According to most chroniclers, Henry's fear was that the prisoners (who, in an unusual turn of events, actually outnumbered their captors) would realise their advantage in numbers, rearm themselves with the weapons strewn about the field and overwhelm the exhausted English forces. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. This famous weapon was made of the native English yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking the yew." As John Keegan wrote in his history of warfare: "To meet a similarly equipped opponent was the occasion for which the armoured soldier trained perhaps every day of his life from the onset of manhood. [19], Henry V invaded France following the failure of negotiations with the French. The Battle of Agincourt is one of England's most celebrated victories and was one of the most important English triumphs in the Hundred Years' War, along with the Battle of Crcy (1346) and Battle of Poitiers (1356). [106] This lack of unity in France allowed Henry eighteen months to prepare militarily and politically for a renewed campaign. [81] In any case, to protect themselves as much as possible from the arrows, the French had to lower their visors and bend their helmeted heads to avoid being shot in the face, as the eye- and air-holes in their helmets were among the weakest points in the armour. The Battle of Agincourt was another famous battle where longbowmen had a particularly important . Without the middle finger it would be impossible for the English soldiers to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore incapable of fighting in the future. It seems clear, however, that the English were at a decided numerical disadvantage. before a defensive battle was possible. The military aspects of this account are similarly specious. The city capitulated within six weeks, but the siege was costly. A list of English archers killed at Agincourt, as recorded in the village's museum, The story of the battle has been retold many times in English, from the 15th-century, Dates in the fifteenth century are difficult to reconcile with modern calendars: see, The first known use of angled stakes to thwart a mounted charge was at the Battle of Nicopolis, an engagement between European states and Turkish forces in 1396, twenty years before Agincourt. [49], The French vanguard and main battle numbered respectively 4,800 and 3,000 men-at-arms. Contemporary chroniclers did not criticise him for it. Historians disagree less about the French numbers. Im even more suspicious of the alleged transformation of p to f. This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. The English won in a major upset and waved the body part in question at the French in defiance. [97] According to the heralds, 3,069 knights and squires were killed,[e] while at least 2,600 more corpses were found without coats of arms to identify them. Departing from Harfleur on October 8, Henry marched northward toward the English-held port of Calais, where he would disembark for England, with a force of 1,000 knights and men-at-arms and 5,000 archers. because when a spectator started to hiss, he called the attention of the whole audience to him with an obscene movement of his middle finger. Morris also claims that the mad emperor Caligula, as an insult, would extend his middle finger for supplicants to kiss. Maybe it means five and was a symbol of support for Henry V? Archers were not the "similarly equipped" opponents that armored soldiers triumphed in defeating -- if the two clashed in combat, the armored soldier would either kill an archer outright or leave him to bleed to death rather than go to the wasteful effort of taking him prisoner. The Roman gesturemadeby extending the third finger from a closed fist, thus made the same threat, by forming a similarly phallic shape. During this battle, the medieval archers started ahead of the army and commenced the action. Henry threatened to hang whoever did not obey his orders. To meet and beat him was a triumph, the highest form which self-expression could take in the medieval nobleman's way of life." This famous weapon was made of the native English yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as plucking the yew. Much to the bewilderment of the French, the English won a major upset and began mocking the French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated French, saying, See, we can still pluck yew! Over the years some folk etymologies have grown up around this symbolic gesture. Agincourt came on the back of half a century of military failure and gave the English a success that repeated victories such as Crcy and Poitiers. The point is, the middle-finger/phallus equation goes back way before the Titanic, the Battle of Agincourt, or probably even that time Sextillus cut off Pylades with his chariot. But lets not quibble. The Battle of Agincourt (/dnkr(t)/ AJ-in-kor(t);[a] French: Azincourt [azku]) was an English victory in the Hundred Years' War. The battle occurred on Friday, 25 October 1415 ( Saint Crispin's Day ), near modern-day Azincourt, in northern France. On 25 October 1415, an army of English raiders under Henry V faced the French outside an obscure village on the road to Calais. [34] The rearguard, leaderless, would serve as a "dumping ground" for the surplus troops. [b] The unexpected English victory against the numerically superior French army boosted English morale and prestige, crippled France, and started a new period of English dominance in the war that would last for 14 years until France defeated England in the Siege of Orlans in 1429. "[102], Estimates of the number of prisoners vary between 700 and 2,200, amongst them the dukes of Orlans and Bourbon, the counts of Eu, Vendme, Richemont (brother of the Duke of Brittany and stepbrother of Henry V) and Harcourt, and marshal Jean Le Maingre.[12]. Fighting ignorance since 1973. He claimed the title of King of France through his great-grandfather Edward III of England, although in practice the English kings were generally prepared to renounce this claim if the French would acknowledge the English claim on Aquitaine and other French lands (the terms of the Treaty of Brtigny). This use of stakes could have been inspired by the Battle of Nicopolis of 1396, where forces of the Ottoman Empire used the tactic against French cavalry. Clip from the 1944 movie "Henry V" (137 min). An account purporting to offer the historical origins of the obscene middle-finger extended hand gesture (varously known as "flipping the bird," "flipping someone off," or the "one-finger salute") is silly, and so obviously a joke that shouldn't need any debunking. Loades, M. (2013). [88] In some accounts the attack happened towards the end of the battle, and led the English to think they were being attacked from the rear. The ransoming of prisoners was the only way for medieval soldiers to make a quick fortune, and so they seized every available opportunity to capture opponents who could be exchanged for handsome prices. . French knights, charging uphill, were unseated from their horses, either because their mounts were injured on the stakes or because they dismounted to uproot the obstacles, and were overpowered. [Adam attaches the following memo, which has been floating around the Internet for some time.] The Battle of Agincourt originated in 1328. [76] Modern historians are divided on how effective the longbows would have been against plate armour of the time. Materials characterization, 29(2), 111117. Upon hearing that his youngest brother Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester had been wounded in the groin, Henry took his household guard and stood over his brother, in the front rank of the fighting, until Humphrey could be dragged to safety. Updates? Rogers says each of the 10,000 men-at-arms would be accompanied by a gros valet (an armed, armoured and mounted military servant) and a noncombatant page, counts the former as fighting men, and concludes thus that the French in fact numbered 24,000. In another of his books Morris describes a variety of sexual insults involving the middle finger, such as the middle-finger down prod, the middle-finger erect, etc., all of which are different from the classic middle-finger jerk. Unable to cross the Somme River because of French defenses, he was forced to take a detour inland and cross farther upstream. After Henry V marched to the north, the French moved to block them along the River Somme. The fighting lasted about three hours, but eventually the leaders of the second line were killed or captured, as those of the first line had been. [125] Shakespeare illustrates these tensions by depicting Henry's decision to kill some of the French prisoners, whilst attempting to justify it and distance himself from the event. The main part of the speech begins "This day is called the feast of . [123] Other ballads followed, including "King Henry Fifth's Conquest of France", raising the popular prominence of particular events mentioned only in passing by the original chroniclers, such as the gift of tennis balls before the campaign. They might also have deployed some archers in the centre of the line. 42 Share 3.9K views 4 years ago There is an old story that allegedly gives the background of how we came to use the middle finger as an insult along with the alleged origin of the "F-word". [70]), The tightness of the terrain also seems to have restricted the planned deployment of the French forces. Without the middle finger, it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow; and therefore, they would be incapable of fighting in the future. In the ensuing negotiations Henry said that he would give up his claim to the French throne if the French would pay the 1.6million crowns outstanding from the ransom of John II (who had been captured at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356), and concede English ownership of the lands of Anjou, Brittany, Flanders, Normandy, and Touraine, as well as Aquitaine. [17] Two of the most frequently cited accounts come from Burgundian sources, one from Jean Le Fvre de Saint-Remy who was present at the battle, and the other from Enguerrand de Monstrelet. In 1999, Snopesdebunked more of the historical aspects of the claim, as well as thecomponent explaininghow the phrase pluck yew graduallychanged form to begin with an f( here ). All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. Common estimates place the English army at about 6,000, while the French army probably consisted of 20,000 to 30,000 men. The battle remains an important symbol in popular culture. The French monk of St. Denis says: "Their vanguard, composed of about 5,000 men, found itself at first so tightly packed that those who were in the third rank could scarcely use their swords,"[63] and the Burgundian sources have a similar passage. When the English won the battle the soldiers waved their middle fingers at the French in defiance, thus flipping the bird was born Theodore Beck also suggests that among Henry's army was "the king's physician and a little band of surgeons". The Battle of Agincourt (October 25, 1415) was a pivotal battle in the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453), resulting in an English victory over the French. [84] The exhausted French men-at-arms were unable to get up after being knocked to the ground by the English. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1991 ISBN 0-471-53672-5 (pp. Fixed formatting. Nonetheless, so many readers have forwarded it to us accompanied by an "Is this true?" Since pluck yew is rather difficult to say, like pheasant mother plucker, which is who you had to go to for the feathers used on the arrows for the longbow, the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodental fricative f, and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger salute are mistakenly thought to have something to do with an intimate encounter. [21] On 19 April 1415, Henry again asked the Great Council to sanction war with France, and this time they agreed. [77][78][79][80] Rogers suggested that the longbow could penetrate a wrought iron breastplate at short range and penetrate the thinner armour on the limbs even at 220 yards (200m). "[67] On top of this, the French were expecting thousands of men to join them if they waited. The one-finger salute, or at any rate sexual gestures involving the middle finger, are thousands of years old. Osprey Publishing. News of the contrivance circulated within Europe and was described in a book of tactics written in 1411 by. The decorative use of the image of Priapusmatched the Roman use ofimages of male genitalia for warding off evil. The field that the French had to cross to meet their enemy was muddy after a week of rain and slowed their progress, during which time they endured casualties from English arrows. [18] A recent re-appraisal of Henry's strategy of the Agincourt campaign incorporates these three accounts and argues that war was seen as a legal due process for solving the disagreement over claims to the French throne. (Indeed, Henry V was heavily criticized for supposedly having ordered the execution of French prisoners at Agincourt. [43], The French were organized into two main groups (or battles), a vanguard up front and a main battle behind, both composed principally of men-at-arms fighting on foot and flanked by more of the same in each wing. Course Hero uses AI to attempt to automatically extract content from documents to surface to you and others so you can study better, e.g., in search results, to enrich docs, and more. The idea being that you need two fingers to draw a bow, which makes more sense, and thus links up a national custom with a triumphant moment in national history! "Guardian newspaper:French correction: Henry V's Agincourt fleet was half as big, historian claims, 28 July 2015", "Living Dictionary of the French Language", "Limitations imposed by wearing armour on Medieval soldiers' locomotor performance", "High Court Rules for French at Agincourt", "High Court Justices, Legal Luminaries Debate Shakespeare's 'Henry V', "The Development of Battle Tactics in the Hundred Years War", "Historians Reassess Battle of Agincourt", The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, "Henry V's Greatest Victory is Besieged by Academia", The Little Grey Horse Henry V's Speech at Agincourt and the Battle Exhortation in Ancient Historiography, "The Battle of Agincourt: An Alternative location? [91] Such an event would have posed a risk to the still-outnumbered English and could have easily turned a stunning victory into a mutually destructive defeat, as the English forces were now largely intermingled with the French and would have suffered grievously from the arrows of their own longbowmen had they needed to resume shooting. A BBCNews Magazinereportsimilarlytracesthe gesture back toAncient Greek philosophers ( here ). It seems it was purely a decision of Henry, since the English knights found it contrary to chivalry, and contrary to their interests, to kill valuable hostages for whom it was commonplace to ask ransom. At issue was the question of the legitimate succession to the French crown as well as the ownership of several French territories. This head-lowered position restricted their breathing and their vision. For three hours after sunrise there was no fighting. [139] The museum lists the names of combatants of both sides who died in the battle. Last, but certainly not least, wouldn't these insolent archers have been bragging about plucking a bow's string, and not the wood of the bow itself? After a difficult siege, the English forces found themselves assaulted by a massive French force.
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