Contemporary accounts [ edit] Fixed formatting. (There is an Indo-European connection between the p-sound and f-sound see the distinction between the Latin pater and the Germanic Vater/father but that split occurred a long time ago.) The number is supported by many other contemporary accounts. "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? Singer Robbie Williams insults the viewer. The play focuses on the pressures of kingship, the tensions between how a king should appear chivalric, honest, and just and how a king must sometimes act Machiavellian and ruthless. [121] Mortimer notes the presence of noncombatant pages only, indicating that they would ride the spare horses during the battle and be mistakenly thought of as combatants by the English.[122]. In pursuit of his claim to the French throne, Henry V invaded Normandy with an army of 11,000 men in August 1415. In the words of Juliet Barker, the battle "cut a great swath through the natural leaders of French society in Artois, Ponthieu, Normandy, Picardy. In his 2007 film adaptation, director Peter Babakitis uses digital effects to exaggerate realist features during the battle scenes, producing a more avant-garde interpretation of the fighting at Agincourt. The Agincourt Carol, dating from around this time and possibly written for Henrys reception in London, is a rousing celebration of the might of the English. Mortimer also considers that the Gesta vastly inflates the English casualties 5,000 at Harfleur, and that "despite the trials of the march, Henry had lost very few men to illness or death; and we have independent testimony that no more than 160 had been captured on the way". The 'middle finger salute' is derived from the defiant gestures of English archers whose fingers had been severed by the French at the Battle of Agincourt. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore be incapable of fighting in the future. Contemporary chroniclers did not criticise him for it. This symbol of rocking out is formed by tucking the middle and index finger and holding them in place with the thumb. The English King Henry V and his troops were marching to Calais to embark for England when he was intercepted by forces which outnumbered his. Humble English archers defeated the armoured elite of French chivalry, enshrining both the longbow and the battle in English national legend. 33-35). I admit that I bring this story up when I talk about the Hundred Years War only to debunk it. Barker, Sumption and Rogers all wrote that the English probably had 6,000 men, these being 5,000 archers and 9001,000 men-at-arms. It was often reported to comprise 1,500 ships, but was probably far smaller. 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. When Henry V acceded to the English throne in 1413, there had been a long hiatus in the fighting. [Adam attaches the following memo, which has been floating around the Internet for some time.] These numbers are based on the Gesta Henrici Quinti and the chronicle of Jean Le Fvre, the only two eyewitness accounts on the English camp. 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. [53] A further 600 dismounted men-at-arms stood in each wing, with the left under the Count of Vendme and the right under the Count of Richemont. [89] A slaughter of the French prisoners ensued. Legend says that the British archers were so formidable that the ones captured by the French had their index and middle fingers cut off so that they . Agincourt. He contrasts the modern, English king and his army with the medieval, chivalric, older model of the French. "[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]. The cavalry force, which could have devastated the English line if it had attacked while they moved their stakes, charged only after the initial volley of arrows from the English. [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. . Henry V's victory in the mud of Picardy remains the . Keegan also speculated that due to the relatively low number of archers actually involved in killing the French knights (roughly 200 by his estimate), together with the refusal of the English knights to assist in a duty they saw as distastefully unchivalrous, and combined with the sheer difficulty of killing such a large number of prisoners in such a short space of time, the actual number of French prisoners put to death may not have been substantial before the French reserves fled the field and Henry rescinded the order. Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. [26] He also intended the manoeuvre as a deliberate provocation to battle aimed at the dauphin, who had failed to respond to Henry's personal challenge to combat at Harfleur. The key word for describing the battle of Agincourt is mud . This famous English longbow was . It took place on 25 October 1415 (Saint Crispin's Day) near Azincourt, in northern France. Osprey Publishing. [34] It is likely that the English adopted their usual battle line of longbowmen on either flank, with men-at-arms and knights in the centre. [90] In his study of the battle John Keegan argued that the main aim was not to actually kill the French knights but rather to terrorise them into submission and quell any possibility they might resume the fight, which would probably have caused the uncommitted French reserve forces to join the fray, as well. [93] In all, around 6,000 of their fighting men lay dead on the ground. The historian Suetonius, writing about Augustus Caesar, says the emperor expelled [the entertainer] Pylades . If the two-fingered salute comes from Agincourt, then at what point was it reduced to one finger in North America? Recent heavy rain made the battle field very muddy, proving very tiring to walk through in full plate armour. The Battle of Agincourt originated in 1328. You would think that anything English predating 1607, such as the language, Protestantism, or the Common Law, would have been a part of Americas patrimony. 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. And although the precise etymology of the English word fuck is still a matter of debate, it is linguistically nonsensical to maintain that that word entered the language because the "difficult consonant cluster at the beginning" of the phase 'pluck yew' has "gradually changed to a labiodental fricative 'f.'" The version that I tell explains the specific British custom of elevating two fingers as a rude gesture. The latter, each titled Henry V, star Laurence Olivier in 1944 and Kenneth Branagh in 1989. The impact of thousands of arrows, combined with the slog in heavy armour through the mud, the heat and difficulty breathing in plate armour with the visor down,[83] and the crush of their numbers, meant the French men-at-arms could "scarcely lift their weapons" when they finally engaged the English line. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). On 25 October 1415, an army of English raiders under Henry V faced the French outside an obscure village on the road to Calais. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. The English were not in an ideal condition to fight a battle. |. The English Gesta Henrici described three great heaps of the slain around the three main English standards. Historians disagree less about the French numbers. But lets not quibble. Details the English victory over the French at the Battle of Agincourt. This famous weapon was made of the native English yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking the yew." He considered a knight in the best-quality steel armour invulnerable to an arrow on the breastplate or top of the helmet, but vulnerable to shots hitting the limbs, particularly at close range. As the mle developed, the French second line also joined the attack, but they too were swallowed up, with the narrow terrain meaning the extra numbers could not be used effectively. The Burgundians seized on the opportunity and within 10 days of the battle had mustered their armies and marched on Paris. [7] Barker, who believes the English were outnumbered by at least four to one,[120] says that the armed servants formed the rearguard in the battle. When the first French line reached the English front, the cavalry were unable to overwhelm the archers, who had driven sharpened stakes into the ground at an angle before themselves. This material may not be reproduced without permission. A Dictionary of Superstitions.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992 ISBN 0-19-282916-5 (p. 454). He told his men that he would rather die in the coming battle than be captured and ransomed. In Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient Rome, Anthony Corbeill, Professor of Classics at the University of Kansas wrote: The most familiar example of the coexistence of a human and transhuman elementis the extended middle finger. [107], Most primary sources which describe the battle have English outnumbered by several times. 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). Supposedly, both originated at the 1415 Battle of Agincourt, . The Battle of Agincourt (720p) Watch on New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1991 ISBN 0-471-53672-5 (pp. [87] Whether this was part of a deliberate French plan or an act of local brigandage is unclear from the sources. The campaign season was coming to an end, and the English army had suffered many casualties through disease. [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. The English finally crossed the Somme south of Pronne, at Bthencourt and Voyennes[28][29] and resumed marching north. [25] The siege took longer than expected. The one-finger salute, or at any rate sexual gestures involving the middle finger, are thousands of years old. The French had originally drawn up a battle plan that had archers and crossbowmen in front of their men-at-arms, with a cavalry force at the rear specifically designed to "fall upon the archers, and use their force to break them,"[71] but in the event, the French archers and crossbowmen were deployed behind and to the sides of the men-at-arms (where they seem to have played almost no part, except possibly for an initial volley of arrows at the start of the battle). In Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution, Desmond Morris and colleagues note that the digitus infamis or digitus impudicus (infamous or indecent finger) is mentioned several times in the literature of ancient Rome. French chroniclers agree that when the mounted charge did come, it did not contain as many men as it should have; Gilles le Bouvier states that some had wandered off to warm themselves and others were walking or feeding their horses. [116] One particular cause of confusion may have been the number of servants on both sides, or whether they should at all be counted as combatants. The battle occurred on Friday, 25 October 1415 ( Saint Crispin's Day ), near modern-day Azincourt, in northern France. The Battle of Agincourt was another famous battle where longbowmen had a particularly important . [23] The army of about 12,000 men and up to 20,000 horses besieged the port of Harfleur. The legend that the "two-fingered salute" stems from the Battle of Agincourt is apocryphal Although scholars and historians continue to debate its origins, according to legend it was first. ", "Miracle in the Mud: The Hundred Years' War's Battle of Agincourt", The Agincourt Battlefield Archaeology Project, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Agincourt&oldid=1137126379, 6,000 killed (most of whom were of the French nobility), Hansen, Mogens Herman (Copenhagen Polis Centre), This page was last edited on 2 February 2023, at 23:13. What does DO NOT HUMP mean on the side of railroad cars? The Battle of Agincourt was a major English victory in the Hundred Years' War.The battle took place on Friday, 25 October 1415 (Saint Crispin's Day) in the County of Saint-Pol, Artois, some. The . Rogers suggested that the French at the back of their deep formation would have been attempting to literally add their weight to the advance, without realising that they were hindering the ability of those at the front to manoeuvre and fight by pushing them into the English formation of lancepoints. Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French,anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. The puzzler was: What was this body part? The two candidates with the strongest claims were Edward III of England, who was the son of Charles's sister, and Philip, Charles's paternal . In the Battle of Agincourt, the French threatened the English Soldiers that they would cut off their fingers and when they failed the Englishmen mocked them by showing their fingers. Whether this was true is open to question and continues to be debated to this day; however, it seems likely that death was the normal fate of any soldier who could not be ransomed. [5] [b] Henry V 's victory at Agincourt, against a numerically superior French army. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Im even more suspicious of the alleged transformation of p to f. False. Keegan, John. David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. The metallography and relative effectiveness of arrowheads and armor during the Middle Ages. [46] Many lords and gentlemen demanded and got places in the front lines, where they would have a higher chance to acquire glory and valuable ransoms; this resulted in the bulk of the men-at-arms being massed in the front lines and the other troops, for which there was no remaining space, to be placed behind. But frankly, I suspect that the French would have done a lot worse to any captured English archers than chopping off their fingers. [135] The battle also forms a central component of the 2019 Netflix film The King. Nonetheless, so many readers have forwarded it to us accompanied by an "Is this true?" Bloomsbury Publishing. [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. Why not simply kill them outright in the first place? Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore be incapable of fighting in the future. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. [50] Both lines were arrayed in tight, dense formations of about 16 ranks each, and were positioned a bowshot length from each other. It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows that the symbolic gesture is known as "giving the bird". [70]), The tightness of the terrain also seems to have restricted the planned deployment of the French forces. This is the answer submitted by a listener: Dear Click and Clack, Thank you for the Agincourt 'Puzzler', which clears up some profound questions of etymology, folklore and emotional symbolism. The military aspects of this account are similarly specious. [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. Inthe book,Corbeillpoints to Priapus, a minor deityhedatesto 400 BC, whichlater alsoappears in Rome as the guardian of gardens,according to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Greece and Rome( here ). Your opponent is not going to pay you (or pay you much) for the return of mutilated soldiers, so now what do you do with them? It may be difficult to pinpoint exactly when the middle finger gesture originated, but some historians trace its roots to ancient Rome. [c], The English made their confessions before the battle, as was customary. The Face of Battle. Before the battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French proposed cutting the middle finger off of captured English soldiers rendering them incapable of shooting longbows. The original usage of this mudra can be traced back as far as the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. This famous weapon was made of the . 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. [60][61], Accounts of the battle describe the French engaging the English men-at-arms before being rushed from the sides by the longbowmen as the mle developed. And where does the distinction between one and two fingers come from? The French, who were overwhelmingly favored to win the battle, Continue Reading 41 2 7 Alexander L [31] This entailed abandoning his chosen position and pulling out, advancing, and then re-installing the long sharpened wooden stakes pointed outwards toward the enemy, which helped protect the longbowmen from cavalry charges. The town surrendered on 22 September, and the English army did not leave until 8 October. Unable to cross the Somme River because of French defenses, he was forced to take a detour inland and cross farther upstream. [82], The surviving French men-at-arms reached the front of the English line and pushed it back, with the longbowmen on the flanks continuing to shoot at point-blank range. Probably each man-at-arms would be accompanied by a gros valet (or varlet), an armed servant, adding up to another 10,000 potential fighting men,[7] though some historians omit them from the number of combatants. On February 1, 1328, King Charles IV of France died without an heir. Dear Cecil: Can you confirm the following? Didn't it originate at Agincourt? Over the years some 'folk etymologies' have grown up around this symbolic gesture. The English army, led by King Henry V, famously achieved victory in spite of the numerical superiority of its opponent. [126], Shakespeare's depiction of the battle also plays on the theme of modernity. Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. Updates? "[67] On top of this, the French were expecting thousands of men to join them if they waited. Nicolle, D. (2004). 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. [54] To disperse the enemy archers, a cavalry force of 8001,200 picked men-at-arms,[55] led by Clignet de Brban and Louis de Bosredon, was distributed evenly between both flanks of the vanguard (standing slightly forward, like horns). While numerous English sources give the English casualties in double figures,[8] record evidence identifies at least 112 Englishmen killed in the fighting,[103] while Monstrelet reported 600 English dead. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. One final observation: any time some appeal begins with heres something that intelligent people will find edifying you should be suspicious. The decorative use of the image of Priapusmatched the Roman use ofimages of male genitalia for warding off evil. Opie, Iona and Moira Tatem. Do you return these prisoners to your opponents in exchange for nothing, thereby providing them with trained soldiers who can fight against you another day? On the morning of 25 October, the French were still waiting for additional troops to arrive. [49], The French vanguard and main battle numbered respectively 4,800 and 3,000 men-at-arms. While the precise number of casualties is unknown, it is estimated that English losses amounted to about 400 and French losses to about 6,000, many of whom were noblemen. Read more about our work to fact-check social media posts here . [110][111][112] Ian Mortimer endorsed Curry's methodology, though applied it more liberally, noting how she "minimises French numbers (by limiting her figures to those in the basic army and a few specific additional companies) and maximises English numbers (by assuming the numbers sent home from Harfleur were no greater than sick lists)", and concluded that "the most extreme imbalance which is credible" is 15,000 French against 8,0009,000 English. However, a need to reassert his authority at home (as well as his own ambition and a sense of justice) led Henry V to renew English claims in France. This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. [109] Juliet Barker, Jonathan Sumption and Clifford J. Rogers criticized Curry's reliance on administrative records, arguing that they are incomplete and that several of the available primary sources already offer a credible assessment of the numbers involved. Winston Churchhill can be seen using the V as a rallying call. The French could not cope with the thousands of lightly armoured longbowmen assailants (who were much less hindered by the mud and weight of their armour) combined with the English men-at-arms. The English had very little food, had marched 260 miles (420km) in two and a half weeks, were suffering from sickness such as dysentery, and were greatly outnumbered by well-equipped French men-at-arms. 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. [23] Thomas Morstede, Henry V's royal surgeon,[24] had previously been contracted by the king to supply a team of surgeons and makers of surgical instruments to take part in the Agincourt campaign. The battle remains an important symbol in popular culture. King Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt, 1415 by Sir John Gilbert, Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport, Lancashire. 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. According to research, heres the true story: Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. . They shadowed Henry's army while calling a semonce des nobles,[30] calling on local nobles to join the army. Moreover, with this outcome Henry V strengthened his position in his own kingdom; it legitimized his claim to the crown, which had been under threat after his accession. [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. This suggests that the French could have outnumbered the English 5 to 1. The next line of French knights that poured in found themselves so tightly packed (the field narrowed at the English end) that they were unable to use their weapons effectively, and the tide of the battle began to turn toward the English. The English won in a major upset and waved the body part in question at the French in defiance. The brunt of the battle had fallen on the Armagnacs and it was they who suffered the majority of senior casualties and carried the blame for the defeat. 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. [130][131] Partially as a result, the battle was used as a metaphor at the beginning of the First World War, when the British Expeditionary Force's attempts to stop the German advances were widely likened to it.[132]. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. New York: Penguin Books, 1978 ISBN 0-140-04897-9 (pp. The English men-at-arms in plate and mail were placed shoulder to shoulder four deep. [128] The original play does not, however, feature any scenes of the actual battle itself, leading critic Rose Zimbardo to characterise it as "full of warfare, yet empty of conflict. A complete coat of plate was considered such good protection that shields were generally not used,[75] although the Burgundian contemporary sources distinguish between Frenchmen who used shields and those who did not, and Rogers has suggested that the front elements of the French force used axes and shields. They were blocking Henry's retreat, and were perfectly happy to wait for as long as it took. The Battle of Agincourt forms a key part of Shakespeare's Henry V. Photo by Nick Ansell / POOL / AFP) Myth: During the Hundred Years War, the French cut off the first and second fingers of any. It forms the backdrop to events in William Shakespeare 's play Henry V, written in 1599. [citation needed], Immediately after the battle, Henry summoned the heralds of the two armies who had watched the battle together with principal French herald Montjoie, and they settled on the name of the battle as Azincourt, after the nearest fortified place. They might also have deployed some archers in the centre of the line. Many people who have seen the film question whether giving the finger was done around the time of the Titanic disaster, or was it a more recent gesture invented by some defiant seventh-grader. ), And even if killing prisoners of war did not violate the moral code of the times, what would be the purpose of taking archers captive, cutting off their fingers, and then executing them? [47] Although it had been planned for the archers and crossbowmen to be placed with the infantry wings, they were now regarded as unnecessary and placed behind them instead. 138). 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.