138). When the English won the battle the soldiers waved their middle fingers at the French in defiance, thus flipping the bird was born Supposedly, both originated at the 1415 Battle of Agincourt, . [32] In 2019, the historian Michael Livingston also made the case for a site west of Azincourt, based on a review of sources and early maps. Henry V and the resumption of the Hundred Years War, That fought with us upon Saint Crispins day, https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Agincourt, World History Encyclopedia - Battle of Agincourt, Warfare History Network - Miracle in the Mud: The Hundred Years' War's Battle of Agincourt, Battle of Agincourt - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). query that we are duty bound to provide a bit of historical and linguistic information demonstrating why this anecdote couldn't possibly be accurate: The 'Car Talk' show (on NPR) with Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers have a feature called the 'Puzzler', and their most recent 'Puzzler' was about the Battle of Agincourt. 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. [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]. The f-word itself is Germanic with early-medieval roots; the earliest attested use in English in an unambiguous sexual context is in a document from 1310. The Battle of Agincourt took place during the the Hundred Years' War, a conflict which, despite its name, was neither one single war nor did it last one hundred years. Contemporary accounts describe the triumphal pageantry with which the king was received in London on November 23, with elaborate displays and choirs attending his passage to St. Pauls Cathedral. It sounds rather fishy to me. If the two-fingered salute comes from Agincourt, then at what point was it reduced to one finger in North America? [50] Both lines were arrayed in tight, dense formations of about 16 ranks each, and were positioned a bowshot length from each other. [113] Barker opined that "if the differential really was as low as three to four then this makes a nonsense of the course of the battle as described by eyewitnesses and contemporaries".[110]. [107], Most primary sources which describe the battle have English outnumbered by several times. Battle of Agincourt, (October 25, 1415), decisive battle in the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) that resulted in the victory of the English over the French. Battle of Agincourt, (October 25, 1415), decisive battle in the Hundred Years War (13371453) that resulted in the victory of the English over the French. 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. 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. 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. Thus, when the victorious English waved their middle fingers at the defeated French, they said, "See, we can still pluck yew! In the other reference Martial writes that a certain party points a finger, an indecent one, at some other people. The king received an axe blow to the head, which knocked off a piece of the crown that formed part of his helmet. "[67] On top of this, the French were expecting thousands of men to join them if they waited. The Battle of Agincourt was another famous battle where longbowmen had a particularly important . Tudor re-invention, leading to the quintessential Shakespearean portrayal of "we happy few", has been the most influential, but every century has made its own accretions. The Hundred Years War was a discontinuous conflict between England and France that spanned two centuries. [36] Henry, worried about the enemy launching surprise raids, and wanting his troops to remain focused, ordered all his men to spend the night before the battle in silence, on pain of having an ear cut off. In March 2010, a mock trial of Henry V for the crimes associated with the slaughter of the prisoners was held in Washington, D.C., drawing from both the historical record and Shakespeare's play. [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. The Hundred Years' War. 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. [21] On 19 April 1415, Henry again asked the Great Council to sanction war with France, and this time they agreed. In pursuit of his claim to the French throne, Henry V invaded Normandy with an army of 11,000 men in August 1415. 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. During World War II the symbol was adopted as a V for victory. It may be difficult to pinpoint exactly when the middle finger gesture originated, but some historians trace its roots to ancient Rome. Eventually the archers abandoned their longbows and began fighting hand-to-hand with swords and axes alongside the men-at-arms. 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. [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. They were successful for a time, forcing Henry to move south, away from Calais, to find a ford. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. Modern test and contemporary accounts conclude that arrows could not penetrate the better quality steel armour, which became available to knights and men-at-arms of fairly modest means by the middle of the 14th century, but could penetrate the poorer quality wrought iron armour. The Burgundian sources have him concluding the speech by telling his men that the French had boasted that they would cut off two fingers from the right hand of every archer, so that he could never draw a longbow again. Since the French had many more men-at-arms than the English, they would accordingly be accompanied by a far greater number of servants. It continued as a series of battles, sieges, and disputes throughout the 14th century, with both the French and the English variously taking advantage. Giving the Finger - 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. [31], The precise location of the battle is not known. (Even if archers whose middle fingers had been amputated could no longer effectively use their bows, they were still capable of wielding mallets, battleaxes, swords, lances, daggers, maces, and other weapons, as archers typically did when the opponents closed ranks with them and the fighting became hand-to-hand.). [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. 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). The deep, soft mud particularly favoured the English force because, once knocked to the ground, the heavily armoured French knights had a hard time getting back up to fight in the mle. After several decades of relative peace, the English had resumed the war in 1415 amid the failure of negotiations with the French. Poitiers 1356: The capture of a king (Vol. The French knights were unable to outflank the longbowmen (because of the encroaching woodland) and unable to charge through the array of sharpened stakes that protected the archers. [93] Among them were 90120 great lords and bannerets killed, including[95] three dukes (Alenon, Bar and Brabant), nine counts (Blmont, Dreux, Fauquembergue, Grandpr, Marle, Nevers, Roucy, Vaucourt, Vaudmont) and one viscount (Puisaye), also an archbishop. Bowman were not valuable prisoners, though: they stood outside the chivalric system and were considered the social inferiors of men-at-arms. The terrain favoured Henrys army and disadvantaged its opponent, as it reduced the numerical advantage of the French army by narrowing the front. There was no monetary reward to be obtained by capturing them, nor was there any glory to be won by defeating them in battle. ", "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. Why do some people have that one extra-long fingernail on the pinkie finger. Its not known whether one displayed the digitus infamis in the same manner that we (well, you) flip the bird today. .). 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. 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. 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. [133] Branagh's version gives a longer, more realist portrayal of the battle itself, drawing on both historical sources and images from the Vietnam and Falkland Wars.[134]. People who killed their social betters from a distance werent very well liked, and would likely have paid with their lives as did all the French prisoners, archers or otherwise, whom Henry V had executed at Agincourt, in what some historians consider a war crime. These heralds were not part of the participating armies, but were, as military expert John Keegan describes, members of an "international corporation of experts who regulated civilized warfare." Two are from the epigrammatist Martial: Laugh loudly, Sextillus, when someone calls you a queen and put your middle finger out., (The verse continues: But you are no sodomite nor fornicator either, Sextillus, nor is Vetustinas hot mouth your fancy. Martial, and Roman poets in general, could be pretty out there, subject-matter-wise. Although the victory had been militarily decisive, its impact was complex. Keegan, John. [59], The field of battle was arguably the most significant factor in deciding the outcome. Barker, following the Gesta Henrici, believed to have been written by an English chaplain who was actually in the baggage train, concluded that the attack happened at the start of the battle. It was often reported to comprise 1,500 ships, but was probably far smaller. [72], The French cavalry, despite being disorganised and not at full numbers, charged towards the longbowmen. This material may not be reproduced without permission. On February 1, 1328, King Charles IV of France died without an heir. Nonetheless, so many readers have forwarded it to us accompanied by an "Is this true?" 1995 - 2023 by Snopes Media Group Inc. What it is supposed to represent I have no idea. [101] The bailiffs of nine major northern towns were killed, often along with their sons, relatives and supporters. [105] Other benefits to the English were longer term. The English and Welsh archers on the flanks drove pointed wooden stakes, or palings, into the ground at an angle to force cavalry to veer off. [38], The French army had 10,000 men-at arms[39][40][41] plus some 4,0005,000 miscellaneous footmen (gens de trait) including archers, crossbowmen[42] (arbaltriers) and shield-bearers (pavisiers), totaling 14,00015,000 men. Henry would marry Catherine, Charles VI's young daughter, and receive a dowry of 2million crowns. To meet and beat him was a triumph, the highest form which self-expression could take in the medieval nobleman's way of life." The English eyewitness account comes from the anonymous author of the Gesta Henrici Quinti, believed to have been written by a chaplain in the King's household who would have been in the baggage train at the battle. [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. Early in the morning on October 25 (the feast day of St. Crispin), 1415, Henry positioned his army for battle on a recently plowed field bounded by woods. The army was divided into three groups, with the right wing led by Edward, Duke of York, the centre led by the king himself, and the left wing under the old and experienced Baron Thomas Camoys. John Keegan argues that the longbows' main influence on the battle at this point was injuries to horses: armoured only on the head, many horses would have become dangerously out of control when struck in the back or flank from the high-elevation, long-range shots used as the charge started. This article was. Wikipedia. A labiodental fricative was no less "difficult" for Middle English speakers to pronounce than the aspirated bilabial stop/voiceless lateral combination of 'pl' that the fricative supposedly changed into, nor are there any other examples of such a pronunciation shift occurring in English. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore be incapable of fighting in the future. The "middle finger" gesture does not derive from the mutilation of English archers at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. [33], Early on the 25th, Henry deployed his army (approximately 1,500 men-at-arms and 7,000 longbowmen) across a 750-yard (690m) part of the defile. PLUCK YEW!". 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. Shakespeare's portrayal of the casualty loss is ahistorical in that the French are stated to have lost 10,000 and the English 'less than' thirty men, prompting Henry's remark, "O God, thy arm was here". [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. [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. 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. (Indeed, Henry V was heavily criticized for supposedly having ordered the execution of French prisoners at Agincourt. [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. 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. 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. Clip from the 1944 movie "Henry V" (137 min). 78-116). The insulting gesture of extending one's middle finger (referred to as digitus impudicus in Latin) originated long before the Battle of Agincourt. 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. 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.'" In such a "press" of thousands of men, Rogers suggested that many could have suffocated in their armour, as was described by several sources, and which was also known to have happened in other battles. Axtell, Roger E. Gestures: The Do's and Taboos of Body Language Around the World. The archers were commanded by Sir Thomas Erpingham, another elderly veteran. Henry threatened to hang whoever did not obey his orders. Bloomsbury Publishing. [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. [56] Some 200 mounted men-at-arms would attack the English rear. When Henry V acceded to the English throne in 1413, there had been a long hiatus in the fighting. [84] The exhausted French men-at-arms were unable to get up after being knocked to the ground by the English. The struggle began in 1337 when King Edward III of England claimed the title King of France over Philip VI and invaded Flanders. Henry managed to subjugate Normandy in 1419, a victory that was followed by the Treaty of Troyes in 1420, which betrothed Henry to King Charles VIs daughter Catherine and named him heir to the French crown. [76] Modern historians are divided on how effective the longbows would have been against plate armour of the time. Another verse begins: You love to be sodomized, Papylus . The latter, each titled Henry V, star Laurence Olivier in 1944 and Kenneth Branagh in 1989. Then they had to walk a few hundred yards (metres) through thick mud and a press of comrades while wearing armour weighing 5060 pounds (2327kg), gathering sticky clay all the way. [49], The French vanguard and main battle numbered respectively 4,800 and 3,000 men-at-arms. 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. This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Some historians trace its origins to ancient Rome. The delay allowed a large French force, led by the constable Charles dAlbret and the marshal Jean II le Meingre (called Boucicaut), to intercept him near the village of Agincourt on October 24. All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. Winston Churchhill can be seen using the V as a rallying call. This famous weapon was made of the . [5] [b] Henry V 's victory at Agincourt, against a numerically superior French army. The fact that Winston Churchill sometimes made his V-for-victory gesture rudely suggests that it is of much more recent vintage. [93] In all, around 6,000 of their fighting men lay dead on the ground. The Battle of Agincourt is well documented by at least seven contemporary accounts, three from eyewitnesses. The image makes the claim that the gesture derives from English soldiers at the Battle of Agincourt, France in 1415. Military textbooks of the time stated: "Everywhere and on all occasions that foot soldiers march against their enemy face to face, those who march lose and those who remain standing still and holding firm win. 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 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. 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. [73] The mounted charge and subsequent retreat churned up the already muddy terrain between the French and the English. Updates? They had been weakened by the siege at Harfleur and had marched over 200 miles (more than 320 km), and many among them were suffering from dysentery. The battle occurred on Friday, 25 October 1415 ( Saint Crispin's Day ), near modern-day Azincourt, in northern France.