[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. Band of Brothers: Henry V and the Battle of Agincourt The History of the Middle Finger & "Fuck You" - Blogger 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. It supposedly describes the origin of the middle-finger hand gesture and, by implication, the insult "fuck you". Although it could be intended as humorous, the image on social media is historically inaccurate. Participating as judges were Justices Samuel Alito and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. They shadowed Henry's army while calling a semonce des nobles,[30] calling on local nobles to join the army. The puzzler was: What was this body part? It is unclear whether the delay occurred because the French were hoping the English would launch a frontal assault (and were surprised when the English instead started shooting from their new defensive position), or whether the French mounted knights instead did not react quickly enough to the English advance. 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. Despite the lack of motion pictures and television way back in the 15th century, the details of medieval battles such as the one at Agincourt in 1415 did not go unrecorded. "[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]. [84] The exhausted French men-at-arms were unable to get up after being knocked to the ground by the English. The English Gesta Henrici described three great heaps of the slain around the three main English standards. 1995 - 2023 by Snopes Media Group Inc. It. [93] Entire noble families were wiped out in the male line, and in some regions an entire generation of landed nobility was annihilated. 78-116). Corrections? One Of The Oldest Insults: The Origin Of The Middle Finger - Storypick [92], The French had suffered a catastrophic defeat. [87] Whether this was part of a deliberate French plan or an act of local brigandage is unclear from the sources. Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured soldiers. The Face of Battle.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. Contemporary chroniclers did not criticise him for it. 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. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. 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. 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. Battle of Agincourt | Facts, Summary, & Significance | Britannica 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. [22], Henry's army landed in northern France on 13 August 1415, carried by a vast fleet. This famous weapon was made of the native English yew tree, and so the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking 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. Medieval Archers (Everything you Need to Know) - The Finer Times Battle of Agincourt - Wikipedia 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". [96] Of the great royal office holders, France lost its constable (Albret), an admiral (the lord of Dampierre), the Master of Crossbowmen (David de Rambures, dead along with three sons), Master of the Royal Household (Guichard Dauphin) and prvt of the marshals. The approximate location of the battle has never been disputed, and the site remains relatively unaltered after 600 years. [8] These included the Duke of York, the young Earl of Suffolk and the Welsh esquire Dafydd ("Davy") Gam. [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. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore be incapable of fighting in the future. If the two-fingered salute comes from Agincourt, then at what point was it reduced to one finger in North America? The French, who were overwhelmingly favored to win the battle, threatened to cut a certain body part off of all captured English soldiers so that they could never fight again. 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. 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. 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. The image makes the claim that the gesture derives from English soldiers at the Battle of Agincourt, France in 1415. The historian Suetonius, writing about Augustus Caesar, says the emperor expelled [the entertainer] Pylades . [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. Didn't it originate at Agincourt? [124], The most famous cultural depiction of the battle today is in Act IV of William Shakespeare's Henry V, written in 1599. The third line of the French army, recoiling at the pile of corpses before them and unable to make an effective charge, was then massacred swiftly. The version that I tell explains the specific British custom of elevating two fingers as a rude gesture. [94][10][11] The list of casualties, one historian has noted, "read like a roll call of the military and political leaders of the past generation". [49], The French vanguard and main battle numbered respectively 4,800 and 3,000 men-at-arms. Rather than retire directly to England for the winter, with his costly expedition resulting in the capture of only one town, Henry decided to march most of his army (roughly 9,000) through Normandy to the port of Calais, the English stronghold in northern France, to demonstrate by his presence in the territory at the head of an army that his right to rule in the duchy was more than a mere abstract legal and historical claim. The English account in the Gesta Henrici says: "For when some of them, killed when battle was first joined, fall at the front, so great was the undisciplined violence and pressure of the mass of men behind them that the living fell on top of the dead, and others falling on top of the living were killed as well."[62]. When the English won the battle the soldiers waved their middle fingers at the French in defiance, thus flipping the bird was born 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. 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. Axtell, Roger E. Gestures: The Do's and Taboos of Body Language Around the World. As the English were collecting prisoners, a band of French peasants led by local noblemen began plundering Henrys baggage behind the lines. The number is supported by many other contemporary accounts. - [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. A truce had been formally declared in 1396 that was meant to last 28 years, sealed by the marriage of the French king Charles VIs daughter to King Richard II of England. [114][115] Curry and Mortimer questioned the reliability of the Gesta, as there have been doubts as to how much it was written as propaganda for Henry V. Both note that the Gesta vastly overestimates the number of French in the battle; its proportions of English archers to men-at-arms at the battle are also different from those of the English army before the siege of Harfleur. The trial ranged widely over whether there was just cause for war and not simply the prisoner issue. [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. The . Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). This claim is false. . During World War II the symbol was adopted as a V for victory. [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.
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