As the story goes, the French were fighting with the English and had a diabolical (and greatly advertised) plan of cutting off the middle fingers of any captured English archers so they could never taunt the French with arrows plucked in their . Updates? [88], Regardless of when the baggage assault happened, at some point after the initial English victory, Henry became alarmed that the French were regrouping for another attack. (Indeed, Henry V was heavily criticized for supposedly having ordered the execution of French prisoners at Agincourt. Medieval warriors didn't take prisoners because by doing so they were observing a moral code that dictated opponents who had laid down their arms and ceased fighting must be treated humanely, but because they knew high-ranking captives were valuable property that could be ransomed for money. 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. I admit that I bring this story up when I talk about the Hundred Years War only to debunk it. First of all, the word pluck begins with the blend pl, which would logically become fl if the voiceless bilabial plosive p has actually transformed into the labiodentalfricative f, which is by no means certain. This symbol of rocking out is formed by tucking the middle and index finger and holding them in place with the thumb. Thepostalleges that the Frenchhad planned to cut offthe middle fingers ofall captured English soldiers,to inhibit them fromdrawingtheir longbowsin futurebattles. He contrasts the modern, English king and his army with the medieval, chivalric, older model of the French. Henry would marry Catherine, Charles VI's young daughter, and receive a dowry of 2million crowns. Clip from the 1944 movie "Henry V" (137 min). 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]. The Battle of Agincourt took place on October 25, 1415. The English men-at-arms in plate and mail were placed shoulder to shoulder four deep. Axtell, Roger E. Gestures: The Dos and Taboos of Body Language Around the World.New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1991 ISBN 0-471-53672-5 (pp. Why not simply kill them outright in the first place? Many folkloric or etymological myths have sprung up about its origin, especially the widely quoted one about the interplay between the French and English soldiery at the battle of Agincourt 1415, where the French threatened to amputate the middle fingers of the English archers to prevent them from drawing their bows, which of course is absolute [69] (The use of stakes was an innovation for the English: during the Battle of Crcy, for example, the archers had been instead protected by pits and other obstacles. [73] The mounted charge and subsequent retreat churned up the already muddy terrain between the French and the English. [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]. The version that I tell explains the specific British custom of elevating two fingers as a rude gesture. [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. There was no monetary reward to be obtained by capturing them, nor was there any glory to be won by defeating them in battle. 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 . 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. 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. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. But frankly, I suspect that the French would have done a lot worse to any captured English archers than chopping off their fingers. [49], The French vanguard and main battle numbered respectively 4,800 and 3,000 men-at-arms. [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. The French hoped to raise 9,000 troops, but the army was not ready in time to relieve Harfleur. [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. It lasted longer than Henry had anticipated, and his numbers were significantly diminished as a result of casualties, desertions, and disease. The battle probably lasted no longer than three hours and was perhaps as short as half an hour, according to some estimates. He told his men that he would rather die in the coming battle than be captured and ransomed. So they were already overcome with fatigue even before they advanced against the enemy". Historians disagree less about the French numbers. The basic premise that the origins of the one-finger gesture and its association with the profane word "fuck" were an outgrowth of the 1415 battle between French and English forces at Agincourt is simple enough to debunk. The effect of the victory on national morale was powerful. 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. [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. [45] A second, smaller mounted force was to attack the rear of the English army, along with its baggage and servants. A widely shared image on social media purportedly explains the historic origins of the middle finger, considered an offensive gesture in Western culture. Keegan, John. They shadowed Henry's army while calling a semonce des nobles,[30] calling on local nobles to join the army. The 'middle finger salute' did not derive from the defiant gestures of English archers whose fingers had been severed at the Battle of Agincourt. 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. 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. 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. They might also have deployed some archers in the centre of the line. 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. The city capitulated within six weeks, but the siege was costly. King Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt, 1415 by Sir John Gilbert, Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport, Lancashire. 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? The French were commanded by Constable Charles d'Albret and various prominent French noblemen of the Armagnac party. 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. Over the years some 'folk etymologies' have grown up around this symbolic gesture. Adam Koford, Salt Lake City, Utah, Now for the facts. [76] Modern historians are divided on how effective the longbows would have been against plate armour of the time. In December 1414, the English parliament was persuaded to grant Henry a "double subsidy", a tax at twice the traditional rate, to recover his inheritance from the French. 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. The Battle of Agincourt (/dnkr(t)/ AJ-in-kor(t);[a] French: Azincourt [azku]) was an English victory in the Hundred Years' War. The king received an axe blow to the head, which knocked off a piece of the crown that formed part of his helmet. [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. The battlefield was a freshly plowed field, and at the time of the battle, it had been raining continuously for several days. [93] Entire noble families were wiped out in the male line, and in some regions an entire generation of landed nobility was annihilated. However, the lack of archaeological evidence at this traditional site has led to suggestions it was fought to the west of Azincourt. 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 ). 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. 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 . [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. She graduated from the University of Chicago in 2019 with bachelor's degrees in English Language and Literature and Medieval Studies. Singer Robbie Williams insults the viewer. [31], The precise location of the battle is not known. Without a river obstacle to defend, the French were hesitant to force a battle. Some historians trace its origins to ancient Rome. [citation needed], In any event, Henry ordered the slaughter of what were perhaps several thousand French prisoners, sparing only the highest ranked (presumably those most likely to fetch a large ransom under the chivalric system of warfare). This moment of the battle is portrayed both as a break with the traditions of chivalry and as a key example of the paradox of kingship. [19], Henry V invaded France following the failure of negotiations with the French. The "middle finger" gesture does not derive from the mutilation of English archers at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows that the gesture is known as giving the bird. And yew all thought yew knew everything! 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. Contemporary accounts [ edit] 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.
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