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Your membership is the foundation of our sustainability and resilience. 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. 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. On October 25, 1415, during the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) between England and France, Henry V (1386-1422), the young king of England, led his forces to victory at the Battle of . This head-lowered position restricted their breathing and their vision. [34][d] The French apparently had no clear plan for deploying the rest of the army. In pursuit of his claim to the French throne, Henry V invaded Normandy with an army of 11,000 men in August 1415. The French army blocked Henry's way to the safety of Calais, and delaying battle would only further weaken his tired army and allow more French troops to arrive. 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. 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. In a book on the battle of Agincourt, Anne Curry, Professor Emeritus of Medieval History at the University of Southampton, addressed a similar claim prescribed to the V-sign, also considered an offensive gesture: No chronicle or sixteenth-centuryhistory says that English archers made any gesture to the French after the battle in order to show they still had their fingers. 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. [22], Henry's army landed in northern France on 13 August 1415, carried by a vast fleet. Henry would marry Catherine, Charles VI's young daughter, and receive a dowry of 2million crowns. |. The next day the French initiated negotiations as a delaying tactic, but Henry ordered his army to advance and to start a battle that, given the state of his army, he would have preferred to avoid, or to fight defensively: that was how Crcy and the other famous longbow victories had been won. [62] Le Fvre and Wavrin similarly say that it was signs of the French rearguard regrouping and "marching forward in battle order" which made the English think they were still in danger. 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. Although the French initially pushed the English back, they became so closely packed that they were described as having trouble using their weapons properly. As the English were collecting prisoners, a band of French peasants led by local noblemen began plundering Henrys baggage behind the lines. [130] Critic David Margolies describes how it "oozes honour, military glory, love of country and self-sacrifice", and forms one of the first instances of English literature linking solidarity and comradeship to success in battle. .). 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. King Charles VI of France did not command the French army as he suffered from psychotic illnesses and associated mental incapacity. before a defensive battle was possible. The key word for describing the battle of Agincourt is mud . The English won in a major upset and waved the body part in question at the French in defiance. He told his men that he would rather die in the coming battle than be captured and ransomed. [124], The most famous cultural depiction of the battle today is in Act IV of William Shakespeare's Henry V, written in 1599. The English men-at-arms in plate and mail were placed shoulder to shoulder four deep. By contrast, Anne Curry in her 2005 book Agincourt: A New History, argued, based on research into the surviving administrative records, that the French army was 12,000 strong, and the English army 9,000, proportions of four to three. To meet and beat him was a triumph, the highest form which self-expression could take in the medieval nobleman's way of life." After Henry V marched to the north, the French moved to block them along the River Somme. On 25 October 1415, an army of English raiders under Henry V faced the French outside an obscure village on the road to Calais. Details the English victory over the French at the Battle of Agincourt. The situation in England, coupled with the fact that France was weakened by its own political crisisthe insanity of Charles VI had resulted in a fight for power among the nobilitymade it an ideal moment for Henry to press his claims. If the one-fingered salute comes from Agincourt, as the graphic suggests, then at what point did it get transformed into two fingers in England? During World War II the symbol was adopted as a V for victory. The French monk of St. Denis describes the French troops as "marching through the middle of the mud where they sank up to their knees. With Toby Merrell, Ian Brooker, Philip Rosch, Brian Blessed. 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. [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. The Hundred Years War was a discontinuous conflict between England and France that spanned two centuries. New York: Penguin Books, 1978 ISBN 0-140-04897-9 (pp. 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. 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. 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. 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 city capitulated within six weeks, but the siege was costly. 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. When that campaign took place, it was made easier by the damage done to the political and military structures of Normandy by the battle. The number is supported by many other contemporary accounts. [93] In all, around 6,000 of their fighting men lay dead on the ground. [62] Materials characterization, 29(2), 111117. Dear Cecil: Can you confirm the following? 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. The one-finger salute, or at any rate sexual gestures involving the middle finger, are thousands of years old. It may be in the narrow strip of open land formed between the woods of Tramecourt and Azincourt (close to the modern village of Azincourt). It was a disastrous attempt. 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 was not strictly a feudal army, but an army paid through a system similar to that of the 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 English King Henry V and his troops were marching to Calais to embark for England when he was intercepted by forces which outnumbered his. [23] The army of about 12,000 men and up to 20,000 horses besieged the port of Harfleur. 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. Thus, when the victorious English waved their middle fingers at the defeated French, they said, "See, we can still pluck yew! 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. [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. Without a river obstacle to defend, the French were hesitant to force a battle. "[67] On top of this, the French were expecting thousands of men to join them if they waited. The effect of the victory on national morale was powerful. In the ensuing campaign, many soldiers died from disease, and the English numbers dwindled; they tried to withdraw to English-held Calais but found their path blocked by a considerably larger French army. 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 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. [105] Other benefits to the English were longer term. 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. This battle is notable for the use of the English longbow in very large numbers, with the English and Welsh archers comprising nearly 80 percent of Henry's army. I suppose that the two-fingered salute could still come from medieval archery, even if it didnt come specifically from the Battle of Agincourt, although the example that Wikipedia links to (the fourteenth-century Luttrell Psalter) is ambiguous. 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. This famous English longbow was . 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." 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". [31], The precise location of the battle is not known. By 1415, negotiations had ground to a halt, with the English claiming that the French had mocked their claims and ridiculed Henry himself.