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May 14, 2020 · A widely shared image on social media purportedly explains the historic origins of the “middle finger”, considered an offensive gesture in Western culture. The image makes the claim that the...
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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.
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 insulting gesture of extending ones middle finger (referred to as digitus impudicus in Latin) originated long before the Battl...
The military aspects of this account are similarly specious. 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. Battles were observed and chronicled by heralds who were present at the scene and recorded what they saw, judged who...
Bowman were not valuable prisoners, though: they stood outside the chivalric system and were considered the social inferiors of men-at-arms. There was no monetary reward to be obtained by capturing them, nor was there any glory to be won by defeating them in battle. As John Keegan wrote in his history of warfare To meet a similarly equipped opponen...
Moreover, if archers could be ransomed, then cutting off their middle fingers would be a senseless move. 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? Take on the burden and expense of caring for them? Kill them outright and violate the medieval moral code of civilized...
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? Why not simply kill them outright in the first place? Do you return these prisoners to your opponents in exchange for nothing, thereby providing them with trained ...
The Battle of Agincourt (/ ˈ æ dʒ ɪ n k ɔːr (t)/ AJ-in-kor(t); French: Azincourt) was an English victory in the Hundred Years' War. It took place on 25 October 1415 (Saint Crispin's Day) near Azincourt, in northern France.
- 25 October 1415 ( Saint Crispin's Day)
- English victory
A commonly repeated legend claims that the two-fingered salute or V sign derives from a gesture made by longbowmen fighting in the English army at the Battle of Agincourt (1415) during the Hundred Years' War, but no written historical primary sources support this contention.
Jan 31, 2020 · The two-fingered salute, or backwards victory or V-sign, made with the middle and index fingers, is said to have originated with English archers at Agincourt in 1415. But is this really true? Medieval researcher and longbow expert Clive Bartlett claims in his book ‘English Longbowman 1330-1515’ that it is.
The image makes the claim that the gesture derives from English soldiers at the Battle of Agincourt, France in 1415. This claim is false.
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Where did the'middle finger salute' come from?
Oct 25, 2015 · The popular image has drifted away from the actual events of 1415. Shakespeare restaged Agincourt in 1599. His image of the battle still predominates today. Drayton rewrote the battle in 1627 as a Homeric epic with invented acts of bravery.
