Origin of The FingerIn 1415, Henry the V took his army of around 6,000 men across the English channel and into southern France. After cutting trees and preparing large pointed sticks, Henry marched his army northwest for 17 days and over 270 miles. With only one day's rest, the mighty force was hagard and exhausted by the time they reached the flat land between the forest of Agincourt.
The French army, consisting of 25,000 troops, 15,000 of which were mounted knights in armor, arrived on the evening of October 24. Their army was a mishmash of Frenchmen from all over the feudal country. It rained hard that night, and both armies were soaked to the bone by morning. Most French knights slept in the saddle so as not to sully their expensive and ornate armor.
On the morning of October 25, the French and British armies were salty and ready to fight. Henry moved his troups slowly up the 1/2 mile wide passage between the two forests of Agincourt. By 11 Am, the French commanders were still bickering over tactics and whether or not to charge, and the British were within 400 yards of the French.
Now what made the battle of Agincourt so interesting was the introduction of what could be considered the only good thing to come out of Wales aside from sheep bestiality: the Welsh long bow. This weapon could dismount a rider at 300 yards, and with top notch arrows, could pierce armor at close range.
When Henry had his troups within bowshot of the French, he loosed the first of many volleys of arrows. The French, caught off guard, charged with half their forces. The Duke of Orlean barely made it 200 yards before his knights broke and ran under a hail of deadly wood and steel. Many of the knights sank into the mud and were smooshed as the horses and frightened soldiers trampled them into a fine paste.
Those knights that did make it to the British front lines were lept upon by unarmored soldiers carrying short swords, who plunged their blades into the joints of the French armor. All this came after a great number of horses were impaled upon the huge pointed sticks the British had placed in the ground in front of them.
At the end of the day, the French had lost some 10,000 men, and the British mourned only 500 dead. In one day, the Hundred Years War had turned and the long bow had successfully defeated the myth of the invincible knight in armor.
Shakespeare went on to glorify this battle, and the French, to vilify it. For the next 100 years, every lad over the age of 6 in Britain was required to be instructed in the firing and maintaining of the long bow.
In response to this, the French began cutting off the index and middle fingers of all British men caught in battle or on French land, thus removing the digits that allowed the firing of a bow. This is where the British tradition of waving two fingers at someone as an insult arose. Thusly, the very American middle fingered salute, or "the bird," is a descendant of this.