proved impossible to find a where and when a link to Agincourt was first suggested.
The story of the French had threatened to cut off the index and middle fingers of any archers
they captured. But since the English won, the archers then stuck up these two fingers to show
they still had them.
Two-fifteenth-century narratives mention mutilation. In a chronicle written by Thoma Walsingham,
a monk of St Albans, "The French published that they wished no on to be spared except certain
lords and the King himself. They announced that the rest would be killed or have their limbs
horribly mutilated. Because of this our men were much excited to rage and took heart, encouraging
one another against the event."
In chronicles written by the Burgundians Jean Le Fevre and Jean Waurin they invent a battle
speech for Henry in which the King is reported to have said "that the French had boasted that if
any English archers were captured they would cut off the three fingers if their right hand so that
neither man or horse would ever again by killed be their arrow fire."
None of these texts says that the victorious archers stuck up their fingers after the battle. Nor is
there evidence that archers taken prisoner ever had their fingers cut off.
Picture of Winston Churchill famously making the V-sign for victory in 1943.