Thread: A Lesson In History

Originally Posted by numpty

You an ortho then Steve? Nothing better than the sound of broken bone ends making contact Not!!

No, Numpty's Missus, trying to be a GP after a decade of odd (and I mean odd) jobs for Governments. Just still have that tingling sensation in the back of my neck from seeing the "angle grinder" taken to limbs. Apologies to those who feel unwell

Not sure I could have been a "sawbones" before anaesthetics.

Steve

look what you started al,
they all are stupified by your initial post.
don't do that again!

Originally Posted by scrambler

No, Numpty's Missus, trying to be a GP

Steve

Ah ha!! Work hard at it then Steve. They keep telling us we need more GP's You'd earn more if you were an ortho

Numpty's Missus

(Just to get the thread back on track)

Back when I was in high school a fellow used to come and do live-action shows.

He was a little into the whole swords and armour thing.

The first year he did the Middle Ages - learnt heaps of stuff of no immediate use - like how to defeat chain-mail armour (archery) and the origin of the one-finger salute (French threatened to cut the fingers off any English archer- the archers used to show the French they still had them).

The next year he did Romans, and I learnt a heap more - again of no immediate use. I learned why officers carry pistols (summary execution), that the plate armour you see in the movies was worn by a small minority of Roman soldiers, that a Legion was 600 not 1000 men (and a Century 60 not 100) and so on.

He was perhaps a little mad, definitely a little disinhibited and I don't think I'll forget the stuff ever. Seeing a few of my classmates run 100m in armour while he shot arrows over them to indicate the superiority of archery over hand-to-hand combat was memorable, as was when he got half-a-dozen kids with spears to form a line, told them he was going to get through them (he was being the Norman knight, they the Saxon infantry) AND THEY SHOULD TRY TO KILL HIM

The second year, during a "slave auction" he flicked up the back of one of the girl's skirts to "demonstrate the merchandise." He was just playing the part, but he didn't come back again.

Steve

keep that up and this will end up in the mud pit



(just kidding)

Originally Posted by scrambler

.....and the origin of the one-finger salute (French threatened to cut the fingers off any English archer- the archers used to show the French they still had them).

Funny you should mention this. I came across this item last week: http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/pluckyew.htm

Secondly, for a variety of reasons, it made no military sense whatsoever for the French to capture English archers, then mutilate them by cutting off their fingers.

You need to read all the reasons.

Ron

Interesting, very interesting. Not least because my informant said it was 3 fingers (and the salute changed over time) and made no mention of any associated words. And he gave a reason for it, tied it to Agincourt, but AFTER Agincourt not before.

His story: After Agincourt the French claimed that the English archers were poisoning their arrows. They did this based on the high number of knights that died not of their wounds but of high fevers days or weeks after the battle. As a result, he claimed, the French took revenge by mutilating any archers they captured because as they saw it the English had started the dirty tactics. And cutting off three fingers didn't make the person useless, just useless as an archer. And the poisoning? Agincourt was fought in a cow paddock, and the English archers stuck their arrows point-first into the softest ground (or substance on the ground) they could find. This was before germs but after septicaemia (for any Princess Bride fans).

That was his story, not sure if it was history.

Steve

OK, at least one source backs him up. No mention of "plucking yew."

http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~ajcd/arc...q/history.html

And a related event

http://kenilworthvoicestwo.mysite.wa....uk/page2.html

Don't know on this. There's another reference to an earlier threat by the French to mutilate archers that I found on a history forum, but that was the blind leding the blind.

I'd have to say that I'm not going to file this under Myth: debunked or under Fact: proven. Excpet for the "pluck yew" bit - that's just nonsense.

Steve