Learn French: L'ennemi aura abandonné les arcs sous la muraille après l'assaut. - The enemy must have abandoned the bows under the wall after the assault.

L'ennemi aura abandonné les arcs sous la muraille après l'assaut.

The enemy must have abandoned the bows under the wall after the assault.

Breakdown of L'ennemi aura abandonné les arcs sous la muraille après l'assaut.

to abandon, to give up

Questions & Answers about L'ennemi aura abandonné les arcs sous la muraille après l'assaut.

Why is aura abandonné translated as "must have abandoned" instead of "will have abandoned"?

This is the epistemic future. In French, the futur antérieur (future perfect) is often used to express a strong probability or assumption about something that happened in the past. While "will have abandoned" is the literal translation, in this context of deducing what happened after the assault, "must have abandoned" captures the intended meaning of a logical guess perfectly.

What is the difference between muraille and mur?

A mur is a standard wall, like the wall of a house. A muraille refers specifically to a large, thick, defensive wall, like those around a fortress or ancient city. Since this sentence is about an enemy and an assault, muraille is the precise word for a fortification.

Are the final letters pronounced in arcs?

The c is pronounced, sounding like a hard "k", but the plural s is silent. However, because the preceding word is les, you make a liaison with the first vowel. So les arcs is pronounced sounding roughly like "lez ark".

Since l'ennemi represents a whole army, shouldn't the verb be plural?

No, in French, l'ennemi is grammatically singular even though it refers to a collective group of soldiers. Therefore, it strictly takes the third-person singular verb form aura.