Cockade

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Image:French-roundel.svg Image:National Cockade of Uruguay.png


A cockade is a knot of ribbons, or other circular- or oval-shaped symbol of distinctive colours which is usually worn on a hat.

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Cockades of the Revolutionaries

In the eighteenth century, it was pinned on the side of a man's tricorn or cocked hat, or on his lapel. Women could also wear it on their hat or in their hair. A cockade uses distinctive colors to show the allegiance of its wearer to some political faction, their rank, or as part of a servant's livery. In pre-revolutionary France, the cockade of the Bourbon dynasty was all white. The Hanoverian monarchy of Great Britain had one that was all black. But elsewhere and at other times there was more variety.

During the American Revolution, the Continental Army initially wore cockades of various colors as an ad hoc form of rank insignia; before long they all reverted to wearing the black cockade they inherited from the British. Later, when France bacame an ally of the United States, the Continental Army pinned the white cockade of the French Ancien Régime onto their old black cocakde; the French reciprocally pinned the black cockade onto their white cockade, as a mark of the French-American alliance. The black-and-white cockade thus bacame known as the "Union Cockade".

Cockades were later widely worn by revolutionaries and proponents of various political factions in France and its colonies beginning in 1789. Just as they did in the United States a few years before, the French now pinned the blue-and-red cockade of Paris onto the white cockade of the Ancien Régime - thus producing the original Tricolore cockade. Later, distinctive colours and styles of cockade would indicate the wearer's faction -- although the meanings of the various styles were not entirely consistent, and varied somewhat by region and period.

Today, the term is often used to indicate the tricolour cockade in specific, which became a relatively common symbol of nationalism during the French Revolutionary Wars.

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Cockades of the European Military

Also from the eighteenth century; European monarchies used cockades to denote the nationalities of their military. Ribbon-style cockades were worn on tricornes and bicornes just as the French did, and also on cocked hats and shakoes; metal cockades were worn at the right side of helmets; small button-type cockades were worn at the front of kepis and peaked caps.

In particular, the Germans under the Kaiser used two cockades on each army headgear: one (black-white-red) for the empire; the other for the individual German provinces and kingdoms, which had used their own colors long before. The Weimar republic removed these, as they might promote faction which would lead to the dissolution of Germany into petty prinicpalities again. In the Second World War, the imperial or Kaiserliche colors of black on the outside, then white, and red on the inside were used on all army caps.

France began the first Air Force in 1910 and soon picked the traditional French cockade as the first national emblem on military aircraft. Later, other countries often took a cockade or a development of it as their own national emblem, painted on certain military airplanes. those from the French navy have a black anchor drawn upon the cockade

Countries which expected to fight France and Britain took some other emblem so they would be recognized by their own forces.

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A list of National Cockades

The following is an incomplete list of traditional cockades used by various nations; the colours are listed from the inside out. Should the air force roundel resembles a cockade but differs from the traditional cockade, the roundel would also be specified.

es:Escarapela

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