line 1, fig. 1). Both these greys, however, refined themselves in course of time into white.
The hat and the long coat and breeches remained the uniform of line infantry almost everywhere up to the advent of the shako and the coatee about 1790–1820. The gradual evolution of these two garments, from the comfortable civilian clothes of 1690 to the stiff, precise military garments of 1790, can be traced in a few words. The brim of the felt hat was first looped up on one side for convenience, then, for appearance’ sake, on the other, and so became the three-cornered cocked hat, fringed with feathers, lace or braid, of Marlborough’s wars.[1] Then came the fashion of looping up before and behind, which produced the hat called the “Khevenhüller,” or the broadside-on cocked hat. Lastly, came the purely decorative, lace-looped “fore-and-aft” pattern, as worn in many states to-day. But before this came into vogue the cocked hat had practically disappeared from the ordinary ranks of all armies. It may be said that so long as the cocked hat survived in its simple, rank-and-file form, uniforms retained much of their looseness. Though the long skirts that rendered great coats unnecessary were looped back, and the ample cuffs of Marlborough’s time were becoming narrower until they were at last sewn down to the sleeve, yet the military costume was in all essentials the civil costume of the time—long coat, hat, sleeved waistcoat, breeches and gaiters.
But other influences were at work. The principal was the introduction into armies of Slavonic irregulars, which tended to restrict line infantry and cavalry to parade drill and to pitched battles in parade order. This, and their complete separation from the civil population, stiffened their costume until it became “soldierly.” Frederick the Great, indeed, could not have developed the infantry fire power that he needed if his soldiers had had tight sleeves, but in his old age the evil of sacrificing comfort to smartness attained a height which, except in the 1820–1840 period, was never surpassed. The figure of a Prussian fusilier, Plate I. line 1, No. 7 (in which by mistake a slung sword is shown) shows this process beginning. The stock has made its appearance, soon to stiffen into a cloth collar, under which, as if it were not already tight enough, another stock in due course came to be worn. The flapped cuffs, shown in the British figure No. 5, have become plain round cuffs, above which are embroidery stripes and buttons which at one time laced the flaps of the cuff together and now survive as the “guard-stripe.” This may be called the first instance of the dummy adornments, which are so marked in modern full-dress uniforms. Similarly the former cloth turnback on the front of the coat has even in 1756 been cut off, the buttons and embroidered loops that retained it being kept as decorations.
Many of these specially military adornments were borrowed from the national costumes of the irregulars themselves. Their head-gear in particular drove out the cocked hat. The grenadier cap, now a towering bearskin, was its first successful rival, the shako the next. The grenadier cap was, in the first instance, a limp conical cap (identical with the hussar cap), edged with fur and having a tassel at the end. Soon the fur became more prominent in the front, and the tail disappeared. Then the cloth mitre-cap (Plate I., line 1, fig. 6) appeared. This was originally a field-service cap, with ear-flaps and sunshade. But it stiffened about 1775 into a fur cap of the same shape (with which sometimes the old cloth tail is found), and this in turn evolved, through the fuller but still narrow and forward-pointing bearskin of Peninsular days, into the great fur cap of grenadiers and fusiliers of the present time. The mitre-shaped cloth cap survives in a few Russian and Prussian regiments. As early as 1755, as the Prussian figure shows, a conical leather cap with a large brass plate in front had come into existence. This held its ground for some time, and the grenadier cap of to-day in Russia and Prussia is a metal copy of the mitre field-service cap itself. A curious derivative of the low fur cap with a peak in front and a bag-tail behind worn by some 17th- and 18th-century grenadiers is the head-dress of the Russian horse-grenadiers. The peak has become the helmet, the fur a “sausage” across the cap from ear to ear, and the back part of the helmet is covered by the bag-tail.
The Hungarian hussars introduced the jacket and the busby. The latter was originally a conical cap with fur edge, but the fur became higher until there was nothing left of the cap but the ornamental “busby-bag” of to-day. It would appear also as if the hussars brought the shako to western Europe. This is a conical, bell-topped, or cylindrical head-dress of stiff material, commonly leather. Its prototype, the tall cylindrical cap of the 18th-century hussars, was tilted on one side and wound round with a very narrow bag-tail, the last few inches of which, adorned with a tassel, hung down. But the shako itself succeeded, as nothing else succeeded, in being accepted by line infantry and cavalry, and after passing through numerous forms it remains in every army to-day, either as a low rigid cap (Germany, England and Austria), a stiffened or limp képi (France and Italy), or the flat-topped peaked cap which is the most common military head-dress of modern Europe.
All these adjuncts came in the first place from the national costume of imported auxiliaries. So also did the lancer cap, which, originally the Polish czapka, was a cylindrical cap, the upper part of which could be pushed up or down after the fashion of a bellows or accordion, with a square top. The original form is seen in Plate I., line 2, fig. 4, and the stiffened development of it in Plate I., line 3, fig. 1. The British lancer cap (Plate II., line 1, No. 2) has still a full middle portion, but in Austria and Germany this has dwindled to a very narrow neck (Plate II., line 3, No. 6; Plate IV., line 1, No. 7). The line infantry and cavalry coat, full-skirted in the first instance, retained its original length until about 1780, but from that time onwards (probably in most cases in the interests of the colonel’s pocket) it becomes, little by little, shorter and scantier (Plate I., line 2, Nos. 2, 3, and 5), until at last it is a “coatee,” not as long as the present-day tunic (Plate I., Line 2, Nos. 6 and 8), or a swallow-tailed coat (Plate I., line 3, figs. 1–3). This, of course, did away with the protection afforded by the full skirt, and necessitated the introduction of the great coat, which even to-day in some cases is worn, without the tunic, over the “vest” that represents the sleeved waistcoat (Plate II., line 2, No. 3), formerly worn under the long skirted coat. The white breeches and gaiters, retained to the last, gradually gave way to trousers and ankle boots in 1800–1820.
Meanwhile another form of head-dress, which was purely military and owed nothing to Poland or Hungary, came into vogue. This was the helmet, which had disappeared from the infantry about 1650–1670, and the cavalry thirty years afterwards. It took two forms, both of which possessed some of the characteristics of ancient Greek and Roman helmets. These were a small helmet with sausage-shaped ornament from front to back, worn chiefly by British light dragoons and artillery (Plate I., line 2, fig. 7), and the towering crested helmet worn by the French, British and Austrians. The French cuirassiers and dragoons (Plate I., line 2, No. 3) had, and still have, long horsehair tails dependent from the crest. The Austrian infantry helmet, worn with the white coat, similar to, but smaller than, that shown in Plate II., line 2, No. 5, had no ornament, but the British heavy cavalry helmet (Plate I., line 2, No. 8) resembled that of the French. To-day, besides the French, the Austrian dragoons and Italian heavy cavalry have this form of helmet (Plate II., line 3, No. 1, and Plate IV., line 2, No. 8).
It has been said above that the coatee and the shako are the principal novelties in European military costumes of Napoleon’s time. To these should be added the replacement of the gaitered breeches by trousers, and the adoption of hussar and lancer uniforms of ever-growing sumptuousness, in which the comfort that had originally belonged to these national irregular costumes was entirely sacrificed. After Waterloo, indeed, all traces of the old-fashioned coat disappeared, and, except for the doubtful gain of tight-fitting “overalls,” the soldier was more showy and worse off in comfort and convenience than ever before or since. One or two examples may be quoted. In George IV.’s time
- ↑ In the cavalry an iron-framed skull-cap was often worn under the cocked hat.
