"French tricolor cockades" Topic

I've been looking around at images in my source books, period paintings and of course the interwebs, and though it seems the blue center with red in the middle and outer white ring is more common, I have seen a lot of examples with red as the outer color. Does anyone know if there was a standard? I assume infantry would have had theirs issued to them, and officers might have had a bit more flexibility in purchasing their own. I'm painting a french battalion in 1812 uniforms if that makes a difference.

Thanks in advance,

David

The white outer ring version seems to have been worn during the Revolution and early Empire. The red outer seems to have crept in as the years advanced and seems to have been common at Waterloo (perhaps to fully contrast the all-white Bourbon cockade).

Personally I would go with the white outer as you can always argue that they lingered on……

Always puzzled me.

TMP link

Mt St Jean site is convinced that the modern French air force roundel was de rigeur by Waterloo, but also shows the "old style" on every page

…and they are easier to paint….

Thanks everyone. For 1812 then I will go with the majority ringed in white, but may throw in a few with red on the outer.

Thanks for the TMP link deadhead. My search thread function seems to be DOA within TMP for some reason.

TMP has dropped the search engine.

To be fair…it was never great and Google anything with TMP to follow and I now admit (grudgingly) you do get there quicker than ever

Lucien Rousselot, one of the foremost uniform experts of the French, in Napoleon's Army: 1790-1815, shows cockades only with white outer ring, red middle ring, and blue centres throughout the duration of the period. As Rousselot is always keen to point out all known 'variations' at the time he was writing--and none are mentioned--I'd be inclined to stick with this scheme.

During the revolution many things were in use were not always agreement with what was later accepted as the norm. The young republic was just getting started and things were not as tight as they were later. I would not consider a revolutionary period dress as necessarily agreeing with what we know later for the Empire. They are really two different periods of French dress.

In the revolutionary period you were basically OK as long as it was red, white and blue.

Terry

Mr. Deadhead,

Thank you for the TMP link. The counts found there of the variations from the various manuscripts of the era are very interesting.