"Aiguillette origin story: is this true?" Topic

‘The aiguillette, the name referring of course to the spike on the end of the rope, goes back to Napoleon. An officer, who behaved very badly during a battle, pleaded with Bonaparte to be given another chance. Napoleon agreed to reinstate him, but he made him wear a piece of braided rope on his right shoulder. The rope was a reminder. If the officer failed again the rope would no longer be on his shoulder, but around his neck.'

I read this in a spy novel. I'd never heard it before. Is it true?

I have read that before. I am confident it doesn't have any basis in fact. Here in what wiki says:

link

No, mate. Aiguilettes were being worn to distinguish ADC's and staff officers, elite companies and even dragoons in the early 1700's. It's also seen in portraits dating even earlier.

So a good myth, but not fact.

The French line cavalry, not just the dragoons, wore aiguelletes as early as the 1690s.

The story I heard was that elite Spanish cavalry in the 80 years' war mutinied and were threatened with hanging. They offered to provide their own nooses and wore them on the shoulder in their next battle so they could be hung after winning.

Yes, I was also wondering whether the origin is broadly correct i.e. it may not have been Napoleon, but some other figure.

I had understood to be a decorative evolution from the habit of hanging the lit musket match from the shoulder belt.

Thanks, dbf1676, I didn't know they were wearing them that early.

Yes, I was also wondering whether the origin is broadly correct i.e. it may not have been Napoleon, but some other figure.

I don't think so, mate. It looks more that it was a fashion that was later used to distinguish certain people/troops/duties.

Explanations of a distinctions or tradition that involves the shaming of a regiment are highly unlikely to have any basis in fact.

I thought auigillites were used for spiking guns that might be captured. Pretty sure that was their original intended use, and they eventually just became decorative.

From the Aussie Military:

"Several traditions account for their origin.

One account of the origin is that the Aiguillette denotes the rope and pickets carried by the squires to tether their knights' horses.

Another authority has it that they were ‘aiguilles' or needles for clearing the touch hole of very old muskets and that the cords were originally lanyards, which fastened the needles to the soldiers' equipment.

It is also suggested that the Aiguillette represents the Provost Marshall's rope with which he hanged defaulters.

The most probable explanation is that they were the pins used to secure a pauldron, or shoulder protector, on the cuirass (a piece of armour) of a knight or cuirassier's plate armour.

Another position on the origin of the Aiguillette is that they represent the pencil that every good Staff Officer had at hand, tied to his person by a piece of string. The Aiguillette of the Japanese is in fact adapted for use as a pencil."

Miniaturised and improved, then.

Weren't spikes used for spiking guns?

I think pauldrons would have been secured by leather straps, invisible beneath the armour- otherwise they would have risked being cut and the piece falling away.