Who invented the tricolour cockade?

Greetings on Bastille Day!

To celebrate, here is one of the most enduring symbols of the Revolution, the tricolour cockade.

The following is taken from the website of the historian and illustrator, Bernard Coppens.

There are two popular theories for the origins of the cockade. The first dates it to Louis XVI's reception in the capital on 17th July 1789 three days after the fall of the Bastille. The King was presented by Mayor Bailly with a cockade in the red and blue of Paris, and fixed it onto his existing white one thereby creating the tricolour cockade.  In the second version the invention is credited to Lafayette who proposed the adoption of the tricolour as the official symbol of the Revolution to the Hôtel de Ville,  on 16th July or shortly after, in the context of  the creation of a uniformed National Guard.

Reception of Louis XVI by Bailly , Painting  of 1891 by Jean-Paul Laurens in the Hôtel de Ville, Paris. 

Bernard Coppens show that neither explanation is wholly satisfactory.  Red-white-and-blue cockades are clearly documented in accounts of the popular movement before the 17th July.  For instance, the journals of two deputies of the Third Estate, Adrien Duquesnoy and J.-A. Creuzé-Latouche,  both mention its existence on the 15th.  The design of the cockade presented to the King on the 17th is also uncertain.  According to Lafayette's Memoirs it was the plain red and blue of the citizen militia, but the Gazette de Leyde  quotes a letter written on the evening of the 17th which states clearly that  Bailly presented the King with "la cocarde royale et bourgeoise",  which was "blue, white and rose" in colour.  See also Histoire parlementaire de la révolution française, Volume 1, p.415, where it is stated that  the King accepted " a cockade like the one which the citizens had adopted". (At this time the personal colours of the King were already red, white and blue, hence perhaps his willingness to accept a tricolour cockade.)

What is the truth of the matter?

In reality though the idea of cockades spread rapidly, there was at first a great deal of confusion and variation in colours between the different districts.  However, the sources agree that there were three main designs adopted   -  a green cockade, a plain blue and red one and finally the tricolour, which combined the colours of Paris with the white of France.
As Bernard Coppens emphasises, the three did not follow in simple succession.  The green cockade was adopted spontaneously on 12th July by supporters of the Third Estate on the initiative of Desmoulin, who was said to have grabbed a leaf from a tree and placed it in his hat. (On 13th July a noble deputy from Marseille noted that it was necessary to have a green rosette in one's hat to remain untroubled by the new Revolutionary authorities.)

The blue and red cockade, on the other hand, was officially decreed by the electors of the Hôtel de Ville in an arrêté of 13 July, as the official  insignia of the citizen militia, which at this time had no other uniform.  Its use by unauthorised persons was strictly forbidden:
Since it is necessary for the Parisian militia to be distinctive, the General Assembly has adopted the colours of the town; as a result each member will wear a blue and red cockade.  Any man found with the cockade who has not been registered in one of the districts will be referred to the justice of the permanent committee.

At a certain point  green, which was the personal colour of the comte d'Artois, was abandoned for the popular cockade and red-white-and-blue adopted in its stead.


When and why did this happen?

Bernard Coppens has assembled various pieces of  evidence, which establish that the use of the tricolour cockade for ordinary citizens was ordered by Hôtel de Ville late on the 13th July and was the subject of a formal arrêté, probably issued on the 14th or 15th (the text of which is no longer extant):

•  A letter written by a merchant called Failly, dated  23 July 1789, observes that on 13th July the authorities were arresting anyone found armed on the streets and imprisoning them if  they failed to name their district.  Cockades were given out as passports; at first these were green but by evening, after it was realised that green was the colour of Artois's livery, they were "rose, blue and white".

• The bookseller Hardy wrote in his Journal on the 14th that, "They are beginning to change the colour of the cockades, substituting the rose, blue and white for the green colour."

•  The printed chronicle La Quinzaine Mémorable  has an entry dated 14th July at 8am in the morning, in which the author observes that "the great and small, from all ranks of society, are sporting, by order of the town, the blue, red and white cockade."

• A MS letter to Mayor Bailly from M. de Gouvion, Major-General of the National Guard, dated 28 March 1790, notes that the three colours had been fixed by an order of the Assembly of Electors dated either 14th or 15th July 1789. 

• An arrêté of the Commune, dated 4th October 1789, confirms previous orders, and repeats the declaration that the red, blue and white cockade is the only one permitted to citizens to wear.

It is possible that the prévôt de marchands  Flesselles, killed on the 14th,  was instrumental in the initiative.  A letter in his hand was said to have been found on the body of the governor of the Bastille, Launay, instructing  him to stay put until evening and await reinforcements, while Flesselles "amused the Parisians with cockades and promises".

Jean-Baptiste Le Sueur, A Citizen is obliged to wear a cockade,  c.1790.  Musée Carnavalet

Why the tricolour?

This is not in fact absolutely explained, though it may be supposed that the Assembly anticipated Lafayette's idea of incorporating white as a symbol of the French nation as a whole, or else sought to assimilate the Revolutionary colours to those of the King.

It may be noted that Lafayette's proposal that the tricolour cockade form part of the National Guard uniform had the incidental consequence of abandoning the distinction between official and popular cockades;  in future there would be a single revolutionary emblem common to both the military, civilian officials and ordinary citizens.


References

Bernard Coppens, entries on www.1789-1815.com:
"Le Mystère de la Cocarde"[original article published in 1989]
https://www.1789-1815.com/mystere_cocarde.htm
"1789 : La cocarde tricolore"
https://www.1789-1815.com/1789_07_cocarde1.htm

Account from the Memoirs of Lafayette, vol. 2,  p.252-3
When the king had received at the Hotel de Ville, from the mayor, the cockade of the revolution, which was only, at that time, of two colours, he was conducted by the commander-in-chief to the picket of the gardes-du-corps, which had remained outside the gates of the city.

At the end of the deliberation of the assembly of electors of the 16th, a project of organisation was fixed upon by Lafayette, in concert with the military committee, the staff of the provisional guard and General Mathieu Dumas, reporter.  It was from his proposal that, after the new colours had been adopted by the king, the Hotel de Ville added to them the ancient white colour*

In this manner was formed the tricoloured cockade, which had become the national one.  Lafayette, when presenting to the Hotel de Ville the project of organising with that cockade a national uniform, pronounced these words:

I bring you a cockade that will traverse the whole world, and an institution, both civil and military, that must triumph over the ancient tactics of Europe...

Note  *The cockade was at first red and blue; these were not only the colours of the town but, by a singular accident, those of the livery of Orleans.  Lafayette, struck by this circumstance, and wishing to nationalize the ancient French colour by uniting it with the colours of the revolution, proposed to the Hotel de Ville the tricoloured cockade, which was adopted.  (Note of General Lafayette)
https://archive.org/stream/memoirscorrespo02unkngoog#page/n262/mode/2up

Robespierre, Letter to Buissart, 23rd July 1789
Robespierre describes with evident pleasure the popular enthusiasm which greeted the King's entry into  Paris on 17th July.  He noticed cockades on the cassocks of monks and even on the stoles of robed and surpliced clergy.  Sadly he does not specify the colour.
https://archive.org/stream/oeuvrescomplte03robe#page/46/mode/2up

Revolutionary chairs

In case we are still too serious (and destructive) about Revolutionary symbolism, here are a couple of nice domestic objects - Revolutionary chairs!

The first, from the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris,  featured in the 2012 "Napoleon: Revolution to Empire" exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.  The second is from a private collection.

 http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/napoleon/art-and-design/symbols

Chair with "Revolutionary attributes",  Bridgeman Art Library

http://www.magnoliabox.com/art/639831/chair-with-revolutionary-attributes-wood

Richard Clay on Iconoclasm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b042ttxl

Watch this space!   On 20th November the BBC Four is repeating Dr Richard Clay's "The French Revolution: Tearing up history", which was first shown in May as part of the Beeb's 18th-century season. Presumably it will also reappear (however fleetingly) on i-player.  At the moment, there is little evidence of its existence on the BBC Website beyond a single clip of a whole one minute and 14 seconds.  Which is an awful shame, because it was an innovative and visually exciting documentary.

Richard Clay's film was an independent production, by Furneaux & Edgar Productions, and, even in the comparative safety of BBC Four, a daring inclusion in the 18th-century season - which featured mostly Handel and Lucy Worsley among the Georges.   Dr Clay always identifies himself as "an art historian".  He is the author of scholarly articles and recently a volume in "Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century", and his views are much more sophisticated and nuanced than they come across in an hour-long TV documentary.  But Whippet-thin and black-coated, his very persona shouts Left-wing intellectual.(I even caught a glimpse of him smoking in the vimeo trailer)  And in this case appearances do not deceive...

Here are some notes to accompany the programme.  My primary intention is not to analysis Dr Clay's arguments,  just to identify and explain some of his locations and passing references.

00:01 Dr Clay begins by explaining that his theme is "iconoclasm" in the French Revolution, the destruction and transformation of art, buildings and symbols of power, a  "history of art from below".

02:03:  At Versailles. The gods do not smile on Richard in bucketing rain outside "the ultimate symbol of royal power" and the seat of government.  He quickly take shelter in the Royal Tennis Court where the Revolutionaries ushered in modern history by proclaiming the  sovereignty of the people.
http://www.versailles-tourisme.com/en/discoveries/heritage-palace-city/muste-sees/royal-tennis-court.html


07:28:  Art as power: Dr. Clay goes to the Musée Cognacq-Jay to demonstrate that art as aesthetics was the prerogative of a leisured aristocracy (and to view a couple of delectable Bouchers on the way.)
http://www.museecognacqjay.paris.fr/  .

10:04 Art as power: Off to the Church of St-Roch - a true Rococo monster -  to illustrate religious art as opium of the people.  And another BBC first - an admiring quote from Diderot "the great philosopher of the 18th century".
Here are some pictures of the interior of St-Roch:
http://www.patrimoine-histoire.fr/Patrimoine/Paris/Paris-Saint-Roch.htm

Nicolas Bernard Lépicié, Study for the Calvary Chapel at Saint-Roch
Paris, Musée Carnavalet
(as unfurled by Richard Clay at St.Roch)

12.22: The attack on the barrière de la Conference. Richard's personable French intellectual is Guillaume Mazeau: 
http://www.univ-paris1.fr/recherche/page-perso/page/?tx_oxcspage
personnel_pi1[page]=cv&tx_oxcspagepersonnel_pi1[uid]=gmazeau
(PS.  Did you spot the silly fluffy dogs?)

16.55: The Storming of the Bastille. No surprises here; the Revolutionaries turned the hated royal prison into "an emblem of freedom".  Richard views the few stones that remain, on display in the Bastille Metro station.
http://archaeology-travel.com/travel-reports/where-is-the-bastille-today/

18:55: Now outside Paris to a warehouse of  the Musée départemental des Antiquités de Seine-Maritime in Rouen.
The Commune authorised Palloy to send out plaster models of the Bastille to all 83 departments - cue entrance of Bastille model wheeled in in big blue plastic crate. [I wonder why they didn't film the one on display in the Carnavalet; maybe they weren't allowed?].  
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mod%C3%A8les_r%C3%A9duits_de_la_Bastille 
http://curiousrambler.com/2014/07/20/pierre-the-patriot/

21: 36: Church of St-Sulpice
Dr Clay identifies the first act of officially-sponsored iconoclasm as the melting down of "Our Lady of the old tableware", a massive statue of the Virgin by Edmé Bouchardon rumoured to have been cast from silver that the curé, Languet de Gercy, extorted from his parishioners. 

22: 52:  Interview with Serge Aberdam historian and veteran of 1968.

25: 05: Attacks on the Church: 
A single church wall in Paris tells its story of Revolutionary destruction: the official BBC clip covers most of this: "It is odd how quickly the familiar can become strange"  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01y3ff3#

The Church is St Louis-en-l'Île:
See http://www.saintlouisenlile.catholique.fr/spip.php?article334#.VGUMMvmsU68

"In the French Revolution, the church lost its organ and almost all its furnishings. The statues in the transepts of St Geneviève and the Virgin Mary, by François Ladatte, survived only by being transformed into statues of "Liberty" and "Equality".  The curé of the parish since 1785, Coretin Coroller, took the Civil Oath but that did not prevent the closure of his church in 1792.  In 1792 all the metalwork was removed and taken to the Mint.  The church became a "depot littéraire" and was subsequently sold as national property on 31st July 1798 for 60,000 francs to a certain Fontaine; interestingly, the buyer left it at the disposal of Father Coroller who had taken refuge near Notre-Dame and continued to take services and exercise his ministry.  Under the Napoleonic Concordat, he retracted his oath and was reinstated as curé of his parish."

27: 23:  Effaced aristocratic coats-of-arms:

These are at the hôtel Lamoignon (Musée Carnavalet) and the  hôtel des Ambassadeurs de Hollande, 47 rue Vieille du Temple.

29: 23:  Back to the historical narrative and the fall of the monarchy.  In Versailles the weather has cheered up marginally.  A print in the Bibliothèque national shows boys climbing up to blindfold the statue of Louis XV as the royal carriage passes on its way back from Varennes.

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b69478019

31:54: The film digresses at this point, to allow Richard to meet some suitably cerebral graffiti artists. In 2010 Lek and Sowat led a forty strong team to embellish the walls of a huge abandoned supermarket. They  readily agree that they are not vandals (though I am not sure how much they really buy into the Revolutionary parallels)
http://mausolee.net/
.
38:28: Another contemporary  analogy, a "Space Invader" on the column in the place du Châtelet. Richard provocatively asks why this is illegal when  a big intrusive ad for VW is allowed. (I think he knows the answer really).  There are actually over 1,000 Invader mosaics:
http://www.localnomad.com/en/blog/2012/11/02/space-invaders-in-paris/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/meteorry/sets/124207/

Back to the Revolution - symbols of royalty destroyed:
39: 26: The statue of Louis XV is toppled. The Assembly decrees that the metal should be taken to the forge to make "cannon to fire on the armies of kings".
40:33:  The statue of Henri IV.on Pont Neuf  dismantled: "as hollow as the power of kings".

41:58:  Statues of Kings on the facade of Notre-Dame toppled onto the parvis. 21 heads were rediscovered during building work in 1977 in basement of a house built for Jean-Baptiste Lakanal on the rue Causée d'Antin.   They are now on display in the Musée Cluny.


For details see: Carmen Gómez-Moreno, Sculpture from Notre Dame. Paris (Metropolitan Museum,1979)
[Relevant sections accessible on Google Books]

47: 29 Dechristianisation - St-Sulpice
Festival of Reason at Notre-Dame (47: 29) and at St-Sulpice (48: 58)
The official dismantling of Christian and royal symbolism at St-Sulpice by a team under François Daujon.
There are some great scenes of the interior of St-Sulpice and its towers.  Here are some photos from intrepid Belgian "urban explorers" which are nearly as good:
http://www.forbidden-places.net/urban-exploration-saint-sulpice-secrets#14

François Daujon: 
Daujon's career illustrates the complications of personal allegiances and individual decisions during the Revolutionary period. Like Palloy, he allied loyalty to the Revolution with financial acumen;  there are detailed invoices for his work in St-Roch, St-Eustace and St-Sulpice. A sculptor rather than a "stonemason", Daujon did not really share Dr.Clay's enthusiasm for creative destruction. He is mentioned as one of Alexandre Lenoir's three "assistants", engaged in the preservation of monuments.  As Dr Clay himself notes, Daujon made good his altered statues and ran foul of conflicting jurisdictions in his effort to rescue pieces of historical and artistic merit.
Interesting, this is the same Daujon who, as Commissioner at the Temple, was responsible for saving the royal family from the crowd carrying the head of the Princesse de Lamballe. Dr Clay quotes a letter from Daujon in defence of his Revolutionary record, when he was briefly arrested post-Thermidor:

"Since 1789 I have not ceased to serve liberty. I did my service in person every time I was not en fonction. I presided over the Section du Nord and of Bondy in stormy times, and these sections were always in good voice[….]On the night of 10 August, I was presiding over the Section du Bondy and called all the citizens to the defense of liberty. I was named first commissioner on that famous night. I was at the Temple as a municipal officer when they brought the head of Lamballe. I prevented them from killing the tyrant, I wanted him to die on the scaffold and I accompanied him there as a soldier. I was in the departements in September 92 to call the citizens to the communal defense. [... ] As a municipal officer I signed the petition of 31 May [ 1793] against the 32 [Girdondin representatives ejected from the Convention].[…]I occupy myself with nothing but the arts, my profession, during which  I was arrested by my revolutionary committee on 15 Thermidor. I am making a statue of liberty [... ].The fatherland has hardly any better friend, I have sacrificed everything for it, I ask to be allowed the liberty that I have so many times risked my life to defend". 

(quoted Clay,Thesis, p.171-2): 


References

Richard Clay - Birmingham University staff profile
http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/historyofart/clay-richard.aspx

Richard Clay - Iconoclasm (Artsat Birmingham). Richard talks about his research into iconoclasm [Youtube video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUWjx3apm8Y

Furneaux & Edgar productions trailer for the TV documentary on Vimeo
http://vimeo.com/44789480

Podcast Q & A on the documentary, following a screening before an invited audience at Birmingham University
https://audioboom.com/boos/2117999-dr-richard-clay-tearing-up-history-on-bbc-four-transferring-academic-research-to-the-screen

Richard Clay, "Re-making French revolutionary iconoclasm" Perspective 2012 (1): p.181-186
http://perspective.revues.org/633

______, "Signs of power: iconoclasm in Paris, 1789-95"  DPhil. thesis, University of London, Sept.1999.
http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1317978/1/1317978.pdf

At home in the Revolution

The French Revolution gave us popular government, militant nationalism, mass conscription, Terror, Dechristianisation......and politically correct wallpaper!

Here is a splendid Revolutionary wallpaper from the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, as posted on their website for 14th July this year:

Sidewall and border: République Française Liberté Égalité. France, ca. 1792.
Woodblock print on paper. Gift of John Jay Ide Collection

French Revolution Wallpapers

Posted by Gregory Herringshaw on Sunday July 14, 2013

This is an example of wallpaper used as propaganda. This is a paper produced during the French Revolution, woodblock-printed ca. 1792. The citizens of France felt that the Revolution could not be won just by fighting in political circles or on the battlefield. They felt it needed to be reinforced on the domestic front as well and had to occur in the ordinary citizen’s everyday life. It was believed that symbols had a powerful effect on the spirit and could strengthen the validity of the new principles. The domestic nature of wallpaper as well its repetitive aspect made it an ideal medium for portraying such motifs, and bringing these ideals into the home. This paper contains numerous symbols of the Revolution including the red Phrygian cap, cockade, tri-color ribbons, and a banner with the words liberty and equality, which are all combined in this rather beautiful format. Unlike posters or flyers used today for the spread of information, these are block-printed wallpapers, made by some of the top French manufacturers. The Museum contains about a dozen different versions of wallpapers expressing this theme, in both sidewalls and borders, suggesting they were widely used and were being produced by a number of different manufacturers.

http://www.cooperhewitt.org/object-of-the-day/2013/07/14/french-revolution-wallpapers