What did the Liberty Cap Represent During the French Revolution (1791-95)?
During the French Revolution many different symbols were birthed by France to symbolize their struggle. These items ranged from flags, to pictures, to clothes, to even colors! Yet perhaps the most widely recognized and popular item came in the form of a cap, a cap of liberty.Inside this red cap was the design of the Phyrgian cap and the iconography of the pileus, both from the Classical Age of Hellenistic civilizations and now prepared to come roaring back into the spotlight in one of the most famous revolutions in all of history. For in the French Revolution the Liberty cap came to represent the San culotte, the struggle of the revolution, the working class, and the idea of liberty.
A Storied Past
Perhaps the biggest reason that the Liberty Cap was so influential was its ties to the Classical age. During the Classical age the Hellenistic civilization of Rome had a sort of ceremony for when a slave was freed. In the ceremony, a praetor (a Roman Magistrate) would touch a slave with a special rod called a vindicta and pronounce him to be free. The former slaves head would then be shaved and be given a pileus to wear. Both the pileus and the vindicta were symbols of Libertas, the goddess of liberty (Shilliam 115).
Fig 1.Rom. Republik: M. lunius Brutus und L. Plaetorius Cestianus, Ident. NR: 18204986
Later on in the history of Rome following the assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar in 44 B.C, Marcus Junius Brutus and his co-conspirators would use this symbolism to capture the idea of a return to Republicanism after the Dictatorship of Caesar. This was because the idea of having another Brutus killing another king and establishing another republic was simply too good of a narrative to pass up. And thus, Brutus captured this icon onto a coin with a pileus between two daggers on one side and an image in the likeness of himself on the other (Shilliam 116). Yet despite all of this inherent symbolism existing before the French Revolution the pileus would be mistaken for the Phrygian cap. Although it is unknown where this mistake came from, it stuck, and so the liberty cap took the design of the Phrygian cap and the symbolism of the pileus and turned them into a single symbol of the revolution (Shilliam 115).
From One Nation to Another
One of history's greatest ironies is that because the French King Louis XVI helped the Americans win their independence from Great Britain, he inadvertently planted the seed of the destruction of the French Monarchy. As France was an ally of America during the war, many of the men sent over worked closely with the Americans and adopted many of the same ideals (Shilliam 115). This meant that when all the men that the King sent to America came back, they brought with them ideals of liberty, and with that came symbols. More specifically, many now attributed the idea of liberty with a woman in a classical era style dress and holding a spear with a liberty cap at the end of it, an outfit that the goddess of liberty, Libertas, was often depicted as wearing (Shilliam 115).
A Working Man’s Dress
Another part of the appeal and symbolic nature of the liberty cap lied in its remarkable similarity to the working man's cap at the time, a floppy, tubular hat, with a tassel on the end (Shilliam 115). It was these same working men and women (and not necessarily the poorest) at the time who were responsible for the storming of the Bastille and marking the calendar at the time with many revolutionary events. In this context, the liberty cap was indispensable as a symbol of the revolution as it was being driven by the working class, something that the Jacobins and the Sans Culottes fully capitalized on. It was for this reason that the Liberty cap had also become a symbol of the working class.
The Color of Liberty
A common theme throughout the duration of the French Revolution was the denotation of symbols through colors, something that is still seen extremely often today. In this way the liberty cap follows tradition in its red crimson hue. This particular coloration symbolized many things, not least among them being the blood spilled when France was ruled by the tyrannical King Louis XVI and that shed when the shackles of monarchy were finally cast aside (Shilliam 116). The color red was also one of the colors commonly associated with Paris at the time, the latter of which was the definitive hub of political and revolutionary activity for the bulk of the French Revolution (Shilliam 116).
Symbolism in Simplicity
Arguably the most unique aspect of the Liberty cap was in that it was in itself a mockery of the French elite. During the French Revolution, one of the easiest ways to identify a person's belief and status in society was by the way they dressed. The elite wore only the most extravagant of clothing, hand-made laces, silk brocades and velvets, powdered hair and wigs, and the most costly intricate silver shoe buckles were all signs that one was of the upper class (Harris 286). Yet during the French Revolution the attire of the Sans culottes and many other revolutionaries was notably absent of such complex design. There were no extravagant cloaks or knee breeches to be seen in the Revolutionary, instead they adorned themselves in the outfit worn by that of the common man. Simple outfits made of linen, cotton, and wool with a simple overcoat and long trousers were common to see, and on their head came the Liberty hat, sometimes even adorned with the tri-color cockade (Harris 286). It was in this way that Liberty cap not only brought someone closer to that of the working class, but it also distanced the wearer from the much hated elite.
The Hat Republic
One of the more odd aspects of the Liberty cap was how it was used as both a rallying point and a means of mocking the wearer in specific circumstances. Easily the best and most well known example of this occurred on June 20, 1792 when a massive crowd of people broke into King Louis’ palace and imprisoned him inside the Tuilieres for several hours (Shilliam 123). In an attempt to appease the crowd the King of France would then don a Liberty cap and a tricolor cockade. Near the end of his confinement King Louis would symbolically pledge his allegiance to the revolution by drinking a toast to its health, something that was forever captured in the newspapers shortly after. Jennifer Harris, author of The Red Cap of Liberty: A Study of Dress Worn by French Revolutionary Partisans 1789-94 states this moment also led to a significant loss in authority for the King which would never be recovered (283).
Fig 2. None Identified, “Louis XVI, King of the French,” LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY: EXPLORING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
Now reinforcing its symbol as a sign of the Republic by modernizing itself as well as a sign of liberty, it was at this point the Liberty cap achieved the height of its symbolic status.
Shortcomings and Hypocrisy
Despite all of what the Liberty hat stood for it does have a few shortcomings. The first of which is that women were not allowed to wear the liberty hat unless for specific religious ceremonies.
Fig 3. Madame de Monchy (engraver) and Louis-Simon Boizot (designer), “Liberty,” LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY: EXPLORING THE FRENCH REVOUTION
This is especially perplexing given that Libertas was commonly depicted as a woman with the symbolic red hat more often than not close by. With that being said, there were groups of women who did push for being able to wear the cap with the most prominent being the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women who had only just recently pushed and won the right to wear the tricolor cockade (Harris 296). Unfortunately the privilege of wearing the Liberty cap remained delegated to the men of France for the duration of the revolution.
Lasting Legacy
Throughout the French Revolution and even before it the Liberty cap was a symbol of liberty and as time went on it would start to stand for more and more. Starting as a symbol of liberty from the goddess Libertas and as a sign of freedom for slaves, the hat would eventually gain its standing in the political scene after the assassination of Brutus. The cap would then gain new meaning as a symbol of the working class and their struggle against the tyrannical government before reaching its height of popularity upon the literal head of a king. In the end the Liberty cap always stood for liberty and soon after the common man and his ideal form of government.
Works Cited
Harris, Jennifer. “The Red Cap of Liberty: A Study of Dress Worn by French Revolutionary Partisans 1789-94.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 14, no. 3 (1981): 283–312.
Shilliam, Nicola J. “‘Cocardes Nationales and Bonnets Rouges’: Symbolic Headdresses of the French Revolution.” Journal of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 5 (1993): 104–31.
Harden, J. David. “Liberty Caps And Liberty Trees.” Past and Present 146, no. 1 (1995): 66–102. https://doi.org/10.1093/past/146.1.66.
Wrigley, Richard. “Transformations Of A Revolutionary Emblem: The Liberty Cap In The French Revolution.” French History 11, no. 2 (January 1997): 131–69. https://doi.org/10.1093/fh/11.2.131.
None Identified, “Louis XVI, King of the French,” LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY: EXPLORING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
Rom. Republik: M. lunius Brutus und L. Plaetorius Cestianus, Ident. NR: 18204986
Madame de Monchy (engraver) and Louis-Simon Boizot (designer), “Liberty,” LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY: EXPLORING THE FRENCH REVOUTION, accessed April 28, 2020, https://revolution.chnm.org/items/show/16.