Cap

During the French Revolution, headdresses played a vital role in marking political affiliation and national identity. Hats adorned with a tricolor ribbon cockade became symbols of patriotism, while the liberty cap or bonnet rouge, became a symbol of the Revolution. The bonnet rouge resembled a floppy woolen cap commonly worn by working men, but its shape was drawn from the ancient Roman pileus, a cap given to freed slaves to mark their liberation, and the Phrygian cap, a curved cap associated in antiquity with the people of Phrygia, located in present-day Turkey. This rare example of a revolutionary cap represents a type known as the bonnet de police worn by members of the National Guard, which was typically adorned with Revolutionary imagery. The band of this cap is embroidered with a Phrygian cap mounted on a pike, and fasces, or tied bundles of wooden rods, a symbol of unity and authority in ancient Rome.