Crimson & Blue & Navy

Crimson is the Phrygian cap — the deep vivid crimson-to-red of the bonnet phrygien (Phrygian cap — liberty cap — French: bonnet rouge — 'red cap') — the single most immediately recognizable symbol of the French Revolution. Historical origins: the Phrygian cap derives from the pileus (Latin: πῖλος — pilos — a soft, conical, brimless felt cap) worn by freed slaves in ancient Rome as the most immediate visual symbol of their liberation from slavery — adopted as a symbol of liberty and civic virtue in 18th-century republican iconography, particularly in England and the American colonies (the cap appears on the Liberty Pole symbol of American revolutionary iconography). In the French Revolution: the bonnet rouge was adopted by the radical sans-culottes ('those without knee-breeches' — the urban working class of Paris, the most radical faction of the revolution) as their characteristic headgear from approximately 1790 — most conspicuously during the assault on the Tuileries Palace on August 10, 1792, when the red-capped sans-culottes forced King Louis XVI to put on the bonnet rouge in front of the revolutionary crowd in the most dramatically humiliating reversal of royal dignity of the revolutionary period. The color: the bonnet rouge is always vivid red-to-crimson — the specific color of the most commonly used scarlet wool used for the cap (cochineal-dyed worsted wool was the most available vivid red fabric in the late 18th century — the same deep vivid crimson of cochineal-dyed scarlet). The female allegory of the French Republic, Marianne (Marianne — the personification of the French Republic since the revolutionary period — whose face changes with each generation to represent the ideals of the contemporary French woman), is always depicted wearing the bonnet rouge. Blue is the bleu de France — the pure electric blue of the Capetian royal house of France's heraldic color (bleu de France — French blue — a vivid, slightly warm, pure blue associated with the fleurs-de-lis of the French royal coat of arms since at least the 12th century CE). The Paris cockade: in July 1789 (specifically July 12-13, 1789 — two days before the storming of the Bastille), the revolutionary guards of Paris adopted a cockade (cocarde — a rosette of ribbons worn as a badge) of blue and red — the colors of Paris (blue and red were the traditional heraldic colors of the city of Paris) — pinned to their hats as the most immediately recognizable badge of revolutionary allegiance. White was added to the blue-and-red Paris cockade in July 1790 (the white of the Bourbon royal house, added to indicate that the revolution was not against the king personally but against tyranny — though this conciliatory interpretation would not survive the radicalization of 1792-1793). The resulting blue-white-red tricolor (bleu-blanc-rouge) was adopted as the French national flag by the National Assembly in February 1794 — the most internationally recognized national flag color scheme in the world, subsequently adopted or influenced dozens of national flags. Navy is the Garde Nationale — the very deep dark navy of the Garde Nationale uniform (the National Guard — established July 14, 1789 — the day of the storming of the Bastille — as a citizen-militia to defend Paris and the revolutionary order, commanded initially by the Marquis de Lafayette — 1757-1834 — the most celebrated French-American hero of both the American and French Revolutions). The National Guard uniform: dark navy blue — adopted from the pre-revolutionary French military tradition of dark blue as the primary uniform color for line infantry (the dark navy blue coat of the 18th-century French infantry had been the most recognizable military uniform in Europe for most of the 18th century — French military fashion was the most internationally imitated in the western European military tradition). Lafayette's specific contribution: Lafayette (who had served in the American Revolutionary War from 1777-1781, the most celebrated French volunteer in the American cause) specifically chose the dark navy-blue uniform for the new Garde Nationale as a deliberate reference to the American Continental Army uniform (which also used dark blue as the primary coat color — following Washington's General Order of 1779 designating dark blue as the official Continental Army coat color) — creating a visual link between the American and French revolutions.