Cockade of Italy
The cockade of Italy is the national ornament of Italy, obtained by folding a green, white and red ribbon into a plissé using the technique called plissage. It is one of the national symbols of Italy and is composed of the three colours of the Italian flag with the green in the centre, the white immediately outside and the red on the edge. The cockade, a revolutionary symbol, was the protagonist of the uprisings that characterized the Italian unification, being pinned on the jacket or on the hats in its tricolour form by many of the patriots of this period of Italian history. During which, the Italian Peninsula achieved its own national unity, culminating on 17 March 1861 with the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy. On 14 June 1848, it replaced the azure cockade on the uniforms of some departments of the Royal Sardinian Army, while on 1 January 1948, with the birth of the Italian Republic, it took its place as a national ornament.
The Italian tricolour cockade appeared for the first time in Genoa on 21 August 1789, and with it the colours of the three Italian national colours. Seven years later, the first tricolour military banner was adopted by the Lombard Legion in Milan on 11 October 1796, and eight years later, the birth of the flag of Italy had its origins on 7 January 1797, when it became for the first time a national flag of an Italian sovereign State, the Cispadane Republic.
The Italian tricolour cockade is one of the symbols of the Italian Air Force, and is widely used on all Italian state aircraft, not only military. The cockade is the basis of the parade frieze of the Bersaglieri, cavalry regiments, Carabinieri and Guardia di Finanza, and a reproduction of it in fabric is sewn on the shirts of the sports teams holding the Coppa Italia that are organized in various national team sports. It is tradition, for the most important offices of the State, excluding the President of the Italian Republic, to have a tricolour cockade pinned to their jacket during the military parade of the Festa della Repubblica, which is celebrated every 2 June.
Colour position
The Italian tricolour cockade, by convention, has the green in the centre, the white in an intermediate position and red in the periphery. This custom derives from one of the conceptual characteristics of the cockades, which can be imagined as flags rolled around the flagpole seen from above.In the case of the Italian tricolour cockade, the green is located in the centre because in the flag of Italy this colour is the one closest to the flagpole. The tricolour cockades with red and green in the opposite position are those of Iran and Suriname. Conversely, the national ornament of Bulgaria and Maldives, starting from the centre, are arranged white, green and red, while that of Madagascar, starting from the centre, is arranged white, red and green.
The Hungarian cockade has the same arrangement of colours as the Italian tricolour cockade, having the colour position reversed like the Iranian cockade and the Surinamese one is an urban legend. Other cockades identical to the Italian one, even in the arrangement of the colours, are the national ornaments of Burundi, Mexico, Lebanon, Seychelles, Algeria and Turkmenistan.
History
The premises
The first cockades were introduced in Europe in the 15th century. The armies of the European states used them to signal the nationality of their soldiers to discern allies from enemies. These first cockades were inspired by the distinctive coloured bands and ribbons that were used in the Late Middle Ages by knights, both in war and in tournaments, which had the same purpose, namely to distinguish the opponent from the fellow soldier.The Italian tricolour cockade, which later became a revolutionary symbol par excellence during the insurrectional uprisings of the 18th and 19th centuries, was often worn by the patriots who participated in the uprisings that marked the Italian unification that was characterized by those social ferments that led to the political and administrative unity of the Italian peninsula in the 19th century; for this reason it is considered one of the national symbols of Italy.
The Italian tricolour cockade, as well as all similar ornaments made in the same period in other countries, main characteristic was that of being able to be clearly visible, thus giving way to unequivocally identify the political ideas of the person who wore it, as well as that of being, in case of need, better hideable than, for example, a flag.
The Italian tricolour cockade was inspired by the French tricolour cockade, as well as the flag of Italy is inspired by the French one, introduced by the French Revolution in the autumn of 1790 on French Navy warships. Other national tricolour European flags were also inspired by the French flag because they were also linked to the ideals of the revolution.
The French tricolour cockade originated during the Revolution and over time became one of the symbols of change. Later, the meaning of change assigned to the French tricolour cockade crossed the Alps and arrived in Italy together with the use of the cockade and all the values of the French Revolution, which were perpetrated by the Jacobinism of the origins, including the ideals of social renewal the basis of the advocacy of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789. Subsequently also political, with the first patriotic ferments directed at national self-determination which subsequently led, on the Italian peninsula, to the Italian unification.
The French tricolour cockade was born on 12 July 1789, two days before the storming of the Bastille, when the revolutionary journalist Camille Desmoulins, while hailing the Parisian crowd to revolt, asked the protesters what colour to adopt as a symbol of the French Revolution, proposing the green hope or the blue of the American Revolution, symbol of freedom and democracy. The protesters replied "The green! The green! We want green cockades!" Desmoulins then seized a green leaf from the ground and pointed it to the hat as a distinctive sign of the revolutionaries.
The green, in the primitive French cockade, was immediately abandoned in favor of blue and red, or the ancient colours of Paris, because it was also the colour of the king's brother, Count of Artois, who became monarch after the First Restoration with the name of Charles X of France. The French tricolour cockade was then completed on 17 July 1789 with the addition of white, the colour of the House of Bourbon, in deference to King Louis XVI, who was still ruling despite the violent revolts that raged in the country: the French monarchy was in fact abolished later, on 10 August 1792.
The birth of the Italian national colours
The leaves used as the first cockades
The first sporadic demonstrations in favor of the ideals of the French Revolution by the Italian population took place in August 1789 with the organization of protests in various places on the Italian peninsula, especially in the Papal States. The rioters, in these early uprisings, had makeshift cockades made of green leaves pinned on their clothes in imitation of the similar protests that took place in France at the dawn of the revolution.The use of cockades during the protests that took place in Italy was not an isolated case. It is documented that on 12 November 1789 the Prussian government forbade the Westphalian population to use cockades because they were viewed with suspicion given their meaning closely linked to the protest movements that were flaring up in France, and their use therefore went beyond the French borders and spread gradually across Europe. This also happened due to gazettes, printed in various European countries, that gave ample prominence to the fact that the cockade had become, in France, one of the most important symbols of the insurrectional uprisings and of the people's struggle against the absolutist regime that ruled at the time.
As for the Italian uprisings, noteworthy were the revolts that took place in Fano and Velletri just before 16 August, in Rome between 16 and 28 August, and in Frascati just before 30 August, all of which took place in the Papal States. In Rome, in particular, cockades, which were formed from laurel leaves, were pinned on the hats. The rioters demanded the lowering of the price of basic necessities with the threat of unleashing riots comparable to the violent Parisian protests in case of refusal of the authorities to satisfy these requests.
File:Anonymous - Prise de la Bastille.jpg|thumb|The people of Paris attack the fortress of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, decreeing the beginning of the French Revolution. Initially the Italian rioters mistakenly believed that the flag waved between the Parisian barricades was green, white and red.
The Milanese gazette Staffetta di Sciaffusa defined the protests in the Papal States as " dance of green cockades" in an article published on 16 August 1789. From September 1789 there was no more news, in the Italian riots, of the cockade formed with the leaves which was replaced by cockades of green fabric.
The first Italian tricolour cockade
During the first weeks of the revolutionary season, it remained a common belief in Italy that the green, white and red flag was the flag waved by the French rioters. The Italian insurgents therefore used these colours as a simple imitation of the protests that were taking place in France and that were aimed at – in both nations – to the same objectives, namely to achieve better living conditions and to obtain civil and political rights, which have always been denied by absolutist regimes. The Italian gazettes of the time had in fact created confusion on the events of the French riots, in particular by omitting the replacement of green with blue and red and thus reporting the erroneous news that the French tricolour was green, white and red.The error about the colours of the French cockade took root among the demonstrators because the newspapers did not correct the error immediately although at the time, in Italy, about 80 newspapers were printed, five of which in Milan alone. The news published were, at the beginning, also contradictory. For example, the Milanese gazette La Staffetta di Sciaffusa reported the news that the green French cockade made up of leaves had been replaced, the next day, by a red and white cockade.
File:Ripa Maris di Genova tra il 1828 e il 1848.jpg|thumb|left|Panorama of Genoa in the early 19th century. Here, the Italian tricolour cockade appeared for the first time, and with it the Italian national colours.
Even on the subsequent and definitive French blue, white and red cockade, which was made on July 17, the newspapers made confusion reporting, as in the case of Il Corriere di Gabinetto, that it was only red and blue or, according to other newspapers, such as La Gazzetta Enciclopedica di Milano, which was white and pink. More precise information, subsequently reported by all the Italian newspapers, correctly informed that there are three colours of the French cockade, however their shades erroneously cited as green, white and red cockades.
The first documented trace of the use of the green, white and red cockade, which however does not specify the arrangement of the colours on the ornament, is dated 21 August 1789. In the historical archives of the Republic of Genoa it is reported that eyewitnesses had seen some demonstrators wandering around the city with "the new French white, red and green cockade introduced recently in Paris". The use of the term "new cockade" is indicative of the French makeshift cockades made of leaves to those in two and subsequently three colours, despite ignoring the real chromatic composition.
The use of the cockade was viewed with suspicion and aversion by the Genoese state authorities, since it recalled those social impulses that were beginning to spread in Europe; the popular ferments had in fact frequently rebellious and destabilizing connotations. The Italian flag was therefore born as a form of popular protest against the absolutist regimes that ruled the peninsula at the time and not as a patriotic manifestation of Italianness, given that it was still far from the birth of that national awareness that then led to the unification of Italy.
It is also not excluded that the green, white and red cockade, with the erroneous belief in the use of green instead of blue, an inaccuracy perhaps caused by the previous use of green leaves, was born before 21 August, and in a different city than Genoa. The revolutionary ferments of the French events probably arrived in Italy before that date, it being understood that we do not yet have documented traces of this possible first realization of the tricolour cockade. It is proven by written evidence that the first revolutionary uprisings, in Italy, took place in August in the Papal State, but the sources relating to these events do not mention tricolour cockades, but only ornaments composed with leaves.
Finally, when the correct information on the chromatic composition of the French cockade arrived in Italy, the Italian Jacobins decided to keep green instead of blue, because it represented nature, and therefore metaphorically also natural rights, that is equality and freedom, both principles dear to them. Although the green, white and red tricolour, when introduced, simply had an imitative value, it was taken as a symbol of the Italian homeland during the popular uprisings of the early 19th century.