COCKADE, a knot of ribbons or a rosette worn as a badge, particularly in modern usage as part of the livery of servants. The cockade was at first the button and loop or clasp which "cocked" up the side of an ordinary slouch hat. The word first appears in this sense in Rabelais in the phrase "bonnet a la co quarde," explained by Cotgrave (I 61I) as a "Spanish cap or fash ion of bonnet used by substantial men of yore ... worne proudly or peartly on th' one side." The bunch of ribbons as a party badge developed from this button and loop. The Stuarts' badge was a white rose, and the resulting white cockade figured in Jacobite songs. William III.'s cockade was of yellow, and the house of Hanover introduced theirs of black, which in its present spiked or circular form of leather is worn by the royal coachmen and grooms, and the servants of all officials or members of the services. At the outbreak of the French Revolution of 1789, cock ades of green ribbon were adopted. These afterwards gave place to the tricolour cockade, which is said to have been a mixture of the traditional colours of Paris (red and blue) with the white of the Bourbons, the early Revolutionists being still Royalists. The French army wore the tricolour cockade until the Restoration. Each foreign nation had its cockade. Thus the Austrian was black and yellow, Bavarian light blue and white, Belgian black, yellow and red, French the tricolour, Prussian black and white, Russian green and white, and so on, following usually the national colours. Originally the wearing of a cockade, as a badge, was re stricted to soldiers. There is still a trace of the cockade as a badge in certain military headgears in England and elsewhere.
Otherwise it has become entirely the mark of domestic service. See Genealogical Magazine, vols. ; Racinet, La Costume historique (1888) .