Grenadiers
During the 18th Century (and in a few cases the 19th), soldiers serving as grenadiers in various northern European armies wore a mitre (usually called a "mitre cap") similar to those worn by Western bishops, but made out of metal rather than fabric. This was worn instead of a wider tricorne to avoid the hat being knocked off when the soldier threw a grenade. The mitre survived as parade dress in several Prussian and Russian grenadier regiments until World War I. Militarily, this headdress came in different styles. The "German" style being a cone shaped structure completely embroidered with cloth; the "Russian" style consisting of a tall brass plate atop of a leather cap with a peak at the rear and the "British" style (usually simply called a "grenadier cap" instead of a mitre) being a tall cloth front-plate forward of a smaller red cap, lined in white. Towards the end of the 18th century in most armies, bar the Russian, the mitre gave way to the bearskin. Some fusilier regiments also wore a mitre with a smaller brass front-plate.
Read more about this topic: Mitre
Famous quotes containing the word grenadiers:
“Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister’s Hill, lived Brister Freeman, “a handy Negro,” slave of Squire Cummings once.... Not long since I read his epitaph in the old Lincoln burying-ground, a little on one side, near the unmarked graves of some British grenadiers who fell in the retreat from Concord,—where he is styled “Sippio Brister,”MScipio Africanus he had some title to be called,—”a man of color,” as if he were discolored.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)