csákó

The shako is a cylindrical or slightly tapered military cap with a flat top, a peak at the front, and often a plume or cockade at the crown. Its name derives from Hungarian csákó, which itself was a shortened form of csákós süveg, meaning 'peaked cap' — csákós being an adjective from csák (peak, point). The peaked cap that Hungarian light cavalry wore in the early eighteenth century was functional headgear adapted for mounted service: stiff enough to offer some protection, with a brim that shielded the eyes. Hungarian hussars spread this cap style through the European armies they served or fought against, and by the mid-eighteenth century variants of the csákó were appearing in Austrian, French, and German military inventories.

The shako's golden age was the Napoleonic period, roughly 1800 to 1815, when it became the dominant headgear for infantry across most of the armies of Europe. Napoleon's Grande Armée adopted it as standard issue. The British army — which fought the French for over a decade — adopted the shako from their adversaries in 1800, giving up the earlier bicorne and cocked hat for line infantry. The Prussians, the Austrians, the Russians, and eventually the Americans all fielded variants. Each nation adapted the form slightly: the British model had a false front that rose higher than the crown, creating the distinctive 'stovepipe' silhouette; the French model was more cylindrical; the Prussian Landwehr shako was lower and plainer. But all descended from the same Hungarian original, and all carried some variant of the same word.

The shako's spread through European languages is a lesson in military borrowing. French adopted the word as shako or schako by the early nineteenth century. English borrowed it from French, first recorded in 1815. German used Tschako or Schako, directly from the Hungarian. Russian had кивер (kiver) for its own variant but also used шако (shako). The Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian armies all used cognates. The word became so thoroughly internationalized that its Hungarian origin was invisible to the soldiers who wore the cap. By the mid-nineteenth century the shako was gradually displaced by the kepi in French service and the Pickelhaube in Prussian service, but it remained in use in various armies — including ceremonial roles — through the twentieth century.

Today the shako survives primarily in ceremonial and parade contexts. West Point cadets wear a shako. British Foot Guards wear a bearskin that is related in ceremonial logic, though not in form. Various European and Latin American military academies retain the shako for dress uniform. The word also entered English as a general term for any tall cylindrical hat with a flat top, applied loosely to marching-band headgear that echoes the military original. The Hungarian word for a peaked cap has become the international word for a type of military pageantry that has outlasted the warfare it once accompanied.