Why do guards wear bearskin hats

The Bataan The hat — a bearskin — is a symbol of what it takes to be the best. Ministry of Defence While the Guard date all the way back to , their trademark bearskin shakos date back to the Napoleonic Wars, the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Specifically, the British picked the hats up from the dead bodies of fallen Frenchmen. More on We are the Mighty 10 time-honored military traditions that civilians find weird This is why the SAS trains with the British royal family. Coatee of a British Officer Wounded at Waterloo.

Belgic Shako. To find out how to sign up your class and discover your local Waterloo history, contact schools ageofrevolution. You can download and use the high resolution image under a Creative Commons licence , for all non-commercial purposes, provided you attribute the copyright holder. Some objects - such as this one - are owned by private collectors.

Waterloo cannot give information on the ownership or location of these items. Creative Commons attribution information. Home Objects of Waterloo Bearskin Headdress. Copyright Guards Regiment. Rights Holder: Private collection. They were devised as essential accoutrements of battle against the United Kingdom's enemies during the s.

They were used when fighting the French in the Napoleonic wars. In fact, Napoleon's Imperial Guard wore them, too. Related: What was the largest empire in the world? The hats are known as bearskins because — you guessed it — they're made of bear fur.