Tunic (military)

In the second half of the seventeenth and into the eighteenth century, European soldiers wore a coat of a similar style to the civilian justacorps, which had wide skirts and was decorated with lace at the front and had broad cuffs.

As the eighteenth century progressed, coats became tighter and broad lapels to expose the facing colour were introduced, initially in the Prussian Army.

[1] By the start of the nineteenth century, this had evolved into a jacket that was cut to waist level at the front and had a short tail behind; in the British Army, this was called a "coatee".

[2] A coat with a skirt that reached down to thigh length had been introduced into both the Russian and Prussian armies at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, but was not widely adopted.

[6] The tunic became almost universal military wear; at the start of the twentieth century, when the need for some kind of concealment became apparent, armies changed to drab coloured uniforms, the British and Americans in 1902, the Germans in 1910.