[Fr. carmagnole a kind of dress much worn in France during the Revolution of 1789; also in senses given below.]
1. Name of a lively song and dance, popular among the French revolutionists in 1793.
1827. Scott, Napoleon, Prose Wks. 1835, II. 92. note.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev. (1857), II. II. V. xi. 82. Duke Brunswick is not dancing carmagnoles, but has his drill-sergeants ready.
1871. Farrar, Witn. Hist., v. 189. That liberty which has ‘for her lullaby the carmagnole, and for her toy the guillotine.’
2. A nickname for a soldier in the French revolutionary army; applied by Burns to the devil, as the author of mischief or ruin.
1796. Burns, Poem on Life. That curst carmagnole, auld Satan.
1823. Galt, Entail, III. xii. 115. Switching away the heads of the thistles and benweeds in his path, as if they had been Parisian carmagnols.
3. The bombastic style adopted in reporting the successes of the French revolutionary army.
1860. Times, 16 April, 10/2. A fair specimen of the style called the Carmagnole, so much cultivated by the newspaper and pamphlet writers of the first Revolution.
