Chamade

In war, a chamade was a certain beat of a drum, or sound of a trumpet, which was addressed to the enemy as a kind of signal, to inform them of some proposition to be made to the commander; either to capitulate, to have leave to bury their dead, make a truce, etc. Gilles Ménage derives the word from the Italian chiamate, from Latin clamare, to call.

Marin Mersenne recorded both a chamade drum pattern,^[1] and a chamade cavalry trumpet signal in his annotated copy of the Harmonie universelle.^[2]

The word was taken from French into German from the late seventeenth century in the military phrase die Chamade schlagen, meaning 'to surrender', and became a geflügeltes Wort in the late nineteenth century.^[3]