In a meeting in 1618 between leaders of the Bohemian, Catholic and Protestant communities, which resulted in the third defenestration of Prague, a representative of the Protestants read a letter affirming, "As they also absolutely intended to proceed with the executionagainst us, we came to an unanimous agreement among ourselves that, regardless of any loss of life and limb, honor and property, we would stand firm, with all for one and one for all... nor would we be subservient, but rather we would loyally help and protect each other to the utmost, against all difficulties." In 1594, William Shakespeare uses it in his poem The Rape of Lucrece to characterize people who take massive risks, including the poem's villainous rapist king, Tarquin the Proud: Many of Shakespeare's contemporaries recognized him not for plays like Hamlet and Macbeth, but poems like Lucrece and Venus and Adonis. Thus, his use of it could have contributed to more widespread usage, since these poems were commercial successes in his time.
''Three Musketeers''
Un pour tous, tous pour un is a motto traditionally associated with the titular heroes of the novelThe Three Musketeers written by Alexandre Dumas père, first published in 1844. In the novel, it was the motto of a group of French musketeers named Athos, Porthos, Aramis and d'Artagnan who stayed loyal to each other through thick and thin. On November 30, 2002, in an elaborate but solemn procession, six Republican Guards carried the coffin of Dumas from its original interment site in the Cimetière de Villers-Cotterêts in Aisne to the Panthéon. The coffin was draped in a blue velvet cloth inscribed with the motto.
Traditional motto of Switzerland
Switzerland has no official motto defined in its constitution or legislative documents. The phrase, in its German, French, Italian and Romansh versions, came into widespread use in the 19th century. After autumn storms had caused widespread floods in the Swiss Alps in late September and early October 1868, officials launched an aid campaign under that slogan, deliberately using it to evoke a sense of duty and solidarity and national unity in the population of the young nation. Switzerland had become a federal state only 20 years earlier, and the last civil war among the cantons, the Sonderbundskrieg, had been in 1847. Newspaper ads that used the motto to call for donations were run in all parts of the country. The phrase was increasingly associated with the founding myths of Switzerland, which often also have solidarity as a central theme, to such a degree that "Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno" was even written in the cupola of the Federal Palace of Switzerland in 1902. It has since been considered the motto of the country. Politicians of all parties and regions acknowledge it as the motto of Switzerland.
