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France

République Française

by mark sensen

Origin of flag
- The Tricolour
- The Oriflamme
The Cross of Lorraine
Naval Flag
Vichy France
Local flags
Corsica
French Colonial Flags

See also:

Origin of flag

According to reference books, the Tricolore was adopted during the early days of the Revolution, to combine white from the traditional flag of the monarchy with red and blue from the arms of Paris.
will linden

In brief we can accept that the colours are basically those of Paris as used on the day of the storming of the Bastille, mixed with the royal white. It is thought that the Marquis de Lafayette was responsible for inventing the red, white and blue cockade which soon became compulsory for revolutionaries in 1789. We don't have to believe that the combination arose because the King placed a red-blue cockade in his hat next to a royal white one, but combinations of revolutionary and royal emblems were common at that time. The flag was created in 1790 but with the colours the reverse of what they are today, ie with red at the hoist, and revised in 1794 to the modern form. The 1790 flag existed only as part of the Jack and Ensign of the Navy. The flag went out of use with Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, but was brought back in 1830 (again by Lafayette) and has remained in use ever since. Although significances have been attached to the colours these are all spurious and invented after the fact. The red and blue of Paris were the livery colours of the coat of arms and natural ones for use by the militia.
william crampton

Prior to 1792 the notion of a French flag is itself fuzzy. The usual story told is this: during the Crusades, various nations adopted crosses of various colors. Brittany was black, Flanders and Lorraine green, Italy and Sweden yellow, Burgundy a red Saint Andrew's, Gascony a white Saint Andrew's. France (it is alleged) had a red cross and England a white cross. (The first crusaders all had red crosses: this scheme was adopted in 1188, at least for France, England and Flanders). It appears that the English switched to the red cross of Saint George sometime in the late 14th c. (I hope someone else has better info, this is from a French book...). And then, in 1420, the king of France Charles VI disowned his son the Dauphin Charles and chose Henry V of England as his successor, and the English "took over" the the French red cross as their own. I'm not sure how much sense this all makes, but one thing seems clear from the iconography: in 1356 and 1380, the Eglish have white crosses and the French red; in 1415 and after, the colors are inverted.

Anyway, the Dauphin Charles had to find an emblem of his own. In 1422, when Charles VI died, he became Charles VII, adopted a white cross as emblem and a white flag as banner. Joan of Arc's famous banner was white with religious figures embroidered on it. Thereafter the three parties to the civil wars of 1420-36 are distinguished by the cross: white for the French, red for the English and red saltire for the Burgundians.

Charles VII also founded the core of the permanent French army, with the first companies of gendarmes, and Louis XI his son created the first troops of the King's Household. The habit developed of using a white cross as the basis of the design of regimental flags, and by the 18th c. almost every regiment had a white cross (exceptions: two Burgundian regiments have the traditional red saltire, an Irish regiment has a red cross, a German regiment has no cross at all). It seems that this lack of consistency in colors (a white cross being hard to make out on a background of multiple colors) made for some confusion: in 1690 at Fleurus, the French infantry was subjected to some "friendly fire" and thereafter it was decided that all regimental flags would have a white "scarf" hanging from the top of the staff.

The white flag itself was the ensign of commanding officers, such as colonel generals, and later colonels. In particular, it was the ensign of the King when he was with the troops. The white flag, usually with a semis of fleurs-de-lis or, was also, since the 17th c. at least, the flag of the French Royal navy (the galleys had a different flag, horizontal striped red-white-red with the French arms in the middle). The merchant navy had a white cross on a blue field, though the white flag was apparently much used, in spite of repeated prohibitions.

Another instance of confusion was at the naval battle of Ouessant in 1778: the French Royal navy, like the British navy, had different colors for its different fleets: white, white-and-blue, and blue. Apparently the latter was easily confused with British ships of the blue fleet, as the national flag at the stern was often shrouded in smoke; after the battle, it was decided to add a white cross to the blue ensign.

The Tricolor

The blue-white-red of the French revolution comes from the combination of the royal white with the Parisian red and blue (the latter derived from the arms of Paris, and in use since the Middle Ages); the colors were combined for the first time when the King visited Paris on July 17, 1789, a few days after the taking of the Bastille. La Fayette is often credited with the idea. The new cockade symbolized the reconciliation of the king with the city. It quickly became the cockade of the Revolution. The three colors in vertical stripes were first used as a canton on Navy flags in 1790, and extended to the whole field in 1794; meanwhile, in 1794, crosses disappear and various arrangements of the tricolor are used by the army; Napoleon standardizes first in 1804 to a white field chape-chausse of red and blue, and in 1812 to the modern French flag. In 1804 took place the distribution of new flags to the regiments, and it is at that time that the near-religious rituals surrounding regimental flags were adopted.

When the Bourbons returned in 1814 they brought back the white flag with the semis as national flag. The Revolution of 1830 ovewrthrew them, and the new, relatively liberal regime of Louis-Philippe hastened to adopt the tricolor again (in fact, the tricolor flag appeared in the arms of the new regime in 1831). It never ceased to be the French flag since that date, through all the regime changes.

In 1870, the disasters of the Franco-Prussian wars led to the fall of Napoleon III's regime. A National Assembly was elected in early 1871 which included a majority of monarchists: the president, elected by the assembly, was also a monarchist. The time seemed ripe for a restoration, and the two branches of the[*]Bourbon family had even reconciled: the childless count of Chambord would reign first, and the throne would then naturally pass to the Orléans branch. But the count of Chambord insisted on restoring the white flag, and this proved fatal to the restoration effort: French monarchists knew that there was no way to impose on the country a flag which by now symbolized the most retrograde and antiquated aspects of monarchism. Furthermore, the count's insistence on the white flag was seen as boding ill for his attitude as a constitutional monarch. Two years passed, the situation lingered on, Republicans rallied, a new parliament was elected with a Republican majority in 1875 and the occasion was lost. Never has France been so close to a restoration of the monarchy since then.

The oriflamme

The oriflamme was a sacred banner used by the kings of France in the Middle Ages in times of great danger. It was distinct from the heraldic banner of the French kings (semis of fleur-de-lys on azure, as expected) . Its history is fairly continuous from 1124 onward, when it is first mentioned. It is first described in 1225. It consists of two parts: a gilded lance, to which is attached a silk banner, red with green fringes. The floating end of the banner splits into two or more trailing strips. The name, aurea flamma, conflates the banner (flamma) and the color of the lance. The banner is sometimes represented as attached vertically to the lance, and sometimes (especially in the 19th c.) as attached to a horizontal bar, itself suspended from the lance.

It was deposited in the abbey of Saint-Denis, north of Paris, where kings of France were buried, next to the relics of Denis who evangelized the area. When going to war, the French king would come to Saint-Denis to "raise the banner". The last time it was raised was in the late 15th c. It was destroyed during the Revolution.

What was its origin? The 1124 text mentions an old tradition of the counts of Vexin, who were protectors of the abbey; the kings of France had become counts of Vexin in 1077. But the text also alludes to a tradition specific to the kings of France. Also, a late 11th-c. text, the Gesta of Roland, calls Charlemagne's emblem or banner orie flambe, but does not describe it. A description of the siege of Paris by the Normans in 885 mentions a large saffron-colored banner with large indentations carried by a double lance. One author tries to link the oriflamme to Charlemagne's lance and through it all the way back to Constantine's labarum, which was taken from a pagan sanctuary located near modern Saint-Denis. (Constantine's lance was part of the regalia of the German emperors, and is now in Vienna). The idea is that the sacred object was the lance itself, decorated with a silk fanion, but later the meaning of the lance was lost and the silk fanion itself came to be seen as the important object.
françois velde 30-JUN-1995

The Cross of Lorraine

Some French military orders and governmental flags use the Cross of Lorraine, which is has two crossbeams. Again, it probably dates from the Angevins.

Recall that the flag of the Free French forces in WWII was a tricolour with a cross of Lorraine on the white stripe. Anyone recall what colour the cross was ?
Robert M.J. Czernkowski 28-JUL-95

Red.
Stuart Notholt 28-JUL-95

I understand it was originally the emblem of the arch-Catholic family of Guise-Lorraine. "Their friends claimed it meant that the Guises would fight for Christ both in France and the Holy Land; their enemies that the League had crucified Christ a second time". (Ross Williamson).
Will Linden 28-JUL-95

Naval Flag and Jack

The proportions of vertical stripes on French naval flag are 30:33:37, to enable good visual efect of flag when flying.
zeljko heimer 23-SEP-1995

According to the BROCKHAUS ENZYKLOPAEDIE, dated 1968 but which still show many valid flags Franch jack is same as the national flag on sea.
pascal vagnat 2-MAY-1996

Vichy France

They did continue to use the Tricolor, but with the addition of the emblem of the regime in the white stripe. This was a double-headed axe with the blades coloured concentricly blue white red (can't remember the order). But interestingly enough they did not like any more the well known French motto "liberte egalite fraternite" (also a sort of national symbol). They changed it to "travail patrie famille" (work fatherland family).
Roy Stilling, Harald Müller 09-APR-96

Local flags

The former provincial flags nearly disappeared due to massive centralisation, excepted in the provinces with strong cultural feelings (Bretagne, Corsica, Savoie, Catalunya, and Pays Basque, and in a lesser extent, former Occitanian country). The administrative regions have logos, and the departements, as administrative recent creations, have no flags, but sometimes logos. Cities have blasons but usually no flags (or fly a flag with the blason, as in Versailles).

I saw the flag of Touraine on the Loire bridge, in my town of Bourges you can sometimes, on hotels, see the flag of Berry. I saw the provincial flags of Alsace, Bourgogne, Picardie, Normandie, Guyenne, Nivernais (in the stadion of Nevers), etc. You remark that all the names above are not necessarily those of strong cultural feeling regions...

The only region which has a good logo, and flag, is the region Midi-Pyrenees, it is the same as the flag of the former

Here some flags of towns:

Paris: blue-red with(out) arms.
Orleans: yellow-red
Bourges: green-red
Nevers: blue-yellow
Tours: banner of the arms
Marseille: banner of the arms
Toulon: banner of the arms
Nice: banner of the arms
Mulhouse: wavy gironny red and white.
Rennes: hermine plain with the arms in the middle
Metz: black-white

pascal vagnat 7-JUN-1996