The Flag of France 2

The Flag of France

The Flag of France 3
Location of St Helena

securely positioned in the midst of the vast Atlantic ocean from any potential help such as he received to make his famous escape from the Italian island of Elba.

French history is lengthy and complex.  One could spend years and go through hundreds of volumes in an attempt to better comprehend it all, but for our purposes a broad outline will suffice.  For those who are interested in a more detailed, and yet still accessible summary of French history, look here.

What really truly concerns us is how the modern tricolor flag of today’s France came to be.

The Flag of France 4
Modern French Flag

Blue and white, at least, have been signature colors of the French flag from the earliest times.  The flags of the Kingdom of France varied over time but usually included blue fields with gold  fleurs-de-lis

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Royal Flag of France

although white background fields were also used at times.

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Fleur de Lys Flag

Red appeared originally in the earliest of the recorded flags of France and made occasionally appearances over the years.  Images of the various early flags of France can be viewed here.

The first tricolor flag that closely resembles that flag of today was used from 1790 to 1794 during the First Republic period.  The major difference was that the red field was on the hoist side while today’s flag has the positions of red and blue reversed, with blue on the hoist side.

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Original Tricolor of France

The tricolor has its origins in the flag of the city of Paris which was blue and red, with blue on the hoist side.

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Historical Flag of City of Paris

Interestingly, at least to me, this exact flag configuration has also been attributed to the Phoenicians, whom you will recall settled in the south of France near modern day Marseilles.  Perhaps there is a connection? This arrangement is also echoed in the modern flag of Haiti, which we will get to eventually.  During the revolution, partisans would wear red and blue “cockades,”

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Tricolor Cockade

which are circular rosette-like emblems attached to a hat.  These colors were most famously worn during the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789.

The white was added at the suggestion of Lafayette, properly known as Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.  Lafayette felt that the addition of the white stripe would serve to make the flag more representative of the French nation as a whole instead of emphasizing Paris over the rest of the nation.  This Lafayette is the same man familiar to students of United States history as he fought on the side of the American rebels in the American War of Independence and was a personal friend of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin.  Lafayette carried his revolutionary ideals back home with him, and despite being a member of the hated aristocracy, his service to the revolution protected him from Madame L’Guillontine.

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