Origin of the flag

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, i.e. 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 law of 27 pluviôse, Year II (February 15, 1794), established the "tricolour" as the national flag. At the recommendation of the painter David, the law stipulated that the blue should be flown nearest the flagstaff.

The flag went out of use with Napoléon I'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.

Napoléon I standardized 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.

Throughout the 19th century, the blue of the legitimist royalists contended with the three colours inherited from the Revolution. The white flag was re-introduced under the Restoration, but Louis-Philippe reinstated the "tricolour," surmounting it with the Gallic rooster.

During the Revolution of 1848, the provisional Government adopted the "tricoloure," but the people on the barricades brandished a red flag to signal their revolt.

Under the Third Republic, a consensus gradually emerged around the three colours. From 1880 onwards, the presentation of the colours to the armed forces, each July 14, came to be a moment of high patriotic fervour.

While the Comte de Chambord, claimant to the French throne, never accepted the "tricolour," the royalists ended up rallying round the national flag at the time of the First World War.

The constitutions of 1946 and 1958 (article 2) instituted the "blue, white and red" flag as the national emblem of the Republic.

Colours of the flag

The colors of the French flag "combine" different symbols, invented after the fact:

• Blue is the color of Saint Martin, a rich Gallo-Roman officer who ripped his blue coat with his sword to give one half of it to a poor who was begging him in the snow. This is the symbol of care, of the duty that the rich had to help the poor.
• White is the color of the Virgin Mary, to whom the Kingdom of France was consecrated by Louis XIII in the 17th century; it is also the color of Joan of Arc, under whose banner the English were finally driven out of the Kingdom (15th century). It became logically the color of Royalty. The King's vessels carried plain white flags at sea.
• Red is the color of Saint Denis, the saint patron of Paris. The original oriflamme (war banner) of the Kings was the red oriflamme of Saint Denis.