Last modified: 2007-02-04 by ivan sache
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The Tricolore flag was created in 1790 but with the colours the reverse of what they are today, that is 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.
William Crampton, undated
During the Revolution and the early Bonaparte/Napoléon
years, the country was besieged and poor. Standardization of the
Tricolore flag took place in 1812 only, and several
geometrical blue-white-red designs were in use before.
Some iconographical sources show a red liberty cap in the white
stripe, but there is no evidence that such flags ever existed in real.
Ivan Sache, 17 October 2000
The National Convention adopted as the national flag the Tricolore (blue, white, red) on 27 Pluviose of the Year II (15 February 1794). The Decree says (in my own free translation):
Armand Noël du Payrat, 4 February 1998
![[French naval ensign, 1790]](../images/f/fr~1790a.gif)
French first naval ensign and jack - Image by Santiago Dotor, 5 January 2000
Quoting Barraclough & Crampton [c2b81]:
The first official use of the blue-white-red colours in a flag was in the naval ensign established on 24 October 1790. This was still white, but had a version of the Tricolore in the first quarter. This version, also used as the jack, had vertical stripes of red, white and blue, with a white inner border and an outer parti-coloured blue and red. Eventually on 24 May 1794 the first naval ensign was abolished, and a uniform Tricolore was prescribed for all purposes.
Santiago Dotor, 5 January 2000
According to the illustrations of the ensign and jack in Smith (p. 135) [smi75c], the outer border was solid red on the flyward half and a blue-outlined white border on the hoist half (blue-outlined only on inner and outer edges, not outlined where it adjoined the red).
Ned Smith, 7 January 2000
This is one of a few documented errors in Smith's opus. The white-outlined-blue shown in this flag is correctly solid blue. Note that the counter-changed border is somewhat thicker than in the above image. The Flag Bulletin [tfb] printed a full listing of the errors in the book.
Dave Martucci, 8 January 2000
The naval jack - the first Ticolore - and its attendant flags
were established (with the assent of the King) by a Decree of the
National Assembly dated 24 October 1790, and exact specifications
were prepared by the Royal Printers and issued by Département de
la Marine.
These show that the jack had an outer border, blue and the hoist and
red at the fly, with a width of 3/60 the flag. This surrounded a
narrow white border of 1/60 the flag which in turn surrounded the
tricolour proper with a width of 52/60 and stripes in the proportions
of red 27, white 28 and blue 27.
The ensign was white with the jack as specified above forming a
canton of one-quarter the flag, whilst it also appeared at the head
of the both a broad and commissioning pendants (whose tails were, of
course, white).
Whether actual flags were prepared according to these
specifications in such a time of upheaval is, of course, a matter of
debate, however, it is good to know what they should have looked
like.
Christopher Southworth, 22 January 2003
The castle of Emperi in Salon-de-Provence houses an important army museum. Among the historical flags shown in the museum, one, dated 26 September 1791, is quite similar to the naval ensign and jack described above, but:
- The flag clearly shows a white cross over white, limited by lines and a
vegetal circle upon the center of the cross;
- There is a full tricolor total border, blue at the upper left and lower right, red at the upper right and lower left, white in the middle;
- In the canton, there is a flag horizontally divided blue-white-red
Philippe Lacroix, 3 November 2003
![[Unidentified French flag]](../images/f/fr_jrevo.gif)
Unidentified French flag - Image by Ivan Sache, 13 December 2003
A flag labelled le pavillon national (the national flag, or
ensign) is shown on the Jeu de la
Révolution, a variant of the well-known Jeu de l'Oie, the French
version of snakes and ladders. The players shall move along a linear
path made of squares, the numbers of squares moved ahead being given by
a dice thrown alternatively by each player. The first player to reach
the end of the path is the winner. The squares are numbered and
illustrated; for instance, if you reach the "jail" square, you must wait
until another player reaches the same case and frees you, being himself jailed.
In the Jeu de la Révolution, the end of the path is the National
Assembly, with the following legend:
Le Bonheur de la France est signé le 14 7bre 1791 par Louis XVI premier
Roi constitutionnel des Français, that is "Good fortune of France was
signed on 14 September 1791 by Louis XVI, the first Constitutional King
of the French".
Case #38 shows the three fleur-de-lis as the national arms. Therefore,
the Jeu de la Révolution game was most probably a propaganda item for
the Constitutional monarchy, which lasted until the overthrowning of
Louis XVI in 1793.
Case#51 shows the enigmatic "national flag" as a square reddish flag
with a canton quartered blue and red by a white cross. The red shade of
the main field seems to be lighter than the red shade of the two red
quarters of the canton, but this might be a printing effect.
Ivan Sache & Thierry Gilabert, 13 December 2003
In July 1791, King Louis XVI and the Royal family attempted to
flee France, dressed as ordinary people. They were arrested in
Varennes, on their way to Germany. It is often said that the son of
the post house's owner recognized the king after a coin. Other said
that the royal princesses were recognized because they were not able
to walk correctly without a servant to assist them. Betrayal might be
a more rational explanation.
The king was brought back to Paris. A "Republican petition"
requiring the overthrowing the king was deposed on Champ-de-Mars,
where the Fête de la Fédération had been
celebrated on 14 July 1790.
A lot of people gathered to sign the petition. On 17 July, when the
meeting turned into a riot, the Mayor of Paris, Bailly, ordered to
hoist the red flag, which meant at that time that the mob should
disperse. The National Guards shot without warning. More than 50
rioters were killed and immediatly considered as the first martyres
of the Revolution. The red flag, "shed with the martyrs' blood"
became the symbol of the Revolution by a weird inversion of its
initial symbolism.
Source: M. Pastoureau Les emblèmes de la France [pst98]
Ivan Sache, 21 August 2002
Historical representations of the Tricolore flag released
after the real events had occurred are often forged. For
instance, the famous propaganda/glorification picture by baron
Antoine Gros Bonaparte au Pont d'Arcole shows Bonaparte
bearing the Tricolore flag when assaulting alone the bridge of
Arcole (near Verona, during the eponymic battle hold on 15-17
November 1796 and won over the Austrians).
The picture was painted some ten years after the battle, and
Bonaparte had became emperor Napoléon
I. It has been pointed out that Bonaparte in Arcole did not bear
the Tricolore flag, which hardly existed on land at that time,
but the flag of the 5th infantry demi-brigade. Anyway, since this
episode is one of the most characteristic of Napoléon's myth,
it was necessary to associate it with the Tricolore flag later
accepted by the Emperor.
The picture is reproduced on a French post stamp released in 1972
(YT1730, M 72-33), which therefore propagates a deliberate historical
forgery. Bonaparte's uniform was also said to be erroneous in several
details. The whole story can be found in the review Armes et
Uniformes de l'Histoire (March 1973), and is summarized in the
book Le Patrimoine du Timbre-Poste français (Flohic,
1998).
Ivan Sache, 17 October 2000
On Bonaparte's proposal, the Directoire appointed in 1798 General Bernadotte Ambassador of France in Vienna
(Austria). On 8 February 1798, Bernadotte
settled in the embassy, located in Palace Caprara Geymuller in
Wallner Street.
On 13 April, around 7 PM, Bernadotte ordered to hoist the French
Tricolor flag on the balcony of his residence. A mob rapidly gathered
in the street and asked the flag to be removed. Heated exchanges
occurred between the mob and the embassy staff gathered on the
balcony. The mob was tediously contained by the guards. Bernadotte
himself, wearing his uniform and the Tricolore cockade, went down
into the street, with sword drawn. The Austrian police arrived and
discussion took place in Bernadotte's office. Bernadotte definitively
refused to take down the flag. In the street, picket lines of cavalry
and infantry attempted to prevent the demonstrators to attack the
embassy. Stones were thrown to the windows. The municipal authorities
mobilized the garrison and the gate of the embassy were locked.
Bernadotte took refuge in the nunciatura, located Am Hof,
in the neighborhood. He sent a protest letter to the Austrian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and required the surroundings of the
embassy to be cleared. Bernadotte eventually came back to the
embassy, where he was rejoined by Baron von Degelmann, recently
appointed Ambassador of Austria in Paris.
In the meantime, the situation deteriorated: the French flag was
torn down and partially burned. The mob broke down the embassy gate,
broke the windows, dragged out coaches in the street and trashed them
until the police took them away. The ransacking was stopped by the
Austrian army, who settled in the stairs in order to guard
Bernadotte's room. A few shots were exchanged but nobody was harmed.
The calm was restored around 2 PM. Bernadotte, however, did not
calm down. The next morning, he asked his passports at the Hofburg
and refused the mediation of the Court. Instead of leaving Vienna
nightly, as advized by the authorities, he decided to leave on 15
April around noon with five state coaches. He left with all the
honours due to his diplomatic rank and a military escort ensured his
safety on the Austrian territory.
Close to the embassy, the street named Fahnengasse (Flag
Street) still commemorates the incident.
The riot is shown on a plate by Johann Balzer (1738-1799) entitled
"Description of the riot caused by the French embassador Bernadotte
when he hosted the French Tricolor flag in Vienna, 13 April 1798",
kept at the Vienna Historical Museum.
Interestingly, the plate shows a Tricolore flag horizontally
divided. This horizontally divided flag might be an erroneous
representation by Balzer. The French Tricolorz was relatively new
in 1798 and Balzer might not have been an ocular witness of the riot
and might have reconstructed the flag from a vague oral description.
However, it is known that the French Tricolore did not have a
fixed design in the first years after his adoption. It is therefore
highly possible that Balzer showed the flag actually used by
Bernadotte, either seen by himself or correctly reported by a rioter.
From the black and white plate, it is not possible to ascertain which
colour was used for the upper and lower stripes, respectively.
The story is told in great detail and Balzer's plate is shown on
Robert
Ouvrard's website.
Ivan Sache, 7 July 2002
It is a well-known historical fact that the symbols of the Ancient
Regime were hated during the French Revolution. The nobility titles as
well as the heraldic attributes were suppressed. The place names
recalling the Ancient Regime were also changed.
Symbols of the Ancient Regime were found and suppressed in the most
weird places, for instance in chess. Guyton-Morveaux (1736-1816),
formerly Baron de Guyton de Morveaux, rallied the Revolution and was
member of the National Convention, the assembly that ruled France from
1792 to 1795. The Moniteur (official gazette) reports the speech he
gave on 20 Brumaire of the Year II (10 November 1793), in which he proposed to
change the names of the chess pieces and the shape of some of them.
I give below my own translation of Guyton-Morveaux' speech. To better
understand the text, remember that the names of the chess pieces are
not strictly equivalent in French and English:
King <--> Roi (equivalent)
Queen <--> Reine (equivalent)
Bishop < --> Fou (lit., fool, jester)
Knight <--> Cavalier (lit., rider)
Castle <--> Tour (lit., tower)
Pawn <--> Pion (equivalent)
Remember also that France was at that time besieged by an European
coalition, which explains the military metaphores used by
Guyton-Morveaux.
Shall the French still be allowed to play chess? This question was raised a few days ago in a circle of good Republicans and received, as expected, an absolutely negative answer.
Then it was asked if it could be possible to republicanize the chess game, which is the only game really exercizing the mind...
Everybody knows that chess is a picture of war, and therefore has nothing to repel a Republican...
Chess shall be the game of camps, or preferably of the little war. The word chess has a royal etymology, which is enough to sentence it to oblivion...
The main piece shall be the flag-bearer, or to say it better, the flag. It won't be difficult to give that piece a suitable shape; it will replace the ci-devant king [...]; when attacking that piece, one shall warn by the words: to the flag; when it will be taken, one shall say victory; when it will be only locked, one shall say blocus...
The piece called so dumbly queen or dame shall be the general officer, or, to make it short, the warrant officer (adjudant). The castle (tour) shall be the cannons. To castle shall be to place a cannon near the flag; it shall be announced by saying: battery to the flag. The bishops (fous) shall represent the light cavalry, the dragons. The ci-devant knights (chevaliers) have already been demoted to the rank of riders (cavaliers). The pawns (pions) shall be the infantry [...] when they hammer the enemy camp until the limit [of the chessboard], their new movement [as a general officer, ex-queen] will be the natural representation of the upgrading of a brave soldier.
Guyton-Morveaux' etymology of the name échecs (chess) is right: according to Grand Robert de la Langue Française, the word échec comes from the Arabo-Persan expression as-sah mat, the king is dead, which gave échec et mat (checkmate).
Ivan Sache, 27 October 2004