The Story of Canada's Flag
The history of the French flag may be said to begin with the first of the Merovingian kings, Clovis, who became king of the Salian Franks in A.D. 481. Following his conversion to Christianity, Clovis adopted the blue banner of St. Martin, Bishop of Tours, the virtues of whose life as a soldier are the theme of more than one legend. On this blue banner (the colour was taken from the colour of St. Martin's cope) Clovis placed Reurs-de-lis, or lilies. On the night preceding the battle of Tolbiac, in 496, he dreamed that the golden toads on one of his standards had been changed to lilies. The successful outcome of the battle convinced him that the dream was a good omen and that lilies should henceforth be included on his banner.
The Emperor Charlemagne adopted the blue banner of Clovis. He used it during his early conquests. Subsequently, in A.D. 800, the Pope, Leo 111, gave Charlemagne a gold banner with six red roses on it. Each rose was to represent one of the provinces of Charlemagne's empire.
In 987, when Hugh Capet, Count of Paris and Orleans, became king, the capital of France was fixed at Paris. Here, in Paris, St. Denis rather than St. Martin was the popular saint. Devotion to St. Martin had been strong in Tours and in the southern parts of the country; but in Paris the popularity of St. Denis persuaded the Capetian monarchs to adopt the red banner of St. Denis rather than the blue banner of St. Martin. The red banner had been frequently borne to victory by the abbots of Paris in their struggles with their neighbours; and the kings of France were prepared to take advantage of whatever virtues the red banner might possess in this respect. When William Il of England (who was also Duke of Normandy) invaded the Vexin in France, Prince Louis (later Louis VI) routed him under the banner of St. Denis. The French banner was a gonfalon of red with flames of gold, and was called the oriflamme. When Louis VII returned from the Crusades, he placed a white crusader's cross on the oriflamme.
The oriflamme was the flag carried by the French at the battle of Agincourt in 1415, when the flower of French chivalry under Charles VI was destroyed by the bowmen of the English army of Henry V. As a sign of his victory, Henry V appropriated the red colour for himself and changed the background of his Coat of Arms from white to red. Prior to this period the royal Coat of Arms of England had included three red leopards on a white field. The royal Arms of Henry V became three golden leopards on a red shield.
In the fighting that followed, Joan of Arc adopted a white banner for her followers. White was the colour of purity. On it were placed a number of fleurs-de-lis, the golden lilies of Clovis. This white Flag with the golden fieurs-de-lis continued to be used after the death of Joan of Arc and eventually made its way to Canada. However, in France the early devotion to the blue Flag was revived. Charles VII adopted a banner that was midway in colour between green and blue, sprinkled with golden fleurs-de-lis. This flag was known as the Grand' Banni6re de France at the time of Francis 1, when Jacques Cartier set out on his first voyage to Canada in 1534. Generally speaking, however, the royal flag of France prior to the French Revolution was a blue, fleur-de-lis flag, charged with a golden sun in the centre. The blue flag with the golden lilies was certainly the Flag of Louis XIV and of Louis XV.
In 1794 the tricolour of three vertical divisions, blue, white and red, was adopted. The white flag was reintroduced after the defeat of Napol6on in 1815 but it gave place to the tricolour in 1830. The latter flag has ever since been used as the Flag of France. Under the two Bonapartes the centre white pale was charged with the imperial eagle.
The royal flag was not the only banner used in France under Louis XIV. Distinctive flags were also worn by the vessels of France, both royal and merchant. According to an ordinance of Louis XIV, royal ships were to carry a white fleur-de-lis flag with the royal Coat of Arms and crown in the centre. The royal galleys carried a red fleur-de-lis flag. Another official flag was the Estandart Frangois, which had three horizontal bars, red, white and red, with a blue roundel and golden fleur-de-lis in the white bar. In the same way that English merchant vessels were forbidden to carry the Union Flag, French merchant-men were forbidden to carry the white fleur-de-lis flag worn by the royal ships. Instead, they carried a blue flag with white horizontal stripes. This latter flag was subsequently replaced by a blue flag with a white cross. Those merchant ships that were not in the regular service carried a red flag with a white cross.
In addition to these various flags were the numerous varieties of colours borne by the regiments of France. Seaports like Calais and Dunkirk also had flags of their own. Evidence of the many flags that were in common use in France during pre-Revolutionary days is afforded by an annex to an ordinance of 1661 listing some sixtyeight flag designs that had been approved for various purposes.
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