Le drapeau Turc

The proportions of vertical stripes on the French flag when used at sea as the civil or naval ensign are 30:33:37, to give a good visual effect when flying.

L'origine du drapeau français

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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 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

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. Lafayette 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 naval 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 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.

François Velde, 30 June1995

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. 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, saint patron of Paris. The original oriflamme (war banner) of the kings was the red oriflamme of Saint Denis.

Pierre Gay, 15 September 1998

Décret d'adoption officiel

Le drapeau dans la Constitution