French ensigns
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A French ensign is the flag flown at sea to identify a vessel as French. Several such ensigns have existed over the years as well as terrestrial flags based on the ensign motif.
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[edit] Current Ensign
The current French ensign is not, as the casual observer would think, identical to the French Flag. Though both are blue, white and red, the French civil ensign has those colours in the proportion blue 30, white 33, and red 37. The intention is in fact to create a flag which, when seen moving at some distance, will appear to have columns of equal width.
[edit] Historic Ensigns
[edit] The royal Arms
As with the ensigns of other countries, the French ensign in the beginning of the 14th century was a banner of the royal arms, blue filled with golden French lilies. Sometimes it bears a white cross.
In 1365, Charles V changed to a blue flag with just three golden French lilies. However, reports as late as 1514 still occasionally mention the use of the lilies and cross flag.
Occasionally illustrations from this era too show the white cross, now on a red field, but this is mostly limited to the coats of arms only. After 1450, however, those two designs are often seen flying side by side.
[edit] The colours of Bourbon
By the time of the House of Bourbon, the royal colours had merged making blue, red, and white the royal colours; Henry IV of France even had his entire entourage dress in these colours. These colours, for these or other reasons, also became the colours of the French ensigns. A plain white ensign indicated the French sailing fleet, a red flag a galley, while the blue flag was flown by the merchant ships. It's somewhat unclear whether all of these were plain flags. Eg. in 1661 the use of white flags on merchant ships is explicitly forbidden, pointing the merchants instead to the "old flag of the French nation", which then was supposed to be a white cross on blue, with on it the royal arms.
A decade or so later, the rule for the merchant navy was modified, however, to allow every kind of ensign, provided it wasn't all white. This caused two new types of French ensigns: regional or local flags flown as French ensign, and personal designs intended to show as much white as was possible without it being considered all white.
[edit] The colours of the revolution
Until the French Revolution most merchants flew designs composed of blue and white. In 1790, however, the revolution joined all three colours in one flag, and the new ensign became the white flag with a canton of three equal columns of red, white, and blue. Since the white field was too royal for the taste of the revolution, on 27 pluviôse year II of the French Republican Calendar, the flag and the ensign were changed to the design of the current flag of France: Three columns of equal width, of blue, white, and red. The same banner was again decreed to be the flag on 7 March 1848.
To counter the effect that the fly of an ensign appears to shorten when moving in the wind, the widths of the columns were regulated anew on 17 May 1853, now as 30:33:37.
[edit] French colonial flags
A number of flags used by French colonies are similar to British ensigns that were adopted by colonies throughout the British Empire except that they use the French tricolour in place of the Union Jack. For more information on these flags see French colonial flags.
[edit] See also
[edit] Sources
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- W.J. Gordon, Flags of the World Past and Present: Their Story and Associations, Frederick Wayne and Co., Ltd., London, pp. 265, (1929).
- B. McCandless, and G. Grosvenor, "Our Flag Number", The National Geographic Magazine, National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C., Vol. XXXII, No. 4, pp. 420, October, (1917).
- G. Grosvenor, and W.J. Showalter, "Flags of the World", The National Geographic Magazine, National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C., Vol. LXVI, No. 3, pp. 338-396, September, (1934).
- Flags of All Nations Volume I. National Flags and Ensigns (B.R.20(1) 1955), Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, (1955).
- Flags of All Nations Volume II. Standards of Rulers, Sovereigns and Heads of State; Flags of Heads of Ministries, and of Naval, Military, and Air Force Officers (B.R.20(2) 1958), Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, (1958).
- Flags of All Nations Change Five (BR20), Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, (1989), Revision (1999).
- W. Smith, Flags Through the Ages and Across the World, McGraw-Hill Book Co., Ltd., Maidenhead, England, pp. 361, (1975).
- J.W. Norie, and J.S. Hobbs, Three Hundred and Six Illustrations of the Maritime Flags of All Nations; Arranged Geographically, with Enlarged Standards: Together with Regulations and Instructions Relating to British Flags &c., Printed for, and Published by C. Wilson, At the Navigation Warehouse and Naval Academy, No. 157, Leadenhall Street, Near Cornhill,(Facsimile reprint of 1848 original), (1987).
- Ottfried Neubecker, Flaggenbuch (Flg.B.). Bearbeitet und herausgegeben vom Oberkommando der Kriegsmarine. Abgesclossen am 1. December 1939, (Historical Facsimile edition containing all national and international flags 1939-1945), pp. 193, (1992).
