The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1907-01-04
THE FLAG In HISTORY
origin OF NATIONAL EMBLEMS OF
THE OLD WORLD.

Joan of Arc and the White Banner o.
France--The TricOIor of Holland
st. Augustine, the Missionary, In.
trOduced Flags Into England.
The first western sovereign to adopt
a flag was Clovis, king of the Franks
After his conversion to Christianity il
the fifth century he took the "chape dc
st. Martin" as his standard. This
according to some writer's, was actu
ally part of the cloak which the sanity
bishop of Tours cut in two in order to
share it with beggar at Amiens. More
credible authorities, however, assert
that it was the blue flag of St Mar
tins abbey.
After Clovis, the Merovingian kings
seem to have returned to the ancient
emblems. They were content to fight
under eagles, flowers, crosses or the
images of saints until the time of Char
lemagne, who, if an old mosaic in the
Church of st. John Lateran at Rome
is to be believed, reintroduced the blue
flag embellished with six red roses
The color of the French flag was
changed in 1924, when Louis the Fat
carried the red orifamb of st. Denis
in his struggles against the German
emperor Henry V. This continued to
be the official French flag down to the
battle of Agincourt in 1415. In the
meantime the blue flag had again made
its appearance, now decorated with the
tieur-de-lis instead of the roses of
Charlemagne. In this form it was car
ried at Acre and Crecy and Poitiers,
until in the fifteenth century it be-
came the banner of France.
The first white flag in French histo-
ry was the banner of the Virgin Mary
borne by Joan of Arc in her heroic
campaigns for the defense of the dau-
phin. A pure white flag was OCCASION
ally used by Francis |. in his struggles
against the Emperor Charles v, but
1t did not become the permanent royal
banner until Henry ", the first Bour-
bon, assembled the throne in 1889.
The tricolOr of the French revolution
was compromise. The cockades of
the revolutionists We're composed of
two colors, the red of the Paris COM
mune and the blue of the ancient mon
archy. IN the troubled times lust pre-
ceding the deposition and execution of
Louis XVI, Lafayette, to signify the
desire of the people for a reconcilia-
ton with their king, added the Bour-
bon white to the cockade. The tricolor
as a national emblem was adopted by
the convention in 1894.
Long before this, however. the tri- |
color had been the national flag of |
Holland. The Dutch were in fact the |
lrst TO use it. When the United Prov
lnces gained their independence from
spain IN the sixteenth century. accord
ing to a favorite old story which can
not be authenticated, they invited Hen
~ OF Navarro to choose their colors,
and he suggested orange, blue and
white. Whether he selected this com
or not. such were the colors
1r Holland until some time i'm the sew
century. when the orange was
replaced by red. When William of
orange became king of England in
L69S he crossed the channel under the
ed, white and blue.
The early inhabitants Of England,
ike those of other countries, used en-
'lematic devices of one kind or an
'ther, that of the Saxons being a white
lorse. The introduction of flags into
England is ascribed to the missionary
It Augustine and his followers, who
fter the conversion of King Ethelbert,
ccording to the Venerable Bede, en-