Who doesn't know the tricolor flag, thenational emblem of the 5th Republic ? Born in the tumult of the French Revolution, it unites the white of royalty with the colors of Paris, blue and red. Today, it flies proudly over all public buildings and illuminates every official ceremony.
The history of the flag is full of twists and turns. Before it became the flag we know today, it was a cockade, presented by La Fayette to Louis XVI after the storming of the Bastille. He is said to have said: "I bring you a cockade that will travel the world". The tricolor cockade, symbolizing the alliance between the king and the people, quickly became a fixture on patriot buttonholes.
In 1790, the Constituent Assembly decided on a flag with three vertical stripes for all warships and merchant vessels: red near the flagstaff, white in the center, and blue on the outside. This distinguishes the French flag from that of the Netherlands, with its horizontal stripes.
February 15, 1794 marked a decisive turning point: the National Convention formalized the tricolor flag as we know it today, with blue attached to the flagstaff, white in the center and red floating in the wind. Some say it was the painter Louis David who decided on the order of the colors.
But the flag has also lived through tumultuous times. Threatened but never abandoned, it lost its blue and red colors under the restored monarchy from 1814 to 1830, reverting to royal white. It resurfaced during the Three Glorious Years of 1830, brandished on the barricades as a sign of republican rallying against Charles X. Louis-Philippe proclaimed that "the nation was regaining its colors".
When the Republic was proclaimed in 1848, some insurgents tried to replace the flag with an all-red standard. But it was Lamartine who, as a poet and politician, saved the national flag with galvanizing words.
Today, this flag, a veritable mosaic of history and symbols, is the beating heart of French identity, the one and only emblem defined by the Constitution of the Fifth Republic. Long live the Tricolore, the eternal symbol of liberty and fraternity!
