France Flag

France Flag

France Flag

France remained a monarchy from a.d. 987, when Hugh was crowned the first king of the House of Capet, until 1792, when a republic was created during the French Revolution (1789-99). The Bourbon monarchy, restored in 1814, was subsequently replaced by the Second Republic in 1848, the empire in turn being restored under Napoleon III between 1852 and 1870, when France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War prompted the establishment of the Third Republic.

Following the adoption of the famous red, white and blue Tricolore as the national emblem of France in 1794, both its design and colors have been used by revolutionary movements and nascent nations across the world to represent their ideals, the red, white and blue colors having come to represent the three ideals of the French Revolutions (as well as later ones): liberty, equality and fraternity. The red-white-blue combination is credited to the Marquis de Lafayette, who devised a similar, tricoloured cockade to be worn by the revolutionaries. (Red and blue were the colors of Paris that were used on the day that the Bastille was stormed, while white was the color of monarchy) Having been created in 1790, the colors of the France flag were reversed (red originally appeared on the hoist) and revised in 1794. Although the France flag went out of use following Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, it was re-adopted again by Lafayette – in 1830 and has remained the French flag ever since.