Chapeau to our friends in the Société Française de Vexillologie (SFV), who recently organised a great day in French vexillology.
Thursday 15 February marked the 230th anniversary of the French tricolore in its present form.
So the SFV’s Bertrand Valeyre invited Mme Yaël Braun-Pivet, president of the Assemblée nationale, to raise the flag in celebration.
Watch as Mme Braun-Pivet hoists the tricolore in front of the Palais Bourbon, home of the Assemblée nationale, with members of the Garde républicaine saluting:
And here’s a translation of her speech:
The French flag, as we now know it, is 230 years old today. Of course the tricolour flag was born originally in 1789, but it was then red-white-blue rather than blue-white-red … Some revolutionaries laid the colours horizontally instead of vertically. And at sea the flag remained white, with these three colours, within a border, confined to the upper left quarter. After the monarchy fell, sailors demanded a national flag that was clearly republican. On 27 Pluviôse Year II, that is 15 February 1794, the deputies responded by voting for a text that defined the French colours as follows: ‘The national flag will comprise the three national colours, arranged in three equal bands, laid vertically, with the blue attached to the hoist, the white in the middle, and the red at the fly’. Finally the definition was clear, as a good law should be! Thus arranged, the three colours became the emblem of France from 1794 to 1815, then continuously from 1830 onwards. Article 2 of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic specifies that ‘the national emblem is the tricolour flag, blue, white, red’. This flag, which unites all French people, now flies over the Palais Bourbon and in the Chamber, alongside the European flag. And the sash worn by each Deputy also comprises the three national colours.
So this morning I’m going to raise the colours by hoisting the French flag.
Long live the Republic, long live France!
