Part 2 (1/2)
In orthodox flags anything of the nature of an inscription is very seldom seen. We find a reference to order and progress on the Brazilian flag (Fig.
169), while the Turkish Imperial Standard (Fig. 238) bears on its scarlet folds the monogram of the Sultan; but these exceptions are rare.[16] We have seen that, on the contrary, on the flags of insurgents and malcontents the inscription often counts for much. On the alteration of the style in the year 1752 this necessary change was made the subject of much ignorant reproach of the government of the day, and was used as a weapon of party warfare. An amusing instance of this feeling occurs in the first plate of Hogarth's election series, where a malcontent, or perhaps only a man anxious to earn a s.h.i.+lling, carries a big flag inscribed, ”Give us back our eleven days.” The flags of the Covenanters often bore mottoes or texts.
Fig. 34 is a curious example: the flag hoisted by the crew of H.M.S.
_Niger_ when they opposed the mutineers in 1797 at Sheerness. It is preserved in the Royal United Service Museum. It is, as we have seen, ordinarily the insubordinate and rebellious who break out into inscriptions of more or less piety or pungency, but we may conclude that the loyal sailors fighting under the royal flag adopted this device in addition as one means the more of fighting the rebels with their own weapons.
During the Civil War between the Royalists and Parliamentarians, we find a great use made of flags inscribed with mottoes. Thus, on one we see five hands stretching at a crown defended by an armed hand issuing from a cloud, and the motto, ”Reddite Caesari.” In another we see an angel with a flaming sword treading a dragon underfoot, and the motto, ”Quis ut Deus,” while yet another is inscribed, ”Courage pour la Cause.” On a fourth we find an ermine, and the motto, ”Malo mori quam foedari”--”It is better to die than {25} to be sullied,” in allusion to the old belief that the ermine would die rather than soil its fur. Hence it is the emblem of purity and stainless honour.
The blood-red flag is the symbol of mutiny and of revolution. As a sign of disaffection it was twice, at the end of last century, displayed in the Royal Navy. A mutiny broke out at Portsmouth in April, 1797, for an advance of pay; an Act of Parliament was pa.s.sed to sanction the increase of expenditure, and all who were concerned in it received the royal pardon, but in June of the same year, at Sheerness, the spirit of disaffection broke out afresh, and on its suppression the ringleaders were executed. It is characteristic that, aggrieved as these seamen were against the authorities, when the King's birthday came round, on June 4th, though the mutiny was then at its height, the red flags were lowered, the vessels gaily dressed in the regulation bunting, and a royal salute was fired.
Having thus demonstrated their real loyalty to their sovereign, the red flags were re-hoisted, and the dispute with the Admiralty resumed in all its bitterness.
The white flag is the symbol of amity and of good will; of truce amidst strife, and of surrender when the cause is lost. The yellow flag betokens infectious illness, and is displayed when there is cholera, yellow fever, or such like dangerous malady on board s.h.i.+p, and it is also hoisted on quarantine stations. The black flag signifies mourning and death; one of its best known uses in these later days is to serve as an indication after an execution that the requirements of the law have been duly carried out.
Honour and respect are expressed by ”dipping” the flag. At any parade of troops before the sovereign the regimental flags are lowered as they pa.s.s the saluting point, and at sea the colours are dipped by hauling them smartly down from the mast-head and then promptly replacing them. They must not be suffered to remain at all stationary when lowered, as a flag flying half-mast high is a sign of mourning for death, for defeat, or for some other national loss, and it is scarcely a mark of honour or respect to imply that the arrival of the distinguished person is a cause of grief or matter for regret.
In time of peace it is an insult to hoist the flag of one friendly nation above another, so that each flag must be flown from its own staff.
Even as early as the reign of Alfred England claimed the sovereignty of the seas. Edward III. is more identified with our early naval glories than any other English king; he was styled ”King of the Seas,” a name of which he appears to have been very proud, and in his coinage of gold n.o.bles he represented himself with s.h.i.+eld and sword, and standing in a s.h.i.+p ”full royally {26} apparelled.” He fought on the seas under many disadvantages of numbers and s.h.i.+ps: in one instance until his s.h.i.+p sank under him, and at all times as a gallant Englishman.
If any commander of an English vessel met the s.h.i.+p of a foreigner, and the latter refused to salute the English flag, it was enacted that such s.h.i.+p, if taken, was the lawful prize of the captain. A very notable example of this punctilious insistance on the respect to the flag arose in May, 1554, when a Spanish fleet of one hundred and sixty sail, escorting the King on his way to England to his marriage with Queen Mary, fell in with the English fleet under the command of Lord Howard, Lord High Admiral. Philip would have pa.s.sed the English fleet without paying the customary honours, but the signal was at once made by Howard for his twenty-eight s.h.i.+ps to prepare for action, and a round shot crashed into the side of the vessel of the Spanish Admiral. The hint was promptly taken, and the whole Spanish fleet struck their colours as homage to the English flag.
In the year 1635 the combined fleets of France and Holland determined to dispute this claim of Great Britain, but on announcing their intention of doing so an English fleet was at once dispatched, whereupon they returned to their ports and decided that discretion was preferable even to valour.
In 1654, on the conclusion of peace between England and Holland, the Dutch consented to acknowledge the English supremacy of the seas, the article in the treaty declaring that ”the s.h.i.+ps of the Dutch--as well s.h.i.+ps of war as others--meeting any of the s.h.i.+ps of war of the English, in the British seas, shall strike their flags and lower their topsails in such manner as hath ever been at any time heretofore practised.” After another period of conflict it was again formally yielded by the Dutch in 1673.
Political changes are responsible for many variations in flags, and the wear and tear of Time soon renders many of the devices obsolete. On turning, for instance, to Nories' ”Maritime Flags of all Nations,” a little book published in 1848, many of the flags are at once seen to be now out of date. The particular year was one of exceptional political agitation, and the author evidently felt that his work was almost old-fas.h.i.+oned even on its issue. ”The accompanying ill.u.s.trations,” he says, ”having been completed prior to the recent revolutionary movements on the Continent of Europe, it has been deemed expedient to issue the plate in its present state, rather than adopt the various tri-coloured flags, which cannot be regarded as permanently established in the present unsettled state of political affairs.” The Russian American Company's flag, Fig. 59, that of the States of the Church, of the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Turkish Imperial Standard, Fig. 64, and many others {27} that he gives, are all now superseded. For Venice he gives two flags, that for war and that for the merchant service. In each case the flag is scarlet, having a broad band of blue, which we may take to typify the sea, near its lower edge. From this rises in gold the winged lion of St. Mark, having in the war ensign a sword in his right paw, and in the peaceful colours of commerce a cross. Of thirty-five ”flags of all nations,” given as a supplement to the _Ill.u.s.trated London News_ in 1858, we note that eleven are now obsolete: the East India Company, for instance, being now extinct, the Ionian Islands ceded to Greece, Tuscany and Naples absorbed into Italy, and so forth.
In Figs. 52 and 53 we have examples of early Spanish flags, and in 54 and 55 of Portuguese, each and all being taken from a very quaint map of the year 1502. This map may be said to be practically the countries lying round the Atlantic Ocean, giving a good slice of Africa, a portion of the Mediterranean basin, the British Isles, most of South America, a little of North America, the West Indies,[17] etc., the object of the map being to show the division that Pope Alexander VI. kindly made between those faithful daughters of the Church--Spain and Portugal--of all the unclaimed portions of the world. Figs. 52 and 53 are types of flags flying on various Spanish possessions, while Figs. 54 and 55 are placed at different points on the map where Portugal held sway. On one place in Africa we see that No.
54 is surmounted by a white flag bearing the Cross of St. George, so we may conclude that--Pope Alexander notwithstanding--England captured it from the Portuguese. At one African town we see the black men dancing round the Portuguese flag, while a little way off three of their brethren are hanging on a gallows, showing that civilization had set in with considerable severity there. The next ill.u.s.tration on this plate (Fig. 56) is taken from a sheet of flags published in 1735; it represents the ”Guiny Company's Ensign,” a trading company, like the East India, Fig. 57, now no longer in existence. Fig. 62 is the flag of Savoy, an ancient sovereignty that, within the memory of many of our readers, has expanded into the kingdom of Italy. The break up of the Napoleonic _regime_ in France, the crus.h.i.+ng out of the Confederate States in North America, the dismissal from the throne of the Emperor of Brazil, have all, within comparatively recent years, led to the superannuation and disestablishment of a goodly number of flags and their final disappearance.
We propose now to deal with the flags of the various nationalities, commencing, naturally, with those of our own country. {28} We were told by a government official that the Universal Code of signals issued by England had led to a good deal of heartburning, as it is prefaced by a plate of the various national flags, the Union Flag of Great Britain and Ireland being placed first. But until some means can be devised by which each nationality can head the list, some sort of precedence seems inevitable. At first sight it seems as though susceptibilities might be saved by adopting an alphabetical arrangement, but this is soon found to be a mistake, as it places such powerful States as Russia and the United States nearly at the bottom of the list. A writer, Von Rosenfeld, who published a book on flags in Vienna in 1853, very naturally adopted this arrangement, but the calls of patriotism would not even then allow him to be quite consistent, since he places his material as follows:--Austria, Annam, Argentine, Belgium, Bolivia, and so forth, where it is evident Annam should lead the world and Austria be content to come in third. Apart from the difficulty of asking Spain, for instance, to admit that Bulgaria was so much in front of her, or to expect j.a.pan to allow China so great a precedence as the alphabetical arrangement favours, a second obstacle is found in the fact that the names of these various States as we Englishmen know them are not in many cases those by which they know themselves or are known by others. Thus a Frenchman would be quite content with the alphabetical arrangement that in English places his beloved country before Germany, but the Teuton would at once claim precedence, declaring that Deutschland must come before ”la belle France,” and the Espagnol would not see why he should be banished to the back row just because we choose to call him a Spaniard.
In the meantime, pending the Millenium, the flag that more than three hundred millions of people, the wide world over, look up to as the symbol of justice and liberty, will serve very well as a starting point, and then the great Daughter across the Western Ocean, that sprung from the Old Home, shall claim a worthy place next in our regard. The Continent of Europe must clearly come next, and such American nationalities as lie outside the United States, together with Asia and Africa, will bring up the rear.
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CHAPTER II.
The Royal Standard--the Three Lions of England--the Lion Rampant of Scotland--Scottish sensitiveness as to precedence--the Scottish Tressure--the Harp of Ireland--Early Irish Flags--Brian Boru--the Royal Standards from Richard I. to Victoria--Claim to the Fleurs-de-Lys of France--Quartering Hanover--the Union Flag--St. George for England--War Cry--Observance of St. George's Day--the Cross of St. George--Early Naval Flags--the London Trained Bands--the Cross of St. Andrew--the ”Blue Blanket”--Flags of the Covenanters--Relics of St. Andrew--Union of England and Scotland--the First Union Flag--Importance of accuracy in representations of it--the Union Jack--Flags of the Commonwealth and Protectorate--Union of Great Britain and Ireland--the Cross of St.
Patrick--Labours of St. Patrick in Ireland--Proclamation of George III.
as to Flags, etc.--the Second Union Flag--Heraldic Difficulties in its Construction--Suggestions by Critics--Regulations as to Fortress Flags--the White Ensign of the Royal Navy--Saluting the Flag--the Navy the Safeguard of Britain--the Blue Ensign--the Royal Naval Reserve--the Red Ensign of the Mercantile Marine--Value of Flag-lore.
Foremost amongst the flags of the British Empire the Royal Standard takes its position as the symbol of the tie that unites all into one great State.
Its glowing blazonry of blue and scarlet and gold is brought before us in Fig. 44. The three golden lions on the scarlet ground are the device of England, the golden harp on the azure field is the device of Ireland, while the ruddy lion rampant on the field of gold[18] stands for Scotland. It may perhaps appear to some of our readers that the standard of the Empire should not be confined to such narrow limits; that the great Dominion of Canada, India, Australia, the ever-growing South Africa, might justly claim a place. Precedent, too, might be urged, since in previous reigns, Na.s.sau, Hanover, and other States have found a resting-place in its folds, and there is much to be said in favour of a wider representation of the greater component parts of our world-wide Empire; but two great practical difficulties arise: the first is that the grand simplicity of the flag would be lost if eight or ten different devices were subst.i.tuted for the three; and secondly, it would very possibly give rise to a good deal of jealousy and ill-feeling, since it would be impossible to introduce all. As it at present stands, it represents the central home of the Empire, the little historic seed-plot from whence all else has sprung, and to which all turn their eyes as the {30} centre of the national life. All equally agree to venerate the dear mother land, but it is perhaps a little too much to expect that the people of Jamaica or Hong Kong would feel the same veneration for the beaver and maple-leaves of Canada, the golden Sun of India, or the Southern Cross of Australasia. As it must clearly be all or none, it seems that only one solution of the problem, the present one, is possible. In the same way the Union flag (Fig. 90) is literally but the symbol of England, Scotland, and Ireland, but far and away outside its primary significance, it floats on every sea the emblem of that Greater Britain in which all its sons have equal pride, and where all share equal honour as brethren of one family.
The earliest Royal Standard bore but the three lions of England, and we shall see presently that in different reigns various modifications of its blazonry arose, either the result of conquest or of dynastic possessions.
Thus Figs. 43 and 44, though they bear a superficial likeness, tell a very different story; the first of these, that of George III., laying claim in its fourth quartering to lords.h.i.+p over Hanover and other German States, and in its second quarter to the entirely shadowy and obsolete claim over France, as typified by the golden fleurs-de-lys on the field of azure.
How the three lions of England arose is by no means clear. Two lions were a.s.signed as the arms of William the Conqueror, but there is no real evidence that he bore them. Heraldry had not then become a definite science, and when it did a custom sprang up of a.s.signing to those who lived and died before its birth certain arms, the kindly theory being that such persons, had they been then living, would undoubtedly have borne arms, and that it was hard, therefore, that the mere accident of being born a hundred years too soon should debar them from possessing such recognition of their rank. Even so late as Henry II. the bearing is still traditional, and it is said that on his marriage with Alianore, eldest daughter of William, Duke of Aquitaine and Guienne, he incorporated with his own two lions the single lion that (it is a.s.serted) was the device of his father-in-law. All this, however, is theory and surmise, and we do not really find ourselves on the solid ground of fact until we come to the reign of Richard Coeur-de-Lion.
Upon his second Great Seal we have the three lions just as they are represented in Figs. 22, 43, 44, and as they have been borne for centuries by successive sovereigns on their arms, standards, and coinage, and as our readers may see them this day on the Royal Standard and on much of the money they may take out of their pockets. The date of this Great Seal of King Richard is 1195 A.D., so we have, at all events, a period of over seven hundred years, waiving a break during the Commonwealth, in which the three golden lions on their scarlet field have typified the might of England. {31}