Part 9 (1/2)
During the first and second Empire the Imperial Standard was still the tricolor, but it bore in the centre of the white strip the eagle; and all three strips were richly diapered over with the golden bees of the Napoleons. The national flag was the tricolor pure and simple, both for the Imperial and the Commercial Navy. As the flags of the army were borne on staffs surmounted by a golden eagle, the term ”eagle” was often applied to these colours.[71]
On the outbreak of the second Republic in 1848, the people immediately on its proclamation demanded the adoption of the ill-omened red flag.
Lamartine, the leading member of the provisional Government, closed an impa.s.sioned address with the words: ”Citizens, I will reject even to death this banner of blood, and you should repudiate it still more than myself, for this red flag you offer us has only made the circuit of the Champs de Mars bathed in the blood of the people, while the tricolor has made the circuit of the world, with the name, the glory, and the liberty of your country.” Louis Blanc and other members of the Government were in favour of the red flag, and at last a compromise was effected and the tricolor was accepted with the addition of a large red rosette. Louis Blanc, not unreasonably, as a Republican, pointed out that Lafayette had in 1789 a.s.sociated the white of the Bourbon flag with the red and blue of the arms of the City, and that the tricolor flag was therefore the result of a compromise between the king and the people, but that in 1848 the king having abdicated, and monarchy done away with, there was no reason why any suggestion of the kingly power should continue. Doubtless the suppression of the flag of the barricades, the symbol of civil strife, {110} of anarchy and bloodshed, and the retaining of the tricolor was the wiser and more patriotic course, though it required no mean amount of courage and strong personal influence to effect the change.
The Imperial Eagle, so long a symbol of victory, has now in these Republican days[72] disappeared from the national colours. The flag of the French army is now surmounted by a wreath of laurel traversed by a golden dart with the letters R.F. and the regimental number, while on one face of the flag itself is, in the middle, the inscription ”Republique Francaise, Honneur et Patrie,” each corner being occupied by a golden wreath enclosing the number of the regiment. The name of the regiment and its ”honours”
occupy the other side.
The pendant of the French man-of-war is simply, Fig. 186, the tricolor elongated. The Admiral flies a swallow-tailed tricolor, while the Rear-Admiral and the Vice-Admiral have flags of the ordinary shape, like Fig. 191, except that the former officer has two white stars on the blue strip near the top of it, and the latter three. Maritime prefects have the three white stars on the blue plus two crossed anchors in blue in the centre of the white strip. The Governor of a French colony has such a special and distinctive flag as Fig. 96 would be if, instead of the Union canton on the blue, we placed in similar place the tricolor. There are naturally a great many other official flags, but the requirements of our s.p.a.ce forbid our going into any further description of them.
The war and mercantile flags of Spain have undergone many changes, and their early history is very difficult to unravel; but on May 28th, 1785, the flags were adopted that have continued in use ever since. Fig. 192 is the flag of the Spanish Navy; it consists, as will be seen, of three stripes--a central yellow one, and a red one, somewhat narrower, above and below. The original proportion was that the yellow should be equal in width to the two red ones combined. This central stripe is charged, near the hoist, with an escutcheon containing the arms of Castile and Leon, and surmounted by the royal crown. The mercantile flag, Fig. 193, is also red and yellow. The yellow stripe in the centre is without the escutcheon, and in width it should be equal to one-third of the entire depth of the flag, the remaining thirds above and below it being divided into two equal strips, the one red and the other yellow. This simple striping of the two colours was doubtless {111} suggested by the arms of Arragon, the vertical red and yellow bars[73] of which may be seen also in the Spanish Royal Standard, Fig. 194. Spain, like Italy, has grown into one monarchy by the aggregation of minor States. In the year 1031 we have the Union of Navarre and Castile; in 1037 we find Leon and Asturias joining this same growing kingdom, and in the year 1474 Ferdinand II. of Arragon married Isabella of Castile, and thus united nearly the whole of the Christian part of Spain into one monarchy. In 1492 this same prince added to his dominions Moorish Spain by the conquest of Granada.
Legend hath it that in the year 873 the Carlovingian Prince Charles the Bold honoured Geoffrey, Count of Barcelona, by dipping his four fingers in the blood from the Count's wounds after a battle in which they were allied, and drawing them down the Count's golden s.h.i.+eld, and that these ruddy bars were then and there incorporated in the blazon. Barcelona was shortly afterwards merged into the kingdom of Arragon, and its arms were adopted as those of that kingdom. Its four upright strips of red, the marks of the royal fingers, are just beyond the upper s.h.i.+eld in Fig. 194.
The pendant of the Spanish Navy bears at its broad end a golden s.p.a.ce in which the arms and crown, as in Fig. 192, are placed; the rest of the streamer is a broad strip of yellow, bordered, as in Fig. 192, by two slightly narrower strips of red.
The Royal Standard of Spain, Fig. 194, is of very elaborate character, and many of its bearings are as inappropriate to the historic facts of the present day as the retention in the arms of Great Britain of the French fleurs-de-lys centuries after all claim to its sovereignty had been lost.
In the upper left hand part of the flag we find quartered the lion of Leon and the castle of Castile.[74] At the point we have marked ”C” are the arms of Arragon. ”D” is the device of Sicily. The red and white stripes at ”E”
are the arms of Austria; we have already encountered these in Fig. 213. The flag of ancient Burgundy, oblique stripes of yellow and blue within a red border, is placed at ”F.” The black lion on the golden ground at ”G” is the heraldic bearing of Flanders, while the red eagle ”H” is the device of Antwerp. At ”I” we have the {112} golden lion of Brabant, and above it at ”J” the fleurs-de-lys and chequers of ancient Burgundy. The upper small s.h.i.+eld contains the arms of Portugal, and the lower contains the fleurs-de-lys of France.[75]
The Portuguese were an independent nation until Philip II. of Spain overran the country, and annexed it in the year 1580 to his own dominions, but in the year 1640 they threw off the Spanish yoke, which had grown intolerable, and raised John, Duke of Braganza, to the throne. The regal power has ever since remained in this family.
The Royal Standard bears on its scarlet field the arms of Portugal, surmounted by the regal crown. These arms were originally only the white s.h.i.+eld with the five smaller escutcheons that we see in the centre of the present blazon. Would the scale of our ill.u.s.tration (Fig. 195) permit it, each of these small escutcheons should bear upon its surface five white circular spots. Portugal was invaded by the Moors in the year 713, and the greater part of the country was held by them for over three centuries. In the year 1139 Alphonso I. defeated an alliance of five great Moorish princes at the Battle of Ourique, and the five escutcheons in the s.h.i.+eld represents the five-fold victory, while the five circles placed on each escutcheon symbolise the five wounds of the Saviour in whose strength he defeated the infidels. The scarlet border with its castles was added by Alphonso III., after his marriage in 1252 with the daughter of Alphonso the Wise, King of Castile, the arms of which province, as we have already seen in discussing the Spanish Standard, are a golden castle on a red field.
In an English poem, written by an eye-witness of the Siege of Rouen in the year 1418, we find an interesting reference to the arms of Portugal, where we read of
”The Kyngis herandis and pursiuantis, In cotis of armys arryauntis.
The Englishe a beste, the Frensshe a floure Of Portyugale bothe castelle and toure, And other cotis of diversitie As lordis beren in ther degre.”[76]
The Portuguese ensign for her vessels of war and also for the merchant service bears the s.h.i.+eld and crown, but instead of the {113} scarlet field we find the groundwork of the flag half blue, and half white, as shown in Fig. 196. The choice of these special colours, no doubt, arose from the arms on the original s.h.i.+eld, the five blue escutcheons on the white ground.
The Portuguese Jack has the national arms and royal crown in the centre of a white field, the whole being surrounded by the broad border of blue.
Italy, for centuries a geographical expression, is now one and indivisible.
Within the recollection of many of our readers the peninsula was composed of the Kingdom of the two Sicilies, the Pontifical States, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchies of Parma and Modena. There was also in the north the Kingdom of Sardinia, while Lombardy and Venetia were in the grip of Austria. It is somewhat beside our present purpose to go into the wonderful story of how Victor Emmanuel of Savoy, aided by Cavour, Garibaldi, and many another n.o.ble patriot, by diplomacy, by lives freely laid down on the Tchernaya, on the fields of Magenta and Solferino, by the disaster at Sedan, by bold audacity at one time, by patient waiting at another, was finally installed in Rome, the Capital of United Italy, as king of a great and free nation of over thirty millions of people. Suffice it now to say that this Kingdom of Italy, as we now know it, did not achieve until the year 1870 this full unity under one flag that had been for centuries the dream of patriots who freely shed their blood on the battlefield or the scaffold, or perished in the dungeons of Papal Rome, or Naples, or Austria for this ideal.
On the downfall in 1861 of the Bourbon Government in the Kingdom of the two Sicilies before the onslaught of the Volunteers of Garibaldi, the first National Parliament met in Turin, and proclaimed Victor Emmanuel King of Italy. The t.i.tle was at once acknowledged by Great Britain, and, later on, by the other Powers, and the capital of the rising State was transferred to Florence. The Papal States were still under the protection of France, ”the eldest Son of the Church”; and the young Kingdom, unable to wrest Rome from the French, had to wait with such patience as it could command for the consummation of its hopes. The long-looked-for day at last arrived, when amidst the tremendous defeats inflicted in 1870 by Germany on France, the French garrison in Rome was withdrawn, and the Italians, after a short, sharp conflict with the Papal troops, entered into possession of the Eternal City, and at once made it the Capital of a State at last free throughout its length and breadth--no longer a geographical expression, but a potent factor to be reckoned with and fully recognised.
Napoleon I. formed Italy into one kingdom in the year 1805, but it was ruled by himself and the Viceroy, Eugene Beauharnois, he appointed; and on his overthrow this, like the various other political {114} arrangements he devised, came to nought. The flag he bestowed was a tricolor of green, white, and red, his idea being that, while giving the new Kingdom a flag of its own, it should indicate by its near resemblance to that of France the source to which it owed its existence. In 1848, the great revolutionary period, this flag, which had pa.s.sed out of existence on the downfall of Napoleon, was rea.s.sumed by the Nationalists of the Peninsula, and accepted by the King of Sardinia as the ensign of his own kingdom, and charged by him with the arms of Savoy. This tricolor, so charged (see Fig. 197) was the flag to which the eyes of all Italian patriots turned, and it is to-day the flag of all Italy. The flag we have represented is the ensign of the Merchant Service; the flag of the armed forces military and naval, is similar, save that the s.h.i.+eld in the centre is surmounted by the Royal Crown. The Royal Standard, the personal flag of the King, has the arms of Savoy in the centre, on a white ground, the whole having a broad bordering of blue.
This s.h.i.+eld of Savoy, the white cross on the red field, was the device of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, an order semi-religious, semi-military, that owed its origin to the Crusades. In the year 1310 the Knights captured Rhodes from the Saracens, but being hard pressed by the infidels, Duke Amadeus IV., of Savoy, came to the rescue, and the Grand Master of the Order conferred upon him the cross that has ever since been borne in the arms of Savoy. The Jack or bowsprit flag of the Italian man-of-war, Fig. 234, is simply this s.h.i.+eld of the Knights of St. John squared into suitable flag-like form.
The Minister of Marine has the tricolor, but on the green portion is placed erect a golden anchor. The vessels carrying the Royal Mail fly a burgee of green, white, red, having a large white ”P” on the green; and there are many other official flags, the insignia of various authorities or different departments, but lack of s.p.a.ce forbids our dwelling at greater length upon them.
The war flag of the defunct temporal power of the Pope was white, and in its centre stood figures of St. Peter and St. Paul, and above them the cross keys and tiara. Fig. 198 was the flag of the merchant s.h.i.+ps owned by the subjects of the States of the Church. The combination of yellow and white is very curious. In the banner borne by G.o.dfrey, the Crusader King of Jerusalem, the only tinctures introduced were the two metals, gold and silver, five golden crosses being placed upon a silver field. This was done of deliberate intention that it might be unlike all other devices, as it is in all other cases deemed false heraldry to place metal on metal. The theory that these metals were selected because of the reference in the Psalms to the Holy City, may also be a very possible one--”Though ye have lien amongst the pots, yet shall ye {115} be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.” However this may be, the yellow and white of the arms of Jerusalem was adopted by the Papal Government.
The Danish flag is the oldest now in existence. In the year 1219, King Waldemar of Denmark in a critical moment in his stormy career, saw, or thought he saw, or said he saw, a cross in the sky. He was then leading his troops to battle against the Livonian pagans, and he gladly welcomed this answer to his prayers for Divine succour, this a.s.surance of celestial aid.
This sign from Heaven he forthwith adopted as the flag of his country, and called it the Dannebrog, _i.e._, the strength of Denmark. As a definite chronological fact, apart from all legend, this flag dates from the thirteenth century. There was also an Order of Dannebrog inst.i.tuted in 1219, in further commemoration and honour of the miracle; and the name is a very popular one in the Danish Royal Navy, one man-of-war after another succeeding to the appellation. One of these Dannebrogs was blown up by the fire of Nelson's fleet in 1801.
The Danish Man-of-War Ensign is shown in Fig. 224. The Royal Standard, like the Ensign, is swallow-tailed, but in the centre of the cross is placed a white square, indicated in our ill.u.s.tration, Fig. 224, by dots. This central, square s.p.a.ce contains the Royal Arms, surrounded by the Collars of the Orders of the Elephant and of the Dannebrog. The merchant flag, Fig.
225, is rectangular.