strewn with flower-de-luces or, and Charles VI, 

 who came to the crown in 1380, reduced the 

 lilies in his coat-of-arms to three." 



White became the national color of France 

 during the Hundred Years War. Later the 

 Huguenot party adopted the white flag, and 

 when Henry HI, himself a Protestant, came 

 to the throne, in 1574, it became the royal en- 

 sign. In the following reign (Henry IV) it 

 became the symbol of the French Bourbons. 

 Thus the French ensign (1149), a simple white 

 banner, came to be the basis of many of the 

 French flags (see 11 50, 1151, 1157, H58, H59, 

 1160, and 1161). The ensign (1149) was the 

 flag under which Cartier sailed on his voyage 

 of exploration to Canada, and the emblem 

 which floated from the flagship of Admiral De 

 Grasse, whose victory off Yorktown was a 

 most important factor contributing to the suc- 

 cess of the American Revolutionary War (see 

 422). Joan of Arc bore a white flag with gold 

 embellishments at the Battle of Orleans. 



The French cornet (1159) is distinctive only 

 in its swallow-tail shape; in modern signaling 

 it is usually called a burgee. 



The blue crosses in the banners of Province 

 (Provence) (1150), of Bretagny (Brittany) 

 (1151), and Normandy (1158), and the blue 

 stripes of Picardy (1161) recall the fact that 

 from earliest recorded times until the seat of 

 French Government was removed to Paris 

 (when the red of that city's patron, St. Denis, 

 was adopted) blue was a favorite color of the 

 Franks. It was under the plain blue flag 

 known as "Chape de St. Martin" that Clovis 

 won his great victory over Alaric in 507, and 

 Charlemagne bore it at Narbonne. This was 

 supposed to be the original cloak which St. 

 Martin, while stationed at Amiens, divided 

 with a beggar ; the following night he had a 

 vision of Christ making known to his angels 

 this act of charity (see also 743). 



Marseilles had a white ensign of its own, 

 with a white cross on a blue square in the first 

 quarter (1160). 



The Zealand colors (1152) are, naturally, 

 those of Holland. On the white bar is the 

 distinctive feature, the red lion of the Zealand 

 (Zeeland) coat-of-arms. In the same manner 

 the flag of Middleburgh (1156), the capital of 

 Zeeland, had the colors of Holland, with its 

 own gold tower in the white band. 



The Hanseatic League, the famous federa- 

 tion of North German towns which controlled 

 the commerce of northern Europe during the 

 Middle ages, had for its colors red and white, 

 two of the three colors which survive in the 

 flag of modern Germany (996). The chief city 

 of the federation was Lubeck (1153). Ham- 

 burg, also an important city of the league, 

 bore a red flag with a white tower (1154), 

 while Bremen's emblem (1166) was a red and 

 white chess-board. Rostock, not content with 

 the league's red and white, added blue (1167), 

 thereby giving her citizens the same occasion 

 as the Russians for complaining that they ap- 

 peared like "Dutchmen in distress" (see note 

 on the flag of the Tsar of Moscovy — 1142). 

 Dantzick (Dantzic) employed the league's 

 red, but placed upon that field three gold 

 crowns, arranged vertically (1165). 



The Munich flag (1164) had an unfortunate 

 color combination, the yellow frequently fad- 

 ing out, leaving the banner a French white 

 (1149). 



Lunenburgh (Luneburg) was one of the 

 most important towns of the Hanseatic League. 

 Its flag (1174) included the red field common 

 to Hamburg and Dantzic, but with a winged 

 Pegasus in gold as the distinctive feature. 



The flag of Heyligeland (Heligoland) (1155) 

 is of especial interest at this time on account 

 of the tremendously important role which the 

 scraps of land (it was one island up to 1720, 

 when a violent eruption of the sea severed a 

 neck of sand and made two islets of it) are 

 playing in the present war as an impregnable 

 naval and submarine base for Germany. Heli- 

 goland was a fief of the dukes of Schleswig- 

 Holstein in 1705, but the free city of Hamburg 

 frequently held it in pawn for loans advanced 

 to the dukes. In 1807 England obtained it 

 from Denmark, and 27 years ago made the 

 great mistake of ceding it to Germany. 



The Swedish man-of-war ensign (1162) and 

 Swedish merchant flag (1163) 200 years ago 

 were virtually the same as today (826 and 

 827), with the exception that the blue in the 

 modern standards is of a much lighter shade. 



The Genoa ensign (1168) is identical with 

 the St. George's jack (1127). 



THE MALTESE CROSS 



Few flags of history can rival in romantic 

 interest the red banner with its eight-pointed 

 white cross (1169), emblem of the island of 

 Malta. The eight points of this famous Mal- 

 tese cross are supposed to represent the eight 

 Beatitudes. In their monasteries the Knights 

 of Malta wore black habits with Maltese 

 crosses over their hearts. In war their coat- 

 of-arms was crimson with the white Maltese 

 cross, like the flag. 



The flag of Jerusalem (1170) at the begin- 

 ning of the eighteenth century contained the 

 same five crosses which the Franciscan monk 

 pictured in 1350 (see 1067), save that the cen- 

 tral cross at the later period quartered the 

 flag, and the "Croisettes," as they are called in 

 French, occupied the four quarters. 



Tuhen (Thuin, Belgium) was one of several 

 cities of the low countries whose device at the 

 beginning of the eighteenth century was a 

 white swan (1171). 



The Danish man-of-war (1172) and mer- 

 chant flags (1173) are the oldest national em- 

 blems now in use, their history dating back to 

 the year 1219, when Waldemar is supposed to 

 have seen a cross in the sky while leading his 

 troops against the Livonian pagans. The flag 

 is known as the Dannebrog (Strength of Den- 

 mark). On the time-stained walls of the medi- 

 eval church on the island of Heligoland there 

 is still to be seen a painted Dannebrog. 



The city and district of Surat, the green flag 

 of whose Grand Mogul (1175) was distin- 

 guished by two gold scimitars, was the site of 

 the first factory (trading post) established by 

 England in India, a seed which has developed 

 into a great Eastern Empire. 



Bengal's Grand Mogul bore a white flag with 

 a red scimitar (1176) two centuries ago. It 



402 



