France
Authority: Constitution of the French Republic (1958), Article 2
The French tricolore has an official 2:3 aspect ratio, with three equal vertical bands of blue, white, and red. Its colors trace to the Paris militia cockade of July 1789; the blue-white-red order was fixed by a decree of 15 February 1794, and the tricolour was named the national emblem in the 1958 Constitution.
| Parameter / Specification | Standard Value | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Hoist to Fly Ratio | 2 : 3 | - |
| Blue-White-Red Order Fixed | 15 February 1794 | - |
History & Origin
The tricolore's colors emerged from revolutionary Paris rather than a single deliberate design. Blue and red were the traditional colors of the city of Paris, and the Paris militia (soon the National Guard) adopted a blue-and-red cockade in mid-July 1789, in the days around the storming of the Bastille. White, described at the time as the old royal French color, was added to the militia's cockade to "nationalize" it -- a change generally credited to the Marquis de Lafayette, though contemporaries also credited Mayor Jean Sylvain Bailly and even Louis XVI.
The National Constituent Assembly approved a vertical tricolour flag on 24 October 1790, though the early version ran red-white-blue from the hoist. A decree of 15 February 1794 reversed the order to the blue-white-red sequence used today. The design has been essentially unchanged since, and the 1958 Constitution of the Fifth Republic formally names "the blue, white, red tricolour flag" as the national emblem in its second article.