See also: Rosette (homonymy)

Friday July 17th 1789, three days after the catch of the Bastille, the king Louis XVI goes to Paris with the marquis of Lafayette. They are accommodated by Bailly, become mayor of Paris, which offers a tricolor Cocarde to him . Blue and the Red colors of the town of Paris frame the white of monarchy there. The king accepts it.

This same day, his/her brother, the Count d' Artois, future Charles X, takes the way of the emigration with other noble attaches with the absolute monarchy.

History

It is in its number dated July 24th that the Gazette of Leyde returns account for the first time of the revolutionary events to Paris.

One can read there the following passage, extracted from written letter a “Friday at the evening, July 17th”:

“Mr. Bailly presented to His Majesty the royal and middle-class, joining together the colors blue, white & pink rosette: the King allowed that one put it on his hat & showed it to the people. ”

This testimony reduced to nothing the legend which wants that the tricolor one finds its origin in the gesture of Louis XVI pinning on his white rosette, on July 17th, the blue and red rosette, adopted the 13 by the middle-class militia of Paris. As for the explanation, which would be liked more erudite, according to which the rosette would have been invented only at the end of the month by Fayette, it is not even more need to speak about it.

Several documents tend to prove that the tricolor rosette in fact was already carried before July 17th. The newspapers of two deputies of the Third State, Adrien Duquesnoy and J. - has. Creuzé-Latouche, attest its existence as of the Wednesday the 15th. On its side, the Hardy bookseller written in his Newspaper, under the date of the Tuesday the 14th: " One started to change the rosettes of color, while making succeed it pink, blue and white with the green color (...)”, color adopted by Parisian on July 12th, as a sign of rising, at the instigation of Camille Desmoulins.

On its side, the committee of the voters had instituted, by a decree of July 13rd, a middle-class guard or Parisian militia, which was seen at the same time allotting a two-tone rosette (blue and red). Very restrictive, the decree did not authorize each and everyone to carry it: " As it is necessary that each member who composes this Parisian militia carries a distinctive mark, the colors of the city were adopted by the General meeting; consequently, each one will carry the rosette blue and red. Any man, who will be found with this rosette without to be recorded in one of the districts will be given to the justice of the Standing Committee. "

This provision was made necessary by what was the acknowledged objective of the creation of the middle-class militia: the disarmament of the rabble. Indeed, were not recorded and thus the uniform rosette blue and red received only the domiciled and known citizens.

One thus sees that there existed simultaneously, the 13, two different rosettes, that of the middle-class, red and blue guard, and the green range by all the other citizens. A witness, deputy of the nobility of Marseilles, written in the afternoon of the 13: “The rascals are disarmed, one stops those which have stolen effects, but it is necessary to have a green rosette with the hat not to be not insulted. ” But soon, it is known, the green rosette was proscribed, when one realized that the green was also the color of delivered of the count d' Artois.

At this point in time the tricolor rosette, intended from now on to ensure the protective role of the green rosette, was created for the people of Paris, other than the militiamans, who will preserve their colors until the end of the month. At which exact moment was it? The register of correspondence of Bailly (B.N. Manuscripts) contains a capital document: the copy of a letter addressed to the mayor of Paris by Mr. de Gouvion, major-general of the national guard, on March 28th, 1790. One reads there: “It is according to a decree of an assembly of the voters, the 14 or July 15th, that the three colors were fixed. "

To still determine with more precision the exact date of creation of tricolor, it is necessary to resort to the two only found texts which speak distinctly about the three models of rosette. The first is a letter of a trader named Failly, written on July 23rd, 1789: “One stopped Monday the 13th all those which were armed without being in patrol, one disarmed them and, if they did not name their district, one temporarily led them in prison. One gave initially for passport the green rosette, but in the evening reflective that this color was delivered of the count d' Artois, one took it pink, blue and white. ”

The other text is memorable, chronic About fifteen Parisian from July 12th to 30th, published as of the first days of August. The author written, at dated July 14th, before 8 hours of the morning: “Large and small of any state raised, by order of the city, the rosette blue, red and blanc."

The conclusion which emerges from these documents is that the tricolor rosette was born in the night from July 13rd to 14th, at one hour difficult to determine. By which mystery one could well oppose, during nearly two centuries, two theses mentioned above, as obviously false one as the other?

It is initially necessary to take into account the disorder inseparable from any state of insurrection:

“Disorder, tumult, confusion, embarrassments” are words which return unceasingly in the pages of the official report of meeting and deliberations of the general meeting of the voters of Paris, devoted with these heats days. Beside the three principal rosettes, one finds in testimonys a great number of alternatives of combinations of the colors: rosettes green and white, blue and white, red and white, green and red, appear to be carried in certain districts.

But there is more: the text of the decree which founded the tricolor rosette is not known. However, this decree existed: Gouvion makes mention of it, the memorable Fortnight makes mention of it, and a decree of the Parliament of the representatives of the Commune, dated October 4th, 1789, carries “that the decrees previously returned, which are as a need confirmed, will continue to be carried out” and “declares that the rosette with the colors red, blue and white is the only one that the citizens must carry”.

If this decree, of so great importance were published in no newspaper nor, more disconcerting fact still, in the official report of the voters, it is that we touch here with the field of crowned.

Quickly, the tricolor rosette became for the French what the newspaper of Brissot calls, on October 24th, “the crowned sign of our redemption”. And it is known that in the moments of large mystical, religious or patriotic exaltation, it is not wise to touch with the crowned character of the symbols, as tested it besides the bodyguards of the king in October 1789. Let us recall that it is “the insult made with the national rosette” which was the occasion of the forwarding of Parisian in Versailles on October 5th, forwarding which had as a result the return of the king in Paris, final rupture with the monarchy of divine right.

However the imposing decree with the citizens the port of the tricolor rosette who, we saw it, is night from July 13rd to 14th, was inevitably signed name of that which chaired the Standing Committee: provost of merchants of Flesselles, in which all the Parisian ones transfers most abominable of the traitors when the noise ran, immediately after taken Bastille, that one had found in the pockets of the governor of the fortress a written letter of the hand of Flesselles carrying these some words: " I amuse the Parisian ones with rosettes and promises, hold good until the evening & you will have renfort."

That this letter existed or not, its hawked contents and the fact that it was worth in Flesselles an immediate and ignominieuse death indicate that this one had played a determining role in the choice of the new badge. Could one leave, with the bottom of a text which instituted the rosette - invested text of an emotional load of which we have nothing any more but one weak idea - a name which inspired such a horror?

A last point remains to be examined: for which reason the white color she was added to the blue and the red of the town of Paris? The explanation most commonly advanced is that the white was the color of the king. This assertion, however, has the defect to rest on an anachronism:

Let us take traditional Traité of the national marks, of Beneton de Morange, works appeared in 1739. One reads there an essay on the colors which compose delivered of the king, and who finishes in the following way:

“I showed that these three colors were successively those which designated the French: to know blue, under the first two races of our kings; red, under the third to Charles VI, and the white, since Charles VII until now; thus to compose one delivered for our kings who was able to indicate the seniority of monarchy, one had only to gather the colors which, in various times, indicated it. ”

With length of page is shown in this work that the national color of the French was then the white, while the personal colors of the king were blue, the white and the red.

How we are far from the simplistic symbolic system of the images of Épinal!

It is thus the rosette with the colors of the king whom Flesselles had given to Parisian on July 14th (“royal and middle-class” rosette called besides by the Gazette of Leyde).

Excel symbol, it is necessary to be appropriate about it, since while gathering the three successively designative colors of the French nation, it expressed all at the same time the union of the three orders by the presence of three colors, the union of Paris and the nation, and the union of the French with their sovereign, which was the political doctrines received then with enthusiasm and almost without division.

One could not better find!

It is what explains that Louis XVI, which knew obviously very although they was its colors there, accepted of so good grace the new rosette. Whereas Louis XVIII would have answered, when one proposed to him into 1814 to preserve the Tricolor: “I do not want to make in France the affront impose my colors to him; let us take again the white flag which is it his. "

Under Charles VII, the French had been constrained to give up the red and to take the white, when the English had forsaken the white and taken the red, to post the claims of their king on the crown of France. In 1789, the refusal of holding of the Old Mode to carry colors - they were those of the king - which had been adopted by their adversaries brought an inversion of symbolic system quickly: the personal colors of the king became national colors, and even symbol of the Revolution, whereas the national color became that of the party of the king.

One of most astonishing and the most ignored the paradoxes of this astounding time….