The royal banner of St. Louis was blue powdered with fleurs-de-lis in gold, and these fleurs-de-lis have remained since the eleventh or twelfth century a peculiarly French and royal device. It is indeed one of extreme antiquity, the emblem of a long-forgotten worship--older by many ages than any record of the doctrine of the Trinity, of which some have supposed this flower to be an emblem.[44] [44] Laughton's _Heraldry of the Sea_. In the reign of Charles VI. the blue field ceased to be _powdered_ with fleurs-de-lis, and was charged with three only--two and one. The white flag which became the standard of the kings of France was probably not introduced till the reign of Henry IV. But there is great confusion in the history of the French flags, and this is increased by the use of personal colours at sea, which continued among the French to a much later period than among the English. In the colours of the French regiments there has been great variety of design. Under the old monarchy the regimental colours were of two kinds--one was the _drapeau-colonel_, or royal; the other, called _drapeau d'ordonnance_, took its device from the founder of the particular regiment which carried it, or from the province of its origin. A common form of the royal colours was a white cross on a blue field. In other examples, sometimes the cross and sometimes the field were powdered with fleurs-de-lis. In some instances the field was green. The flag displayed by the French in 1789 was a white cross on a blue ground, with one fleur-de-lis at each corner of the field, and the motto "Patrie et Liberté." The Tricolour was introduced at the Revolution, but the origin of the design is unknown. Possibly a trace of it may be found in an illumination in one of the MS. copies of Froissart. It represents the King of France setting out against the Duke of Brittany, and his majesty is preceded by a man on horseback bearing a swallow-tailed pennon, the first part containing the ancient arms of France, and each of the tails--composed of three stripes--red, white, and green.