For some time after the Revolution the white field was retained. When the three colours came to be used there appears to have been at first no fixed order in arranging them, and in some cases they were placed vertically, and in others horizontally. By a decree in 1790 it was ordained that in the navy the flag on the bowsprit--the jack--should be composed of three equal bands placed vertically, that next the staff being red, the middle white, and the third blue. The flag at the stem was to have in a canton the jack above described (occupying one fourth of the flag), and to be surrounded by a narrow band, the half of which was to be red and the other blue, and the rest of the flag to be white. In 1794 this flag was abolished, and it was ordered "that the national flag shall be formed of _the three national colours_ in equal bands placed vertically, the hoist being blue, the centre white, and the fly red." It would appear, however, that this arrangement was not for some time universally adopted, and that old flags continued to be used. Thus, in the great picture by De Loutherbourg at Greenwich, the French ships are represented as wearing the suppressed flag of 1790; while, in a rare print preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris, representing the magnificent ceremony at which the first Napoleon distributed eagles to the troops in 1804, the banners suspended over the Ecole Militaire in the Champ de Mars, where the ceremony took place, show the three colours in fess, that is, in horizontal lines. But the vertical arrangement must have been soon afterwards generally adopted, and this continued to be the flag both of the French army and navy during the Empire. On the return of the king in 1814, and again in 1815, it was abolished, and the white flag restored; but the Tricolour was reintroduced in 1830, and it has remained in use since.[45] [45] See French Imperial Standard, and National Flag, Plate IV. Nos. 2 and 3.