French ensigns
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A French ensign is the flag flown at sea to identify a vessel as French. Several such ensigns have existed over the years as well as terrestrial flags based on the ensign motif.
The current French ensign is not, as the casual observer would think, identical to the flag of France. Though both are blue, white and red, the French civil ensign has those colours in the proportion blue 30, white 33, and red 37. The intention is in fact to create a flag which, when seen moving at some distance, will appear to have columns of equal width; in addition, the slightly wider red column is intended to improve the flag's visibility at sea.
The current French ensign, with proportions different from those of the French flag.
As with the ensigns of other countries, the French ensign in the beginning of the 14th century was a banner of the royal arms, blue field with golden French lilies. Sometimes it bears a white cross.
In 1365, Charles V changed to a blue flag with just three golden French lilies. However, reports as late as 1514 still occasionally mention the use of the lilies and cross flag.
Occasionally illustrations from this era also show the white cross, now on a red field, but this is mostly limited to the coats of arms only. After 1450, however, those two designs are often seen flying side by side.
By the time of the House of Bourbon, the royal colours had merged making blue, red, and white the royal colours; Henry IV of France even had his entire entourage dress in these colours. These colours, for these or other reasons, also became the colours of the French ensigns. A plain white ensign indicated the French sailing fleet, a red flag a galley, while the blue flag was flown by the merchant ships. It's somewhat unclear whether all of these were plain flags. E.g. in 1661 the use of white flags on merchant ships is explicitly forbidden, pointing the merchants instead to the "old flag of the French nation", which then was supposed to be a white cross on blue, with on it the .
A decade or so later, the rule for the merchant navy was modified, however, to allow every kind of ensign, provided it wasn't all white. This caused two new types of French ensigns: regional or local flags flown as French ensign, and personal designs intended to show as much white as was possible without it being considered all white.
Ensign of the Réale, the prestige galley of Louis XIV.
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