The National Flag of France, the “Tri-Color”

John Mahoney, a local, recently ventured out to the Castle Pickney site in Charleston Harbor to hoist France’s Tri-Color Flag above the historic fort. The tri-color or tricolour, the national flag of France, features three vertical bands colored blue (on the hoist side), white, and red. The design was adopted following the French Revolution (1788-99) whose revolutionaries were influenced by the horizontally striped red-white-blue flag of the Netherlands. Coincidentally, there’s a strong “French connection” in Charleston, also known as the “Holy City.” French protestants (Huguenots) fled to South Carolina in the late 17th century so they could worship freely. By 1793, the National Register of Historic Places named a section in Charleston the “French Quarter” to help preserve the city’s Lodge Alley area. Huguenots, many of whom were wealthy and prosperous merchants, settled the area and constructed warehouses for their ships that docked off East Bay Street.