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White flags have had different meanings throughout history and depending on the locale.
The improper use of the flag is forbidden by the rules of war and constitutes a war crime of perfidy. Numerous cases of such behavior have been reported in conflicts, such as combatants using white flags as a Deception to approach and attack enemy combatants or killings of combatants attempting to surrender by carrying white flags.
The French Capetian dynasty utilized a prominent white banner during this period, referred to at the time as the oriflamme. As head of House Capet, Philip II adopted a single white flag as the family's emblem, still closely identified with the Kings of France for several generations afterward. "Its very name - a derivation of 'golden flame' - shows that it was intended from its inception to represent the French crown".This quote lacks provenance. Marc Morris (2015) nowhere discusses the oriflamme, and Gillingham, J. (2004). Richard I (New Haven, US: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 60, previously cited, is a duff reference.
This meaning is affirmed a few years later during a subsequent conflict between the French monarchy and the English throne. At the siege of Fréteval castle in 1194, the English knights defending the castle "came clad in white tunics, barefoot, holding up white cloths" to King Philip and his invading army to indicate their surrender.Power, D. (2004). The Norman Frontier in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, p. 505. The color white, synonymous with the royal Capet flag, demonstrated the way medieval visual symbolism intertwined with feudal expressions of submission and dominance.
Through the 13th century, the precedent of utilizing white flags and banners to surrender to the French people continued to proliferate after many French victories and across medieval Europe as Philip Augustus expanded the royal domain. Matthew Paris notes how during a 1231 rebellion against King Henry II of England in Wales, the princes pleading for mercy "came before him bearing the king's white banner".Paris, Matthew. Vaughan, Richard. (1958). The Illustrated Chronicles of Matthew Paris: Observations of Thirteenth-Century Life (Cambridge, UK: Corpus Christi College, 1958), p. 370. This correlated the white flag with signaling the transition of land or rulership.
Thus, the original meaning of waving a white flag was deeply tied to feudal custom, acknowledging and pledging loyalty or sanctuary to a specific lord and his noble standard. By the later Middle Ages, however, the distinct connection of the white symbol to House Capet and French royalty diminished as it gained wider currency as a gesture, indicating any general surrender or truce between opposing armies regardless of feudal loyalties.
Through diffusion over time and across Europe, the white flag of the Capets became divorced from a strict embodiment of Capetian suzerainty in war. Regardless of its shifting meaning, the basis of the tradition itself clearly originated in 12th-century medieval France.Delbrück, Hans (1990). Medieval Warfare. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, p. 286–287.Verbruggen, J.F. (1997). The Art of Warfare in Western Europe During the Middle Ages: From the Eighth Century to 1340. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, p. 243.Huizinga, Johan (1996). The Autumn of the Middle Ages. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, p. 123.The Flanders peasant revolt against French rule in 1323-1328 involved rebels carrying white crosses and flags to induce talks or passage without being attacked (TeBrake, 1993, p. 65).
During the Renaissance, the white flag was widely used in Western Europe to indicate an intent to surrender. The color white was not used as the color of the king of France anymore but instead to generally indicate a person was exempt from combat; heralds bore white wands, prisoners or hostages captured in battle would attach a piece of white paper to their hat or helmet, and garrisons that had surrendered and been promised safe passage would carry white batons.
Its use may have expanded across continents (e.g., Portuguese chronicler Gaspar Correia, writing in the 1550s, claims that in 1502, an Indian ruler, the Zamorin of Calicut, dispatched negotiators bearing a "white cloth tied to a stick", "as a sign of peace", to his enemy Vasco da Gama. In 1625, Hugo Grotius in De jure belli ac pacis (On the Law of War and Peace), one of the foundational texts in international law, recognized the white flag as a "sign, to which use has given a signification"; it was "a tacit sign of demanding a parley, and shall be as obligatory, as if expressed by words".
The Alids and the Fatimid dynasty also used white in opposition to the Abbasids, who used black as their dynastic color. (1999). 9780195107999, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195107999 For the same reason, the color white was adopted by other Shia regimes, like the Qarmatians of Eastern Arabia, and the Zaydi rulers in Alavid dynasty and Rassid dynasty. (1967). 9780691097978, Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691097978
The white color was also used as a symbol of military command, by the commanding officer of a French army. It would be featured on a white scarf attached to the regimental flag as to recognize French units from foreign ones and avoid friendly fire incidents. The French troops fighting in the American Revolutionary War fought under the white flag.
The French Navy used a plain white French ensigns for ships of the line. Smaller ships might have used other standards, such as a fleur-de-lis on white field. Commerce and private ships were authorized to use their own designs to represent France, but were forbidden to fly the white ensign.
During the French Revolution, in 1794, the blue, white and red Tricolore was adopted as the official national flag. The white flag quickly became a symbol of French royalists. (The white part of the French Tricolor is itself originally derived from the old Royal flag, the tricolor having been designed when the revolution still aimed at constitutional monarchy rather than a republic; this aspect of the Tricolor was, however, soon forgotten.)
During the Bourbon Restoration, the white flag replaced the Tricolore, which by then was seen as a symbol of regicide.
It was finally abandoned in 1830, with the July Revolution, with the definitive use of the blue, white and red flag.
In 1873, an attempt to reestablish the monarchy failed when Henri of Artois, the Count of Chambord refused to accept the Tricolore. He demanded the return of the white flag before he would accept the throne, a condition that proved unacceptable.
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