For Portugal the flag is one of the few national flags that are parti-coloured. It is half blue, half white, with, in the centre, the arms of Portugal surmounted by the royal crown, and it is the same both in the mercantile marine and in the Portuguese navy. The royal standard of Portugal is an all-red flag charged in the centre with the royal arms, as shown in the national flag.
In the Spanish ensigns red and yellow are the prevailing colours, and here again the arrangement differs from that generally used. The navy flag has a yellow central stripe, with red above and below. To be correct the yellow should be half the width of the flag, and each of the red stripes a quarter of the width of the flag. The central yellow stripe is charged in the hoist with an escutcheon containing the arms of Castile and Leon, and surmounted by the royal crown. In the mercantile flag the yellow centre is without the escutcheon, and is one-third of the entire depth of the flag, the remaining thirds being divided into equal stripes of red and yellow, the yellow above in the upper part of the flag, the red in the lower. Of all royal standards that of Spain is the most elaborate, for it contains quarterings of the Spanish royal escutcheon, many of the bearings being as much an anachronism as if the royal arms of England were to-day to be quartered with the fleur-de-lis. In all, the quarterings displayed are those of Leon, Castile, Aragon, Sicily, Austria, Burgundy, Flanders, Antwerp, Brabant, Portugal and France. The flag is usually depicted as composed entirely of the quarterings. We believe, however, that it is more correctly a purple flag in the centre of which the quarterings are displayed on an oval shield surmounted by a crown and encircled by the collar of the order of the Golden Fleece.
The flag of the Russian mercantile marine is a horizontal tricolour of white, blue and red. Originally, it was a tricolour of blue, white and red, and it is said that the idea of its colouring was taken by Peter the Great when learning shipbuilding in Holland, for as the flag then stood it was simply the Dutch ensign reversed. Later, to make it more distinctive, the blue and white stripes changed places, leaving the tricolour as it stands to-day. The flag of the Russian navy is the blue saltire of St Andrew on a white ground. St Andrew is the patron saint of Russia, from whence the emblem. The imperial standard is of a character akin to that of Austria; the ground is yellow, and the centre bears the imperial double-headed eagle, a badge that dates back to 1472, when Ivan the Great married a niece of Constantine Palaeologus and assumed the arms of the Greek empire. On the breast of the eagle is an escutcheon charged with the emblem of St George and the Dragon on a red ground, and this is surrounded by the collar of the order of St Andrew. On the splayed wings of the eagle are small shields bearing the arms of the various provinces of the empire.
The Rumanian flag is a blue, yellow and red tricolour, the stripes vertical, with the blue stripe forming the fly. The Servian flag is a horizontal tricolour, the top stripe red, the middle blue and the lower white. When these tricolours are flown as royal standards the royal arms are displayed on the central stripe. The flag of Montenegro is a horizontal tricolour, the top stripe red, the centre blue, the lowermost white. The Bulgarian flag is a similar tricolour, white, green and red, the white stripe uppermost, but when flown as a war ensign there is a canton in the upper corner of the hoist in which is a golden lion on a red ground.
The flags of all the three Scandinavian kingdoms are somewhat similar in design. That of Denmark, the Dannebrog, has been already alluded to, and it is shown in our illustration as flown by the Danish navy. The mercantile marine flag is precisely similar, but rectangular instead of being swallow-tailed. The Swedish flag is a yellow cross on a blue ground. When flown from a man-of-war it is forked as in the Danish, but the longer arm of the cross is not cut off but pointed, thus making it a three-pointed flag as illustrated. For the mercantile marine the flag is rectangular. When Norway separated from Denmark in 1814, the first flag was red with a white cross on it, and the arms of Norway in the upper corner of the hoist, but as this was found to resemble too closely the Danish flag, a blue cross with a white border was substituted for the white cross. This, it will be seen, is the Danish flag with a blue cross imposed upon the white one. For a man-of-war the flag is precisely similar to that of Sweden in shape; that is to say, converted from the rectangular into the three-pointed design. While Sweden and Norway remained united the flag of each remained distinct, but each bore in the top canton of the hoist a union device, being the combination of the Norwegian and Swedish national colours and crosses. In each of the three above nationalities the flag used for a royal standard is the man-of-war flag with the royal arms imposed on the centre of the cross.
The Belgian tricolour is vertical, the stripes being black next the hoist, yellow in the centre and red in the fly. That of the Netherlands is a horizontal tricolour, red above, white in the centre and blue below. In both countries the same flag is common to both navy and mercantile marine, but when the flag is used as a royal standard the royal arms are displayed in the central stripe. The black, yellow and red of the Belgian flag are the colours of the duchy of Brabant, and were adopted in 1831 when the monarchy was founded. The original Dutch colours adopted when Holland declared its independence were orange, white and blue, the colours of the house of Orange, and when and how the orange became red is not quite clear, though it was certainly prior to 1643.
The blue and white which form the colouring of the Greek flag shown in our illustration are the colours of the house of Bavaria, and were adopted in 1832, when Prince Otho of Bavaria was elected to the throne of Greece. The stripes are nine in number—five blue and four white—with, in the upper corner of the hoist, a canton bearing a white cross on a blue ground. The flag for the royal navy is similar to that flown by the mercantile marine, with the exception that it has the addition of a golden crown in the centre of the cross. The royal standard is a blue flag with a white cross, on the centre of which the royal arms are imposed. The cross is exactly similar to that in the Danish flag, that is to say, the arms of the cross are not of equal length, the shorter end being in the hoist of the flag.
The very simple flag of Switzerland is one of great antiquity, for it was the emblem of the nation as far back as 1339, and probably considerably earlier. In addition to the national flag of the Swiss confederation, each canton has its own cantonal colours. In each case the flag has its stripes disposed horizontally. Basel, for instance, is half black, half white; Berne, half black, half red; Glarus, red, black and white, &c., &c.
The Turkish crescent moon and star were the device adopted by Mahomet II. when he captured Constantinople in 1453. Originally they were the symbol of Diana, the patroness of Byzantium, and were adopted by the Ottomans as a triumph, for they had always been the special emblem of Constantinople, and even now in Moscow and elsewhere the crescent emblem and the cross may be seen combined in Russian churches, the crescent badge, of course, indicating the Byzantine origin of the Russian church. The symbol originated at the time of the siege of Constantinople by Philip the father of Alexander the Great, when a night attempt of the besiegers to undermine the walls was betrayed by the light of a crescent moon, and in acknowledgment of their escape the Byzantines raised a statue to Diana, and made her badge the symbol of the city. Both the man-of-war and mercantile marine flags are the same, but the imperial standard of the sultan is scarlet, and bears in its centre the device of the reigning sovereign. This device is known as the “Tughra,” and consists of the name of the sultan, the title of khan, and the epithet al-Muzaffar Daima, which means “the ever victorious.” The origin of the “Tughra” is that the sultan Murad I., who was not of scholarly parts, signed a treaty by wetting his open hand with ink, and pressing it on the paper, the first, second and third fingers making smears close together, the thumb and fourth finger leaving marks apart. Within the marks thus made the scribes wrote in the name of Murad, his title, and the epithet above quoted. The “Tughra” dates from the latter part of the 14th century. The smaller characters in the “Tughra” change, of course, on the accession of every fresh sovereign, but the leading form of the device always remains the same, namely, rounded lines to the left denoting the thumb, lines to the right denoting where the little finger made impression, and three upright lines indicating the other fingers.
The Mahommedan states tributary to Turkey also display the crescent and star. Morocco, Muscat and other Arab states where they use an ensign display a red flag, that of the Zanzibar protectorate having the British union in the centre of the red field.