Rather--as in the case of armies where the wearing of uniforms
was not practiced--they were used for the purposes of identifica-
tion and signaling. Serving for the identification of friend or foe
and as a rallying point during engagements between units or indi-
vidual soldiers, flags afforded protection to those within a unit,
ultimately ensuring their survival. The fall of the flag of one's own
army meant that chaos would ensue, soldiers running helter skel-
ter across the battlefield or directly into the enemy's arms. Albrecht
Altdorfer's monumental painting "Battle of Alexander at Issus"
( 1529) gives a sense of the vital importance of flags in the conduct
of war. The various forces portrayed in this vast panorama of sol-
diers embroiled in the tumultuous struggle between ancient
Greeks and Persians are so intertwined that the different flags are
virtually the only way for viewers to orient themselves.

It is probably impossible to determine in which spheres of life
flags first came into use. What has come down to us is a report of
the magnificent ceremony in which the first flag was formally con-
secrated when Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor
in the city of Rome. Ironically, the flag that Pope Leo III granted
the secular head of Roman Catholic Christendom in the year 800
A.D. as a sign of his new power was red in color. During war, in
seafaring, and in the case of religion, flags were used chiefly as
identification signs and as a means to highlight differences. Dur-
ing the crusades, which lasted two hundred years, the number of
flags was myriad. They gave courage to the knights of one's own
country who were obliged to fight on foreign soil, and they intim-
idated the natives.

Flags appeared as identification signs on the world's oceans
long before Christians took to the sea. The Vikings used them
during their sea voyages. With a raven (the symbol of Odin, their
god of war and death) painted on their standards, the Vikings
brought a reign of terror to the seas. And with martial insignia on
the flags flying from their topmasts, William the Conqueror's
ships set sail from Normandy in 1066 to invade England at Sussex
and defeat the forces of the successor to the throne, Harold II, at
Hastings. The Bayeux Tapestry, an embroidered frieze 230 feet in
length and a primary cultural and historical document, depicts
the lovely cross-emblazoned flags that the Church had granted
William in Rome.

Even Richard Wagner was conversant with the role of flags as
signals. In his 1865 opera Tristan and Isolde, set in the Middle
Ages, he makes reference to them through the resonant baritone

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