Flag of Switzerland to the "Arma Christi" that were especially venerated in the three forest cantons, and which they were allegedly allowed to display on the formerly uniformly red battle flag from 1289 by king Rudolph I of Habsburg at the occasion of a campaign to Besançon. Use of a white cross as a mark of identification of the combined troops of the Old Swiss Confederacy is first attested in the Battle of Laupen (1339), where it was sewn on combatants' clothing as two stripes of textile, contrasting with the red St. George's cross of Habsburg Austria, and with the St. Andrew's cross
Flag of Switzerland The Swiss cross is defined as Swiss Standard German consistently uses (cognate with "vane") rather than the term used for national flags in Germany. The name of the flag of the Swiss Confederation is a nominal compound, . While the proportions of the cross have been fixed since 1889, the size of the cross relative to the flag (the width of the margin separating the "cross couped" from the edge of the flag) had not been officially fixed prior to 2017. The annex to SR 232.21 provides an image specifying that the margin is to be of the same width