French Revolution during the storming of the Bastille on 14 July. The blue and red cockade was presented to King Louis XVI at the Hôtel de Ville on 17 July. Lafayette argued for the addition of a white stripe to "nationalise" the design. On 27 July, a tricolour cockade was adopted as part of the uniform of the National Guard, the national police force that succeeded the militia. Well after the revolution, by 1912 the French Third Republic had authorised the form of the "tricolore cockade" for use on its military aircraft by the "Aeronautique Militaire" as a national insignia, the first-ever
Scuttling of the French fleet at Toulon the French fleet would be largely disarmed and confined to its harbours, under French control. The Allies were concerned that the fleet, which included some of the most advanced warships of the time, might fall into enemy hands and so the British attacked the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kebir on 3 July 1940 and at the Battle of Dakar on 23 September 1940. On 8 November 1942 the Allies invaded French North Africa (Operation Torch). It may be that General Dwight Eisenhower, with the support of President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, made