“The Oriflamme [was the] forked-tongue scarlet banner of the Kings of France. . . . Legend derived the banner from Charlemagne, who was said to have carried it to the Holy Land in response to an angel’s prophecy that a knight armed with a golden lance from whose tip flames of “great marvel” burned would deliver the land from the Saracens. [It was embroidered with [the] golden flames that gave it its name. . . .”

—Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.