
SWITZERLAND NATIONAL COAT OF ARMS
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Switzerland has a very simple National Coat of Arms consisting of a white cross on a red field, this does not mean that it has a brief history however. Legend has it that in the most remote times red was the national color of the first Scandinavian colonists who came to inhabit the high Alpine valleys where Switzerland is today situated. Their banners and clothes were in the color red. In the most ancient times Swiss warriors, on their clothes and flags, carried the white cross since they regarded the freeing of their native land as crusade in itself. The Swiss Arms are mentioned as early as 1339 with reference to the Swiss forces leaving Berne to march against the army of nobles “and they were all marked with the sign of the Holy Cross, a white cross on a red shield….” According to the medieval chronicler Justinger. The Swiss Diet appropriately proclaimed in 1814: “ Seeing that it was the military sign of the ancient Swiss, the red shield carrying a white cross will compose the communal federal Arms of the Swiss Confederation. “ Such is the origin of the Coat of Arms which, by reversal of the colors, gave birth to the international sign of the Red Cross. The Coat of Arms of the other European Republic, San Marino, display its three castle topped mountain peaks.
