Text and Background Colors

[orbidden]

So i'm trying to figure out how to make it so the user can assign the color for background and text color but i'm pretty confused. I read an article http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/beginner/6714/ and i was confused how this whole two bit number thing works out. it said:
"
0 fg blue
1 fg green
2 fg red
3 fg intensity
4 bg blue
5 bg green
6 bg red
7 bg intensity

So, the value for, say, light cyan on blue is 0x1B."

i'm figuring you get the b after the 1 from the fg or bg but there is no 1b so i'm not really understanding. also which number are "high and low nibbles". I"m very new to programming so i don't understand a whole ton (I'm only currently in a high school C++ programming class) so i was hoping you could explain this to me.
Other places told me to use system commands but i'm having trouble converting my command to a c string (I'm using Dev-C++ and idk if maybe that just has a problem with changing it into an array using .c_str?) Also i'm running on a windows computer. can someone clear up how to get these colors to work? and give me some more example for the colors and maybe an explanation of why 0x1b gives you light cyan, because i'd like to understand what i'm writing.

Thank you in advance.