Flags of Napoleonic Italy

The Flags of Napoleonic Italy were the green, white and red tricolour flags and banners in use in Italy during the Napoleonic era, which lasted from 1796 to 1814. During this period, on 7 January 1797, the green, white and red tricolour was officially adopted for the first time as a national flag by a sovereign Italian state, the Cispadane Republic. This event is commemorated by the Tricolour Day. The Italian tricolour, like other tricolour flags, is inspired by the French one, introduced by the revolution in the autumn of 1790 on French Navy warships, and symbol of the renewal perpetrated by the origins of Jacobinism. The first documented trace of the use of Italian national colours is dated 21 August 1789. In the historical archives of the Republic of Genoa it is reported that eyewitnesses had seen some demonstrators pinned on their clothes hanging a red, white and green cockade on their clothes. The oldest documented mention of the Italian tricolour flag is linked to the first descent of Napoleon in the Italian Peninsula. With the start of the first campaign in Italy, in many places the Jacobins of the peninsula rose up, contributing, together with the Italian soldiers framed in the Napoleonic army, to the French victories. This renewal was accepted by the Italians despite being linked to the conveniences of Napoleonic France, which had strong imperialist tendencies, because the new political situation was better than the previous one. The double-threaded link with France was in fact much more acceptable than in past centuries in absolutism. During the first campaign in Italy, Napoleon, under the command of the Army of Italy, conquered the states into which the Italian peninsula was divided by founding new republican state bodies inspired by French revolutionary ideals. Between 1796 and 1799 were born, among others, the Piedmontese Republic, the Cispadane Republic, the Transpadane Republic, the Ligurian Republic, the Roman Republic, the Anconine Republic and the Parthenopean Republic.