Flags of Napoleonic Italy

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.

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.

[10] The first territory to be conquered by Napoleon was Piedmont; in the historical archive of the Piedmontese municipality of Cherasco there is a document that proves, on 13 May 1796, on the occasion of the homonymous armistice between Napoleon and the Austrian-Piedmontese troops, with which Victor Emmanuel I of Piedmont-Sardinia ceded Nice and Savoy to France to end the war,[11] the first mention of the Italian flag, which refers to municipal banners hoisted on three towers in the historic centre.

In France, due to the Revolution, the flag had passed from having a "dynastic" and "military" meaning, to having a "national" one, and this concept, still unknown in Italy, was transmitted by the French to the Italians.

[15] On 11 October 1796, Napoleon communicated to the Directory the birth of the Lombard Legion, a military unit constituted by the General Administration of Lombardy,[16][17] a government headed by the Transpadane Republic.

[18] On this document, in reference to its war flag, which traced the French tricolor and which was proposed to Napoleon by the Milanese patriots,[19] it is reported that:[20] [...] Here you will find the organization of the Lombard Legion: the national colours adopted are green, white and red.

This is the reason, in the Milanese dialect, the members of this municipal guard were popularly called remolazzit, or "small radishes", recalling the luxuriant green leaves of this vegetable.

[25] On November 6, 1796, the first cohort of the Lombard Legion received its tricolour banner during a solemn ceremony at five o'clock in the afternoon in Piazza del Duomo in Milan.

[26][20][24] The flag was divided into three vertical bands; it also reported the inscription "Lombard Legion" and the cohort number, while in the centre there was an oak crown that enclosed a Phrygian cap and a Masonic square with pendulum.

The military banner of this military unit, which consisted of five cohorts of six hundred soldiers each, was composed of a red, white and green tricolour, probably inspired by the similar decision of the Lombard Legion:[19][20][17] [...] The constitution of the Cispadane Confederation is decreed, and the formation of the Italian Legion, whose cohorts must have as their flag the white, red and green banner adorned with the emblems of freedom.

[30] At the same time, a Civic Guard was established, which adopted a uniform identical to that of the Milanese city militia, that is a green outfit with red and white displays.

[35] After the adoption by the Bolognese congregation, the tricolour became a political symbol of the struggle for the independence of Italy from foreign powers, given its use also in the civil sphere, taking the name of "flag of the Italian revolution".

[37] At the same time the Civic Guard of the city of Reggio was constituted and this military formation, aided by a small group of French grenadiers, defeated a squad of 150 Austrian soldiers at Montechiarugolo on 4 October 1796.

But the high genius of Liberty which inflames me, and which makes me a Free Man, and a Citizen of a homeland not by fate but chosen, gives me the rights of the Italian and lends me republican energy, so that I raised myself on myself.

I sing Bonaparte Liberatore, and I dedicate my songs to the animating city of Italy[43]Vincenzo Monti dedicated these verses from his cantica In morte di Lorenzo Mascheroni ("On the death of Lorenzo Mascheroni") to the event:[41] [...] Reggio still does not forget that from its bosom / the spark broke out whence the lightning / of our freedom ran [...][44]Moreover, in Reggio Emilia, in August 1796, one of the first liberty pole had been planted.

[45] The proposal was followed despite controversy with the other cities of Emilia, which wanted the assembly organized in their own municipality;[39] the congress of 27 December took place then in the Reggio town hall designed by Bolognini which was to house the archive of the former duchy.

[46] Here, 110 delegates chaired by Carlo Facci approved the constitutional charter of the Cispadane Republic, including the territories of Bologna, Ferrara, Modena and Reggio Emilia.

[46] In another session, dated 30 December 1796, the congress had approved a motion, amidst shower of applause such was the fervor of the delegates, which read:[49] [...] Bologna, Ferrara, Modena and Reggio constitute a one and indivisible Republic for all relations, so that the four populations form only one people, one family, for all purposes, both past and future, no one except.

[...][50]In subsequent meetings, which always took place in the "hall of the congress centumvirate" of Reggio, many decisions were decreed and formalized, including the choice of the emblem of the newly formed republic.

Instead of the green, the Italian Jacobins favoured the blue of the French flag, while the members of the papacy preferred the yellow of the Papal States' banner.

[19] The congress's decision to adopt a green, white and red tricolour flag was then also greeted by a jubilant atmosphere, enthusiasm of the delegates, and by bursts of applause.

[45] The Italian flag was first displayed in public in Modena on February 12, 1797; to celebrate the event a procession was organized through the streets of the city, which went down in history with the name of "patriotic walk",[52] with exponents of the civic guard and the army who solemnly honoured it.

An episode that occurred on 16 January 1801, during the second Cisalpine Republic[78] was significant in that the Napoleonic officer Teodoro Lechi, in a clash with the Austrians in Trento during which a bridge over the Adige river was disputed, decided to burn the tricolour flags of the military unit to prevent them from falling into the hands of the enemy before surrendering.

The radical change in the arrangement of the colours was probably proposed by the Vice President of the Republic Francesco Melzi d'Eril, who perhaps wanted to communicate, even from a symbolic point of view, the end of a phase of the history of Italy.

The Italian tricolour waved for the first time in the history of the Risorgimento on 11 March 1821 in the Cittadella of Alessandria, during the revolutions of 1820s, after the oblivion caused by the restoration of the absolutist monarchical regimes.