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Republic of Alba Repubblica di Alba | |||||||||
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| 1796 | |||||||||
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| Capital | Alba | ||||||||
| Common languages | Italian,French[citation needed] | ||||||||
| Religion | Roman Catholicism[citation needed] | ||||||||
| Government | Republic | ||||||||
| Historical era | French Revolutionary Wars | ||||||||
• Established | 26 April 1796 | ||||||||
• Disestablished | 28 April 1796 | ||||||||
| Currency | French franc Sardinian lira[citation needed] | ||||||||
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| Today part of | Italy | ||||||||
TheRepublic of Alba (Italian:Repubblica di Alba) was arevolutionarymunicipality proclaimed on 26 April 1796, inAlba,Piedmont, when the town was taken by theFrench army. The municipality had a very short life of only 2 days because, with theArmistice of Cherasco on 28 April 1796, KingVictor Amadeus III of Sardinia was given back the civil control of allPiedmont.
At the time the republic was proclaimed, Piedmont was the main part of theKingdom of Sardinia which, despite its name, had its core on the mainland;Turin was its capital city. The kingdom suffered a firstFrench Revolutionary invasion in April 1796: theMontenotte campaign. After a string of French victories, Italian patriot andJacobin Giovanni Antonio Ranza proclaimed a republic in the town ofAlba (therefore historically known as the 'Republic of Alba') as a replacement of the Sardinian monarchy on Piedmontese territory[1] on 25 or 26 April 1796. Ranza had been agitating for an independent Piedmontese republic ever since 1793; he saw such a state as a first step towards a republic encompassing all of Italy.[1] Ranza and his fellow rebels then presented an address to French generalNapoleon Bonaparte, calling on him to liberate the whole of Italy from 'tyranny'.[1] However, Bonaparte ignored their pleas, and wrote to theFrench Directory that the Piedmontese people were not politically ready, and that 'you should not count on a revolution in Piedmont.'[1]
French military commanders at the time had no interest in this project of an Italiansister republic, and it already ended on 28 April 1796 with theArmistice of Cherasco, which gave most of Piedmont (except forAlessandria,Coni andTortone, which were annexed by France) back to the Sardinian king, who had to withdraw from theFirst Coalition. The final peaceTreaty of Paris on 15 May 1796 led to loss of theduchy of Savoy,Nice, Tende and Beuil to France, and guaranteed military access to French troops crossing Piedmontese soil. The ultrashort-lived Republic of Alba would serve as the laterPiedmontese Republic's predecessor.[citation needed]
The flag of the Republic of Alba was designed by the jacobin Giovanni Antonio Ranza, who said that the blue and red were for France while the orange is taken to the tree of the Piedmont's shield. The orange was also the personal colour of Mr. Ranza: he fantasised his surnameRanza as a corrupted form of Italianarancia, meaning 'orange', in order to avoid the actual meaning ofranza in his ownPiedmontese language, which is "scythe". The blue, red and orange flag existed in both horizontal and verticaltricolour versions, and it is used nowadays on some occasions by the region Piedmont.[citation needed]
| Sister republics |
|  Europe at the height of Napoleon's Empire | |||||||||||
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| Napoleonic creations |
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