Tricolour (flag) orange-white-blue design of the Prince's Flag ("Prinsenvlag", predecessor of the flags of the Netherlands and Luxembourg), used from 1579 by William I of Orange-Nassau in the Eighty Years' War, establishing the independence of the Dutch Republic from the Spanish Empire. Though not the first tricolour flag, one of the most famous, known as "Le Tricolore", is the blue, white and red (whence also called "Le Bleu-Blanc-Rouge") flag of France adopted in the French Revolution. With the formation of French client republics after 1795, the revolutionary tricolour was exported and adopted more widely in Europe, by the Republic of Alba 1796
Newfoundland Tricolour flags of England, Ireland, France and the United States, but make no mention of a pink, white and green tricolour. Sometime thereafter the "Pink, White and Green" tricolour appeared and, with the support of the clergy, was adopted by other Catholic groups in the St. John's and surrounding area in the 1880s and 1890s. It has been suggested on some websites and commercial tourist items that the Irish flag was based on the "Pink, White and Green" - the basis for this claim being that Irish nationalist, Thomas Francis Meagher, was the son of Newfoundland-born mayor of Waterford, Ireland, Thomas