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
Flag of France However, he insisted that he would accept the throne only on the condition that the tricolour be replaced by the white flag. As the tricolour had become a cherished national symbol, this demand proved impossible to accommodate. Plans to restore the monarchy were adjourned and ultimately dropped, and France has remained a republic, with the tricolour flag, ever since. The Vichy régime, which dropped the word "republic" in favour of "the French state", maintained the use of the "tricolore", but Philippe Pétain used as his personal standard a version of the flag with, in the white stripe, an axe made