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 Mali original flag was adopted on April 4, 1959, when Mali joined the Mali Federation. This flag was the same, except the golden stripe had a human stick figure, a "kanaga", in black, with arms raised to the sky. The figure was removed due to the opposition, in a country whose population is 90% Muslim, of Islamic fundamentalists (see Aniconism in Islam, the belief against making pictures of the human figure). Flag of Mali The national flag of Mali (French: "Drapeau du Mali") is a tricolour with three equal vertical stripes. From the hoist (the place where the flagpole meets the