1782, wore a uniform of this shade, that is a green outfit with red and white gorget patches. 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. The white and red were also peculiar to the very ancient municipal coat of arms of Milan and were also common on the Lombard military uniforms of the time. It was therefore no coincidence that the green, white and red tricolour was chosen as an insignia by the Lombard Legion. The first official approval of the Italian flag by the authorities was as a military insignia of the Lombard Legion and not yet as the national flag of a sovereign Italian state. 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. 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. As shown in the "Prospectus of the formation of the Lombard Legion", each cohort was equipped with: Flags of the same style were also assigned to the other five established cohorts. All six banners are still extant, five being exhibited at the Museum of Military History in Vienna and one at the Musée de l'Armée in Paris. With the succession of Napoleon's military victories and the consequent birth of republics favourable to revolutionary ideals, in many Italian cities, red, white and green were adopted on military banners as a symbol of social and political innovation. The war flag of the Italian Legion From 16 to 18 October 1796, in Modena, a congress was held in which the delegates of Bologna, Ferrara, Modena and Reggio Emilia participated, which decreed the birth of the Cispadane Republic, with lawyer Antonio Aldini as president. The congress also deliberated the constitution of an Italian Legion, later renamed Cispadane Legion, which was to participate together with France in a war against the Austrians. 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