Republic of Alba

Alba is a town and comune of Piedmont, Italy, in the province of Cuneo. It is considered the capital of the UNESCO Human Heritage hilly area of Langhe, and is famous for its white truffle, peach and wine production. The confectionery group Ferrero is based there.

HISTORY

Alba's origins date from before the Roman civilization, connected probably to the presence of Celtic and Ligurian tribes in the area.

The modern town occupies the site of ancient Alba Pompeia, the name given after being officially recognized as a town by the Roman consul Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo while constructing a road from Aquae Statiellae (Acqui) to Augusta Taurinorum (Turin). Alba was the birthplace of Publius Helvius Pertinax, briefly Roman emperor in 193.

After the fall of the Western Empire, the city was repeatedly sacked by Ostrogoths, Burgundians, Byzantines, Lombards, Franks, Hungarians and Saracens. In the 11th century it became a free commune (or city-state) and was a member of the Lombard League. Montferrat and the Visconti fought over the town; later it became a possession of the Gonzaga. Charles Emmanuel I of Savoyconquered it twice, while later France and Spain battled for its possession. The Treaty of Cherasco (1631) assigned Alba definitively to Savoy.

THEN, THE MICRONATION OF ALBA

The Republic of Alba was a revolutionary municipality proclaimed on 26 April 1796, in Alba, Piedmont, when the town was taken by the French army.

The Republic of Alba was a sister Republic, a satellite State of the First French Republic, of brief existence (from April 26 to 28, 1796). Proclaimed in the municipality of Alba, in Piedmont (today in the province of Cuneo), it was recovered by the Piedmontese two days after its proclamation. Subsequently, on April 19, 1801, the territory of the Republic was annexed by France.

It should not be confused with the Piedmontese Republic or the Subalpine Republic, two sister republics born in the immediately following years in Piedmont. Nor with the republic with the same name that was proclaimed by the partisans in the same locality on October 10, 1944, during the Second World War, and which was dissolved on November 2 of that same year.

After the arrival in Italy of the young General Bonaparte under the command of the Italian army and his victorious Montenotte battles (11-12 of April), Millesimo (April 13-14), and Dego (14- April 15), and those of Ceva and Mondovì (April 21), on April 26, 1796, the French troops arrived at the city of Alba, which they occupied, and where a revolutionary Council was set up led by Patriots Ignazio Bonafous and Giovanni Antonio Ranza.

The sister Republic of Alba was proclaimed, whose purposes were to be the basis for the Italian unification and the dissemination of the ideals of freedom represented by the French Revolution.

Few hours after the proclamation of the republic, Alba imposed strong contributions to the neighbors of neighboring communities, such as Guarene, Corneliano d'Alba and Castagnito, who accepted them, unlike those of Sommariva Perno, Vezza and Canale, who refused to contribute to Republican cause.

The Republic had an extraordinarily short life: on April 28, with the signature of the armistice of Cherasco, in the Salmatoris palace, Vitor Amadeo III of Savoia recovered Alba. According to the treaty, General Signoris entered the city and easily regained control. Ignazio Bonafous, a prisoner, in an attempt to save herself, wrote to the king to exonerate him from the accusations.

However, while Alba recovered, thus maintaining Turin's control, due to the defeat suffered by the king, he had to give the French the fortresses of Tortona, Alessandria, Cuneo and Ceva, allowing the free passage of the Bapoleonic troops by Piedmont to continue the war against Austria.

With the battle of Lodi, on May 10, 1796 and the defeat of Austrian general Jean Pierre de Beaulieu, Napoleon opened the way to the conquest of Milan. Finally, on May 15, by the Paris peace treaty, the county of Nice and the Duchy of Savoy, they went from the Kingdom of Sardinia to France.

Its flag was designed by Jacobin Giovanni Antonio Ranza, who said that the colors blue and red were from France while the orange is the one of the shield tree of the Piedmont. The flag has existed in two versions tricolor, horizontally and vertically, and is still used today in some occasions in the region of Piedmont.

Giovanni Antonio Ranza

Giovanni Antonio Ranza (Vercelli, January 19, 1741 - April 11, 1801) was an Italian presbyter and patriot.

Priest and professor of letters, after the outbreak of the French Revolution, became a supporter of revolutionary principles. He prepared a revolt in Vercelli; but, discovered, he was able to repair first in Switzerland (in Lugano) and later in France. In 1793 he created the Italian Political and Literary Monitor, one of the first French-speaking Italian newspapers. It sustained a Franco-Piedmont alliance against Austria. During the French campaign of 1796 in Piedmont, he organized a republican motion in Alba.

It was active during the "Jacobins" motions of 1796, during which he designed the red, blue and orange Republican tricolor (also called the Tricolor of Alba and today adopted for the gonfalone of the Piedmont Region). After the armistice of Cherasco repaired in Milan, where he directed the newspaper The Friend of the Italian People.

Natal house of Giovanni Ranza

He hoped the Church's return to the simplicity and purity of the gospel in which to reconcile the ideals of Christianity with those of the French Revolution. His conscience was however different from that of the most radical patriots; recalling the ideas of French physicists, he argued that the right of citizenship belonged only to those who were landowners . He also proposed the formation of a federation in Italy, as preparation for a unitary state which also included Canton Ticino, Corsica and Malta.

Recalling federalist ideas already expressed in the eighteenth century by thinkers such as Antonio Genovesi and Gian Francesco Galeani Napione, at the Concourse of Ideas launched in 1796 by the French Government in Milan, "Which of the Free Governments best fits to the happiness of Italy?" Ranza proposed a an idea of ​​an Italian confederation of autonomous republics with foreign, military and commercial foreign policy, to be decided at a General Congress of the Federated Republics, to reunite in Pisa, a city most easily reachable from all over Italy. In 1797 he published a brochure titled Vera idea of ​​Federalism in Milan, in which he perfected his proposal better, suggesting that every republic should send two representatives to the federal assembly.

MEDIA IN THE REPUBLIC OF ALBA

Today the micronation is extint, but the citizens of the village remember its history very well. They usually talk about that day, in which they were an independent country. The village has its won offical gazzette, la Gazzetta d'Alba. They publish daily news about the village, but very often they include articles related to the history of the Republic of Alba. The citizens of the village have a strong sence of nation because of his history.

BOOKS ABOUT THE REPUBLIC OF ALBA

A lot of writers have talked about the History of the Republic of Alba, not only because of the fact of being a country. Also, it is because, this Republic was a main issue during the Napoleonic wars, with the intervention of Giovanni Antonio Ranza.

After analyzing all this information about the past of the Republic of Alba, and thinking about the Sovereignty that this territory had in the past, I present the following questions, What if the Republic of Alba claims the same as the Principality of Seborga? Do they need another ''Giorgio Carbone'' for the Republic of Alba?

Perhaps yes, but in our history, we have also seen another Republic of Aba, the same name but a sovereignty applied in another territory, in this case, also in Italy.

THE OTHER REPUBLIC OF ALBA

The Republic of Alba was a state of brief duration that existed from 10 October to 2 November 1944 in Alba in northern Italy, as a local resistance against Italian fascism during World War II.

Its name reminds the Republic of Alba, Napoleonic sister Republic, Satellite State of the First French Republic, which existed in 1796 in Piedmont.