The canton was founded in 1798 with the slogan Liberi e svizzeri (Italian for Freemen and Swiss) as a means of remaining a part of Switzerland, rather than being annexed to the Cisalpine client republic.
In 1795 the William V, Prince of Orange-Nassau, lost all his possessions in the Low Countries because of the rise of the Batavian Republic, a client state of the French Republic.
With the formation of French client republics after 1795, the revolutionary tricolour was adopted more widely, by
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With the Treaty of Campo Formio, the Holy Roman Empire ceded the Austrian Netherlands to France and Northern Italy was turned into several French "Sister Republics".