Conventional Long Name: | Republic of Crema |
Common Name: | Crema |
Common Languages: | Lombard |
Era: | French Revolutionary Wars |
Status: | Sister Republic |
Empire: | the First French Republic |
Status Text: | Client state of France |
Government Type: | Republic |
Year Start: | 1797 |
Date Start: | March 28 |
Year End: | 1797 |
Life Span: | 1797 |
Event End: | Amalgamated Into the Cisalpine Republic |
Date End: | July 10 |
P1: | Domini di Terraferma |
Flag P1: | Flag of Republic of Venice (1659-1675).svg |
S1: | Cisalpine Republic |
Flag S1: | Flag of the Repubblica Cisalpina.svg |
Capital: | Crema |
Religion: | Roman Catholicism |
Today: | Italy |
The Republic of Crema (Republega Cremasca; Italian: Repubblica Cremasca) was a revolutionary municipality[1] in Lombardy, which was created when the French Army entered Crema on 28 March 1797. It ruled the local affairs of the city and its environs, which previously were a Venetian exclave in the Duchy of Milan. The municipality entered then into the Cisalpine Republic in July 1797.
See main article: Fall of the Republic of Venice. The city of Crema and its surroundings had been annexed by the Republic of Venice since 1449, and had been ruled by a Venetian podestà for more than three centuries. On 28 March 1797, a troop of French dragoons entered and occupied the city without facing any resistance[2] and arrested the last Venetian magistrate, the duke Zan Battista Contarini.[3]
A new municipality was formed to control the city, which was composed mostly of small landowners and local nobles. They proclaimed the new Republic of Crema, that had the control of the town and the territories previously belonging to the province of Crema.
The small revolutionary republic had a short life. Three months later, on 29 July 1797, its territory merged with the Cisalpine Republic and legally annexed to it on the base of the Treaty of Campo Formio, becoming part of the Adda department and later on the Alto Po one.
Nowadays, the territory of the former Republic of Crema goes from the municipality of Spino d'Adda (east) to the Castelleone one.
The republic used a simple white flag with the coat of arms.