The Latgalian Flag Flying on the Mast for the National Holiday

Greetings to all on Latvia's 91st birthday! Red-and-white flags are flying on all buildings in Latvia, on the November embankment in Riga and on the castle tower. I decided to look into the history of the national flag's creation, as well as where these colours came from and who were their first bearers.

The design of the national flag was created based on historical evidence from the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle, which tells of the courageous battles of the tribes that inhabited the Latvian territories in the 13th century; and on 15 June 1921, by resolution of the Constitutional Assembly, the carmine-white-carmine flag was declared the Flag of the Latvian State.

The chronicle records the fact that in connection with the Zemgalian chieftain Nameisis's attack on Riga in 1280, the unit of the Cēsis Commandery arrived on the battlefield with a carmine-white-carmine flag. In the early 13th century, a large part of the Cēsis region was included within the territories inhabited by Latgalians. In what is now the eastern part of Vidzeme and in Latgale, there lived at that time a Baltic people - the Latgalians - who are mentioned in written sources from the 9th century.

The use of the carmine-white-carmine colours, with deliberate emphasis on their Latvian significance, is usually associated with the early 1870s. Writings on the history of the Latvian flag mention that these colours, based on the information of the Rhymed Chronicle, were adopted as their own already in 1870 by Latvian students who began to gather around Atis Kronvalds (1837–1875) at the so-called Tartu Latvian literature evenings. It can be said with confidence that the information about the flag, grounded in the Rhymed Chronicle, was sufficiently convincing to the intelligentsia that later, when the carmine-white-carmine colours were put forward as the colours of the Latvian national flag, they were accepted as a matter of principle and further promoted among the people with solid argumentation.

Sources used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latgalians
http://wapedia.mobi/lv/Latvijas_Republikas_karogs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Latvia
http://www.segewoldiana.sigulda.lv/vesture/13/latgali.htm
http://www.mfa.gov.lv/lv/Jaunumi/Publiska-Diplomatija/karogs/izstade/raksts-geneze/