Battle of Legnano
| date | May 29, 1176 |
|---|---|
| place | at Legnano |
| output | Decisive Lombard victory |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
|
Friedrich I. Barbarossa |
|
| Troop strength | |
| approx. 3,000 | approx. 3,500 |
| losses | |
|
heavy |
heavy |
The Battle of Legnano took place on May 29, 1176 about 30 km northwest of Milan . The northern Italian municipalities united in the Lombard League (“Lega Lombarda”) defeated the army of Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa .
background
After the end of the Roman Empire and the Great Migration , the Empire of the Franks emerged in Europe , whose King Charlemagne was appointed Emperor by the Pope in 800 . It roughly comprised the present-day states of France and Germany , the Benelux states, Switzerland , Austria , northern and central Italy , parts of Hungary and a small part of north-eastern Spain . It saw itself as the successor to the Western Roman Empire, which fell in 476 . Shortly after the death of Charlemagne, however, it split into a western and an eastern empire, from which France and Germany later emerged. A kingdom of Italy also existed for a short time, but it was conquered in 962 by the East Franconian-German King Otto I , who was then crowned emperor. Since the emperors were mostly absent and the Alps were an arduous obstacle, the northern Italian municipalities achieved far-reaching autonomy and, from the 11th century onwards, fought against imperial domination. Over time, Milan in particular gained supremacy over other municipalities, which complained about this to the emperor. After Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa wanted to renew the imperial authority at the Diet of Roncaglia near Piacenza by sending imperial potentas to the Italian communes, this was rejected by many communes, and revolts broke out, but were put down. In 1154 he devastated the city of Tortona , which was allied with Milan, and in 1162 Barbarossa destroyed Milan. In addition, a conflict between Pope and Emperor for supremacy in Europe had been simmering since 1077, in the context of which there was an ambivalent papal election in 1159. The representative of papal supremacy over the emperor, Pope Alexander III., Allied himself a. a. with the Lombard municipalities and mediated an alliance between the municipalities, the Lombard League.
The Lombard League
The otherwise regularly feuding northern Italian municipalities finally united to form the Lombards League for the purpose of the common struggle against the emperor. At a meeting near Pontida (between Bergamo and Lecco ) they swore to force the emperor to recognize their rights by force of arms. In 1174 Emperor Friedrich I Barbarossa came to Italy to put an end to the uprisings of the communes. First he besieged the Piedmontese city of Alessandria , which got its name in honor of Pope Alexander III. had received. Pope Alexander had allied himself with the Lombard League because he felt threatened by the German Emperor, who also wanted to see the city of Rome as the origin of his imperial dignity in the empire. In addition, Rome had already belonged to the Carolingian Empire under Charlemagne . The emperor urgently needed additional troops from across the Alps in order to be able to survive the upcoming decisive battle against the Lombards. At a meeting in Chiavenna in early 1176, however, Frederick's most important vassal, Heinrich the Lion , Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, refused to come to his military aid. Thus the emperor had hardly more than 3,000 men with whom he had to compete against the numerically equally strong Italians. The decisive dispute then took place on May 29, 1176 near Legnano.
The battle of Legnano
The Battle of Legnano developed from a local episode. Frederick I had taken a break with his troops in Seprio near Legnano. The peasants in the area took up arms and at dawn pounced on the far inferior imperial vanguard at Borsano. A short time later, the emperor personally reached the scene with his cavalry. The Legnanos peasants then withdrew to their “ Carroccio ”, a cart pulled by oxen on which the commune's warrior sanctuary was located (to be compared with today's troop flag ). While the peasants could not withstand the imperial cavalry and some of them fled to Milan, the rest of the foot troops and the small local cavalry formed a phalanx . The first lines were immediately brutally crushed by the imperial troops, but then a defiant fighting spirit awoke among the Lombards , which made them fight almost to the point of total annihilation. In the meantime, however, the best riders from Brescia and Milan, as well as fresh infantry, had arrived. These attacked the flank of the imperial army in the early afternoon. The decisive blow was achieved by the riders from Brescia, who killed the bearer of the imperial regalia and forced the emperor to flee. This incident also unsettled the other troops who fled towards Ticino .
Further development
Defeated militarily, Frederick I was forced to give up his support for the antipope and to make peace with Pope Alexander, whom he recognized in the Peace of Venice in 1177. In the Peace of Constance in 1183, the emperor also recognized the "internal autonomy " of the Italian communes, which in turn accepted the formal "sovereignty" of the emperor.
The diplomatic clarification of Italian affairs then gave the emperor the opportunity to deal with Heinrich the Lion, who finally had his two duchies stripped of his two duchies in Gelnhausen in 1180 and who had to surrender after an imperial journey the following year.
Emperor Friedrich II. , Who lived in Sicily for many years and created the most modern civil service state of his time, tried again in 1237 to bring northern Italy under his control ( Battle of Cortenuova ). In 1249 the Bologna militias beat his son Enzio of Sardinia near Fossalta and imprisoned him for life. With the death of Frederick in 1250 and the battle of Tagliacozzo in 1268, the rule of the Hohenstaufen in Italy ended.
In southern Italy, subsequently, the Spanish translated Aragonese found in central Italy, consolidated Papal States with the inviolable temporal power of the Popes, while the free northern Italian States evolved from the now independent, democratic partially municipalities of northern Italy, which later support of the Italian Renaissance were .
Importance in the modern age
The Battle of Legnano gained a certain importance during the Italian unification movement ( Risorgimento ). The fourth stanza of the battle song of the Italian freedom movement Fratelli d'Italia , written in 1847, refers to the battle of Legnano. After the popular uprisings and the war of 1848 , Giuseppe Verdi composed the opera La battaglia di Legnano , which premiered in January 1849. In 1900 a monument was erected in Legnano to the legendary victor of the Battle of Legnano, Alberto da Giussano . In the 1980s, the Italian politician Umberto Bossi founded the separatist party “Lega Lombarda”, which later merged with the “Liga Veneta” to form Lega Nord . This party leads Alberto da Giussano in the coat of arms.
Representations
The event inspired, among others, the Italian history painter Amos Cassioli (1832-1891), whose painting entitled Battle of Legnano is preserved in Florence in the Gallery of Modern Art in the Palazzo Pitti .
literature
- Hans Delbrück : History of the art of war in the context of political history. Volume 3. De Gruyter, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-11-016985-1 , p. 355 ff.
- Karl Hadank: On the controversy about Legnano. In: Historische Vierteljahresschrift 11 (1908), p. 517 ff.
- Wilhelm von Giesebrecht : History of the German Empire. Volume 5, part 2. Schwetschke, Braunschweig 1888, p. 785 ff.