This Day in History (May 29th) Legnano #history

Añadido: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]On this day in history, May 29th, 1176, at the Battle of Legnano, the Lombard League defeats Emperor Frederick I.

[00:00:09]Included in the following is an excerpt from the 1944 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica going over the history of the town.

[00:00:15]Legnano, a town of Lombardy, Italy, province of Milan, 17 mi northwest of it by rail, 682 ft above sea level.

[00:00:23]Population from 1936, 31,959.

[00:00:27]The Church of St. Magno, built in the style of Bramante by Lampugnano 1504 to 1529, contains an altarpiece by Luini. There are also remains of a castle of the Visconti. Legnano is the seat of an important cotton, >> [music] >> especially cotton finishing, and silk industries with machine shops, boiler works, and dyeing.

[00:00:49]Close by, the Lombard League defeated [music] Frederick Barbarossa in 1176. A monument to commemorate the battle was erected on the field in [music] 1876.

[00:00:58]Another by Butti, erected in 1900, is in the Piazza Federico Barbarossa.

[00:01:05]The battle is of significance [music] in military history as foreshadowing the end of the great era of cavalry supremacy.

[00:01:12]Frederick, in the spring of 1176, sending [music] for reinforcements from South Germany, planned a determined effort to crush the League of the Guelph cities. [music] With a small body of knights, he marched to Como to meet these reinforcements and then sought [music] to regain his headquarters at Pavia by a Seregno road, the enemy stronghold of Milan.

[00:01:34]Meanwhile, however, the Milanese [music] had rallied to them large contingents of their allies and quitting Milan, placed themselves astride Frederick's route.

[00:01:43]>> [music] >> He attacked at once, despite his inferiority of numbers, and his cavalry scattered the Lombard cavalry.

[00:01:50]Then, pressing on to attack the infantry mass, which lay in the rear.

[00:01:54]But their charge was brought to a standstill [music] by the close-knit ranks of the Milanese pikemen.

[00:02:00]Their resistance allowed their own cavalry to rally, [music] and these, reinforced by the arrival of a fresh body from Brescia, charged the flank of Frederick's cavalry.

[00:02:10]Frederick himself was unhorsed, and his troops thereupon broke and fled. [music] The small body of infantry furnished by the citizen militia of Como were slaughtered or captured without difficulty. Frederick, however, managed [music] to escape and reach Pavia.

[00:02:26]On the Lombard side, the battle had given an illustration of the possibilities of a staunch infantry body as a stable pivot to the mobile arm.