Lombard League

An alliance of rival cities that beat an emperor and invented a way of being Italian. The northern Italian communes had been governing themselves in practice for over a century when Frederick Barbarossa arrived in the 1150s determined to enforce imperial rights - taxes, appointment of officials, and the regalian powers a lawyer's assembly at Roncaglia declared his in 1158. He destroyed Milan in 1162, levelling it and dispersing its people. That was the mistake. Cities that had spent decades fighting each other formed the league in 1167, rebuilt Milan, and founded a new fortress town named Alessandria after the pope who backed them. At Legnano in 1176 their infantry militia broke the imperial cavalry, one of the few medieval battles where citizen foot soldiers defeated feudal horse. The Peace of Constance in 1183 conceded what mattered: the communes kept their internal self-government and the right to elect their own consuls, acknowledging imperial suzerainty in form. The league revived against Frederick II in the thirteenth century with less success. Its real legacy is the survival of the city-republic as a political form, which made the Italian Renaissance possible. The name was borrowed by a modern political party. Legnano is commemorated in the Italian national anthem. Milan, Cremona, Brescia, Bergamo, Mantua and Bologna were among its members. Venice joined for a time. The Peace of Constance was signed in 1183 in the imperial city of that name. The Carroccio, a war wagon carrying each city's standard, was the militia's rallying point at Legnano.

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