LEGNANO, a town of Lombardy, Italy, province of Milan, 17 m. N.W. of it by rail, 682 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1931) 29, 875. The church of S. Magno, built in the style of Bramante by G. Lampugnano (1504-1529), contains an altar-piece by Luini. There are also remains of a castle of the Visconti. Legnano is the seat of important cotton (especially cotton finishing) and silk industries, with machine-shops, boiler-works, and dyeing.
Close by, the Lombard League defeated Frederick Barbarossa in 1176. A monument to commemorate the battle was erected on the field in 1876; another by Butti erected in 1900 is in the Piazza Frederic° Barbarossa. The battle is of significance in mili tary history as foreshadowing the end of the great era of cavalry supremacy. Frederick, in the spring of 1176, sending for reinforce ments from south Germany, planned a determined effort to crush the league of the Guelf cities. With a small body of knights he marched to Como to meet these reinforcements and then sought to regain his headquarters at Pavia by a circuit round the enemy stronghold of Milan. Meanwhile, however, the Milanese had
rallied to them large contingents of their allies and, quitting Milan, placed themselves astride Frederick's route. He attacked at once, despite his inferiority of numbers, and his cavalry scattered the Lombard cavalry, then pressing on to attack the infantry mass which lay in rear. But their charge was brought to a standstill by the close-knit ranks of the Milanese pikemen. Their resistance allowed their own cavalry to rally, and these, reinforced by the arrival of a fresh body from Brescia, charged the flank of Fred erick's cavalry. Frederick himself was unhorsed, and his troops thereupon broke and fled. The small body of infantry—furnished by the citizen militia of Como—were slaughtered or captured without difficulty. Frederick, however, managed to escape and reach Pavia. On the Lombard side, the battle had given an illus tration of the possibilities of a staunch infantry body as a stable pivot to the mobile arm.