In the year 1176, at Legnano, fifteen miles from Milan, the armies of the League and Empire met in decisive battle, Barbarossa nothing doubting of his success against mere armed citizens; but the spirit of the men of Crema survived in the ‘Company of Death’, a bodyguard of Milanese knights sworn to protect their _carroccio_, or sacred cart, or else to fall beside it. Upon the _carroccio_ was raised a figure of Christ with arms outstretched, beneath his feet an altar, while from a lofty pole hung the banner of St. Ambrose, patron saint of Milan. When the battle opened the first terrific onslaught of German cavalry broke the Milanese lines; but the Company of Death, reckless in their resolve, rallied the waverers and turned defence into attack. In the ensuing struggle the Emperor was unhorsed, and, as the rumour spread through the ranks that he had been killed, the Germans broke, and their retreat became a wild, unreasoning rout that bore their commander back on its tide, unable to stem the current, scarcely able to save himself. Such was the battle of Legnano, worthy to be remembered not as an isolated twelfth-century victory of one set of forces against another, but as one of the first very definite advances in the great campaign for liberty that is still the battle of the world. At Venice in the following year the Hohenstaufen acknowledged his defeat and was reconciled to the Church; while by the ‘Perpetual Peace of Constance’ signed in 1183 he granted to the communes of North Italy ‘all the royal rights (regalia) which they had ever had or at the moment enjoyed’. Such rights--coinage, the election of officials and judges, the power to raise and control armies, to impose and exact taxes--are the pillars on which democracy must support her house of freedom. Yet since ‘freedom’ to the mediaeval mind too often implied the right to oppress some one else or maintain a state of anarchy, too much stress must not be laid on the immediate gains. North Italy in the coming centuries was to fall again under foreign rule, her ‘communes’ to abuse and betray the rights for which the Company of Death had risked their lives: yet, in spite of this taint of ignorance and treachery, the victory of Legnano had won for Europe something infinitely precious, the knowledge that tyrants could be overthrown by the popular will and feudal armies discomfited by citizen levies. [Sidenote: Henry ‘the Lion’]