Abstract

For the first time in Ukrainian historiography the Battle of Legnano 29 May1176 inthe context of European origin and formation of the professional army has been analyzed in this study. In this battle the first European professional military formation, equipped and trained by the city and commune of Milan, defeated the mighty army, formed with well-armed and prepared German knights. This army was headed by the Emperor Frederick I Barbaros, who was an experienced commander. Particular attention is paid to the reasons of emergence of the first professional formations and infantry evolution, which allowed to resist armored knightly cavalry. The lack of necessary resources and the inability to advance sufficient number of mighty men forced the Italian cities-communes, among which Milan was one of the largest centers of arms crafts at the end of the twelfth century, to form the army, which could be manned with the free segments of the population of not noble origin and resist knightly cavalry. In practice, this led to formation of the armored infantry, which returned to modernized ancient hoplites tactics. Readiness of such infantry which demonstrated its feasibility in the Battle of Legnano required resources and professionalism. The problems of maintaining and training of professional formations led to the search for reduction of their strength due to the efficiency of technical innovations, one of which was the use of chariots bound round with metal and manned with crew armed with fighting scythes - hizarmams. But this experiment did not justify itself or may have been devised by the later Milan chronicler Galvani Fiamma. The battle of Legnano initiated hired professional contingent of condottieres, which were widely used in Italian cities-states in the XIII-XV centuries