How have historians/politicians used the Lombard League through Italian history?
The modern League is not original in seeking to use the exploits of the medieval League in support of its cause: precisely the same process occurred during the early stages of the Risorgimento. The Italian patriots who attempted to throw off Austrian rule in the 1830s and 1840s saw in the struggles of the Lombard League in the Middle Ages an earlier attempt to rid Italy of foreign dominion. During these years Italian historians, playwrights, poets and artists evoked medieval imagery in support of the cause of national self-determination. A recent study has counted no fewer than thirty major paintings from this period that depict aspects of the Lombard League, including six of the Pontida Oaths and ten of the Battle of Legnano. Many Italian patriots saw themselves as the modern equivalents of the Company of Death, and the Cinque Giornate at Milan (18-22 March, 1848) as a re-run of the Battle of Legnano. Verdi’s opera La Battaglia di Legnano, which was first performed in 1849 shortly aft
