Wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines: Troops of the Lombard League defeated forces of the Holy Roman Empire near Legnano in present-day Italy.

The Guelphs and Ghibellines were factions supporting the Pope (Guelphs) and the Holy Roman Emperor (Ghibellines) in the Italian city-states of Central and Northern Italy during the Middle Ages. During the 12th and 13th centuries, rivalry between these two parties dominated political life across medieval Italy. The struggle for power between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire arose with the Investiture Controversy, which began in 1075 and ended with the Concordat of Worms in 1122.

The Lombard League was an alliance of cities formed in 1167, and supported by the popes, to counter the attempts by the Hohenstaufen Holy Roman emperors to establish direct royal administrative control over the cities of the Kingdom of Italy after many decades of de facto local self-governance.

The battle of Legnano was a battle between the imperial army of Frederick Barbarossa and the troops of the Lombard League on 29 May 1176, near the town of Legnano, in present-day Lombardy, Italy. Although the presence of the enemy nearby was already known to both sides, they suddenly met without having time to plan any strategy.

The Holy Roman Empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation after 1512, was a polity in Central and Western Europe, usually headed by the Holy Roman Emperor. It developed in the Early Middle Ages, and lasted for a millennium until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars. For most of its history the Empire comprised the entirety of the modern countries of Germany, Czechia, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Slovenia, and Luxembourg, most of north-central Italy and southern Belgium, and large parts of modern-day east France and west Poland.