Franco-Venetian victory 22,200 men The Battle of Marignano was the last major engagement of the War of the League of Cambrai and took place on 13–14 September 1515, near the town now called Melegnano, 16 km southeast of Milan.

It pitted the French army, composed of the best heavy cavalry and artillery in the world, led by Francis I, newly crowned King of France, against the Old Swiss Confederacy, whose mercenaries until that point were regarded as the best medieval infantry force in Europe.

[6] The prologue to the battle was an Alpine passage, in which Francis hauled pieces of artillery (72 huge cannons[7]) over new-made roads over the Col d'Argentière, a previously unknown route.

At Villafranca the French, led by Jacques de la Palice,[8] surprised and captured the Papal commander, Prospero Colonna, in a daring cavalry raid deep behind the allied lines (the Chevalier Bayard providing the impetus and expertise).

The main Swiss army retreated to Milan, while a large faction, tired of the war and eager to return home with the booty of years of successful campaigning, urged terms with the French.

The Swiss encountered Francis's forces at the little burnt-out village of Marignano on a plain dotted with vineyards, farm fields, small orchards, and pastures.

The French vanguard, under the joint command of Charles III, Duke of Bourbon and the Marshal Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, took possession of two shallow rises near San Giuliano.

Two kilometers to their rear, Francis I of France personally led a force of cavalry and 6,000 Landsknechts recruited from the Netherlands known as the Black Band of Gueldern.

At Marignano, the battle began with a “forlorn hope” detaching from the Swiss vanguard phalanx, and charging the grand battery in front of the King’s position in the center with lowered pikes.

Furious French cavalry charges, often led by the king himself, with Bayard at his side, succeeded time and again in throwing back temporary Swiss gains.

Again, the defending German landsknechts were driven back; but the massed fire of the guns at point blank range prevented the Swiss from pushing farther forward.

Their attacks repulsed everywhere, their ranks in bloody shambles, they grudgingly gave ground and withdrew by forming a single gigantic open square, maintaining extraordinary discipline in their retreat.[9]: p.

Marignano established the superiority of French cast bronze artillery and gendarme cavalry over the heretofore invincible phalanx tactics of the Swiss infantry.

After lengthy negotiations, a peace treaty between the Thirteen Cantons and their allies (abbot and city of St. Gallen, Three Leagues, Valais, Mulhouse) on one hand and Francis as both King of France and Duke of Milan on the other was signed in Fribourg on 29 November 1516.

In the treaty of Fribourg, known as "Perpetual Peace" (Ewiger Frieden, Paix perpétuelle), the Swiss Confederacy renounced all claims to the protectorate of Milan.

[15] Only the Ossola valley was passed back to Milan, while the other transmontane bailiwicks of the Swiss Confederacy remain part of Switzerland to this day, since 1803 as the canton Ticino (while the Three Leagues lost control of the Valtellina in 1797).

It opened a period of close ties between the Swiss Confederacy with France over the next three centuries (while at the same time Switzerland moved away from its association with the Holy Roman Empire).

[18] Also at the meeting in Bologna was Leonardo da Vinci, whom Francis persuaded to accompany him back to France, and granted him the Clos Lucé manor and a pension of 7,000 scudi.

Commemorating the event are a bas-relief of the Battle of Marignano by Pierre Bontemps, which decorates Francis I's tomb at Saint-Denis; a painting by Antoine Caron for Fontainebleau (now at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa); and the most famous musical composition of Clément Janequin, the chanson La guerre.

The march Marignan (Marignano in the French language), composed in 1939 by Jean Daetwyler, is the official orchestral hymn of the Swiss canton Valais.