Having reached the Adda to take back the Gera d'Adda, Louis XII of France had two bridges built at Cassano: the cavalry crossed by one, the infantry by the other. Then he ordered them destroyed, so that his soldiers should have no way of retreating. On the fourteenth of May 1509, in front of the Mirabello farmstead at the gates of Agnadello, the French vanguard found the Venetian rearguard under Bartolomeo d'Alviano; from Pandino he was ordered not to attack but to fall back, and Alviano attacked anyway. Towards four in the afternoon it began to pour with rain, and the Venetian infantry, already surrounded by the enemy cavalry, had no way out.
The battle cost Venice almost all its mainland dominion. A few days earlier the Venetians had taken and sacked Treviglio, and that sack had been a mistake: many soldiers deserted to go and sell the loot. Agnadello, three thousand seven hundred and fifty-seven inhabitants in the province of Cremona, lies on a flat plain crossed by spring-fed ditches and by the river Tormo; it is first mentioned as a Castrum in a decree of the emperor Henry III of 1046.
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📅 Every year, on 8 May; on 5 August, Our Lady of the Snows, recalling the 1509 battle
Agnadello celebrates Saint Victor on 8 May, in the church dedicated to him. On 5 August, the community still celebrates, at the site, Our Lady of the Snows, in memory of the events tied to the famous battle fought here in 1509.
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Outside Agnadello, but an easy day trip away.
