Italy experienced a series of conflict between 1494 to 1559.
Furthermore , the Italian city-states constantly engaged one another in bloody warfare , culminating in the Italian Wars of the 15th and 16th centuries that left them exhausted , with no one emerging as a dominant power.
The Italian Wars , often referred to as the Great Italian Wars or the Great Wars of Italy and sometimes as the Habsburg -- Valois Wars or the Renaissance Wars , were a series of conflicts from 1494 to 1559 that involved , at various times , most of the city-states of Italy , the Papal States , the Republic of Venice , most of the major states of Western Europe -LRB- France , Spain , the Holy Roman Empire , England , and Scotland -RRB- as well as the Ottoman Empire.
