Italian war paintings

On April 3, 1559, King Henry II of France and King Philip II of Spain signed the Treaty of Cato-Cambrezzi in Cambrai, ending the Italian War.

The Anglo-French Peace Treaty stipulated that France could redeem Calais from Britain within eight years. The Peace Treaty of West France stipulated that France abandoned most of the areas it had occupied since 1552, retaining only the three bishops of Thule, Metz, and Verdun in Lorraine, and only the five fortresses of Turin, Chieri, Pinerolo, Kiwasso, and Asti in Italy; the Kingdom of Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, Milan and parts of central Italy were ruled by Spain; the Duchy of Savoy, which was conquered by France in 1536, was restored; Corsica was merged into Genoa, and Siena and Piacenza were merged into the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. With the signing of the peace treaty, Spain replaced France and took control of Italy.

The Italian Wars (Italian: Guerre d'Italia del XVI secolo), also known as the Habsburg-Valois Wars, were a series of wars fought between 1494 and 1559, including most of the Italian city-states, the Papal States, the major countries of Western Europe (France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, England, and Scotland), and the Ottoman Turkish Empire. The war originated in a dispute between the Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of Naples, and quickly turned into a military conflict between the participating countries for power and territory, with alliances, anti-alliances, and frequent severance and betrayal.

This war was originally launched by Italy's strong neighbors to slaughter and divide up Italy, but later evolved into a war for European hegemony.