Italy fairly decisively exited the grand plans of European monarchs and politicians after the last Italian War, which ended in 1559. In the years between the end of the "Italian Wars" and the start of the Thirty Years War, Spanish (that us to say Hapsburg) influence in Italy consolidated itself very strongly on the peninsula. The French monarchy, on the other hand, had formally renounced claims to the Duchy of Milan which had been one of the principal claims fueling conflicts over the previous sixty years. The loss of this claim implied the renouncing of a motivation to consider Italy an area of direct power projection.

While the political stratagems of the French monarchy might have continued to involve the Italian peninsula even without a formal claim on Milan, between 1562 and 1598 the Kingdom of France and the claimants to its throne would be dragged into the destructive internal conflict known as the French Wars of Religion. Power projection in Italy or elsewhere would be made nearly impossible during the Wars of Religion, and French decision-makers would indeed not feel it necessary or advantageous to again enter into a large-scale foreign conflict until its formal entry in the late phase of the Thirty Years War in 1635. And even upon entry into this conflict, Italy would continue to play a very marginal role for France.

Italy, a staunchly catholic territory almost totally under both direct and indirect Habsburg control, had not been involved in the disputes which had had set off the Thirty Years War. Even in the early and middle phases of the conflict, when French rulers sought to undermine Catholic and Hapsburg power in Central Europe by supporting and subsidizing Protestant states, there were no real challengers to Catholic or Hapsburg authority that emerged in Italy which the French might be interested in supporting or subsidizing in a similar manner.

Italian political leaders' disinterest in the protestant cause is symptomatic of Italy's peripheral role in the European social, political, and economic landscape. As Europe's northern regions grew more economically and socially vibrant, Italy instead remained largely unchanged and stagnant, with Italian decision-makers last to learn of and adopt new ideas, and thus an uninteresting landscape for the great games of Europe's monarchs.

Italy was also in a way victim of its own past. Until being overtaken by Atlantic-facing regions in the 16th century Italy had also been the most economically prosperous and socially innovative region of Western Europe, and indeed it is no coincidence that the Papacy was (and is) seated in Rome. But being host to the Papacy would ultimately mean that any challenge to the centrality of the church in society and politics was not only a direct challenge to established dogma, but a direct challenge to a neighbor. An Italian state had learned what it meant to not confirm in religious affairs: the Republic of Venice historically subordinated religious figures to the Republic's secular institutions, and this practice had been one of the grievances leading to the War of the League of Cambrai in 1516, the phase of the Italian Wars which would permanently cripple Italy's most powerful state. Indeed the Papal State would be the only state in Italy which would emerge from the Italian Wars with its area of territorial control expanded, its political influence heightened, and its social leadership uncontested. Where else would the counter-reformation have taken place if not in Italy?

Had the War of the League of Cambrai occurred as a phase of the Thirty Years War and not as a phase of the Italian Wars, maybe the Venetians would have found support in the Protestant cause (and in French subsidies). Instead, the Italian Wars had set off the trend whereby the future of Europe would be decided by its large nation-states (it is neat that Italy itself would so clearly demonstrate the European trend that would cause its own demise) and when the Thirty Years War the following century would confirm the same, Italy had already spent nearly a century at Europe's margins.

While we are on the topic of the Venetians (as well as the topic of Italian events anticipating European trends) another factor mitigating pressures born out of religious tension is the Republic's authorities historic indifference to religion. Italy's most powerful and second-largest state had hosted Lutheran communities since the early 16th century, and even after the introduction of religious censorship following the War of Cambrai the Republic's ruling aristocracy continued to apply a policy of benign disinterest to matters of religious conformism. This was done on the one hand to not harm Venice's florid publishing industry, and on the other to not offend the myriad religious and ethnic communities hosted in Venice upon which the city's increasingly precarious mercantile prosperity relied. Thus in what was probably the only Italian State that could develop a willingness to challenge the Catholic socio-religious order (and indeed had a precedent of doing so) the conditions for the rise of religious fervor and politicization were not present. What's more, the devastation wrought upon Venice's German trade parters by the Thirty Years War would have an enormously detrimental effect on the Republic's economy and tax revenue, and this vulnerability would mean that by the tail end of the Thirty Years War the Venetian government would find itself very much preoccupied with its own conflict that went on to last nearly thirty years: The Candian War against the Ottoman Empire. As appetizing as the prospect might be to modern readers speculating on the grand plans (or lack thereof) by the Republic's government, conditions to jump into the war at the last minute to claim a slice of French subsidies and cripple the Papal States were simply not present.

Lastly, it is important to remember that the Thirty Years War did not leave Italy entirely untouched in terms of military campaigning. Upon France's formal entry into the Thirty Years War as a belligerent, the French opened fronts on all of the hexagon's land borders. In the southeast, the Duchy of Savoy acted as a French client state (the Savoyard Duke Victor Amadeus was married to Princess Marie Cristine, the French King's sister) and the Savoyards organized a successful containment of Spanish-held Lombardy before the Duke's freak death while cerebrating the successful campaigning season. The widowed Duchess Marie Cristine would then navigate a torrid internal conflict that would see her brother-in-law Thomas Francis conclude secret negotiations with the court of Madrid and challenge her regency at the head of a Spanish army raised in Milan. Marie Cristine and her young son would have to flee the Savoyard capital of Turin in the spring of 1640 as it was besieged by Spanish forces, but she would return that same autumn as the Marquis d'Harcourt arrived with a French relief force. The following year French forces would repel a couple of additional Spanish incursions in Piedmont, eventually bringing Thomas Francis to agree to renounce his claim on the throne. Without a motivated leader in Italy and unwilling to commit to additional fronts in the late phases of the war, Spanish operations in Italy ceased with Thomas Francis' demobilization.

Marie Cristine revealed herself a formidable ruler, and was successful in securing her son's succession to an independent Savoyard state. She was unwilling to commit Savoyard forces against the Spanish Empire in spite of pressures by both her brother (the King of France) and French commanders in Italy. She ultimately saw this difficult position as necessary to both avoid drawing attention to Savoy as a possible theater of war and eventual bargaining chip, as well as to avoid spreading malcontent among her own court and subjects. Lacking a leader or political faction interested in participating in the conflict, Northwestern Italy did not develop into a significant theater during the late phases of the Thirty Years War.