[4] It was Cosimo de' Medici's most important foreign policy decision to end the traditional rivalry between his Florence and Sforza's Milan.

[5] The League was the coherent development of the Peace of Lodi, born from the realisation that none of the regional Italian states, despite the long and bloody wars in the preceding hundred years, was in a position to assume hegemony in the north, let alone in the peninsula.

The League therefore provided a détente, founded on mutual suspicion and fear of France rather than on collaboration, which might have led to the formation of a broader, unified state.

[6] The League also enabled the creation of the first permanent embassies amongst the states of the Italian peninsula,[7] in order to monitor compliance with the terms prohibiting supporting exiled dissidents,[8] with De Officio Legati — what seems to be the first treatise on ambassadorship — written by Ermolao Barbaro in Venice in 1490, after he had served the Serenìsima in Burgundy and Milan.

[11] As a result of the détente,[citation needed] unlike France, Spain, and England, Italy did not coalesce into a single monarchy in the Middle Ages, and was consequently left vulnerable to invasion from more powerful neighbours.