The Prince
by Nicolo Machiavelli
Chapter III
Concerning mixed principalities
But the difficulties occur in a new principality. And
firstly, if it be not entirely new, but is, as it were, a
member of a state which, taken collectively, may be called
composite, the changes arise chiefly from an inherent
difficulty which there is in all new principalities; for men
change their rulers willingly, hoping to better themselves,
and this hope induces them to take up arms against him who
rules: wherein they are deceived, because they afterwards
find by experience they have gone from bad to worse. This
follows also on another natural and common necessity, which
always causes a new prince to burden those who have
submitted to him with his soldiery and with infinite other
hardships which he must put upon his new acquisition.
In this way you have enemies in all those whom you have
injured in seizing that principality, and you are not able
to keep those friends who put you there because of your not
being able to satisfy them in the way they expected, and you
cannot take strong measures against them, feeling bound to
them. For, although one may be very strong in armed forces,
yet in entering a province one has always need of the
goodwill of the natives.
For these reasons Louis the Twelfth, King of France,
quickly occupied Milan, and as quickly lost it; and to turn
him out the first time it only needed Lodovico's own forces;
because those who had opened the gates to him, finding
themselves deceived in their hopes of future benefit, would
not endure the ill-treatment of the new prince. It is very
true that, after acquiring rebellious provinces a second
time, they are not so lightly lost afterwards, because the
prince, with little reluctance, takes the opportunity of the
rebellion to punish the delinquents, to clear out the
suspects, and to strengthen himself in the weakest places.
Thus to cause France to lose Milan the first time it was
enough for the Duke
Lodovico1 to raise
insurrections on the borders; but to cause him to lose it a
second time it was necessary to bring the whole world
against him, and that his armies should be defeated and
driven out of Italy; which followed from the causes above
mentioned.
Nevertheless Milan was taken from France both the first
and the second time. The general reasons for the first have
been discussed; it remains to name those for the second, and
to see what resources he had, and what any one in his
situation would have had for maintaining himself more
securely in his acquisition than did the King of France.
Now I say that those dominions which, when acquired, are
added to an ancient state by him who acquires them, are
either of the same country and language, or they are not.
When they are, it is easier to hold them, especially when
they have not been accustomed to self- government; and to
hold them securely it is enough to have destroyed the family
of the prince who was ruling them; because the two peoples,
preserving in other things the old conditions, and not being
unlike in customs, will live quietly together, as one has
seen in Brittany, Burgundy, Gascony, and Normandy, which
have been bound to France for so long a time: and, although
there may be some difference in language, nevertheless the
customs are alike, and the people will easily be able to get
on amongst themselves. He who has annexed them, if he wishes
to hold them, has only to bear in mind two considerations:
the one, that the family of their former lord is
extinguished; the other, that neither their laws nor their
taxes are altered, so that in a very short time they will
become entirely one body with the old principality.
But when states are acquired in a country differing in
language, customs, or laws, there are difficulties, and good
fortune and great energy are needed to hold them, and one of
the greatest and most real helps would be that he who has
acquired them should go and reside there. This would make
his position more secure and durable, as it has made that of
the Turk in Greece, who, notwithstanding all the other
measures taken by him for holding that state, if he had not
settled there, would not have been able to keep it. Because,
if one is on the spot, disorders are seen as they spring up,
and one can quickly remedy them; but if one is not at hand,
they are heard of only when they are great, and then one can
no longer remedy them. Besides this, the country is not
pillaged by your officials; the subjects are satisfied by
prompt recourse to the prince; thus, wishing to be good,
they have more cause to love him, and wishing to be
otherwise, to fear him. He who would attack that state from
the outside must have the utmost caution; as long as the
prince resides there it can only be wrested from him with
the greatest difficulty.
The other and better course is to send colonies to one or
two places, which may be as keys to that state, for it is
necessary either to do this or else to keep there a great
number of cavalry and infantry. A prince does not spend much
on colonies, for with little or no expense he can send them
out and keep them there, and he offends a minority only of
the citizens from whom he takes lands and houses to give
them to the new inhabitants; and those whom he offends,
remaining poor and scattered, are never able to injure him;
whilst the rest being uninjured are easily kept quiet, and
at the same time are anxious not to err for fear it should
happen to them as it has to those who have been despoiled.
In conclusion, I say that these colonies are not costly,
they are more faithful, they injure less, and the injured,
as has been said, being poor and scattered, cannot hurt.
Upon this, one has to remark that men ought either to be
well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves
of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot;
therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be
of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of
revenge.
But in maintaining armed men there in place of colonies
one spends much more, having to consume on the garrison all
the income from the state, so that the acquisition turns
into a loss, and many more are exasperated, because the
whole state is injured; through the shifting of the garrison
up and down all become acquainted with hardship, and all
become hostile, and they are enemies who, whilst beaten on
their own ground, are yet able to do hurt. For every reason,
therefore, such guards are as useless as a colony is
useful.
Again, the prince who holds a country differing in the
above respects ought to make himself the head and defender
of his less powerful neighbours, and to weaken the more
powerful amongst them, taking care that no foreigner as
powerful as himself shall, by any accident, get a footing
there; for it will always happen that such a one will be
introduced by those who are discontented, either through
excess of ambition or through fear, as one has seen already.
The Romans were brought into Greece by the Aetolians; and in
every other country where they obtained a footing they were
brought in by the inhabitants. And the usual course of
affairs is that, as soon as a powerful foreigner enters a
country, all the subject states are drawn to him, moved by
the hatred which they feel against the ruling power. So that
in respect to those subject states he has not to take any
trouble to gain them over to himself, for the whole of them
quickly rally to the state which he has acquired there. He
has only to take care that they do not get hold of too much
power and too much authority, and then with his own forces,
and with their goodwill, he can easily keep down the more
powerful of them, so as to remain entirely master in the
country. And he who does not properly manage this business
will soon lose what he has acquired, and whilst he does hold
it he will have endless difficulties and troubles.
The Romans, in the countries which they annexed, observed
closely these measures; they sent colonies and maintained
friendly relations with2
the minor powers, without increasing their strength; they
kept down the greater, and did not allow any strong foreign
powers to gain authority. Greece appears to me sufficient
for an example. The Achaeans and Aetolians were kept
friendly by them, the kingdom of Macedonia was humbled,
Antiochus was driven out; yet the merits of the Achaeans and
Aetolians never secured for them permission to increase
their power, nor did the persuasions of Philip ever induce
the Romans to be his friends without first humbling him, nor
did the influence of Antiochus make them agree that he
should retain any lordship over the country. Because the
Romans did in these instances what all prudent princes ought
to do, who have to regard not only present troubles, but
also future ones, for which they must prepare with every
energy, because, when foreseen, it is easy to remedy them;
but if you wait until they approach, the medicine is no
longer in time because the malady has become incurable; for
it happens in this, as the physicians say it happens in
hectic fever, that in the beginning of the malady it is easy
to cure but difficult to detect, but in the course of time,
not having been either detected or treated in the beginning,
it becomes easy to detect but difficult to cure. This it
happens in affairs of state, for when the evils that arise
have been foreseen (which it is only given to a wise man to
see), they can be quickly redressed, but when, through not
having been foreseen, they have been permitted to grow in a
way that every one can see them, there is no longer a
remedy. Therefore, the Romans, foreseeing troubles, dealt
with them at once, and, even to avoid a war, would not let
them come to a head, for they knew that war is not to be
avoided, but is only to be put off to the advantage of
others; moreover they wished to fight with Philip and
Antiochus in Greece so as not to have to do it in Italy;
they could have avoided both, but this they did not wish;
nor did that ever please them which is for ever in the
mouths of the wise ones of our time:--Let us enjoy the
benefits of the time--but rather the benefits of their own
valour and prudence, for time drives everything before it,
and is able to bring with it good as well as evil, and evil
as well as good.
But let us turn to France and inquire whether she has
done any of the things mentioned. I will speak of
Louis3 (and not of
Charles4) as the one whose
conduct is the better to be observed, he having held
possession of Italy for the longest period; and you will see
that he has done the opposite to those things which ought to
be done to retain a state composed of divers elements.
King Louis was brought into Italy by the ambition of the
Venetians, who desired to obtain half the state of Lombardy
by his intervention. I will not blame the course taken by
the king, because, wishing to get a foothold in Italy, and
having no friends there--seeing rather that every door was
shut to him owing to the conduct of Charles--he was forced
to accept those friendships which he could get, and he would
have succeeded very quickly in his design if in other
matters he had not made some mistakes. The king, however,
having acquired Lombardy, regained at once the authority
which Charles had lost: Genoa yielded; the Florentines
became his friends; the Marquess of Mantua, the Duke of
Ferrara, the Bentivogli, my lady of Forli, the Lords of
Faenza, of Pesaro, of Rimini, of Camerino, of Piombino, the
Lucchese, the Pisans, the Sienese--everybody made advances
to him to become his friend. Then could the Venetians
realize the rashness of the course taken by them, which, in
order that they might secure two towns in Lombardy, had made
the king master of two-thirds of Italy.
Let any one now consider with that little difficulty the
king could have maintained his position in Italy had he
observed the rules above laid down, and kept all his friends
secure and protected; for although they were numerous they
were both weak and timid, some afraid of the Church, some of
the Venetians, and thus they would always have been forced
to stand in with him, and by their means he could easily
have made himself secure against those who remained
powerful. But he was no sooner in Milan than he did the
contrary by assisting Pope Alexander to occupy the Romagna.
It never occurred to him that by this action he was
weakening himself, depriving himself of friends and of those
who had thrown themselves into his lap, whilst he
aggrandized the Church by adding much temporal power to the
spiritual, thus giving it greater authority. And having
committed this prime error, he was obliged to follow it up,
so much so that, to put an end to the ambition of Alexander,
and to prevent his becoming the master of Tuscany, he was
himself forced to come into Italy.
And as if it were not enough to have aggrandized the
Church, and deprived himself of friends, he, wishing to have
the kingdom of Naples, divides it with the King of Spain,
and where he was the prime arbiter in Italy he takes an
associate, so that the ambitious of that country and the
malcontents of his own should have somewhere to shelter; and
whereas he could have left in the kingdom his own pensioner
as king, he drove him out, to put one there who was able to
drive him, Louis, out in turn.
The wish to acquire is in truth very natural and common,
and men always do so when they can, and for this they will
be praised not blamed; but when they cannot do so, yet wish
to do so by any means, then there is folly and blame.
Therefore, if France could have attacked Naples with her own
forces she ought to have done so; if she could not, then she
ought not to have divided it. And if the partition which she
made with the Venetians in Lombardy was justified by the
excuse that by it she got a foothold in Italy, this other
partition merited blame, for it had not the excuse of that
necessity.
Therefore Louis made these five errors: he destroyed the
minor powers, he increased the strength of one of the
greater powers in Italy, he brought in a foreign power, he
did not settle in the country, he did not send colonies.
Which errors, had he lived, were not enough to injure him
had he not made a sixth by taking away their dominions from
the Venetians; because, had he not aggrandized the Church,
nor brought Spain into Italy, it would have been very
reasonable and necessary to humble them; but having first
taken these steps, he ought never to have consented to their
ruin, for they, being powerful, would always have kept off
others from designs on Lombardy, to which the Venetians
would never have consented except to become masters
themselves there; also because the others would not wish to
take Lombardy from France in order to give it to the
Venetians, and to run counter to both they would not have
had the courage.
And if any one should say: "King Louis
yielded the Romagna to Alexander and the kingdom to Spain to
avoid war, I answer for the reasons given above that a
blunder ought never to be perpetrated to avoid war, because
it is not to be avoided, but is only deferred to your
disadvantage. And if another should allege the pledge which
the king had given to the Pope that he would assist him in
the enterprise, in exchange for the dissolution of his
marriage5 and for the cap
to Rouen,6 to that I reply
what I shall write later on concerning the faith of princes,
and how it ought to be kept.
Thus King Louis lost Lombardy by not having followed any
of the conditions observed by those who have taken
possession of countries and wished to retain them. Nor is
there any miracle in this, but much that is reasonable and
quite natural. And on these matters I spoke at Nantes with
Rouen, when Valentino, as Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope
Alexander, was usually called, occupied the Romagna, and on
Cardinal Rouen observing to me that the Italians did not
understand war, I replied to him that the French did not
understand statecraft, meaning that otherwise they would not
have allowed the Church to reach such greatness. And in fact
is has been seen that the greatness of the Church and of
Spain in Italy has been caused by France, and her ruin may
be attributed to them. From this a general rule is drawn
which never or rarely fails: that he who is the cause of
another becoming powerful is ruined; because that
predominancy has been brought about either by astuteness or
else by force, and both are distrusted by him who has been
raised to power.
1 Duke Lodovico was Lodovico Moro,
a son of Francesco Sforza, who married Beatrice d'Este. He
ruled over Milan from 1494 to 1500, and died in
1510.
2 See remark in the introduction
on the word "intrattenere."
3 Louis XII, King of France, "The
Father of the People," born 1462, died 1515.
4 Charles VIII, King of France,
born 1470, died 1498.
5 Louis XII divorced his wife,
Jeanne, daughter of Louis XI, and married in 1499 Anne of
Brittany, widow of Charles VIII, in order to retain the
Duchy of Brittany for the crown.
6 The Archbishop of Rouen. He was
Georges d'Amboise, created a cardinal by Alexander VI. Born
1460, died 1510.
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by Nicolo Machiavelli
Chapter II
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