CHAPTER I
HOW MANY KINDS OF PRINCIPALITIES THERE ARE, AND BY WHAT MEANS THEY
ARE ACQUIRED
All states, all powers, that have held and hold rule over men have
been and are either republics or principalities.
Principalities are either hereditary, in which the family has been
long established; or they are new.
The new are either entirely new, as was Milan to Francesco Sforza, or
they are, as it were, members annexed to the hereditary state of the
prince who has acquired them, as was the kingdom of Naples to that of
the King of Spain.
Such dominions thus acquired are either accustomed to live under a
prince, or to live in freedom; and are acquired either by the arms of
the prince himself, or of others, or else by fortune or by ability.
CHAPTER II
CONCERNING HEREDITARY PRINCIPALITIES
I will leave out all discussion on republics, inasmuch as in another
place I have written of them at length, and will address myself only to
principalities. In doing so I will keep to the order indicated above,
and discuss how such principalities are to be ruled and preserved.
I say at once there are fewer difficulties in holding hereditary
states, and those long accustomed to the family of their prince, than
new ones; for it is sufficient only not to transgress the customs of his
ancestors, and to deal prudently with circumstances as they arise, for a
prince of average powers to maintain himself in his state, unless he be
deprived of it by some extraordinary and excessive force; and if he
should be so deprived of it, whenever anything sinister happens to the
usurper, he will regain it.
We have in Italy, for example, the Duke of Ferrara, who could not
have withstood the attacks of the Venetians in '84, nor those of Pope
Julius in '10, unless he had been long established in his dominions. For
the hereditary prince has less cause and less necessity to offend; hence
it happens that he will be more loved; and unless extraordinary vices
cause him to be hated, it is reasonable to expect that his subjects will
be naturally well disposed towards him; and in the antiquity and
duration of his rule the memories and motives that make for change are
lost, for one change always leaves the toothing for another.
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 Lodovico[*] 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.
[*] 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.
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
with[*] 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.
[*] See remark in the introduction on the word "intrattenere."
But let us turn to France and inquire whether she has done any of the
things mentioned. I will speak of Louis[*] (and not of Charles[+]) 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.
[*] Louis XII, King of France, "The Father of the People," born 1462,
died 1515.
[+] Charles VIII, King of France, born 1470, died 1498.
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 marriage[*] and for the cap to
Rouen,[+] to that I reply what I shall write later on concerning the
faith of princes, and how it ought to be kept.
[*] 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.
[+] The Archbishop of Rouen. He was Georges d'Amboise, created a
cardinal by Alexander VI. Born 1460, died 1510.
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.
CHAPTER IV
WHY THE KINGDOM OF DARIUS, CONQUERED BY ALEXANDER, DID NOT REBEL
AGAINST THE SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER AT HIS DEATH
Considering the difficulties which men have had to hold to a newly
acquired state, some might wonder how, seeing that Alexander the Great
became the master of Asia in a few years, and died whilst it was
scarcely settled (whence it might appear reasonable that the whole
empire would have rebelled), nevertheless his successors maintained
themselves, and had to meet no other difficulty than that which arose
among themselves from their own ambitions.
I answer that the principalities of which one has record are found to
be governed in two different ways; either by a prince, with a body of
servants, who assist him to govern the kingdom as ministers by his
favour and permission; or by a prince and barons, who hold that dignity
by antiquity of blood and not by the grace of the prince. Such barons
have states and their own subjects, who recognize them as lords and hold
them in natural affection. Those states that are governed by a prince
and his servants hold their prince in more consideration, because in all
the country there is no one who is recognized as superior to him, and if
they yield obedience to another they do it as to a minister and
official, and they do not bear him any particular affection.
The examples of these two governments in our time are the Turk and
the King of France. The entire monarchy of the Turk is governed by one
lord, the others are his servants; and, dividing his kingdom into
sanjaks, he sends there different administrators, and shifts and changes
them as he chooses. But the King of France is placed in the midst of an
ancient body of lords, acknowledged by their own subjects, and beloved
by them; they have their own prerogatives, nor can the king take these
away except at his peril. Therefore, he who considers both of these
states will recognize great difficulties in seizing the state of the
Turk, but, once it is conquered, great ease in holding it. The causes of
the difficulties in seizing the kingdom of the Turk are that the usurper
cannot be called in by the princes of the kingdom, nor can he hope to be
assisted in his designs by the revolt of those whom the lord has around
him. This arises from the reasons given above; for his ministers, being
all slaves and bondmen, can only be corrupted with great difficulty, and
one can expect little advantage from them when they have been corrupted,
as they cannot carry the people with them, for the reasons assigned.
Hence, he who attacks the Turk must bear in mind that he will find him
united, and he will have to rely more on his own strength than on the
revolt of others; but, if once the Turk has been conquered, and routed
in the field in such a way that he cannot replace his armies, there is
nothing to fear but the family of this prince, and, this being
exterminated, there remains no one to fear, the others having no credit
with the people; and as the conqueror did not rely on them before his
victory, so he ought not to fear them after it.
The contrary happens in kingdoms governed like that of France,
because one can easily enter there by gaining over some baron of the
kingdom, for one always finds malcontents and such as desire a change.
Such men, for the reasons given, can open the way into the state and
render the victory easy; but if you wish to hold it afterwards, you meet
with infinite difficulties, both from those who have assisted you and
from those you have crushed. Nor is it enough for you to have
exterminated the family of the prince, because the lords that remain
make themselves the heads of fresh movements against you, and as you are
unable either to satisfy or exterminate them, that state is lost
whenever time brings the opportunity.
Now if you will consider what was the nature of the government of
Darius, you will find it similar to the kingdom of the Turk, and
therefore it was only necessary for Alexander, first to overthrow him in
the field, and then to take the country from him. After which victory,
Darius being killed, the state remained secure to Alexander, for the
above reasons. And if his successors had been united they would have
enjoyed it securely and at their ease, for there were no tumults raised
in the kingdom except those they provoked themselves.
But it is impossible to hold with such tranquillity states
constituted like that of France. Hence arose those frequent rebellions
against the Romans in Spain, France, and Greece, owing to the many
principalities there were in these states, of which, as long as the
memory of them endured, the Romans always held an insecure possession;
but with the power and long continuance of the empire the memory of them
passed away, and the Romans then became secure possessors. And when
fighting afterwards amongst themselves, each one was able to attach to
himself his own parts of the country, according to the authority he had
assumed there; and the family of the former lord being exterminated,
none other than the Romans were acknowledged.
When these things are remembered no one will marvel at the ease with
which Alexander held the Empire of Asia, or at the difficulties which
others have had to keep an acquisition, such as Pyrrhus and many more;
this is not occasioned by the little or abundance of ability in the
conqueror, but by the want of uniformity in the subject state.
CHAPTER V
CONCERNING THE WAY TO GOVERN CITIES OR PRINCIPALITIES WHICH LIVED
UNDER THEIR OWN LAWS BEFORE THEY WERE ANNEXED
Whenever those states which have been acquired as stated have been
accustomed to live under their own laws and in freedom, there are three
courses for those who wish to hold them: the first is to ruin them, the
next is to reside there in person, the third is to permit them to live
under their own laws, drawing a tribute, and establishing within it an
oligarchy which will keep it friendly to you. Because such a government,
being created by the prince, knows that it cannot stand without his
friendship and interest, and does it utmost to support him; and
therefore he who would keep a city accustomed to freedom will hold it
more easily by the means of its own citizens than in any other way.
There are, for example, the Spartans and the Romans. The Spartans
held Athens and Thebes, establishing there an oligarchy, nevertheless
they lost them. The Romans, in order to hold Capua, Carthage, and
Numantia, dismantled them, and did not lose them. They wished to hold
Greece as the Spartans held it, making it free and permitting its laws,
and did not succeed. So to hold it they were compelled to dismantle many
cities in the country, for in truth there is no safe way to retain them
otherwise than by ruining them. And he who becomes master of a city
accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it, may expect to be
destroyed by it, for in rebellion it has always the watchword of liberty
and its ancient privileges as a rallying point, which neither time nor
benefits will ever cause it to forget. And whatever you may do or
provide against, they never forget that name or their privileges unless
they are disunited or dispersed, but at every chance they immediately
rally to them, as Pisa after the hundred years she had been held in
bondage by the Florentines.
But when cities or countries are accustomed to live under a prince,
and his family is exterminated, they, being on the one hand accustomed
to obey and on the other hand not having the old prince, cannot agree in
making one from amongst themselves, and they do not know how to govern
themselves. For this reason they are very slow to take up arms, and a
prince can gain them to himself and secure them much more easily. But in
republics there is more vitality, greater hatred, and more desire for
vengeance, which will never permit them to allow the memory of their
former liberty to rest; so that the safest way is to destroy them or to
reside there.
CHAPTER VI
CONCERNING NEW PRINCIPALITIES WHICH ARE ACQUIRED BY ONE'S OWN ARMS
AND ABILITY
Let no one be surprised if, in speaking of entirely new
principalities as I shall do, I adduce the highest examples both of
prince and of state; because men, walking almost always in paths beaten
by others, and following by imitation their deeds, are yet unable to
keep entirely to the ways of others or attain to the power of those they
imitate. A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great
men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability
does not equal theirs, at least it will savour of it. Let him act like
the clever archers who, designing to hit the mark which yet appears too
far distant, and knowing the limits to which the strength of their bow
attains, take aim much higher than the mark, not to reach by their
strength or arrow to so great a height, but to be able with the aid of
so high an aim to hit the mark they wish to reach.
I say, therefore, that in entirely new principalities, where there is
a new prince, more or less difficulty is found in keeping them,
accordingly as there is more or less ability in him who has acquired the
state. Now, as the fact of becoming a prince from a private station
presupposes either ability or fortune, it is clear that one or other of
these things will mitigate in some degree many difficulties.
Nevertheless, he who has relied least on fortune is established the
strongest. Further, it facilitates matters when the prince, having no
other state, is compelled to reside there in person.
But to come to those who, by their own ability and not through
fortune, have risen to be princes, I say that Moses, Cyrus, Romulus,
Theseus, and such like are the most excellent examples. And although one
may not discuss Moses, he having been a mere executor of the will of
God, yet he ought to be admired, if only for that favour which made him
worthy to speak with God. But in considering Cyrus and others who have
acquired or founded kingdoms, all will be found admirable; and if their
particular deeds and conduct shall be considered, they will not be found
inferior to those of Moses, although he had so great a preceptor. And in
examining their actions and lives one cannot see that they owed anything
to fortune beyond opportunity, which brought them the material to mould
into the form which seemed best to them. Without that opportunity their
powers of mind would have been extinguished, and without those powers
the opportunity would have come in vain.
It was necessary, therefore, to Moses that he should find the people
of Israel in Egypt enslaved and oppressed by the Egyptians, in order
that they should be disposed to follow him so as to be delivered out of
bondage. It was necessary that Romulus should not remain in Alba, and
that he should be abandoned at his birth, in order that he should become
King of Rome and founder of the fatherland. It was necessary that Cyrus
should find the Persians discontented with the government of the Medes,
and the Medes soft and effeminate through their long peace. Theseus
could not have shown his ability had he not found the Athenians
dispersed. These opportunities, therefore, made those men fortunate, and
their high ability enabled them to recognize the opportunity whereby
their country was ennobled and made famous.
Those who by valorous ways become princes, like these men, acquire a
principality with difficulty, but they keep it with ease. The
difficulties they have in acquiring it rise in part from the new rules
and methods which they are forced to introduce to establish their
government and its security. And it ought to be remembered that there is
nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or
more uncertain in its success, then to take the lead in the introduction
of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all
those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm
defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises
partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and
partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new
things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens
that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they
do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise
that the prince is endangered along with them.
It is necessary, therefore, if we desire to discuss this matter
thoroughly, to inquire whether these innovators can rely on themselves
or have to depend on others: that is to say, whether, to consummate
their enterprise, have they to use prayers or can they use force? In the
first instance they always succeed badly, and never compass anything;
but when they can rely on themselves and use force, then they are rarely
endangered. Hence it is that all armed prophets have conquered, and the
unarmed ones have been destroyed. Besides the reasons mentioned, the
nature of the people is variable, and whilst it is easy to persuade
them, it is difficult to fix them in that persuasion. And thus it is
necessary to take such measures that, when they believe no longer, it
may be possible to make them believe by force.
If Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus had been unarmed they could not
have enforced their constitutions for long--as happened in our time to
Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who was ruined with his new order of things
immediately the multitude believed in him no longer, and he had no means
of keeping steadfast those who believed or of making the unbelievers to
believe. Therefore such as these have great difficulties in consummating
their enterprise, for all their dangers are in the ascent, yet with
ability they will overcome them; but when these are overcome, and those
who envied them their success are exterminated, they will begin to be
respected, and they will continue afterwards powerful, secure, honoured,
and happy.
To these great examples I wish to add a lesser one; still it bears
some resemblance to them, and I wish it to suffice me for all of a like
kind: it is Hiero the Syracusan.[*] This man rose from a private station
to be Prince of Syracuse, nor did he, either, owe anything to fortune
but opportunity; for the Syracusans, being oppressed, chose him for
their captain, afterwards he was rewarded by being made their prince. He
was of so great ability, even as a private citizen, that one who writes
of him says he wanted nothing but a kingdom to be a king. This man
abolished the old soldiery, organized the new, gave up old alliances,
made new ones; and as he had his own soldiers and allies, on such
foundations he was able to build any edifice: thus, whilst he had
endured much trouble in acquiring, he had but little in keeping.
[*] Hiero II, born about 307 B.C., died 216 B.C.
CHAPTER VII
CONCERNING NEW PRINCIPALITIES WHICH ARE ACQUIRED EITHER BY THE ARMS
OF OTHERS OR BY GOOD FORTUNE
Those who solely by good fortune become princes from being private
citizens have little trouble in rising, but much in keeping atop; they
have not any difficulties on the way up, because they fly, but they have
many when they reach the summit. Such are those to whom some state is
given either for money or by the favour of him who bestows it; as
happened to many in Greece, in the cities of Ionia and of the
Hellespont, where princes were made by Darius, in order that they might
hold the cities both for his security and his glory; as also were those
emperors who, by the corruption of the soldiers, from being citizens
came to empire. Such stand simply elevated upon the goodwill and the
fortune of him who has elevated them--two most inconstant and unstable
things. Neither have they the knowledge requisite for the position;
because, unless they are men of great worth and ability, it is not
reasonable to expect that they should know how to command, having always
lived in a private condition; besides, they cannot hold it because they
have not forces which they can keep friendly and faithful.
States that rise unexpectedly, then, like all other things in nature
which are born and grow rapidly, cannot leave their foundations and
correspondencies[*] fixed in such a way that the first storm will not
overthrow them; unless, as is said, those who unexpectedly become
princes are men of so much ability that they know they have to be
prepared at once to hold that which fortune has thrown into their laps,
and that those foundations, which others have laid BEFORE they became
princes, they must lay AFTERWARDS.
[*] "Le radici e corrispondenze," their roots (i.e. foundations) and
correspondencies or relations with other states--a common meaning of
"correspondence" and "correspondency" in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.
Concerning these two methods of rising to be a prince by ability or
fortune, I wish to adduce two examples within our own recollection, and
these are Francesco Sforza[*] and Cesare Borgia. Francesco, by proper
means and with great ability, from being a private person rose to be
Duke of Milan, and that which he had acquired with a thousand anxieties
he kept with little trouble. On the other hand, Cesare Borgia, called by
the people Duke Valentino, acquired his state during the ascendancy of
his father, and on its decline he lost it, notwithstanding that he had
taken every measure and done all that ought to be done by a wise and
able man to fix firmly his roots in the states which the arms and
fortunes of others had bestowed on him.
[*] Francesco Sforza, born 1401, died 1466. He married Bianca Maria
Visconti, a natural daughter of Filippo Visconti, the Duke of Milan, on
whose death he procured his own elevation to the duchy. Machiavelli was
the accredited agent of the Florentine Republic to Cesare Borgia
(1478-1507) during the transactions which led up to the assassinations
of the Orsini and Vitelli at Sinigalia, and along with his letters to
his chiefs in Florence he has left an account, written ten years before
"The Prince," of the proceedings of the duke in his "Descritione del
modo tenuto dal duca Valentino nello ammazzare Vitellozzo Vitelli,"
etc., a translation of which is appended to the present work.
Because, as is stated above, he who has not first laid his
foundations may be able with great ability to lay them afterwards, but
they will be laid with trouble to the architect and danger to the
building. If, therefore, all the steps taken by the duke be considered,
it will be seen that he laid solid foundations for his future power, and
I do not consider it superfluous to discuss them, because I do not know
what better precepts to give a new prince than the example of his
actions; and if his dispositions were of no avail, that was not his
fault, but the extraordinary and extreme malignity of fortune.
Alexander the Sixth, in wishing to aggrandize the duke, his son, had
many immediate and prospective difficulties. Firstly, he did not see his
way to make him master of any state that was not a state of the Church;
and if he was willing to rob the Church he knew that the Duke of Milan
and the Venetians would not consent, because Faenza and Rimini were
already under the protection of the Venetians. Besides this, he saw the
arms of Italy, especially those by which he might have been assisted, in
hands that would fear the aggrandizement of the Pope, namely, the Orsini
and the Colonnesi and their following. It behoved him, therefore, to
upset this state of affairs and embroil the powers, so as to make
himself securely master of part of their states. This was easy for him
to do, because he found the Venetians, moved by other reasons, inclined
to bring back the French into Italy; he would not only not oppose this,
but he would render it more easy by dissolving the former marriage of
King Louis. Therefore the king came into Italy with the assistance of
the Venetians and the consent of Alexander. He was no sooner in Milan
than the Pope had soldiers from him for the attempt on the Romagna,
which yielded to him on the reputation of the king. The duke, therefore,
having acquired the Romagna and beaten the Colonnesi, while wishing to
hold that and to advance further, was hindered by two things: the one,
his forces did not appear loyal to him, the other, the goodwill of
France: that is to say, he feared that the forces of the Orsini, which
he was using, would not stand to him, that not only might they hinder
him from winning more, but might themselves seize what he had won, and
that the king might also do the same. Of the Orsini he had a warning
when, after taking Faenza and attacking Bologna, he saw them go very
unwillingly to that attack. And as to the king, he learned his mind when
he himself, after taking the Duchy of Urbino, attacked Tuscany, and the
king made him desist from that undertaking; hence the duke decided to
depend no more upon the arms and the luck of others.
For the first thing he weakened the Orsini and Colonnesi parties in
Rome, by gaining to himself all their adherents who were gentlemen,
making them his gentlemen, giving them good pay, and, according to their
rank, honouring them with office and command in such a way that in a few
months all attachment to the factions was destroyed and turned entirely
to the duke. After this he awaited an opportunity to crush the Orsini,
having scattered the adherents of the Colonna house. This came to him
soon and he used it well; for the Orsini, perceiving at length that the
aggrandizement of the duke and the Church was ruin to them, called a
meeting of the Magione in Perugia. From this sprung the rebellion at
Urbino and the tumults in the Romagna, with endless dangers to the duke,
all of which he overcame with the help of the French. Having restored
his authority, not to leave it at risk by trusting either to the French
or other outside forces, he had recourse to his wiles, and he knew so
well how to conceal his mind that, by the mediation of Signor
Pagolo--whom the duke did not fail to secure with all kinds of
attention, giving him money, apparel, and horses--the Orsini were
reconciled, so that their simplicity brought them into his power at
Sinigalia.[*] Having exterminated the leaders, and turned their
partisans into his friends, the duke laid sufficiently good foundations
to his power, having all the Romagna and the Duchy of Urbino; and the
people now beginning to appreciate their prosperity, he gained them all
over to himself. And as this point is worthy of notice, and to be
imitated by others, I am not willing to leave it out.
[*] Sinigalia, 31st December 1502.
When the duke occupied the Romagna he found it under the rule of weak
masters, who rather plundered their subjects than ruled them, and gave
them more cause for disunion than for union, so that the country was
full of robbery, quarrels, and every kind of violence; and so, wishing
to bring back peace and obedience to authority, he considered it
necessary to give it a good governor. Thereupon he promoted Messer
Ramiro d'Orco,[*] a swift and cruel man, to whom he gave the fullest
power. This man in a short time restored peace and unity with the
greatest success. Afterwards the duke considered that it was not
advisable to confer such excessive authority, for he had no doubt but
that he would become odious, so he set up a court of judgment in the
country, under a most excellent president, wherein all cities had their
advocates. And because he knew that the past severity had caused some
hatred against himself, so, to clear himself in the minds of the people,
and gain them entirely to himself, he desired to show that, if any
cruelty had been practised, it had not originated with him, but in the
natural sternness of the minister. Under this pretence he took Ramiro,
and one morning caused him to be executed and left on the piazza at
Cesena with the block and a bloody knife at his side. The barbarity of
this spectacle caused the people to be at once satisfied and dismayed.
[*] Ramiro d'Orco. Ramiro de Lorqua.
But let us return whence we started. I say that the duke, finding
himself now sufficiently powerful and partly secured from immediate
dangers by having armed himself in his own way, and having in a great
measure crushed those forces in his vicinity that could injure him if he
wished to proceed with his conquest, had next to consider France, for he
knew that the king, who too late was aware of his mistake, would not
support him. And from this time he began to seek new alliances and to
temporize with France in the expedition which she was making towards the
kingdom of Naples against the Spaniards who were besieging Gaeta. It was
his intention to secure himself against them, and this he would have
quickly accomplished had Alexander lived.
Such was his line of action as to present affairs. But as to the
future he had to fear, in the first place, that a new successor to the
Church might not be friendly to him and might seek to take from him that
which Alexander had given him, so he decided to act in four ways.
Firstly, by exterminating the families of those lords whom he had
despoiled, so as to take away that pretext from the Pope. Secondly, by
winning to himself all the gentlemen of Rome, so as to be able to curb
the Pope with their aid, as has been observed. Thirdly, by converting
the college more to himself. Fourthly, by acquiring so much power before
the Pope should die that he could by his own measures resist the first
shock. Of these four things, at the death of Alexander, he had
accomplished three. For he had killed as many of the dispossessed lords
as he could lay hands on, and few had escaped; he had won over the Roman
gentlemen, and he had the most numerous party in the college. And as to
any fresh acquisition, he intended to become master of Tuscany, for he
already possessed Perugia and Piombino, and Pisa was under his
protection. And as he had no longer to study France (for the French were
already driven out of the kingdom of Naples by the Spaniards, and in
this way both were compelled to buy his goodwill), he pounced down upon
Pisa. After this, Lucca and Siena yielded at once, partly through hatred
and partly through fear of the Florentines; and the Florentines would
have had no remedy had he continued to prosper, as he was prospering the
year that Alexander died, for he had acquired so much power and
reputation that he would have stood by himself, and no longer have
depended on the luck and the forces of others, but solely on his own
power and ability.
But Alexander died five years after he had first drawn the sword. He
left the duke with the state of Romagna alone consolidated, with the
rest in the air, between two most powerful hostile armies, and sick unto
death. Yet there were in the duke such boldness and ability, and he knew
so well how men are to be won or lost, and so firm were the foundations
which in so short a time he had laid, that if he had not had those
armies on his back, or if he had been in good health, he would have
overcome all difficulties. And it is seen that his foundations were
good, for the Romagna awaited him for more than a month. In Rome,
although but half alive, he remained secure; and whilst the Baglioni,
the Vitelli, and the Orsini might come to Rome, they could not effect
anything against him. If he could not have made Pope him whom he wished,
at least the one whom he did not wish would not have been elected. But
if he had been in sound health at the death of Alexander,[*] everything
would have been different to him. On the day that Julius the Second[+]
was elected, he told me that he had thought of everything that might
occur at the death of his father, and had provided a remedy for all,
except that he had never anticipated that, when the death did happen, he
himself would be on the point to die.
[*] Alexander VI died of fever, 18th August 1503.
[+] Julius II was Giuliano della Rovere, Cardinal of San Pietro ad
Vincula, born 1443, died 1513.
When all the actions of the duke are recalled, I do not know how to
blame him, but rather it appears to be, as I have said, that I ought to
offer him for imitation to all those who, by the fortune or the arms of
others, are raised to government. Because he, having a lofty spirit and
far-reaching aims, could not have regulated his conduct otherwise, and
only the shortness of the life of Alexander and his own sickness
frustrated his designs. Therefore, he who considers it necessary to
secure himself in his new principality, to win friends, to overcome
either by force or fraud, to make himself beloved and feared by the
people, to be followed and revered by the soldiers, to exterminate those
who have power or reason to hurt him, to change the old order of things
for new, to be severe and gracious, magnanimous and liberal, to destroy
a disloyal soldiery and to create new, to maintain friendship with kings
and princes in such a way that they must help him with zeal and offend
with caution, cannot find a more lively example than the actions of this
man.
Only can he be blamed for the election of Julius the Second, in whom
he made a bad choice, because, as is said, not being able to elect a
Pope to his own mind, he could have hindered any other from being
elected Pope; and he ought never to have consented to the election of
any cardinal whom he had injured or who had cause to fear him if they
became pontiffs. For men injure either from fear or hatred. Those whom
he had injured, amongst others, were San Pietro ad Vincula, Colonna, San
Giorgio, and Ascanio.[*] The rest, in becoming Pope, had to fear him,
Rouen and the Spaniards excepted; the latter from their relationship and
obligations, the former from his influence, the kingdom of France having
relations with him. Therefore, above everything, the duke ought to have
created a Spaniard Pope, and, failing him, he ought to have consented to
Rouen and not San Pietro ad Vincula. He who believes that new benefits
will cause great personages to forget old injuries is deceived.
Therefore, the duke erred in his choice, and it was the cause of his
ultimate ruin.
[*] San Giorgio is Raffaello Riario. Ascanio is Ascanio Sforza.
CHAPTER VIII
CONCERNING THOSE WHO HAVE OBTAINED A PRINCIPALITY BY WICKEDNESS
Although a prince may rise from a private station in two ways,
neither of which can be entirely attributed to fortune or genius, yet it
is manifest to me that I must not be silent on them, although one could
be more copiously treated when I discuss republics. These methods are
when, either by some wicked or nefarious ways, one ascends to the
principality, or when by the favour of his fellow-citizens a private
person becomes the prince of his country. And speaking of the first
method, it will be illustrated by two examples--one ancient, the other
modern--and without entering further into the subject, I consider these
two examples will suffice those who may be compelled to follow them.
Agathocles, the Sicilian,[*] became King of Syracuse not only from a
private but from a low and abject position. This man, the son of a
potter, through all the changes in his fortunes always led an infamous
life. Nevertheless, he accompanied his infamies with so much ability of
mind and body that, having devoted himself to the military profession,
he rose through its ranks to be Praetor of Syracuse. Being established
in that position, and having deliberately resolved to make himself
prince and to seize by violence, without obligation to others, that
which had been conceded to him by assent, he came to an understanding
for this purpose with Amilcar, the Carthaginian, who, with his army, was
fighting in Sicily. One morning he assembled the people and the senate
of Syracuse, as if he had to discuss with them things relating to the
Republic, and at a given signal the soldiers killed all the senators and
the richest of the people; these dead, he seized and held the princedom
of that city without any civil commotion. And although he was twice
routed by the Carthaginians, and ultimately besieged, yet not only was
he able to defend his city, but leaving part of his men for its defence,
with the others he attacked Africa, and in a short time raised the siege
of Syracuse. The Carthaginians, reduced to extreme necessity, were
compelled to come to terms with Agathocles, and, leaving Sicily to him,
had to be content with the possession of Africa.
[*] Agathocles the Sicilian, born 361 B.C., died 289 B.C.
Therefore, he who considers the actions and the genius of this man
will see nothing, or little, which can be attributed to fortune,
inasmuch as he attained pre-eminence, as is shown above, not by the
favour of any one, but step by step in the military profession, which
steps were gained with a thousand troubles and perils, and were
afterwards boldly held by him with many hazardous dangers. Yet it cannot
be called talent to slay fellow-citizens, to deceive friends, to be
without faith, without mercy, without religion; such methods may gain
empire, but not glory. Still, if the courage of Agathocles in entering
into and extricating himself from dangers be considered, together with
his greatness of mind in enduring and overcoming hardships, it cannot be
seen why he should be esteemed less than the most notable captain.
Nevertheless, his barbarous cruelty and inhumanity with infinite
wickedness do not permit him to be celebrated among the most excellent
men. What he achieved cannot be attributed either to fortune or genius.
In our times, during the rule of Alexander the Sixth, Oliverotto da
Fermo, having been left an orphan many years before, was brought up by
his maternal uncle, Giovanni Fogliani, and in the early days of his
youth sent to fight under Pagolo Vitelli, that, being trained under his
discipline, he might attain some high position in the military
profession. After Pagolo died, he fought under his brother Vitellozzo,
and in a very short time, being endowed with wit and a vigorous body and
mind, he became the first man in his profession. But it appearing a
paltry thing to serve under others, he resolved, with the aid of some
citizens of Fermo, to whom the slavery of their country was dearer than
its liberty, and with the help of the Vitelleschi, to seize Fermo. So he
wrote to Giovanni Fogliani that, having been away from home for many
years, he wished to visit him and his city, and in some measure to look
upon his patrimony; and although he had not laboured to acquire anything
except honour, yet, in order that the citizens should see he had not
spent his time in vain, he desired to come honourably, so would be
accompanied by one hundred horsemen, his friends and retainers; and he
entreated Giovanni to arrange that he should be received honourably by
the Fermians, all of which would be not only to his honour, but also to
that of Giovanni himself, who had brought him up.
Giovanni, therefore, did not fail in any attentions due to his
nephew, and he caused him to be honourably received by the Fermians, and
he lodged him in his own house, where, having passed some days, and
having arranged what was necessary for his wicked designs, Oliverotto
gave a solemn banquet to which he invited Giovanni Fogliani and the
chiefs of Fermo. When the viands and all the other entertainments that
are usual in such banquets were finished, Oliverotto artfully began
certain grave discourses, speaking of the greatness of Pope Alexander
and his son Cesare, and of their enterprises, to which discourse
Giovanni and others answered; but he rose at once, saying that such
matters ought to be discussed in a more private place, and he betook
himself to a chamber, whither Giovanni and the rest of the citizens went
in after him. No sooner were they seated than soldiers issued from
secret places and slaughtered Giovanni and the rest. After these murders
Oliverotto, mounted on horseback, rode up and down the town and besieged
the chief magistrate in the palace, so that in fear the people were
forced to obey him, and to form a government, of which he made himself
the prince. He killed all the malcontents who were able to injure him,
and strengthened himself with new civil and military ordinances, in such
a way that, in the year during which he held the principality, not only
was he secure in the city of Fermo, but he had become formidable to all
his neighbours. And his destruction would have been as difficult as that
of Agathocles if he had not allowed himself to be overreached by Cesare
Borgia, who took him with the Orsini and Vitelli at Sinigalia, as was
stated above. Thus one year after he had committed this parricide, he
was strangled, together with Vitellozzo, whom he had made his leader in
valour and wickedness.
Some may wonder how it can happen that Agathocles, and his like,
after infinite treacheries and cruelties, should live for long secure in
his country, and defend himself from external enemies, and never be
conspired against by his own citizens; seeing that many others, by means
of cruelty, have never been able even in peaceful times to hold the
state, still less in the doubtful times of war. I believe that this
follows from severities[*] being badly or properly used. Those may be
called properly used, if of evil it is possible to speak well, that are
applied at one blow and are necessary to one's security, and that are
not persisted in afterwards unless they can be turned to the advantage
of the subjects. The badly employed are those which, notwithstanding
they may be few in the commencement, multiply with time rather than
decrease. Those who practise the first system are able, by aid of God or
man, to mitigate in some degree their rule, as Agathocles did. It is
impossible for those who follow the other to maintain themselves.
[*] Mr Burd suggests that this word probably comes near the modern
equivalent of Machiavelli's thought when he speaks of "crudelta" than
the more obvious "cruelties."
Hence it is to be remarked that, in seizing a state, the usurper
ought to examine closely into all those injuries which it is necessary
for him to inflict, and to do them all at one stroke so as not to have
to repeat them daily; and thus by not unsettling men he will be able to
reassure them, and win them to himself by benefits. He who does
otherwise, either from timidity or evil advice, is always compelled to
keep the knife in his hand; neither can he rely on his subjects, nor can
they attach themselves to him, owing to their continued and repeated
wrongs. For injuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being
tasted less, they offend less; benefits ought to be given little by
little, so that the flavour of them may last longer.
And above all things, a prince ought to live amongst his people in
such a way that no unexpected circumstances, whether of good or evil,
shall make him change; because if the necessity for this comes in
troubled times, you are too late for harsh measures; and mild ones will
not help you, for they will be considered as forced from you, and no one
will be under any obligation to you for them.
CHAPTER IX
CONCERNING A CIVIL PRINCIPALITY
But coming to the other point--where a leading citizen becomes the
prince of his country, not by wickedness or any intolerable violence,
but by the favour of his fellow citizens--this may be called a civil
principality: nor is genius or fortune altogether necessary to attain to
it, but rather a happy shrewdness. I say then that such a principality
is obtained either by the favour of the people or by the favour of the
nobles. Because in all cities these two distinct parties are found, and
from this it arises that the people do not wish to be ruled nor
oppressed by the nobles, and the nobles wish to rule and oppress the
people; and from these two opposite desires there arises in cities one
of three results, either a principality, self- government, or anarchy.
A principality is created either by the people or by the nobles,
accordingly as one or other of them has the opportunity; for the nobles,
seeing they cannot withstand the people, begin to cry up the reputation
of one of themselves, and they make him a prince, so that under his
shadow they can give vent to their ambitions. The people, finding they
cannot resist the nobles, also cry up the reputation of one of
themselves, and make him a prince so as to be defended by his authority.
He who obtains sovereignty by the assistance of the nobles maintains
himself with more difficulty than he who comes to it by the aid of the
people, because the former finds himself with many around him who
consider themselves his equals, and because of this he can neither rule
nor manage them to his liking. But he who reaches sovereignty by popular
favour finds himself alone, and has none around him, or few, who are not
prepared to obey him.
Besides this, one cannot by fair dealing, and without injury to
others, satisfy the nobles, but you can satisfy the people, for their
object is more righteous than that of the nobles, the latter wishing to
oppress, while the former only desire not to be oppressed. It is to be
added also that a prince can never secure himself against a hostile
people, because of their being too many, whilst from the nobles he can
secure himself, as they are few in number. The worst that a prince may
expect from a hostile people is to be abandoned by them; but from
hostile nobles he has not only to fear abandonment, but also that they
will rise against him; for they, being in these affairs more far- seeing
and astute, always come forward in time to save themselves, and to
obtain favours from him whom they expect to prevail. Further, the prince
is compelled to live always with the same people, but he can do well
without the same nobles, being able to make and unmake them daily, and
to give or wake away authority when it pleases him.
Therefore, to make this point clearer, I say that the nobles ought to
be looked at mainly in two ways: that is to say, they either shape their
course in such a way as binds them entirely to your fortune, or they do
not. Those who so bind themselves, and are not rapacious, ought to be
honoured and loved; those who do not bind themselves may be dealt with
in two ways; they may fail to do this through pusillanimity and a
natural want of courage, in which case you ought to make use of them,
especially of those who are of good counsel; and thus, whilst in
prosperity you honour them, in adversity you do not have to fear them.
But when for their own ambitious ends they shun binding themselves, it
is a token that they are giving more thought to themselves than to you,
and a prince out to guard against such, and to fear them as if they were
open enemies, because in adversity they always help to ruin him.
Therefore, one who becomes a prince through the favour of the people
ought to keep them friendly, and this he can easily do seeing they only
ask not to be oppressed by him. But one who, in opposition to the
people, becomes a prince by the favour of the nobles, ought, above
everything, to seek to win the people over to himself, and this he may
easily do if he takes them under his protection. Because men, when they
receive good from him of whom they were expecting evil, are bound more
closely to their benefactor; thus the people quickly become more devoted
to him than if he had been raised to the principality by their favours;
and the prince can win their affections in many ways, but as these vary
according to the circumstances one cannot give fixed rules, so I omit
them; but, I repeat, it is necessary for a prince to have the people
friendly, otherwise he has no security in adversity.
Nabis,[*] Prince of the Spartans, sustained the attack of all Greece,
and of a victorious Roman army, and against them he defended his country
and his government; and for the overcoming of this peril it was only
necessary for him to make himself secure against a few, but this would
not have been sufficient had the people been hostile. And do not let any
one impugn this statement with the trite proverb that "He who builds on
the people, builds on the mud," for this is true when a private citizen
makes a foundation there, and persuades himself that the people will
free him when he is oppressed by his enemies or by the magistrates;
wherein he would find himself very often deceived, as happened to the
Gracchi in Rome and to Messer Giorgio Scali[+] in Florence. But granted
a prince who has established himself as above, who can command, and is a
man of courage, undismayed in adversity, who does not fail in other
qualifications, and who, by his resolution and energy, keeps the whole
people encouraged--such a one will never find himself deceived in them,
and it will be shown that he has laid his foundations well.
[*] Nabis, tyrant of Sparta, conquered by the Romans under Flamininus
in 195 B.C.; killed 192 B.C.
[+] Messer Giorgio Scali. This event is to be found in Machiavelli's
"Florentine History," Book III.
These principalities are liable to danger when they are passing from
the civil to the absolute order of government, for such princes either
rule personally or through magistrates. In the latter case their
government is weaker and more insecure, because it rests entirely on the
goodwill of those citizens who are raised to the magistracy, and who,
especially in troubled times, can destroy the government with great
ease, either by intrigue or open defiance; and the prince has not the
chance amid tumults to exercise absolute authority, because the citizens
and subjects, accustomed to receive orders from magistrates, are not of
a mind to obey him amid these confusions, and there will always be in
doubtful times a scarcity of men whom he can trust. For such a prince
cannot rely upon what he observes in quiet times, when citizens have
need of the state, because then every one agrees with him; they all
promise, and when death is far distant they all wish to die for him; but
in troubled times, when the state has need of its citizens, then he
finds but few. And so much the more is this experiment dangerous,
inasmuch as it can only be tried once. Therefore a wise prince ought to
adopt such a course that his citizens will always in every sort and kind
of circumstance have need of the state and of him, and then he will
always find them faithful.
CHAPTER X
CONCERNING THE WAY IN WHICH THE STRENGTH OF ALL PRINCIPALITIES OUGHT
TO BE MEASURED
It is necessary to consider another point in examining the character
of these principalities: that is, whether a prince has such power that,
in case of need, he can support himself with his own resources, or
whether he has always need of the assistance of others. And to make this
quite clear I say that I consider those who are able to support
themselves by their own resources who can, either by abundance of men or
money, raise a sufficient army to join battle against any one who comes
to attack them; and I consider those always to have need of others who
cannot show themselves against the enemy in the field, but are forced to
defend themselves by sheltering behind walls. The first case has been
discussed, but we will speak of it again should it recur. In the second
case one can say nothing except to encourage such princes to provision
and fortify their towns, and not on any account to defend the country.
And whoever shall fortify his town well, and shall have managed the
other concerns of his subjects in the way stated above, and to be often
repeated, will never be attacked without great caution, for men are
always adverse to enterprises where difficulties can be seen, and it
will be seen not to be an easy thing to attack one who has his town well
fortified, and is not hated by his people.
The cities of Germany are absolutely free, they own but little
country around them, and they yield obedience to the emperor when it
suits them, nor do they fear this or any other power they may have near
them, because they are fortified in such a way that every one thinks the
taking of them by assault would be tedious and difficult, seeing they
have proper ditches and walls, they have sufficient artillery, and they
always keep in public depots enough for one year's eating, drinking, and
firing. And beyond this, to keep the people quiet and without loss to
the state, they always have the means of giving work to the community in
those labours that are the life and strength of the city, and on the
pursuit of which the people are supported; they also hold military
exercises in repute, and moreover have many ordinances to uphold them.
Therefore, a prince who has a strong city, and had not made himself
odious, will not be attacked, or if any one should attack he will only
be driven off with disgrace; again, because that the affairs of this
world are so changeable, it is almost impossible to keep an army a whole
year in the field without being interfered with. And whoever should
reply: If the people have property outside the city, and see it burnt,
they will not remain patient, and the long siege and self- interest will
make them forget their prince; to this I answer that a powerful and
courageous prince will overcome all such difficulties by giving at one
time hope to his subjects that the evil will not be for long, at another
time fear of the cruelty of the enemy, then preserving himself adroitly
from those subjects who seem to him to be too bold.
Further, the enemy would naturally on his arrival at once burn and
ruin the country at the time when the spirits of the people are still
hot and ready for the defence; and, therefore, so much the less ought
the prince to hesitate; because after a time, when spirits have cooled,
the damage is already done, the ills are incurred, and there is no
longer any remedy; and therefore they are so much the more ready to
unite with their prince, he appearing to be under obligations to them
now that their houses have been burnt and their possessions ruined in
his defence. For it is the nature of men to be bound by the benefits
they confer as much as by those they receive. Therefore, if everything
is well considered, it will not be difficult for a wise prince to keep
the minds of his citizens steadfast from first to last, when he does not
fail to support and defend them.
CHAPTER XI
CONCERNING ECCLESIASTICAL PRINCIPALITIES
It only remains now to speak of ecclesiastical principalities,
touching which all difficulties are prior to getting possession, because
they are acquired either by capacity or good fortune, and they can be
held without either; for they are sustained by the ancient ordinances of
religion, which are so all-powerful, and of such a character that the
principalities may be held no matter how their princes behave and live.
These princes alone have states and do not defend them; and they have
subjects and do not rule them; and the states, although unguarded, are
not taken from them, and the subjects, although not ruled, do not care,
and they have neither the desire nor the ability to alienate themselves.
Such principalities only are secure and happy. But being upheld by
powers, to which the human mind cannot reach, I shall speak no more of
them, because, being exalted and maintained by God, it would be the act
of a presumptuous and rash man to discuss them.
Nevertheless, if any one should ask of me how comes it that the
Church has attained such greatness in temporal power, seeing that from
Alexander backwards the Italian potentates (not only those who have been
called potentates, but every baron and lord, though the smallest) have
valued the temporal power very slightly--yet now a king of France
trembles before it, and it has been able to drive him from Italy, and to
ruin the Venetians--although this may be very manifest, it does not
appear to me superfluous to recall it in some measure to memory.
Before Charles, King of France, passed into Italy,[*] this country
was under the dominion of the Pope, the Venetians, the King of Naples,
the Duke of Milan, and the Florentines. These potentates had two
principal anxieties: the one, that no foreigner should enter Italy under
arms; the other, that none of themselves should seize more territory.
Those about whom there was the most anxiety were the Pope and the
Venetians. To restrain the Venetians the union of all the others was
necessary, as it was for the defence of Ferrara; and to keep down the
Pope they made use of the barons of Rome, who, being divided into two
factions, Orsini and Colonnesi, had always a pretext for disorder, and,
standing with arms in their hands under the eyes of the Pontiff, kept
the pontificate weak and powerless. And although there might arise
sometimes a courageous pope, such as Sixtus, yet neither fortune nor
wisdom could rid him of these annoyances. And the short life of a pope
is also a cause of weakness; for in the ten years, which is the average
life of a pope, he can with difficulty lower one of the factions; and
if, so to speak, one people should almost destroy the Colonnesi, another
would arise hostile to the Orsini, who would support their opponents,
and yet would not have time to ruin the Orsini. This was the reason why
the temporal powers of the pope were little esteemed in Italy.
[*] Charles VIII invaded Italy in 1494.
Alexander the Sixth arose afterwards, who of all the pontiffs that
have ever been showed how a pope with both money and arms was able to
prevail; and through the instrumentality of the Duke Valentino, and by
reason of the entry of the French, he brought about all those things
which I have discussed above in the actions of the duke. And although
his intention was not to aggrandize the Church, but the duke,
nevertheless, what he did contributed to the greatness of the Church,
which, after his death and the ruin of the duke, became the heir to all
his labours.
Pope Julius came afterwards and found the Church strong, possessing
all the Romagna, the barons of Rome reduced to impotence, and, through
the chastisements of Alexander, the factions wiped out; he also found
the way open to accumulate money in a manner such as had never been
practised before Alexander's time. Such things Julius not only followed,
but improved upon, and he intended to gain Bologna, to ruin the
Venetians, and to drive the French out of Italy. All of these
enterprises prospered with him, and so much the more to his credit,
inasmuch as he did everything to strengthen the Church and not any
private person. He kept also the Orsini and Colonnesi factions within
the bounds in which he found them; and although there was among them
some mind to make disturbance, nevertheless he held two things firm: the
one, the greatness of the Church, with which he terrified them; and the
other, not allowing them to have their own cardinals, who caused the
disorders among them. For whenever these factions have their cardinals
they do not remain quiet for long, because cardinals foster the factions
in Rome and out of it, and the barons are compelled to support them, and
thus from the ambitions of prelates arise disorders and tumults among
the barons. For these reasons his Holiness Pope Leo[*] found the
pontificate most powerful, and it is to be hoped that, if others made it
great in arms, he will make it still greater and more venerated by his
goodness and infinite other virtues.
[*] Pope Leo X was the Cardinal de' Medici.
CHAPTER XII
HOW MANY KINDS OF SOLDIERY THERE ARE, AND CONCERNING MERCENARIES
Having discoursed particularly on the characteristics of such
principalities as in the beginning I proposed to discuss, and having
considered in some degree the causes of their being good or bad, and
having shown the methods by which many have sought to acquire them and
to hold them, it now remains for me to discuss generally the means of
offence and defence which belong to each of them.
We have seen above how necessary it is for a prince to have his
foundations well laid, otherwise it follows of necessity he will go to
ruin. The chief foundations of all states, new as well as old or
composite, are good laws and good arms; and as there cannot be good laws
where the state is not well armed, it follows that where they are well
armed they have good laws. I shall leave the laws out of the discussion
and shall speak of the arms.
I say, therefore, that the arms with which a prince defends his state
are either his own, or they are mercenaries, auxiliaries, or mixed.
Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds
his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for
they are disunited, ambitious, and without discipline, unfaithful,
valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the
fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so
long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by
the enemy. The fact is, they have no other attraction or reason for
keeping the field than a trifle of stipend, which is not sufficient to
make them willing to die for you. They are ready enough to be your
soldiers whilst you do not make war, but if war comes they take
themselves off or run from the foe; which I should have little trouble
to prove, for the ruin of Italy has been caused by nothing else than by
resting all her hopes for many years on mercenaries, and although they
formerly made some display and appeared valiant amongst themselves, yet
when the foreigners came they showed what they were. Thus it was that
Charles, King of France, was allowed to seize Italy with chalk in
hand;[*] and he who told us that our sins were the cause of it told the
truth, but they were not the sins he imagined, but those which I have
related. And as they were the sins of princes, it is the princes who
have also suffered the penalty.
[*] "With chalk in hand," "col gesso." This is one of the bons mots
of Alexander VI, and refers to the ease with which Charles VIII seized
Italy, implying that it was only necessary for him to send his
quartermasters to chalk up the billets for his soldiers to conquer the
country. Cf. "The History of Henry VII," by Lord Bacon: "King Charles
had conquered the realm of Naples, and lost it again, in a kind of a
felicity of a dream. He passed the whole length of Italy without
resistance: so that it was true what Pope Alexander was wont to say:
That the Frenchmen came into Italy with chalk in their hands, to mark up
their lodgings, rather than with swords to fight."
I wish to demonstrate further the infelicity of these arms. The
mercenary captains are either capable men or they are not; if they are,
you cannot trust them, because they always aspire to their own
greatness, either by oppressing you, who are their master, or others
contrary to your intentions; but if the captain is not skilful, you are
ruined in the usual way.
And if it be urged that whoever is armed will act in the same way,
whether mercenary or not, I reply that when arms have to be resorted to,
either by a prince or a republic, then the prince ought to go in person
and perform the duty of a captain; the republic has to send its
citizens, and when one is sent who does not turn out satisfactorily, it
ought to recall him, and when one is worthy, to hold him by the laws so
that he does not leave the command. And experience has shown princes and
republics, single-handed, making the greatest progress, and mercenaries
doing nothing except damage; and it is more difficult to bring a
republic, armed with its own arms, under the sway of one of its citizens
than it is to bring one armed with foreign arms. Rome and Sparta stood
for many ages armed and free. The Switzers are completely armed and
quite free.
Of ancient mercenaries, for example, there are the Carthaginians, who
were oppressed by their mercenary soldiers after the first war with the
Romans, although the Carthaginians had their own citizens for captains.
After the death of Epaminondas, Philip of Macedon was made captain of
their soldiers by the Thebans, and after victory he took away their
liberty.
Duke Filippo being dead, the Milanese enlisted Francesco Sforza
against the Venetians, and he, having overcome the enemy at
Caravaggio,[*] allied himself with them to crush the Milanese, his
masters. His father, Sforza, having been engaged by Queen Johanna[+] of
Naples, left her unprotected, so that she was forced to throw herself
into the arms of the King of Aragon, in order to save her kingdom. And
if the Venetians and Florentines formerly extended their dominions by
these arms, and yet their captains did not make themselves princes, but
have defended them, I reply that the Florentines in this case have been
favoured by chance, for of the able captains, of whom they might have
stood in fear, some have not conquered, some have been opposed, and
others have turned their ambitions elsewhere. One who did not conquer
was Giovanni Acuto,[%] and since he did not conquer his fidelity cannot
be proved; but every one will acknowledge that, had he conquered, the
Florentines would have stood at his discretion. Sforza had the
Bracceschi always against him, so they watched each other. Francesco
turned his ambition to Lombardy; Braccio against the Church and the
kingdom of Naples. But let us come to that which happened a short while
ago. The Florentines appointed as their captain Pagolo Vitelli, a most
prudent man, who from a private position had risen to the greatest
renown. If this man had taken Pisa, nobody can deny that it would have
been proper for the Florentines to keep in with him, for if he became
the soldier of their enemies they had no means of resisting, and if they
held to him they must obey him. The Venetians, if their achievements are
considered, will be seen to have acted safely and gloriously so long as
they sent to war their own men, when with armed gentlemen and plebians
they did valiantly. This was before they turned to enterprises on land,
but when they began to fight on land they forsook this virtue and
followed the custom of Italy. And in the beginning of their expansion on
land, through not having much territory, and because of their great
reputation, they had not much to fear from their captains; but when they
expanded, as under Carmignuola,[#] they had a taste of this mistake;
for, having found him a most valiant man (they beat the Duke of Milan
under his leadership), and, on the other hand, knowing how lukewarm he
was in the war, they feared they would no longer conquer under him, and
for this reason they were not willing, nor were they able, to let him
go; and so, not to lose again that which they had acquired, they were
compelled, in order to secure themselves, to murder him. They had
afterwards for their captains Bartolomeo da Bergamo, Roberto da San
Severino, the count of Pitigliano,[&] and the like, under whom they had
to dread loss and not gain, as happened afterwards at Vaila,[$] where in
one battle they lost that which in eight hundred years they had acquired
with so much trouble. Because from such arms conquests come but slowly,
long delayed and inconsiderable, but the losses sudden and portentous.
[*] Battle of Caravaggio, 15th September 1448.
[+] Johanna II of Naples, the widow of Ladislao, King of Naples.
[%] Giovanni Acuto. An English knight whose name was Sir John
Hawkwood. He fought in the English wars in France, and was knighted by
Edward III; afterwards he collected a body of troops and went into
Italy. These became the famous "White Company." He took part in many
wars, and died in Florence in 1394. He was born about 1320 at Sible
Hedingham, a village in Essex. He married Domnia, a daughter of Bernabo
Visconti.
[#] Carmignuola. Francesco Bussone, born at Carmagnola about 1390,
executed at Venice, 5th May 1432.
[&] Bartolomeo Colleoni of Bergamo; died 1457. Roberto of San
Severino; died fighting for Venice against Sigismund, Duke of Austria,
in 1487. "Primo capitano in Italia."--Machiavelli. Count of Pitigliano;
Nicolo Orsini, born 1442, died 1510.
[$] Battle of Vaila in 1509.
And as with these examples I have reached Italy, which has been ruled
for many years by mercenaries, I wish to discuss them more seriously, in
order that, having seen their rise and progress, one may be better
prepared to counteract them. You must understand that the empire has
recently come to be repudiated in Italy, that the Pope has acquired more
temporal power, and that Italy has been divided up into more states, for
the reason that many of the great cities took up arms against their
nobles, who, formerly favoured by the emperor, were oppressing them,
whilst the Church was favouring them so as to gain authority in temporal
power: in many others their citizens became princes. From this it came
to pass that Italy fell partly into the hands of the Church and of
republics, and, the Church consisting of priests and the republic of
citizens unaccustomed to arms, both commenced to enlist foreigners.
The first who gave renown to this soldiery was Alberigo da Conio,[*]
the Romagnian. From the school of this man sprang, among others, Braccio
and Sforza, who in their time were the arbiters of Italy. After these
came all the other captains who till now have directed the arms of
Italy; and the end of all their valour has been, that she has been
overrun by Charles, robbed by Louis, ravaged by Ferdinand, and insulted
by the Switzers. The principle that has guided them has been, first, to
lower the credit of infantry so that they might increase their own. They
did this because, subsisting on their pay and without territory, they
were unable to support many soldiers, and a few infantry did not give
them any authority; so they were led to employ cavalry, with a moderate
force of which they were maintained and honoured; and affairs were
brought to such a pass that, in an army of twenty thousand soldiers,
there were not to be found two thousand foot soldiers. They had, besides
this, used every art to lessen fatigue and danger to themselves and
their soldiers, not killing in the fray, but taking prisoners and
liberating without ransom. They did not attack towns at night, nor did
the garrisons of the towns attack encampments at night; they did not
surround the camp either with stockade or ditch, nor did they campaign
in the winter. All these things were permitted by their military rules,
and devised by them to avoid, as I have said, both fatigue and dangers;
thus they have brought Italy to slavery and contempt.
[*] Alberigo da Conio. Alberico da Barbiano, Count of Cunio in
Romagna. He was the leader of the famous "Company of St George,"
composed entirely of Italian soldiers. He died in 1409.
CHAPTER XIII
CONCERNING AUXILIARIES, MIXED SOLDIERY, AND ONE'S OWN
Auxiliaries, which are the other useless arm, are employed when a
prince is called in with his forces to aid and defend, as was done by
Pope Julius in the most recent times; for he, having, in the enterprise
against Ferrara, had poor proof of his mercenaries, turned to
auxiliaries, and stipulated with Ferdinand, King of Spain,[*] for his
assistance with men and arms. These arms may be useful and good in
themselves, but for him who calls them in they are always
disadvantageous; for losing, one is undone, and winning, one is their
captive.
[*] Ferdinand V (F. II of Aragon and Sicily, F. III of Naples),
surnamed "The Catholic," born 1542, died 1516.
And although ancient histories may be full of examples, I do not wish
to leave this recent one of Pope Julius the Second, the peril of which
cannot fail to be perceived; for he, wishing to get Ferrara, threw
himself entirely into the hands of the foreigner. But his good fortune
brought about a third event, so that he did not reap the fruit of his
rash choice; because, having his auxiliaries routed at Ravenna, and the
Switzers having risen and driven out the conquerors (against all
expectation, both his and others), it so came to pass that he did not
become prisoner to his enemies, they having fled, nor to his
auxiliaries, he having conquered by other arms than theirs.
The Florentines, being entirely without arms, sent ten thousand
Frenchmen to take Pisa, whereby they ran more danger than at any other
time of their troubles.
The Emperor of Constantinople,[*] to oppose his neighbours, sent ten
thousand Turks into Greece, who, on the war being finished, were not
willing to quit; this was the beginning of the servitude of Greece to
the infidels.
[*] Joannes Cantacuzenus, born 1300, died 1383.
Therefore, let him who has no desire to conquer make use of these
arms, for they are much more hazardous than mercenaries, because with
them the ruin is ready made; they are all united, all yield obedience to
others; but with mercenaries, when they have conquered, more time and
better opportunities are needed to injure you; they are not all of one
community, they are found and paid by you, and a third party, which you
have made their head, is not able all at once to assume enough authority
to injure you. In conclusion, in mercenaries dastardy is most dangerous;
in auxiliaries, valour. The wise prince, therefore, has always avoided
these arms and turned to his own; and has been willing rather to lose
with them than to conquer with the others, not deeming that a real
victory which is gained with the arms of others.
I shall never hesitate to cite Cesare Borgia and his actions. This
duke entered the Romagna with auxiliaries, taking there only French
soldiers, and with them he captured Imola and Forli; but afterwards,
such forces not appearing to him reliable, he turned to mercenaries,
discerning less danger in them, and enlisted the Orsini and Vitelli;
whom presently, on handling and finding them doubtful, unfaithful, and
dangerous, he destroyed and turned to his own men. And the difference
between one and the other of these forces can easily be seen when one
considers the difference there was in the reputation of the duke, when
he had the French, when he had the Orsini and Vitelli, and when he
relied on his own soldiers, on whose fidelity he could always count and
found it ever increasing; he was never esteemed more highly than when
every one saw that he was complete master of his own forces.
I was not intending to go beyond Italian and recent examples, but I
am unwilling to leave out Hiero, the Syracusan, he being one of those I
have named above. This man, as I have said, made head of the army by the
Syracusans, soon found out that a mercenary soldiery, constituted like
our Italian condottieri, was of no use; and it appearing to him that he
could neither keep them not let them go, he had them all cut to pieces,
and afterwards made war with his own forces and not with aliens.
I wish also to recall to memory an instance from the Old Testament
applicable to this subject. David offered himself to Saul to fight with
Goliath, the Philistine champion, and, to give him courage, Saul armed
him with his own weapons; which David rejected as soon as he had them on
his back, saying he could make no use of them, and that he wished to
meet the enemy with his sling and his knife. In conclusion, the arms of
others either fall from your back, or they weigh you down, or they bind
you fast.
Charles the Seventh,[*] the father of King Louis the Eleventh,[+]
having by good fortune and valour liberated France from the English,
recognized the necessity of being armed with forces of his own, and he
established in his kingdom ordinances concerning men-at-arms and
infantry. Afterwards his son, King Louis, abolished the infantry and
began to enlist the Switzers, which mistake, followed by others, is, as
is now seen, a source of peril to that kingdom; because, having raised
the reputation of the Switzers, he has entirely diminished the value of
his own arms, for he has destroyed the infantry altogether; and his
men-at-arms he has subordinated to others, for, being as they are so
accustomed to fight along with Switzers, it does not appear that they
can now conquer without them. Hence it arises that the French cannot
stand against the Switzers, and without the Switzers they do not come
off well against others. The armies of the French have thus become
mixed, partly mercenary and partly national, both of which arms together
are much better than mercenaries alone or auxiliaries alone, but much
inferior to one's own forces. And this example proves it, for the
kingdom of France would be unconquerable if the ordinance of Charles had
been enlarged or maintained.
[*] Charles VII of France, surnamed "The Victorious," born 1403, died
1461.
[+] Louis XI, son of the above, born 1423, died 1483.
But the scanty wisdom of man, on entering into an affair which looks
well at first, cannot discern the poison that is hidden in it, as I have
said above of hectic fevers. Therefore, if he who rules a principality
cannot recognize evils until they are upon him, he is not truly wise;
and this insight is given to few. And if the first disaster to the Roman
Empire[*] should be examined, it will be found to have commenced only
with the enlisting of the Goths; because from that time the vigour of
the Roman Empire began to decline, and all that valour which had raised
it passed away to others.
[*] "Many speakers to the House the other night in the debate on the
reduction of armaments seemed to show a most lamentable ignorance of the
conditions under which the British Empire maintains its existence. When
Mr Balfour replied to the allegations that the Roman Empire sank under
the weight of its military obligations, he said that this was 'wholly
unhistorical.' He might well have added that the Roman power was at its
zenith when every citizen acknowledged his liability to fight for the
State, but that it began to decline as soon as this obligation was no
longer recognized."--Pall Mall Gazette, 15th May 1906.
I conclude, therefore, that no principality is secure without having
its own forces; on the contrary, it is entirely dependent on good
fortune, not having the valour which in adversity would defend it. And
it has always been the opinion and judgment of wise men that nothing can
be so uncertain or unstable as fame or power not founded on its own
strength. And one's own forces are those which are composed either of
subjects, citizens, or dependents; all others are mercenaries or
auxiliaries. And the way to make ready one's own forces will be easily
found if the rules suggested by me shall be reflected upon, and if one
will consider how Philip, the father of Alexander the Great, and many
republics and princes have armed and organized themselves, to which
rules I entirely commit myself.
CHAPTER XIV
THAT WHICH CONCERNS A PRINCE ON THE SUBJECT OF THE ART OF WAR
A prince ought to have no other aim or thought, nor select anything
else for his study, than war and its rules and discipline; for this is
the sole art that belongs to him who rules, and it is of such force that
it not only upholds those who are born princes, but it often enables men
to rise from a private station to that rank. And, on the contrary, it is
seen that when princes have thought more of ease than of arms they have
lost their states. And the first cause of your losing it is to neglect
this art; and what enables you to acquire a state is to be master of the
art. Francesco Sforza, through being martial, from a private person
became Duke of Milan; and the sons, through avoiding the hardships and
troubles of arms, from dukes became private persons. For among other
evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised, and
this is one of those ignominies against which a prince ought to guard
himself, as is shown later on. Because there is nothing proportionate
between the armed and the unarmed; and it is not reasonable that he who
is armed should yield obedience willingly to him who is unarmed, or that
the unarmed man should be secure among armed servants. Because, there
being in the one disdain and in the other suspicion, it is not possible
for them to work well together. And therefore a prince who does not
understand the art of war, over and above the other misfortunes already
mentioned, cannot be respected by his soldiers, nor can he rely on them.
He ought never, therefore, to have out of his thoughts this subject of
war, and in peace he should addict himself more to its exercise than in
war; this he can do in two ways, the one by action, the other by study.
As regards action, he ought above all things to keep his men well
organized and drilled, to follow incessantly the chase, by which he
accustoms his body to hardships, and learns something of the nature of
localities, and gets to find out how the mountains rise, how the valleys
open out, how the plains lie, and to understand the nature of rivers and
marshes, and in all this to take the greatest care. Which knowledge is
useful in two ways. Firstly, he learns to know his country, and is
better able to undertake its defence; afterwards, by means of the
knowledge and observation of that locality, he understands with ease any
other which it may be necessary for him to study hereafter; because the
hills, valleys, and plains, and rivers and marshes that are, for
instance, in Tuscany, have a certain resemblance to those of other
countries, so that with a knowledge of the aspect of one country one can
easily arrive at a knowledge of others. And the prince that lacks this
skill lacks the essential which it is desirable that a captain should
possess, for it teaches him to surprise his enemy, to select quarters,
to lead armies, to array the battle, to besiege towns to advantage.
Philopoemen,[*] Prince of the Achaeans, among other praises which
writers have bestowed on him, is commended because in time of peace he
never had anything in his mind but the rules of war; and when he was in
the country with friends, he often stopped and reasoned with them: "If
the enemy should be upon that hill, and we should find ourselves here
with our army, with whom would be the advantage? How should one best
advance to meet him, keeping the ranks? If we should wish to retreat,
how ought we to pursue?" And he would set forth to them, as he went, all
the chances that could befall an army; he would listen to their opinion
and state his, confirming it with reasons, so that by these continual
discussions there could never arise, in time of war, any unexpected
circumstances that he could not deal with.
[*] Philopoemen, "the last of the Greeks," born 252 B.C., died 183
B.C.
But to exercise the intellect the prince should read histories, and
study there the actions of illustrious men, to see how they have borne
themselves in war, to examine the causes of their victories and defeat,
so as to avoid the latter and imitate the former; and above all do as an
illustrious man did, who took as an exemplar one who had been praised
and famous before him, and whose achievements and deeds he always kept
in his mind, as it is said Alexander the Great imitated Achilles, Caesar
Alexander, Scipio Cyrus. And whoever reads the life of Cyrus, written by
Xenophon, will recognize afterwards in the life of Scipio how that
imitation was his glory, and how in chastity, affability, humanity, and
liberality Scipio conformed to those things which have been written of
Cyrus by Xenophon. A wise prince ought to observe some such rules, and
never in peaceful times stand idle, but increase his resources with
industry in such a way that they may be available to him in adversity,
so that if fortune chances it may find him prepared to resist her blows.
CHAPTER XV
CONCERNING THINGS FOR WHICH MEN, AND ESPECIALLY PRINCES, ARE PRAISED
OR BLAMED
It remains now to see what ought to be the rules of conduct for a
prince towards subject and friends. And as I know that many have written
on this point, I expect I shall be considered presumptuous in mentioning
it again, especially as in discussing it I shall depart from the methods
of other people. But, it being my intention to write a thing which shall
be useful to him who apprehends it, it appears to me more appropriate to
follow up the real truth of the matter than the imagination of it; for
many have pictured republics and principalities which in fact have never
been known or seen, because how one lives is so far distant from how one
ought to live, that he who neglects what is done for what ought to be
done, sooner effects his ruin than his preservation; for a man who
wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with
what destroys him among so much that is evil.
Hence it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know
how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity.
Therefore, putting on one side imaginary things concerning a prince, and
discussing those which are real, I say that all men when they are spoken
of, and chiefly princes for being more highly placed, are remarkable for
some of those qualities which bring them either blame or praise; and
thus it is that one is reputed liberal, another miserly, using a Tuscan
term (because an avaricious person in our language is still he who
desires to possess by robbery, whilst we call one miserly who deprives
himself too much of the use of his own); one is reputed generous, one
rapacious; one cruel, one compassionate; one faithless, another
faithful; one effeminate and cowardly, another bold and brave; one
affable, another haughty; one lascivious, another chaste; one sincere,
another cunning; one hard, another easy; one grave, another frivolous;
one religious, another unbelieving, and the like. And I know that every
one will confess that it would be most praiseworthy in a prince to
exhibit all the above qualities that are considered good; but because
they can neither be entirely possessed nor observed, for human
conditions do not permit it, it is necessary for him to be sufficiently
prudent that he may know how to avoid the reproach of those vices which
would lose him his state; and also to keep himself, if it be possible,
from those which would not lose him it; but this not being possible, he
may with less hesitation abandon himself to them. And again, he need not
make himself uneasy at incurring a reproach for those vices without
which the state can only be saved with difficulty, for if everything is
considered carefully, it will be found that something which looks like
virtue, if followed, would be his ruin; whilst something else, which
looks like vice, yet followed brings him security and prosperity.
CHAPTER XVI
CONCERNING LIBERALITY AND MEANNESS
Commencing then with the first of the above-named characteristics, I
say that it would be well to be reputed liberal. Nevertheless,
liberality exercised in a way that does not bring you the reputation for
it, injures you; for if one exercises it honestly and as it should be
exercised, it may not become known, and you will not avoid the reproach
of its opposite. Therefore, any one wishing to maintain among men the
name of liberal is obliged to avoid no attribute of magnificence; so
that a prince thus inclined will consume in such acts all his property,
and will be compelled in the end, if he wish to maintain the name of
liberal, to unduly weigh down his people, and tax them, and do
everything he can to get money. This will soon make him odious to his
subjects, and becoming poor he will be little valued by any one; thus,
with his liberality, having offended many and rewarded few, he is
affected by the very first trouble and imperilled by whatever may be the
first danger; recognizing this himself, and wishing to draw back from
it, he runs at once into the reproach of being miserly.
Therefore, a prince, not being able to exercise this virtue of
liberality in such a way that it is recognized, except to his cost, if
he is wise he ought not to fear the reputation of being mean, for in
time he will come to be more considered than if liberal, seeing that
with his economy his revenues are enough, that he can defend himself
against all attacks, and is able to engage in enterprises without
burdening his people; thus it comes to pass that he exercises liberality
towards all from whom he does not take, who are numberless, and meanness
towards those to whom he does not give, who are few.
We have not seen great things done in our time except by those who
have been considered mean; the rest have failed. Pope Julius the Second
was assisted in reaching the papacy by a reputation for liberality, yet
he did not strive afterwards to keep it up, when he made war on the King
of France; and he made many wars without imposing any extraordinary tax
on his subjects, for he supplied his additional expenses out of his long
thriftiness. The present King of Spain would not have undertaken or
conquered in so many enterprises if he had been reputed liberal. A
prince, therefore, provided that he has not to rob his subjects, that he
can defend himself, that he does not become poor and abject, that he is
not forced to become rapacious, ought to hold of little account a
reputation for being mean, for it is one of those vices which will
enable him to govern.
And if any one should say: Caesar obtained empire by liberality, and
many others have reached the highest positions by having been liberal,
and by being considered so, I answer: Either you are a prince in fact,
or in a way to become one. In the first case this liberality is
dangerous, in the second it is very necessary to be considered liberal;
and Caesar was one of those who wished to become pre-eminent in Rome;
but if he had survived after becoming so, and had not moderated his
expenses, he would have destroyed his government. And if any one should
reply: Many have been princes, and have done great things with armies,
who have been considered very liberal, I reply: Either a prince spends
that which is his own or his subjects' or else that of others. In the
first case he ought to be sparing, in the second he ought not to neglect
any opportunity for liberality. And to the prince who goes forth with
his army, supporting it by pillage, sack, and extortion, handling that
which belongs to others, this liberality is necessary, otherwise he
would not be followed by soldiers. And of that which is neither yours
nor your subjects' you can be a ready giver, as were Cyrus, Caesar, and
Alexander; because it does not take away your reputation if you squander
that of others, but adds to it; it is only squandering your own that
injures you.
And there is nothing wastes so rapidly as liberality, for even whilst
you exercise it you lose the power to do so, and so become either poor
or despised, or else, in avoiding poverty, rapacious and hated. And a
prince should guard himself, above all things, against being despised
and hated; and liberality leads you to both. Therefore it is wiser to
have a reputation for meanness which brings reproach without hatred,
than to be compelled through seeking a reputation for liberality to
incur a name for rapacity which begets reproach with hatred.
CHAPTER XVII
CONCERNING CRUELTY AND CLEMENCY, AND WHETHER IT IS BETTER TO BE LOVED
THAN FEARED
Coming now to the other qualities mentioned above, I say that every
prince ought to desire to be considered clement and not cruel.
Nevertheless he ought to take care not to misuse this clemency. Cesare
Borgia was considered cruel; notwithstanding, his cruelty reconciled the
Romagna, unified it, and restored it to peace and loyalty. And if this
be rightly considered, he will be seen to have been much more merciful
than the Florentine people, who, to avoid a reputation for cruelty,
permitted Pistoia to be destroyed.[*] Therefore a prince, so long as he
keeps his subjects united and loyal, ought not to mind the reproach of
cruelty; because with a few examples he will be more merciful than those
who, through too much mercy, allow disorders to arise, from which follow
murders or robberies; for these are wont to injure the whole people,
whilst those executions which originate with a prince offend the
individual only.
[*] During the rioting between the Cancellieri and Panciatichi
factions in 1502 and 1503.
And of all princes, it is impossible for the new prince to avoid the
imputation of cruelty, owing to new states being full of dangers. Hence
Virgil, through the mouth of Dido, excuses the inhumanity of her reign
owing to its being new, saying:
"Res dura, et regni novitas me talia cogunt Moliri, et late fines
custode tueri."[*]
Nevertheless he ought to be slow to believe and to act, nor should he
himself show fear, but proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and
humanity, so that too much confidence may not make him incautious and
too much distrust render him intolerable.
[*] . . . against my will, my fate A throne unsettled, and an infant
state, Bid me defend my realms with all my pow'rs, And guard with these
severities my shores.
Christopher Pitt.
Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than
feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to
be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is
much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be
dispensed with. Because this is to be asserted in general of men, that
they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as
you succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood,
property, life, and children, as is said above, when the need is far
distant; but when it approaches they turn against you. And that prince
who, relying entirely on their promises, has neglected other
precautions, is ruined; because friendships that are obtained by
payments, and not by greatness or nobility of mind, may indeed be
earned, but they are not secured, and in time of need cannot be relied
upon; and men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one
who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation which,
owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their
advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never
fails.
Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he
does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well
being feared whilst he is not hated, which will always be as long as he
abstains from the property of his citizens and subjects and from their
women. But when it is necessary for him to proceed against the life of
someone, he must do it on proper justification and for manifest cause,
but above all things he must keep his hands off the property of others,
because men more quickly forget the death of their father than the loss
of their patrimony. Besides, pretexts for taking away the property are
never wanting; for he who has once begun to live by robbery will always
find pretexts for seizing what belongs to others; but reasons for taking
life, on the contrary, are more difficult to find and sooner lapse. But
when a prince is with his army, and has under control a multitude of
soldiers, then it is quite necessary for him to disregard the reputation
of cruelty, for without it he would never hold his army united or
disposed to its duties.
Among the wonderful deeds of Hannibal this one is enumerated: that
having led an enormous army, composed of many various races of men, to
fight in foreign lands, no dissensions arose either among them or
against the prince, whether in his bad or in his good fortune. This
arose from nothing else than his inhuman cruelty, which, with his
boundless valour, made him revered and terrible in the sight of his
soldiers, but without that cruelty, his other virtues were not
sufficient to produce this effect. And short-sighted writers admire his
deeds from one point of view and from another condemn the principal
cause of them. That it is true his other virtues would not have been
sufficient for him may be proved by the case of Scipio, that most
excellent man, not only of his own times but within the memory of man,
against whom, nevertheless, his army rebelled in Spain; this arose from
nothing but his too great forbearance, which gave his soldiers more
license than is consistent with military discipline. For this he was
upbraided in the Senate by Fabius Maximus, and called the corrupter of
the Roman soldiery. The Locrians were laid waste by a legate of Scipio,
yet they were not avenged by him, nor was the insolence of the legate
punished, owing entirely to his easy nature. Insomuch that someone in
the Senate, wishing to excuse him, said there were many men who knew
much better how not to err than to correct the errors of others. This
disposition, if he had been continued in the command, would have
destroyed in time the fame and glory of Scipio; but, he being under the
control of the Senate, this injurious characteristic not only concealed
itself, but contributed to his glory.
Returning to the question of being feared or loved, I come to the
conclusion that, men loving according to their own will and fearing
according to that of the prince, a wise prince should establish himself
on that which is in his own control and not in that of others; he must
endeavour only to avoid hatred, as is noted.
CHAPTER XVIII[*]
CONCERNING THE WAY IN WHICH PRINCES SHOULD KEEP FAITH
[*] "The present chapter has given greater offence than any other
portion of Machiavelli's writings." Burd, "Il Principe," p. 297.
Every one admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith,
and to live with integrity and not with craft. Nevertheless our
experience has been that those princes who have done great things have
held good faith of little account, and have known how to circumvent the
intellect of men by craft, and in the end have overcome those who have
relied on their word. You must know there are two ways of contesting,[*]
the one by the law, the other by force; the first method is proper to
men, the second to beasts; but because the first is frequently not
sufficient, it is necessary to have recourse to the second. Therefore it
is necessary for a prince to understand how to avail himself of the
beast and the man. This has been figuratively taught to princes by
ancient writers, who describe how Achilles and many other princes of old
were given to the Centaur Chiron to nurse, who brought them up in his
discipline; which means solely that, as they had for a teacher one who
was half beast and half man, so it is necessary for a prince to know how
to make use of both natures, and that one without the other is not
durable. A prince, therefore, being compelled knowingly to adopt the
beast, ought to choose the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot
defend himself against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against
wolves. Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares
and a lion to terrify the wolves. Those who rely simply on the lion do
not understand what they are about. Therefore a wise lord cannot, nor
ought he to, keep faith when such observance may be turned against him,
and when the reasons that caused him to pledge it exist no longer. If
men were entirely good this precept would not hold, but because they are
bad, and will not keep faith with you, you too are not bound to observe
it with them. Nor will there ever be wanting to a prince legitimate
reasons to excuse this non-observance. Of this endless modern examples
could be given, showing how many treaties and engagements have been made
void and of no effect through the faithlessness of princes; and he who
has known best how to employ the fox has succeeded best.
[*] "Contesting," i.e. "striving for mastery." Mr Burd points out
that this passage is imitated directly from Cicero's "De Officiis": "Nam
cum sint duo genera decertandi, unum per disceptationem, alterum per
vim; cumque illud proprium sit hominis, hoc beluarum; confugiendum est
ad posterius, si uti non licet superiore."
But it is necessary to know well how to disguise this characteristic,
and to be a great pretender and dissembler; and men are so simple, and
so subject to present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will
always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived. One recent
example I cannot pass over in silence. Alexander the Sixth did nothing
else but deceive men, nor ever thought of doing otherwise, and he always
found victims; for there never was a man who had greater power in
asserting, or who with greater oaths would affirm a thing, yet would
observe it less; nevertheless his deceits always succeeded according to
his wishes,[*] because he well understood this side of mankind.
[*] "Nondimanco sempre gli succederono gli inganni (ad votum)." The
words "ad votum" are omitted in the Testina addition, 1550.
Alexander never did what he said, Cesare never said what he did.
Italian Proverb.
Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good
qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have
them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always to
observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to
appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but
with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be
able and know how to change to the opposite.
And you have to understand this, that a prince, especially a new one,
cannot observe all those things for which men are esteemed, being often
forced, in order to maintain the state, to act contrary to fidelity,[*]
friendship, humanity, and religion. Therefore it is necessary for him to
have a mind ready to turn itself accordingly as the winds and variations
of fortune force it, yet, as I have said above, not to diverge from the
good if he can avoid doing so, but, if compelled, then to know how to
set about it.
[*] "Contrary to fidelity" or "faith," "contro alla fede," and "tutto
fede," "altogether faithful," in the next paragraph. It is noteworthy
that these two phrases, "contro alla fede" and "tutto fede," were
omitted in the Testina edition, which was published with the sanction of
the papal authorities. It may be that the meaning attached to the word
"fede" was "the faith," i.e. the Catholic creed, and not as rendered
here "fidelity" and "faithful." Observe that the word "religione" was
suffered to stand in the text of the Testina, being used to signify
indifferently every shade of belief, as witness "the religion," a phrase
inevitably employed to designate the Huguenot heresy. South in his
Sermon IX, p. 69, ed. 1843, comments on this passage as follows: "That
great patron and Coryphaeus of this tribe, Nicolo Machiavel, laid down
this for a master rule in his political scheme: 'That the show of
religion was helpful to the politician, but the reality of it hurtful
and pernicious.'"
For this reason a prince ought to take care that he never lets
anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named
five qualities, that he may appear to him who sees and hears him
altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. There is
nothing more necessary to appear to have than this last quality,
inasmuch as men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand,
because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with
you. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are,
and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who
have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all
men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge,
one judges by the result.
For that reason, let a prince have the credit of conquering and
holding his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he
will be praised by everybody; because the vulgar are always taken by
what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there
are only the vulgar, for the few find a place there only when the many
have no ground to rest on.
One prince[*] of the present time, whom it is not well to name, never
preaches anything else but peace and good faith, and to both he is most
hostile, and either, if he had kept it, would have deprived him of
reputation and kingdom many a time.
[*] Ferdinand of Aragon. "When Machiavelli was writing 'The Prince'
it would have been clearly impossible to mention Ferdinand's name here
without giving offence." Burd's "Il Principe," p. 308.
CHAPTER XIX
THAT ONE SHOULD AVOID BEING DESPISED AND HATED
Now, concerning the characteristics of which mention is made above, I
have spoken of the more important ones, the others I wish to discuss
briefly under this generality, that the prince must consider, as has
been in part said before, how to avoid those things which will make him
hated or contemptible; and as often as he shall have succeeded he will
have fulfilled his part, and he need not fear any danger in other
reproaches.
It makes him hated above all things, as I have said, to be rapacious,
and to be a violator of the property and women of his subjects, from
both of which he must abstain. And when neither their property nor their
honor is touched, the majority of men live content, and he has only to
contend with the ambition of a few, whom he can curb with ease in many
ways.
It makes him contemptible to be considered fickle, frivolous,
effeminate, mean-spirited, irresolute, from all of which a prince should
guard himself as from a rock; and he should endeavour to show in his
actions greatness, courage, gravity, and fortitude; and in his private
dealings with his subjects let him show that his judgments are
irrevocable, and maintain himself in such reputation that no one can
hope either to deceive him or to get round him.
That prince is highly esteemed who conveys this impression of
himself, and he who is highly esteemed is not easily conspired against;
for, provided it is well known that he is an excellent man and revered
by his people, he can only be attacked with difficulty. For this reason
a prince ought to have two fears, one from within, on account of his
subjects, the other from without, on account of external powers. From
the latter he is defended by being well armed and having good allies,
and if he is well armed he will have good friends, and affairs will
always remain quiet within when they are quiet without, unless they
should have been already disturbed by conspiracy; and even should
affairs outside be disturbed, if he has carried out his preparations and
has lived as I have said, as long as he does not despair, he will resist
every attack, as I said Nabis the Spartan did.
But concerning his subjects, when affairs outside are disturbed he
has only to fear that they will conspire secretly, from which a prince
can easily secure himself by avoiding being hated and despised, and by
keeping the people satisfied with him, which it is most necessary for
him to accomplish, as I said above at length. And one of the most
efficacious remedies that a prince can have against conspiracies is not
to be hated and despised by the people, for he who conspires against a
prince always expects to please them by his removal; but when the
conspirator can only look forward to offending them, he will not have
the courage to take such a course, for the difficulties that confront a
conspirator are infinite. And as experience shows, many have been the
conspiracies, but few have been successful; because he who conspires
cannot act alone, nor can he take a companion except from those whom he
believes to be malcontents, and as soon as you have opened your mind to
a malcontent you have given him the material with which to content
himself, for by denouncing you he can look for every advantage; so that,
seeing the gain from this course to be assured, and seeing the other to
be doubtful and full of dangers, he must be a very rare friend, or a
thoroughly obstinate enemy of the prince, to keep faith with you.
And, to reduce the matter into a small compass, I say that, on the
side of the conspirator, there is nothing but fear, jealousy, prospect
of punishment to terrify him; but on the side of the prince there is the
majesty of the principality, the laws, the protection of friends and the
state to defend him; so that, adding to all these things the popular
goodwill, it is impossible that any one should be so rash as to
conspire. For whereas in general the conspirator has to fear before the
execution of his plot, in this case he has also to fear the sequel to
the crime; because on account of it he has the people for an enemy, and
thus cannot hope for any escape.
Endless examples could be given on this subject, but I will be
content with one, brought to pass within the memory of our fathers.
Messer Annibale Bentivogli, who was prince in Bologna (grandfather of
the present Annibale), having been murdered by the Canneschi, who had
conspired against him, not one of his family survived but Messer
Giovanni,[*] who was in childhood: immediately after his assassination
the people rose and murdered all the Canneschi. This sprung from the
popular goodwill which the house of Bentivogli enjoyed in those days in
Bologna; which was so great that, although none remained there after the
death of Annibale who was able to rule the state, the Bolognese, having
information that there was one of the Bentivogli family in Florence, who
up to that time had been considered the son of a blacksmith, sent to
Florence for him and gave him the government of their city, and it was
ruled by him until Messer Giovanni came in due course to the government.
[*] Giovanni Bentivogli, born in Bologna 1438, died at Milan 1508. He
ruled Bologna from 1462 to 1506. Machiavelli's strong condemnation of
conspiracies may get its edge from his own very recent experience
(February 1513), when he had been arrested and tortured for his alleged
complicity in the Boscoli conspiracy.
For this reason I consider that a prince ought to reckon conspiracies
of little account when his people hold him in esteem; but when it is
hostile to him, and bears hatred towards him, he ought to fear
everything and everybody. And well-ordered states and wise princes have
taken every care not to drive the nobles to desperation, and to keep the
people satisfied and contented, for this is one of the most important
objects a prince can have.
Among the best ordered and governed kingdoms of our times is France,
and in it are found many good institutions on which depend the liberty
and security of the king; of these the first is the parliament and its
authority, because he who founded the kingdom, knowing the ambition of
the nobility and their boldness, considered that a bit to their mouths
would be necessary to hold them in; and, on the other side, knowing the
hatred of the people, founded in fear, against the nobles, he wished to
protect them, yet he was not anxious for this to be the particular care
of the king; therefore, to take away the reproach which he would be
liable to from the nobles for favouring the people, and from the people
for favouring the nobles, he set up an arbiter, who should be one who
could beat down the great and favour the lesser without reproach to the
king. Neither could you have a better or a more prudent arrangement, or
a greater source of security to the king and kingdom. From this one can
draw another important conclusion, that princes ought to leave affairs
of reproach to the management of others, and keep those of grace in
their own hands. And further, I consider that a prince ought to cherish
the nobles, but not so as to make himself hated by the people.
It may appear, perhaps, to some who have examined the lives and
deaths of the Roman emperors that many of them would be an example
contrary to my opinion, seeing that some of them lived nobly and showed
great qualities of soul, nevertheless they have lost their empire or
have been killed by subjects who have conspired against them. Wishing,
therefore, to answer these objections, I will recall the characters of
some of the emperors, and will show that the causes of their ruin were
not different to those alleged by me; at the same time I will only
submit for consideration those things that are noteworthy to him who
studies the affairs of those times.
It seems to me sufficient to take all those emperors who succeeded to
the empire from Marcus the philosopher down to Maximinus; they were
Marcus and his son Commodus, Pertinax, Julian, Severus and his son
Antoninus Caracalla, Macrinus, Heliogabalus, Alexander, and Maximinus.
There is first to note that, whereas in other principalities the
ambition of the nobles and the insolence of the people only have to be
contended with, the Roman emperors had a third difficulty in having to
put up with the cruelty and avarice of their soldiers, a matter so beset
with difficulties that it was the ruin of many; for it was a hard thing
to give satisfaction both to soldiers and people; because the people
loved peace, and for this reason they loved the unaspiring prince,
whilst the soldiers loved the warlike prince who was bold, cruel, and
rapacious, which qualities they were quite willing he should exercise
upon the people, so that they could get double pay and give vent to
their own greed and cruelty. Hence it arose that those emperors were
always overthrown who, either by birth or training, had no great
authority, and most of them, especially those who came new to the
principality, recognizing the difficulty of these two opposing humours,
were inclined to give satisfaction to the soldiers, caring little about
injuring the people. Which course was necessary, because, as princes
cannot help being hated by someone, they ought, in the first place, to
avoid being hated by every one, and when they cannot compass this, they
ought to endeavour with the utmost diligence to avoid the hatred of the
most powerful. Therefore, those emperors who through inexperience had
need of special favour adhered more readily to the soldiers than to the
people; a course which turned out advantageous to them or not,
accordingly as the prince knew how to maintain authority over them.
From these causes it arose that Marcus, Pertinax, and Alexander,
being all men of modest life, lovers of justice, enemies to cruelty,
humane, and benignant, came to a sad end except Marcus; he alone lived
and died honoured, because he had succeeded to the throne by hereditary
title, and owed nothing either to the soldiers or the people; and
afterwards, being possessed of many virtues which made him respected, he
always kept both orders in their places whilst he lived, and was neither
hated nor despised.
But Pertinax was created emperor against the wishes of the soldiers,
who, being accustomed to live licentiously under Commodus, could not
endure the honest life to which Pertinax wished to reduce them; thus,
having given cause for hatred, to which hatred there was added contempt
for his old age, he was overthrown at the very beginning of his
administration. And here it should be noted that hatred is acquired as
much by good works as by bad ones, therefore, as I said before, a prince
wishing to keep his state is very often forced to do evil; for when that
body is corrupt whom you think you have need of to maintain yourself--it
may be either the people or the soldiers or the nobles--you have to
submit to its humours and to gratify them, and then good works will do
you harm.
But let us come to Alexander, who was a man of such great goodness,
that among the other praises which are accorded him is this, that in the
fourteen years he held the empire no one was ever put to death by him
unjudged; nevertheless, being considered effeminate and a man who
allowed himself to be governed by his mother, he became despised, the
army conspired against him, and murdered him.
Turning now to the opposite characters of Commodus, Severus,
Antoninus Caracalla, and Maximinus, you will find them all cruel and
rapacious-- men who, to satisfy their soldiers, did not hesitate to
commit every kind of iniquity against the people; and all, except
Severus, came to a bad end; but in Severus there was so much valour
that, keeping the soldiers friendly, although the people were oppressed
by him, he reigned successfully; for his valour made him so much admired
in the sight of the soldiers and people that the latter were kept in a
way astonished and awed and the former respectful and satisfied. And
because the actions of this man, as a new prince, were great, I wish to
show briefly that he knew well how to counterfeit the fox and the lion,
which natures, as I said above, it is necessary for a prince to imitate.
Knowing the sloth of the Emperor Julian, he persuaded the army in
Sclavonia, of which he was captain, that it would be right to go to Rome
and avenge the death of Pertinax, who had been killed by the praetorian
soldiers; and under this pretext, without appearing to aspire to the
throne, he moved the army on Rome, and reached Italy before it was known
that he had started. On his arrival at Rome, the Senate, through fear,
elected him emperor and killed Julian. After this there remained for
Severus, who wished to make himself master of the whole empire, two
difficulties; one in Asia, where Niger, head of the Asiatic army, had
caused himself to be proclaimed emperor; the other in the west where
Albinus was, who also aspired to the throne. And as he considered it
dangerous to declare himself hostile to both, he decided to attack Niger
and to deceive Albinus. To the latter he wrote that, being elected
emperor by the Senate, he was willing to share that dignity with him and
sent him the title of Caesar; and, moreover, that the Senate had made
Albinus his colleague; which things were accepted by Albinus as true.
But after Severus had conquered and killed Niger, and settled oriental
affairs, he returned to Rome and complained to the Senate that Albinus,
little recognizing the benefits that he had received from him, had by
treachery sought to murder him, and for this ingratitude he was
compelled to punish him. Afterwards he sought him out in France, and
took from him his government and life. He who will, therefore, carefully
examine the actions of this man will find him a most valiant lion and a
most cunning fox; he will find him feared and respected by every one,
and not hated by the army; and it need not be wondered at that he, a new
man, was able to hold the empire so well, because his supreme renown
always protected him from that hatred which the people might have
conceived against him for his violence.
But his son Antoninus was a most eminent man, and had very excellent
qualities, which made him admirable in the sight of the people and
acceptable to the soldiers, for he was a warlike man, most enduring of
fatigue, a despiser of all delicate food and other luxuries, which
caused him to be beloved by the armies. Nevertheless, his ferocity and
cruelties were so great and so unheard of that, after endless single
murders, he killed a large number of the people of Rome and all those of
Alexandria. He became hated by the whole world, and also feared by those
he had around him, to such an extent that he was murdered in the midst
of his army by a centurion. And here it must be noted that such- like
deaths, which are deliberately inflicted with a resolved and desperate
courage, cannot be avoided by princes, because any one who does not fear
to die can inflict them; but a prince may fear them the less because
they are very rare; he has only to be careful not to do any grave injury
to those whom he employs or has around him in the service of the state.
Antoninus had not taken this care, but had contumeliously killed a
brother of that centurion, whom also he daily threatened, yet retained
in his bodyguard; which, as it turned out, was a rash thing to do, and
proved the emperor's ruin.
But let us come to Commodus, to whom it should have been very easy to
hold the empire, for, being the son of Marcus, he had inherited it, and
he had only to follow in the footsteps of his father to please his
people and soldiers; but, being by nature cruel and brutal, he gave
himself up to amusing the soldiers and corrupting them, so that he might
indulge his rapacity upon the people; on the other hand, not maintaining
his dignity, often descending to the theatre to compete with gladiators,
and doing other vile things, little worthy of the imperial majesty, he
fell into contempt with the soldiers, and being hated by one party and
despised by the other, he was conspired against and was killed.
It remains to discuss the character of Maximinus. He was a very
warlike man, and the armies, being disgusted with the effeminacy of
Alexander, of whom I have already spoken, killed him and elected
Maximinus to the throne. This he did not possess for long, for two
things made him hated and despised; the one, his having kept sheep in
Thrace, which brought him into contempt (it being well known to all, and
considered a great indignity by every one), and the other, his having at
the accession to his dominions deferred going to Rome and taking
possession of the imperial seat; he had also gained a reputation for the
utmost ferocity by having, through his prefects in Rome and elsewhere in
the empire, practised many cruelties, so that the whole world was moved
to anger at the meanness of his birth and to fear at his barbarity.
First Africa rebelled, then the Senate with all the people of Rome, and
all Italy conspired against him, to which may be added his own army;
this latter, besieging Aquileia and meeting with difficulties in taking
it, were disgusted with his cruelties, and fearing him less when they
found so many against him, murdered him.
I do not wish to discuss Heliogabalus, Macrinus, or Julian, who,
being thoroughly contemptible, were quickly wiped out; but I will bring
this discourse to a conclusion by saying that princes in our times have
this difficulty of giving inordinate satisfaction to their soldiers in a
far less degree, because, notwithstanding one has to give them some
indulgence, that is soon done; none of these princes have armies that
are veterans in the governance and administration of provinces, as were
the armies of the Roman Empire; and whereas it was then more necessary
to give satisfaction to the soldiers than to the people, it is now more
necessary to all princes, except the Turk and the Soldan, to satisfy the
people rather the soldiers, because the people are the more powerful.
From the above I have excepted the Turk, who always keeps round him
twelve thousand infantry and fifteen thousand cavalry on which depend
the security and strength of the kingdom, and it is necessary that,
putting aside every consideration for the people, he should keep them
his friends. The kingdom of the Soldan is similar; being entirely in the
hands of soldiers, it follows again that, without regard to the people,
he must keep them his friends. But you must note that the state of the
Soldan is unlike all other principalities, for the reason that it is
like the Christian pontificate, which cannot be called either an
hereditary or a newly formed principality; because the sons of the old
prince are not the heirs, but he who is elected to that position by
those who have authority, and the sons remain only noblemen. And this
being an ancient custom, it cannot be called a new principality, because
there are none of those difficulties in it that are met with in new
ones; for although the prince is new, the constitution of the state is
old, and it is framed so as to receive him as if he were its hereditary
lord.
But returning to the subject of our discourse, I say that whoever
will consider it will acknowledge that either hatred or contempt has
been fatal to the above-named emperors, and it will be recognized also
how it happened that, a number of them acting in one way and a number in
another, only one in each way came to a happy end and the rest to
unhappy ones. Because it would have been useless and dangerous for
Pertinax and Alexander, being new princes, to imitate Marcus, who was
heir to the principality; and likewise it would have been utterly
destructive to Caracalla, Commodus, and Maximinus to have imitated
Severus, they not having sufficient valour to enable them to tread in
his footsteps. Therefore a prince, new to the principality, cannot
imitate the actions of Marcus, nor, again, is it necessary to follow
those of Severus, but he ought to take from Severus those parts which
are necessary to found his state, and from Marcus those which are proper
and glorious to keep a state that may already be stable and firm.
CHAPTER XX
ARE FORTRESSES, AND MANY OTHER THINGS TO WHICH PRINCES OFTEN RESORT,
ADVANTAGEOUS OR HURTFUL?
1. Some princes, so as to hold securely the state, have disarmed
their subjects; others have kept their subject towns distracted by
factions; others have fostered enmities against themselves; others have
laid themselves out to gain over those whom they distrusted in the
beginning of their governments; some have built fortresses; some have
overthrown and destroyed them. And although one cannot give a final
judgment on all of these things unless one possesses the particulars of
those states in which a decision has to be made, nevertheless I will
speak as comprehensively as the matter of itself will admit.
2. There never was a new prince who has disarmed his subjects; rather
when he has found them disarmed he has always armed them, because, by
arming them, those arms become yours, those men who were distrusted
become faithful, and those who were faithful are kept so, and your
subjects become your adherents. And whereas all subjects cannot be
armed, yet when those whom you do arm are benefited, the others can be
handled more freely, and this difference in their treatment, which they
quite understand, makes the former your dependents, and the latter,
considering it to be necessary that those who have the most danger and
service should have the most reward, excuse you. But when you disarm
them, you at once offend them by showing that you distrust them, either
for cowardice or for want of loyalty, and either of these opinions
breeds hatred against you. And because you cannot remain unarmed, it
follows that you turn to mercenaries, which are of the character already
shown; even if they should be good they would not be sufficient to
defend you against powerful enemies and distrusted subjects. Therefore,
as I have said, a new prince in a new principality has always
distributed arms. Histories are full of examples. But when a prince
acquires a new state, which he adds as a province to his old one, then
it is necessary to disarm the men of that state, except those who have
been his adherents in acquiring it; and these again, with time and
opportunity, should be rendered soft and effeminate; and matters should
be managed in such a way that all the armed men in the state shall be
your own soldiers who in your old state were living near you.
3. Our forefathers, and those who were reckoned wise, were accustomed
to say that it was necessary to hold Pistoia by factions and Pisa by
fortresses; and with this idea they fostered quarrels in some of their
tributary towns so as to keep possession of them the more easily. This
may have been well enough in those times when Italy was in a way
balanced, but I do not believe that it can be accepted as a precept for
to-day, because I do not believe that factions can ever be of use;
rather it is certain that when the enemy comes upon you in divided
cities you are quickly lost, because the weakest party will always
assist the outside forces and the other will not be able to resist. The
Venetians, moved, as I believe, by the above reasons, fostered the
Guelph and Ghibelline factions in their tributary cities; and although
they never allowed them to come to bloodshed, yet they nursed these
disputes amongst them, so that the citizens, distracted by their
differences, should not unite against them. Which, as we saw, did not
afterwards turn out as expected, because, after the rout at Vaila, one
party at once took courage and seized the state. Such methods argue,
therefore, weakness in the prince, because these factions will never be
permitted in a vigorous principality; such methods for enabling one the
more easily to manage subjects are only useful in times of peace, but if
war comes this policy proves fallacious.
4. Without doubt princes become great when they overcome the
difficulties and obstacles by which they are confronted, and therefore
fortune, especially when she desires to make a new prince great, who has
a greater necessity to earn renown than an hereditary one, causes
enemies to arise and form designs against him, in order that he may have
the opportunity of overcoming them, and by them to mount higher, as by a
ladder which his enemies have raised. For this reason many consider that
a wise prince, when he has the opportunity, ought with craft to foster
some animosity against himself, so that, having crushed it, his renown
may rise higher.
5. Princes, especially new ones, have found more fidelity and
assistance in those men who in the beginning of their rule were
distrusted than among those who in the beginning were trusted. Pandolfo
Petrucci, Prince of Siena, ruled his state more by those who had been
distrusted than by others. But on this question one cannot speak
generally, for it varies so much with the individual; I will only say
this, that those men who at the commencement of a princedom have been
hostile, if they are of a description to need assistance to support
themselves, can always be gained over with the greatest ease, and they
will be tightly held to serve the prince with fidelity, inasmuch as they
know it to be very necessary for them to cancel by deeds the bad
impression which he had formed of them; and thus the prince always
extracts more profit from them than from those who, serving him in too
much security, may neglect his affairs. And since the matter demands it,
I must not fail to warn a prince, who by means of secret favours has
acquired a new state, that he must well consider the reasons which
induced those to favour him who did so; and if it be not a natural
affection towards him, but only discontent with their government, then
he will only keep them friendly with great trouble and difficulty, for
it will be impossible to satisfy them. And weighing well the reasons for
this in those examples which can be taken from ancient and modern
affairs, we shall find that it is easier for the prince to make friends
of those men who were contented under the former government, and are
therefore his enemies, than of those who, being discontented with it,
were favourable to him and encouraged him to seize it.
6. It has been a custom with princes, in order to hold their states
more securely, to build fortresses that may serve as a bridle and bit to
those who might design to work against them, and as a place of refuge
from a first attack. I praise this system because it has been made use
of formerly. Notwithstanding that, Messer Nicolo Vitelli in our times
has been seen to demolish two fortresses in Citta di Castello so that he
might keep that state; Guido Ubaldo, Duke of Urbino, on returning to his
dominion, whence he had been driven by Cesare Borgia, razed to the
foundations all the fortresses in that province, and considered that
without them it would be more difficult to lose it; the Bentivogli
returning to Bologna came to a similar decision. Fortresses, therefore,
are useful or not according to circumstances; if they do you good in one
way they injure you in another. And this question can be reasoned thus:
the prince who has more to fear from the people than from foreigners
ought to build fortresses, but he who has more to fear from foreigners
than from the people ought to leave them alone. The castle of Milan,
built by Francesco Sforza, has made, and will make, more trouble for the
house of Sforza than any other disorder in the state. For this reason
the best possible fortress is--not to be hated by the people, because,
although you may hold the fortresses, yet they will not save you if the
people hate you, for there will never be wanting foreigners to assist a
people who have taken arms against you. It has not been seen in our
times that such fortresses have been of use to any prince, unless to the
Countess of Forli,[*] when the Count Girolamo, her consort, was killed;
for by that means she was able to withstand the popular attack and wait
for assistance from Milan, and thus recover her state; and the posture
of affairs was such at that time that the foreigners could not assist
the people. But fortresses were of little value to her afterwards when
Cesare Borgia attacked her, and when the people, her enemy, were allied
with foreigners. Therefore, it would have been safer for her, both then
and before, not to have been hated by the people than to have had the
fortresses. All these things considered then, I shall praise him who
builds fortresses as well as him who does not, and I shall blame
whoever, trusting in them, cares little about being hated by the people.
[*] Catherine Sforza, a daughter of Galeazzo Sforza and Lucrezia
Landriani, born 1463, died 1509. It was to the Countess of Forli that
Machiavelli was sent as envy on 1499. A letter from Fortunati to the
countess announces the appointment: "I have been with the signori,"
wrote Fortunati, "to learn whom they would send and when. They tell me
that Nicolo Machiavelli, a learned young Florentine noble, secretary to
my Lords of the Ten, is to leave with me at once." Cf. "Catherine
Sforza," by Count Pasolini, translated by P. Sylvester, 1898.
CHAPTER XXI
HOW A PRINCE SHOULD CONDUCT HIMSELF SO AS TO GAIN RENOWN
Nothing makes a prince so much esteemed as great enterprises and
setting a fine example. We have in our time Ferdinand of Aragon, the
present King of Spain. He can almost be called a new prince, because he
has risen, by fame and glory, from being an insignificant king to be the
foremost king in Christendom; and if you will consider his deeds you
will find them all great and some of them extraordinary. In the
beginning of his reign he attacked Granada, and this enterprise was the
foundation of his dominions. He did this quietly at first and without
any fear of hindrance, for he held the minds of the barons of Castile
occupied in thinking of the war and not anticipating any innovations;
thus they did not perceive that by these means he was acquiring power
and authority over them. He was able with the money of the Church and of
the people to sustain his armies, and by that long war to lay the
foundation for the military skill which has since distinguished him.
Further, always using religion as a plea, so as to undertake greater
schemes, he devoted himself with pious cruelty to driving out and
clearing his kingdom of the Moors; nor could there be a more admirable
example, nor one more rare. Under this same cloak he assailed Africa, he
came down on Italy, he has finally attacked France; and thus his
achievements and designs have always been great, and have kept the minds
of his people in suspense and admiration and occupied with the issue of
them. And his actions have arisen in such a way, one out of the other,
that men have never been given time to work steadily against him.
Again, it much assists a prince to set unusual examples in internal
affairs, similar to those which are related of Messer Bernabo da Milano,
who, when he had the opportunity, by any one in civil life doing some
extraordinary thing, either good or bad, would take some method of
rewarding or punishing him, which would be much spoken about. And a
prince ought, above all things, always endeavour in every action to gain
for himself the reputation of being a great and remarkable man.
A prince is also respected when he is either a true friend or a
downright enemy, that is to say, when, without any reservation, he
declares himself in favour of one party against the other; which course
will always be more advantageous than standing neutral; because if two
of your powerful neighbours come to blows, they are of such a character
that, if one of them conquers, you have either to fear him or not. In
either case it will always be more advantageous for you to declare
yourself and to make war strenuously; because, in the first case, if you
do not declare yourself, you will invariably fall a prey to the
conqueror, to the pleasure and satisfaction of him who has been
conquered, and you will have no reasons to offer, nor anything to
protect or to shelter you. Because he who conquers does not want
doubtful friends who will not aid him in the time of trial; and he who
loses will not harbour you because you did not willingly, sword in hand,
court his fate.
Antiochus went into Greece, being sent for by the Aetolians to drive
out the Romans. He sent envoys to the Achaeans, who were friends of the
Romans, exhorting them to remain neutral; and on the other hand the
Romans urged them to take up arms. This question came to be discussed in
the council of the Achaeans, where the legate of Antiochus urged them to
stand neutral. To this the Roman legate answered: "As for that which has
been said, that it is better and more advantageous for your state not to
interfere in our war, nothing can be more erroneous; because by not
interfering you will be left, without favour or consideration, the
guerdon of the conqueror." Thus it will always happen that he who is not
your friend will demand your neutrality, whilst he who is your friend
will entreat you to declare yourself with arms. And irresolute princes,
to avoid present dangers, generally follow the neutral path, and are
generally ruined. But when a prince declares himself gallantly in favour
of one side, if the party with whom he allies himself conquers, although
the victor may be powerful and may have him at his mercy, yet he is
indebted to him, and there is established a bond of amity; and men are
never so shameless as to become a monument of ingratitude by oppressing
you. Victories after all are never so complete that the victor must not
show some regard, especially to justice. But if he with whom you ally
yourself loses, you may be sheltered by him, and whilst he is able he
may aid you, and you become companions on a fortune that may rise again.
In the second case, when those who fight are of such a character that
you have no anxiety as to who may conquer, so much the more is it
greater prudence to be allied, because you assist at the destruction of
one by the aid of another who, if he had been wise, would have saved
him; and conquering, as it is impossible that he should not do with your
assistance, he remains at your discretion. And here it is to be noted
that a prince ought to take care never to make an alliance with one more
powerful than himself for the purposes of attacking others, unless
necessity compels him, as is said above; because if he conquers you are
at his discretion, and princes ought to avoid as much as possible being
at the discretion of any one. The Venetians joined with France against
the Duke of Milan, and this alliance, which caused their ruin, could
have been avoided. But when it cannot be avoided, as happened to the
Florentines when the Pope and Spain sent armies to attack Lombardy, then
in such a case, for the above reasons, the prince ought to favour one of
the parties.
Never let any Government imagine that it can choose perfectly safe
courses; rather let it expect to have to take very doubtful ones,
because it is found in ordinary affairs that one never seeks to avoid
one trouble without running into another; but prudence consists in
knowing how to distinguish the character of troubles, and for choice to
take the lesser evil.
A prince ought also to show himself a patron of ability, and to
honour the proficient in every art. At the same time he should encourage
his citizens to practise their callings peaceably, both in commerce and
agriculture, and in every other following, so that the one should not be
deterred from improving his possessions for fear lest they be taken away
from him or another from opening up trade for fear of taxes; but the
prince ought to offer rewards to whoever wishes to do these things and
designs in any way to honour his city or state.
Further, he ought to entertain the people with festivals and
spectacles at convenient seasons of the year; and as every city is
divided into guilds or into societies,[*] he ought to hold such bodies
in esteem, and associate with them sometimes, and show himself an
example of courtesy and liberality; nevertheless, always maintaining the
majesty of his rank, for this he must never consent to abate in
anything.
[*] "Guilds or societies," "in arti o in tribu." "Arti" were craft or
trade guilds, cf. Florio: "Arte . . . a whole company of any trade in
any city or corporation town." The guilds of Florence are most admirably
described by Mr Edgcumbe Staley in his work on the subject (Methuen,
1906). Institutions of a somewhat similar character, called "artel,"
exist in Russia to-day, cf. Sir Mackenzie Wallace's "Russia," ed. 1905:
"The sons . . . were always during the working season members of an
artel. In some of the larger towns there are artels of a much more
complex kind-- permanent associations, possessing large capital, and
pecuniarily responsible for the acts of the individual members." The
word "artel," despite its apparent similarity, has, Mr Aylmer Maude
assures me, no connection with "ars" or "arte." Its root is that of the
verb "rotisya," to bind oneself by an oath; and it is generally admitted
to be only another form of "rota," which now signifies a "regimental
company." In both words the underlying idea is that of a body of men
united by an oath. "Tribu" were possibly gentile groups, united by
common descent, and included individuals connected by marriage. Perhaps
our words "septs" or "clans" would be most appropriate.
CHAPTER XXII
CONCERNING THE SECRETARIES OF PRINCES
The choice of servants is of no little importance to a prince, and
they are good or not according to the discrimination of the prince. And
the first opinion which one forms of a prince, and of his understanding,
is by observing the men he has around him; and when they are capable and
faithful he may always be considered wise, because he has known how to
recognize the capable and to keep them faithful. But when they are
otherwise one cannot form a good opinion of him, for the prime error
which he made was in choosing them.
There were none who knew Messer Antonio da Venafro as the servant of
Pandolfo Petrucci, Prince of Siena, who would not consider Pandolfo to
be a very clever man in having Venafro for his servant. Because there
are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself;
another which appreciates what others comprehended; and a third which
neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is
the most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless. Therefore,
it follows necessarily that, if Pandolfo was not in the first rank, he
was in the second, for whenever one has judgment to know good and bad
when it is said and done, although he himself may not have the
initiative, yet he can recognize the good and the bad in his servant,
and the one he can praise and the other correct; thus the servant cannot
hope to deceive him, and is kept honest.
But to enable a prince to form an opinion of his servant there is one
test which never fails; when you see the servant thinking more of his
own interests than of yours, and seeking inwardly his own profit in
everything, such a man will never make a good servant, nor will you ever
be able to trust him; because he who has the state of another in his
hands ought never to think of himself, but always of his prince, and
never pay any attention to matters in which the prince is not concerned.
On the other hand, to keep his servant honest the prince ought to
study him, honouring him, enriching him, doing him kindnesses, sharing
with him the honours and cares; and at the same time let him see that he
cannot stand alone, so that many honours may not make him desire more,
many riches make him wish for more, and that many cares may make him
dread chances. When, therefore, servants, and princes towards servants,
are thus disposed, they can trust each other, but when it is otherwise,
the end will always be disastrous for either one or the other.
CHAPTER XXIII
HOW FLATTERERS SHOULD BE AVOIDED
I do not wish to leave out an important branch of this subject, for
it is a danger from which princes are with difficulty preserved, unless
they are very careful and discriminating. It is that of flatterers, of
whom courts are full, because men are so self-complacent in their own
affairs, and in a way so deceived in them, that they are preserved with
difficulty from this pest, and if they wish to defend themselves they
run the danger of falling into contempt. Because there is no other way
of guarding oneself from flatterers except letting men understand that
to tell you the truth does not offend you; but when every one may tell
you the truth, respect for you abates.
Therefore a wise prince ought to hold a third course by choosing the
wise men in his state, and giving to them only the liberty of speaking
the truth to him, and then only of those things of which he inquires,
and of none others; but he ought to question them upon everything, and
listen to their opinions, and afterwards form his own conclusions. With
these councillors, separately and collectively, he ought to carry
himself in such a way that each of them should know that, the more
freely he shall speak, the more he shall be preferred; outside of these,
he should listen to no one, pursue the thing resolved on, and be
steadfast in his resolutions. He who does otherwise is either overthrown
by flatterers, or is so often changed by varying opinions that he falls
into contempt.
I wish on this subject to adduce a modern example. Fra Luca, the man
of affairs to Maximilian,[*] the present emperor, speaking of his
majesty, said: He consulted with no one, yet never got his own way in
anything. This arose because of his following a practice the opposite to
the above; for the emperor is a secretive man--he does not communicate
his designs to any one, nor does he receive opinions on them. But as in
carrying them into effect they become revealed and known, they are at
once obstructed by those men whom he has around him, and he, being
pliant, is diverted from them. Hence it follows that those things he
does one day he undoes the next, and no one ever understands what he
wishes or intends to do, and no one can rely on his resolutions.
[*] Maximilian I, born in 1459, died 1519, Emperor of the Holy Roman
Empire. He married, first, Mary, daughter of Charles the Bold; after her
death, Bianca Sforza; and thus became involved in Italian politics.
A prince, therefore, ought always to take counsel, but only when he
wishes and not when others wish; he ought rather to discourage every one
from offering advice unless he asks it; but, however, he ought to be a
constant inquirer, and afterwards a patient listener concerning the
things of which he inquired; also, on learning that nay one, on any
consideration, has not told him the truth, he should let his anger be
felt.
And if there are some who think that a prince who conveys an
impression of his wisdom is not so through his own ability, but through
the good advisers that he has around him, beyond doubt they are
deceived, because this is an axiom which never fails: that a prince who
is not wise himself will never take good advice, unless by chance he has
yielded his affairs entirely to one person who happens to be a very
prudent man. In this case indeed he may be well governed, but it would
not be for long, because such a governor would in a short time take away
his state from him.
But if a prince who is not inexperienced should take counsel from
more than one he will never get united counsels, nor will he know how to
unite them. Each of the counsellors will think of his own interests, and
the prince will not know how to control them or to see through them. And
they are not to found otherwise, because men will always prove untrue to
you unless they are kept honest by constraint. Therefore it must be
inferred that good counsels, whencesoever they come, are born of the
wisdom of the prince, and not the wisdom of the prince from good
counsels.
CHAPTER XXIV
WHY THE PRINCES OF ITALY HAVE LOST THEIR STATES
The previous suggestions, carefully observed, will enable a new
prince to appear well established, and render him at once more secure
and fixed in the state than if he had been long seated there. For the
actions of a new prince are more narrowly observed than those of an
hereditary one, and when they are seen to be able they gain more men and
bind far tighter than ancient blood; because men are attracted more by
the present than by the past, and when they find the present good they
enjoy it and seek no further; they will also make the utmost defence of
a prince if he fails them not in other things. Thus it will be a double
glory for him to have established a new principality, and adorned and
strengthened it with good laws, good arms, good allies, and with a good
example; so will it be a double disgrace to him who, born a prince,
shall lose his state by want of wisdom.
And if those seigniors are considered who have lost their states in
Italy in our times, such as the King of Naples, the Duke of Milan, and
others, there will be found in them, firstly, one common defect in
regard to arms from the causes which have been discussed at length; in
the next place, some one of them will be seen, either to have had the
people hostile, or if he has had the people friendly, he has not known
how to secure the nobles. In the absence of these defects states that
have power enough to keep an army in the field cannot be lost.
Philip of Macedon, not the father of Alexander the Great, but he who
was conquered by Titus Quintius, had not much territory compared to the
greatness of the Romans and of Greece who attacked him, yet being a
warlike man who knew how to attract the people and secure the nobles, he
sustained the war against his enemies for many years, and if in the end
he lost the dominion of some cities, nevertheless he retained the
kingdom.
Therefore, do not let our princes accuse fortune for the loss of
their principalities after so many years' possession, but rather their
own sloth, because in quiet times they never thought there could be a
change (it is a common defect in man not to make any provision in the
calm against the tempest), and when afterwards the bad times came they
thought of flight and not of defending themselves, and they hoped that
the people, disgusted with the insolence of the conquerors, would recall
them. This course, when others fail, may be good, but it is very bad to
have neglected all other expedients for that, since you would never wish
to fall because you trusted to be able to find someone later on to
restore you. This again either does not happen, or, if it does, it will
not be for your security, because that deliverance is of no avail which
does not depend upon yourself; those only are reliable, certain, and
durable that depend on yourself and your valour.
CHAPTER XXV
WHAT FORTUNE CAN EFFECT IN HUMAN AFFAIRS AND HOW TO WITHSTAND HER
It is not unknown to me how many men have had, and still have, the
opinion that the affairs of the world are in such wise governed by
fortune and by God that men with their wisdom cannot direct them and
that no one can even help them; and because of this they would have us
believe that it is not necessary to labour much in affairs, but to let
chance govern them. This opinion has been more credited in our times
because of the great changes in affairs which have been seen, and may
still be seen, every day, beyond all human conjecture. Sometimes
pondering over this, I am in some degree inclined to their opinion.
Nevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that
Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions,[*] but that she still
leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less.
[*] Frederick the Great was accustomed to say: "The older one gets
the more convinced one becomes that his Majesty King Chance does
three-quarters of the business of this miserable universe." Sorel's
"Eastern Question."
I compare her to one of those raging rivers, which when in flood
overflows the plains, sweeping away trees and buildings, bearing away
the soil from place to place; everything flies before it, all yield to
its violence, without being able in any way to withstand it; and yet,
though its nature be such, it does not follow therefore that men, when
the weather becomes fair, shall not make provision, both with defences
and barriers, in such a manner that, rising again, the waters may pass
away by canal, and their force be neither so unrestrained nor so
dangerous. So it happens with fortune, who shows her power where valour
has not prepared to resist her, and thither she turns her forces where
she knows that barriers and defences have not been raised to constrain
her.
And if you will consider Italy, which is the seat of these changes,
and which has given to them their impulse, you will see it to be an open
country without barriers and without any defence. For if it had been
defended by proper valour, as are Germany, Spain, and France, either
this invasion would not have made the great changes it has made or it
would not have come at all. And this I consider enough to say concerning
resistance to fortune in general.
But confining myself more to the particular, I say that a prince may
be seen happy to-day and ruined to-morrow without having shown any
change of disposition or character. This, I believe, arises firstly from
causes that have already been discussed at length, namely, that the
prince who relies entirely on fortune is lost when it changes. I believe
also that he will be successful who directs his actions according to the
spirit of the times, and that he whose actions do not accord with the
times will not be successful. Because men are seen, in affairs that lead
to the end which every man has before him, namely, glory and riches, to
get there by various methods; one with caution, another with haste; one
by force, another by skill; one by patience, another by its opposite;
and each one succeeds in reaching the goal by a different method. One
can also see of two cautious men the one attain his end, the other fail;
and similarly, two men by different observances are equally successful,
the one being cautious, the other impetuous; all this arises from
nothing else than whether or not they conform in their methods to the
spirit of the times. This follows from what I have said, that two men
working differently bring about the same effect, and of two working
similarly, one attains his object and the other does not.
Changes in estate also issue from this, for if, to one who governs
himself with caution and patience, times and affairs converge in such a
way that his administration is successful, his fortune is made; but if
times and affairs change, he is ruined if he does not change his course
of action. But a man is not often found sufficiently circumspect to know
how to accommodate himself to the change, both because he cannot deviate
from what nature inclines him to do, and also because, having always
prospered by acting in one way, he cannot be persuaded that it is well
to leave it; and, therefore, the cautious man, when it is time to turn
adventurous, does not know how to do it, hence he is ruined; but had he
changed his conduct with the times fortune would not have changed.
Pope Julius the Second went to work impetuously in all his affairs,
and found the times and circumstances conform so well to that line of
action that he always met with success. Consider his first enterprise
against Bologna, Messer Giovanni Bentivogli being still alive. The
Venetians were not agreeable to it, nor was the King of Spain, and he
had the enterprise still under discussion with the King of France;
nevertheless he personally entered upon the expedition with his
accustomed boldness and energy, a move which made Spain and the
Venetians stand irresolute and passive, the latter from fear, the former
from desire to recover the kingdom of Naples; on the other hand, he drew
after him the King of France, because that king, having observed the
movement, and desiring to make the Pope his friend so as to humble the
Venetians, found it impossible to refuse him. Therefore Julius with his
impetuous action accomplished what no other pontiff with simple human
wisdom could have done; for if he had waited in Rome until he could get
away, with his plans arranged and everything fixed, as any other pontiff
would have done, he would never have succeeded. Because the King of
France would have made a thousand excuses, and the others would have
raised a thousand fears.
I will leave his other actions alone, as they were all alike, and
they all succeeded, for the shortness of his life did not let him
experience the contrary; but if circumstances had arisen which required
him to go cautiously, his ruin would have followed, because he would
never have deviated from those ways to which nature inclined him.
I conclude, therefore that, fortune being changeful and mankind
steadfast in their ways, so long as the two are in agreement men are
successful, but unsuccessful when they fall out. For my part I consider
that it is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is a
woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is necessary to beat and
ill-use her; and it is seen that she allows herself to be mastered by
the adventurous rather than by those who go to work more coldly. She is,
therefore, always, woman-like, a lover of young men, because they are
less cautious, more violent, and with more audacity command her.
CHAPTER XXVI
AN EXHORTATION TO LIBERATE ITALY FROM THE BARBARIANS
Having carefully considered the subject of the above discourses, and
wondering within myself whether the present times were propitious to a
new prince, and whether there were elements that would give an
opportunity to a wise and virtuous one to introduce a new order of
things which would do honour to him and good to the people of this
country, it appears to me that so many things concur to favour a new
prince that I never knew a time more fit than the present.
And if, as I said, it was necessary that the people of Israel should
be captive so as to make manifest the ability of Moses; that the
Persians should be oppressed by the Medes so as to discover the
greatness of the soul of Cyrus; and that the Athenians should be
dispersed to illustrate the capabilities of Theseus: then at the present
time, in order to discover the virtue of an Italian spirit, it was
necessary that Italy should be reduced to the extremity that she is now
in, that she should be more enslaved than the Hebrews, more oppressed
than the Persians, more scattered than the Athenians; without head,
without order, beaten, despoiled, torn, overrun; and to have endured
every kind of desolation.
Although lately some spark may have been shown by one, which made us
think he was ordained by God for our redemption, nevertheless it was
afterwards seen, in the height of his career, that fortune rejected him;
so that Italy, left as without life, waits for him who shall yet heal
her wounds and put an end to the ravaging and plundering of Lombardy, to
the swindling and taxing of the kingdom and of Tuscany, and cleanse
those sores that for long have festered. It is seen how she entreats God
to send someone who shall deliver her from these wrongs and barbarous
insolencies. It is seen also that she is ready and willing to follow a
banner if only someone will raise it.
Nor is there to be seen at present one in whom she can place more
hope than in your illustrious house,[*] with its valour and fortune,
favoured by God and by the Church of which it is now the chief, and
which could be made the head of this redemption. This will not be
difficult if you will recall to yourself the actions and lives of the
men I have named. And although they were great and wonderful men, yet
they were men, and each one of them had no more opportunity than the
present offers, for their enterprises were neither more just nor easier
than this, nor was God more their friend than He is yours.
[*] Giuliano de Medici. He had just been created a cardinal by Leo X.
In 1523 Giuliano was elected Pope, and took the title of Clement VII.
With us there is great justice, because that war is just which is
necessary, and arms are hallowed when there is no other hope but in
them. Here there is the greatest willingness, and where the willingness
is great the difficulties cannot be great if you will only follow those
men to whom I have directed your attention. Further than this, how
extraordinarily the ways of God have been manifested beyond example: the
sea is divided, a cloud has led the way, the rock has poured forth
water, it has rained manna, everything has contributed to your
greatness; you ought to do the rest. God is not willing to do
everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory
which belongs to us.
And it is not to be wondered at if none of the above-named Italians
have been able to accomplish all that is expected from your illustrious
house; and if in so many revolutions in Italy, and in so many campaigns,
it has always appeared as if military virtue were exhausted, this has
happened because the old order of things was not good, and none of us
have known how to find a new one. And nothing honours a man more than to
establish new laws and new ordinances when he himself was newly risen.
Such things when they are well founded and dignified will make him
revered and admired, and in Italy there are not wanting opportunities to
bring such into use in every form.
Here there is great valour in the limbs whilst it fails in the head.
Look attentively at the duels and the hand-to-hand combats, how superior
the Italians are in strength, dexterity, and subtlety. But when it comes
to armies they do not bear comparison, and this springs entirely from
the insufficiency of the leaders, since those who are capable are not
obedient, and each one seems to himself to know, there having never been
any one so distinguished above the rest, either by valour or fortune,
that others would yield to him. Hence it is that for so long a time, and
during so much fighting in the past twenty years, whenever there has
been an army wholly Italian, it has always given a poor account of
itself; the first witness to this is Il Taro, afterwards Allesandria,
Capua, Genoa, Vaila, Bologna, Mestri.[*]
[*] The battles of Il Taro, 1495; Alessandria, 1499; Capua, 1501;
Genoa, 1507; Vaila, 1509; Bologna, 1511; Mestri, 1513.
If, therefore, your illustrious house wishes to follow these
remarkable men who have redeemed their country, it is necessary before
all things, as a true foundation for every enterprise, to be provided
with your own forces, because there can be no more faithful, truer, or
better soldiers. And although singly they are good, altogether they will
be much better when they find themselves commanded by their prince,
honoured by him, and maintained at his expense. Therefore it is
necessary to be prepared with such arms, so that you can be defended
against foreigners by Italian valour.
And although Swiss and Spanish infantry may be considered very
formidable, nevertheless there is a defect in both, by reason of which a
third order would not only be able to oppose them, but might be relied
upon to overthrow them. For the Spaniards cannot resist cavalry, and the
Switzers are afraid of infantry whenever they encounter them in close
combat. Owing to this, as has been and may again be seen, the Spaniards
are unable to resist French cavalry, and the Switzers are overthrown by
Spanish infantry. And although a complete proof of this latter cannot be
shown, nevertheless there was some evidence of it at the battle of
Ravenna, when the Spanish infantry were confronted by German battalions,
who follow the same tactics as the Swiss; when the Spaniards, by agility
of body and with the aid of their shields, got in under the pikes of the
Germans and stood out of danger, able to attack, while the Germans stood
helpless, and, if the cavalry had not dashed up, all would have been
over with them. It is possible, therefore, knowing the defects of both
these infantries, to invent a new one, which will resist cavalry and not
be afraid of infantry; this need not create a new order of arms, but a
variation upon the old. And these are the kind of improvements which
confer reputation and power upon a new prince.
This opportunity, therefore, ought not to be allowed to pass for
letting Italy at last see her liberator appear. Nor can one express the
love with which he would be received in all those provinces which have
suffered so much from these foreign scourings, with what thirst for
revenge, with what stubborn faith, with what devotion, with what tears.
What door would be closed to him? Who would refuse obedience to him?
What envy would hinder him? What Italian would refuse him homage? To all
of us this barbarous dominion stinks. Let, therefore, your illustrious
house take up this charge with that courage and hope with which all just
enterprises are undertaken, so that under its standard our native
country may be ennobled, and under its auspices may be verified that
saying of Petrarch:
Virtu contro al Furore Prendera l'arme, e fia il combatter corto: Che
l'antico valore Negli italici cuor non e ancor morto.
Virtue against fury shall advance the fight, And it i' th' combat
soon shall put to flight: For the old Roman valour is not dead, Nor in
th' Italians' brests extinguished.
Edward Dacre, 1640.
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DESCRIPTION OF THE METHODS ADOPTED BY THE DUKE VALENTINO WHEN
MURDERING VITELLOZZO VITELLI, OLIVEROTTO DA FERMO, THE SIGNOR PAGOLO,
AND THE DUKE DI GRAVINA ORSINI
BY
NICOL MACHIAVELLI
The Duke Valentino had returned from Lombardy, where he had been to
clear himself with the King of France from the calumnies which had been
raised against him by the Florentines concerning the rebellion of Arezzo
and other towns in the Val di Chiana, and had arrived at Imola, whence
he intended with his army to enter upon the campaign against Giovanni
Bentivogli, the tyrant of Bologna: for he intended to bring that city
under his domination, and to make it the head of his Romagnian duchy.
These matters coming to the knowledge of the Vitelli and Orsini and
their following, it appeared to them that the duke would become too
powerful, and it was feared that, having seized Bologna, he would seek
to destroy them in order that he might become supreme in Italy. Upon
this a meeting was called at Magione in the district of Perugia, to
which came the cardinal, Pagolo, and the Duke di Gravina Orsini,
Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, Gianpagolo Baglioni, the tyrant
of Perugia, and Messer Antonio da Venafro, sent by Pandolfo Petrucci,
the Prince of Siena. Here were discussed the power and courage of the
duke and the necessity of curbing his ambitions, which might otherwise
bring danger to the rest of being ruined. And they decided not to
abandon the Bentivogli, but to strive to win over the Florentines; and
they send their men to one place and another, promising to one party
assistance and to another encouragement to unite with them against the
common enemy. This meeting was at once reported throughout all Italy,
and those who were discontented under the duke, among whom were the
people of Urbino, took hope of effecting a revolution.
Thus it arose that, men's minds being thus unsettled, it was decided
by certain men of Urbino to seize the fortress of San Leo, which was
held for the duke, and which they captured by the following means. The
castellan was fortifying the rock and causing timber to be taken there;
so the conspirators watched, and when certain beams which were being
carried to the rock were upon the bridge, so that it was prevented from
being drawn up by those inside, they took the opportunity of leaping
upon the bridge and thence into the fortress. Upon this capture being
effected, the whole state rebelled and recalled the old duke, being
encouraged in this, not so much by the capture of the fort, as by the
Diet at Magione, from whom they expected to get assistance.
Those who heard of the rebellion at Urbino thought they would not
lose the opportunity, and at once assembled their men so as to take any
town, should any remain in the hands of the duke in that state; and they
sent again to Florence to beg that republic to join with them in
destroying the common firebrand, showing that the risk was lessened and
that they ought not to wait for another opportunity.
But the Florentines, from hatred, for sundry reasons, of the Vitelli
and Orsini, not only would not ally themselves, but sent Nicolo
Machiavelli, their secretary, to offer shelter and assistance to the
duke against his enemies. The duke was found full of fear at Imola,
because, against everybody's expectation, his soldiers had at once gone
over to the enemy and he found himself disarmed and war at his door. But
recovering courage from the offers of the Florentines, he decided to
temporize before fighting with the few soldiers that remained to him,
and to negotiate for a reconciliation, and also to get assistance. This
latter he obtained in two ways, by sending to the King of France for men
and by enlisting men-at-arms and others whom he turned into cavalry of a
sort: to all he gave money.
Notwithstanding this, his enemies drew near to him, and approached
Fossombrone, where they encountered some men of the duke and, with the
aid of the Orsini and Vitelli, routed them. When this happened, the duke
resolved at once to see if he could not close the trouble with offers of
reconciliation, and being a most perfect dissembler he did not fail in
any practices to make the insurgents understand that he wished every man
who had acquired anything to keep it, as it was enough for him to have
the title of prince, whilst others might have the principality.
And the duke succeeded so well in this that they sent Signor Pagolo
to him to negotiate for a reconciliation, and they brought their army to
a standstill. But the duke did not stop his preparations, and took every
care to provide himself with cavalry and infantry, and that such
preparations might not be apparent to the others, he sent his troops in
separate parties to every part of the Romagna. In the meanwhile there
came also to him five hundred French lancers, and although he found
himself sufficiently strong to take vengeance on his enemies in open
war, he considered that it would be safer and more advantageous to
outwit them, and for this reason he did not stop the work of
reconciliation.
And that this might be effected the duke concluded a peace with them
in which he confirmed their former covenants; he gave them four thousand
ducats at once; he promised not to injure the Bentivogli; and he formed
an alliance with Giovanni; and moreover he would not force them to come
personally into his presence unless it pleased them to do so. On the
other hand, they promised to restore to him the duchy of Urbino and
other places seized by them, to serve him in all his expeditions, and
not to make war against or ally themselves with any one without his
permission.
This reconciliation being completed, Guido Ubaldo, the Duke of
Urbino, again fled to Venice, having first destroyed all the fortresses
in his state; because, trusting in the people, he did not wish that the
fortresses, which he did not think he could defend, should be held by
the enemy, since by these means a check would be kept upon his friends.
But the Duke Valentino, having completed this convention, and dispersed
his men throughout the Romagna, set out for Imola at the end of November
together with his French men-at-arms: thence he went to Cesena, where he
stayed some time to negotiate with the envoys of the Vitelli and Orsini,
who had assembled with their men in the duchy of Urbino, as to the
enterprise in which they should now take part; but nothing being
concluded, Oliverotto da Fermo was sent to propose that if the duke
wished to undertake an expedition against Tuscany they were ready; if he
did not wish it, then they would besiege Sinigalia. To this the duke
replied that he did not wish to enter into war with Tuscany, and thus
become hostile to the Florentines, but that he was very willing to
proceed against Sinigalia.
It happened that not long afterwards the town surrendered, but the
fortress would not yield to them because the castellan would not give it
up to any one but the duke in person; therefore they exhorted him to
come there. This appeared a good opportunity to the duke, as, being
invited by them, and not going of his own will, he would awaken no
suspicions. And the more to reassure them, he allowed all the French
men-at-arms who were with him in Lombardy to depart, except the hundred
lancers under Mons. di Candales, his brother-in-law. He left Cesena
about the middle of December, and went to Fano, and with the utmost
cunning and cleverness he persuaded the Vitelli and Orsini to wait for
him at Sinigalia, pointing out to them that any lack of compliance would
cast a doubt upon the sincerity and permanency of the reconciliation,
and that he was a man who wished to make use of the arms and councils of
his friends. But Vitellozzo remained very stubborn, for the death of his
brother warned him that he should not offend a prince and afterwards
trust him; nevertheless, persuaded by Pagolo Orsini, whom the duke had
corrupted with gifts and promises, he agreed to wait.
Upon this the duke, before his departure from Fano, which was to be
on 30th December 1502, communicated his designs to eight of his most
trusted followers, among whom were Don Michele and the Monsignor d'Euna,
who was afterwards cardinal; and he ordered that, as soon as Vitellozzo,
Pagolo Orsini, the Duke di Gravina, and Oliverotto should arrive, his
followers in pairs should take them one by one, entrusting certain men
to certain pairs, who should entertain them until they reached
Sinigalia; nor should they be permitted to leave until they came to the
duke's quarters, where they should be seized.
The duke afterwards ordered all his horsemen and infantry, of which
there were more than two thousand cavalry and ten thousand footmen, to
assemble by daybreak at the Metauro, a river five miles distant from
Fano, and await him there. He found himself, therefore, on the last day
of December at the Metauro with his men, and having sent a cavalcade of
about two hundred horsemen before him, he then moved forward the
infantry, whom he accompanied with the rest of the men-at- arms.
Fano and Sinigalia are two cities of La Marca situate on the shore of
the Adriatic Sea, fifteen miles distant from each other, so that he who
goes towards Sinigalia has the mountains on his right hand, the bases of
which are touched by the sea in some places. The city of Sinigalia is
distant from the foot of the mountains a little more than a bow-shot and
from the shore about a mile. On the side opposite to the city runs a
little river which bathes that part of the walls looking towards Fano,
facing the high road. Thus he who draws near to Sinigalia comes for a
good space by road along the mountains, and reaches the river which
passes by Sinigalia. If he turns to his left hand along the bank of it,
and goes for the distance of a bow-shot, he arrives at a bridge which
crosses the river; he is then almost abreast of the gate that leads into
Sinigalia, not by a straight line, but transversely. Before this gate
there stands a collection of houses with a square to which the bank of
the river forms one side.
The Vitelli and Orsini having received orders to wait for the duke,
and to honour him in person, sent away their men to several castles
distant from Sinigalia about six miles, so that room could be made for
the men of the duke; and they left in Sinigalia only Oliverotto and his
band, which consisted of one thousand infantry and one hundred and fifty
horsemen, who were quartered in the suburb mentioned above. Matters
having been thus arranged, the Duke Valentino left for Sinigalia, and
when the leaders of the cavalry reached the bridge they did not pass
over, but having opened it, one portion wheeled towards the river and
the other towards the country, and a way was left in the middle through
which the infantry passed, without stopping, into the town.
Vitellozzo, Pagolo, and the Duke di Gravina on mules, accompanied by
a few horsemen, went towards the duke; Vitellozo, unarmed and wearing a
cape lined with green, appeared very dejected, as if conscious of his
approaching death--a circumstance which, in view of the ability of the
man and his former fortune, caused some amazement. And it is said that
when he parted from his men before setting out for Sinigalia to meet the
duke he acted as if it were his last parting from them. He recommended
his house and its fortunes to his captains, and advised his nephews that
it was not the fortune of their house, but the virtues of their fathers
that should be kept in mind. These three, therefore, came before the
duke and saluted him respectfully, and were received by him with
goodwill; they were at once placed between those who were commissioned
to look after them.
But the duke noticing that Oliverotto, who had remained with his band
in Sinigalia, was missing--for Oliverotto was waiting in the square
before his quarters near the river, keeping his men in order and
drilling them--signalled with his eye to Don Michelle, to whom the care
of Oliverotto had been committed, that he should take measures that
Oliverotto should not escape. Therefore Don Michele rode off and joined
Oliverotto, telling him that it was not right to keep his men out of
their quarters, because these might be taken up by the men of the duke;
and he advised him to send them at once to their quarters and to come
himself to meet the duke. And Oliverotto, having taken this advice, came
before the duke, who, when he saw him, called to him; and Oliverotto,
having made his obeisance, joined the others.
So the whole party entered Sinigalia, dismounted at the duke's
quarters, and went with him into a secret chamber, where the duke made
them prisoners; he then mounted on horseback, and issued orders that the
men of Oliverotto and the Orsini should be stripped of their arms. Those
of Oliverotto, being at hand, were quickly settled, but those of the
Orsini and Vitelli, being at a distance, and having a presentiment of
the destruction of their masters, had time to prepare themselves, and
bearing in mind the valour and discipline of the Orsinian and Vitellian
houses, they stood together against the hostile forces of the country
and saved themselves.
But the duke's soldiers, not being content with having pillaged the
men of Oliverotto, began to sack Sinigalia, and if the duke had not
repressed this outrage by killing some of them they would have
completely sacked it. Night having come and the tumult being silenced,
the duke prepared to kill Vitellozzo and Oliverotto; he led them into a
room and caused them to be strangled. Neither of them used words in
keeping with their past lives: Vitellozzo prayed that he might ask of
the pope full pardon for his sins; Oliverotto cringed and laid the blame
for all injuries against the duke on Vitellozzo. Pagolo and the Duke di
Gravina Orsini were kept alive until the duke heard from Rome that the
pope had taken the Cardinal Orsino, the Archbishop of Florence, and
Messer Jacopo da Santa Croce. After which news, on 18th January 1502, in
the castle of Pieve, they also were strangled in the same way.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE LIFE OF CASTRUCCIO CASTRACANI OF LUCCA
WRITTEN BY NICOLO MACHIAVELLI
And sent to his friends ZANOBI BUONDELMONTI And LUIGI ALAMANNI
CASTRUCCIO CASTRACANI 1284-1328
It appears, dearest Zanobi and Luigi, a wonderful thing to those who
have considered the matter, that all men, or the larger number of them,
who have performed great deeds in the world, and excelled all others in
their day, have had their birth and beginning in baseness and obscurity;
or have been aggrieved by Fortune in some outrageous way. They have
either been exposed to the mercy of wild beasts, or they have had so
mean a parentage that in shame they have given themselves out to be sons
of Jove or of some other deity. It would be wearisome to relate who
these persons may have been because they are well known to everybody,
and, as such tales would not be particularly edifying to those who read
them, they are omitted. I believe that these lowly beginnings of great
men occur because Fortune is desirous of showing to the world that such
men owe much to her and little to wisdom, because she begins to show her
hand when wisdom can really take no part in their career: thus all
success must be attributed to her. Castruccio Castracani of Lucca was
one of those men who did great deeds, if he is measured by the times in
which he lived and the city in which he was born; but, like many others,
he was neither fortunate nor distinguished in his birth, as the course
of this history will show. It appeared to be desirable to recall his
memory, because I have discerned in him such indications of valour and
fortune as should make him a great exemplar to men. I think also that I
ought to call your attention to his actions, because you of all men I
know delight most in noble deeds.
The family of Castracani was formerly numbered among the noble
families of Lucca, but in the days of which I speak it had somewhat
fallen in estate, as so often happens in this world. To this family was
born a son Antonio, who became a priest of the order of San Michele of
Lucca, and for this reason was honoured with the title of Messer
Antonio. He had an only sister, who had been married to Buonaccorso
Cenami, but Buonaccorso dying she became a widow, and not wishing to
marry again went to live with her brother. Messer Antonio had a vineyard
behind the house where he resided, and as it was bounded on all sides by
gardens, any person could have access to it without difficulty. One
morning, shortly after sunrise, Madonna Dianora, as the sister of Messer
Antonio was called, had occasion to go into the vineyard as usual to
gather herbs for seasoning the dinner, and hearing a slight rustling
among the leaves of a vine she turned her eyes in that direction, and
heard something resembling the cry of an infant. Whereupon she went
towards it, and saw the hands and face of a baby who was lying enveloped
in the leaves and who seemed to be crying for its mother. Partly
wondering and partly fearing, yet full of compassion, she lifted it up
and carried it to the house, where she washed it and clothed it with
clean linen as is customary, and showed it to Messer Antonio when he
returned home. When he heard what had happened and saw the child he was
not less surprised or compassionate than his sister. They discussed
between themselves what should be done, and seeing that he was priest
and that she had no children, they finally determined to bring it up.
They had a nurse for it, and it was reared and loved as if it were their
own child. They baptized it, and gave it the name of Castruccio after
their father. As the years passed Castruccio grew very handsome, and
gave evidence of wit and discretion, and learnt with a quickness beyond
his years those lessons which Messer Antonio imparted to him. Messer
Antonio intended to make a priest of him, and in time would have
inducted him into his canonry and other benefices, and all his
instruction was given with this object; but Antonio discovered that the
character of Castruccio was quite unfitted for the priesthood. As soon
as Castruccio reached the age of fourteen he began to take less notice
of the chiding of Messer Antonio and Madonna Dianora and no longer to
fear them; he left off reading ecclesiastical books, and turned to
playing with arms, delighting in nothing so much as in learning their
uses, and in running, leaping, and wrestling with other boys. In all
exercises he far excelled his companions in courage and bodily strength,
and if at any time he did turn to books, only those pleased him which
told of wars and the mighty deeds of men. Messer Antonio beheld all this
with vexation and sorrow.
There lived in the city of Lucca a gentleman of the Guinigi family,
named Messer Francesco, whose profession was arms and who in riches,
bodily strength, and valour excelled all other men in Lucca. He had
often fought under the command of the Visconti of Milan, and as a
Ghibelline was the valued leader of that party in Lucca. This gentleman
resided in Lucca and was accustomed to assemble with others most
mornings and evenings under the balcony of the Podesta, which is at the
top of the square of San Michele, the finest square in Lucca, and he had
often seen Castruccio taking part with other children of the street in
those games of which I have spoken. Noticing that Castruccio far
excelled the other boys, and that he appeared to exercise a royal
authority over them, and that they loved and obeyed him, Messer
Francesco became greatly desirous of learning who he was. Being informed
of the circumstances of the bringing up of Castruccio he felt a greater
desire to have him near to him. Therefore he called him one day and
asked him whether he would more willingly live in the house of a
gentleman, where he would learn to ride horses and use arms, or in the
house of a priest, where he would learn nothing but masses and the
services of the Church. Messer Francesco could see that it pleased
Castruccio greatly to hear horses and arms spoken of, even though he
stood silent, blushing modestly; but being encouraged by Messer
Francesco to speak, he answered that, if his master were agreeable,
nothing would please him more than to give up his priestly studies and
take up those of a soldier. This reply delighted Messer Francesco, and
in a very short time he obtained the consent of Messer Antonio, who was
driven to yield by his knowledge of the nature of the lad, and the fear
that he would not be able to hold him much longer.
Thus Castruccio passed from the house of Messer Antonio the priest to
the house of Messer Francesco Guinigi the soldier, and it was
astonishing to find that in a very short time he manifested all that
virtue and bearing which we are accustomed to associate with a true
gentleman. In the first place he became an accomplished horseman, and
could manage with ease the most fiery charger, and in all jousts and
tournaments, although still a youth, he was observed beyond all others,
and he excelled in all exercises of strength and dexterity. But what
enhanced so much the charm of these accomplishments, was the delightful
modesty which enabled him to avoid offence in either act or word to
others, for he was deferential to the great men, modest with his equals,
and courteous to his inferiors. These gifts made him beloved, not only
by all the Guinigi family, but by all Lucca. When Castruccio had reached
his eighteenth year, the Ghibellines were driven from Pavia by the
Guelphs, and Messer Francesco was sent by the Visconti to assist the
Ghibellines, and with him went Castruccio, in charge of his forces.
Castruccio gave ample proof of his prudence and courage in this
expedition, acquiring greater reputation than any other captain, and his
name and fame were known, not only in Pavia, but throughout all
Lombardy.
Castruccio, having returned to Lucca in far higher estimation that he
left it, did not omit to use all the means in his power to gain as many
friends as he could, neglecting none of those arts which are necessary
for that purpose. About this time Messer Francesco died, leaving a son
thirteen years of age named Pagolo, and having appointed Castruccio to
be his son's tutor and administrator of his estate. Before he died
Francesco called Castruccio to him, and prayed him to show Pagolo that
goodwill which he (Francesco) had always shown to HIM, and to render to
the son the gratitude which he had not been able to repay to the father.
Upon the death of Francesco, Castruccio became the governor and tutor of
Pagolo, which increased enormously his power and position, and created a
certain amount of envy against him in Lucca in place of the former
universal goodwill, for many men suspected him of harbouring tyrannical
intentions. Among these the leading man was Giorgio degli Opizi, the
head of the Guelph party. This man hoped after the death of Messer
Francesco to become the chief man in Lucca, but it seemed to him that
Castruccio, with the great abilities which he already showed, and
holding the position of governor, deprived him of his opportunity;
therefore he began to sow those seeds which should rob Castruccio of his
eminence. Castruccio at first treated this with scorn, but afterwards he
grew alarmed, thinking that Messer Giorgio might be able to bring him
into disgrace with the deputy of King Ruberto of Naples and have him
driven out of Lucca.
The Lord of Pisa at that time was Uguccione of the Faggiuola of
Arezzo, who being in the first place elected their captain afterwards
became their lord. There resided in Paris some exiled Ghibellines from
Lucca, with whom Castruccio held communications with the object of
effecting their restoration by the help of Uguccione. Castruccio also
brought into his plans friends from Lucca who would not endure the
authority of the Opizi. Having fixed upon a plan to be followed,
Castruccio cautiously fortified the tower of the Onesti, filling it with
supplies and munitions of war, in order that it might stand a siege for
a few days in case of need. When the night came which had been agreed
upon with Uguccione, who had occupied the plain between the mountains
and Pisa with many men, the signal was given, and without being observed
Uguccione approached the gate of San Piero and set fire to the
portcullis. Castruccio raised a great uproar within the city, calling
the people to arms and forcing open the gate from his side. Uguccione
entered with his men, poured through the town, and killed Messer Giorgio
with all his family and many of his friends and supporters. The governor
was driven out, and the government reformed according to the wishes of
Uguccione, to the detriment of the city, because it was found that more
than one hundred families were exiled at that time. Of those who fled,
part went to Florence and part to Pistoia, which city was the
headquarters of the Guelph party, and for this reason it became most
hostile to Uguccione and the Lucchese.
As it now appeared to the Florentines and others of the Guelph party
that the Ghibellines absorbed too much power in Tuscany, they determined
to restore the exiled Guelphs to Lucca. They assembled a large army in
the Val di Nievole, and seized Montecatini; from thence they marched to
Montecarlo, in order to secure the free passage into Lucca. Upon this
Uguccione assembled his Pisan and Lucchese forces, and with a number of
German cavalry which he drew out of Lombardy, he moved against the
quarters of the Florentines, who upon the appearance of the enemy
withdrew from Montecarlo, and posted themselves between Montecatini and
Pescia. Uguccione now took up a position near to Montecarlo, and within
about two miles of the enemy, and slight skirmishes between the horse of
both parties were of daily occurrence. Owing to the illness of
Uguccione, the Pisans and Lucchese delayed coming to battle with the
enemy. Uguccione, finding himself growing worse, went to Montecarlo to
be cured, and left the command of the army in the hands of Castruccio.
This change brought about the ruin of the Guelphs, who, thinking that
the hostile army having lost its captain had lost its head, grew
over-confident. Castruccio observed this, and allowed some days to pass
in order to encourage this belief; he also showed signs of fear, and did
not allow any of the munitions of the camp to be used. On the other
side, the Guelphs grew more insolent the more they saw these evidences
of fear, and every day they drew out in the order of battle in front of
the army of Castruccio. Presently, deeming that the enemy was
sufficiently emboldened, and having mastered their tactics, he decided
to join battle with them. First he spoke a few words of encouragement to
his soldiers, and pointed out to them the certainty of victory if they
would but obey his commands. Castruccio had noticed how the enemy had
placed all his best troops in the centre of the line of battle, and his
less reliable men on the wings of the army; whereupon he did exactly the
opposite, putting his most valiant men on the flanks, while those on
whom he could not so strongly rely he moved to the centre. Observing
this order of battle, he drew out of his lines and quickly came in sight
of the hostile army, who, as usual, had come in their insolence to defy
him. He then commanded his centre squadrons to march slowly, whilst he
moved rapidly forward those on the wings. Thus, when they came into
contact with the enemy, only the wings of the two armies became engaged,
whilst the center battalions remained out of action, for these two
portions of the line of battle were separated from each other by a long
interval and thus unable to reach each other. By this expedient the more
valiant part of Castruccio's men were opposed to the weaker part of the
enemy's troops, and the most efficient men of the enemy were disengaged;
and thus the Florentines were unable to fight with those who were
arrayed opposite to them, or to give any assistance to their own flanks.
So, without much difficulty, Castruccio put the enemy to flight on both
flanks, and the centre battalions took to flight when they found
themselves exposed to attack, without having a chance of displaying
their valour. The defeat was complete, and the loss in men very heavy,
there being more than ten thousand men killed with many officers and
knights of the Guelph party in Tuscany, and also many princes who had
come to help them, among whom were Piero, the brother of King Ruberto,
and Carlo, his nephew, and Filippo, the lord of Taranto. On the part of
Castruccio the loss did not amount to more than three hundred men, among
whom was Francesco, the son of Uguccione, who, being young and rash, was
killed in the first onset.
This victory so greatly increased the reputation of Castruccio that
Uguccione conceived some jealousy and suspicion of him, because it
appeared to Uguccione that this victory had given him no increase of
power, but rather than diminished it. Being of this mind, he only waited
for an opportunity to give effect to it. This occurred on the death of
Pier Agnolo Micheli, a man of great repute and abilities in Lucca, the
murderer of whom fled to the house of Castruccio for refuge. On the
sergeants of the captain going to arrest the murderer, they were driven
off by Castruccio, and the murderer escaped. This affair coming to the
knowledge of Uguccione, who was than at Pisa, it appeared to him a
proper opportunity to punish Castruccio. He therefore sent for his son
Neri, who was the governor of Lucca, and commissioned him to take
Castruccio prisoner at a banquet and put him to death. Castruccio,
fearing no evil, went to the governor in a friendly way, was entertained
at supper, and then thrown into prison. But Neri, fearing to put him to
death lest the people should be incensed, kept him alive, in order to
hear further from his father concerning his intentions. Ugucionne cursed
the hesitation and cowardice of his son, and at once set out from Pisa
to Lucca with four hundred horsemen to finish the business in his own
way; but he had not yet reached the baths when the Pisans rebelled and
put his deputy to death and created Count Gaddo della Gherardesca their
lord. Before Uguccione reached Lucca he heard of the occurrences at
Pisa, but it did not appear wise to him to turn back, lest the Lucchese
with the example of Pisa before them should close their gates against
him. But the Lucchese, having heard of what had happened at Pisa,
availed themselves of this opportunity to demand the liberation of
Castruccio, notwithstanding that Uguccione had arrived in their city.
They first began to speak of it in private circles, afterwards openly in
the squares and streets; then they raised a tumult, and with arms in
their hands went to Uguccione and demanded that Castruccio should be set
at liberty. Uguccione, fearing that worse might happen, released him
from prison. Whereupon Castruccio gathered his friends around him, and
with the help of the people attacked Uguccione; who, finding he had no
resource but in flight, rode away with his friends to Lombardy, to the
lords of Scale, where he died in poverty.
But Castruccio from being a prisoner became almost a prince in Lucca,
and he carried himself so discreetly with his friends and the people
that they appointed him captain of their army for one year. Having
obtained this, and wishing to gain renown in war, he planned the
recovery of the many towns which had rebelled after the departure of
Uguccione, and with the help of the Pisans, with whom he had concluded a
treaty, he marched to Serezzana. To capture this place he constructed a
fort against it, which is called to-day Zerezzanello; in the course of
two months Castruccio captured the town. With the reputation gained at
that siege, he rapidly seized Massa, Carrara, and Lavenza, and in a
short time had overrun the whole of Lunigiana. In order to close the
pass which leads from Lombardy to Lunigiana, he besieged Pontremoli and
wrested it from the hands of Messer Anastagio Palavicini, who was the
lord of it. After this victory he returned to Lucca, and was welcomed by
the whole people. And now Castruccio, deeming it imprudent any longer to
defer making himself a prince, got himself created the lord of Lucca by
the help of Pazzino del Poggio, Puccinello dal Portico, Francesco
Boccansacchi, and Cecco Guinigi, all of whom he had corrupted; and he
was afterwards solemnly and deliberately elected prince by the people.
At this time Frederick of Bavaria, the King of the Romans, came into
Italy to assume the Imperial crown, and Castruccio, in order that he
might make friends with him, met him at the head of five hundred
horsemen. Castruccio had left as his deputy in Lucca, Pagolo Guinigi,
who was held in high estimation, because of the people's love for the
memory of his father. Castruccio was received in great honour by
Frederick, and many privileges were conferred upon him, and he was
appointed the emperor's lieutenant in Tuscany. At this time the Pisans
were in great fear of Gaddo della Gherardesca, whom they had driven out
of Pisa, and they had recourse for assistance to Frederick. Frederick
created Castruccio the lord of Pisa, and the Pisans, in dread of the
Guelph party, and particularly of the Florentines, were constrained to
accept him as their lord.
Frederick, having appointed a governor in Rome to watch his Italian
affairs, returned to Germany. All the Tuscan and Lombardian Ghibellines,
who followed the imperial lead, had recourse to Castruccio for help and
counsel, and all promised him the governorship of his country, if
enabled to recover it with his assistance. Among these exiles were
Matteo Guidi, Nardo Scolari, Lapo Uberti, Gerozzo Nardi, and Piero
Buonaccorsi, all exiled Florentines and Ghibellines. Castruccio had the
secret intention of becoming the master of all Tuscany by the aid of
these men and of his own forces; and in order to gain greater weight in
affairs, he entered into a league with Messer Matteo Visconti, the
Prince of Milan, and organized for him the forces of his city and the
country districts. As Lucca had five gates, he divided his own country
districts into five parts, which he supplied with arms, and enrolled the
men under captains and ensigns, so that he could quickly bring into the
field twenty thousand soldiers, without those whom he could summon to
his assistance from Pisa. While he surrounded himself with these forces
and allies, it happened at Messer Matteo Visconti was attacked by the
Guelphs of Piacenza, who had driven out the Ghibellines with the
assistance of a Florentine army and the King Ruberto. Messer Matteo
called upon Castruccio to invade the Florentines in their own
territories, so that, being attacked at home, they should be compelled
to draw their army out of Lombardy in order to defend themselves.
Castruccio invaded the Valdarno, and seized Fucecchio and San Miniato,
inflicting immense damage upon the country. Whereupon the Florentines
recalled their army, which had scarcely reached Tuscany, when Castruccio
was forced by other necessities to return to Lucca.
There resided in the city of Lucca the Poggio family, who were so
powerful that they could not only elevate Castruccio, but even advance
him to the dignity of prince; and it appearing to them they had not
received such rewards for their services as they deserved, they incited
other families to rebel and to drive Castruccio out of Lucca. They found
their opportunity one morning, and arming themselves, they set upon the
lieutenant whom Castruccio had left to maintain order and killed him.
They endeavoured to raise the people in revolt, but Stefano di Poggio, a
peaceable old man who had taken no hand in the rebellion, intervened and
compelled them by his authority to lay down their arms; and he offered
to be their mediator with Castruccio to obtain from him what they
desired. Therefore they laid down their arms with no greater
intelligence than they had taken them up. Castruccio, having heard the
news of what had happened at Lucca, at once put Pagolo Guinigi in
command of the army, and with a troop of cavalry set out for home.
Contrary to his expectations, he found the rebellion at an end, yet he
posted his men in the most advantageous places throughout the city. As
it appeared to Stefano that Castruccio ought to be very much obliged to
him, he sought him out, and without saying anything on his own behalf,
for he did not recognize any need for doing so, he begged Castruccio to
pardon the other members of his family by reason of their youth, their
former friendships, and the obligations which Castruccio was under to
their house. To this Castruccio graciously responded, and begged Stefano
to reassure himself, declaring that it gave him more pleasure to find
the tumult at an end than it had ever caused him anxiety to hear of its
inception. He encouraged Stefano to bring his family to him, saying that
he thanked God for having given him the opportunity of showing his
clemency and liberality. Upon the word of Stefano and Castruccio they
surrendered, and with Stefano were immediately thrown into prison and
put to death. Meanwhile the Florentines had recovered San Miniato,
whereupon it seemed advisable to Castruccio to make peace, as it did not
appear to him that he was sufficiently secure at Lucca to leave him. He
approached the Florentines with the proposal of a truce, which they
readily entertained, for they were weary of the war, and desirous of
getting rid of the expenses of it. A treaty was concluded with them for
two years, by which both parties agreed to keep the conquests they had
made. Castruccio thus released from this trouble, turned his attention
to affairs in Lucca, and in order that he should not again be subject to
the perils from which he had just escaped, he, under various pretences
and reasons, first wiped out all those who by their ambition might
aspire to the principality; not sparing one of them, but depriving them
of country and property, and those whom he had in his hands of life
also, stating that he had found by experience that none of them were to
be trusted. Then for his further security he raised a fortress in Lucca
with the stones of the towers of those whom he had killed or hunted out
of the state.
Whilst Castruccio made peace with the Florentines, and strengthened
his position in Lucca, he neglected no opportunity, short of open war,
of increasing his importance elsewhere. It appeared to him that if he
could get possession of Pistoia, he would have one foot in Florence,
which was his great desire. He, therefore, in various ways made friends
with the mountaineers, and worked matters so in Pistoia that both
parties confided their secrets to him. Pistoia was divided, as it always
had been, into the Bianchi and Neri parties; the head of the Bianchi was
Bastiano di Possente, and of the Neri, Jacopo da Gia. Each of these men
held secret communications with Castruccio, and each desired to drive
the other out of the city; and, after many threatenings, they came to
blows. Jacopo fortified himself at the Florentine gate, Bastiano at that
of the Lucchese side of the city; both trusted more in Castruccio than
in the Florentines, because they believed that Castruccio was far more
ready and willing to fight than the Florentines, and they both sent to
him for assistance. He gave promises to both, saying to Bastiano that he
would come in person, and to Jacopo that he would send his pupil, Pagolo
Guinigi. At the appointed time he sent forward Pagolo by way of Pisa,
and went himself direct to Pistoia; at midnight both of them met outside
the city, and both were admitted as friends. Thus the two leaders
entered, and at a signal given by Castruccio, one killed Jacopo da Gia,
and the other Bastiano di Possente, and both took prisoners or killed
the partisans of either faction. Without further opposition Pistoia
passed into the hands of Castruccio, who, having forced the Signoria to
leave the palace, compelled the people to yield obedience to him, making
them many promises and remitting their old debts. The countryside
flocked to the city to see the new prince, and all were filled with hope
and quickly settled down, influenced in a great measure by his great
valour.
About this time great disturbances arose in Rome, owing to the
dearness of living which was caused by the absence of the pontiff at
Avignon. The German governor, Enrico, was much blamed for what
happened--murders and tumults following each other daily, without his
being able to put an end to them. This caused Enrico much anxiety lest
the Romans should call in Ruberto, the King of Naples, who would drive
the Germans out of the city, and bring back the Pope. Having no nearer
friend to whom he could apply for help than Castruccio, he sent to him,
begging him not only to give him assistance, but also to come in person
to Rome. Castruccio considered that he ought not to hesitate to render
the emperor this service, because he believed that he himself would not
be safe if at any time the emperor ceased to hold Rome. Leaving Pagolo
Guinigi in command at Lucca, Castruccio set out for Rome with six
hundred horsemen, where he was received by Enrico with the greatest
distinction. In a short time the presence of Castruccio obtained such
respect for the emperor that, without bloodshed or violence, good order
was restored, chiefly by reason of Castruccio having sent by sea from
the country round Pisa large quantities of corn, and thus removed the
source of the trouble. When he had chastised some of the Roman leaders,
and admonished others, voluntary obedience was rendered to Enrico.
Castruccio received many honours, and was made a Roman senator. This
dignity was assumed with the greatest pomp, Castruccio being clothed in
a brocaded toga, which had the following words embroidered on its front:
"I am what God wills." Whilst on the back was: "What God desires shall
be."
During this time the Florentines, who were much enraged that
Castruccio should have seized Pistoia during the truce, considered how
they could tempt the city to rebel, to do which they thought would not
be difficult in his absence. Among the exiled Pistoians in Florence were
Baldo Cecchi and Jacopo Baldini, both men of leading and ready to face
danger. These men kept up communications with their friends in Pistoia,
and with the aid of the Florentines entered the city by night, and after
driving out some of Castruccio's officials and partisans, and killing
others, they restored the city to its freedom. The news of this greatly
angered Castruccio, and taking leave of Enrico, he pressed on in great
haste to Pistoia. When the Florentines heard of his return, knowing that
he would lose no time, they decided to intercept him with their forces
in the Val di Nievole, under the belief that by doing so they would cut
off his road to Pistoia. Assembling a great army of the supporters of
the Guelph cause, the Florentines entered the Pistoian territories. On
the other hand, Castruccio reached Montecarlo with his army; and having
heard where the Florentines' lay, he decided not to encounter it in the
plains of Pistoia, nor to await it in the plains of Pescia, but, as far
as he possibly could, to attack it boldly in the Pass of Serravalle. He
believed that if he succeeded in this design, victory was assured,
although he was informed that the Florentines had thirty thousand men,
whilst he had only twelve thousand. Although he had every confidence in
his own abilities and the valour of his troops, yet he hesitated to
attack his enemy in the open lest he should be overwhelmed by numbers.
Serravalle is a castle between Pescia and Pistoia, situated on a hill
which blocks the Val di Nievole, not in the exact pass, but about a
bowshot beyond; the pass itself is in places narrow and steep, whilst in
general it ascends gently, but is still narrow, especially at the summit
where the waters divide, so that twenty men side by side could hold it.
The lord of Serravalle was Manfred, a German, who, before Castruccio
became lord of Pistoia, had been allowed to remain in possession of the
castle, it being common to the Lucchese and the Pistoians, and unclaimed
by either--neither of them wishing to displace Manfred as long as he
kept his promise of neutrality, and came under obligations to no one.
For these reasons, and also because the castle was well fortified, he
had always been able to maintain his position. It was here that
Castruccio had determined to fall upon his enemy, for here his few men
would have the advantage, and there was no fear lest, seeing the large
masses of the hostile force before they became engaged, they should not
stand. As soon as this trouble with Florence arose, Castruccio saw the
immense advantage which possession of this castle would give him, and
having an intimate friendship with a resident in the castle, he managed
matters so with him that four hundred of his men were to be admitted
into the castle the night before the attack on the Florentines, and the
castellan put to death.
Castruccio, having prepared everything, had now to encourage the
Florentines to persist in their desire to carry the seat of war away
from Pistoia into the Val di Nievole, therefore he did not move his army
from Montecarlo. Thus the Florentines hurried on until they reached
their encampment under Serravalle, intending to cross the hill on the
following morning. In the meantime, Castruccio had seized the castle at
night, had also moved his army from Montecarlo, and marching from thence
at midnight in dead silence, had reached the foot of Serravalle: thus he
and the Florentines commenced the ascent of the hill at the same time in
the morning. Castruccio sent forward his infantry by the main road, and
a troop of four hundred horsemen by a path on the left towards the
castle. The Florentines sent forward four hundred cavalry ahead of their
army which was following, never expecting to find Castruccio in
possession of the hill, nor were they aware of his having seized the
castle. Thus it happened that the Florentine horsemen mounting the hill
were completely taken by surprise when they discovered the infantry of
Castruccio, and so close were they upon it they had scarcely time to
pull down their visors. It was a case of unready soldiers being attacked
by ready, and they were assailed with such vigour that with difficulty
they could hold their own, although some few of them got through. When
the noise of the fighting reached the Florentine camp below, it was
filled with confusion. The cavalry and infantry became inextricably
mixed: the captains were unable to get their men either backward or
forward, owing to the narrowness of the pass, and amid all this tumult
no one knew what ought to be done or what could be done. In a short time
the cavalry who were engaged with the enemy's infantry were scattered or
killed without having made any effective defence because of their
unfortunate position, although in sheer desperation they had offered a
stout resistance. Retreat had been impossible, with the mountains on
both flanks, whilst in front were their enemies, and in the rear their
friends. When Castruccio saw that his men were unable to strike a
decisive blow at the enemy and put them to flight, he sent one thousand
infantrymen round by the castle, with orders to join the four hundred
horsemen he had previously dispatched there, and commanded the whole
force to fall upon the flank of the enemy. These orders they carried out
with such fury that the Florentines could not sustain the attack, but
gave way, and were soon in full retreat--conquered more by their
unfortunate position than by the valour of their enemy. Those in the
rear turned towards Pistoia, and spread through the plains, each man
seeking only his own safety. The defeat was complete and very
sanguinary. Many captains were taken prisoners, among whom were Bandini
dei Rossi, Francesco Brunelleschi, and Giovanni della Tosa, all
Florentine noblemen, with many Tuscans and Neapolitans who fought on the
Florentine side, having been sent by King Ruberto to assist the Guelphs.
Immediately the Pistoians heard of this defeat they drove out the
friends of the Guelphs, and surrendered to Castruccio. He was not
content with occupying Prato and all the castles on the plains on both
sides of the Arno, but marched his army into the plain of Peretola,
about two miles from Florence. Here he remained many days, dividing the
spoils, and celebrating his victory with feasts and games, holding horse
races, and foot races for men and women. He also struck medals in
commemoration of the defeat of the Florentines. He endeavoured to
corrupt some of the citizens of Florence, who were to open the city
gates at night; but the conspiracy was discovered, and the participators
in it taken and beheaded, among whom were Tommaso Lupacci and
Lambertuccio Frescobaldi. This defeat caused the Florentines great
anxiety, and despairing of preserving their liberty, they sent envoys to
King Ruberto of Naples, offering him the dominion of their city; and he,
knowing of what immense importance the maintenance of the Guelph cause
was to him, accepted it. He agreed with the Florentines to receive from
them a yearly tribute of two hundred thousand florins, and he send his
son Carlo to Florence with four thousand horsemen.
Shortly after this the Florentines were relieved in some degree of
the pressure of Castruccio's army, owing to his being compelled to leave
his positions before Florence and march on Pisa, in order to suppress a
conspiracy that had been raised against him by Benedetto Lanfranchi, one
of the first men in Pisa, who could not endure that his fatherland
should be under the dominion of the Lucchese. He had formed this
conspiracy, intending to seize the citadel, kill the partisans of
Castruccio, and drive out the garrison. As, however, in a conspiracy
paucity of numbers is essential to secrecy, so for its execution a few
are not sufficient, and in seeking more adherents to his conspiracy
Lanfranchi encountered a person who revealed the design to Castruccio.
This betrayal cannot be passed by without severe reproach to Bonifacio
Cerchi and Giovanni Guidi, two Florentine exiles who were suffering
their banishment in Pisa. Thereupon Castruccio seized Benedetto and put
him to death, and beheaded many other noble citizens, and drove their
families into exile. It now appeared to Castruccio that both Pisa and
Pistoia were thoroughly disaffected; he employed much thought and energy
upon securing his position there, and this gave the Florentines their
opportunity to reorganize their army, and to await the coming of Carlo,
the son of the King of Naples. When Carlo arrived they decided to lose
no more time, and assembled a great army of more than thirty thousand
infantry and ten thousand cavalry--having called to their aid every
Guelph there was in Italy. They consulted whether they should attack
Pistoia or Pisa first, and decided that it would be better to march on
the latter--a course, owing to the recent conspiracy, more likely to
succeed, and of more advantage to them, because they believed that the
surrender of Pistoia would follow the acquisition of Pisa.
In the early part of May 1328, the Florentines put in motion this
army and quickly occupied Lastra, Signa, Montelupo, and Empoli, passing
from thence on to San Miniato. When Castruccio heard of the enormous
army which the Florentines were sending against him, he was in no degree
alarmed, believing that the time had now arrived when Fortune would
deliver the empire of Tuscany into his hands, for he had no reason to
think that his enemy would make a better fight, or had better prospects
of success, than at Pisa or Serravalle. He assembled twenty thousand
foot soldiers and four thousand horsemen, and with this army went to
Fucecchio, whilst he sent Pagolo Guinigi to Pisa with five thousand
infantry. Fucecchio has a stronger position than any other town in the
Pisan district, owing to its situation between the rivers Arno and
Gusciana and its slight elevation above the surrounding plain. Moreover,
the enemy could not hinder its being victualled unless they divided
their forces, nor could they approach it either from the direction of
Lucca or Pisa, nor could they get through to Pisa, or attack
Castruccio's forces except at a disadvantage. In one case they would
find themselves placed between his two armies, the one under his own
command and the other under Pagolo, and in the other case they would
have to cross the Arno to get to close quarters with the enemy, an
undertaking of great hazard. In order to tempt the Florentines to take
this latter course, Castruccio withdrew his men from the banks of the
river and placed them under the walls of Fucecchio, leaving a wide
expanse of land between them and the river.
The Florentines, having occupied San Miniato, held a council of war
to decide whether they should attack Pisa or the army of Castruccio,
and, having weighed the difficulties of both courses, they decided upon
the latter. The river Arno was at that time low enough to be fordable,
yet the water reached to the shoulders of the infantrymen and to the
saddles of the horsemen. On the morning of 10 June 1328, the Florentines
commenced the battle by ordering forward a number of cavalry and ten
thousand infantry. Castruccio, whose plan of action was fixed, and who
well knew what to do, at once attacked the Florentines with five
thousand infantry and three thousand horsemen, not allowing them to
issue from the river before he charged them; he also sent one thousand
light infantry up the river bank, and the same number down the Arno. The
infantry of the Florentines were so much impeded by their arms and the
water that they were not able to mount the banks of the river, whilst
the cavalry had made the passage of the river more difficult for the
others, by reason of the few who had crossed having broken up the bed of
the river, and this being deep with mud, many of the horses rolled over
with their riders and many of them had stuck so fast that they could not
move. When the Florentine captains saw the difficulties their men were
meeting, they withdrew them and moved higher up the river, hoping to
find the river bed less treacherous and the banks more adapted for
landing. These men were met at the bank by the forces which Castruccio
had already sent forward, who, being light armed with bucklers and
javelins in their hands, let fly with tremendous shouts into the faces
and bodies of the cavalry. The horses, alarmed by the noise and the
wounds, would not move forward, and trampled each other in great
confusion. The fight between the men of Castruccio and those of the
enemy who succeeded in crossing was sharp and terrible; both sides
fought with the utmost desperation and neither would yield. The soldiers
of Castruccio fought to drive the others back into the river, whilst the
Florentines strove to get a footing on land in order to make room for
the others pressing forward, who if they could but get out of the water
would be able to fight, and in this obstinate conflict they were urged
on by their captains. Castruccio shouted to his men that these were the
same enemies whom they had before conquered at Serravalle, whilst the
Florentines reproached each other that the many should be overcome by
the few. At length Castruccio, seeing how long the battle had lasted,
and that both his men and the enemy were utterly exhausted, and that
both sides had many killed and wounded, pushed forward another body of
infantry to take up a position at the rear of those who were fighting;
he then commanded these latter to open their ranks as if they intended
to retreat, and one part of them to turn to the right and another to the
left. This cleared a space of which the Florentines at once took
advantage, and thus gained possession of a portion of the battlefield.
But when these tired soldiers found themselves at close quarters with
Castruccio's reserves they could not stand against them and at once fell
back into the river. The cavalry of either side had not as yet gained
any decisive advantage over the other, because Castruccio, knowing his
inferiority in this arm, had commanded his leaders only to stand on the
defensive against the attacks of their adversaries, as he hoped that
when he had overcome the infantry he would be able to make short work of
the cavalry. This fell out as he had hoped, for when he saw the
Florentine army driven back across the river he ordered the remainder of
his infantry to attack the cavalry of the enemy. This they did with
lance and javelin, and, joined by their own cavalry, fell upon the enemy
with the greatest fury and soon put him to flight. The Florentine
captains, having seen the difficulty their cavalry had met with in
crossing the river, had attempted to make their infantry cross lower
down the river, in order to attack the flanks of Castruccio's army. But
here, also, the banks were steep and already lined by the men of
Castruccio, and this movement was quite useless. Thus the Florentines
were so completely defeated at all points that scarcely a third of them
escaped, and Castruccio was again covered with glory. Many captains were
taken prisoners, and Carlo, the son of King Ruberto, with Michelagnolo
Falconi and Taddeo degli Albizzi, the Florentine commissioners, fled to
Empoli. If the spoils were great, the slaughter was infinitely greater,
as might be expected in such a battle. Of the Florentines there fell
twenty thousand two hundred and thirty-one men, whilst Castruccio lost
one thousand five hundred and seventy men.
But Fortune growing envious of the glory of Castruccio took away his
life just at the time when she should have preserved it, and thus ruined
all those plans which for so long a time he had worked to carry into
effect, and in the successful prosecution of which nothing but death
could have stopped him. Castruccio was in the thick of the battle the
whole of the day; and when the end of it came, although fatigued and
overheated, he stood at the gate of Fucecchio to welcome his men on
their return from victory and personally thank them. He was also on the
watch for any attempt of the enemy to retrieve the fortunes of the day;
he being of the opinion that it was the duty of a good general to be the
first man in the saddle and the last out of it. Here Castruccio stood
exposed to a wind which often rises at midday on the banks of the Arno,
and which is often very unhealthy; from this he took a chill, of which
he thought nothing, as he was accustomed to such troubles; but it was
the cause of his death. On the following night he was attacked with high
fever, which increased so rapidly that the doctors saw it must prove
fatal. Castruccio, therefore, called Pagolo Guinigi to him, and
addressed him as follows:
"If I could have believed that Fortune would have cut me off in the
midst of the career which was leading to that glory which all my
successes promised, I should have laboured less, and I should have left
thee, if a smaller state, at least with fewer enemies and perils,
because I should have been content with the governorships of Lucca and
Pisa. I should neither have subjugated the Pistoians, nor outraged the
Florentines with so many injuries. But I would have made both these
peoples my friends, and I should have lived, if no longer, at least more
peacefully, and have left you a state without a doubt smaller, but one
more secure and established on a surer foundation. But Fortune, who
insists upon having the arbitrament of human affairs, did not endow me
with sufficient judgment to recognize this from the first, nor the time
to surmount it. Thou hast heard, for many have told thee, and I have
never concealed it, how I entered the house of thy father whilst yet a
boy--a stranger to all those ambitions which every generous soul should
feel--and how I was brought up by him, and loved as though I had been
born of his blood; how under his governance I learned to be valiant and
capable of availing myself of all that fortune, of which thou hast been
witness. When thy good father came to die, he committed thee and all his
possessions to my care, and I have brought thee up with that love, and
increased thy estate with that care, which I was bound to show. And in
order that thou shouldst not only possess the estate which thy father
left, but also that which my fortune and abilities have gained, I have
never married, so that the love of children should never deflect my mind
from that gratitude which I owed to the children of thy father. Thus I
leave thee a vast estate, of which I am well content, but I am deeply
concerned, inasmuch as I leave it thee unsettled and insecure. Thou hast
the city of Lucca on thy hands, which will never rest contented under
they government. Thou hast also Pisa, where the men are of nature
changeable and unreliable, who, although they may be sometimes held in
subjection, yet they will ever disdain to serve under a Lucchese.
Pistoia is also disloyal to thee, she being eaten up with factions and
deeply incensed against thy family by reason of the wrongs recently
inflicted upon them. Thou hast for neighbours the offended Florentines,
injured by us in a thousand ways, but not utterly destroyed, who will
hail the news of my death with more delight than they would the
acquisition of all Tuscany. In the Emperor and in the princes of Milan
thou canst place no reliance, for they are far distant, slow, and their
help is very long in coming. Therefore, thou hast no hope in anything
but in thine own abilities, and in the memory of my valour, and in the
prestige which this latest victory has brought thee; which, as thou
knowest how to use it with prudence, will assist thee to come to terms
with the Florentines, who, as they are suffering under this great
defeat, should be inclined to listen to thee. And whereas I have sought
to make them my enemies, because I believed that war with them would
conduce to my power and glory, thou hast every inducement to make
friends of them, because their alliance will bring thee advantages and
security. It is of the greatest important in this world that a man
should know himself, and the measure of his own strength and means; and
he who knows that he has not a genius for fighting must learn how to
govern by the arts of peace. And it will be well for thee to rule they
conduct by my counsel, and to learn in this way to enjoy what my
life-work and dangers have gained; and in this thou wilt easily succeed
when thou hast learnt to believe that what I have told thee is true. And
thou wilt be doubly indebted to me, in that I have left thee this realm
and have taught thee how to keep it."
After this there came to Castruccio those citizens of Pisa, Pistoia,
and Lucca, who had been fighting at his side, and whilst recommending
Pagolo to them, and making them swear obedience to him as his successor,
he died. He left a happy memory to those who had known him, and no
prince of those times was ever loved with such devotion as he was. His
obsequies were celebrated with every sign of mourning, and he was buried
in San Francesco at Lucca. Fortune was not so friendly to Pagolo Guinigi
as she had been to Castruccio, for he had not the abilities. Not long
after the death of Castruccio, Pagolo lost Pisa, and then Pistoia, and
only with difficulty held on to Lucca. This latter city continued in the
family of Guinigi until the time of the great-grandson of Pagolo.
From what has been related here it will be seen that Castruccio was a
man of exceptional abilities, not only measured by men of his own time,
but also by those of an earlier date. In stature he was above the
ordinary height, and perfectly proportioned. He was of a gracious
presence, and he welcomed men with such urbanity that those who spoke
with him rarely left him displeased. His hair was inclined to be red,
and he wore it cut short above the ears, and, whether it rained or
snowed, he always went without a hat. He was delightful among friends,
but terrible to his enemies; just to his subjects; ready to play false
with the unfaithful, and willing to overcome by fraud those whom he
desired to subdue, because he was wont to say that it was the victory
that brought the glory, not the methods of achieving it. No one was
bolder in facing danger, none more prudent in extricating himself. He
was accustomed to say that men ought to attempt everything and fear
nothing; that God is a lover of strong men, because one always sees that
the weak are chastised by the strong. He was also wonderfully sharp or
biting though courteous in his answers; and as he did not look for any
indulgence in this way of speaking from others, so he was not angered
with others did not show it to him. It has often happened that he has
listened quietly when others have spoken sharply to him, as on the
following occasions. He had caused a ducat to be given for a partridge,
and was taken to task for doing so by a friend, to whom Castruccio had
said: "You would not have given more than a penny." "That is true,"
answered the friend. Then said Castruccio to him: "A ducat is much less
to me." Having about him a flatterer on whom he had spat to show that he
scorned him, the flatterer said to him: "Fisherman are willing to let
the waters of the sea saturate them in order that they make take a few
little fishes, and I allow myself to be wetted by spittle that I may
catch a whale"; and this was not only heard by Castruccio with patience
but rewarded. When told by a priest that it was wicked for him to live
so sumptuously, Castruccio said: "If that be a vice than you should not
fare so splendidly at the feasts of our saints." Passing through a
street he saw a young man as he came out of a house of ill fame blush at
being seen by Castruccio, and said to him: "Thou shouldst not be ashamed
when thou comest out, but when thou goest into such places." A friend
gave him a very curiously tied knot to undo and was told: "Fool, do you
think that I wish to untie a thing which gave so much trouble to
fasten." Castruccio said to one who professed to be a philosopher: "You
are like the dogs who always run after those who will give them the best
to eat," and was answered: "We are rather like the doctors who go to the
houses of those who have the greatest need of them." Going by water from
Pisa to Leghorn, Castruccio was much disturbed by a dangerous storm that
sprang up, and was reproached for cowardice by one of those with him,
who said that he did not fear anything. Castruccio answered that he did
not wonder at that, since every man valued his soul for what is was
worth. Being asked by one what he ought to do to gain estimation, he
said: "When thou goest to a banquet take care that thou dost not seat
one piece of wood upon another." To a person who was boasting that he
had read many things, Castruccio said: "He knows better than to boast of
remembering many things." Someone bragged that he could drink much
without becoming intoxicated. Castruccio replied: "An ox does the same."
Castruccio was acquainted with a girl with whom he had intimate
relations, and being blamed by a friend who told him that it was
undignified for him to be taken in by a woman, he said: "She has not
taken me in, I have taken her." Being also blamed for eating very dainty
foods, he answered: "Thou dost not spend as much as I do?" and being
told that it was true, he continued: "Then thou art more avaricious than
I am gluttonous." Being invited by Taddeo Bernardi, a very rich and
splendid citizen of Luca, to supper, he went to the house and was shown
by Taddeo into a chamber hung with silk and paved with fine stones
representing flowers and foliage of the most beautiful colouring.
Castruccio gathered some saliva in his mouth and spat it out upon
Taddeo, and seeing him much disturbed by this, said to him: "I knew not
where to spit in order to offend thee less." Being asked how Caesar died
he said: "God willing I will die as he did." Being one night in the
house of one of his gentlemen where many ladies were assembled, he was
reproved by one of his friends for dancing and amusing himself with them
more than was usual in one of his station, so he said: "He who is
considered wise by day will not be considered a fool at night." A person
came to demand a favour of Castruccio, and thinking he was not listening
to his plea threw himself on his knees to the ground, and being sharply
reproved by Castruccio, said: "Thou art the reason of my acting thus for
thou hast thy ears in thy feet," whereupon he obtained double the favour
he had asked. Castruccio used to say that the way to hell was an easy
one, seeing that it was in a downward direction and you travelled
blindfolded. Being asked a favour by one who used many superfluous
words, he said to him: "When you have another request to make, send
someone else to make it." Having been wearied by a similar man with a
long oration who wound up by saying: "Perhaps I have fatigued you by
speaking so long," Castruccio said: "You have not, because I have not
listened to a word you said." He used to say of one who had been a
beautiful child and who afterwards became a fine man, that he was
dangerous, because he first took the husbands from the wives and now he
took the wives from their husbands. To an envious man who laughed, he
said: "Do you laugh because you are successful or because another is
unfortunate?" Whilst he was still in the charge of Messer Francesco
Guinigi, one of his companions said to him: "What shall I give you if
you will let me give you a blow on the nose?" Castruccio answered: "A
helmet." Having put to death a citizen of Lucca who had been
instrumental in raising him to power, and being told that he had done
wrong to kill one of his old friends, he answered that people deceived
themselves; he had only killed a new enemy. Castruccio praised greatly
those men who intended to take a wife and then did not do so, saying
that they were like men who said they would go to sea, and then refused
when the time came. He said that it always struck him with surprise that
whilst men in buying an earthen or glass vase would sound it first to
learn if it were good, yet in choosing a wife they were content with
only looking at her. He was once asked in what manner he would wish to
be buried when he died, and answered: "With the face turned downwards,
for I know when I am gone this country will be turned upside down." On
being asked if it had ever occurred to him to become a friar in order to
save his soul, he answered that it had not, because it appeared strange
to him that Fra Lazerone should go to Paradise and Uguccione della
Faggiuola to the Inferno. He was once asked when should a man eat to
preserve his health, and replied: "If the man be rich let him eat when
he is hungry; if he be poor, then when he can." Seeing on of his
gentlemen make a member of his family lace him up, he said to him: "I
pray God that you will let him feed you also." Seeing that someone had
written upon his house in Latin the words: "May God preserve this house
from the wicked," he said, "The owner must never go in." Passing through
one of the streets he saw a small house with a very large door, and
remarked: "That house will fly through the door." He was having a
discussion with the ambassador of the King of Naples concerning the
property of some banished nobles, when a dispute arose between them, and
the ambassador asked him if he had no fear of the king. "Is this king of
yours a bad man or a good one?" asked Castruccio, and was told that he
was a good one, whereupon he said, "Why should you suggest that I should
be afraid of a good man?"
I could recount many other stories of his sayings both witty and
weighty, but I think that the above will be sufficient testimony to his
high qualities. He lived forty-four years, and was in every way a
prince. And as he was surrounded by many evidences of his good fortune,
so he also desired to have near him some memorials of his bad fortune;
therefore the manacles with which he was chained in prison are to be
seen to this day fixed up in the tower of his residence, where they were
placed by him to testify for ever to his days of adversity. As in his
life he was inferior neither to Philip of Macedon, the father of
Alexander, nor to Scipio of Rome, so he died in the same year of his age
as they did, and he would doubtless have excelled both of them had
Fortune decreed that he should be born, not in Lucca, but in Macedonia
or Rome.
