9
Monarchy with public support
Now let’s turn to our second case, where a private citizen becomes king in his own country not by crime or unacceptable violence, but with the support of his fellow-citizens. We can call this a monarchy with public support and to become its king you don’t have to be wholly brilliant or extraordinarily lucky, just shrewd in a lucky way. Obviously, to take control of this kind of state you need the support of either the common people or the wealthy families, the nobles. In every city one finds these two conflicting political positions: there are the common people who are eager not to be ordered around and oppressed by the noble families, and there are the nobles who are eager to oppress the common people and order them around. These opposing impulses will lead to one of three different situations: a monarchy, a republic, or anarchy.
A monarchy can be brought about either by the common people or the nobles, when one or the other party finds it convenient. Seeing that they can’t control the people, the wealthy families begin to concentrate prestige on one of their number and make him king so as to be able to get what they want in his shadow. Likewise, the people, seeing that they can’t resist the power of the nobles, concentrate prestige on one citizen and make him king so that his authority will protect them. A king who comes to power with the help of the rich nobles will have more trouble keeping it than the king who gets there with the support of the people, because he will be surrounded by men who consider themselves his equals, and that will make it hard for him to give them orders or to manage affairs as he wants.
But a man coming to power with the support of the common people holds it alone and has no one, or hardly anyone, around him who’s unwilling to obey. What’s more, you can’t in good faith give the nobles what they want without doing harm to others; but you can with the people. Because the people’s aspirations are more honourable than those of the nobles: the nobles want to oppress the people, while the people want to be free from oppression. What’s more, a king can never be safe if the common people are hostile to him, because there are so many of them; but he can protect himself against the nobles, since there are not so many. The worst a king can expect if the people turn hostile is that they will desert him; but when the nobles turn against him, he has to fear not only desertion, but a direct attack. The nobles are smarter, they see further ahead, they always move early enough to save their skins, ingratiating themselves with whoever they think will turn out the winner. Then, of necessity, a king will always have to live with the same common people; but he can perfectly well get by without the same nobles, since he can make and unmake noblemen every day, giving and taking away honours as he likes.
Let’s settle this question of the nobles. As I see it, they can be divided for the most part into two categories: either they behave in such a way as to tie themselves entirely to your destiny, or they don’t. Those who do tie themselves and aren’t greedy should be honoured and loved; the ones who don’t can be further divided into two groups. Maybe they are anxious men, naturally lacking in character, in which case you’d better make use of them, especially the ones with good advice to offer, since when things are going well they’ll respect you and when things are tough you needn’t fear them; but if they’re hanging back out of calculation and ambition that’s a sign they’re looking more to their own interests than to yours. These are the ones you have to watch out for and guard against as if they were already declared enemies, because, inevitably, when things start going wrong, these men will be working to bring you down.
A man who becomes king with the support of the people, then, must keep those people on his side. This is easy enough since all they want is to be free from oppression. But the man who becomes king against the will of the majority and with the support of the wealthy nobles must make it an absolute priority to win over the affection of the common people. This will be easy if he takes them under his protection. When people are treated well by someone they thought was hostile they respond with even greater loyalty; they’ll go over to his side at once and be even more devoted than if he had taken power with their support. There are all kinds of ways a king can win the people’s affection, but since these depend on particular circumstances and one can hardly lay down rules, I’ll leave them out of our discussion. I’ll just conclude, then, that a ruler must have the people on his side; otherwise when things get tough there’ll be no way out.
Nabis, the Spartan king, was besieged by forces from all over Greece plus a hugely successful Roman army, but he held out and defended his country and his position against the lot of them. All he had to do when danger threatened was take precautions to deal with a few internal enemies, but if he’d had the people against him, this wouldn’t have been enough. And if anyone objects to my reasoning here with that trite proverb: the man who builds his house on the people is building on mud, my answer is that this is true if it’s a private citizen doing the building and imagining the people will come to his rescue when he’s in trouble with the law or his enemies. Men like this usually find themselves being let down, as did the Gracchi brothers in Rome and Giorgio Scali in Florence. But when it’s a king building on the people, and when he’s a man of spirit who knows how to lead and doesn’t panic when things get tough, a man who takes the right precautions and whose personality and style of government keeps everybody in a positive state of mind, then the people will never let him down and time will show what solid foundations he laid.
This kind of ruler is most at risk when passing from publicly supported leadership to absolute rule. At this point he either commands directly himself or gives orders by proxy through magistrates. If he’s ruling by proxy he’ll be weaker and exposed to greater risks, since he now depends entirely on the good will of the men appointed as magistrates and they can very easily strip him of his power, particularly when times are hard, either by attacking him directly or by just not carrying out his orders. Once the trouble has begun, the ruler won’t have time to take absolute command himself because his citizens and subjects will be used to taking orders from magistrates and they aren’t going to start obeying him in a moment of crisis; so when he’s up against it, he’ll always be struggling to find anyone he can trust. A ruler in this position mustn’t count on what he sees when things are going well and the citizens need his government. Then everybody comes running, everyone is promising this and that, everyone is ready to die for him, since there is no question of dying. But when things get tough and it’s the government that needs the citizens, then hardly anyone shows. And what’s so dangerous about a critical moment like this is that you only get one shot at it. So if he’s sensible the ruler must work out a situation where his citizens will always need both his government and him, however well or badly things are going. Then they will always be loyal.
10
Assessing a state’s strength
When looking at the nature of these various states one important question to ask is: if attacked, does a ruler have sufficient power to defend himself with his own resources, or will he always have to rely on the protection of others? To make the question more precise, let’s say that a ruler who has enough men or enough money to put together an army that can take on all comers is, by my definition, capable of defending himself, while a ruler who can’t take on an enemy in the field but has to withdraw behind his city walls and defend those, is one who will always be in need of outside help. We’ve already said something about the first kind of ruler [Chapter 6] and later on there’ll be more [Chapters 11-13]. As for the second kind, one can only encourage them to fortify their home towns and keep them well supplied, while leaving the surrounding countryside entirely to its fate. If a ruler has built good fortifications and managed his relationship with his subjects as suggested above and further elaborated in the following pages, his enemies will always think twice before attacking him. People are always wary of projects that present obvious difficulties, and attacking a well-defended town and a ruler whose subjects don’t hate him is never a
n easy proposition.
German cities are completely independent, don’t have much territory around them and obey the emperor only when it suits. They are not afraid of him, nor of any other powerful rulers in the area. This is because these towns are so well fortified that everyone realizes what an arduous, wearisome business it would be to attack them. They all have properly sized moats and walls; they have the necessary artillery; they have public warehouses with food, drink and firewood for a year; what’s more, to keep people well fed without draining the public purse, they stock materials for a year’s worth of work in whatever trades are the lifeblood of the city and whatever jobs the common folk earn their keep with. They hold military exercises in high regard and make all kinds of arrangements to make sure they’re routinely practised.
So, a ruler whose city is well fortified and who doesn’t inspire hatred among his subjects isn’t going to be attacked, and even if he is, his attackers will leave humiliated, because the world is such a changeable place that it’s almost impossible to keep an army camped outside a city’s walls doing nothing for a whole year. Someone will object: what if people have houses outside the walls and see them being burned down; won’t they get impatient; won’t the long siege and their worries for their own futures make them forget their ruler? My answer is that a leader with power and personality will always get round problems like this; he can raise hopes that the siege won’t last long; he can frighten people with stories about the enemy’s cruelty; he can move quickly to block anyone who seems too hot-headed. Aside from this, it’s obvious that the enemy is going to be burning and razing the countryside as he approaches the town at a time when people are still enthusiastic and determined to resist. This actually gives the ruler less cause for concern, because a few days later, when hearts are cooling, the damage is already done, the blow struck, and there’s no way back. As a result, people will rally round their ruler all the more, they’ll see him as indebted to them because their houses have been burned and their property destroyed in his defence. It’s human nature to tie yourself to a leader as much for the services you’ve done him as the good he’s done you. Hence, when you think about it, if the ruler is sensible, it won’t be that hard to keep people solid throughout the siege, so long as they have food to eat and weapons to defend themselves.
11
Church states
The last kind of state we have to look at is the Church state. In this case all the difficulties an eventual ruler must face come before he takes power; because while you need ability or luck to take a state like this you can hold on to it without either. Church states are upheld by ancient religious institutions that are so strong and well established as to keep their rulers in power no matter what they do or how they live. Only Church leaders possess states without defending them and subjects without governing them. And even when undefended their states are not taken off them; even when left ungoverned their subjects don’t rebel; they don’t think about changing ruler and wouldn’t be able to anyway. So this is the only form of government that is secure and relaxed.
But since Church states depend on forces beyond the reach of human reason, I shall say no more about them. God created them and sustains them and it would be rash and presumptuous for a mere man to discuss them. All the same, if someone were to ask me how the Church has increased its temporal power so dramatically in recent times, progressing from a situation prior to Pope Alexander where even the most insignificant rulers of Italy hardly rated the Church at all in temporal terms to one where a pope can scare the King of France himself and chase him out of Italy and crush the Venetians, then I think it would be worthwhile sorting out the facts for the record, however well known they may already be.
Before Charles, King of France, came down into Italy, the country was controlled by the pope, the Venetians, the King of Naples, the Duke of Milan and the Florentines. Necessarily, these powerful states had two main concerns: to keep foreign armies out of Italy and to prevent each other from grabbing more territory. The pope and the Venetians were the most eager expansionists. The only way to hold back the Venetians was for all the other states to band together, as they did in the defence of Ferrara; to frustrate the pope, on the other hand, they relied on the Roman barons. Since these barons were divided into two factions, the Orsinis and the Colonnas, they always had something to fight about, and with their swords drawn under the pope’s nose they kept him weak and indecisive. And though from time to time you might get a really determined pope, like Sixtus, all the same he was never quite cunning enough or lucky enough to solve the problem. The reason was that papacies tended to be short-lived. In the ten years, on average, that a pope was in power he might just manage to beat down one of the two factions; but if, for example, one pope had almost finished off the Colonnas, the next would be hostile to the Orsinis and so resurrect the Colonnas, but without quite having the time to see off the Orsinis. This is why the Italian states did not rate the pope’s temporal power very highly.
Then came Alexander VI, who more than any other pope in history showed what could be done with finance and force of arms. Using Valentino Borgia and taking advantage of the intrusions of the French, he made all the gains I mentioned in my discussion of Duke Valentino. And though Alexander’s aim was to make his son great, not the Church, all the same his achievements enhanced the power of the Church, which, after his and then Valentino’s death, inherited his conquests. So on his election Pope Julius took over a Church that now possessed the whole of Romagna and was all the more powerful because Alexander had quashed the Roman barons and their factions. He also found a new way of increasing Church income which had never been used before.1
Julius not only followed Alexander’s lead, but went further. He aimed to take Bologna, defeat the Venetians and push the French out of Italy. In the end all three goals were achieved and Julius’s credit was the greater because he did it for the glory of the Church, not out of private interest. He kept the Orsini and Colonna factions in the same reduced state he found them in, and, though one or two of their leaders tried to change things, two obstacles held them back: the first was the Church’s power, which unnerved them, and the second was the fact that they had no cardinals. Cardinals are always a cause of internal division; when they have their own cardinals, these factions are never quiet, because the cardinals feed party animosity both inside and outside Rome and the barons are forced to come to their party’s defence. So it’s the ambition of the cardinals that prompts hostility and conflict between the barons. On Julius’s death, his Holiness Pope Leo found the papacy in an extremely strong position and it is to be hoped that while his predecessors made the Church great by armed force, he can make it even greater and more praiseworthy thanks to his goodness and many, many other virtues.
12
Different kinds of armies and a consideration of mercenary forces
Now that I’ve given a detailed account of the characteristics of the states I set out to talk about, and examined to some extent the reasons for their being powerful or weak and the ways people in the past have tried to take and to hold them, I shall offer a more general discussion of the means of attack and defence available to each kind of state. We’ve already said that a ruler’s power must be based on solid foundations; otherwise he’s bound to fall. And the main foundations of any state, whether it be new, or old, or a new territory acquired by an old regime, are good laws and good armed forces. And since you can’t have good laws if you don’t have good armed forces, while if you have good armed forces good laws inevitably follow, I’ll leave aside a discussion of the law and go straight to the question of the army.
Now, the armies a ruler is depending on to defend his state will either be his own, or mercenaries, or auxiliaries, or some combination of these. Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous. If you are counting on mercenaries to defend your state you will never be stable or secure, because mercenaries are ambitious, undisciplined, disloyal and they quarrel among themselves. Courageous
with friends and cowardly with enemies, they have no fear of God and keep no promises. With mercenaries the only way to delay disaster is to delay the battle; in peacetime they plunder you and in wartime they let the enemy plunder you. Why? Because the only interest they have in you and their only reason for fighting is the meagre salary you’re paying them, and that’s not reason enough to make them want to die for you. Sure, they’re happy to be your soldiers while you’re not at war, but when war comes, they run for it, or just disappear.
It shouldn’t be hard to convince the reader of this, since Italy’s present ruin has been caused precisely by a prolonged dependence on mercenaries. It’s true that mercenary forces did win some battles and seemed courageous when fighting other mercenaries; but as soon as a foreign army turned up we saw what they were made of: Charles, King of France, didn’t even have to fight; his men just put chalk crosses on the buildings they planned to use as billets. When Savonarola said we brought this on ourselves with our own sins, he was right; except the sins were not what he was thinking of, but the ones I’ve been talking about. And because they were our rulers’ sins, it was our rulers who paid the price.