I’d like to offer a better explanation of why mercenaries are not a good idea. A mercenary commander may or may not be an excellent military leader: if he is, you can’t trust him because he will always aspire to power himself, either by attacking you, his paymaster, or by attacking others against your wishes; but if he isn’t a capable leader, he’ll ruin you anyway. And if someone objects that it hardly matters who commands the army since commanders always behave like this, whether mercenary or no, my response is as follows: armed forces are always at the service of a hereditary ruler or a republic. A ruler must go in person and act as commander himself; a republic must send its citizens; if it sends a man who turns out to be no good it must replace him; if he is good it must keep him in line with laws that prevent him exceeding his brief. Experience shows that only rulers and republics with their own armies make serious progress, while mercenaries bring nothing but trouble. And a republic with a citizen army is less likely to fall victim to a coup than a republic paying for mercenary armies.
Rome and Sparta stood for many centuries armed and free. The Swiss are extremely well armed and completely free. One example of the use of mercenaries in ancient times is Carthage. After the first war with Rome the Carthaginians were almost overthrown by their mercenaries despite the fact that these men were commanded by Carthaginian citizens. After the death of Epaminondas the Thebans made Philip of Macedonia commander of their army and no sooner had he won the war than he stripped them of their freedom. On the death of Filippo Maria Visconti, the Milanese hired Francesco Sforza to fight against the Venetians. Having beaten the Venetians at Caravaggio, Sforza joined forces with them to overthrow his paymasters, the Milanese. When Francesco’s father was mercenary commander for Queen Joanna of Naples, he suddenly made off and left her undefended so that she had to put herself into the hands of the King of Aragon or risk losing her kingdom.
It’s true that in the past both Venice and Florence did increase their territories with the use of mercenaries whose commanders did not seize power but actually defended their employers. The fact is that the Florentines were lucky; various powerful captains were indeed potential threats, but one didn’t win his war, while others either found themselves facing strong opposition or turned their ambitions elsewhere. The one who didn’t win was Giovanni Acuto [ John Hawkwood], and since he lost we don’t know whether he would have been loyal or not; but everyone must admit that, had he won, the Florentines would have been at his mercy. Francesco Sforza had the forces of Braccio da Montone against him and the two commanders kept each other in check: Sforza turned his ambitions to Lombardy while Braccio went to fight Rome and Naples.
But let’s remember what happened just a short while ago. Florence took on Paulo Vitelli as military commander, an extremely serious man who had come from nothing to achieve enormous prestige. Had he taken Pisa for them, you could hardly deny that the Florentines would have been right to hang on to him, because if he had gone over to the enemy, they wouldn’t have had a chance; but keeping him would have meant accepting him as their ruler.
Turning to the Venetians, we find they fought confidently and successfully when they fought for themselves, at sea that is, where both nobles and armed commoners showed great courage. But when they began to fight on land, they left these strengths behind and, like other Italian states, hired mercenaries. In the early stages of their expansion on the mainland they had so little territory and so much prestige they hardly needed to worry about their mercenary commanders; but when they pushed deeper into the peninsula, under the leadership of Carmagnola, they got a taste of the trouble mercenaries bring. They’d seen what a fine commander Carmagnola was and under his leadership they had defeated the Duke of Milan, so they soon noticed when he lost his enthusiasm for the war. They realized they couldn’t win anything else with him, because that wasn’t what he wanted, but they couldn’t fire him either for fear of losing what they had previously won; at which point the only safe thing to do was to kill him. Later they hired Bartolomeo da Bergamo, Ruberto da San Severino, Niccolò Orsini, Count of Pitigliano, and other such mercenary commanders who were always more likely to lose than win, and in fact at the battle of Vailà the Venetians eventually lost in a single day all the gains they had so determinedly accumulated over the past 800 years. The fact is that mercenaries bring only slow, belated, unconvincing victories, then sudden, bewildering defeats. Since these examples all have to do with Italy, which has been dominated by mercenaries for many years, I’d now like to get a broader view of the problem, because if we can trace its origin and developments it will be easier to find a solution.
What we must remember is that over recent centuries, as the empire began to lose its hold in Italy while the pope increased his temporal power, so the country broke up into smaller states. Many of the larger cities rose up against the local nobles who had needed the emperor’s backing to keep control of them; the Church supported the rebels to increase its own political influence. In many other towns private citizens took over as rulers. The result was that with much of Italy now controlled by the Church and republics, which is to say by people who had no experience of war, leaders began to hire men from outside. The first successful mercenary commander was Alberigo da Conio from Romagna. With what they learned from him, Braccio da Montone and Francesco Sforza and others would become arbiters of Italy’s destiny. After them came all the other mercenary commanders down to our own times. And the end result of all their genius is that Italy was overrun by Charles, ransacked by Louis, torn apart by Ferdinand and humiliated by the Swiss.
The mercenaries’ first tactic was to increase their own importance by playing down the importance of infantry. Having no territory of their own and living on what they got from fighting, they couldn’t feed large numbers of infantry, while smaller numbers weren’t sufficiently impressive; so they concentrated on cavalry and were fed and respected with more manageable numbers. Things reached the point where an army of 20,000 would have fewer than 2,000 infantry. Aside from this the mercenaries did everything possible to avoid hard work and danger; they wouldn’t kill each other in combat but took prisoners, then didn’t even ask for a ransom. They wouldn’t attack fortifications at night; and they wouldn’t leave their own fortifications to attack a besieging army’s camp. They didn’t dig ditches or build stockades round their camps; in winter they didn’t camp out at all. All these omissions became accepted practice for the simple reason, as I said, that they wanted to steer clear of danger and hard work. Thus they brought Italy to slavery and humiliation.
13
Auxiliaries, combined forces and citizen armies
Auxiliary armies - that is, when you ask a powerful ruler to send military help to defend your town - are likewise useless. In recent times we have the example of Pope Julius during his Ferrara campaign: having seen what a sad lot his mercenaries were in battle, he reached an agreement with Ferdinand, King of Spain, to have his forces come to help. Auxiliaries may be efficient and useful when it comes to achieving their own ends, but they are almost always counterproductive for those who invite them in, because if they lose, you lose too, and if they win, you are at their mercy.
Although ancient history is full of pertinent examples, I’d like to stick to this recent case of Pope Julius II, whose decision to put himself entirely in a foreign army’s hands merely to take Ferrara could hardly have been more rash. But he was lucky and the unlikely outcome of the campaign spared him the possible consequences of his mistake: when his Spanish auxiliaries were beaten at Ravenna, the Swiss turned up and against all expectations - the pope’s included - routed the hitherto victorious French, so that Julius escaped being a prisoner either to his enemies, who had fled, or to his auxiliaries, who weren’t the ones to win the day for him. The Florentines, who had no armed forces at all, took 10,000 French auxiliaries to lay siege to Pisa, a decision that put them in greater danger than any they had experienced in their whole troubled history. To fight his neighbours, the emperor of Constantinople br
ought 10,000 Turks into Greece and when the war was over they wouldn’t leave, which was how the infidels began to get control of Greece.
So anyone looking for a no-win situation should turn to auxiliaries, because they are far more dangerous even than mercenaries. With auxiliaries your ruin is guaranteed: they are a tightly knit force and every one of them obedient to someone else; when mercenaries win they need time and a convenient opportunity before they can attack you, if only because they’re not a solid united force, you chose them, you’re paying them, and hence it will take the man you put in command a while to build up sufficient authority to turn against you. To summarize, the big danger with mercenaries is their indecision, with auxiliaries their determination.
So, sensible rulers have always avoided using auxiliaries and mercenaries, relying instead on their own men and even preferring to lose with their own troops than to win with others, on the principle that a victory won with foreign forces is not a real victory at all. As always Cesare Borgia offers a good example. He invaded Romagna with an army entirely made up of French auxiliaries and took Imola and Forlì with them; but since he felt they weren’t reliable he turned to mercenaries as a less dangerous option. He hired the Orsini and Vitelli armies, but when he found that they dithered in battle and were disloyal and dangerous, he had them killed and trained his own men. It’s easy to see the difference between these various kinds of armies if you look at the duke’s standing when he had just the French, when he had the Orsinis and the Vitellis, and when he had his own soldiers and relied on his own resources. With each change his prestige grew and he was only truly respected when everyone could see that his troops were entirely his own.
I had planned to stick to these recent Italian examples, but I wouldn’t like to leave out Hiero of Syracuse since he is one of the men I talked about before. Given command, as I explained, of the Syracusan armies, Hiero soon realized that the mercenaries among them were no good, led as they were by men like our Italian commanders. Realizing that he could neither make use of them nor let them go, he had them all cut to pieces, and from then on fought only with his own soldiers. I’d also like to bring in a parable from the Old Testament. When David offered to go and fight the Philistine trouble-maker, Goliath, on Saul’s behalf, Saul gave him his own weapons to bolster the boy’s courage. But no sooner had David put them on than he refused the gift, saying he wouldn’t feel confident with them, he would rather face the enemy with his own sling and knife. In the end, other people’s arms are either too loose, too heavy or too tight.
When, with luck and good leadership, Charles VII, Louis XI’s father, had pushed the English out of France, he saw that a ruler needs his own troops and so set up a standing army of both cavalry and infantry. Later, his son Louis disbanded the infantry and began to hire Swiss mercenaries. It’s now plain that this mistake, together with others that followed, is what lies behind France’s present troubles. By giving this important role to the Swiss, Louis had weakened his whole army, since, with no infantry of their own, his cavalry were now relying on others, and once they’d got used to fighting alongside the Swiss they started to think they couldn’t win without them. As a result the French are unable to take on the Swiss in battle and won’t fight anyone else without their help. So French forces are now mixed, part mercenary and part their own men. Such composite forces are much better than just auxiliaries or just mercenaries, but much worse than having all your own men. France’s situation proves the point, because if the standing army Charles recruited had been reinforced or just maintained, the French would be unbeatable. But men are so thoughtless they’ll opt for a diet that tastes good without realizing there’s a hidden poison in it: it’s like the problem I mentioned earlier about people not diagnosing tuberculosis until it’s too late.
So, if a man can’t spot a problem in the making, he can’t really be a wise leader. But very few men have this gift. If you look for the initial cause of the collapse of the Roman empire, you’ll find it was when they started hiring Goths as mercenaries. From that moment on the strength of the empire began to decline and all the determination that drained out of it went to strengthen its rivals.
So, to conclude: no state is secure without its own army; if it hasn’t got men to defend it determinedly and loyally in a crisis, it is simply relying on luck. As those who understand these things have always thought and said: There is nothing so weak and unstable as a reputation for power that is not backed up by its own army.2 And having your own army means having a force made up of subjects, or citizens, or men dependent on you. All other forces are mercenaries or auxiliaries. To see how to set up your own armed forces, all you need do is consider how the four men I mentioned above organized and arranged theirs, or Philip, Alexander the Great’s father, or many other kingdoms and republics. They are all entirely reliable models.
14
A ruler and his army
A ruler, then, must have no other aim or consideration, nor seek to develop any other vocation outside war, the organization of the army and military discipline. This is the only proper vocation of the man in command. And it’s such a potent one that it not only keeps those born to rule on their thrones but often raises private citizens to political power. Vice versa, when rulers think more about frills than fighting they lose their thrones. In fact, the thing most likely to bring about a ruler’s downfall is his neglect of the art of war; the thing most likely to win him power is becoming an expert in it.
A military man with his own army, Francesco Sforza rose from commoner to Duke of Milan; shunning military hardships, his sons fell from dukes to commoners. For one of the many negative consequences of not having an army is that people will find you pathetic, and this is a stigma a ruler must guard against, as I’ll explain. The fact is that between a man who has an army and a man who hasn’t there is simply no comparison. And there is no reason why a man who commands an armed force should willingly obey a man who doesn’t, or why a man who doesn’t command an army should live safely beside a servant who does. The one will harbour contempt and the other suspicion and they won’t be able to work well together. So, quite apart from the other disadvantages, a ruler who doesn’t involve himself in military matters won’t, as I’ve said, have his soldiers’ respect and won’t be able to trust them.
A ruler, then, must never stop thinking about war and preparing for war and he must work at it even more in peacetime than in war itself. He can do this in two ways, physically and mentally. Physically, aside from keeping his men exercised and disciplined, he should go hunting a great deal, which will toughen up his body. It will also help him get to know different landscapes, how the mountains rise and the valleys open out, the lie of the plains, what rivers and marshes are like. These are things he should study really carefully since this kind of knowledge is useful in two ways. First, he’ll get to know his own country and hence will have a better sense of how it can be defended. Second, familiarity with these places will make it easier for him to grasp the topography of places he needs to understand but hasn’t seen before. The hills, valleys, plains, rivers and marshes of Tuscany, for example, have much in common with those of other areas, so that knowing the lie of the land in one region makes it easier to get to know it in another. The ruler who doesn’t have this facility lacks the first thing a commander needs, because understanding the land helps you find the enemy, lead your army by the right route, choose a place to camp, plan out the battle and lay siege to a town, all in the best way possible.
One of the things historians admired about the Achaean leader Philopoemen was that even in peacetime he thought of nothing but military strategy and when he was in the country with his friends he would often stop and ask them: If the enemy were over there on that hill and we were down here with our army, who would be in the better position? How could we attack them without breaking ranks? If we decided to retreat, how would we do it? And if they retreated, how would we go after them? And as he and his friends went along he would list all the predicam
ents an army can find itself in. He listened to their ideas, expressed and explained his own; so much so that, thanks to this constant work of mental preparation, when he was back leading his armies there was simply nothing that could happen that he didn’t know how to deal with.
Another thing a ruler must do to exercise his mind is read history, in particular accounts of great leaders and their achievements. He should look at their wartime strategies and study the reasons for their victories and defeats so as to avoid the failures and imitate the successes. Above all he must do what some great men have done in the past: take as model a leader who’s been much praised and admired and keep his example and achievements in mind at all times. Alexander the Great, it seems, modelled himself on Achilles, Caesar on Alexander and Scipio on Cyrus. Anyone who reads Xenophon’s life of Cyrus will see how valuable his example was to Scipio, and how closely Scipio’s decency, charm, humanity and generosity conform to the description Xenophon gives of Cyrus. A sensible leader must follow this advice and never relax in peacetime but work hard to make the most of it and turn it to his advantage in the tough times ahead. That way, when his luck does turn, he’ll be ready.
15
What men and particularly rulers are praised and blamed for
It’s time to look at how a ruler should behave with his subjects and his friends. Given that a great deal has already been written about this, I fear people may find my contribution presumptuous, especially since, here more than elsewhere, the code of conduct I’m offering will be rather controversial. But since my aim was to write something useful for anyone interested, I felt it would be appropriate to go to the real truth of the matter, not to repeat other people’s fantasies. Many writers have dreamed up republics and kingdoms that bear no resemblance to experience and never existed in reality; there is such a gap between how people actually live and how they ought to live that anyone who declines to behave as people do, in order to behave as they should, is schooling himself for catastrophe and had better forget personal security: if you always want to play the good man in a world where most people are not good, you’ll end up badly. Hence, if a ruler wants to survive, he’ll have to learn to stop being good, at least when the occasion demands.