1532 2026
This is an AI modernization of The Prince into contemporary English. The original W. K. Marriott translation (1908) is available on Project Gutenberg.
People who want to win a prince's favor usually approach him bearing whatever they consider most precious, or whatever they know he enjoys most. That's why princes are always being presented with horses, weapons, gold cloth, gemstones, and similar gifts worthy of their status.
So in wanting to present myself to Your Magnificence with some proof of my devotion, I looked through everything I have and found that the thing I value most is my understanding of how great leaders operate — knowledge I've built up through years of firsthand political experience and a lifetime of studying history. I've thought long and hard about all of it, distilled it into this small book, and now I'm offering it to you.
I know this work may not seem worthy of your attention. But I trust in your generosity to accept it, because there is no better gift I can give you than the chance to understand, in a few short hours, everything I've learned over many years and through so much hardship and danger. I haven't dressed this book up with fancy language or elaborate rhetoric, or decorated it with any of the flourishes that so many writers use to make their work look impressive. I wanted it to either succeed on its own merits or not at all — to be valued for the truth of what it says and the importance of its subject.
And I hope no one considers it presumptuous for a man of low and humble position to dare to analyze and lay down rules about how princes should govern. After all, just as landscape painters have to stand down in the valley to capture the true shape of the mountains, and climb up to the peaks to capture the true shape of the valley below, the same principle applies to politics: you need to be a prince to fully understand the nature of the people, and you need to be one of the people to fully understand the nature of princes.
So please, Your Magnificence, accept this small gift in the spirit in which I send it. If you read it carefully and think it through, you'll see in it my deepest hope that you will achieve the greatness that fortune and your own qualities promise you. And if Your Magnificence should ever glance down from the heights of your position to these lower regions, you'll see how much I have suffered — through no fault of my own — from a long and relentless run of bad luck.
Every state, every power that has ever ruled over people, has been either a republic or a principality.
Principalities come in two varieties: hereditary ones, where the ruling family has been in power for generations, and new ones.
New principalities are either completely new — the way Milan was to Francesco Sforza when he seized it — or they are territories annexed to the existing hereditary state of the prince who acquired them, the way the Kingdom of Naples was added to the Kingdom of Spain.
These acquired territories either had been used to living under a prince or had been used to freedom. And they are won either by the prince's own forces or by someone else's, and either by luck or by ability.
I'm going to skip over republics entirely here, since I've written about them at length elsewhere, and focus only on principalities. Following the outline I just laid out, I'll discuss how these different types of principalities can be governed and held.
Let me start with this: hereditary states — the ones long accustomed to the ruling family — are far easier to hold than new ones. All the prince really has to do is avoid breaking with the traditions of his predecessors and then deal sensibly with events as they come up. A prince of even average ability can keep hold of his state this way, unless some truly extraordinary force strips it from him. And even if he does lose it, the moment the usurper stumbles, the old prince will get it back.
Consider the Duke of Ferrara as an example from Italy. He survived attacks from Venice in 1484 and from Pope Julius II in 1510, for no reason other than that his family had been established in that territory for a very long time. A hereditary prince has less reason and less need to antagonize his people, so they're naturally more inclined to love him. Unless he goes out of his way to make himself hated through truly outrageous behavior, it's only natural that his subjects will be well disposed toward him. The sheer length and continuity of his family's rule has a way of erasing the memories and grievances that lead to revolution — because every change in power leaves behind the foundations for the next one.
The real difficulties show up in a new principality. And first, let's talk about a specific kind: a principality that isn't entirely new but is instead a new piece added to an existing state — what you might call a composite principality. In these cases, the problems stem from a basic difficulty built into every new regime: people are always willing to change rulers, hoping things will get better. This hope is enough to make them take up arms against whoever is currently in charge. But they're fooling themselves, because experience almost always shows them that things have gotten worse, not better. And this follows from another unavoidable reality: a new prince always has to burden the people he's just conquered — with his troops, with taxes, and with a thousand other hardships that come with occupation.
So here's where you end up. Everyone you harmed while seizing the territory is now your enemy. And the people who helped you take it? You can't keep them happy either, because you can't deliver everything they were hoping for — and you can't crack down on them because you owe them. No matter how strong your army is, when you're entering a new territory, you always need the goodwill of the people who actually live there.
This is exactly why Louis XII, King of France, seized Milan quickly and lost it just as fast. The first time, all it took to drive him out was the forces of Duke Lodovico Sforza, Milan's own ruler. The people who had opened their gates to the French felt cheated — their hopes of better treatment went unfulfilled — and they wouldn't put up with the new regime's abuses. Now, it's absolutely true that when a prince reconquers a territory that has rebelled, he's much less likely to lose it a second time. The rebellion gives him an excuse to crack down: punish the troublemakers, root out the suspects, and shore up his weak points. So while the first time around, all it took was Duke Lodovico stirring up trouble on the borders to knock France out of Milan, the second time it took the combined forces of practically the whole world to defeat the French — their armies had to be destroyed and driven out of Italy entirely. And this happened for the reasons I've just laid out.
Still, France lost Milan both times. The general reasons for the first loss have been covered. Now let's look at the reasons for the second, and examine what options Louis had — what anyone in his position could have done to hold onto the territory more securely than he did.
Let me start with a principle. When you add new territories to an existing state, those territories either share the same language and culture as your original domain, or they don't.
When they do, they're relatively easy to hold — especially if the people aren't used to governing themselves. All you really need to do is wipe out the family of their former ruler. As long as you leave everything else alone — their laws, their taxes, their customs — they'll settle down quickly, because the two populations aren't that different from each other. We've seen this with Brittany, Burgundy, Gascony, and Normandy, all of which have been part of France for so long that they're thoroughly French now. Even where there are some differences in language, shared customs are enough to make things work. A ruler who absorbs these kinds of territories just needs to remember two things: first, make sure the old ruling family is gone; and second, don't change the laws or the taxes. Do that, and in no time at all, the new territory will blend seamlessly into the old state.
But when you acquire a territory with a different language, different customs, and different laws — that's where the real trouble starts. You'll need both good luck and serious skill to hold onto it. One of the best and most effective strategies is for the new ruler to go live there in person. Nothing makes your grip on a territory more secure and more lasting. This is what the Ottoman sultan did in Greece: despite all the other measures he took to hold that territory, if he hadn't actually moved there, he could never have kept it. When you're on the ground, you spot problems the moment they appear and can deal with them immediately. When you're far away, you only hear about problems once they've grown too big to fix. On top of that, your officials aren't stripping the place bare, and the people have direct access to their ruler. Those who want to be loyal have more reason to love you; those who are thinking about causing trouble have more reason to fear you. And any foreign power thinking about attacking the territory will think twice — as long as you're living there, it's extremely hard to take it from you.
The second-best strategy is to plant colonies in one or two key locations — strategic strongholds for the territory. If you don't do this, you'll have to station a massive military force there instead. Colonies are cheap. You can set them up and maintain them at little or no expense, and the only people you hurt are the ones whose land and homes you take to give to the settlers — a small minority. Those dispossessed people, now poor and scattered, can never pose a real threat. Meanwhile, everyone else is left untouched and has no reason to complain — and they're careful to stay in line, afraid the same thing might happen to them. Bottom line: colonies are affordable, more reliable, and less disruptive. The people who get hurt are too poor and too scattered to fight back.
And this brings us to a general rule: **people should either be treated well or destroyed completely.** They can take revenge for minor injuries; they can't take revenge when they've been crushed. So when you do harm to someone, make sure it's the kind of harm they can never come back from.
Now, if instead of colonies you station troops in the territory, the costs are vastly higher. The garrison eats up all the revenue the territory produces, turning your gain into a loss. And it makes enemies of far more people, because the whole population suffers. As the soldiers move around, everyone gets a taste of the hardship, and everyone becomes hostile. These are enemies who, even though they've been beaten, are still on their own ground and still capable of doing damage. Troops as an occupying force are, in every way, as useless as colonies are useful.
Beyond all this, a prince who holds a territory with a different culture should make himself the protector and leader of the weaker neighboring powers, while working to weaken the stronger ones. And he must make absolutely sure that no outside power of equal strength gets a foothold there. Because what always happens is this: some discontented faction — driven by ambition or fear — will invite a foreign power in. That's how the Romans first entered Greece: they were invited in by the Aetolians, a Greek confederation. And in every other territory where Rome gained a foothold, it was the local inhabitants who brought them in. The pattern is predictable: the moment a powerful outsider enters a region, all the smaller states that resent the current dominant power rally to the newcomer. The newcomer doesn't even have to work to win them over — they flock to him on their own. He just has to make sure they don't accumulate too much power and authority. Then, using his own forces combined with their support, he can easily keep the stronger players in check and remain the undisputed master of the entire region. A prince who mismanages this process will quickly lose everything he's gained, and as long as he holds it, he'll face nothing but endless headaches.
The Romans followed this playbook precisely in every territory they absorbed. They planted colonies. They cultivated the smaller powers without letting them grow too strong. They cut the bigger powers down to size. And they never allowed a rival foreign power to gain influence. Greece is the perfect case study. Rome kept the Achaeans and the Aetolians as friendly allies while humbling the kingdom of Macedonia. They drove out Antiochus, the powerful Seleucid king. But no matter how loyal the Achaeans and Aetolians were, the Romans never let them expand their power. No matter how persuasively Philip of Macedon tried to win Roman friendship, the Romans never accepted it without first cutting him down. And no matter how much influence Antiochus wielded, the Romans never agreed to let him keep any authority in the region.
The Romans did what every wise ruler should do: they worried not only about current problems but about future ones, and they threw everything they had into preventing them. Here's why this matters so much. Think of it like a disease. Doctors will tell you that a fever in its early stages is easy to treat but hard to diagnose. If you let it go — if you don't catch it or don't treat it early — it becomes easy to diagnose but impossible to cure. The same thing is true in politics. When you can see trouble coming from a distance (a skill only the truly wise possess), you can deal with it quickly. But when you can't see it, or you ignore it, and you let it grow until it's obvious to everyone — by then, there's nothing you can do.
This is exactly what the Romans understood. They saw trouble coming and dealt with it immediately. They never let a problem fester just to avoid a war, because they knew that war can't really be avoided — it can only be delayed, and delay always works to someone else's advantage. That's why they chose to fight Philip and Antiochus in Greece rather than wait until they had to fight them in Italy. They could have put off both wars at the time, but they refused. They never bought into what passes for wisdom in our own day — the idea that we should just "enjoy the benefits of time" and hope things work out. Instead, they relied on their own skill and foresight, because time sweeps everything along and can bring bad just as easily as good, and good just as easily as bad.
Now let's turn to France and see whether Louis XII did any of these things. I'll focus on Louis rather than his predecessor Charles VIII, because Louis held territory in Italy longer, so his actions are easier to evaluate. And you'll see that he did the exact opposite of everything I've just described.
Louis was drawn into Italy by the ambition of Venice, which wanted to use his intervention to grab half of Lombardy. I'm not going to criticize the king's initial decision. He wanted a foothold in Italy, he had no allies there — every door had been slammed shut thanks to Charles VIII's earlier blunders — so he had to take whatever alliances he could get. And his plan would have worked beautifully if he hadn't made mistakes elsewhere. Once he took Lombardy, Louis immediately recovered all the prestige that Charles had thrown away. Genoa submitted. Florence rushed to ally with him. The Marquess of Mantua, the Duke of Ferrara, the Bentivoglio family, the Lady of Forli, the lords of Faenza, Pesaro, Rimini, Camerino, and Piombino — along with the cities of Lucca, Pisa, and Siena — they all came running to win his friendship. At that point, the Venetians could finally see the recklessness of what they'd done: to gain two towns in Lombardy, they had made the king of France the master of two-thirds of Italy.
Now consider how easily Louis could have maintained his position if he had followed the principles I've outlined and kept all these allies secure and protected. They were numerous, though individually weak and nervous — some afraid of the Church, some of Venice — and they would always have been forced to stick with him. Through them, he could easily have kept the remaining major powers in check.
But the moment he set foot in Milan, he did the opposite. He helped Pope Alexander VI seize the Romagna, a region in central Italy. It apparently never occurred to him that this move was undermining his own position — cutting himself off from his allies, from the very people who had thrown themselves into his arms — while at the same time making the Church enormously more powerful by piling territorial authority on top of its spiritual authority. And once he made this first mistake, he was trapped. He had to keep going. Eventually, to stop Alexander's unchecked ambition and prevent him from taking over Tuscany, Louis was forced to come back to Italy in person.
As if making the Church more powerful and driving away his own allies weren't bad enough, Louis then went after the Kingdom of Naples — and split it with Ferdinand, the King of Spain. Where Louis had been the supreme power broker in all of Italy, he now voluntarily brought in a partner: someone for the malcontents to rally around, someone for ambitious players to appeal to. Instead of leaving his own puppet on the throne of Naples — someone who would answer to him — he kicked that man out and replaced him with a king powerful enough to kick Louis out in turn.
The desire to acquire new territory is perfectly natural and utterly normal. When people succeed at it, they're praised, not blamed. But when they try and fail — when they overreach — that's foolishness, and it deserves criticism. So: if France could have taken Naples with her own forces alone, she should have done it. If she couldn't, she shouldn't have divided it with a rival. The partition of Lombardy with Venice was at least defensible — it got France into Italy. But the partition of Naples had no such excuse. It was a blunder, pure and simple.
So here is the full tally. Louis made five errors:
1. He crushed the smaller powers. 2. He increased the strength of a major power in Italy — the Church. 3. He brought in a rival foreign power — Spain. 4. He didn't come to live in the territory. 5. He didn't plant colonies.
Even these five mistakes might not have been fatal during his lifetime — if he hadn't added a sixth: stripping Venice of its territories. If Louis hadn't already built up the Church and brought Spain into Italy, then weakening Venice would have been perfectly reasonable and necessary. But having already made those other moves, he should never have allowed Venice to be ruined. A strong Venice would have kept other powers away from Lombardy, because Venice would never have tolerated anyone else taking it — and because no one would have wanted to take Lombardy from France just to hand it to Venice. And no one would have had the nerve to challenge both France and Venice together.
Now, if someone objects: "But Louis gave the Romagna to Pope Alexander and the Kingdom of Naples to Spain in order to avoid war" — I answer with the principle I laid down above. You should never make a bad decision just to dodge a conflict. You won't actually avoid it. You'll only postpone it, and the delay will work against you. And if someone else brings up the promise Louis had made to the pope — that he'd support Alexander's territorial ambitions in exchange for the annulment of Louis's marriage and a cardinal's hat for his advisor, the Archbishop of Rouen, Georges d'Amboise — my answer to that is what I'll explain later, in the chapter on whether princes should keep their promises. (Spoiler: not always.)
So King Louis lost Lombardy by violating every single principle that successful conquerors follow. There's nothing miraculous about this — it's entirely logical and predictable.
And I have a personal story about it. I discussed these very matters at Nantes with Cardinal d'Amboise — the Archbishop of Rouen — at the time when Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI (commonly known as "Duke Valentino"), was conquering the Romagna. When the cardinal remarked to me that the Italians didn't understand war, I shot back that the French didn't understand politics — because if they did, they would never have let the Church grow so powerful. And history proved me right. The rise of both the Church and Spain to dominance in Italy was France's doing, and France's downfall was the result.
From all of this we can draw a universal rule, one that never — or almost never — fails:
**Whoever is responsible for making someone else powerful is setting up their own destruction.** Because that power was built through either cunning or force, and both of those qualities make the newly powerful man deeply suspicious of the one who put him there.
Given how hard it is to hold onto a newly conquered state, you might wonder about the case of Alexander the Great. He conquered all of Asia in just a few years and then died before he'd barely settled in. You'd expect the whole empire to revolt. But it didn't. His successors held on to it without much trouble — the only problems they had were the ones they created among themselves, fighting each other out of ambition.
Here's the explanation. Throughout history, you'll find that states are governed in one of two ways. Either a single prince rules with the help of appointed servants — officials who govern on his behalf, at his pleasure, and who can be hired and fired at will — or a prince rules alongside a class of hereditary nobles, barons who hold their rank not because the prince gave it to them but because their families have held power for generations. These nobles have their own territories and their own subjects, people who recognize them as their natural lords and feel a genuine loyalty to them. In states governed by a prince and his appointed officials, the prince holds supreme authority. If people obey anyone beneath him, they obey that person as a government functionary, not out of any personal attachment.
The best examples of these two systems in recent times are the Ottoman Empire and France. The Ottoman sultan governs everything through a single centralized authority. Everyone else in the government is his servant. He divides the empire into provinces, sends out different administrators to run them, and rotates and replaces them whenever he wants. But the King of France sits in the middle of a large group of ancient noble families, each recognized and beloved by their own subjects, each holding inherited privileges that the king can't take away without putting himself at risk.
Now, if you think about what it means to conquer each type of state, the picture gets interesting. The Ottoman Empire is incredibly hard to conquer but easy to hold once you've won. France is easy to invade but a nightmare to hold.
Here's why the Ottoman system is so hard to crack. You can't get any of the sultan's officials to invite you in or support your invasion. Since they're all appointed servants — essentially political employees — they're very hard to corrupt. And even if you did manage to turn one of them, it wouldn't help much, because they have no independent following among the people. So anyone attacking the Ottoman Empire has to expect to face a completely unified defense, and has to rely on the strength of his own army rather than on defections from the other side. But here's the flip side: once you've beaten the sultan's army decisively in the field, and he can't raise a new one, the only thing left to worry about is the royal family itself. Eliminate them, and there's no one left with enough independent authority to resist you. The sultan's officials never had their own power base, so the people won't rally around them.
The opposite happens in states organized like France. You can always find a way in by winning over some disgruntled nobleman — there are always people who are unhappy and looking for a change. These insiders can open the gates for you and make your initial victory easy. But then the trouble starts. Holding the country means dealing with an endless series of problems, both from the nobles who helped you (who will want payback) and from the ones you crushed (who will want revenge). It's not enough to eliminate the ruling family, because the remaining nobles will make themselves the leaders of new resistance movements. And since you can neither satisfy all of them nor wipe them all out, you'll lose that state the moment circumstances turn against you.
So now consider what kind of state Darius had. It was organized like the Ottoman Empire — one absolute ruler, everyone else a servant. That's why Alexander only needed to defeat Darius's army in the field and kill Darius, and after that, the empire stayed firmly in Alexander's hands, for all the reasons I've just explained. If his successors had stayed united, they could have held it in perfect peace. The only upheavals in the empire were the ones they stirred up among themselves.
But states organized like France — with powerful, independent nobles — can never be held so easily. That's why the Romans faced constant rebellions in Spain, France, and Greece. All those regions were full of small, semi-independent principalities, and as long as people remembered those principalities, the Romans never had a truly secure grip. It was only after a long time, when the power and permanence of the Roman Empire finally erased those old memories, that the Romans became secure rulers. And later, when the Romans fought among themselves in civil wars, each general was able to claim a piece of those territories based on the authority he'd built up there — and with the old ruling families long gone, the people recognized no one but the Romans.
Once you understand all of this, there's no mystery about why Alexander held Asia so easily, or why others — like Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus — had so much trouble holding their conquests. It has nothing to do with whether the conqueror was more or less skilled. It comes down to the structure of the conquered state.
When you conquer a state that has been used to living under its own laws and governing itself freely, there are three ways to hold onto it. The first is to destroy it. The second is to go live there yourself. The third is to let the people keep living under their own laws, collect tribute from them, and install a small ruling group that will keep the state loyal to you. This approach works because that ruling group knows it owes its power entirely to you — it can't survive without your backing — so it has every incentive to keep things under control on your behalf. If your goal is to preserve a city that's used to self-government, there's no easier way than to rule it through its own citizens.
The examples of Sparta and Rome show both sides of this. The Spartans conquered Athens and Thebes and installed friendly oligarchies in each. But they still lost both cities in the end. The Romans, to hold Capua, Carthage, and Numantia, razed them to the ground — and never lost them. When the Romans tried to hold Greece the Spartan way, by leaving it free and letting it keep its own laws, they failed. They ended up having to destroy many Greek cities to keep control.
Because here's the hard truth: there really is no reliable way to hold a self-governing state other than demolishing it. A city that's tasted freedom will always have that memory to rebel around — the word "liberty" and the old ways of self-rule become an eternal rallying cry. No amount of time, no amount of generous treatment will make the people forget. No matter what you do, they'll seize the first opportunity to revolt. Look at Pisa: the Florentines held it for a hundred years, and it still rebelled the moment it could.
The picture changes completely, though, when a state has been used to living under a prince. Once you eliminate the ruling family, the people are accustomed to obeying and don't have a tradition of self-government to fall back on. They can't agree on a new leader from among themselves. They don't know how to be independent. So they're slow to take up arms, and a new prince can win them over and secure their loyalty much more easily.
But republics — free states with a living memory of self-rule — have more fight in them, more hatred for the conqueror, and a deeper thirst for revenge. They will never let the memory of their freedom die. With such states, your safest options are to destroy them or to live there yourself.
No one should be surprised that in discussing entirely new principalities, I'm going to cite the greatest examples in history. People almost always walk in paths that others have beaten before them, imitating the actions of those who came first — yet they can never follow those paths exactly or match the full ability of the people they're imitating. A wise person should always aim for the paths carved by the greatest and imitate the very best, so that even if their own ability falls short, at least some of that greatness will rub off. Think of a skilled archer who sees that his target is far away. He knows the limits of his bow, so he aims well above the mark — not because he's trying to hit something that high, but because aiming high is exactly what it takes to hit the target he's actually going for.
So here's my point: in entirely new principalities with a new prince, holding onto the state is either harder or easier depending on how capable the new ruler is. And since rising from private citizen to prince already implies either great ability or great luck, it stands to reason that one or the other will smooth out many of the difficulties along the way. That said, the prince who relied less on luck tends to hold on the longest. It also helps if the prince has no other territory and is forced to live in the new state personally.
But to focus on those who became princes through their own ability and not by luck, I'd say the most outstanding examples are Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, and Theseus. Now, you might say we shouldn't discuss Moses, since he was simply carrying out God's will. But he still deserves admiration, if only for the divine favor that made him worthy of speaking directly with God. Setting him aside, though, look at Cyrus and the others who founded or conquered kingdoms — they're all remarkable. And if you study their specific actions and decisions, you'll find they don't fall short of Moses at all, even though he had God as his guide.
When you examine their lives, you see that the only thing luck gave them was opportunity — the raw material they could then shape into whatever form seemed best to them. Without that opportunity, their extraordinary abilities would have gone to waste. And without their abilities, the opportunity would have come and gone, meaning nothing.
Moses needed to find the people of Israel enslaved and oppressed in Egypt, so that they'd be willing to follow him out of bondage. Romulus needed to be cast out of Alba and abandoned at birth, so that he'd go on to found Rome and become its king. Cyrus needed to find the Persians unhappy under Median rule, and the Medes grown soft and lazy from a long peace. Theseus couldn't have demonstrated his ability if the Athenians hadn't been scattered and disorganized. These opportunities made these leaders fortunate — and their outstanding ability let them recognize the opportunity and seize it, bringing glory and greatness to their countries.
Leaders like these, who rise to power through their own ability, have a hard time winning their principalities but an easy time keeping them. The difficulties come mainly from the new rules and systems they have to introduce in order to establish their power and make it secure. And here's something crucial to understand: there is nothing harder to pull off, nothing more risky to attempt, and nothing more uncertain of success than taking the lead in introducing a new order of things. The reformer makes enemies of everyone who benefited from the old system, and gets only lukewarm support from those who might benefit from the new one. This lukewarmness comes partly from fear — the opponents have the existing laws and power structure on their side — and partly from basic human skepticism, since people don't truly believe in new things until they've seen them work with their own eyes. The result is that whenever the opposition finds an opening to attack, they do it with passionate intensity, while the reformer's supporters defend him halfheartedly. The prince and his supporters end up in danger together.
To understand this fully, we need to ask a key question: can these reformers stand on their own, or do they depend on others? That is, do they have to beg and persuade their way to success, or can they use force? If they can only persuade, they always fail — they never accomplish anything lasting. But when they can stand on their own strength and use force when necessary, they rarely fail. This is why all the armed prophets succeeded and the unarmed ones were destroyed. On top of everything else, people are fickle by nature. It's easy enough to convince them of something, but hard to keep them convinced. So you need to be set up in such a way that when they stop believing, you can make them believe by force.
If Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus had been unarmed, they could never have kept their new institutions in place for long. We can see exactly what happens in such cases from the example of Girolamo Savonarola, the fiery preacher of Florence, who built a whole new political and moral order — and watched it collapse the moment the people stopped believing in him, because he had no way to hold the faithful in line or to force the skeptics to come around. Leaders like him face enormous obstacles in getting to the top, with every danger crowded into the climb. But once they've made it — once they've overcome those dangers and earned respect, and once they've eliminated those who resented their rise — they become powerful, secure, honored, and successful.
To these towering examples I want to add one smaller case that still follows the same pattern: Hiero of Syracuse, who lived around 300 B.C. He rose from being a private citizen to become the ruler of Syracuse, and he owed nothing to luck except the opportunity itself. The Syracusans were being oppressed, and they chose him as their military commander. He proved himself so capable that they made him their prince. Even as a private citizen, he had shown so much ability that one historian wrote of him: "He lacked nothing of kingship but a kingdom." Hiero disbanded the old army and built a new one. He dropped the old alliances and formed new ones. And once he had soldiers and allies that were truly his own, he had a solid foundation on which to build anything he wanted. He had endured great difficulty in winning his position, but very little in keeping it.
People who go from being private citizens to princes purely through good luck have an easy time rising but a very hard time staying on top. They face no resistance on the way up — they practically fly there — but every kind of trouble once they arrive. This is what happens to those who are given a state, whether they buy it with money or receive it as a favor from someone powerful. It happened repeatedly in the Greek cities of Ionia and the Hellespont, where Darius made various men into princes so they would hold those cities for his security and his prestige. It also happened to those Roman emperors who bribed their way from private life to the imperial throne through the corruption of the army. These people exist entirely at the mercy of whoever elevated them — and goodwill and luck are two of the most unreliable things in the world. They don't have the knowledge or the forces to hold their position. They lack the knowledge because, unless they are men of exceptional ability, you can't expect someone who has always been a private citizen to know how to lead. And they lack the forces because they have no army of their own that is loyal and committed to them.
On top of that, states that spring up suddenly — like everything in nature that grows too fast — can't develop the deep roots and structural connections they need to survive the first storm. The only exception is when these suddenly-made princes are men of such extraordinary ability that they immediately figure out how to hold on to what luck has dropped into their laps, and they lay the foundations after becoming princes that others would have laid before.
I want to give two examples from recent memory of these two paths to power — rising by ability versus rising by luck: Francesco Sforza and Cesare Borgia. Francesco Sforza, who rose from being a private citizen to become Duke of Milan through his own strategic skill and tremendous ability, held on to what he had won with a thousand struggles with relatively little difficulty afterward. Cesare Borgia, on the other hand — known to the public as Duke Valentino — acquired his state entirely during the rise of his father, Pope Alexander VI, and lost it when his father fell, despite having taken every precaution and done everything that a wise and capable man should do to sink deep roots in territories won through someone else's forces and someone else's luck.
Because, as I said above, a man who hasn't laid his foundations first can potentially lay them afterward — if he has great ability. But building foundations after the fact is painful for the architect and dangerous for the building. Still, if you examine all the steps the duke took, you'll see that he did lay powerful foundations for future greatness. And I think it's worth discussing them in detail, because I can't think of any better lessons to offer a new prince than the example of Cesare Borgia's actions. If his plans didn't ultimately save him, that wasn't his fault — it was due to an extraordinary and extreme stroke of bad luck.
Pope Alexander VI faced many obstacles, both immediate and long-term, in his effort to make his son Cesare powerful. First, he couldn't see any way to make him the ruler of any territory that didn't already belong to the Church. And if he tried to carve off Church lands, he knew that the Duke of Milan and the Venetians would never allow it, since Faenza and Rimini were already under Venetian protection. Beyond that, the military forces in Italy — the very ones the pope might have used — were controlled by families who had every reason to fear papal expansion, namely the Orsini and Colonna clans and their allies. Alexander therefore needed to disrupt the existing order and throw the Italian powers into chaos so he could safely seize a piece of the territory. This turned out to be easy, because the Venetians had their own reasons for wanting to bring the French back into Italy. Alexander didn't just go along with this — he actively helped make it happen by annulling King Louis XII's first marriage. So the French king entered Italy with Venetian support and the pope's blessing. And no sooner was Louis in Milan than the pope had French soldiers for his campaign in the Romagna, which surrendered quickly once it saw the king's forces backing the operation.
After the duke had seized the Romagna and crushed the Colonna faction, he wanted to hold his gains and push further. But two things stood in his way. First, his own military forces — the Orsini troops he had been using — didn't seem reliable. Second, he couldn't count on France's continued support. He was afraid the Orsini forces might not only fail to follow through on future campaigns but might actually turn on him and seize what he had already won. And France might do the same. He got a taste of the Orsini problem when, after taking Faenza and attacking Bologna, he watched them drag their feet and show obvious reluctance. As for France, he learned where he really stood when, after seizing the Duchy of Urbino, he attacked Tuscany — and the king forced him to pull back. At that point, the duke decided he would never again depend on someone else's army or someone else's luck.
His first move was to weaken the Orsini and Colonna factions in Rome. He did this by buying off all their noble followers — making them his own men, giving them generous salaries, and honoring them with offices and military commands suited to their rank. Within a few months, their loyalty to the old factions had completely dissolved and shifted entirely to the duke. Next, he waited for the right moment to crush the Orsini, having already scattered the Colonna's supporters. The opportunity came soon, and he used it brilliantly. The Orsini, finally realizing that the duke's growing power and the Church's expansion meant their own ruin, called a council at Magione, near Perugia. That meeting triggered the rebellion at Urbino, uprisings throughout the Romagna, and endless dangers for the duke — all of which he overcame with French help. Having restored his authority, and not wanting to risk depending on the French or any other outside force again, he turned to deception. He was so skilled at hiding his true intentions that, through the mediation of Signor Paolo Orsini — whom the duke courted with every possible generosity, lavishing money, fine clothing, and horses on him — the Orsini were lured into a reconciliation. Their gullibility delivered them right into his hands at Sinigaglia, on December 31, 1502. Having wiped out the Orsini leaders and turned their followers into his own allies, the duke had now built a very solid foundation for his power. He controlled the entire Romagna and the Duchy of Urbino, and — crucially — the people of those regions were starting to see real improvements in their lives and were rallying to his side. This point deserves special attention and is worth imitating, so I want to spell it out.
When the duke took over the Romagna, he found it had been governed by a collection of weak lords who had spent more time robbing their subjects than ruling them. They had left the region in a state of chaos — rampant theft, constant feuding, and violence of every kind. The duke decided that restoring order required a strong hand. So he appointed Ramiro d'Orco, a brutal and efficient man, and gave him absolute authority. In short order, Ramiro restored peace and unity — an impressive achievement. But then the duke reconsidered. He decided that this kind of unchecked, heavy-handed authority was becoming a political liability — people were starting to resent it. So he established a proper civil court in the region, presided over by an excellent judge, where every city had legal representation.
And because the duke knew that Ramiro's harsh measures had generated hatred — some of which stuck to himself — he wanted to clear his name with the people and prove that whatever cruelty had occurred was the minister's doing, not his own. So one morning, he had Ramiro's body placed in the town square of Cesena — cut in two, with the executioner's block and a bloody knife laid beside it.
The sheer brutality of the spectacle left the people both satisfied and stunned.
But let me get back to the main thread. At this point, the duke was powerful enough and secure enough from immediate threats — having built his own military forces and largely destroyed the neighboring powers that could have threatened him — that his next concern was France. He knew that the king, who had been too slow to recognize his own mistake in letting the duke grow so strong, would no longer support him. So the duke began seeking new alliances and playing a waiting game with France while Louis was marching south toward Naples against the Spanish forces besieging Gaeta. His plan was to secure himself against France, and he would have accomplished this quickly if Pope Alexander had lived.
That covers his handling of immediate problems. But looking ahead, the duke had a deeper worry: the next pope might be hostile and might try to take back everything Alexander had given him. He planned to guard against this in four ways. First, by wiping out the ruling families he had dispossessed, so a future pope couldn't use their claims as a pretext for action. Second, by winning the loyalty of the Roman nobility, so he could use them to keep a hostile pope in check. Third, by gaining as much influence as possible over the College of Cardinals. Fourth, by accumulating so much power before the pope died that he could survive the initial shock of a hostile succession on his own.
By the time Alexander died, Cesare had accomplished three of these four goals. He had killed as many of the dispossessed lords as he could get his hands on — only a few escaped. He had won over the Roman nobility. And he had secured the largest faction in the College of Cardinals. As for new conquests, his plan was to take Tuscany. He already held Perugia and Piombino, and Pisa was under his protection. And since he no longer needed to worry about France — the Spanish had already driven the French out of Naples, which meant both Spain and France now needed to stay on his good side — he was free to pounce on Pisa. After that, Lucca and Siena would have submitted almost immediately, partly out of hatred for Florence and partly out of fear. And Florence would have had no recourse. If Cesare had continued to prosper — and he was prospering that very year, the year Alexander died — he would have accumulated such power and reputation that he could have stood entirely on his own, depending on no one else's luck or forces, only on his own strength and skill.
But Alexander died just five years after he had first drawn the sword on his son's behalf. He left Cesare with only the Romagna fully secured, everything else still up in the air, trapped between two powerful hostile armies, and deathly sick. Yet there was such boldness and such ability in the duke, and he understood so well how to win people over or destroy them, and the foundations he had built in so short a time were so solid, that if those enemy armies hadn't been bearing down on him, or if he had been in good health, he would have overcome every obstacle. And the proof that his foundations were strong is this: the Romagna waited for him patiently for over a month. In Rome, even though he was barely alive, he remained secure. The Baglioni, the Vitelli, and the Orsini all came to Rome, but none of them could move against him. Even if he couldn't get the pope he wanted elected, he was at least able to block the ones he didn't want. If only he had been healthy when Alexander died, everything would have been different.
On the day that Julius II was elected pope, Cesare told me personally that he had thought through everything that could possibly happen when his father died, and had prepared a solution for every scenario — except that he had never imagined that when his father died, he himself would be at death's door.
Looking back at everything the duke did, I can't find anything to criticize. In fact, I think he should be held up as a model to anyone who rises to power through someone else's forces or through luck. With his bold ambitions and his far-reaching vision, he couldn't have acted any differently. The only things that defeated him were the shortness of Alexander's life and his own illness. So anyone who believes that a new prince needs to secure himself against enemies, win allies, conquer by force or by cunning, make himself both loved and feared by the people, earn the loyalty and respect of the soldiers, eliminate those who have the power or the motive to threaten him, replace old institutions with new ones, be both tough and generous, disband unreliable troops and build new ones, and maintain alliances with kings and princes so they are eager to help him and cautious about crossing him — that person will not find a more vivid example than Cesare Borgia.
The only thing you can fault him for is the election of Julius II — and that was a serious mistake. Since he couldn't get his own preferred candidate elected pope, he should at least have blocked anyone hostile to him. He should never have allowed the election of any cardinal he had previously wronged, or who would have reason to fear him once they sat on the papal throne. Because people attack you either out of fear or out of hatred. The cardinals he had wronged included, among others, Giuliano della Rovere (who became Julius II), along with Colonna, San Giorgio, and Ascanio Sforza. All the rest, had they become pope, would have had reason to fear him — except for the French cardinal of Rouen and the Spanish cardinals. The Spanish would have been bound to him by family ties and mutual obligations. Rouen would have been bound to him through French political interests. Therefore, the duke's best move would have been to push for a Spanish pope. Failing that, he should have accepted Rouen over Giuliano della Rovere.
Anyone who believes that doing new favors for powerful people will make them forget old injuries is fooling himself. The duke made a fatal miscalculation here, and it was the cause of his ultimate ruin.
There are two more ways a private citizen can rise to become a prince that can't be chalked up entirely to either luck or ability. I shouldn't pass over them in silence, even though one of them would be better treated at length in a discussion about republics. These are: when someone climbs to power through criminal or immoral means, and when a private citizen becomes prince through the support of his fellow citizens. I'll deal with the first method here and illustrate it with two examples — one ancient, one modern — without diving too deep into the theory, since I think the examples themselves will be enough for anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation.
Agathocles the Sicilian rose to become King of Syracuse starting not just from a private station but from the lowest, most degraded origins. He was the son of a potter. At every stage of his life, he behaved like a criminal. And yet he paired his crimes with such extraordinary mental and physical toughness that, after entering the military, he rose through the ranks until he became the military governor of Syracuse. Once he had secured that position, he made a deliberate decision: he would seize absolute power by violence, taking by force what had only been given to him by consent — and he would owe nothing to anyone else for it. He struck a deal with Hamilcar the Carthaginian, who was campaigning with his army in Sicily at the time. One morning, Agathocles called an assembly of the people and the senate of Syracuse, as if there were some matter of public business to discuss. At a prearranged signal, his soldiers killed every single senator and every wealthy citizen in the room. With them dead, he seized control of the city and held it without any organized resistance.
Later, even though the Carthaginians defeated him in battle twice and eventually laid siege to Syracuse itself, he managed not only to defend the city but to go on the offensive — leaving part of his army behind to hold the walls while he personally led the rest in an invasion of North Africa. In short order, he forced the Carthaginians to lift the siege. They were reduced to such desperation that they had to negotiate, surrendering Sicily to Agathocles and settling for control of Africa alone.
Now, if you look at what Agathocles did and how he did it, you'll find little or nothing that can be attributed to luck. As I said, he didn't rise through anyone's patronage. He clawed his way up through the military ranks, step by painful step, through a thousand hardships and dangers — and then he held what he had won through still more bold and dangerous gambles. At the same time, you can't call it "ability" to massacre your own citizens, betray your friends, and operate without loyalty, without mercy, without any sense of right and wrong. Methods like that can win you power, but never glory. If you consider just the raw courage Agathocles showed — plunging into danger and fighting his way out, the sheer mental toughness to endure and overcome every hardship — you'd have to rank him alongside the greatest military commanders who ever lived. But his savage cruelty and inhuman wickedness, piled atrocity upon atrocity, make it impossible to count him among truly great men. You simply can't credit what he achieved to either luck or ability.
In our own times, during the reign of Pope Alexander VI, there was Oliverotto da Fermo. Orphaned as a young child, he was raised by his maternal uncle, Giovanni Fogliani, and sent off at an early age to serve under the military commander Paolo Vitelli, so that with proper training he could build a distinguished military career. After Paolo died, Oliverotto served under his brother Vitellozzo Vitelli, and in very short order — being smart, physically tough, and mentally sharp — he became the top soldier in the company. But serving under someone else struck him as beneath his ambitions. So with the backing of some citizens of Fermo who preferred their city's subjugation to its freedom, and with the help of the Vitelli family, he hatched a plan to seize Fermo for himself.
He wrote to his uncle Giovanni, saying that since he had been away from home for so many years, he wanted to come visit him and see the city — and also to take a look at his family's property. He said that although he had pursued nothing but honor in his military career, he wanted the citizens to see that he hadn't wasted his time. So he hoped to arrive in proper style, accompanied by a hundred horsemen — friends and retainers of his. He asked Giovanni to arrange an appropriately honorable reception from the people of Fermo, which would reflect well not just on Oliverotto himself but on Giovanni, who had raised him.
Giovanni did everything a good uncle would. He arranged an honorable welcome from the citizens and put Oliverotto up in his own home. After a few days — having quietly set everything in motion for what he actually had planned — Oliverotto threw a lavish banquet and invited his uncle Giovanni along with all the leading men of Fermo. When the food and the usual entertainments were finished, Oliverotto deliberately steered the conversation toward weighty political topics — the power of Pope Alexander VI and his son Cesare Borgia, and their various campaigns. Giovanni and the others joined in the discussion. Then Oliverotto suddenly stood up and said that these were matters better discussed somewhere more private. He withdrew to an inner chamber, and Giovanni and the rest of the leading citizens followed him in.
The moment they were seated, soldiers burst from hiding places and slaughtered Giovanni and every one of them.
After the massacre, Oliverotto mounted his horse, rode through the streets of Fermo, and besieged the chief magistrate in the government palace. The terrified people had no choice but to submit. He set up a new government with himself as prince. He killed anyone with the influence or the motive to oppose him, and he strengthened his position with new civil and military institutions. Within the single year he held power, he was not only secure in Fermo itself but had become a threat to all his neighbors. Dislodging him would have been just as difficult as dislodging Agathocles — except that he let himself get outmaneuvered by Cesare Borgia, who trapped him along with the Orsini and Vitelli at Sinigaglia, as I described in the previous chapter. There, just one year after he had murdered his uncle, Oliverotto was strangled alongside Vitellozzo Vitelli — the man who had been both his mentor in military skill and his partner in crime.
Some people might wonder how Agathocles and men like him, after committing endless treacheries and cruelties, managed to live securely in their own countries for so long, defend themselves against foreign enemies, and never face conspiracies from their own citizens — while many other rulers who used cruelty couldn't hold on to power even in peacetime, let alone during war. I believe the answer comes down to whether cruelty is used well or badly.
Well-used cruelty — if you can use the word "well" about something evil — is cruelty that is applied all at once, out of necessity for your own security, and then not repeated afterward. In fact, the measures should be converted as quickly as possible into benefits for the people. Badly-used cruelty is cruelty that starts small but increases over time instead of diminishing. Those who follow the first approach can, with the help of God and their own political skill, find ways to stabilize their rule, as Agathocles did. Those who follow the second approach will inevitably be destroyed.
The lesson here is this: when you seize a state, you need to calculate all the harsh measures you'll have to take, and then do them all at once — in a single stroke — so you don't have to keep repeating them day after day. By not constantly unsettling people, you can gradually reassure them and win them over with good governance. Anyone who does it differently — whether out of timidity or bad advice — will be forced to keep the knife in his hand forever. He'll never be able to trust his own people, and they'll never be able to trust him, because the injuries never stop coming.
Here is the principle: injuries should be inflicted all at once, so that people suffer them less intensely and resent them less. Benefits should be handed out gradually, little by little, so that people savor them longer.
And above all, a prince must live among his people in a way that is so consistent that no unexpected turn of events — whether good or bad — forces him to change course. Because if a crisis hits and you suddenly turn harsh, it's too late. And if you suddenly turn generous, no one will give you credit for it — they'll see it as desperation, and you'll earn no gratitude at all.
Now let's turn to the other case — where a leading citizen becomes prince of his country, not through crime or unbearable violence, but through the support of his fellow citizens. This is what you'd call a civil principality. Getting one doesn't require extraordinary talent or extraordinary luck — just a certain shrewd sense of timing.
Here's the fundamental point: a civil principality comes about through the support of either the people or the nobles. Every city contains these two distinct factions, and they arise from the same basic tension: the people don't want to be dominated and oppressed by the nobles, and the nobles want to dominate and oppress the people. From these two opposing desires, one of three things will happen in a city: a principality, a republic, or total chaos.
A principality gets created when one side or the other sees its opportunity. When the nobles realize they can't overpower the people directly, they rally behind one of their own and make him prince — so they can pursue their ambitions under his cover. The people, when they realize they can't resist the nobles, do the same thing — they rally behind one of their own and make him prince, so his authority can protect them.
Now, a prince who rises to power through the support of the nobles has a much harder time holding on than one who rises through the support of the people. The noble-backed prince finds himself surrounded by men who consider themselves his equals, which means he can't command or manage them the way he'd like. But the prince who rises through popular support stands essentially alone — with no one around him, or very few, who aren't prepared to follow his lead.
On top of that, you can't keep the nobles happy without harming other people, but you can keep the people happy without harming anyone. The people's goal is more legitimate than the nobles' goal: the nobles want to oppress, while the people simply want not to be oppressed. There's another thing too: a prince can never protect himself against a hostile populace — there are simply too many of them. But the nobles? There are few enough that he can protect himself against them. The worst a hostile people will do is abandon the prince. But hostile nobles will not only abandon him — they'll actively move against him. They're more politically savvy and more calculating, so they always hedge their bets in time, currying favor with whoever they think is going to win. And here's one more thing: a prince is stuck with the same people forever, but he doesn't need the same nobles. He can make and unmake them any day he likes — raising one up or cutting another down whenever it suits him.
To make this clearer, let me break down how to handle the nobles. There are essentially two types. Some align their fortunes completely with yours. As long as they aren't greedy and grasping, honor these men and keep them close. Others hold back and don't commit to you. These uncommitted nobles fall into two categories. Some hold back out of timidity and a natural lack of nerve — you can still make use of them, especially the ones who give good advice. They'll serve you well in good times, and you won't have to worry about them in bad times. But others hold back for their own ambitious, calculating reasons — and that's a sign they're thinking about themselves more than about you. A prince needs to watch these men carefully and treat them as if they were open enemies, because when trouble comes, they'll always help bring him down.
So here's the bottom line: if you became prince through popular support, keep the people on your side. This is easy, since all they really want is not to be oppressed. But if you became prince through the nobles' support and against the will of the people, your first priority should be winning the people over — and you can do this by taking them under your protection. Here's the psychology: when people receive good treatment from someone they expected to treat them badly, they become even more loyal than if that person had been their champion all along. You can win the people's devotion in many ways, but since these vary depending on circumstances, I won't lay down fixed rules here. I'll just repeat the essential point: a prince must have the people on his side. Without that, he has no safety net when times get hard.
Nabis, the tyrant of Sparta, held off an attack by all of Greece combined with a victorious Roman army, and he managed to defend both his city and his government. When the crisis hit, he only needed to neutralize a few people — but that would never have been enough if the general population had been against him. And don't let anyone dismiss this argument with that worn-out proverb, "He who builds on the people builds on mud." That's true when a private citizen stakes his future on popular support, fooling himself into thinking the people will rescue him when he's being crushed by enemies or magistrates — he'll be disappointed more often than not, as the Gracchi learned in Rome and Giorgio Scali learned in Florence. But a prince who has established himself as I've described — one who knows how to command, who has courage, who doesn't panic in a crisis, who covers the other bases, and who keeps the whole population energized through his own determination and decisiveness — that prince will never find himself let down by the people. He'll have built his foundations on solid ground.
These kinds of principalities usually run into danger when they're making the transition from a civil government to an absolute one. Princes at this stage either govern personally or through appointed officials. When they govern through officials, their position is weaker and more fragile, because they're entirely dependent on the goodwill of the men they've put in office — and those men can easily destroy the government during a crisis, either through conspiracy or open rebellion. In the middle of upheaval, the prince doesn't get the chance to assert absolute authority, because the citizens and subjects, used to taking orders from officials, won't suddenly start obeying him in the chaos. And in uncertain times, he'll always find a shortage of people he can trust. A prince like this can't base his plans on what he sees during peacetime, when everyone needs the state and so everyone rallies around, making promises, swearing they'd die for him — because death is still far away. But when trouble actually arrives, when the state needs its citizens, he'll find precious few of them stepping up. And this kind of test is especially dangerous because you only get to run it once. That's why a wise prince should organize things so that his citizens always — in every situation — need the state and need him personally. Then they'll always be loyal.
There's another important factor to consider when evaluating principalities: can the prince, if he needs to, stand on his own? Or does he always depend on others for protection?
Let me define terms. A prince who can stand on his own is one who has enough men or money to put together a real army and fight a pitched battle against anyone who attacks him. A prince who depends on others is one who can't face the enemy in the open field and is forced to retreat behind his walls. I've already discussed the first type, and I'll come back to it as needed. For the second type, the only advice I can give is this: fortify your city, stock up supplies, and don't bother trying to defend the surrounding countryside. Any prince who has properly fortified his city and has managed his relationship with his people in the ways I've described — and will describe again — will make attackers think twice. People are always reluctant to take on enterprises where the difficulties are obvious, and there's nothing obviously easy about attacking a prince whose city is well fortified and whose people don't hate him.
The free cities of Germany are a perfect example. They have very little territory beyond their walls. They obey the emperor only when they feel like it. They don't fear the emperor or any neighboring power. Why? Because they're so well fortified that everyone knows taking one by assault would be a long, painful grind. They all have proper moats and walls, plenty of artillery, and their public storehouses always have enough food, drink, and fuel for a full year. Beyond that, to keep the common people employed without draining the treasury, they always have public works projects going — the kind of industries that are the backbone and lifeblood of the city. They also take military training seriously and have all kinds of ordinances in place to maintain it.
So: a prince who has a strong city and hasn't made himself hated won't be attacked. And if someone does attack, they'll be driven off in disgrace — because the affairs of the world are so unpredictable that it's nearly impossible for an army to sit around besieging a city for an entire year without something going wrong.
Now, someone might object: "But if the enemy burns everything the people own outside the city walls, won't the citizens lose patience? Won't a long siege and self-interest make them forget their prince?" My answer: a capable and courageous prince will handle all of these pressures — at one moment giving his people hope that the suffering won't last long, at another reminding them of the enemy's brutality, and at other times skillfully dealing with anyone who gets too outspoken.
Besides, the enemy will naturally do their burning and raiding right at the start, when the defenders' spirits are still high and they're eager to fight. So the prince has even less reason to worry — because by the time spirits cool down, the damage is already done. The losses have already been suffered, there's no undoing them. And at that point, the people actually rally around their prince even more, because they feel he owes them something now that their homes have been burned and their property destroyed in his defense. It's human nature: people feel bound not just by the benefits they receive, but by the sacrifices they make. So when you think it all through, it shouldn't be hard for a wise prince to keep his citizens' morale steady from beginning to end — as long as he doesn't fail to support and defend them.
The only type left to discuss is ecclesiastical principalities — states controlled by the Church. With these, all the difficulties come before you take power. You need either ability or luck to acquire one, but you can hold onto it without either. These states are sustained by ancient religious institutions so deeply rooted and so powerful that the princes stay in power no matter how they behave or live. These are the only rulers who have states they don't defend and subjects they don't govern. And their states, though unprotected, are never taken from them. Their subjects, though ungoverned, don't care — and couldn't break away even if they wanted to. These principalities alone are secure and happy. But since they're upheld by powers beyond the reach of the human mind, I'll say no more about them. They are raised up and maintained by God, and it would be the act of a presumptuous fool to analyze them.
Still, if someone were to ask me: how did the Church come to wield such enormous temporal power? After all, before Pope Alexander VI, every Italian power player — not just the major ones, but every petty baron and minor lord — treated the Church's political authority as a joke. And now a king of France trembles before it, and the Church has been able to drive France out of Italy and crush the Venetians. Even though this story is well known, I think it's worth walking through it briefly.
Before King Charles VIII of France invaded Italy in 1494, the peninsula was effectively controlled by five powers: the Pope, Venice, the King of Naples, the Duke of Milan, and Florence. These powers had two main concerns: first, that no foreign army should enter Italy; second, that none of them should expand at the others' expense. The two they worried about most were the Pope and Venice. Keeping Venice in check required all the others to cooperate, as they did in the defense of Ferrara. And to keep the Pope weak, they relied on the Roman barons — the Orsini and Colonna factions — who were perpetually feuding with each other and stood around with weapons in hand right under the Pope's nose, keeping the papacy feeble and unstable. Every now and then a tough pope would come along — someone like Sixtus IV — but neither luck nor skill could free him from these headaches. The root problem was the brevity of a pope's reign. In the ten years an average pope lasted, he could barely manage to beat down one of the two factions. If one pope nearly destroyed the Colonna, his successor would be hostile to the Orsini and would prop the Colonna back up — yet still wouldn't have enough time to finish off the Orsini. This is why the Pope's political power was taken so lightly in Italy.
Then came Alexander VI, who showed the world what a pope could really do when he had both money and military force at his disposal. Working through his son Cesare Borgia, and exploiting the French invasion as his opportunity, he accomplished everything I described earlier in my discussion of Cesare's career. His goal was never really to strengthen the Church — it was to strengthen the duke. But what he did ended up strengthening the Church anyway, because after both Alexander and Cesare were gone, the Church inherited everything they had built.
Then came Pope Julius II, who found the Church already in a strong position: it held the entire Romagna region, the Roman barons had been crushed, and Alexander's punishments had wiped out the old factions. Julius also found the door open to accumulating wealth in ways no pope before Alexander had ever attempted. Julius didn't just continue these policies — he improved on them. He set out to conquer Bologna, break Venice, and drive the French out of Italy, and he succeeded in all of it. What made his achievements even more impressive was that he did everything to strengthen the Church as an institution, not to enrich any private individual. He also kept the Orsini and Colonna factions within the limits he'd found them in. There were some among them who wanted to stir up trouble, but Julius held two things over them: one, the sheer power of the Church, which intimidated them; and two, his refusal to let them have any cardinals, since cardinals were always the source of faction conflict. Whenever these families had their own cardinals, the cardinals would stir up trouble both in Rome and beyond, and the barons were dragged into it. So it's from the ambitions of Church leaders that the feuds and upheavals among the barons always arose. This is why His Holiness Pope Leo X inherited such a powerful pontificate — and one can hope that if his predecessors made it great through force of arms, he will make it even greater and more revered through his goodness and his many other fine qualities.
Now that I've covered the characteristics of all the different types of principalities I set out to discuss — looking at the reasons why they succeed or fail, and the methods people have used to acquire and hold them — it's time to talk generally about the offensive and defensive capabilities that each of them can bring to bear.
We've already seen how essential it is for a prince to have solid foundations. Without them, he's bound to be destroyed. And the chief foundations of every state, whether new, old, or mixed, are good laws and good military forces. Since you can't have good laws without good military forces, and where the military forces are good the laws tend to be good as well, I'll set the question of laws aside and talk about military forces.
Here's what I want to say: the military forces a prince uses to defend his state are either his own, or they are mercenaries, auxiliaries, or some combination. Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous. If you build your state's defense on mercenary forces, you will never be stable or secure. They are disunited, ambitious, undisciplined, and disloyal — brave when they're showing off in front of allies, cowards when they face a real enemy. They have no fear of God and no loyalty to anyone. Your destruction is only postponed as long as nobody attacks you, because in peacetime they rob you blind, and in wartime the enemy does. The reason is simple: the only thing keeping them in the field is a meager paycheck, and that's not enough to make them willing to die for you. They're perfectly happy to be your soldiers when you're not at war, but the moment fighting starts, they desert or run. This shouldn't be hard to prove — the ruin of Italy has been caused by nothing other than decades of reliance on mercenary forces. There was a time when some of these mercenaries made a decent showing and looked impressive fighting among themselves, but the moment foreign armies arrived, they showed their true colors. That's how Charles VIII, King of France, was able to take Italy with a piece of chalk — meaning that his quartermasters only had to mark up lodgings for his soldiers, and the conquest was done. Pope Alexander VI said as much, and whoever told us that our sins caused Italy's downfall was right — but the sins weren't the ones he meant. They were the sins of the princes who relied on mercenaries. And the princes have paid the price.
Let me spell out why mercenary forces are so fatally unreliable. Mercenary captains are either competent or they're not. If they're competent, you can't trust them, because they'll always be looking to increase their own power — either by turning on you, their employer, or by crushing people you didn't want crushed. But if the captain is incompetent, well, he'll just ruin you in the usual way.
Now, if someone argues that anyone in command of an army will behave the same way, mercenary or not, I'd reply: when military force needs to be used, either a prince or a republic must wield it. The prince should take personal command and act as his own general. A republic should send one of its citizens, and if that general turns out to be a failure, replace him — and if he's good, keep him in check with the law so he doesn't overstep. History shows that princes and republics relying on their own forces make great progress, while mercenaries deliver nothing but damage. And a republic armed with its own citizens' forces is much harder for any single ambitious man to seize control of than one that depends on foreign soldiers. Rome and Sparta lasted for centuries as armed and free states. The Swiss are completely armed and completely free.
For an ancient example of the danger, take Carthage. The Carthaginians were nearly destroyed by their own mercenary soldiers after the First Punic War, even though they had Carthaginian citizens serving as commanders. Then there's Philip of Macedon: the Thebans appointed him captain of their army after the death of their great general Epaminondas, and after he won their battles for them, he turned around and took their freedom.
For a more recent Italian example, when Duke Filippo Visconti of Milan died, the Milanese hired the mercenary captain Francesco Sforza to fight against Venice. Sforza defeated the Venetians at the Battle of Caravaggio in 1448, then promptly switched sides and allied with the Venetians to crush the very people who'd hired him — the Milanese. His father, the elder Sforza, had pulled a similar move after being hired by Queen Johanna II of Naples: he abandoned her without protection, forcing her to throw herself on the mercy of the King of Aragon just to save her kingdom.
Now, if someone points out that Venice and Florence expanded their territories using mercenary captains and that those captains never turned themselves into princes, I'd answer that the Florentines got lucky in this regard. Of the capable captains they might have feared, some didn't win, some faced opposition from rivals, and others directed their ambitions elsewhere. The one who didn't win was John Hawkwood — known to the Italians as Giovanni Acuto — the famous English commander of the White Company. Since he never managed a decisive victory, we can't really test his loyalty, but everyone would admit that if he'd won, Florence would have been at his mercy. Then there were Sforza and Braccio, who kept each other in check — Francesco Sforza turned his ambitions toward Lombardy, and Braccio aimed his at the Church and the Kingdom of Naples.
But let me turn to more recent events. Florence appointed Pagolo Vitelli as their captain — a very shrewd man who had risen from obscurity to great fame. If he had captured Pisa, no one could deny that the Florentines would have been stuck: if he'd gone over to their enemies, they'd have had no defense, and if they'd kept him, they'd have had to obey him. As for Venice, if you look at their record, they fought brilliantly and won great glory as long as they used their own forces — their own armed noblemen and common citizens performing valiantly. This was during their wars at sea. But when they started fighting on land, they abandoned that approach and adopted Italy's bad habit of hiring mercenaries. Early in their land expansion, because they didn't have much territory yet and had a powerful reputation, they didn't have much to fear from their captains. But as they expanded, they got a taste of the problem under Carmignuola — Francesco Bussone, the Count of Carmagnola. He proved to be a brilliant general (they defeated the Duke of Milan under his leadership), but they could also see he was dragging his feet in the war. They figured they couldn't win any more battles with him, but they couldn't afford to let him go either — he might take what they'd gained right back. So to protect themselves, they had to murder him. After that, their captains were men like Bartolomeo Colleoni of Bergamo, Roberto da San Severino, and the Count of Pitigliano — the kind of generals who made you worry about losses, not victories. And the losses came. At the Battle of Vaila in 1509, Venice lost in a single day what had taken eight hundred years to build. Because this is how it goes with mercenary forces: the gains come slowly — small, hard-won, and gradual — but the losses come all at once, sudden and catastrophic.
Since these examples have brought me to Italy, which has been dominated by mercenary forces for many years now, I want to dig deeper into how this happened, so that understanding the origins of the problem might help us fix it. You need to understand that in recent times, the authority of the Holy Roman Empire faded in Italy, the Pope gained more temporal power, and Italy broke apart into more and more small states. This happened because many of the great cities rose up against the nobles who had oppressed them (nobles who had been backed by the emperor), and the Church encouraged these revolts to increase its own worldly influence. In many other cities, ordinary citizens made themselves princes. The result was that Italy ended up divided between the Church and various small republics — and since priests don't know how to fight and citizens of republics weren't accustomed to military life, both started hiring foreign soldiers.
The first man to make a name for this type of mercenary warfare was Alberigo da Barbiano, Count of Cunio in Romagna, who led the famous Company of Saint George. From his school came Braccio and Sforza, who in their day were the power brokers of all Italy. After them came every other captain who has directed Italy's military forces up to the present — and the sum total of all their skill and bravery has been that Italy was overrun by Charles, plundered by Louis, ravaged by Ferdinand, and humiliated by the Swiss.
The strategy these captains followed was this: first, they undermined the reputation of infantry in order to boost their own importance. They did this because, living on their pay and having no territory of their own, they couldn't support large numbers of soldiers, and a small force of infantry wouldn't have given them much clout. So they relied on cavalry, where even a moderate force earned them prestige and employment. Things got so bad that in an army of twenty thousand, you'd be hard pressed to find two thousand foot soldiers. Beyond that, they used every trick to minimize hardship and danger — both for themselves and for their troops. They didn't kill enemy soldiers in battle; they took prisoners and released them without ransom. They didn't attack towns at night, and town garrisons didn't attack their camps at night. They didn't bother building stockades or digging ditches around their camps. They didn't fight in winter. All of this was permitted — even encouraged — by their own rules of war, rules they'd invented specifically to avoid effort and risk. And this is how they brought Italy to slavery and disgrace.
Auxiliaries — the other type of useless military force — are what you get when you call on another ruler to come help you with his armies. This is what Pope Julius II did in recent times. After getting dismal results from his mercenaries in the campaign against Ferrara, he turned to auxiliaries and made an agreement with Ferdinand, King of Spain, to send troops to fight on his behalf. These forces may be perfectly good and effective on their own terms, but for the prince who borrows them, they are always a disaster. If they lose, you're destroyed. If they win, you're their prisoner.
Ancient history is full of examples, but I don't want to stray from this recent one involving Pope Julius, because the danger is too obvious to miss. Julius wanted Ferrara, so he put himself entirely in the hands of a foreign power. But his good luck produced an unexpected outcome that saved him from paying the full price of his reckless gamble. His auxiliaries — the Spanish troops — were routed at the Battle of Ravenna, but then the Swiss rose up and drove out the victors, shocking everyone. The result was that Julius ended up neither a prisoner of his enemies (who had fled) nor a prisoner of his auxiliaries (since the victory had been won by someone else's forces entirely). He got lucky. That's all.
The Florentines, having no military forces of their own, once sent ten thousand French soldiers to capture Pisa. That decision put them in greater danger than anything else in their entire troubled history.
The Emperor of Constantinople, John Cantacuzenus, sent ten thousand Turks into Greece to fight his neighbors. When the war was over, the Turks refused to leave. That was the beginning of Greece's subjugation to the Ottoman infidels.
So if you have no interest in winning, by all means use auxiliary troops — because they are far more dangerous than mercenaries. With auxiliaries, your ruin comes ready-made. They are a unified force, fully obedient to someone else. Mercenaries, even after they've won, need more time and more favorable conditions before they can turn on you. They're not a cohesive unit; you recruited and paid them, and the commander you appointed over them can't instantly seize enough authority to move against you. In short, with mercenaries the main danger is their cowardice; with auxiliaries, the danger is their competence. A wise prince has therefore always avoided both and relied on his own forces. He would rather lose with his own troops than win with someone else's, because a victory won with borrowed armies is no real victory at all.
I'll never pass up a chance to cite Cesare Borgia. The duke entered the Romagna with auxiliary forces — nothing but French troops — and used them to capture Imola and Forli. But he quickly decided these forces were unreliable, so he switched to mercenaries, hiring the Orsini and the Vitelli, figuring they were less dangerous. When even they turned out to be untrustworthy, disloyal, and dangerous, he got rid of them and built his own army. And the difference between these three stages is easy to see if you look at how the duke's reputation changed. When he had only the French, people took him somewhat seriously. When he had the Orsini and Vitelli, his standing grew. But when he stood on his own soldiers — men whose loyalty he could count on, and whose devotion only grew over time — that's when his reputation reached its peak. He was never more respected than when everyone could see he was the complete master of his own forces.
I didn't intend to go beyond Italian and recent examples, but I can't leave out Hiero of Syracuse, since I mentioned him earlier. When the Syracusans made Hiero the commander of their army, he quickly realized that their mercenary soldiers — organized just like Italy's condottieri — were completely useless. He decided he could neither keep them nor safely dismiss them. So he had them all cut to pieces. After that, he made war with his own forces, not someone else's.
I also want to recall a story from the Old Testament that fits perfectly here. When David volunteered to fight Goliath, the Philistine champion, Saul offered David his own royal armor to give him courage. David put it on, then immediately took it off, saying he couldn't fight in someone else's equipment — he wanted to face the enemy with his sling and his knife. That's the lesson: other people's military forces either fall off your back, or weigh you down, or tie you up.
Charles VII of France, the father of Louis XI, had the skill and the good fortune to drive the English out of France, and he recognized how essential it was to have his own military forces. He established laws in his kingdom creating a national system of men-at-arms and infantry. Later, his son King Louis abolished the infantry and began hiring Swiss mercenaries instead. This mistake, compounded by others, is — as we can now see — a source of real danger to that kingdom. By building up the reputation of the Swiss, Louis undermined his own forces completely. He eliminated his infantry altogether, and his men-at-arms became so dependent on fighting alongside the Swiss that they no longer believed they could win without them. The result is that the French can't stand up to the Swiss and are useless without them against anyone else. France's military forces have become a mix of mercenary and national troops, which is much better than purely mercenary or purely auxiliary forces, but much worse than having your own army. This example proves the point: the kingdom of France would be unbeatable if Charles VII's system had been expanded or at least maintained.
But human wisdom is limited. Something can look good at the start while the poison hidden inside it goes undetected — as I said earlier about certain fevers that are easy to treat at first but hard to diagnose, then easy to diagnose later but impossible to cure. The same goes for governing a principality: if you can't spot problems until they're already upon you, you're not truly wise. And that kind of foresight is given to very few.
If you look for the first cause of the Roman Empire's decline, you'll find it started with the enlisting of the Goths as soldiers. From that point on, the strength of Rome began to drain away, and all the ability and fighting spirit that had built the empire passed to others.
My conclusion is this: no principality is secure without its own military forces. In fact, without them it is entirely at the mercy of fortune, having no strength of its own to mount a defense when times get hard. Wise men have always held that nothing is more fragile or unstable than a reputation for power that isn't backed by real strength. Your own forces are those composed of your subjects, your citizens, or your dependents — everything else is mercenary or auxiliary. And the way to organize your own forces will be clear enough if you study the methods I've outlined here and consider how Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, and many republics and princes have armed and organized themselves. I defer entirely to those models.
A prince should have no other objective, no other thought, and no other focus of study than war — its rules, its strategy, and its discipline. This is the only art that matters for a ruler. It is so powerful that it not only keeps born princes in power but frequently lifts ordinary men to the rank of prince. Conversely, when princes have prioritized comfort over military readiness, they've lost their states. The quickest way to lose power is to neglect the art of war; the surest way to gain it is to master that art.
Francesco Sforza, because he was a warrior, rose from a private citizen to become Duke of Milan. His sons, because they avoided the hardships and discomforts of military life, fell from dukes back to private citizens. Among the many problems that come from being militarily weak, it makes you despised — and that is one of the worst things that can happen to a prince, as I'll discuss later. There is simply no comparison between a ruler who is armed and one who isn't. It's not reasonable to expect that an armed man will willingly obey an unarmed one, or that an unarmed prince will feel safe surrounded by armed soldiers. When the soldiers feel contempt and the prince feels anxiety, nothing good can come of it. A prince who doesn't understand military affairs, on top of all the other disadvantages I've mentioned, can't earn the respect of his soldiers and can't rely on them.
A prince must therefore never take his mind off the subject of war. In peacetime, he should actually devote more attention to it than in wartime. He can do this in two ways: through action and through study.
When it comes to action, beyond keeping his troops well organized and well trained, he should spend a great deal of time hunting. This serves two purposes: it toughens his body against hardship, and it teaches him the lay of the land — how mountains rise, how valleys open, how plains spread out, and the nature of rivers and marshes. He should pay the closest attention to all of this. This kind of knowledge is useful in two ways. First, he learns the terrain of his own country and is better prepared to defend it. Second, and more important, understanding one landscape makes it far easier to understand any new landscape he encounters. The hills, valleys, plains, rivers, and marshes of Tuscany, for instance, have a basic resemblance to those found in other regions. A prince who understands the terrain of one country can quickly grasp the terrain of another. And the prince who lacks this skill is missing the most essential quality a military commander can have: it's what enables you to find the enemy, choose your ground, move your army, arrange your battle lines, and besiege towns effectively.
Philopoemen, the leader of the Achaean League — a man ancient writers praised above almost all others — is especially admired because even in peacetime, war was the only thing on his mind. Whenever he was out in the countryside with friends, he would constantly stop and put questions to them: "If the enemy held that hill, and we were here with our army, who would have the advantage? How should we advance against them while keeping formation? If we needed to retreat, how should we do it? If they retreated, how should we pursue?" He would walk them through every scenario an army might face, listen to their opinions, give his own, and back it up with reasoning. The result of these constant mental exercises was that in actual warfare, no situation could ever arise that he hadn't already thought through.
As for exercising the mind, a prince should read history and study the actions of great leaders. He should examine how they conducted their wars, analyze what made them win or lose, and learn to avoid their failures while imitating their successes. Above all, he should do what the greatest men have always done: choose a hero from the past and follow his example. Alexander the Great imitated Achilles. Caesar imitated Alexander. Scipio imitated Cyrus. Anyone who reads Xenophon's biography of Cyrus will see, looking at Scipio's life afterward, how much that imitation contributed to Scipio's greatness — how closely Scipio modeled himself on Cyrus in self-discipline, approachability, generosity, and humanity.
A wise prince should follow these principles and never be idle during peacetime. Instead, he should use those quiet years to build up knowledge and ability that he can draw on when trouble comes — so that when fortune turns against him, he is ready to fight back.
Now we need to consider how a prince should behave toward his subjects and allies. I know many people have written about this before, and I expect I'll be called presumptuous for bringing it up again — especially since I'm going to break sharply from what everyone else has said. But my goal is to write something genuinely useful for anyone who understands it, so I think it makes more sense to focus on how things actually are rather than how we imagine them to be. Many writers have dreamed up republics and principalities that have never existed in the real world and never will. The gap between how people actually live and how they ought to live is so wide that anyone who ignores reality in favor of ideals will destroy himself faster than he'll save himself. A man who insists on being good all the time is guaranteed to be ruined when he's surrounded by so many who are not.
So here is the essential truth: a prince who wants to hold on to power must learn how to do wrong, and must use that ability — or not — as circumstances require.
Setting aside the fantasy versions of how a prince should be, and dealing with reality, I'll say this: whenever people talk about anyone — but especially about princes, since they stand higher and are more visible — they are judged by certain qualities that earn them either praise or blame. One prince is considered generous, another stingy (I'm using a Tuscan word here, because "greedy" in our language means someone who takes what isn't his by force, while "stingy" means someone who hoards his own wealth too tightly). One is considered a giver, another a taker. One is cruel, another compassionate. One is a liar, another a man of his word. One is soft and cowardly, another bold and brave. One is approachable, another arrogant. One is promiscuous, another restrained. One is straightforward, another cunning. One is rigid, another easygoing. One is serious, another frivolous. One is devout, another faithless. And so on.
Everyone would agree that it would be wonderful if a prince possessed all of the qualities people consider good. But because no human being can have them all or live by them all — that's just the nature of being human — a prince must be smart enough to avoid the worst reputations, the ones that would actually cost him his state. He should also try, if possible, to avoid the lesser vices. But when that's not possible, he can afford to be less worried about them. And he absolutely shouldn't lose sleep over being blamed for vices that are necessary to save his state. Because when you look at things carefully, you'll find that some things that look like virtues will lead to his ruin if he follows them, while other things that look like vices will bring him security and success.
Starting with the first of the qualities I listed above, I'll say that it would certainly be nice to have a reputation for generosity. And yet, if you practice generosity in a way that doesn't get you credit for it, all it does is hurt you. If you are genuinely and quietly generous, as true generosity requires, nobody will notice — and you'll still get called stingy. So any prince who actually wants to be known as generous is forced into spectacular displays of spending. A prince who goes down that road will burn through everything he has. Then, if he still wants to keep his generous reputation, he'll be forced to pile taxes on his people and squeeze them in every way possible to raise more money. This will quickly make his subjects hate him, and once he's broke, nobody will respect him either. His generosity will have offended the many and rewarded the few. Every small crisis will threaten him, and the first real danger will put him at risk. When he finally recognizes this and tries to pull back, he'll immediately be branded a miser.
So here's the reality. Since a prince can't practice generosity in any meaningful way without it destroying him, if he's smart he won't worry about being called stingy. Over time, he'll actually be seen as more generous — because his careful spending means his revenues are sufficient, he can defend himself against anyone who attacks him, and he can launch new ventures without crushing his people with taxes. In effect, he ends up being generous to the vast majority of people — all those he doesn't take from — and stingy only toward the small number he doesn't give to.
In our own time, the only leaders who have accomplished great things are those who were considered stingy. The rest have failed. Pope Julius II used a reputation for generosity to help him win the papacy, but once he had it, he didn't bother maintaining that image. He wanted to make war on France, and he waged many wars without ever imposing a single extraordinary tax on his people — his long years of careful spending funded everything. The current King of Spain could never have launched or won so many campaigns if he'd had a reputation for generosity.
A prince, therefore — as long as he doesn't have to rob his subjects, as long as he can defend himself, as long as he doesn't sink into poverty and contempt, as long as he isn't forced to become a plunderer — should think very little of a reputation for stinginess. It's one of those so-called vices that actually helps him govern.
Now, someone might object: "What about Julius Caesar? He rose to power through generosity, and plenty of others have climbed to the top by being generous and being seen as generous." My answer is this: either you're already a prince, or you're on your way to becoming one. In the first case, generosity is dangerous. In the second, a reputation for generosity is absolutely essential. Caesar was one of those trying to rise to supreme power in Rome. But if he had actually achieved it and survived, and hadn't reined in his spending, he would have destroyed his own government.
And if someone pushes back further: "Plenty of princes have led armies and accomplished great things while being famously generous" — I'd reply: a prince is either spending his own money and his subjects' money, or he's spending other people's. In the first case, he should be careful. In the second, he should miss no opportunity for generosity. A prince who marches with his army, living off plunder, looting, and tribute, is spending what belongs to others — and that kind of generosity is essential, or his soldiers won't follow him. When you're giving away what doesn't belong to you or your subjects, you can afford to be lavish. That's what Cyrus, Caesar, and Alexander did. Spending other people's wealth doesn't hurt your reputation — it enhances it. The only spending that hurts you is spending your own.
Nothing burns through resources faster than generosity. The very act of practicing it destroys your ability to keep practicing it. You end up either poor and despised, or — in your scramble to avoid poverty — greedy and hated. And the one thing a prince must guard against above all is being despised and hated. Generosity leads straight to both.
This is why it's wiser to accept a reputation for stinginess — which brings criticism but not hatred — than to chase a reputation for generosity and end up being called a plunderer, which brings both criticism and hatred.
Moving on to the next qualities on the list: every prince should want to be seen as compassionate, not cruel. But he has to be careful not to use that compassion badly. Cesare Borgia was considered cruel — yet his cruelty brought order to the Romagna, unified it, and restored it to peace and loyalty. If you think about it honestly, he was far more merciful than the people of Florence, who let the city of Pistoia tear itself apart in factional violence just to avoid being called cruel. A prince, therefore, should not worry too much about a reputation for cruelty — as long as it keeps his subjects united and loyal. A few well-chosen acts of harshness will actually be more merciful than excessive leniency, which lets chaos spread. Disorder harms everyone; punishment from a prince harms only the individual.
This is especially true for a new prince. New states are full of dangers, and it's nearly impossible for a new ruler to avoid a reputation for cruelty. As Virgil has Dido say: "Harsh necessity and the newness of my kingdom force me to take these measures and to guard my borders well."
That said, a prince should be slow to believe accusations and slow to act on them. He shouldn't jump at shadows. He should proceed with a balance of caution and humanity, so that too much confidence doesn't make him careless and too much suspicion doesn't make him unbearable.
And this raises the famous question: is it better to be loved than feared, or feared than loved?
The answer is that you'd want to be both. But since it's very hard to combine them in one person, if you have to choose, it is much safer to be feared than loved.
Here's why. This is what we can say about people in general: they are ungrateful, unreliable, dishonest, cowardly, and greedy. As long as you're succeeding, they're entirely yours. They'll offer you their blood, their money, their lives, their children — when the danger is far off. But the moment trouble actually arrives, they turn on you. A prince who has trusted entirely in their promises, without making any other preparations, is ruined. Friendships that are bought with money rather than earned through greatness of character may be paid for, but they're never really owned — and when you need them most, you can't count on them.
People have fewer qualms about hurting someone who is loved than someone who is feared. Love is held together by a chain of obligation, and because people are fundamentally self-interested, they'll break that chain the moment it serves their purposes. But fear is held together by the dread of punishment, and that never fails.
Still, a prince should inspire fear in a way that, even if he doesn't win love, he avoids hatred. Being feared and not being hated can absolutely go together. And he will achieve this as long as he keeps his hands off his subjects' property and their women. If he has to execute someone, he should do it only when there is clear justification and an obvious reason. But above all, he must not touch other people's property — because men will sooner forgive the killing of their father than the seizure of their inheritance. And besides, pretexts for confiscation are never hard to come by: a ruler who starts living by plunder will always find excuses to take what belongs to others. But justifications for execution are harder to manufacture and quicker to expire.
When a prince is with his army, though, commanding a huge number of soldiers, he absolutely cannot afford to worry about being called cruel. Without a reputation for severity, you will never hold an army together or keep it ready to fight.
Among Hannibal's many remarkable achievements, this one stands out: he led an enormous army, made up of countless different peoples, to fight in foreign lands — and through all his campaigns, in good times and bad, there was never a single mutiny among his troops or against him. The reason was nothing other than his terrifying cruelty, which, combined with his extraordinary military skill, made him both feared and respected by his soldiers. Without that cruelty, his other qualities wouldn't have been enough. Shallow historians admire his accomplishments on the one hand while condemning their primary cause on the other.
The proof that his other qualities alone wouldn't have been enough is the case of Scipio — an extraordinary man not just of his own time but of all recorded history. His army mutinied against him in Spain. The cause was nothing but his excessive leniency, which gave his soldiers more freedom than military discipline can tolerate. Fabius Maximus called him out for it in the Senate, calling him the corrupter of the Roman military. When one of Scipio's officers devastated the city of Locri, Scipio neither punished the officer nor corrected the abuse — all because of his easygoing nature. Someone in the Senate, trying to defend him, said that there were many men who were better at not making mistakes themselves than at correcting the mistakes of others. Eventually this temperament would have destroyed Scipio's reputation and legacy — except that he served under the authority of the Senate, and so this dangerous quality was kept in check and even turned, in the end, to his credit.
So, returning to the question of being feared or loved, my conclusion is this: since people love at their own will but fear at the prince's will, a wise prince should build on what he controls, not on what others control. He just needs to make sure — as I've said — that he avoids being hated.
Everyone understands how praiseworthy it is for a prince to keep his word and live with integrity rather than deception. And yet, experience in our own time shows that the princes who have accomplished great things are the ones who gave their word lightly, who knew how to manipulate people through cunning, and who in the end defeated those who played by the rules.
You need to understand that there are two ways of fighting: through law and through force. The first is the way of human beings; the second is the way of animals. But because law is often not enough, you have to be willing to use force. A prince, therefore, must know how to act as both a man and a beast. The ancient writers taught this lesson in code when they described how Achilles and many other princes were raised by Chiron the Centaur — a creature who was half man and half beast. The symbolism is clear: a prince needs a teacher who is both. One nature without the other doesn't last.
Since a prince must know how to use his animal nature, he should model himself on two animals: the fox and the lion. The lion can't protect himself from traps. The fox can't protect himself from wolves. You need to be a fox to spot the traps, and a lion to scare off the wolves. Leaders who rely only on the lion don't understand the game.
So a wise prince cannot — and should not — keep his word when doing so would work against him, and when the reasons that made him give his word no longer exist. If all men were good, this rule would be wrong. But since men are dishonest and won't keep their word to you, you have no obligation to keep yours to them. And a prince will never lack legitimate reasons to justify breaking a promise. I could give endless recent examples of this — showing how many treaties and agreements have been broken and made worthless by the dishonesty of princes. The ones who knew best how to play the fox came out ahead.
But you have to know how to disguise this quality well. You have to be a skilled pretender and deceiver. And people are so gullible, so caught up in their immediate needs, that someone who wants to deceive will always find plenty of people willing to be deceived.
There's one recent example I can't pass over. Pope Alexander VI did nothing his entire life but deceive people, and never gave a thought to anything else. He always found willing victims. No man in history was more forceful in making promises or more emphatic in swearing oaths — and no man honored them less. Yet his deceptions always succeeded exactly as he wished, because he understood this side of human nature perfectly.
As the Italian proverb put it: Alexander never did what he said; Cesare never said what he did.
So: it is not necessary for a prince to actually possess all the good qualities I've listed. But it is absolutely necessary to appear to possess them. In fact, I'll go further and say this: actually having these qualities and practicing them at all times is harmful. But appearing to have them is useful. You should appear to be compassionate, trustworthy, humane, devout, and honest — and you should actually be all these things. But you must keep your mind flexible enough that, if you need to be the opposite, you can make the switch instantly.
Here is what you need to understand: a prince — especially a new prince — cannot afford to practice all those qualities that make people call a man "good." He is often forced, in order to hold his state together, to act against loyalty, against charity, against humanity, against religion. He needs a mind that's ready to shift direction as the winds and tides of fortune change. As I said, he shouldn't stray from the path of good if he can help it — but he must be willing to step onto the path of wrong when necessary.
A prince must therefore be extremely careful never to let a word slip from his mouth that doesn't reflect all five of the qualities I named: compassion, trustworthiness, humanity, integrity, and religious devotion. Nothing is more important to project than this last one. People judge far more by their eyes than by their hands — everyone can see you, but very few actually deal with you directly. Everyone sees what you appear to be; few experience what you actually are. And those few don't dare challenge the opinion of the many, who have the authority of the state behind them. When it comes to the actions of all men — and especially of princes, where there's no court of appeals — people judge by results.
So let a prince focus on conquering and holding his state. The methods he uses will always be judged honorable, and everyone will praise him. The common crowd is always impressed by appearances and outcomes — and the world is made up of the common crowd. The few who see through the illusion have no influence when the majority have already made up their minds.
A certain prince of our own time — whom it's better not to name — preaches nothing but peace and good faith, yet is the sworn enemy of both. If he had actually practiced either one, he would have lost his reputation and his kingdom many times over.
Now, I've already discussed the most important qualities a prince should cultivate. The rest I want to cover briefly under one general rule: a prince must think carefully about how to avoid the things that will make him hated or despised. As long as he manages that, he's done the hard part, and no other kind of criticism poses a real threat.
What makes a prince hated above all else, as I've said, is stealing from his subjects — seizing their property and their women. He must stay away from both. As long as you don't touch people's property or their honor, most of them will live contentedly enough. Then you only have to deal with the ambition of a few troublemakers, and there are many ways to keep them in check.
What makes a prince despised is being seen as fickle, frivolous, weak, cowardly, or indecisive. A prince should guard against these impressions the way a sailor watches for rocks. In everything he does, he should project greatness, courage, seriousness, and strength. In his dealings with subjects, he should make it clear that his decisions are final. He should build such a reputation that no one even dreams of trying to deceive him or manipulate him.
A prince who creates this impression of himself earns deep respect. And a deeply respected prince is not easy to conspire against — as long as people know he is capable and that his subjects support him, he is very hard to attack. A prince really has only two things to worry about: threats from within his own territory, from his own subjects; and threats from outside, from foreign powers. Against foreign threats, the answer is a strong military and good allies — and if you have a strong military, good allies tend to follow. And as long as things are stable abroad, they'll stay stable at home too, unless some conspiracy is already underway. Even if foreign affairs get turbulent, a prince who has prepared himself and lived the way I've described — as long as he doesn't lose his nerve — will weather any storm, just as I said Nabis, the tyrant of Sparta, did.
When it comes to his own subjects, though, even when there's no external threat, a prince's main worry should be secret conspiracies. The best defense against conspiracies is simply not being hated or despised by the people, and keeping them satisfied. This is absolutely essential, as I discussed earlier at length. One of the most powerful shields a prince can have against conspiracies is the support of the people. Here's why: every conspirator expects that killing the prince will please the people. But if the conspirator knows that the assassination would actually anger the people? He won't have the nerve to go through with it, because the obstacles facing a conspirator are already enormous.
History shows that while many conspiracies have been attempted, very few have succeeded. A conspirator can't act alone, and the only people he can recruit are those he believes are discontented. But the moment you reveal your plot to a discontented man, you've given him everything he needs to solve his own problems — because by turning you in, he gets a guaranteed reward. On one side, he sees a certain payoff from betraying you. On the other, he sees a dangerous, uncertain gamble. He'd have to be an extraordinarily loyal friend — or a fanatically determined enemy of the prince — to keep your secret.
To put it simply: on the conspirator's side, there is nothing but fear, suspicion, and the terror of punishment. On the prince's side, there is the authority of the state, the law, his allies, and the government apparatus protecting him. Add popular support to all of that, and it's almost unthinkable that anyone would be reckless enough to conspire. Most conspirators have to worry about getting caught before they strike. This conspirator has to worry about what happens after, too — because with the people against him, there's no escape.
I could give endless examples, but I'll stick with one from recent memory. Messer Annibale Bentivogli, the ruling prince of Bologna and grandfather of the current Annibale, was murdered by the Canneschi family, who had conspired against him. Not a single member of the Bentivogli family survived except Messer Giovanni, who was just a child at the time. But here's what happened next: the people of Bologna immediately rose up and slaughtered every last one of the Canneschi. That's how strong the popular loyalty to the Bentivogli house was in those days. It was so strong that when Annibale died and there was no one left in Bologna capable of running the government, the Bolognese heard that a member of the Bentivogli family was living in Florence — a man who had been raised as a blacksmith's son. They sent for him and gave him control of the city. He governed Bologna until young Giovanni was old enough to take over. (Machiavelli's passionate hostility to conspiracies, it's worth noting, may have been sharpened by personal experience — just a year before writing this, in 1513, he had been arrested and tortured on suspicion of involvement in the Boscoli conspiracy against the Medici.)
The lesson: when the people support a prince, conspiracies are nothing to worry about. But when the people are hostile and hate him, he should fear everything and everyone. Well-governed states and wise princes have always made it a top priority to keep the nobles from getting desperate and to keep the common people satisfied and happy. This is one of the most important things any prince can do.
Among the best-ordered kingdoms of our time is France, which has many excellent institutions that protect the king's freedom and security. The most important of these is the parliament. The founder of the French kingdom understood two things: the ambition and arrogance of the nobles, who needed to be reined in; and the fear-driven resentment of the common people toward the nobles, who needed to be protected. But he didn't want this to be the king's direct responsibility — that would have exposed the king to criticism from both sides. So he created an independent arbiter, the parliament, which could hold the nobles in check and defend the common people without the king taking the blame for either. You couldn't ask for a smarter or more effective arrangement, or one that does more to keep the king and kingdom secure. This leads to another important principle: princes should delegate the unpopular decisions to others and keep the popular ones for themselves. And one more thing: a prince should cultivate the nobles, but never in a way that alienates the people.
Now, some readers who have studied the lives and deaths of the Roman emperors might think many of them disprove my argument. After all, some emperors lived admirably and showed tremendous ability, yet they still lost their empires or were murdered by conspirators. To answer that objection, I'm going to examine the character of several emperors and show that the causes of their downfall were exactly the ones I've been describing. Along the way, I'll highlight the lessons that anyone studying this era should take to heart.
I think it's enough to focus on the emperors who ruled in succession from Marcus Aurelius to Maximinus. They were: Marcus Aurelius, his son Commodus, Pertinax, Julian, Severus, his son Antoninus Caracalla, Macrinus, Heliogabalus, Alexander Severus, and Maximinus.
The first thing to understand is that these Roman emperors faced a challenge that modern princes don't. In most principalities, you only have to balance the ambitions of the nobles against the demands of the people. The Roman emperors had a third force to contend with: the greed and brutality of their soldiers. This was an incredibly difficult problem, and it destroyed many of them. Here's why it was so hard: the people wanted peace, and so they preferred a cautious, unambitious emperor. The soldiers wanted war, and they preferred an emperor who was bold, cruel, and aggressive — qualities they were happy to see directed at the civilian population, because it meant higher pay and an outlet for their own violent impulses. The result was that emperors who lacked great authority — whether from birth or from hard-won reputation — were almost always overthrown. Most of them, especially those who came to power as new men, quickly realized they couldn't satisfy both the soldiers and the people at the same time. They chose to satisfy the soldiers and stopped worrying about harming the people. This was a necessary calculation: since a prince will inevitably be hated by someone, his first goal should be to avoid being hated by everyone. And if that's impossible, he should focus hardest on appeasing whichever group is more powerful. That's why emperors who needed special support — the newcomers especially — sided with the soldiers over the people. Whether this strategy worked or not depended entirely on whether the emperor was skillful enough to maintain control of the army.
These dynamics explain why Marcus Aurelius, Pertinax, and Alexander Severus — all men of modest personal habits, lovers of justice, enemies of cruelty, humane and decent — all came to bad ends. All except Marcus Aurelius. He alone lived and died with his honor intact, because he inherited the throne by right of succession and owed nothing to either the soldiers or the people for his position. On top of that, he possessed so many admirable qualities that he commanded genuine respect, and he managed to keep both the military and the civilians in their proper place for his entire reign. He was neither hated nor despised.
Pertinax, however, was made emperor against the wishes of the soldiers. The army had grown accustomed to the dissolute lifestyle they'd enjoyed under Commodus and couldn't tolerate the discipline and honest government that Pertinax tried to impose. So he earned their hatred. Add to that the contempt they felt for his old age, and he was overthrown almost as soon as he took power. And this brings up an important point: hatred can be earned by good actions just as easily as by bad ones. As I said earlier, a prince who wants to keep his state is often forced to do things that aren't good. When the group you depend on for support — whether it's the people, the soldiers, or the nobles — is itself corrupt, you have to feed their corruption to keep them happy. In that situation, good behavior will actually destroy you.
Now let's turn to Alexander Severus. He was a man of such remarkable goodness that among the many things he was praised for, one stands out: during the entire fourteen years of his reign, not a single person was executed without a fair trial. Despite this, he was perceived as weak and as a man who let his mother run the government. This earned him the army's contempt, and they conspired against him and murdered him.
Turning to the opposite type — Commodus, Severus, Caracalla, and Maximinus — these were all cruel and greedy men who, to keep their soldiers happy, didn't hesitate to commit every kind of outrage against the civilian population. And all of them except Severus came to bad ends. Severus was the exception because he possessed such extraordinary ability that, even though he oppressed the people, he kept the soldiers loyal and reigned successfully. His skill made him so impressive in the eyes of both soldiers and civilians that the people were left in a kind of stunned awe, while the soldiers remained respectful and satisfied. Because his actions as a new prince were truly remarkable, I want to show briefly how masterfully he played both the fox and the lion — the two natures that, as I said in an earlier chapter, a prince must learn to adopt.
Severus knew that the Emperor Julian was weak and indecisive. He persuaded the army in Slavonia, which he commanded, that they should march on Rome to avenge the murder of Pertinax, who had been killed by the Praetorian Guard. Using this pretext — without ever openly announcing that he wanted the throne — he led his army toward Rome and arrived in Italy before anyone even knew he had set out. When he reached Rome, the Senate, terrified, elected him emperor and had Julian killed. After this, Severus still faced two obstacles if he wanted to control the entire empire: one in the East, where Niger, commander of the Asian armies, had declared himself emperor; and one in the West, where Albinus also had his eye on the throne. Severus judged it too dangerous to fight both at once, so he decided to attack Niger while deceiving Albinus. He wrote to Albinus saying that, having been elected emperor by the Senate, he wanted to share power and was sending him the title of Caesar. He even arranged for the Senate to officially name Albinus his co-ruler. Albinus believed all of it. But after Severus defeated and killed Niger and settled affairs in the East, he returned to Rome and complained to the Senate that Albinus — showing no gratitude for the honors bestowed on him — had treacherously plotted to murder him. Severus was therefore compelled to go punish this ingratitude. He tracked Albinus down in France and stripped him of both his command and his life.
If you examine this man's actions carefully, you'll find him to be both a ferocious lion and a cunning fox. You'll find him feared and respected by everyone, and not hated by the army. And it should be no surprise that, as a new man, he was able to hold such a vast empire. His towering reputation always shielded him from the hatred that his brutal treatment of the people might otherwise have provoked.
His son Antoninus Caracalla was also a remarkable man in many ways. He had qualities that made him impressive to the public and popular with the soldiers: he was a warrior through and through, indifferent to hardship, contemptuous of fine food and every kind of luxury, which made the troops love him. But his savagery and cruelty were so extreme and so unprecedented — after countless individual murders, he slaughtered a huge portion of Rome's population and massacred the entire city of Alexandria — that he became hated by the whole world. Even the people closest to him began to fear him, and eventually he was murdered by a centurion right in the middle of his own army.
This illustrates a point worth noting: assassinations carried out by a single determined individual who doesn't fear death are essentially impossible for a prince to prevent. Anyone who is willing to die can kill anyone. But a prince shouldn't lose too much sleep over this, because such attacks are extremely rare. He just needs to be careful not to seriously harm anyone in his inner circle or his personal service. Caracalla failed at exactly this: he had killed the brother of that centurion and threatened the man daily, yet kept him as a bodyguard. This was reckless to the point of stupidity, and it got him killed.
Now for Commodus. Holding the empire should have been easy for him. As the son of Marcus Aurelius, he inherited it and only had to follow in his father's footsteps to keep both the people and the soldiers satisfied. But his nature was cruel and brutish. To indulge his greed, he chose to pamper the soldiers and let them run wild, unleashing them on the people. At the same time, he destroyed his own dignity — actually stepping into the arena to fight as a gladiator and doing other things that were beneath contempt for an emperor. The soldiers came to despise him. Hated by one group and despised by the other, he was conspired against and killed.
That leaves Maximinus. He was an extremely warlike man. When the armies grew disgusted with the weakness of Alexander Severus — whom I just discussed — they killed Alexander and elected Maximinus emperor. But he didn't hold power for long, because two things made him both hated and despised. First, he had a humble background — he'd been a shepherd in Thrace — and everyone knew it. This was widely considered degrading and earned him universal contempt. Second, when he first came to power, he didn't bother going to Rome to officially take possession of the imperial seat, which made him look even less legitimate. On top of all this, he had earned a reputation for extreme cruelty: his governors had committed terrible atrocities throughout the empire on his behalf. So the whole world was simultaneously contemptuous of his low origins and furious about his brutality. Africa rebelled first. Then the Senate and the people of Rome. Then all of Italy conspired against him. Finally, his own army turned. They were besieging Aquileia and having trouble taking it. Disgusted with his cruelty and seeing how many enemies he'd made, they grew less afraid of him — and murdered him.
I won't bother discussing Heliogabalus, Macrinus, or Julian, who were all so thoroughly contemptible that they were wiped out almost immediately. Instead, let me draw the conclusions from this entire survey.
The princes of our own time face this problem of satisfying their soldiers to a much lesser degree. Yes, you have to give the military some consideration, but it's a manageable issue. No modern prince commands armies that are deeply entrenched in the government and administration of provinces the way the Roman legions were. Back then, it was more important to keep the soldiers happy than the people. Today, the opposite is true for every prince — except the Ottoman Sultan and the Egyptian Sultan — because the people are the more powerful force.
I except the Ottoman Sultan because he always keeps a standing force of twelve thousand infantry and fifteen thousand cavalry around him, on which the security and strength of his kingdom depend. For him, keeping the army happy has to come before all other considerations. The Egyptian Sultanate is similar: since power rests entirely in the hands of the military, the Sultan must keep the soldiers loyal regardless of what the people think. But note that the Egyptian Sultanate is unlike any other principality. It actually resembles the Catholic papacy: it's not hereditary, and it's not a newly created state either. The old ruler's sons don't inherit — instead, a new leader is elected by those who hold power, and the previous ruler's children simply become private citizens. Because this is an ancient and established system, it can't be called a new principality. None of the challenges that face a new prince apply here: even though the ruler himself is new, the institution is old, and it is structured to receive him as though he were a hereditary lord.
But let me return to the main argument. Anyone who reflects on what I've laid out will see that hatred or contempt was the downfall of every one of the emperors I've discussed. And you'll also notice something striking: of the emperors who took the same approach, some succeeded and some failed. Pertinax and Alexander tried to rule through decency — and both were destroyed. Marcus Aurelius did the same — and thrived. Severus ruled through ruthless cunning — and succeeded. Caracalla, Commodus, and Maximinus tried the same thing — and all perished. Why? Because it was pointless and dangerous for Pertinax and Alexander, as new princes, to imitate Marcus Aurelius, who had inherited his throne. And it was equally fatal for Caracalla, Commodus, and Maximinus to imitate Severus, because they lacked the ability to walk in his footsteps.
So here is the lesson for a new prince: you can't simply copy Marcus Aurelius, and you don't need to copy Severus either. Instead, take from Severus what you need to build your state, and take from Marcus Aurelius what you need to maintain and glorify a state that is already established and secure.
Princes have tried all sorts of tactics to hold onto power. Some have disarmed their subjects. Others have kept their territories divided by internal rivalries. Some have deliberately cultivated enemies. Others have worked to win over people who distrusted them at the start of their rule. Some have built fortresses. Others have torn them down. And while you can't pass final judgment on any of these strategies without knowing the specific details of each situation, I'll discuss them as broadly as the subject allows.
No new prince has ever disarmed his subjects. In fact, whenever a new prince has found his subjects already disarmed, he has always armed them. Here's why: when you arm your people, those weapons become yours. The people you distrusted become loyal. The people who were already loyal stay that way. And your subjects become your committed supporters. Now, you obviously can't arm everyone, but when the people you do arm receive clear benefits from it, the rest can be handled more easily. The armed citizens, seeing that they've been singled out for greater responsibility and greater reward, become your dependents. The unarmed ones accept the situation, recognizing that the people who take on more danger and more service naturally deserve more reward. But when you disarm your subjects, you immediately insult them. You're telling them you don't trust them — whether because you think they're cowards or because you think they're disloyal. Either way, they'll start to hate you. And since you can't remain defenseless yourself, you'll be forced to turn to mercenaries — who, as I've already shown, are unreliable no matter how good they seem. Even the best mercenaries won't be enough to protect you against powerful external enemies and resentful subjects at home. So, as I said, a new prince in a new principality has always armed his people. History is full of examples. But when a prince conquers a new territory and adds it as a province to his existing state, then he needs to disarm the people in that new territory — except for those who actively supported his takeover. And even those supporters should, over time, be gradually softened and made dependent on you. The goal is to arrange things so that the only armed people in your entire domain are the soldiers from your original state who already serve you.
Our ancestors — and the people considered wise in those days — had a saying: you hold Pistoia through factions and Pisa through fortresses. Based on this principle, they deliberately stirred up rivalries in their subject cities to keep them under control. This might have been a workable strategy back when Italy existed in a rough balance of power, but I don't think it holds up today. I don't believe factions are ever useful. In fact, it's certain that when an enemy attacks, a city divided by internal rivalries will fall quickly, because the weaker faction will always side with the invader, and the stronger faction won't be able to hold out alone. The Venetians, operating on this same logic, encouraged the old Guelph and Ghibelline feuds in their subject cities. They never let these rivalries escalate to actual bloodshed, but they kept the disputes simmering so that the citizens would be too busy fighting each other to unite against Venice. As we saw, this didn't work out as planned. After the Venetians' crushing defeat at the Battle of Vaila in 1509, one of those factions immediately found its courage, rose up, and seized control. Strategies like these reveal weakness in a prince. A strong principality would never allow such divisions. Factions only help you manage your subjects during peacetime. The moment war comes, the whole approach collapses.
There's no question that princes become great by overcoming obstacles and opposition. And fortune, especially when she wants to build up a new prince — who needs to earn his reputation more than a hereditary ruler does — will create enemies and plots against him, giving him the opportunity to crush them and climb even higher, as if on a ladder his enemies built for him. For this reason, many believe that a wise prince should actually cultivate a certain amount of opposition when the chance arises, so that by defeating it, his reputation grows even greater.
Princes — especially new ones — have often found more loyalty and usefulness in the men they initially distrusted than in the ones they trusted from the start. Pandolfo Petrucci, the ruler of Siena, governed his state more through former enemies than through original allies. But I can't make a general rule out of this, because it varies too much from case to case. I'll say only this: when men who were hostile at the beginning of your rule are the type who need your support to survive, you can win them over easily. And they will serve you with fierce loyalty, because they know they need to prove themselves and erase the bad impression you had of them. A prince always gets more value out of these converts than from people who serve him in comfortable security and therefore tend to neglect his interests. And since this subject demands it, I have to warn any prince who has won a new state through the help of insiders: think carefully about why those people helped you. If it wasn't genuine loyalty — if they were simply unhappy with their previous government — then keeping them satisfied will be extremely difficult, because it will be nearly impossible to meet their expectations. Looking at examples from both ancient and modern history, the pattern is clear: it's actually easier for a prince to win over people who were content under the old government (and therefore started as his enemies) than to hold onto people who were discontented with it (and therefore helped him take power).
Princes have traditionally built fortresses to serve as a check on anyone plotting against them and as a refuge from the first wave of an attack. I approve of this approach, since it has a long track record. That said, in our own times, Niccolo Vitelli demolished two fortresses in Citta di Castello in order to hold that territory. Guidobaldo, Duke of Urbino, after returning from exile — having been driven out by Cesare Borgia — razed every fortress in his province to the ground, reasoning that without them, his state would actually be harder to take from him. The Bentivoglio family, upon returning to Bologna, made the same decision. So fortresses are useful in some situations and harmful in others. Here's how to think about it: a prince who fears his own people more than foreign enemies should build fortresses. But a prince who fears foreign enemies more than his own people should skip them. The castle of Milan, built by Francesco Sforza, has caused — and will continue to cause — more trouble for the Sforza family than any other problem in their state. Ultimately, the best fortress you can have is not being hated by your people. Because even if you have fortresses, they won't save you if your people hate you — there will always be foreign powers willing to help a population that has taken up arms against their ruler. In our times, fortresses haven't proven useful to any prince except Caterina Sforza, the Countess of Forli. When her husband, Count Girolamo Riario, was murdered, she was able to retreat to her fortress, withstand the popular uprising, wait for reinforcements from Milan, and reclaim her state. The circumstances at the time were such that no foreign power was able to come help the rebels. But fortresses did her little good later, when Cesare Borgia attacked and the people — now her enemies — allied with a foreign invader. In both cases, it would have been better for her not to be hated by the people in the first place than to have all the fortresses in the world. Taking all of this into account, I'll praise both the prince who builds fortresses and the one who doesn't. But I'll criticize anyone who relies on fortresses while ignoring whether his people hate him.
Nothing earns a prince more respect than bold enterprises and striking examples. Consider Ferdinand of Aragon, the current King of Spain. You could almost call him a new prince, because through fame and glory he has risen from being a minor king to the foremost ruler in Christendom. And if you study his actions, you'll find them all impressive — some of them truly extraordinary. At the start of his reign, he attacked Granada, and that campaign became the foundation of his power. He launched it quietly at first, without worrying about opposition, because he kept the minds of the Castilian barons focused on the war and distracted from any political maneuvering. Meanwhile, without them realizing it, he was building power and authority over them. He used Church money and public revenue to fund his armies, and that long war gave him the opportunity to develop the military machine that has distinguished him ever since. Beyond that, always using religion as his justification for even bigger projects, he turned to a campaign of pious brutality — driving the Moors out of his kingdom. You couldn't ask for a more striking or unusual example. Under that same religious cover, he invaded Africa, launched campaigns in Italy, and finally attacked France. His achievements and schemes have always been grand, and they have kept his subjects in a constant state of suspense and admiration, fully absorbed in watching what he would do next. And his moves have followed one from another in such quick succession that he has never given anyone the time to organize against him.
It also helps a prince enormously to make memorable examples in domestic affairs — rewarding or punishing people in ways that get talked about. Whenever a citizen does something extraordinary in public life, whether good or bad, the prince should respond in a way that people will remember and discuss. Above all, a prince should strive in every action to build a reputation as a truly great and exceptional leader.
A prince also earns respect when he is a genuine friend or a genuine enemy — that is, when he declares himself clearly for one side and against the other, without hedging. This is always a better strategy than staying neutral. Here's why: if two powerful neighbors go to war, they are either strong enough that the winner will be a threat to you, or they're not. In either case, it's better to pick a side and commit fully. In the first scenario — where the winner might threaten you — if you don't choose a side, you will inevitably become the prey of whoever wins, to the delight of whoever loses. You'll have no defense, no claim on anyone's help, and no shelter. The winner doesn't want unreliable allies who refused to help when it mattered. And the loser won't take you in, because you weren't willing to draw your sword and share his fate.
Consider this example: Antiochus, king of the Seleucid Empire, invaded Greece at the invitation of the Aetolian League to drive out the Romans. He sent envoys to the Achaeans, who were allies of Rome, urging them to stay neutral. The Romans, meanwhile, pressured the Achaeans to join the fight. The question was debated in the Achaean council, where Antiochus's representative argued for neutrality. The Roman envoy answered: "As for the argument that it's better and safer for you to stay out of our war — nothing could be more wrong. If you stay neutral, you'll be left with no one's favor and no one's respect. You'll simply be the prize the winner collects." This is always how it works: your enemy demands your neutrality; your ally demands your commitment. And princes who lack resolve, trying to dodge immediate danger, usually choose the neutral path — and are usually destroyed by it.
But when a prince commits boldly to one side: if his ally wins, even though the victor is powerful and could theoretically dominate him, there's a bond of obligation. And people are never so shameless as to repay loyalty with outright oppression. Besides, victories are never so total that the winner can afford to throw all considerations aside — especially considerations of justice. And if your ally loses, he will shelter you. As long as he's able, he'll help you. And you become partners in a cause that might yet recover.
In the second scenario — where the two warring powers are not individually strong enough to threaten you — joining one side is even smarter. You're helping to destroy one rival with the help of another who, if he had any sense, would have been trying to save him. If your ally wins — and with your help, how could he not? — he'll be in your debt. And here's an important point: a prince should be careful never to ally with someone more powerful than himself for the purpose of attacking a third party, unless absolute necessity forces his hand. Because if that stronger ally wins, you're at his mercy. And princes should avoid putting themselves at anyone's mercy whenever possible. The Venetians allied with France against the Duke of Milan, and that alliance — which they could have avoided — led to their ruin. But when you truly can't avoid it, as happened when Florence faced armies sent by both the Pope and Spain against Lombardy, then you have to pick a side, for all the reasons I've given.
And no government should ever think it can always choose a perfectly safe course of action. Expect instead to have to choose between uncertain options. That's the nature of things: you never avoid one danger without running into another. Wisdom consists of knowing how to evaluate the different risks and choosing the least bad option.
A prince should also be a patron of talent, honoring people who excel in any field. At the same time, he should encourage his citizens to pursue their livelihoods in peace — in commerce, agriculture, and every other profession. People shouldn't be afraid to build up their property for fear that it will be confiscated, or afraid to start a business for fear of crushing taxes. Instead, the prince should offer rewards to anyone who wants to do these things or who contributes to the prosperity and reputation of the city or state.
Beyond that, the prince should keep the people entertained with festivals and public events at appropriate times throughout the year. And since every city is divided into trade guilds or civic associations, the prince should pay attention to these groups — meeting with them occasionally, showing himself generous and approachable — while always maintaining the dignity of his position, which he must never compromise.
Choosing the right people is critically important for a prince. Whether his advisors are good or bad depends entirely on his own judgment. And the first impression people form of a ruler — and of his intelligence — comes from looking at the people he surrounds himself with. When his inner circle is capable and loyal, everyone assumes the prince is wise, because he clearly knows how to identify talent and keep it loyal to him. When his people are mediocre or unreliable, the opposite conclusion is drawn, because the first mistake a prince made was in choosing them.
Everyone who knew Antonio da Venafro as the chief advisor to Pandolfo Petrucci, the ruler of Siena, considered Pandolfo to be an extremely shrewd man for having chosen him. And here's why: there are three levels of intelligence. The first can figure things out on its own. The second can recognize a good idea when someone else presents it. The third can do neither. The first is outstanding. The second is excellent. The third is worthless. It necessarily followed that if Pandolfo wasn't in the first category, he was at least in the second. Because anyone who has the judgment to recognize good work and bad work in an advisor — even if he couldn't have come up with the ideas himself — can tell the difference between what the advisor does well and what he does poorly. He can praise the one and correct the other. The advisor, knowing he can't get away with anything, stays honest.
But there's one test that never fails when it comes to evaluating an advisor. When you see a minister thinking more about his own interests than yours — pursuing his own advantage in everything he does — that person will never be a good advisor, and you can never trust him. Because someone who holds the affairs of the state in his hands should never be thinking about himself. He should be thinking about the prince, every moment, and never paying attention to anything that doesn't concern the prince's interests.
On the other side, to keep an advisor loyal, the prince needs to take care of him — honoring him, enriching him, creating bonds of obligation, sharing both the rewards and the responsibilities. The advisor should see that he can't stand on his own without the prince. Enough honors that he doesn't crave more. Enough wealth that he doesn't chase more. Enough responsibility that he fears any change in the status quo. When prince and advisor are bound together this way, they can trust each other completely. When they're not, it always ends badly — for one or the other.
I don't want to skip over an important topic, because it's a trap that princes have a very hard time escaping unless they're exceptionally careful and perceptive. I'm talking about flatterers — and courts are crawling with them. People are so naturally pleased with themselves and so easily deceived about their own qualities that protecting yourself from this plague is extremely difficult. And the obvious remedy creates its own problem: if you try to defend yourself by letting everyone know that telling you the truth won't offend you, then everyone starts telling you whatever they think — and you lose their respect.
So a wise prince should take a middle path. He should select a small group of wise advisors and give only them the freedom to speak the truth to him — and only about the topics he specifically asks about, not whatever they feel like discussing. But he should ask them about everything, listen carefully to their opinions, and then make up his own mind. With these advisors, both individually and as a group, he should make it clear that the more honestly they speak, the more valued they'll be. Outside this inner circle, he should listen to no one. Once he's made a decision, he should commit to it and follow through. A prince who operates any other way either gets manipulated by flatterers or changes course so often in response to conflicting opinions that people stop taking him seriously.
I want to give a modern example here. Fra Luca, the advisor to Emperor Maximilian — ruler of the Holy Roman Empire — once said of his master: "He consults with no one, yet never gets his way in anything." This happened because Maximilian did the exact opposite of what I'm recommending. He's a secretive man — he doesn't share his plans with anyone, and he doesn't ask for input. But the moment his plans become visible as he starts to carry them out, the people around him immediately push back and obstruct him. And because he's easily swayed, he backs down. The result is that whatever he does one day, he undoes the next. No one ever knows what he wants or what he intends to do, and no one can count on his decisions.
A prince should therefore always seek advice — but only when he wants it, not when others want to give it. In fact, he should discourage unsolicited opinions. But he should be a relentless questioner and a patient listener on the topics he raises. And if he discovers that someone held back the truth out of deference or fear, he should make his displeasure very clear.
Some people think that when a prince seems wise, it's not because of his own intelligence but because of the smart advisors around him. They're wrong. Here's a rule that never fails: a prince who isn't wise himself will never get good advice — unless he happens to hand over all his affairs to a single person who is exceptionally capable. In that case, he might be well governed for a while, but it won't last long, because that all-powerful advisor will eventually take the state away from him.
But if an unwise prince tries to take advice from multiple people, he'll never get consistent counsel. He won't know how to reconcile conflicting opinions. Each advisor will be looking out for his own interests, and the prince won't have the ability to see through them or manage them. And you should expect nothing different, because people will always look out for themselves unless something forces them to be honest. The conclusion is this: good advice, wherever it comes from, is ultimately born from the wisdom of the prince — not the other way around. The prince's wisdom does not come from having good advisors.
If a new prince follows the advice I've laid out in this book, he'll quickly look as established as a ruler who's been in power for generations — and he'll actually be more secure. Here's why: the actions of a new prince get far more scrutiny than those of a hereditary one. And when people see that those actions are effective, they rally to him with more loyalty than they'd ever give to a ruler who simply inherited his throne. People care more about the present than the past. When things are going well right now, they're satisfied and they don't look elsewhere. In fact, they'll defend that prince with everything they have, as long as he doesn't let them down in other ways. A new prince who builds his state well — with good laws, good military forces, good allies, and a good personal example — earns a double glory: he created something from nothing and then made it strong. And a born prince who loses his state through incompetence earns a double disgrace.
Now look at the rulers who have lost their states in Italy in our own time — the King of Naples, the Duke of Milan, and others. You'll find they all shared one basic flaw when it came to their military forces, for the reasons I've discussed at length in earlier chapters. Beyond that, you'll see that some of them had the people against them, or if they had the people's support, they didn't know how to secure the loyalty of the nobles. Without these fatal weaknesses, a state with enough power to field an army doesn't get conquered.
Philip V of Macedon — not the father of Alexander the Great, but the one who was defeated by the Roman general Titus Quintius — didn't control much territory compared to the vast power of Rome and Greece combined. But he was a true warrior who knew how to win the people's loyalty and keep the nobles on his side. That was enough to sustain a war against these formidable enemies for years. And even though he eventually lost control of some cities, he held on to his kingdom.
So let our Italian princes stop blaming fortune for the loss of their states after so many years of rule. The blame belongs to their own laziness. During the good times, they never imagined things could change — and it's a universal human failing to not prepare for storms while the weather is calm. When the bad times finally came, their first instinct was to run rather than fight. They hoped that eventually the people, fed up with the arrogance of the conquerors, would call them back. That plan, when nothing else is available, might be acceptable. But it is pathetic to have neglected every other option in favor of that one. You wouldn't deliberately let yourself fall just because you trusted that someone would come along later to pick you up. That rescue either never happens, or if it does, it doesn't make you secure — because any salvation that doesn't come from your own effort and ability is unreliable. Only those defenses are good, only those are certain and lasting, that depend on yourself and your own ability.
I'm well aware that many people have believed — and still believe — that the affairs of this world are governed by Fortune and by God in such a way that human wisdom can't really steer them, and that nobody can do anything about it. According to this view, there's no point working too hard at anything; you might as well just let chance take the wheel. This belief has gained a lot of ground in our own time, because we've witnessed extraordinary upheavals — things happening every day that no one could have predicted. Thinking it over, I sometimes find myself leaning toward this view.
Still, because I don't want to wipe out free will entirely, I'll say this: I think Fortune controls about half of our actions, but she leaves the other half — or close to it — for us to manage.
I compare her to one of those raging rivers that, when it floods, sweeps across the plains, tears out trees, knocks down buildings, and carries away the soil from one place to dump it somewhere else. Everything flees before it. Everyone gives way to its force. There is no resisting it. And yet, even though this is the river's nature, that doesn't mean people can't take action during the calm weather — building levees and channels so that when the river rises again, the floodwaters are directed safely away, and its force is neither as wild nor as destructive. The same is true of Fortune. She unleashes her power where no one has prepared to resist her. She directs her fury precisely where she knows that no levees or channels have been built to hold her back.
And if you look at Italy — which is ground zero for all these upheavals, the place that set them in motion — you'll see that it's an open country without any levees or defenses at all. If it had been protected by real military ability, the way Germany, Spain, and France have been, either this wave of invasions would never have caused the devastation it did, or it wouldn't have come at all. That's enough said about resisting Fortune in general terms.
But getting more specific: you can watch a prince thrive today and collapse tomorrow without any apparent change in his character or methods. This happens, I believe, for the reasons I've already discussed — namely, that a prince who relies entirely on fortune is doomed the moment it shifts. I also believe that the man who succeeds is the one whose approach matches the spirit of the times, and the man who fails is the one whose approach clashes with it. Because you can see that men pursue the same goals — glory and wealth — by completely different methods. One man is cautious, another is reckless. One uses force, another uses cunning. One is patient, another is impulsive. And each of these approaches can work. You can also see two cautious men where one succeeds and the other fails. Or two men using opposite methods who both succeed. All of this comes down to one thing: whether or not their approach fits the times. This is what I mean when I say two men working differently can achieve the same result, while two men working the same way can get opposite results.
This is also why a man's fortunes can rise and fall. When someone who governs himself with caution and patience finds that the times and circumstances reward that approach, he prospers. But when the times change, he's ruined — because he doesn't change his methods. And you rarely find a man flexible enough to adapt. There are two reasons for this. First, a person can't easily go against what his own nature inclines him to do. Second, when someone has always succeeded by doing things one way, you can't convince him that he should do things differently. So the cautious man, when the moment demands boldness, doesn't know how to shift gears — and he's destroyed. If he'd changed his approach to match the changing times, his fortune would not have changed.
Pope Julius II attacked everything with sheer aggression, and he happened to live in times when that approach was exactly what the situation demanded — so he always succeeded. Consider his first campaign against Bologna, while Giovanni Bentivoglio still held the city. The Venetians opposed the idea. So did Spain. He was still negotiating with France about it. But he personally charged ahead with his characteristic boldness and energy, leading the expedition himself. That move froze both Spain and Venice in place — the Venetians out of fear, the Spanish because they wanted to recover the entire Kingdom of Naples and figured they couldn't oppose the pope. Meanwhile, Julius dragged the King of France along behind him, because once the French king saw the pope was actually moving, and since he wanted to keep the pope as an ally in order to weaken Venice, he decided he couldn't refuse his support without openly offending him. So Julius, through sheer audacity, pulled off what no other pope could have achieved through careful planning and human wisdom. If he had waited in Rome until every deal was finalized and every detail was locked down — as any other pope would have done — he would have failed. The King of France would have found a thousand excuses, and the others would have raised a thousand objections.
I'll skip over Julius's other enterprises, because they were all cut from the same cloth and they all succeeded. The brevity of his reign spared him from ever facing the opposite situation. But if circumstances had arisen that demanded a cautious approach, it would have been his ruin. He would never have deviated from his nature.
So here is my conclusion. Fortune changes, and men are stubborn. When a man's approach matches the times, he succeeds. When it doesn't, he fails. But here is what I believe: it is better to be bold than cautious. Because Fortune is a woman, and if you want to master her, you have to beat her and manhandle her. And experience shows that she lets herself be conquered by the bold rather than by those who approach her coldly. Therefore, like a woman, she is always the friend of the young, because they are less cautious, more aggressive, and command her with more audacity.
Having thought carefully about everything I've discussed in this book — and asking myself whether the present moment in Italy is ripe for a new prince, whether there is an opening here for a bold and capable leader to establish a new order that would bring him honor and bring the people of this country hope — I have to say that everything seems to converge in favor of such a prince. I cannot think of a time more suited for it than right now.
If the people of Israel had to be enslaved in Egypt before Moses could reveal his greatness; if the Persians had to groan under the oppression of the Medes before Cyrus could show the magnitude of his spirit; if the Athenians had to be scattered and broken before Theseus could demonstrate his leadership — then, in the same way, to reveal the true ability of an Italian leader, Italy had to be brought to where she is now. She had to become more enslaved than the Hebrews, more oppressed than the Persians, more scattered than the Athenians. Without a leader. Without any order. Beaten, stripped, torn apart, overrun. Subjected to every kind of devastation.
And though recently one man showed a spark that made us think he might be the one God had chosen for Italy's redemption, Fortune struck him down at the very height of his career. So Italy still waits — as if barely alive — for the one who will heal her wounds and put a stop to the ravaging and looting of Lombardy, the extortion and plundering of the Kingdom of Naples and of Tuscany, and who will cleanse the sores that have been festering for so long. Watch how Italy prays to God to send someone who will deliver her from these barbarous cruelties and humiliations. Watch how eager and willing she is to rally behind a banner — if only someone will raise it.
And right now, there is no one Italy can look to with more hope than your illustrious house, the Medici — with its ability and its fortune, favored by God and by the Church, of which a Medici is now the head. If your house will only recall the actions and the lives of the men I've named throughout this book, the task will not seem impossible. Yes, those men were extraordinary. But they were still men. And not one of them had an opportunity greater than what presents itself to you right now. Their causes were no more just than yours. Their undertakings were no easier. And God was no more on their side than He is on yours.
Here, the justice is overwhelming. A war is just when it is necessary, and weapons are sacred when they represent the only hope left. Here, the willingness of the people is immense. And where willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be insurmountable — not if your house follows the example of those leaders I've pointed you toward. Beyond that, consider the extraordinary signs God has already shown: the sea has parted, a cloud has shown the way, water has poured from rock, manna has rained from heaven. Everything has pointed toward your greatness. The rest is up to you. God will not do everything — that would strip away our free will and rob us of our share of the glory.
And it should come as no surprise that none of the Italians I've mentioned were able to accomplish what your illustrious house can accomplish now. If, through all the revolutions and all the wars Italy has endured, it has always seemed like the country's military ability was completely spent, that is simply because the old system was broken and nobody had the vision to create a new one. Nothing brings a newly risen leader more honor than establishing new laws and new institutions. When these are well designed and have real substance, they make him revered and admired. And in Italy, there is no shortage of raw material waiting to be shaped.
The courage in the limbs is extraordinary — what is missing is the leadership at the top. Look at duels and small-scale combat: Italian fighters are superior in strength, agility, and tactical intelligence. But when it comes to full armies on the battlefield, Italians haven't been able to compete. The fault lies entirely with the leaders. Those who claim to know what they're doing are incompetent, and no one has distinguished himself so clearly — whether by ability or by fortune — that the others would accept his authority. The result is that for twenty years, in every battle fought entirely by Italian forces, the outcome has been humiliating. The evidence is written in blood: at Fornovo, at Alessandria, at Capua, at Genoa, at Vaila, at Bologna, at Mestri.
If your illustrious house, then, wishes to follow the example of those great men who liberated their nations, the first and most essential step — the true foundation of everything — is to build your own military forces. There are no soldiers more faithful, more reliable, or more capable than your own citizens. And while each of them is good individually, together they will be even better when they find themselves led by their own prince, honored by him, and supported by him. You need this kind of army so that Italian ability can stand up to foreign invaders.
And although the Swiss and Spanish infantry are both considered fearsome, each has a critical weakness that a third model of infantry could not only stand up to, but potentially overthrow. The Spanish can't withstand cavalry, and the Swiss collapse against infantry that meets them in close combat with real discipline. We've seen this proven, and we'll see it again: the Spanish can't hold against French cavalry charges, and the Swiss have been broken by Spanish infantry. A full demonstration of the Swiss weakness hasn't played out entirely, but there was clear evidence at the Battle of Ravenna in 1512. There, the Spanish infantry — using their agility and their shields — got in under the long pikes of the German battalions (who fight the same way as the Swiss) and attacked from a position where the Germans couldn't strike back. If the cavalry hadn't charged in to rescue them, the Germans would have been destroyed. Knowing the defects of both these infantries, it is entirely possible to design a new model that can resist cavalry and isn't afraid of other infantry. This won't require some revolutionary new weapon — just a creative variation on existing tactics. And these are exactly the kinds of innovations that build the reputation and power of a new prince.
This opportunity must not be allowed to pass. Italy has waited far too long to see her liberator appear. I cannot describe the love with which he would be welcomed in every province that has suffered under these foreign invasions — with what desperate thirst for justice, with what fierce loyalty, with what devotion, with what tears of gratitude. What door would be closed to him? What people would refuse their allegiance? What jealousy would dare stand in his way? What Italian would deny him their support?
This barbarian occupation disgusts us all.
Let your illustrious house, then, take up this mission with the courage and the hope that belong to all just causes — so that under your banner this country may be lifted up, and under your leadership those words of Petrarch may finally come true:
Boldness will take up arms against blind rage,
And the battle will be brief:
For the ancient courage
Has not yet died in Italian hearts.