The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
So Louis lost Lombardy because he didn’t take the measures others have taken when they conquered territory and were determined to hold on to it. There’s nothing mysterious about this; it’s all very normal and reasonable. In fact I discussed the matter in Nantes with the Cardinal of Rouen when Duke Valentino (that was what people used to call Cesare Borgia, Pope Alexander’s son) was invading Romagna; and when the cardinal told me that the Italians knew nothing about war, I told him that the French knew nothing about politics, because if they did they wouldn’t be letting the pope grow so powerful. And as it turned out, it was Rome and Spain, the two states whose power in Italy France had built up, that proved France’s downfall. From which we can infer a general rule that always holds, or almost always: that to help another ruler to grow powerful is to prepare your own ruin; because it takes flair or military strength to build up a new power, and both will seem threatening to the person who has benefited from them.
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Conquered by Alexander the Great, the Kingdom of Darius did not rebel against his successors after his death. Why not?
Now that we’ve seen how difficult it is to hold on to recently acquired territory some readers will be surprised to recall what happened when Alexander the Great conquered Asia in just a few years, then died very soon after his victory was complete. You would have thought the whole area would have rebelled, yet Alexander’s successors held on to it and the only trouble they had arose from their own personal ambitions and infighting. To explain this situation let’s start by remembering that all monarchies on record have been governed in one of two ways: either by a king and the servants he appoints as ministers to run his kingdom; or by a king and a number of barons, who are not appointed by the king but hold their positions thanks to hereditary privilege. These barons have their own lands and their own subjects who recognize the barons as their masters and are naturally loyal to them. Where a state is governed by a king and his ministers the king is more powerful since he is the only person in the state whom people recognize as superior. When they obey someone else it is only because he is a minister or official and they have no special loyalty to him.
Examples of these two forms of government in our own times are Turkey and France. The whole of Turkey is governed by one ruler, or sultan. Everyone serves him. He divides his realm into provinces, or sanjaks, and sends administrators to run them, appointing and dismissing them as he sees fit. The King of France, on the other hand, is surrounded by any number of barons whose rights date back to ancient times and who are acknowledged and loved by their subjects. Each baron has specific privileges which a king can only take away at his peril. Looking at these two kinds of states, it’s clear that Turkey is hard to conquer but once conquered very easy to hold. France on the other hand will be somewhat easier to conquer but very hard to hold.
The reason why it’s hard to conquer a country like Turkey is that there are no barons to invite you in and you can’t expect anyone to make your invasion easier by rebelling against the king. This follows naturally from the situation as described above; since all subjects are the king’s servants and indebted to him it’s hard to corrupt them, and even assuming you do manage to bribe someone he’s not likely to be much help because he can’t bring any local people along with him, this again for the reasons I’ve explained. So, anyone attacking this kind of country has to reckon that he will find it united against him and hence has to rely on his own armed forces rather than on any mutiny in enemy ranks. But once you have won and routed the enemy and made sure he can’t rebuild his armies, then the only thing to worry about is the king and his family. Eliminate them and no one else can threaten you since no one commands the loyalty of the people. Just as before your victory you couldn’t look to any barons for help, so after it there are none around to pose a threat.
The opposite is true in countries run along French lines. Here you can make inroads easily enough, winning the support of a baron or two. There’s always someone unhappy with the king and eager for change. Then these people are well placed to get you a foothold in the country and help you to victory. But afterwards you’re going to have all kinds of problems holding on to what you’ve won, problems with the people who fought on your side and problems with those who fought against you and lost. This time it won’t be enough to eliminate the king’s family because there will always be barons ready to assume authority when circumstances swing their way, and, since you can never give them everything they want and never eliminate them all, you’ll lose the territory you took as soon as your enemies get an opportunity to rebel.
If we go back now to the Kingdom of Darius, we’ll find that it was of the Turkish variety. So Alexander first had to defeat its entire army and get control of the country; but once he’d done that, and once Darius was dead, he was securely in command for the reasons cited above. And if his successors had been united they could have run the region without any worries; in fact the only trouble was the infighting they started themselves. But states organized the French way can never be held so easily. The frequent uprisings against Roman power in Spain, Gaul and Greece, for example, were the result of those regions’ being internally divided into so many principalities. So long as people remembered their old loyalties to local lords, Rome was never in complete control. But once the power and permanence of empire had extinguished those loyalties, then Rome became the undisputed master of the region. In fact, when the Romans started fighting among themselves, each warring commander was able to bring the province he was running into the conflict on his side, since once the families of the old local rulers had been eliminated the only authority people recognized was Rome’s representative. When you take all this into account, it’s really not surprising how easy it was for Alexander to hold Asia, nor how hard it was for many others, Pyrrhus for example, to hold on to the territories they took. It wasn’t a question of the abilities of each particular conqueror, but of the different kinds of state they had invaded.
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How to govern cities and states that were previously self-governing
When the states you invade have been accustomed to governing themselves without a monarch and living in freedom under their own laws, then there are three ways of holding on to them: the first is to reduce them to rubble; the second is to go and live there yourself; the third is to let them go on living under their own laws, make them pay you a tax and install a government of just a few local people to keep the state as a whole friendly. Since this government has been set up by the invading ruler, its members know they can’t survive without his support and will do everything they can to defend his authority. Once you’ve decided not to destroy it, the best way to hold a previously self-governing city is with the help of its own citizens.
Let’s take our examples from Sparta and Rome. The Spartans held Athens and Thebes by setting up governments run by a few local people, but in the end they lost these towns. The Romans razed Capua, Carthage and Numantia to the ground and that way held on to them. They tried to hold Greece in much the same way the Spartans had, granting it self-government and leaving it its own laws, but it didn’t work and eventually they were forced to destroy quite a number of cities so as to keep hold of the region as a whole.
The truth is that the only sure way to hold such places is to destroy them. If you conquer a city accustomed to self-government and opt not to destroy it you can expect it to destroy you. Rebelling, its people will always rally to the cry of freedom and the inspiration of their old institutions. It doesn’t matter how long they’ve been occupied or how benevolent the occupation, these things will never be forgotten. Whatever you do, whatever measures you take, if the population hasn’t been routed and dispersed so that its freedoms and traditions are quite forgotten, they will rise up to fight for those principles at the first opportunity; just as the Pisans did after a hundred years of Florentine dominion.
But when a people has been accustomed to living under a ruler and the ruler’s family has been eliminated, then
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States won by the new ruler’s own forces and abilities
In the following discussion dealing with states where both the ruler and the form of government are entirely new, no one should be surprised if I choose to cite the most impressive examples. The fact is that although people almost always proceed by imitation, following in another man’s footsteps, you can never tread a model’s path or reproduce his qualities exactly. So, if you’re sensible, you set out to follow a trail blazed by someone who was truly great, someone really worth imitating, so that even if you’re not on the same level yourself at least you’ll reflect a little of his brilliance. It’s like the clever archer who senses that his target is too far off, knows the limitations of his bow, and so aims far higher than he normally would, not because he really wants his arrow to go that high, but to have it fall from a height on to his target.
So let’s start by saying that when it comes to entirely new regimes where a new ruler has seized the state, the ease or difficulty of his staying in power will be in proportion to his abilities or failings. And since you can’t go from being an ordinary citizen to a ruler without either talent or favourable circumstances, we must suppose that one or the other of these factors will be offsetting, at least in part, a great many difficulties. That said, those who haven’t relied too much on lucky circumstances have lasted longer. Another positive factor is that since in this case the ruler doesn’t already possess another state, he will be forced to live in his new territory.
But to turn to those who became rulers through their own qualities rather than by luck, no doubt the most impressive are: Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus and suchlike figures. And though we can hardly say much about Moses, since he merely carried out God’s orders, all the same we have to admire him for the grace that made him worthy of God’s attention. But let’s look at Cyrus and other men who won and founded kingdoms. We’ll find they are all admirable and when we look into the specific actions each took and the institutions they established, we’ll see they don’t differ that much from what Moses did under divine guidance. Analysing their lives and achievements, we notice that the only part luck played was in giving them an initial opportunity: they were granted the raw material and had the chance to mould it into whatever shape they wanted. Without this opportunity their talent would have gone unused, and without their talent the opportunity would have gone begging.
So, if Moses hadn’t found the people of Israel in Egypt, enslaved and oppressed and in need of a leader to get them out of the situation, they would never have been willing to follow him. If Romulus hadn’t been abandoned at birth and chosen to leave Alba Longa, how could he have become king and founder of Rome? If Cyrus hadn’t found the Persians ready to rebel against the occupation of the Medes, and the Medes undisciplined and effeminate after a long period of peace, he couldn’t have achieved what he did. And Theseus could hardly have shown his qualities if the Athenians hadn’t first been defeated and dispersed. These opportunities made these men’s fortunes and it was because of their remarkable qualities that they were able to recognize and grasp the opportunities, bringing glory and even greater good fortune to their countries.
These men and others like them who rise to sovereignty through their own abilities face all kinds of difficulties when setting up their states but then hold on to them fairly easily. The initial difficulties depend in large part on the fact that in order to establish their government and guarantee its security they have to impose a new administrative system and new procedures. Here we have to bear in mind that nothing is harder to organize, more likely to fail, or more dangerous to see through, than the introduction of a new system of government. The person bringing in the changes will make enemies of everyone who was doing well under the old system, while the people who stand to gain from the new arrangements will not offer wholehearted support, partly because they are afraid of their opponents, who still have the laws on their side, and partly because people are naturally sceptical: no one really believes in change until they’ve had solid experience of it. So as soon as the opponents of the new system see a chance, they’ll go on the offensive with the determination of an embattled faction, while its supporters will offer only half-hearted resistance, something that will put the new ruler’s position at risk too.
To get a better grasp of the problem, we have to ask: is the leader introducing the changes relying on his own resources, or does he depend on other people’s support; that is, does he have to beg help to achieve his goals, or can he impose them? If he’s begging help, he’s bound to fail and will get nowhere. But if he’s got his own resources and can impose his plans, then it’s unlikely he’ll be running serious risks. This is why the visionary who has armed force on his side has always won through, while unarmed even your visionary is always a loser. Because on top of everything else, we must remember that the general public’s mood will swing. It’s easy to convince people of something, but hard to keep them convinced. So when they stop believing in you, you must be in a position to force them to believe.
Moses, Cyrus, Theseus and Romulus couldn’t have got people to respect their new laws for long if they hadn’t possessed armed force. We saw what happened in our own times to Girolamo Savonarola: he was overthrown along with all his reforms when people stopped believing in him. He had no way of keeping the initial believers on board or forcing the sceptical to see the light. But any new ruler bringing in changes will have to deal with huge obstacles and dangers, mostly in the early stages, and must overcome them with his own abilities. Once he’s done that and eliminated those who resented his achievements, so that people start to respect and admire him, then he can enjoy his power in safety and will live honoured and fulfilled.
I’ve mentioned four exceptional leaders but now I want to bring in a lesser man, Hiero of Syracuse, who nevertheless had some of the same qualities as the others and will serve as an example of a whole category. Originally an ordinary citizen, Hiero became King of Syracuse. Once again the only luck he had lay in the initial situation: under threat from Carthage, the Syracusans elected him as their military commander and he was so successful they then made him king. In fact, even as a private citizen he was so capable that one writer said of him: ‘He had all it takes to be a king except a kingdom.’ Hiero disbanded the existing army and mustered a new one. He broke off old alliances and made new ones; that way, with his own soldiers and his own allies to support him, he had laid the foundation for building whatever he wanted. So it cost him considerable effort to establish his power, but very little to hold on to it.
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States won by lucky circumstance and someone else’s armed forces
A private citizen who becomes a ruler out of sheer good luck needn’t make much effort to take his state but will have to sweat if he is to hold on to it. He has no trouble climbing on to his pedestal, since he is lifted there; but as soon as he is up on top, there will be any number of problems. I’m talking about situations where someone buys a territory with money, or is simply granted it as a favour. This was the case with quite a few rulers of cities in Ionia and the Hellespont: Darius gave them their thrones so that they would govern with his security and prestige in mind. Another example is those emperors who started out as private citizens and rose to power by bribing the army.
These men rely entirely on the support and continuing success of the people who gave them their power, which is to say on two extremely unreliable and unstable quantities. They don’t know how to hang on to power and even i
I’d like to mention two men from our own times who achieved power in these different ways, one through his own abilities and one by luck. The people I have in mind are Francesco Sforza and Cesare Borgia. With the right policies and great courage, Sforza, a commoner, became Duke of Milan and, having won power with enormous effort, held on to it easily enough. Borgia, on the other hand, or Duke Valentino as he was commonly known, received his territories thanks to his father’s position, and when his father died he lost them, this despite the fact that he used all means available and did everything a sensible, capable man could have done to lay the foundations for his own rule in the lands that another man’s army and position had won for him. As we said earlier on, if you haven’t laid the foundations before becoming king, it takes very special qualities to do it afterwards, and even then it’ll be tough for the architect and risky for the building. If we look carefully at Borgia’s strategies, we’ll see that he did in fact lay down good foundations for future power; and I think it makes sense to discuss how he did it, because I wouldn’t know what better advice to give a ruler new to power than to follow his example. If his efforts eventually came to nothing, it was not due to his own shortcomings, but to an extraordinary run of bad luck.