So, as I said, a new ruler in a newly constituted state has always armed his subjects. History offers endless examples. But when a ruler acquires a new territory to add like an extra limb to an existing state, then he must disarm its people, except for the men who supported him when he took it. But with time and opportunity even those men should be kept weak and emasculated so that all the real armed force in the state as a whole resides with your own soldiers who live with you in your home base.
Generations ago, the experts in Florence used to say that you had to hold Pistoia by playing on its factions and Pisa by holding its fortresses. So they encouraged factionalism in some of the towns they held, the better to control them. In times when there was a certain balance between opposing parties in Italy this was probably an effective policy, but I don’t think we should take it as a rule today. I don’t think factional divisions ever really improved the situation. On the contrary, when an enemy approaches, a subject town that’s divided in factions will fall at once. The weaker of the factions will always join forces with the attacker and the other faction won’t be strong enough to beat them both.
The Venetians were reasoning along the same lines, I believe, when they fomented divisions between Guelphs and Ghibellines in the towns they held; they didn’t let the factions get as far as bloodshed but encouraged divergences so that people would be too busy with their own disputes to unite against Venice. It wasn’t, as things turned out, a successful policy. After the Venetians’ defeat at Vailà, one or other of the factions immediately took courage and seized control of the various towns. This kind of policy actually indicates weakness on a ruler’s part; in a healthy, confident state such differences would never be allowed; they are only useful in peacetime when they make it easier to keep people under control. In times of war everyone can see how flawed the policy is.
There’s no doubt that rulers achieve greatness by overcoming the obstacles and enemies they find in their path. So when destiny wants to make a ruler great, particularly a new ruler who, unlike a hereditary king, really needs to build up his reputation, it sends him enemies and prompts them to attack him. That way he has the chance to beat them and climb the ladder his enemies have put in front of him. Hence many people reckon that when the opportunity presents itself a smart ruler will shrewdly provoke hostility so that he can then increase his reputation by crushing it.
Rulers, and especially those new to power, have found that men they initially doubted prove more loyal and useful than those they trusted. Pandolfo Petrucci ran Siena more with the men he had doubted than the others. But it’s hard to lay down firm rules here because things vary from case to case. I’ll just say this: that a ruler can very easily win over men who opposed him when he came to power, if they are not in a position to support themselves with their own resources. They’ll be forced to behave more loyally than others in that they know they have to work hard to offset the negative impression the ruler initially had of them. So a ruler can always get more out of such men than out of people who feel too safe in his service and don’t really make an effort.
Since the discussion demands it, I wouldn’t like to leave out a reminder to any ruler who has taken a new state with inside help that he must think hard about why the local people who helped him did so. If they didn’t act out of natural friendship for the new ruler, but only because the previous government wasn’t giving them what they wanted, it will be extremely demanding and difficult to keep their support, because the new ruler won’t be able to give them what they want either. Looking carefully at the reasons for this and drawing on the examples available from ancient and modern history, we find that it is much easier to win over those who were content with the previous government, and hence your enemies, than the men who were not content and so made an alliance with you and helped you take the country.
One way rulers have tried to secure their power is by building fortresses to curb and discourage potential aggressors and to offer a safe refuge in case of sudden attack. I approve of this policy, if only because it has been used for centuries. All the same, there is the recent example of Niccolò Vitelli who demolished two fortresses in Città di Castello in order to hold the town. When Guidobaldo retook possession of his lands after Cesare Borgia’s occupation, he razed every fortress in the state to the ground, convinced that he’d be less likely to lose it again without them. And when the Bentivoglio family returned to power in Bologna it did the same thing. So, whether fortresses are useful or not will depend on the circumstances; in one situation they’ll be a help and in another they’ll be dangerous. We can sum up the reasons for this as follows.
The ruler who is more afraid of his people than of foreign enemies must build fortresses; but the ruler who is more afraid of foreign enemies should do without them. The castle Francesco Sforza built in Milan has provoked and will go on provoking more rebellions against the Sforza family than any other cause of unrest in the whole state. Your best fortress is not to be hated by the people, because even if you do have fortresses, they won’t save you if the people hate you. Once the people have decided to take up arms against you they’ll never be short of foreign support. In recent times there are no examples of fortresses having proved useful to any ruler at all, with the exception of the Countess of Forlì, Caterina Sforza, when her husband, Count Girolamo Riario, was murdered. Taking refuge in the fortress, she was able to survive the rebels’ assault, wait till help came from Milan, then take control again. Circumstances were such at the time that no foreign enemies were in a position to help the people. Later, however, her fortresses were not much use when Cesare Borgia attacked the town, and the people, who were hostile to her, fought on his side. Both then and earlier she would have been safer had she avoided making an enemy of the people rather than counting on fortresses. All things considered, I’ll give my approval both to rulers who build fortresses and to those who don’t, but I’ll always criticize any ruler who imagines it doesn’t matter whether the people hate him or not and trusts in fortresses for his security.
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What a ruler should do to win respect
Nothing wins a ruler respect like great military victories and a display of remarkable personal qualities. One example in our own times is Ferdinand of Aragon, the present King of Spain. One might almost describe him as a ruler new to power because from being a weak king he has become the most famous and honoured of Christendom, and when you look at his achievements you find they are all remarkable and some of them extraordinary. At the beginning of his reign he launched an invasion of Granada, a campaign that laid the foundation of his power. It was important that he did it at a moment of domestic quiet when he didn’t have to worry about possible interruptions: the war then kept the Castilian barons busy so that they didn’t start plotting changes inside Spain. Meanwhile, and without their even noticing, Ferdinand’s power and reputation were increasing at their expense. Supplying his armies with money from the Church and the people, he was able to sustain a long war that allowed him to establish, then consolidate, a military force that would do him proud in the future. After that was done, to ensure the Church’s support for even larger campaigns, he perpetrated an act of cruelty dressed up as piety, stripping the Marrano Jews of their wealth and expelling them from his kingdom, a move that could hardly have been more distressing or striking. Once again under cover of religion, he attacked Africa, then moved into Italy and finally attacked France. So he was always planning and doing great things, keeping his people in a state of suspense and admiration, concentrated as they were on the outcome of his various campaigns. Since each of these came as a consequence of the one before, he never gave the more powerful men in the country any slack time between wars when they could plot against him.
A leader can also win acclaim by giving impressive demonstrations of character in his handling of domestic affairs, as Bernabò Visconti did in Milan; whenever anyone does anything remarkable, whether for good or ill, in civil life, you think up some reward or punishmen
t that will cause a stir. But above all a ruler must make sure that everything he does gives people the impression that he is a great man of remarkable abilities.
A ruler will also be respected when he is a genuine friend and a genuine enemy, that is, when he declares himself unambiguously for one side and against the other. This policy will always bring better results than neutrality. For example, if you have two powerful neighbours who go to war, you may or may not have reason to fear the winner afterwards. Either way it will always be better to take sides and fight hard. If you do have cause to fear but stay neutral, you’ll still be gobbled up by the winner to the amusement and satisfaction of the loser; you’ll have no excuses, no defence and nowhere to hide. Because a winner doesn’t want half-hearted friends who don’t help him in a crisis; and the loser will have nothing to do with you since you didn’t choose to fight alongside him and share his fate.
When Antiochus was sent to Greece by the Aetolians to push back the Romans, he sent ambassadors to the Achaeans, who were allied to the Romans, asking them to remain neutral, while for their part the Romans encouraged them to join the war on their side. The Achaean council debated the matter and after Antiochus’s ambassador had spoken, asking them to remain neutral, the Roman ambassador replied: ‘With regard to this invitation to remain neutral, nothing could be more damaging to your interests: you’ll get no thanks, no consideration and will be taken as a reward by whoever wins.’
The contender who is not your ally will always try to get you to stay neutral and your ally will always try to get you to fight. Indecisive rulers who want to avoid immediate danger usually decide to stay neutral, and usually things end badly for them. But if you declare yourself courageously for one side or the other and your ally wins, he’ll be indebted to you and there’ll be a bond of friendship between you, so that even if he is more powerful now and has you at his mercy he’s not going to be so shameless as to take advantage of the circumstances and become an example of ingratitude. Victories are never so decisive that the winner can override every principle, justice in particular. But if your ally loses, you’re still his friend and he’ll offer what help he can: you become companions in misfortune, and your luck could always turn.
In the event that the two neighbours going to war are not so powerful that you need fear the winner, it is even more sensible to take sides and get involved: you’ll be destroying one with the help of another who, if he had any sense, would be protecting the loser. And when your ally wins, which with your help is inevitable, he’ll be at your mercy.
Here it’s worth noting that a ruler must never ally himself with someone more powerful in order to attack his enemies, unless, as I said above, it is absolutely necessary. Because when you win you’ll be at your ally’s mercy, and whenever possible rulers must avoid placing themselves in another’s power. The Venetians allied themselves with France to attack the Duke of Milan. It was an alliance they could have avoided and it led to disaster. But when such an alliance can’t be avoided, as was the case with Florence when the pope and Spain took their armies to attack Lombardy, then a ruler must take sides for the reasons set out above. In general, a ruler must never imagine that any decision he takes is safe; on the contrary he should reckon that any decision is potentially dangerous. It is in the nature of things that every time you try to avoid one danger you run into another. Good sense consists in being able to assess the dangers and choose the lesser of various evils.
A ruler must also show that he admires achievement in others, giving work to men of ability and rewarding people who excel in this or that craft. What’s more, he should reassure his subjects that they can go calmly about their business as merchants or farmers, or whatever other trade they practise, without worrying that if they increase their wealth they’ll be in danger of having it taken away from them, or that if they start up a business they’ll be punitively taxed. On the contrary, a ruler should offer incentives to people who want to do this kind of thing and to whoever plans to bring prosperity to his city or state. Then at the right times of the year he should entertain people with shows and festivals. And since every city is divided into guilds and districts, he should respect these groups and go to their meetings from time to time, showing what a humane and generous person he is, though without ever forgetting the authority of his position, something he must always keep to the fore.
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A ruler’s ministers
A ruler’s choice of ministers is an important matter. The quality of the ministers will reflect his good sense or lack of it and give people their first impression of the way the ruler’s mind is working. If his ministers are capable and loyal, people will always reckon a ruler astute, because he was able to recognize their ability and command their loyalty. When they are not, people will always have reason to criticize, because the first mistake the ruler made was in his choice of ministers. Everyone who knew Antonio da Venafro, Pandolfo Petrucci’s minister in Siena, thought Pandolfo extremely smart for having chosen him.
There are actually three kinds of mind: one kind grasps things unaided, the second sees what another has grasped, the third grasps nothing and sees nothing. The first kind is extremely valuable, the second valuable, the third useless. So although Pandolfo didn’t have the first kind of mind, he certainly had the second; if someone is sharp enough to recognize what’s right and wrong in what another man says and does, then even if he doesn’t have the creativity to make policy himself, he can still see which of his minister’s policies are positive and negative, encourage the good ones and correct the bad. The minister, meanwhile, will realize that he can’t fool the ruler and so will have to behave.
There is one infallible way of checking a minister’s credentials: when you see the man thinking more for himself than for you, when his policies are all designed to enhance his own interests, then he’ll never make a good minister and you’ll never be able to trust him. A minister running a state must never think of himself, only of the ruler, and should concentrate exclusively on the ruler’s business. To make sure he does so, the ruler, for his part, must take an interest in the minister, grant him wealth and respect, oblige him and share honours and appointments with him. That way the minister will see that he can’t survive without the ruler. He’ll have so many honours he won’t want any more, so much wealth he won’t look for more, and so many appointments that he’ll guard against any change of the status quo. When rulers and their ministers arrange their relationships this way, they can trust each other. When they don’t, one or the other is bound to come to a bad end.
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Avoiding flatterers
There’s another important issue we need to consider, a mistake rulers can only avoid if they are very canny, or very good at choosing their ministers. I’m talking about flatterers. Courts are always full of them and men are so ready to congratulate themselves on their achievements and to imagine themselves more successful than they are that it is hard not to fall into this error. Then if you do try to defend yourself from flatterers you run the risk of having people despise you. Because the only way to guard against flattery is to have people understand that you don’t mind them telling you the truth. But when anyone and everyone can tell you the truth, you lose respect.
So the sensible ruler must find a middle way, choosing intelligent men for ministers and giving them and only them the right to tell him the truth, and only on the issues he asks about, not in general. However, the ruler should ask his ministers about everything and listen to their opinions, then make up his mind on his own, following his own criteria. In responding to these advisers, as a group or separately, he should make it clear that the more openly they speak, the more welcome their advice will be. After which, he shouldn’t take advice from anyone else, but get on with whatever has been decided and be firm in his decisions. Try a different approach and you’ll either be ruined by flatterers or change your mind so often listening to everyone’s opinions that people will lose their respect for you.
Let me offer an example from modern times. Bishop Luca Rainaldi, a man close to the present Emperor Maximilian, said that the emperor never took advice from anyone and never got his own policies enacted; this is because he did the opposite of what I proposed above. Being secretive, the emperor tends not to explain his plans to anyone and doesn’t seek advice. But when he starts putting his policies into action and people see what he’s up to, his ministers tell him he’s got it wrong and all too readily he changes his mind. As a result, whatever he does one day he undoes the next and nobody understands what he wants or means to do and no one can make plans in response to his policies.
So a ruler must always take advice, but only when he wants it, not when others want to give it to him. In fact he should discourage people from giving him advice unasked. On the other hand he should ask a great deal and listen patiently when an adviser responds truthfully. And if he realizes someone is keeping quiet out of fear, he should show his irritation. Many people think that when a ruler has a reputation for being sensible it’s thanks to the good advice he’s getting from his ministers and not because he’s shrewd himself. But they’re wrong. There’s a general and infallible rule here: that a leader who isn’t sensible himself can never get good advice, unless he just happens to have put the government entirely in the hands of a single minister who turns out to be extremely shrewd. In this case he may well get good advice, but the situation won’t last long because the minister will soon grab the state for himself. If on the other hand he’s taking advice from more than one person, an ingenuous ruler will find himself listening to very different opinions and won’t know how to make sense of them. Each of his advisers will be thinking of his own interests and the ruler won’t be able to control them or even sense what’s going on. It’s not a case of finding better ministers; men will always be out to trick you unless you force them to be honest. In conclusion: a ruler isn’t smart because he’s getting proper advice; on the contrary, it’s his good sense that makes the right advice possible.