finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Prince/section_1_part_0.txt
The Prince.chapters 4-7
section 2: chapters 4-7
{"name": "Section 2: Chapters IV-VII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210417004655/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-prince/study-guide/summary-section-2-chapters-iv-vii", "summary": "There are two kinds of kingdoms: those in which the prince is the sole ruler and those in which power is split between the prince and the barons . This classification enables Machiavelli to argue, as the title of Chapter IV goes, \"Why the Successors of Alexander After His Death Did Not Lose the Kingdom He Had Conquered From Darius.\" The first kind of kingdom is difficult to conquer and easy to hold onto; the latter is easy to conquer and difficult to hold onto. What should a prince do if he has conquered a republic, as opposed to a kingdom? Herein lie a number of difficulties, enumerated in the next chapter, \"How Cities or States Should Be Ruled Which Lived By Their Own Laws Before Being Taken.\" The subjects of a conquered kingdom are not used to living in freedom or standing up for themselves, and are therefore slower to take up arms than are the citizens of a republic. There are three options for the conquering prince: destroy the republic, live there, or set up a puppet government. At the end of the day, Machiavelli seems to favor the first option. The Spartans established oligarchies in Athens and Thebes and lost both. The Romans destroyed Capua, Carthage, and Numantia and never lost them. \"Any man who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom, and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it,\" Machiavelli writes. In the following chapter, \"About New Princedoms Acquired With One's Own Arms and Energy,\" Machiavelli digresses momentarily in order to explain why he relies so much on examples in his writing. \"A prudent man should always follow the footsteps of the great and imitate those who have been supreme,\" he writes. The most notable princes who became princes by their own force were, according to Machiavelli, Moses , Cyrus , Romulus , and Theseus . These are the giants of the past and the models for present and future princes to follow; men of this sort \"may have trouble gaining their power, but they find it easy to hold onto.\" Carving out one's own position of power single-handedly, without outside help, is an arduous task; but once accomplished, the prince who has risen on his own merits and by his own force will find his perch far easier to maintain. On the other hand, new states acquired either by fortune or outside assistance are easy to conquer; the difficulty lies in holding onto power, as Machiavelli argues in his next chapter, \"About New States Acquired With Other People's Arms and By Good Luck.\" Here Machiavelli zeroes in on a single protracted example: the story of Cesare Borgia, otherwise known as Duke Valentino, the son of Pope Alexander VI. Alexander wanted to give his son a state to rule, but the only ones he could offer were the papal states, and the Duke of Milan and the Venetians would never agree to that hand-off of power. So the Pope used his ties to King Louis of France to secure control of Romagna for his son. Louis offered up some of his own troops to aid in the cause after Alexander helped the French King enter Italy by dissolving his first marriage. Now that Cesare Borgia had Romagna, what was he to do next? Two problems faced him: he could not trust his army, composed of members of the Orsini clan , and he could not trust King Louis. His suspicions that these players might turn against him growing, Cesare decided to no longer rely on their support. He recruited to his cause all noble-ranked Orsinis and Colonna followers in Rome, thereby weakening the Orsini/Colonna factions. The city of Urbino, an Orsini stronghold, rebelled as a result, the Orsini family having realized what Cesare was up to. Cesare promptly squashed the revolt with the aid of the French. The Orsinis tried to reconcile with him, and Cesare used this opportunity to lure their leaders to Sinigaglia and kill them all. Cesare now possessed Romagna fully, but it was a territory rife with crime and disorder. He appointed Remirro de Orco, a notoriously cruel and ruthless man, as lieutenant general of the region. Quickly and mercilessly, Remirro pacified and unified Romagna. Then, in order to quell the hatred that this aggressiveness might have spawned, Cesare had Remirro tried and executed, making it clear that the cruelty had been the result of the lieutenant general's character, and not Cesare's own. Machiavelli expresses approval for all these drastic measures. However, the tide ultimately turned against Cesare. Alexander died, and Cesare himself fell ill. In the depths of his illness, he made the mistake of allowing Julius to become the next Pope. Machiavelli argues that he should instead have tried to make a Spaniard Pope, or else accepted Rouen's entreaties to the papacy, the reason being that both Spain and Rouen were \"bound to him by nationality and obligation.\" Julius, on the other hand, had reason to hate and fear Cesare: he had endured ten years of exile in France, and held a considerable grudge against the Borgia family. Machiavelli offers Cesare Borgia up as an example of what to do right should a prince acquire his power through the help of others, and the ways in which fortune can lay waste to even the best plans.", "analysis": "Out of the trials and tribulations of Cesare Borgia Machiavelli constructs a rise-and-fall saga that is itself a profoundly moving piece of storytelling. Machiavelli, especially in his later works, seemed to prefer to be thought of as an historian, and here he shows off his predilection for spinning the messiness of history into the stuff of great fiction to. That said, Machiavelli does much to undercut and subvert his own tendency to draw larger meanings out of complex events. For example, Machiavelli posits Borgia as a kind of latter-day mortal equivalent of the legends of history: Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus. Where those ancient figures exist shrouded in a haze, their exploits mythologized, Borgia is, for Machiavelli, a contemporary figure, and thus cannot hope to live up to these precedents. He is a flawed man, albeit one equipped with intelligence and courage, and yet when Machiavelli concludes by blaming Cesare's failure on bad luck, one senses a kind of half-heartedness in the decision. Julius's rise to the papacy sealed Cesare's doom, and that rise can be attributed, according to Machiavelli, to a lapse of reason on Cesare's part: \"his only error lay in making Julius pope, where he simply made a bad choice; because, as I said, though he couldn't make his own man pope, he could keep anyone else from the office.\" It is interesting to note the extent to which Machiavelli will decry or apologize for either figures of history or his contemporaries, when it comes to Borgia one senses some level of personal connection to or feeling for the material. \"Looking over all the duke's actions, then,\" he writes, \"I find nothing with which to reproach him; rather I think I'm right in proposing him, as I have done, as a model for all those who rise to power by means of the fortune and arms of others.\" There is a defensiveness in the tone that is worth considering. History is, indeed, inherently subjective. What gets told, not to mention why, is dependent on so many variables, and in the end it is the temperament of the historian that dictates the form history takes. From his decision to introduce The Prince with a letter to Lorenzo de Medici, itself a heartfelt plea for understanding and favor, to his construction of Borgia as a character and his use of the first person, it is clear that Machiavelli's writing is not the work of a faceless author who would rather disappear behind the veil of his own ostensibly objective formulations, but is rather a kind of first-person history, a sustained meditation on the foibles of human nature and how those foibles translate into larger  results. In other words, The Prince is a work of philosophy in the traditional sense: a sustained piece of thought that personalizes the impersonal. To this effect, certain fibs can be identified in Machiavelli's history-making. One example that springs to mind is his reference to France as a major problem for the Romans. Not only does Machiavelli seem to equate pre-Capet France with the nation post-Capet, stretching his vision of a prince sharing power with barons, but in some sort of vaguely centralized manner, back in the days of Vercingetorix and the Gallic Wars, he also exaggerates Gaul's rebelliousness once conquered by the Roman Empire. In fact, Gaul became one of the Empire's calmer territories. That said, Machiavelli is not prone to historical inaccuracy, and his elision of certain facts in this case can be interpreted as a way of supporting his central argument - that states in which power is split between princes and barons are easy to conquer and difficult to hold onto."}
Considering the difficulties which men have had to hold to a newly
acquired state, some might wonder how, seeing that Alexander the
Great became the master of Asia in a few years, and died whilst it
was scarcely settled (whence it might appear reasonable that the whole
empire would have rebelled), nevertheless his successors maintained
themselves, and had to meet no other difficulty than that which arose
among themselves from their own ambitions.

I answer that the principalities of which one has record are found to
be governed in two different ways; either by a prince, with a body
of servants, who assist him to govern the kingdom as ministers by his
favour and permission; or by a prince and barons, who hold that dignity
by antiquity of blood and not by the grace of the prince. Such barons
have states and their own subjects, who recognize them as lords and hold
them in natural affection. Those states that are governed by a prince
and his servants hold their prince in more consideration, because in all
the country there is no one who is recognized as superior to him, and
if they yield obedience to another they do it as to a minister and
official, and they do not bear him any particular affection.

The examples of these two governments in our time are the Turk and the
King of France. The entire monarchy of the Turk is governed by one lord,
the others are his servants; and, dividing his kingdom into sanjaks, he
sends there different administrators, and shifts and changes them as
he chooses. But the King of France is placed in the midst of an ancient
body of lords, acknowledged by their own subjects, and beloved by them;
they have their own prerogatives, nor can the king take these away
except at his peril. Therefore, he who considers both of these states
will recognize great difficulties in seizing the state of the Turk,
but, once it is conquered, great ease in holding it. The causes of the
difficulties in seizing the kingdom of the Turk are that the usurper
cannot be called in by the princes of the kingdom, nor can he hope to be
assisted in his designs by the revolt of those whom the lord has around
him. This arises from the reasons given above; for his ministers, being
all slaves and bondmen, can only be corrupted with great difficulty, and
one can expect little advantage from them when they have been corrupted,
as they cannot carry the people with them, for the reasons assigned.
Hence, he who attacks the Turk must bear in mind that he will find him
united, and he will have to rely more on his own strength than on the
revolt of others; but, if once the Turk has been conquered, and routed
in the field in such a way that he cannot replace his armies, there
is nothing to fear but the family of this prince, and, this being
exterminated, there remains no one to fear, the others having no credit
with the people; and as the conqueror did not rely on them before his
victory, so he ought not to fear them after it.

The contrary happens in kingdoms governed like that of France, because
one can easily enter there by gaining over some baron of the kingdom,
for one always finds malcontents and such as desire a change. Such men,
for the reasons given, can open the way into the state and render the
victory easy; but if you wish to hold it afterwards, you meet with
infinite difficulties, both from those who have assisted you and from
those you have crushed. Nor is it enough for you to have exterminated
the family of the prince, because the lords that remain make themselves
the heads of fresh movements against you, and as you are unable either
to satisfy or exterminate them, that state is lost whenever time brings
the opportunity.

Now if you will consider what was the nature of the government of
Darius, you will find it similar to the kingdom of the Turk, and
therefore it was only necessary for Alexander, first to overthrow him in
the field, and then to take the country from him. After which victory,
Darius being killed, the state remained secure to Alexander, for the
above reasons. And if his successors had been united they would have
enjoyed it securely and at their ease, for there were no tumults raised
in the kingdom except those they provoked themselves.

But it is impossible to hold with such tranquillity states constituted
like that of France. Hence arose those frequent rebellions against the
Romans in Spain, France, and Greece, owing to the many principalities
there were in these states, of which, as long as the memory of them
endured, the Romans always held an insecure possession; but with the
power and long continuance of the empire the memory of them passed
away, and the Romans then became secure possessors. And when fighting
afterwards amongst themselves, each one was able to attach to himself
his own parts of the country, according to the authority he had assumed
there; and the family of the former lord being exterminated, none other
than the Romans were acknowledged.

When these things are remembered no one will marvel at the ease with
which Alexander held the Empire of Asia, or at the difficulties which
others have had to keep an acquisition, such as Pyrrhus and many more;
this is not occasioned by the little or abundance of ability in the
conqueror, but by the want of uniformity in the subject state.



Whenever those states which have been acquired as stated have been
accustomed to live under their own laws and in freedom, there are three
courses for those who wish to hold them: the first is to ruin them, the
next is to reside there in person, the third is to permit them to live
under their own laws, drawing a tribute, and establishing within it an
oligarchy which will keep it friendly to you. Because such a government,
being created by the prince, knows that it cannot stand without
his friendship and interest, and does it utmost to support him; and
therefore he who would keep a city accustomed to freedom will hold it
more easily by the means of its own citizens than in any other way.

There are, for example, the Spartans and the Romans. The Spartans held
Athens and Thebes, establishing there an oligarchy; nevertheless they
lost them. The Romans, in order to hold Capua, Carthage, and Numantia,
dismantled them, and did not lose them. They wished to hold Greece as
the Spartans held it, making it free and permitting its laws, and did
not succeed. So to hold it they were compelled to dismantle many
cities in the country, for in truth there is no safe way to retain them
otherwise than by ruining them. And he who becomes master of a city
accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it, may expect to be
destroyed by it, for in rebellion it has always the watchword of liberty
and its ancient privileges as a rallying point, which neither time
nor benefits will ever cause it to forget. And whatever you may do or
provide against, they never forget that name or their privileges unless
they are disunited or dispersed, but at every chance they immediately
rally to them, as Pisa after the hundred years she had been held in
bondage by the Florentines.

But when cities or countries are accustomed to live under a prince, and
his family is exterminated, they, being on the one hand accustomed to
obey and on the other hand not having the old prince, cannot agree in
making one from amongst themselves, and they do not know how to govern
themselves. For this reason they are very slow to take up arms, and a
prince can gain them to himself and secure them much more easily. But
in republics there is more vitality, greater hatred, and more desire
for vengeance, which will never permit them to allow the memory of their
former liberty to rest; so that the safest way is to destroy them or to
reside there.



Let no one be surprised if, in speaking of entirely new principalities
as I shall do, I adduce the highest examples both of prince and of
state; because men, walking almost always in paths beaten by others, and
following by imitation their deeds, are yet unable to keep entirely to
the ways of others or attain to the power of those they imitate. A wise
man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate
those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal
theirs, at least it will savour of it. Let him act like the clever
archers who, designing to hit the mark which yet appears too far
distant, and knowing the limits to which the strength of their bow
attains, take aim much higher than the mark, not to reach by their
strength or arrow to so great a height, but to be able with the aid of
so high an aim to hit the mark they wish to reach.

I say, therefore, that in entirely new principalities, where there is
a new prince, more or less difficulty is found in keeping them,
accordingly as there is more or less ability in him who has acquired
the state. Now, as the fact of becoming a prince from a private station
presupposes either ability or fortune, it is clear that one or other
of these things will mitigate in some degree many difficulties.
Nevertheless, he who has relied least on fortune is established the
strongest. Further, it facilitates matters when the prince, having no
other state, is compelled to reside there in person.

But to come to those who, by their own ability and not through fortune,
have risen to be princes, I say that Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus,
and such like are the most excellent examples. And although one may not
discuss Moses, he having been a mere executor of the will of God, yet
he ought to be admired, if only for that favour which made him worthy to
speak with God. But in considering Cyrus and others who have acquired or
founded kingdoms, all will be found admirable; and if their particular
deeds and conduct shall be considered, they will not be found inferior
to those of Moses, although he had so great a preceptor. And in
examining their actions and lives one cannot see that they owed anything
to fortune beyond opportunity, which brought them the material to mould
into the form which seemed best to them. Without that opportunity their
powers of mind would have been extinguished, and without those powers
the opportunity would have come in vain.

It was necessary, therefore, to Moses that he should find the people of
Israel in Egypt enslaved and oppressed by the Egyptians, in order that
they should be disposed to follow him so as to be delivered out of
bondage. It was necessary that Romulus should not remain in Alba, and
that he should be abandoned at his birth, in order that he should become
King of Rome and founder of the fatherland. It was necessary that Cyrus
should find the Persians discontented with the government of the Medes,
and the Medes soft and effeminate through their long peace. Theseus
could not have shown his ability had he not found the Athenians
dispersed. These opportunities, therefore, made those men fortunate,
and their high ability enabled them to recognize the opportunity whereby
their country was ennobled and made famous.

Those who by valorous ways become princes, like these men, acquire
a principality with difficulty, but they keep it with ease. The
difficulties they have in acquiring it rise in part from the new rules
and methods which they are forced to introduce to establish their
government and its security. And it ought to be remembered that there
is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or
more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction
of a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies
all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm
defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises
partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and
partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new
things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens
that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they
do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise
that the prince is endangered along with them.

It is necessary, therefore, if we desire to discuss this matter
thoroughly, to inquire whether these innovators can rely on themselves
or have to depend on others: that is to say, whether, to consummate
their enterprise, have they to use prayers or can they use force? In the
first instance they always succeed badly, and never compass anything;
but when they can rely on themselves and use force, then they are rarely
endangered. Hence it is that all armed prophets have conquered, and the
unarmed ones have been destroyed. Besides the reasons mentioned, the
nature of the people is variable, and whilst it is easy to persuade
them, it is difficult to fix them in that persuasion. And thus it is
necessary to take such measures that, when they believe no longer, it
may be possible to make them believe by force.

If Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus had been unarmed they could not
have enforced their constitutions for long--as happened in our time to
Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who was ruined with his new order of things
immediately the multitude believed in him no longer, and he had no means
of keeping steadfast those who believed or of making the unbelievers to
believe. Therefore such as these have great difficulties in consummating
their enterprise, for all their dangers are in the ascent, yet with
ability they will overcome them; but when these are overcome, and those
who envied them their success are exterminated, they will begin to be
respected, and they will continue afterwards powerful, secure, honoured,
and happy.

To these great examples I wish to add a lesser one; still it bears some
resemblance to them, and I wish it to suffice me for all of a like kind:
it is Hiero the Syracusan.(*) This man rose from a private station to
be Prince of Syracuse, nor did he, either, owe anything to fortune but
opportunity; for the Syracusans, being oppressed, chose him for their
captain, afterwards he was rewarded by being made their prince. He was
of so great ability, even as a private citizen, that one who writes
of him says he wanted nothing but a kingdom to be a king. This man
abolished the old soldiery, organized the new, gave up old alliances,
made new ones; and as he had his own soldiers and allies, on such
foundations he was able to build any edifice: thus, whilst he had
endured much trouble in acquiring, he had but little in keeping.

     (*) Hiero II, born about 307 B.C., died 216 B.C.




Those who solely by good fortune become princes from being private
citizens have little trouble in rising, but much in keeping atop; they
have not any difficulties on the way up, because they fly, but they have
many when they reach the summit. Such are those to whom some state
is given either for money or by the favour of him who bestows it;
as happened to many in Greece, in the cities of Ionia and of the
Hellespont, where princes were made by Darius, in order that they might
hold the cities both for his security and his glory; as also were those
emperors who, by the corruption of the soldiers, from being citizens
came to empire. Such stand simply elevated upon the goodwill and the
fortune of him who has elevated them--two most inconstant and unstable
things. Neither have they the knowledge requisite for the position;
because, unless they are men of great worth and ability, it is not
reasonable to expect that they should know how to command, having always
lived in a private condition; besides, they cannot hold it because they
have not forces which they can keep friendly and faithful.

States that rise unexpectedly, then, like all other things in nature
which are born and grow rapidly, cannot leave their foundations and
correspondencies(*) fixed in such a way that the first storm will
not overthrow them; unless, as is said, those who unexpectedly become
princes are men of so much ability that they know they have to be
prepared at once to hold that which fortune has thrown into their laps,
and that those foundations, which others have laid BEFORE they became
princes, they must lay AFTERWARDS.

     (*) "Le radici e corrispondenze," their roots (i.e.
     foundations) and correspondencies or relations with other
     states--a common meaning of "correspondence" and
     "correspondency" in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Concerning these two methods of rising to be a prince by ability or
fortune, I wish to adduce two examples within our own recollection, and
these are Francesco Sforza(*) and Cesare Borgia. Francesco, by proper
means and with great ability, from being a private person rose to be
Duke of Milan, and that which he had acquired with a thousand anxieties
he kept with little trouble. On the other hand, Cesare Borgia, called by
the people Duke Valentino, acquired his state during the ascendancy of
his father, and on its decline he lost it, notwithstanding that he had
taken every measure and done all that ought to be done by a wise and
able man to fix firmly his roots in the states which the arms and
fortunes of others had bestowed on him.

     (*) Francesco Sforza, born 1401, died 1466. He married
     Bianca Maria Visconti, a natural daughter of Filippo
     Visconti, the Duke of Milan, on whose death he procured his
     own elevation to the duchy. Machiavelli was the accredited
     agent of the Florentine Republic to Cesare Borgia (1478-
     1507) during the transactions which led up to the
     assassinations of the Orsini and Vitelli at Sinigalia, and
     along with his letters to his chiefs in Florence he has left
     an account, written ten years before "The Prince," of the
     proceedings of the duke in his "Descritione del modo tenuto
     dal duca Valentino nello ammazzare Vitellozzo Vitelli,"
     etc., a translation of which is appended to the present
     work.

Because, as is stated above, he who has not first laid his foundations
may be able with great ability to lay them afterwards, but they will
be laid with trouble to the architect and danger to the building. If,
therefore, all the steps taken by the duke be considered, it will be
seen that he laid solid foundations for his future power, and I do not
consider it superfluous to discuss them, because I do not know what
better precepts to give a new prince than the example of his actions;
and if his dispositions were of no avail, that was not his fault, but
the extraordinary and extreme malignity of fortune.

Alexander the Sixth, in wishing to aggrandize the duke, his son, had
many immediate and prospective difficulties. Firstly, he did not see his
way to make him master of any state that was not a state of the Church;
and if he was willing to rob the Church he knew that the Duke of Milan
and the Venetians would not consent, because Faenza and Rimini were
already under the protection of the Venetians. Besides this, he saw the
arms of Italy, especially those by which he might have been assisted, in
hands that would fear the aggrandizement of the Pope, namely, the Orsini
and the Colonnesi and their following. It behoved him, therefore,
to upset this state of affairs and embroil the powers, so as to make
himself securely master of part of their states. This was easy for him
to do, because he found the Venetians, moved by other reasons, inclined
to bring back the French into Italy; he would not only not oppose this,
but he would render it more easy by dissolving the former marriage of
King Louis. Therefore the king came into Italy with the assistance of
the Venetians and the consent of Alexander. He was no sooner in Milan
than the Pope had soldiers from him for the attempt on the Romagna,
which yielded to him on the reputation of the king. The duke, therefore,
having acquired the Romagna and beaten the Colonnesi, while wishing to
hold that and to advance further, was hindered by two things: the one,
his forces did not appear loyal to him, the other, the goodwill of
France: that is to say, he feared that the forces of the Orsini, which
he was using, would not stand to him, that not only might they hinder
him from winning more, but might themselves seize what he had won, and
that the king might also do the same. Of the Orsini he had a warning
when, after taking Faenza and attacking Bologna, he saw them go very
unwillingly to that attack. And as to the king, he learned his mind when
he himself, after taking the Duchy of Urbino, attacked Tuscany, and the
king made him desist from that undertaking; hence the duke decided to
depend no more upon the arms and the luck of others.

For the first thing he weakened the Orsini and Colonnesi parties in
Rome, by gaining to himself all their adherents who were gentlemen,
making them his gentlemen, giving them good pay, and, according to their
rank, honouring them with office and command in such a way that in a few
months all attachment to the factions was destroyed and turned entirely
to the duke. After this he awaited an opportunity to crush the Orsini,
having scattered the adherents of the Colonna house. This came to him
soon and he used it well; for the Orsini, perceiving at length that the
aggrandizement of the duke and the Church was ruin to them, called a
meeting of the Magione in Perugia. From this sprung the rebellion at
Urbino and the tumults in the Romagna, with endless dangers to the duke,
all of which he overcame with the help of the French. Having restored
his authority, not to leave it at risk by trusting either to the French
or other outside forces, he had recourse to his wiles, and he knew
so well how to conceal his mind that, by the mediation of Signor
Pagolo--whom the duke did not fail to secure with all kinds of
attention, giving him money, apparel, and horses--the Orsini were
reconciled, so that their simplicity brought them into his power
at Sinigalia.(*) Having exterminated the leaders, and turned their
partisans into his friends, the duke laid sufficiently good foundations
to his power, having all the Romagna and the Duchy of Urbino; and the
people now beginning to appreciate their prosperity, he gained them
all over to himself. And as this point is worthy of notice, and to be
imitated by others, I am not willing to leave it out.

     (*) Sinigalia, 31st December 1502.

When the duke occupied the Romagna he found it under the rule of weak
masters, who rather plundered their subjects than ruled them, and gave
them more cause for disunion than for union, so that the country was
full of robbery, quarrels, and every kind of violence; and so, wishing
to bring back peace and obedience to authority, he considered it
necessary to give it a good governor. Thereupon he promoted Messer
Ramiro d'Orco,(*) a swift and cruel man, to whom he gave the fullest
power. This man in a short time restored peace and unity with the
greatest success. Afterwards the duke considered that it was not
advisable to confer such excessive authority, for he had no doubt but
that he would become odious, so he set up a court of judgment in the
country, under a most excellent president, wherein all cities had their
advocates. And because he knew that the past severity had caused some
hatred against himself, so, to clear himself in the minds of the people,
and gain them entirely to himself, he desired to show that, if any
cruelty had been practised, it had not originated with him, but in the
natural sternness of the minister. Under this pretence he took Ramiro,
and one morning caused him to be executed and left on the piazza at
Cesena with the block and a bloody knife at his side. The barbarity of
this spectacle caused the people to be at once satisfied and dismayed.

     (*) Ramiro d'Orco. Ramiro de Lorqua.

But let us return whence we started. I say that the duke, finding
himself now sufficiently powerful and partly secured from immediate
dangers by having armed himself in his own way, and having in a great
measure crushed those forces in his vicinity that could injure him if he
wished to proceed with his conquest, had next to consider France, for
he knew that the king, who too late was aware of his mistake, would not
support him. And from this time he began to seek new alliances and to
temporize with France in the expedition which she was making towards the
kingdom of Naples against the Spaniards who were besieging Gaeta. It
was his intention to secure himself against them, and this he would have
quickly accomplished had Alexander lived.

Such was his line of action as to present affairs. But as to the future
he had to fear, in the first place, that a new successor to the Church
might not be friendly to him and might seek to take from him that which
Alexander had given him, so he decided to act in four ways. Firstly, by
exterminating the families of those lords whom he had despoiled, so as
to take away that pretext from the Pope. Secondly, by winning to himself
all the gentlemen of Rome, so as to be able to curb the Pope with their
aid, as has been observed. Thirdly, by converting the college more to
himself. Fourthly, by acquiring so much power before the Pope should die
that he could by his own measures resist the first shock. Of these four
things, at the death of Alexander, he had accomplished three. For he had
killed as many of the dispossessed lords as he could lay hands on, and
few had escaped; he had won over the Roman gentlemen, and he had the
most numerous party in the college. And as to any fresh acquisition, he
intended to become master of Tuscany, for he already possessed Perugia
and Piombino, and Pisa was under his protection. And as he had no longer
to study France (for the French were already driven out of the kingdom
of Naples by the Spaniards, and in this way both were compelled to buy
his goodwill), he pounced down upon Pisa. After this, Lucca and Siena
yielded at once, partly through hatred and partly through fear of
the Florentines; and the Florentines would have had no remedy had he
continued to prosper, as he was prospering the year that Alexander died,
for he had acquired so much power and reputation that he would have
stood by himself, and no longer have depended on the luck and the forces
of others, but solely on his own power and ability.

But Alexander died five years after he had first drawn the sword. He
left the duke with the state of Romagna alone consolidated, with the
rest in the air, between two most powerful hostile armies, and sick unto
death. Yet there were in the duke such boldness and ability, and he knew
so well how men are to be won or lost, and so firm were the foundations
which in so short a time he had laid, that if he had not had those
armies on his back, or if he had been in good health, he would have
overcome all difficulties. And it is seen that his foundations were
good, for the Romagna awaited him for more than a month. In Rome,
although but half alive, he remained secure; and whilst the Baglioni,
the Vitelli, and the Orsini might come to Rome, they could not effect
anything against him. If he could not have made Pope him whom he wished,
at least the one whom he did not wish would not have been elected. But
if he had been in sound health at the death of Alexander,(*) everything
would have been different to him. On the day that Julius the Second(+)
was elected, he told me that he had thought of everything that might
occur at the death of his father, and had provided a remedy for all,
except that he had never anticipated that, when the death did happen, he
himself would be on the point to die.

     (*) Alexander VI died of fever, 18th August 1503.

     (+) Julius II was Giuliano della Rovere, Cardinal of San
     Pietro ad Vincula, born 1443, died 1513.

When all the actions of the duke are recalled, I do not know how to
blame him, but rather it appears to be, as I have said, that I ought to
offer him for imitation to all those who, by the fortune or the arms of
others, are raised to government. Because he, having a lofty spirit and
far-reaching aims, could not have regulated his conduct otherwise,
and only the shortness of the life of Alexander and his own sickness
frustrated his designs. Therefore, he who considers it necessary to
secure himself in his new principality, to win friends, to overcome
either by force or fraud, to make himself beloved and feared by the
people, to be followed and revered by the soldiers, to exterminate those
who have power or reason to hurt him, to change the old order of things
for new, to be severe and gracious, magnanimous and liberal, to destroy
a disloyal soldiery and to create new, to maintain friendship with kings
and princes in such a way that they must help him with zeal and offend
with caution, cannot find a more lively example than the actions of this
man.

Only can he be blamed for the election of Julius the Second, in whom he
made a bad choice, because, as is said, not being able to elect a Pope
to his own mind, he could have hindered any other from being elected
Pope; and he ought never to have consented to the election of any
cardinal whom he had injured or who had cause to fear him if they became
pontiffs. For men injure either from fear or hatred. Those whom he
had injured, amongst others, were San Pietro ad Vincula, Colonna, San
Giorgio, and Ascanio.(*) The rest, in becoming Pope, had to fear him,
Rouen and the Spaniards excepted; the latter from their relationship and
obligations, the former from his influence, the kingdom of France having
relations with him. Therefore, above everything, the duke ought to have
created a Spaniard Pope, and, failing him, he ought to have consented to
Rouen and not San Pietro ad Vincula. He who believes that new benefits
will cause great personages to forget old injuries is deceived.
Therefore, the duke erred in his choice, and it was the cause of his
ultimate ruin.

     (*) San Giorgio is Raffaello Riario. Ascanio is Ascanio
     Sforza.




Section 2: Chapters IV-VII
There are two kinds of kingdoms: those in which the prince is the sole ruler and those in which power is split between the prince and the barons . This classification enables Machiavelli to argue, as the title of Chapter IV goes, "Why the Successors of Alexander After His Death Did Not Lose the Kingdom He Had Conquered From Darius." The first kind of kingdom is difficult to conquer and easy to hold onto; the latter is easy to conquer and difficult to hold onto. What should a prince do if he has conquered a republic, as opposed to a kingdom? Herein lie a number of difficulties, enumerated in the next chapter, "How Cities or States Should Be Ruled Which Lived By Their Own Laws Before Being Taken." The subjects of a conquered kingdom are not used to living in freedom or standing up for themselves, and are therefore slower to take up arms than are the citizens of a republic. There are three options for the conquering prince: destroy the republic, live there, or set up a puppet government. At the end of the day, Machiavelli seems to favor the first option. The Spartans established oligarchies in Athens and Thebes and lost both. The Romans destroyed Capua, Carthage, and Numantia and never lost them. "Any man who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom, and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it," Machiavelli writes. In the following chapter, "About New Princedoms Acquired With One's Own Arms and Energy," Machiavelli digresses momentarily in order to explain why he relies so much on examples in his writing. "A prudent man should always follow the footsteps of the great and imitate those who have been supreme," he writes. The most notable princes who became princes by their own force were, according to Machiavelli, Moses , Cyrus , Romulus , and Theseus . These are the giants of the past and the models for present and future princes to follow; men of this sort "may have trouble gaining their power, but they find it easy to hold onto." Carving out one's own position of power single-handedly, without outside help, is an arduous task; but once accomplished, the prince who has risen on his own merits and by his own force will find his perch far easier to maintain. On the other hand, new states acquired either by fortune or outside assistance are easy to conquer; the difficulty lies in holding onto power, as Machiavelli argues in his next chapter, "About New States Acquired With Other People's Arms and By Good Luck." Here Machiavelli zeroes in on a single protracted example: the story of Cesare Borgia, otherwise known as Duke Valentino, the son of Pope Alexander VI. Alexander wanted to give his son a state to rule, but the only ones he could offer were the papal states, and the Duke of Milan and the Venetians would never agree to that hand-off of power. So the Pope used his ties to King Louis of France to secure control of Romagna for his son. Louis offered up some of his own troops to aid in the cause after Alexander helped the French King enter Italy by dissolving his first marriage. Now that Cesare Borgia had Romagna, what was he to do next? Two problems faced him: he could not trust his army, composed of members of the Orsini clan , and he could not trust King Louis. His suspicions that these players might turn against him growing, Cesare decided to no longer rely on their support. He recruited to his cause all noble-ranked Orsinis and Colonna followers in Rome, thereby weakening the Orsini/Colonna factions. The city of Urbino, an Orsini stronghold, rebelled as a result, the Orsini family having realized what Cesare was up to. Cesare promptly squashed the revolt with the aid of the French. The Orsinis tried to reconcile with him, and Cesare used this opportunity to lure their leaders to Sinigaglia and kill them all. Cesare now possessed Romagna fully, but it was a territory rife with crime and disorder. He appointed Remirro de Orco, a notoriously cruel and ruthless man, as lieutenant general of the region. Quickly and mercilessly, Remirro pacified and unified Romagna. Then, in order to quell the hatred that this aggressiveness might have spawned, Cesare had Remirro tried and executed, making it clear that the cruelty had been the result of the lieutenant general's character, and not Cesare's own. Machiavelli expresses approval for all these drastic measures. However, the tide ultimately turned against Cesare. Alexander died, and Cesare himself fell ill. In the depths of his illness, he made the mistake of allowing Julius to become the next Pope. Machiavelli argues that he should instead have tried to make a Spaniard Pope, or else accepted Rouen's entreaties to the papacy, the reason being that both Spain and Rouen were "bound to him by nationality and obligation." Julius, on the other hand, had reason to hate and fear Cesare: he had endured ten years of exile in France, and held a considerable grudge against the Borgia family. Machiavelli offers Cesare Borgia up as an example of what to do right should a prince acquire his power through the help of others, and the ways in which fortune can lay waste to even the best plans.
Out of the trials and tribulations of Cesare Borgia Machiavelli constructs a rise-and-fall saga that is itself a profoundly moving piece of storytelling. Machiavelli, especially in his later works, seemed to prefer to be thought of as an historian, and here he shows off his predilection for spinning the messiness of history into the stuff of great fiction to. That said, Machiavelli does much to undercut and subvert his own tendency to draw larger meanings out of complex events. For example, Machiavelli posits Borgia as a kind of latter-day mortal equivalent of the legends of history: Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus. Where those ancient figures exist shrouded in a haze, their exploits mythologized, Borgia is, for Machiavelli, a contemporary figure, and thus cannot hope to live up to these precedents. He is a flawed man, albeit one equipped with intelligence and courage, and yet when Machiavelli concludes by blaming Cesare's failure on bad luck, one senses a kind of half-heartedness in the decision. Julius's rise to the papacy sealed Cesare's doom, and that rise can be attributed, according to Machiavelli, to a lapse of reason on Cesare's part: "his only error lay in making Julius pope, where he simply made a bad choice; because, as I said, though he couldn't make his own man pope, he could keep anyone else from the office." It is interesting to note the extent to which Machiavelli will decry or apologize for either figures of history or his contemporaries, when it comes to Borgia one senses some level of personal connection to or feeling for the material. "Looking over all the duke's actions, then," he writes, "I find nothing with which to reproach him; rather I think I'm right in proposing him, as I have done, as a model for all those who rise to power by means of the fortune and arms of others." There is a defensiveness in the tone that is worth considering. History is, indeed, inherently subjective. What gets told, not to mention why, is dependent on so many variables, and in the end it is the temperament of the historian that dictates the form history takes. From his decision to introduce The Prince with a letter to Lorenzo de Medici, itself a heartfelt plea for understanding and favor, to his construction of Borgia as a character and his use of the first person, it is clear that Machiavelli's writing is not the work of a faceless author who would rather disappear behind the veil of his own ostensibly objective formulations, but is rather a kind of first-person history, a sustained meditation on the foibles of human nature and how those foibles translate into larger  results. In other words, The Prince is a work of philosophy in the traditional sense: a sustained piece of thought that personalizes the impersonal. To this effect, certain fibs can be identified in Machiavelli's history-making. One example that springs to mind is his reference to France as a major problem for the Romans. Not only does Machiavelli seem to equate pre-Capet France with the nation post-Capet, stretching his vision of a prince sharing power with barons, but in some sort of vaguely centralized manner, back in the days of Vercingetorix and the Gallic Wars, he also exaggerates Gaul's rebelliousness once conquered by the Roman Empire. In fact, Gaul became one of the Empire's calmer territories. That said, Machiavelli is not prone to historical inaccuracy, and his elision of certain facts in this case can be interpreted as a way of supporting his central argument - that states in which power is split between princes and barons are easy to conquer and difficult to hold onto.