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The PrinceI. How Many Kinds of Principalities There Are, and How They Are Acquired
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I. How Many Kinds of Principalities There Are, and How They Are Acquired

All states, all dominions that have had and now have power over men, have been and are either republics or principalities. Principalities are either hereditary, in which the family of their lord has long been princes, or they are new. The new ones are either entirely new, as Milan was to Francesco Sforza,1 or they are like limbs joined to the hereditary state of the prince who acquires them, as the Kingdom of Naples is to the king of Spain.2 Dominions acquired in this way are either used to living under a prince or used to being free; and they are acquired either with the arms of others or with one’s own, either by fortune or by ability (virtù).

Notes

  1. 1. Francesco Sforza (1401–1466), a mercenary captain who made himself Duke of Milan in 1450.

  2. 2. Ferdinand II of Aragon (1452–1516), “the Catholic,” king of Aragon and, through his wife Isabella, ruler of Castile. He drove the French out of the Kingdom of Naples and held it from 1504.