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The PrinceV. How Cities or Principalities That Lived Under Their Own Laws Before They Were Conquered Should Be Governed
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V. How Cities or Principalities That Lived Under Their Own Laws Before They Were Conquered Should Be Governed

When the states acquired, as I have said, are accustomed to living under their own laws and in freedom, there are three ways to hold them: the first, to ruin them; the second, to go and live there in person; the third, to let them live under their own laws, taking a tribute from them and setting up a government of a few within them who will keep them friendly to you. For that government, having been created by the prince, knows that it cannot survive without his friendship and power, and must do everything to keep him there. And a city used to living in freedom is held more easily through its own citizens than in any other way, if you mean to preserve it.

The Spartans and the Romans are examples. The Spartans held Athens and Thebes by setting up a government of a few; yet they lost them again.1 The Romans, to hold Capua, Carthage, and Numantia, destroyed them, and did not lose them. They tried to hold Greece almost as the Spartans had, making it free and leaving it its own laws, and they did not succeed; so they were forced to destroy many cities of that province in order to hold it. For in truth there is no sure way to possess such cities except to ruin them. And whoever becomes master of a city used to living in freedom and does not destroy it should expect to be destroyed by it; because in rebellion it always has as its refuge the name of liberty and its own ancient institutions, which are never forgotten, either through the passage of time or through benefits received. And whatever is done or provided, unless the inhabitants are divided or scattered, they do not forget that name or those institutions, and at every turn they run back to them, as Pisa did after a hundred years of servitude to the Florentines.2 But when cities or provinces are used to living under a prince and his family has been extinguished, then, being on the one hand used to obeying and on the other lacking their old prince, they cannot agree on making one from among themselves, and they do not know how to live in freedom. So they are slower to take up arms, and a prince can win them over and secure himself against them more easily. But in republics there is more life, more hatred, more desire for revenge; the memory of their ancient liberty does not and cannot let them rest. So the surest way is to wipe them out or to live there.

Notes

  1. 1. Sparta imposed the rule of the Thirty on Athens in 404 BC and a garrison and oligarchy on Thebes in 382 BC; both were overthrown within a few years.

  2. 2. Florence bought Pisa in 1405 and took it in 1406; Pisa rebelled in 1494, when Charles VIII entered Italy, and was not retaken until 1509. The servitude had lasted not a hundred years but less than ninety.