XIV. What a Prince Should Do About the Military
A prince, then, should have no other object and no other thought, and should take up nothing as his profession, except war and its institutions and discipline; for this is the only art that belongs to one who commands. And it is of such power that it not only keeps those who were born princes in their place, but often enables men of private station to rise to that rank. Conversely, one sees that when princes have thought more about luxuries than about arms, they have lost their states. The first cause that makes you lose your state is neglect of this art, and the cause that enables you to acquire one is to be a master of this art.
Francesco Sforza, because he was armed, rose from private citizen to Duke of Milan; and his sons, because they shunned the hardships of arms, fell from dukes to private citizens.1 For among the other evils that being unarmed brings you, it makes you contemptible, which is one of those disgraces a prince must guard against, as will be said below. For there is no proportion at all between an armed man and an unarmed one; and it is not reasonable that an armed man should willingly obey an unarmed one, or that an unarmed man should be safe among armed servants. For with scorn in the one and suspicion in the other, it is impossible for them to work well together. And so a prince who does not understand military matters, besides the other misfortunes already mentioned, cannot be esteemed by his soldiers or trust them.
He must, therefore, never lift his thoughts from this exercise of war, and in peace he must exercise himself in it even more than in war. This he can do in two ways: one with deeds, the other with the mind. As to deeds, besides keeping his men well organized and trained, he must always be out hunting, and by this means accustom his body to hardship; and at the same time he must learn the nature of the terrain, and get to know how the mountains rise, how the valleys open, how the plains lie, and understand the nature of rivers and marshes, and give the greatest care to this. This knowledge is useful in two ways. First, he learns to know his own country and can better understand how to defend it; second, through his knowledge of and experience with that terrain, he can easily grasp any other terrain he may need to study for the first time. For the hills, the valleys, the plains, the rivers, and the marshes that are, for instance, in Tuscany have a certain likeness to those of other provinces, so that from knowing the terrain of one province one can easily come to know that of others. And the prince who lacks this expertise lacks the first thing a captain must have; for it teaches you to find the enemy, to choose your quarters, to lead armies, to plan battles, and to besiege towns to your advantage.
Among the praises the writers give to Philopoemen, prince of the Achaeans,2 is that in times of peace he never thought of anything but the methods of war. When he was out in the country with his friends, he would often stop and reason with them: “If the enemy were on that hill, and we found ourselves here with our army, which of us would have the advantage? How could we go to meet them while keeping our ranks? If we wanted to retreat, how should we do it? If they retreated, how should we pursue them?” And as they went along he would put before them all the situations that can arise in an army. He listened to their opinion and gave his own, supporting it with reasons; so that, because of these continual reflections, no accident could ever arise while he was leading his armies for which he did not have the remedy.
As for the exercise of the mind, the prince should read histories, and in them consider the actions of excellent men, see how they conducted themselves in war, and examine the causes of their victories and defeats, so as to be able to avoid the latter and imitate the former. Above all he should do as some excellent men have done in the past: they took as a model someone before them who had been praised and glorified, and always kept his deeds and actions before them, as it is said that Alexander the Great imitated Achilles, Caesar imitated Alexander, and Scipio imitated Cyrus. And whoever reads the life of Cyrus written by Xenophon will then recognize in the life of Scipio how much glory that imitation brought him, and how closely Scipio conformed in chastity, affability, humanity, and generosity to what Xenophon wrote of Cyrus. A wise prince must observe such methods as these, and never remain idle in peaceful times, but industriously make capital of them so as to be able to draw on it in adversity; so that when fortune changes, it will find him ready to resist her.