XX. Whether Fortresses and Many Other Things Princes Commonly Do Are Useful or Harmful
Some princes, to hold their states securely, have disarmed their subjects; some others have kept their subject towns divided; some have fostered enmities against themselves; some others have turned to winning over those they suspected at the beginning of their rule; some have built fortresses; some have pulled them down and destroyed them. And although one cannot give a definite judgment on all these things without coming to the particulars of the states in which such a decision had to be made, I will nevertheless speak in the broad way that the subject itself allows.
There has never been a new prince, then, who disarmed his subjects; on the contrary, when he has found them disarmed, he has always armed them. For when they are armed, those arms become yours; those who were suspect to you become faithful, those who were faithful remain so, and from subjects they become your partisans. And since all your subjects cannot be armed, when you benefit those you arm, you can deal more safely with the others. The difference in treatment they see in themselves makes the armed ones obliged to you; the others excuse you, judging it necessary that those who have more danger and more duty should have more reward. But when you disarm them, you begin to offend them; you show that you distrust them, judging them either cowardly or disloyal, and either of these opinions breeds hatred against you. And because you cannot remain unarmed, you must turn to mercenary soldiery, which is of the quality described above; and even if it were good, it could not be strong enough to defend you against powerful enemies and suspect subjects. So, as I have said, a new prince in a new principality has always set up arms there; the histories are full of such examples. But when a prince acquires a new state that is added like a limb to his old one, then it is necessary to disarm that state, except for those who were your partisans in acquiring it; and even they, with time and opportunity, must be made soft and effeminate, and things must be arranged so that all the arms of your state are in the hands of your own soldiers, who live near you in your old state.
Our ancestors, and those who were held wise, used to say that Pistoia had to be held by factions and Pisa by fortresses; and for this reason they fostered quarrels in some of their subject towns so as to possess them more easily. In those times, when Italy was in a certain way balanced, this may well have been the right thing to do; but I do not believe it can be given as a precept today. For I do not believe that divisions ever did any good; on the contrary, when the enemy approaches, divided cities are necessarily lost at once, because the weaker party will always join the outside forces and the other will not be able to hold out.
The Venetians, moved, I believe, by the reasons given above, fostered the Guelf and Ghibelline sects in their subject cities;1 and although they never let them come to bloodshed, they still fostered these disagreements among them, so that the citizens, busy with their own quarrels, would not unite against them. As was seen, this did not afterward serve their purpose; for when they were routed at Vailà, one party in those cities at once took courage and took the whole state from them. Such methods, therefore, argue weakness in the prince; because in a strong principality such divisions will never be permitted. They are profitable only in time of peace, when subjects can be managed more easily by means of them; but when war comes, such a policy shows its fallacy.
Without doubt princes become great when they overcome the difficulties and the opposition they meet. And so fortune, especially when she wants to make a new prince great (since he has a greater need to acquire reputation than a hereditary one), raises up enemies for him and has them undertake enterprises against him, so that he will have reason to overcome them and climb higher on the ladder his enemies have brought him. So many judge that a wise prince, when he has the opportunity, should cunningly foster some enmity, so that by crushing it his greatness will grow.
Princes, and especially new ones, have found more faith and more usefulness in men who were held suspect at the beginning of their rule than in those who were trusted at the beginning. Pandolfo Petrucci, prince of Siena,2 governed his state more with those who had been suspect to him than with the others. But one cannot speak of this broadly, because it varies with circumstances. I will say only this: that the men who were enemies at the beginning of a principality, if they are of a kind that needs support to maintain themselves, can always be won over by the prince with the greatest ease; and they are all the more obliged to serve him faithfully because they know how necessary it is for them to cancel by their deeds the bad opinion held of them. And so the prince always gets more use out of them than out of those who, serving him with too much security, neglect his affairs.
And since the subject calls for it, I do not want to fail to remind princes who have taken a new state with the help of people inside it to consider well what moved those who helped them to do so. If it is not natural affection for the prince, but only that they were not content with their former state, he will be able to keep them friendly only with toil and great difficulty, because it will be impossible for him to content them. And if he examines the reason for this carefully, with the examples drawn from ancient and modern affairs, he will see that it is much easier for him to win as friends the men who were content with the former state, and were therefore his enemies, than those who, because they were not content with it, became his friends and helped him seize it.
It has been the custom of princes, in order to hold their states more securely, to build fortresses that serve as a bridle and bit for those who might plan to act against them, and as a safe refuge against a sudden attack. I praise this method, because it has been used since ancient times. Nevertheless, in our own times Niccolò Vitelli has been seen to pull down two fortresses in Città di Castello in order to hold that state. Guidobaldo, Duke of Urbino, on returning to his dominion, from which Cesare Borgia had driven him, razed all the fortresses of that province to the ground, and judged that without them he would be less likely to lose that state again. The Bentivoglio, on returning to Bologna, took similar measures.3 Fortresses, then, are useful or not according to the times; and if they do you good in one way, they harm you in another. One can put the matter this way: the prince who is more afraid of his people than of foreigners should build fortresses, but the one who is more afraid of foreigners than of his people should do without them. The castle of Milan, which Francesco Sforza built there, has made and will make more war on the house of Sforza than any other disorder in that state. So the best fortress there is is not to be hated by the people; because even if you have fortresses and the people hate you, the fortresses will not save you, since once the people have taken up arms, foreigners will never be lacking to come to their aid. In our own times one does not see that fortresses have profited any prince, except the countess of Forlì when her husband Count Girolamo was killed;4 for by means of her fortress she was able to escape the fury of the people, wait for help from Milan, and recover her state. And the times were then such that no foreigner could come to the aid of the people. But afterward her fortresses were of little use to her when Cesare Borgia attacked her and her hostile people joined with the foreigners. So, then and before, it would have been safer for her not to be hated by the people than to have fortresses. Considering all these things, then, I will praise whoever builds fortresses and whoever does not, and I will blame anyone who, trusting in fortresses, thinks little of being hated by the people.
Notes
1. The Guelfs and Ghibellines, the old factions of medieval Italy, originally supporters of the pope and of the emperor respectively.
2. Pandolfo Petrucci (1452–1512), lord of Siena from about 1500.
3. Niccolò Vitelli, father of Paolo and Vitellozzo, recovered Città di Castello in 1482. Guidobaldo da Montefeltro returned to Urbino in 1503 after Alexander VI’s death. The Bentivoglio returned briefly to Bologna in 1511.
4. Caterina Sforza (1463–1509). When her husband Girolamo Riario, lord of Forlì and Imola, was murdered in 1488, she held out in the fortress of Ravaldino until help came from her uncle Ludovico of Milan. Cesare Borgia took Forlì and captured her in 1500.