CHAP III.
Of Mixed Principalities.
It is in anew principality that difficulties are found ; and in the first place, if it is not entirely new, but an incorporated member of another sovereignty, or what we may distinguish by the appellation of a mixed principality, its changes are created by the difficulties which new principalities naturally experience. Now, in these, the subjects voluntarily change their masters, believing that they will gain by the change; this opinion makes them take arms against the existing government. They find themselves, however, mistaken in this object, and soon perceive that they have only rendered their situation worse. This mischievous result is a natural and necessary consequence of the very change which they have experienced. In fact, every new prince is compelled more or less to displease his new subjects, whether it be by the presence of the soldiers which he is under the necessity of retaining, or by an infinity of other evils which a new acquisition natu- rally draws after it; so that he has all those for enemies, whom, by occupying the principality, he has offended, and he cannot preserve as friends those who placed him in it. In fact, he is unable to fulfil the hopes they had conceived of him, and he is equally unable to empioy rigorous measures against them, because he is already under an obligation to them. For how powerful soever a prince may be to enter successfully a province, he stands in need of the favour of the inhabitants. It was for this reason that Lewis the XIIth, King of France, so quickly poşsessed himself of Milan, and as speedily lost it. Louis Sforza, the first time, in order to retake it, had only to appear before its gates. Those who had opened them to the king soon finding themselves deceived in the hopes they had entertained of a better fate, were immediately disgusted with the new prince.
It is very true that after having reconquered a rebellious country a prince, does not lose it so easily. He avails himself of the rebellion as a pretext for being less reserved. As to the means of securing his conquest, he punishes the guilty, watches the suspected, and fortifies himself in all the vulnerable points of his province. Thus the first time the French were driven from the duchy of Milan, a movement on the confines, on the part of Louis Sforza was all that was necessary; but the second time it became expedient to form with other states, a league against the French, to destroy their armies and expel them from Italy, and all this from the causes we have before mentioned. The duchy of Milan was, nevertheless, twice wrested from its new master. We have mentioned the general reasons which occasioned his losing it the first time; it remains for us to examine the aauses of the second, and to speak of the measures which the King of France, or any other prince in a similar situation, ought to have adopted in order to maintain his ground bętter than Lewis did.
We must first premise that a state which a sovereign acquires and unites with those he heretofore possessed, is either bordering on and contiguous to the others, and that they speak the same language; or, that they differ in both these respects. In the former case there is nothing so easy as to maintain possession, especially if the inhabitants have not been accustomed to liberty. To extinguish the line of their princes, is to ensure its safe possession; and by preserving to them their ancient customs and their manners, provided there exists no national antipathy between the old and new states, the latter will live peaceably under their new prince, as we have seen in Burgundy, Brittany, Gascony, and Normandy, which have been so long united to France; for although there was some difference in language, yet their habits and their manners were congenial, and were therefore easily blended. Hence, whoever acquires this kind of states and wishes to preserve them, he has only to attend to two considerations; the one, to extinguish entirely the family of their ancient sovereigns, the other, not to alter their laws nor increase their taxes; and in a little time the new states will mingle and unite with the old one, so as to become one and the same.
But when a prince acquires the sovereignty of a country differing from his own both in language, manners, and intellectual organization, it is there the difficulties lie; and in order to maintain the possession of it, good fortune must unite with superior talent.
One of the readiest and most effective methods. which a new prince can employ, is to go thither and inhabit it, which cannot fail to render the possession more certain and durable. This was the conduct of the Turk in respect to Greece; for, notwithstanding every precaution which human foresight could suggest, he would never have been able to retain that country under his domination if he had not gone to and dwelt in it. By being on the spot, a prince sees the commencement of disorder, and remedies it immediately; when he is absent, he is only apprised of it when it has attained such force and extent that no remedy can reach it. Besides, this new state cannot be pillaged by those who command there in his name: the new subjects enjoy the consoling advantage of free and speedy access to the prince; they have more reason to love him if he acts with lenity and tenderness towards them, of to fear him if he act otherwise. Foreign princes would also be deterred from attacking such a state, from the imminent difficulty which always attends the attempt to dispossess a sovereign of a country in which he personally resides.
Another excellent method is to send colonies to those places which are considered as the keys of the province. This measure must either be adopted, or a military force maintained in it. These colonies cost the prince but little. They only injure those, whom he wishes to punish, or those whom he dreads, and from whom he has taken their lands and their houses to give them tơ the new comers; and as their numbers are inferior, and they are dispersed and impoverished, they can never do any harm. On the other hand, all those to whom no wrong nor injury has been done, are naturally inclined for repose and quiet; dreading, should they stir, the fate of those already despoiled. From whence I conclude that those colonies cost but little are extremely faithful to the prince, and injure only a small number of individuals, who being, as I have said before, reduced to beggary and dispersed, have it not in their power to disturb the tranquitlity of the state; for we must never lose sight of this maxim, "Either make a man your friend, or put it out of his power to be your enemy." They may revenge slight injuries, but great ones deprive them of the power of doing so. Hence the injury done to a man ought to be such that the prince can have nothing to dread from his vengeance.
But if instead of colonies he retains large bodies of troops, his expences are infinitely greater, and the whole revenue of the country is consumed in the single purpose of maintaining peaceable possession, so that the prince loses, rather than gains by his conquest. The wrongs which he does are so much the greater, as they extend indiscriminately to all his subjects, who are perpetually harassed by the marches, the lodging, and subsistence of his troops. These inconveniences being universally felt, all become his enemies, and dangerous enemies too; for though defeated, they remain in possession of their homes. Hence, on every account, this military force is just as prejudicial as the colonies which we have proposed are advantageous.
The new sovereign of a country, remote as well as different from his own, ought to take care and make himself the protector and chief, of the weaker neighbouring princes, and to curb and lessen the authority of the more powerful. He ought especially, in every possible case, to prevent the interference of a stranger as powerful as himself; for it will happen that they may be invited by the discontented, or urged by ambition or fear. Thus the Etolians invited the Romans into Greece; and in every province that they entered they were always invited by the inhabitants of the country. The reason is obvious: whenever a powerful stranger enters a country, all those who in that very country feel themselves inferior in force join the new comer from a motive of envy, which animates them against all those who were more powerful than they. As to those little states, the stranger will not be put to any the least trouble or expence concerning them in order to influence them in his favour: they forminstantly of themselves a part of his force; he has only to take care that they do not acquire any accession of strength among themselves, and he will easily with his own troops and their succours, weaken and humiliate the more powerful, and consequently be able to retain quiet possession of the country. He who does not know how to put those measures in practice will soon lose all that he has acquired, ąnd must, while he keeps it, experience an infinity of troubles, difficulties, and embarrassments.
The Romans, in the provinces which they conquered, carefully practised this system; they sent thither colonies, they supported the lesser powers without increasing their strength; they diminished the power of those they dreaded, and permitted not any forėigner whom they had reason to fear, to obtain the smallest influence in them. I need to exemplify this only the provinces of Greece: by them the Achaians and Etolians were supported, the power of the Macedonians was weakened, and Antiochus was driven out: all the services of the Achaians and Etolians did not obtain them the smallest increase to their possessions; notwithstanding all the persuasions of Philip, they never would receive him as a friend but with a view of weakening him; and they too much dreaded Antiochus, to permit him to preserve the smallest degree of sovereignty in that province.
The Romans on this occasion did what ought to be done by every wise prince, whose duty it is not only to provide a remedy for present evils, but at the same time to anticipate such as are likely to happen: by foreseeing them at a distance, they are easily remedied; but if you wait till they have surrounded you, the time is past, and the malady is become incurable. It happens then as it does to physicians in the cure of a consumption, which in the commencement is easy to cure, and difficult to understand; but when it has neither been dis- covered in due time, nor treated upon a proper principle, it becomes easy to understand, and difficult to cure. The same thing happens in state affairs, by foreseeing them at a distance, which is only done by men of talents: the evils which might arise from them are soon cured; but when, from want of foresight, they are suffered to increase to such a height that they are perceptible to every one, there is no longer any remedy.
Thus the Romans, seeing inconveniences at a great distance, immediately prepared for them, and did not suffer them to grow worse, in order to shun a war; they knew that war is not to be shunned, but thạt in deferring it they always gave a great advantage to the enemy. According to these principles, they wished to wage it both against Philip and Antiochus in Greece, to avoid having to defend themselves against those princes in Italy. They might then, unquestionably, have avoided declaring it against botlh; but they would not, and they did not think fit to put in practice the maxim of the wise men of the present day, viz. to wait the advantage of time. They made use only of their prudence and their courage; in fact, time drives every thing before it, and may bring good as well as evil, and evil as well as good.
But let us return to France, and examine if she has in any thing followed the principles we have just explained. I will not speak of Charles VIII. but rather of Lewis XII. as of a prince who, having governed longer in Italy, has enabled us more easily to follow and to understand his course; and you will see that he has done every thing he ought not to have done to preserve a kingdom so different from his own.
Lewis was called into Italy by the ambition of the Venetians, who wished for his assistance to enable them to conquer half of Lombardy. I do not blame this entry of the king into Italy, and the course he then pursued. Wishing to gain an entrance into it, and having no friends there, the misconduct of his predecessor Charles having shut all the avenues against him, he was compelled to avail himself of that alliance, and his enterprise would have succeeded, if he had not committed errors in his subsequent conduct. This monarch soon recovered Lombardy, and, with it, the reputation that Charles had lost. The Genoese submitted to him, the Florentines obtained his friendship, and all were eager to acquire it. The Marquis of Mantua, the Duke de Ferrara, the Bentivolios[1], the Countess de Forli, the Lords of Faënza, Pesaro, Rimini, Camerino, Piombino,; those of Lucca, Pisa, Sienna, &c. It was then that the Venetians perceived the imprudent temerity with which they had acted, and that, in order to acquire to themselves two płaces in Lombardy, they had made the King of France master of two thirds of Italy.
With what facility might this monarch, if he had observed the rules above laid down, have maintained his power in Italy, and preserved and protected all his friends! These, too numerous to be powerful, dreaded the church and the Venetians; and being compelled by their interests to attach themselves to him, he could by their aid easily have strengthened himself against every power that was dangerous to him.
But he was no sooner at Milan, than he pursued a course directly the reverse. He sent succours to Pope Alexander to invade Romania. He did not perceive that in so doing he was weakening himself; that he was depriving himself of those friends who had thrown themselves into his arms. That he aggrandised the church by adding to the ecclesiastical, a power which gave him so much strength, the civil power of a state so considerable as Romania. This first fault committed, he was constrained to pursue it, till in order to set bounds to the ambition of this same Alexander, and to prevent him from seizing on Tuscany, he was obliged to return into Italy.
Not content with having aggrandised the church and deprived himself of his natural allies; being desirous of seizing on the kingdom of Naples, he had the folly to divide it with the King of Spain. He alone was the supreme disposer of Italy, and he gave himself a rival in it; a competitor to whom the ambitious and the discontented might have course; and whilst he might have left in this kingdom a king who would have been his tributary, he drove him out of it, in order to place there another powerful enough to drive away himself.
There is nothing so natural or so common as the thirst for conquest, and when men can satisfy it they are rather praised than blamed for it. But when they have only the wish without the power of conquest, there the blame follows the error. If the King of France with his own strength was able to attack the kingdom of Naples, he ought to have done it; but if he was not able, he ought not to have divided it; and if the partition which he made of Lombardy with the Venetians is entitled to some excuse, because they had furnished him with the means of entering into Italy, the partition of Naples deserves blame alone, because it was totally inexcusable.
Lewis then committed five capital errors in Italy. He increased the strength of a great power, and destroyed that of the small ones; he called into it a very powerful foreigner; he did not go himself to live there; he did not send colonies into it. Notwithstanding these errors time might have enabled him to maintain himself there, if he had not committed a sixth; this was despoiling the Venetians. Unquestionably, if he had not aggrandised the ecclesiastical state, nor called the Spaniards into Italy, it would have been necessary for him to weaken the Venetian states; but having taken that first step, he ought never to have consented to their ruin. These being always powerful, would have prevented the others from undertaking any. thing against Lombardy; the Venetians would not, at least, have consented that they should become masters of it. It was not the interest of the others to take it away from France, merely to enrich the Venetians, and they would never have had the courage to attack both.
If it should be objected that King Lewis ceded Romania to Alexander VI. and to the King of Spain a throne, in order to avoid a war; I will answer as I have already done, that we ought never to suffer an evil to increase for the purpose of avoiding a war; in short, we do not avoid it, but only defer it to our great injury. If others alledge his promise to the Pope, that he would undertake this enterprise for him, on condition that he would by a dispensation remove all obstacles to his marriage[2], and that he would give the hat to the Archbishop of Rouen[3]. My answer will be found in a subsequent article where I shall speak of the faith of a prince, and how far he ought to keep it.
King Lewis therefore lost Lombardy by not having observed any of the precautions taken by those who have seized upon any sovereignty in which they wished to maintain themselves. Nothing is less miraculous than this event; on the contrary, nothing is more natural, more common, or more likely to happen. It was thus that I explained myself on this point to Cardinal D'Ambọise when Valentino (as the son of Pope Alexander was commonly called) occupied Romania. This Cardinal telling me that the Italians did not. know how to make war, I answered him, that the French knew nothing of politics, because if they. had, they would never have suffered the church to arrive at that state of greatness. Experience had proved that the increase of that power and that of Spain in Italy had been entirely owing to France, and that her ruin in that country was solely to be attribuțed to the same cause. From whence we may draw this general rule, which will never or very rarely fail, that the prince who procures the elevation of another power ruins his own. This new power is the offspring of address or force, and both those means mușt be viewed with, suspicion by him who has become powerful.
- ↑ Lords of Bologna.
- ↑ With Anne of Brittany. Nardi says on this head that Pope Alexander VI. and King Lewis XII. mutually and reciprocally took advantage of the ecclesiastical to acquire temporal power; Alexander to procure Romania for his son, Lewis to unite Britanny to his crown. [See Hist. of Florence.]
- ↑ Since Cardinal D'Amboise.