Name: The Prince
Author: Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli to the Magnificent Lorenzo de' Medici

Those who wish to win the favour of a prince usually come before him with the things they value most, or that they see please him most. So princes are often presented with horses, arms, cloth of gold, precious stones and similar ornaments worthy of their greatness. Wishing, then, to offer Your Magnificence some token of my devotion, I have found nothing among my possessions that I value so much as my knowledge of the actions of great men, learned by long experience of modern affairs and continual reading of ancient ones. I have pondered and examined these things with great care for a long time, and now I send them to Your Magnificence reduced to a small volume.

I have not decorated this work or filled it with long sentences, or pompous and magnificent words, or any of the outside charms with which many writers adorn their matter. I wanted it to be honoured by nothing except the variety of its matter and the seriousness of its subject.

Nor should it be thought presumptuous for a man of low and humble station to dare to discuss and lay down rules for the government of princes. Those who draw landscapes put themselves down in the plain to see the shape of the mountains and the high places, and put themselves high on the mountains to see the plains. In the same way, to know well the nature of peoples one must be a prince, and to know well the nature of princes one must be of the people.

Take this little gift, then, in the spirit in which I send it. If you read it carefully, you will find in it my earnest wish that you reach the greatness that fortune and your other qualities promise you. And if Your Magnificence should ever turn your eyes from the summit of your height toward these low places, you will see how undeservedly I endure a great and continual malice of fortune.

Chapter I. Quot sint genera principatuum et quibus modis acquirantur — How many kinds of principality there are, and how they are acquired

All states, all dominions that have had and have power over men, have been and are either republics or principalities. Principalities are either hereditary, where the ruler's family has long held them, or they are new. The new are either wholly new, as Milan was to Francesco Sforza, or they are like limbs added to the hereditary state of the prince who acquires them, as the kingdom of Naples is to the King of Spain. Dominions acquired in this way are either used to living under a prince or used to being free; and they are won either with the arms of others or with one's own, either by fortune or by virtù.

Chapter II. De principatibus hereditariis — Of hereditary principalities

I shall leave out any discussion of republics, because I have discussed them at length elsewhere. I shall turn only to principalities.

Hereditary states, used to the family of their prince, are much easier to keep than new ones. It is enough not to overstep the order of one's ancestors, and then to adapt to events as they come. A prince of ordinary diligence will always hold his state this way, unless some extraordinary and excessive force deprives him of it — and even then he will regain it at the first misfortune of the usurper. We have in Italy the Duke of Ferrara, who withstood the attacks of the Venetians in 1484 and of Pope Julius in 1510 for no other reason than that his family was ancient in that dominion. The natural prince has fewer reasons and less need to offend; so he is more loved; and unless extraordinary vices make him hated, his subjects will naturally wish him well. In the antiquity and continuity of a dominion the memories and the causes of innovation fade; for one change always leaves the notch on which to build another.

Chapter III. De principatibus mixtis — Of mixed principalities

But the difficulties lie in the new principality. First, if it is not entirely new but a limb added to an old state — so that the whole may be called mixed — its troubles arise from a natural difficulty found in all new principalities. Men gladly change their ruler believing they will better themselves, and this belief makes them take up arms against him. In this they deceive themselves, for they soon learn by experience that they have made things worse. That follows from another natural and ordinary necessity: a new prince must always offend those he has newly conquered, with soldiers and with the countless other injuries that follow a new conquest. So you have as enemies all those you have injured in taking the principality, and you cannot keep as friends those who put you there, since you cannot satisfy them as they expected, nor use strong medicines against them, being obliged to them. However strong a prince's armies, he always needs the goodwill of the inhabitants to enter a province.

That is why Louis XII, King of France, seized Milan quickly and lost it quickly, and the first time Duke Lodovico's own forces were enough to take it from him. For the people who had opened the gates, finding themselves deceived in their hopes, could not bear the burdens of the new prince.

When the newly acquired state is of the same province and the same language as the old, it is very easy to hold, especially if it is not used to freedom. It is enough to extinguish the line of the prince who ruled it, and in other things to keep their old conditions; for where customs do not differ, men live quietly, as Burgundy, Brittany, Gascony and Normandy have done for so long with France. Whoever acquires such states and wishes to keep them must do two things: wipe out the old prince's blood, and change neither their laws nor their taxes.

But when states are acquired in a province different in language, customs and laws, there the difficulties are, and great fortune and great industry are needed to keep them. One of the best remedies is for the conqueror to go and live there, as the Turk has done in Greece. Being on the spot, one sees disorders arise and can remedy them quickly; if one is absent, one hears of them only when they are great and past remedy. The other good remedy is to send colonies to one or two places that serve as fetters on that state. Colonies cost little, and they offend only those whose fields and houses are taken to give to the new settlers, who are a small part of the state; and those who are offended, being scattered and poor, can do no harm, while all the rest, being unharmed, keep quiet and are afraid of erring lest they be dispossessed in turn.

On this it should be noted that men ought either to be well treated or crushed. They avenge themselves for light injuries; for grave ones they cannot. So any injury one does to a man should be of such a kind that one does not fear his revenge.

The prince in such a province must also make himself the head and defender of the weaker neighbours, and contrive to weaken the powerful among them, and take care that no foreigner as strong as himself enters it by any accident. The Romans observed all this well in the provinces they took. They sent colonies, kept the weaker powers friendly without increasing their strength, put down the strong, and did not let powerful foreigners gain reputation there. Look only at Greece: the Romans kept the Achaeans and the Aetolians friendly, humbled the kingdom of Macedon, drove out Antiochus, and never let the merits of their friends earn them any growth, nor did the persuasions of Philip ever induce them to be his friends without first humbling him.

The Romans did what all wise princes should do, who must consider not only present troubles but future ones, and prepare against them with every skill. For when they are foreseen from afar, they are easily remedied; but if you wait until they are upon you, the medicine is too late, because the malady has become incurable. It is as the physicians say of a wasting fever: at the beginning it is easy to cure and hard to recognise, but in time, not having been recognised or treated at the start, it becomes easy to recognise and hard to cure. So it is in affairs of state. The Romans, seeing troubles from far off, always remedied them, and never let them grow to avoid a war, for they knew that war is not avoided but only put off to the advantage of others. Nor did they ever like the saying that is always on the lips of the wise men of our day — to enjoy the benefit of time — but rather that of their own virtù and prudence. For time sweeps everything before it, and can bring good as well as evil, and evil as well as good.

Consider France, then, and see whether it did any of these things. King Louis was brought into Italy by the ambition of the Venetians, who wanted to win half of Lombardy by his coming. Having taken Lombardy, the king at once regained the reputation Charles had lost. He might have kept it easily, had he followed the rules above. Instead he no sooner reached Milan than he did the opposite, helping Pope Alexander to occupy the Romagna. So the king made five errors: he destroyed the weaker powers; he increased the power of one who was already powerful in Italy, the Church; he brought in a very powerful foreigner, the King of Spain; he did not come to live there; and he sent no colonies. And these errors might not have harmed him while he lived, had he not made a sixth: taking their state from the Venetians.

When I spoke at Nantes with the Cardinal of Rouen, he told me that Italians do not understand war; I answered him that the French do not understand the state, because if they did, they would not have let the Church grow so great. From this we draw a general rule which never or rarely fails: whoever is the cause of another becoming powerful is ruined; for that power is produced either by skill or by force, and both are suspect to the one who has become powerful.

Chapter IV. Cur Darii regnum quod Alexander occupaverat a successoribus suis post Alexandri mortem non defecit — Why the kingdom of Darius, conquered by Alexander, did not rebel against his successors after his death

Some may wonder how, when Alexander the Great became lord of Asia in a few years and died soon after, his successors kept it, when it seemed reasonable that the whole state would rebel. I answer that principalities known to us are governed in two ways: either by a prince with servants, who as ministers by his grace and permission help to govern; or by a prince and barons, who hold their rank by the antiquity of their blood, not by the prince's grace, and have their own states and subjects who recognise them as lords. The examples in our time are the Turk and the King of France. The whole monarchy of the Turk is governed by one lord; the others are his servants, and he sends and changes his governors as he pleases. But the King of France is placed among a multitude of ancient lords, recognised and loved by their own subjects, who have their privileges, and the king cannot take these away without danger.

So whoever considers both states will find it difficult to conquer the Turk, but once conquered, very easy to hold. The opposite is true of France: you can enter it easily by winning over some baron of the kingdom, for there are always malcontents and men who want change; but if you want to hold it afterward, endless difficulties follow, both from those who helped you and from those you have crushed. Darius's government was like the Turk's. So Alexander had first to overthrow him completely; after which, Darius being dead, the state remained secure for Alexander, and his successors, had they been united, could have enjoyed it at their ease.

Chapter V. Quomodo administrandae sunt civitates vel principatus, qui, antequam occuparentur, suis legibus vivebant — How cities or principalities that lived under their own laws before they were taken should be governed

When states acquired are used to living under their own laws and in freedom, there are three ways to hold them. The first is to ruin them; the second, to go and live there in person; the third, to let them live by their own laws, taking a tribute from them and creating within them a government of a few who will keep them friendly to you.

The Spartans held Athens and Thebes by setting up governments of a few there; yet they lost them. The Romans, to hold Capua, Carthage and Numantia, destroyed them, and did not lose them. In truth there is no secure way to hold such places except to destroy them. For whoever becomes master of a city used to freedom and does not destroy it may expect to be destroyed by it, because in rebellion it always has as a refuge the name of liberty and its ancient orders, which neither length of time nor benefits ever make it forget. Whatever one does or provides, unless the inhabitants are divided or scattered, they do not forget that name or those orders, and at every opportunity they run back to them, as Pisa did after a hundred years of servitude to the Florentines.

Chapter VI. De principatibus novis qui armis propriis et virtute acquiruntur — Of new principalities acquired by one's own arms and virtù

Let no one marvel if, in speaking of wholly new principalities, I bring up the greatest examples. Men almost always walk in paths beaten by others and proceed in their actions by imitation. So a prudent man should always follow the paths of great men and imitate those who have been most excellent, so that if his own virtù does not reach theirs, at least it will have some smell of it. He should do as prudent archers do, who, when the target seems too far, aim much higher, not to reach that height with their arrow, but with the help of so high an aim to reach their mark.

The most excellent of those who became princes by their own virtù and not by fortune were Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus and the like. Examining their lives, we see that they had nothing from fortune but the opportunity, which gave them the material to shape into whatever form they pleased. Without the opportunity, their virtù would have been wasted; without their virtù, the opportunity would have come in vain. It was necessary for Moses to find the people of Israel enslaved in Egypt, so that they would be disposed to follow him; for Romulus not to be kept in Alba and to have been exposed at birth; for Cyrus to find the Persians discontented with the Medes; for Theseus to find the Athenians scattered.

Those who become princes by such paths acquire their principality with difficulty but keep it easily. The difficulties come partly from the new orders they must introduce. It should be considered that nothing is harder to handle, more doubtful of success, or more dangerous to manage than to make oneself the leader in introducing new orders. For the innovator has as enemies all who do well under the old orders, and only lukewarm defenders in all who might do well under the new — a lukewarmness that arises partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not truly believe in new things until they have had firm experience of them.

It is necessary, therefore, to ask whether these innovators stand by themselves or depend on others — that is, whether they must beg or can use force. In the first case they always come to grief; but when they can depend on themselves and use force, they are rarely in danger. Hence it is that all armed prophets have conquered, and the unarmed ones have been destroyed. For the nature of peoples is changeable; it is easy to persuade them of something, but hard to keep them in that persuasion. So things must be ordered so that when they no longer believe, they can be made to believe by force. Moses, Cyrus, Theseus and Romulus could not have made their constitutions observed for long if they had been unarmed — as in our own times happened to Brother Girolamo Savonarola, who was ruined in his new orders as soon as the multitude began not to believe in him, since he had no way of holding firm those who had believed nor of making the unbelievers believe.

To these high examples I want to add a lesser one, which will have some proportion with them: Hiero of Syracuse. From a private citizen he became prince of Syracuse, and he too had nothing from fortune but the opportunity. He dissolved the old militia and made a new one, left his old friendships and made new ones; and having friends and soldiers of his own, he could build any building on that foundation. So he endured great labour in acquiring and little in maintaining.

Chapter VII. De principatibus novis qui alienis armis et fortuna acquiruntur — Of new principalities acquired by the arms and fortune of others

Those who become princes from private men by fortune alone become so with little trouble but maintain themselves with much. They rest simply on the will and fortune of the one who has given them the state, two things most changeable and unstable; and they neither know how nor are able to hold that rank. States that come quickly, like all other things in nature that are born and grow fast, cannot have their roots and branches, so that the first bad weather kills them.

Of the two ways of becoming prince — by virtù or by fortune — I want to give two examples within our own memory: Francesco Sforza and Cesare Borgia. Francesco, by the proper means and with great virtù, rose from private man to Duke of Milan, and what he had acquired with a thousand toils he kept with little trouble. On the other side, Cesare Borgia, called by the people Duke Valentino, acquired his state through the fortune of his father and lost it with the same — even though he used every means and did everything a prudent and virtuous man should do to put down his roots in the states that the arms and fortune of others had given him.

Pope Alexander VI, wanting to make his son great, had many difficulties present and future. But by the coming of King Louis into Italy, which he helped by dissolving the King's first marriage, he got soldiers from him for the conquest of the Romagna. Having taken the Romagna and beaten the Colonna, the Duke wanted to hold it and go further; but two things stopped him: his own arms, which did not seem faithful to him, and the will of France. That is, he feared the Orsini soldiers he had used would fail him, and that the King would do the same. So the Duke decided no longer to depend on the arms and fortune of others. First he weakened the Orsini and Colonna parties in Rome by winning over all their gentlemen followers, giving them high pay and honours. Then, when the Orsini leaders, realising too late that his greatness meant their ruin, met at Magione, the Duke, by tricks and by reconciliations, managed so well that they came to him at Sinigaglia in their simplicity — where he had them killed.

Having taken the Romagna, he found it commanded by impotent lords who had sooner robbed their subjects than ruled them, so that the province was full of thefts, quarrels and every kind of insolence. He judged it necessary to give it good government, if he wanted to bring it to peace and obedience. So he put there Messer Remirro de Orco, a cruel and expeditious man, to whom he gave the fullest power. This man in a short time made it peaceful and united, with the greatest reputation. Then the Duke judged that so excessive an authority was no longer necessary, because he feared it would become hateful. He set up a civil court in the middle of the province, with an excellent president, where every city had its advocate. And because he knew that the past severities had generated some hatred against him, to purge the minds of the people and win them entirely, he wanted to show that if any cruelty had been done, it had not come from him but from the harsh nature of the minister. Seizing the occasion, he had Remirro placed one morning in the piazza at Cesena, cut in two, with a piece of wood and a bloody knife beside him. The ferocity of that spectacle left the people at once satisfied and stunned.