Charles VII's establishment of a national army is significant because it embodies the book's central distinction between power rooted in a ruler's own subjects and power borrowed from outsiders. After Charles VII freed France from the English through good fortune and valor, he issued ordinances regulating the service of both men-at-arms and foot soldiers throughout the kingdom. The measure gave France a nationally organized military basis rather than leaving its security to mercenaries or auxiliaries. In the book's argument, this was the sound foundation from which durable political strength could have developed.

Reform and National Organization

Charles VII's reform followed a period in which France needed more than battlefield success. His ordinances did not merely gather soldiers for a particular campaign; they regulated military service across the kingdom, incorporating both mounted men-at-arms and infantry into a national system. The reform therefore connected military obligation to the realm itself, making defense less dependent on temporary contracts or the favor of another power.

The importance of this arrangement becomes clearer beside the book's broader account of states and conquest. A prince must lay solid foundations, and those foundations consist principally of good laws and good arms. Because laws cannot be securely maintained without arms, military organization is not an accessory to government but one of its conditions. Charles VII's ordinances represented an attempt to give France the kind of internal force on which political security could rest.

The Contrast with Foreign Troops

The later reversal of Charles VII's policy supplies the event's sharpest historical contrast. Louis XI abolished the national infantry and began hiring Swiss mercenaries. Subsequent princes followed this error, and the consequences reached beyond the army itself: the reputation of the Swiss was enhanced while France's national troops deteriorated. French men-at-arms became dependent on foreign assistance and grew accustomed to believing that they could accomplish nothing without the Swiss.

The result was a mixed army, partly national and partly mercenary. Such forces were judged superior to purely mercenary or purely auxiliary armies, but inferior to a force that was entirely national. The judgment is not simply about military composition; it concerns dependence. A mixed army may possess immediate strength, yet its effectiveness is compromised when the national component has learned to rely on an external force. The French example thus shows how a seemingly useful alteration can create a hidden weakness that becomes visible only under pressure.

The Principle of National Arms

The event is placed within a wider condemnation of mercenary and auxiliary forces. Mercenaries are described as disunited, ambitious, insubordinate, treacherous, insolent toward friends, and cowardly before enemies. Their only binding motive is pay, so they may serve in peace but disappear when war is declared. Their captains create a second danger: if capable, they may seek their own aggrandizement against the prince's interests; if incapable, they may bring ruin through incompetence.

Auxiliaries are more dangerous in another way. They are brought in by a foreign ruler, remain united, and are controlled by their own officers. If defeated, the prince who summoned them is undone; if victorious, he may become their prisoner. The examples of Pope Julius II and the Florentines illustrate the peril of surrendering military initiative to outsiders, while the Turkish troops summoned into Greece remained after the war and helped begin Greece's servitude to the Infidel.

Against both forms of dependence, the book sets national arms: soldiers composed of subjects, citizens, and dependents. Wise princes prefer defeat with their own forces to victory won through foreign aid, because borrowed victory is not secure victory. Cesare Borgia's progression from French auxiliaries, to mercenaries drawn from the Orsini and Vitelli, and finally to troops of his own raising is used to show that his reputation increased as he became sole master of his forces. The same principle appears in Hiero of Syracuse, who destroyed an unusable mercenary force and thereafter made war with native soldiers alone.

Consequences and Historical Judgment

Charles VII's achievement is therefore remembered not as an isolated administrative reform but as a missed institutional path. The book argues that France would have been invincible had the military ordinances of Charles VII been retained and extended. Their abandonment allowed foreign dependence to become embedded in the kingdom's military practice, weakening the national forces that the ordinances had sought to organize.

The argument also gives the reform a broader historical reach. Without national arms, a principality is dependent on Fortune because it lacks the strength to defend itself in adversity. Reputation for power that is not founded on a national army is described as infirm and fleeting. The Roman Empire's decline is likewise traced to the employment of Gothic mercenaries, after which Roman strength waned and military virtue passed to the Goths. Charles VII's ordinances thus stand as the positive counterpart to these failures: they demonstrate how a ruler may convert military service into durable state capacity, while their abandonment demonstrates how quickly that capacity can be surrendered to foreign soldiers.

Narrative and Political Significance

Within the book's comparative method, the reform functions as a test case for the difference between temporary success and durable power. Alexander the Great could hold the kingdom of Darius because its centralized structure allowed conquest to be completed through the defeat of the ruling power; Cesare Borgia's reputation grew when he moved toward forces under his own command; and Charles VII's France possessed, in its national army, the basis for security that later rulers weakened. These cases differ in time and setting, but they are joined by the same political question: whether authority is supported by institutions the ruler controls or by forces whose loyalty belongs elsewhere.

The episode also illustrates a recurring logic in the book: changes that seem advantageous at first may conceal a future poison. Hiring Swiss troops could appear practical, but it weakened French infantry, increased dependence among the men-at-arms, and left France unable to match the Swiss without them. The reform of Charles VII therefore matters both for what it established and for what later rulers discarded. Its unrealized possibility gives the episode its final irony: France possessed the military foundation of invincibility, yet failed to preserve and extend it.