Mixed principality

Mixed principality denotes a state that is not wholly new but has been annexed to the long-established dominions of the prince who acquires it. Its defining difficulty is the unstable interval between conquest and incorporation. Subjects often believe that changing masters will improve their condition and may take up arms in that expectation, only to discover that the new ruler brings troops, administrative burdens, and other vexations. The conqueror, meanwhile, has injured those who resisted him without necessarily satisfying those who helped him, since supporters demand rewards that he may be unable to grant and obligations may prevent him from disciplining them. Military strength alone cannot solve this problem: a prince entering a new province must also obtain the goodwill of its inhabitants.

Definition and Initial Instability

A mixed principality differs from a hereditary state because the latter benefits from custom, continuity, and the fading of memories that once generated innovation. A prince born into a dynasty ordinarily has fewer occasions to offend and is therefore more likely to be loved, unless conspicuous vices make him hated. In a mixed principality, by contrast, the very act of acquisition disturbs the existing political order. One change leaves an opening for another, and the expectation of improvement that encouraged the first transfer of allegiance can quickly become disappointment.

The experience of Louis XII of France at Milan illustrates this reversal. He gained the city quickly, but lost it just as quickly; on its first capture, Ludovico Sforza was able to recover it with his own forces alone. The people who had opened the gates to the French king had expected future benefits and could not endure the arrogance of the new ruler when those expectations were disappointed. Once a state has rebelled and been reconquered, however, it is harder to lose in the same manner: the prince can use the rebellion to punish the guilty, try the suspected, and fortify the weak points of his rule. Thus the second recovery of Milan required a general coalition against France, and French armies were destroyed and driven from Italy. Even so, Louis XII of France lost Milan again, demonstrating that the suppression of one rebellion does not compensate for a defective system of retention.

Similar and Different Provinces

The easiest mixed principalities to retain are those whose people share the conqueror’s province and language, particularly when they have not been accustomed to freedom. The text points to Brittany, Burgundy, Gascony, and Normandy, long united to France despite slight linguistic differences, because their customs were sufficiently similar for their populations to live together. In such a territory, the new ruler is instructed to remove the bloodline of the former princes while leaving laws and taxes unchanged. Dynastic elimination prevents restoration, while institutional continuity allows the acquired province to become incorporated into the hereditary state rather than remaining visibly foreign.

Where language, usages, and laws differ, the difficulties multiply and require both good fortune and political skill. One of the most effective remedies is personal residence. The Turk’s hold over Greece is presented as an example: without living there himself, even alongside other precautions, he could not have preserved the province. Residence allows disorders to be detected at their beginning, when remedies remain available, instead of being discovered only after they have grown beyond cure. It also restrains officials from pillaging the province, gives subjects direct access to the prince, makes a well-disposed population more capable of loving him and a disaffected one more capable of fearing him, and makes foreign attack more hazardous. A prince who lives in the acquired province is correspondingly difficult to expel.

Another remedy is the establishment of colonies in one or two strategically useful places, turning them into keys to the province. Colonies cost little compared with a permanent army and are more faithful, while the people directly dispossessed of fields and houses form only a small, scattered, and impoverished part of the population. Those left untouched are easier to quiet and are warned against resistance by the fate of the dispossessed. By contrast, troops are expensive, consume the country’s revenues, and impose hardship wherever their quarters are moved. Because the entire population feels the burden, conquered enemies retain both resentment and the local power to cause harm. The governing principle is uncompromising: people must either be treated well or utterly crushed, since light injuries invite revenge whereas injuries too severe to avenge leave no comparable expectation of reprisal.

Regional Balance and Preventive Rule

A prince ruling a culturally distinct province must also become the head and protector of weaker neighbors while weakening stronger ones. He must prevent any foreign power as formidable as himself from entering, because discontented inhabitants may invite such a power through ambition or fear. Once a powerful stranger arrives, lesser states tend to join him voluntarily out of hostility toward the ruler who had previously kept them subordinate. These weaker powers therefore require little effort to win, but they must not be permitted to grow strong enough to become independent centers of opposition. With his own forces and their goodwill, the new prince can subdue the powerful and remain supreme; failure to manage this balance produces continuing trouble and eventual loss.

The Romans are offered as the exemplary practitioners of this method. In the territories they acquired, they planted colonies, conciliated weaker powers without increasing their strength, humbled the great, and prevented formidable strangers from gaining influence. In Greece they employed the Achaians and Aetolians, humbled the Macedonian monarchy, and drove Antiochus out. They did not allow the services of the Achaians and Aetolians to purchase an enlargement of their power, refused Philip friendship on terms that spared him humiliation, and rejected any arrangement that would permit Antiochus authority in the province. The Roman policy therefore combined local cooperation with strict limits on the political growth of allies.

This policy is also a doctrine of political timing. Disorders resemble a fever that is easy to cure at its beginning but difficult to recognize, then easy to recognize but impossible to cure once it has advanced. A sagacious ruler detects state troubles while they remain inchoate. The Romans consequently acted against Philip and Antiochus in Greece rather than waiting until they had to fight them in Italy. They refused to postpone war merely to enjoy temporary peace, because war is not avoided by delay; it is deferred to the advantage of the opposing side. Mixed principality thus demands foresight as much as force: remote dangers must be treated before geography, alliances, and accumulated resentment make them unmanageable.

The French Failure in Italy

The career of Louis XII of France is used as a sustained negative example. He entered Italy through the ambition of the Venetians, who hoped to obtain half of Lombardy. Although the alliance offered France a foothold in a country where the conduct of Charles VIII of France had left it without friends, Louis regained Lombardy and briefly recovered French political credit. Genoa submitted; the Florentines reached terms; the Marquis of Mantua, the Duke of Ferrara, the Bentivogli, the Countess of Forlì, the lords of Faenza, Pesaro, Rimini, Camerino, and Piombino, and the citizens of Lucca, Pisa, and Siena offered friendship. The Venetians, who had made the French king master of two-thirds of Italy in exchange for a couple of towns in Lombardy, had reason to regret the bargain.

Louis then reversed the logic required for retaining a foreign state. He strengthened the Church, deprived himself of friends, and divided the Kingdom of Naples with Ferdinand II of Aragon, thereby introducing into Italy a rival to whom ambitious and discontented subjects could turn. Instead of leaving a tributary king in Naples, he displaced him for another ruler strong enough to expel France. The partition of Lombardy with Venice might be defended as the price of gaining a foothold in Italy; the partition of Naples could not, because it was not required by the same necessity. If France could conquer Naples with its own forces, it should have done so; if it could not, it should not have divided the kingdom.

The text identifies six connected errors: Louis destroyed weaker states, strengthened an already powerful prince, introduced a powerful stranger, failed to reside in the acquired territory, failed to send colonies, and finally deprived the Venetians of their dominions. The last error became especially damaging because it followed the aggrandizement of the Church and the introduction of Spain into Italy. A powerful Venice would have restrained others from attacking Lombardy: it would not have accepted the enterprise unless made its master, while other powers would have been reluctant to seize Lombardy for Venice or to challenge both Venice and France. Louis’s concessions of Romagna to the pope and Naples to Spain were defended as measures to avoid war, but the analysis rejects that justification. War postponed is war transferred into a more dangerous future.

The judgment is sharpened by a conversation at Nantes with Georges d’Amboise, while Cesare Borgia was occupying Romagna. When the cardinal said that the Italians did not understand war, the reply was that the French did not understand statecraft, because they would never have allowed the Church to become so powerful. The subsequent course of events confirmed the charge: France itself had helped aggrandize both the Church and Spain in Italy, and those powers contributed to France’s ruin. The maxim attached to mixed principality is therefore relational rather than merely military: a ruler who makes another power great creates the instrument of his own undoing.

Free Cities, Popular Support, and Security

The problems of mixed principality become more severe when the acquired city has lived under its own laws and in freedom. Three methods are proposed: destroy it, reside there personally, or allow it to retain its laws while imposing tribute and entrusting administration to a small group of inhabitants dependent on the new prince. The third arrangement can work because the client government knows that it cannot survive without the conqueror’s protection and therefore has an interest in preserving his authority. Yet the general warning is severe: a free city remembers its liberty and ancient laws, and those memories can become the language of rebellion whenever the ruler suffers misfortune. Pisa’s uprising against the Florentines after a century of servitude shows that time and benefits do not necessarily erase political memory.

The histories of Sparta and Rome supply contrasting examples. The Spartans held Athens and Thebes by installing oligarchies but eventually lost them. The Romans destroyed Capua, Carthage, and Numantia and never lost them; when they attempted to hold Greece while leaving it free and governed by its own laws, they failed and had to destroy many cities before securing the province. A city accustomed to freedom can therefore be controlled only through destruction or direct residence. A city accustomed to princely rule is less dangerous after its ruling line has been extinguished: its citizens are used to obedience, do not know how to live as free people, and are slow to take up arms, making them more open to attachment by a foreign claimant. Republics possess greater vitality, fiercer hatred, and keener revenge because the memory of former freedom continues to animate resistance.

Mixed principality also depends on the social basis of authority. In a civil principality, a leading citizen becomes prince through the favor of fellow citizens rather than through crime or violence. Cities contain two opposed humors: the people wish not to be dominated or oppressed by the nobles, while the nobles wish to dominate and oppress the people. From this conflict arise principality, liberty, or license. The nobles may elevate one of their own when unable to withstand the people, using his authority as cover for their ambitions; the people may elevate a single citizen when unable to resist the nobles, seeking shelter under his power.

A prince raised by the nobles faces more difficulty than one raised by the people because many nobles consider themselves his equals and cannot be directed as easily. The prince supported by the people stands with few immediate rivals ready to obey, while noble demands cannot be met without injuring others and the people’s demand is principally that they not be oppressed. The prince must therefore preserve popular goodwill, especially in adversity. Nabis of Sparta defended his country and crown against the armies of Greece and a victorious Roman army, needing to guard himself against only a few subjects; hostile popular sentiment would have made that defense impossible. More broadly, well-ordered states keep the commons content and avoid driving the nobility into desperation, because a prince with friendly subjects has little to fear from conspiracies, whereas a hated ruler has reason to fear everyone.

Security has a material as well as a political dimension. A prince able to assemble an army with the men and money at his disposal can stand alone; one unable to take the field must withdraw behind fortified walls. Such a ruler should strengthen his towns and establish relations with subjects that prevent hatred. Fortifications, however, are not sufficient by themselves. The towns of Germany are difficult to reduce because they possess moats, ramparts, artillery, and public stores of food, drink, and fuel sufficient for a year; they also maintain common stocks of materials to support poorer citizens through their crafts and sustain military exercises. A mixed principality is secure only when institutional continuity, local dependence, popular acquiescence, strategic geography, and material defense reinforce one another.