Germany is presented not as a single episode of conquest but as a political and geographical example. Its fortified towns embody the organized strength that Italy lacks, while its local freedoms and material preparations demonstrate how a community can make itself difficult to subdue. In the book’s wider argument, Germany links the practical defense of cities with the broader problem of resisting Fortune through foresight, infrastructure, and disciplined civic institutions.

Fortified Cities and Political Autonomy

The towns of Germany are described as enjoying considerable freedom. Their territorial extent is small, and they obey the Emperor only when they choose to do so; neither the Emperor nor neighboring powers is treated as an overwhelming authority. Their independence is therefore supported by more than custom or political preference. It rests on a defensive system that makes coercion costly and uncertain.

Each town is protected by moats and suitable ramparts and possesses artillery sufficient to make an assault difficult. Public magazines are continually stocked with food, drink, and fuel enough to sustain the population for a year. The towns thus transform endurance into a political weapon: an enemy cannot assume that a siege will quickly break the defenders or that scarcity will force an early surrender.

Civic Provision and Military Readiness

Germany’s towns also prepare for prolonged crisis by supporting poorer citizens without placing the full burden on public finances. They maintain a common stock of materials on which poorer inhabitants can work for a year in the handicrafts that sustain urban life. Defensive organization therefore includes economic provision. The city is not merely a wall enclosing soldiers; it is a social body equipped to keep its population active and supplied during interruption and danger.

Military exercises and regulations for maintaining them form another part of this civic structure. The towns’ strength comes from the coordination of fortifications, stored supplies, productive labor, and military discipline. This combination makes the city harder to isolate politically as well as harder to reduce by force. A ruler or governing authority that possesses such a town can discourage attack because the prospective assailant must confront both the walls and the organized capacity of the inhabitants to endure.

Germany as a Contrast with Italy

Germany’s most important narrative function emerges in its contrast with Italy. Italy is described as a field without embankment or barrier, exposed to the violent changes brought by Fortune. Germany, France, and Spain, by contrast, are invoked as places guarded with sufficient skill. Had Italy possessed comparable defenses, the inundation of political upheaval would not have produced such sweeping transformations.

The image of Germany as protected terrain extends the book’s larger comparison between natural disaster and political instability. Fortune resembles a wild torrent that overwhelms plains, sweeps away trees and houses, and shifts soil from one bank to another. Yet torrents can be redirected by weirs and channels, and political powers can similarly reduce devastation by constructing organized resistance before the flood arrives. Germany represents that anticipatory barrier: its towns make danger difficult to convert into conquest.

Strategic and Political Significance

The example of Germany supports the principle that a ruler’s strength should be measured by the ability to stand alone. A power capable of taking the field against an assailant has one kind of security; a weaker power that cannot meet its enemies outside must compensate by fortifying its towns and maintaining the goodwill of its subjects. Germany’s cities illustrate the second form of security. Their defenses make an attacker proceed cautiously because a well-fortified town, especially one whose inhabitants do not hate its ruler, presents no easy opening.

The example also clarifies the relationship between physical defense and political legitimacy. Fortifications alone cannot guarantee safety if the population is hostile. A besieged ruler must be able to sustain loyalty through hope, fear of the enemy’s cruelty, and the management of internal complaints. Germany’s towns are therefore significant not simply because they have walls, artillery, and supplies, but because their defensive arrangements are joined to civic discipline and collective participation.

Place in the Book’s Theory of Rule

Germany belongs to the book’s recurring geography of statecraft, in which language, law, custom, settlement, military force, and political memory determine whether a newly acquired territory can be retained. Provinces differing in language, usages, and laws require residence, colonies, protection of weaker neighbors, and the weakening of stronger powers. Free cities pose a special danger because the memory of their old laws and liberty can revive rebellion. Germany’s fortified towns do not erase these political problems, but they show how institutions and material preparedness can give a community lasting resistance.

The example ultimately favors foresight over reliance on changing circumstances. Political disorders, like illness, are easiest to remedy while still remote and difficult to cure once they have become obvious. The Romans are praised for acting before distant threats matured, and Germany supplies a spatial image of the same wisdom. Its towns have prepared stores, barriers, weapons, and civic systems before the siege begins. Germany thus stands as a practical emblem of organized strength: not a guarantee against Fortune, but a demonstration that Fortune is most destructive where no barrier has been built.