Nantes

Nantes appears in the book not as a developed landscape but as the site of a revealing political exchange. Its decisive significance lies in the conversation held there between the narrator and Georges d’Amboise: while Cesare Borgia was occupying Romagna, d’Amboise remarked that the Italians did not understand war, and the narrator answered that the French did not understand statecraft. Nantes therefore becomes a point from which the text interprets the wider collapse of French power in Italy.

The Conversation at Nantes

The exchange took place while Cesare Borgia, commonly known as Duke Valentino, was occupying Romagna. The immediate subject was a contrast between Italian military weakness and French political judgment. Georges d’Amboise argued that the Italians lacked understanding of war; the narrator turned the criticism back upon France, claiming that the French lacked understanding of statecraft. Nantes thus frames a reversal of national accusation: military ineptitude is set against the inability to recognize and manage political power.

The conversation is presented retrospectively as evidence whose importance became clearer with subsequent events. The narrator states that France allowed the Church to grow powerful, and that the later aggrandizement of the Church and Spain in Italy was brought about by France itself. The exchange at Nantes consequently functions less as an isolated anecdote than as a remembered diagnosis of a strategic error already visible in the conduct of French policy.

Political Lessons Drawn from the Exchange

The Nantes discussion is connected to the broader argument about acquiring and retaining new territories. States joined to an existing dominion are easier to hold when they share language, customs, and laws with the old territory; in such cases, the new ruler must preserve laws and taxes and extinguish the former ruling line. By contrast, provinces differing in language, usages, and laws require greater fortune and address. Residence by the conquering Prince, the establishment of colonies, or other means of securing local obedience becomes necessary because distant rulers discover disorders only after they have become difficult to cure.

The same analysis distinguishes governments organized around a single Prince and dependent ministers from kingdoms surrounded by hereditary Barons. In a centralized system, authority is concentrated in the sovereign, and the ruler’s officers possess no independent affection among the people. In a baronial system, powerful nobles can open the country to an invader and later lead resistance against the conqueror. The distinction explains why Alexander the Great could secure the kingdom of Darius after defeating him completely, while acquisitions resembling France were more difficult to retain because surviving Lords could organize new movements.

Nantes and the Failure of French Expansion

The conversation bears directly on France’s conduct in Italy. The book argues that Louis XII of France lost Lombardy because he did not follow the methods by which successful conquerors secure newly acquired provinces. He weakened or destroyed smaller States, strengthened an already powerful Prince, introduced a powerful foreign presence, failed to reside in the conquered country, and failed to establish colonies. He also helped enlarge the Church and brought Spain into Italy, while depriving Venice of its dominions.

These decisions transformed temporary victories into lasting danger. France ceded Romagna to Pope Alexander VI and Naples to Spain in the hope of avoiding war, but the book insists that war cannot truly be avoided by such concessions; it is merely postponed to the disadvantage of the side that yields. The political exchange at Nantes anticipates this conclusion. France’s problem was not simply that its soldiers or enemies were stronger, but that its rulers failed to understand how concessions, alliances, territorial arrangements, and the enlargement of rival powers would alter the entire balance of Italy.

The book condenses the lesson into a general axiom: he who causes another’s greatness is himself undone. A ruler who raises a new power must rely either on address or force, and either method arouses distrust in the person elevated. Nantes is therefore associated with the recognition that French policy had helped create the forces that later destroyed French influence: the Church and Spain became stronger through French action, and France was ruined by the powers whose growth it had enabled.

Place in the Book’s Comparative Method

Nantes belongs to the book’s wider method of reasoning through paired and contrasting examples. The discussion moves from France and Italy to the kingdom of Darius and the conquests of Alexander the Great, then to the differing political structures represented by the Turk and the King of France. It also compares the treatment of free cities: the Spartans held Athens and Thebes through oligarchies but eventually lost them, whereas Rome destroyed Capua, Carthage, and Numantia and thereby never lost them.

The location is consequently important through association rather than physical description. Nantes anchors a remembered conversation, but that conversation opens onto a chain of historical comparisons involving Alexander the Great, Louis XII of France, Cesare Borgia, and Hiero II of Syracuse. In each case, the governing question is whether conquest is supported by durable foundations, native forces, political intelligence, and an accurate reading of the institutions and loyalties of the acquired State. Nantes marks the moment at which the narrator’s criticism of French statecraft is crystallized before the historical consequences are fully displayed.