Naples is treated not merely as a conquered territory but as a test of how a prince should manage expansion, rivalry, and political dependence. Its decisive significance lies in the way Louis XII of France handled it: instead of conquering and holding the Kingdom of Naples with French strength alone, he divided it with Ferdinand II of Aragon, thereby importing into Italy a rival strong enough to threaten his entire position.

Naples in the Structure of Conquest

Naples appears within an argument about composite states and the dangers that follow the acquisition of territories unlike a ruler’s hereditary dominions. A newly acquired province is easier to retain when its language, customs, and laws resemble those of the prince’s existing lands; where those conditions differ, the conqueror needs unusual fortune and political skill. The general remedies proposed include residence in the acquired country, the establishment of colonies, and the preservation or deliberate alteration of local institutions according to the political character of the territory.

The same analysis distinguishes between states that have lived under a prince and cities or provinces accustomed to freedom. A population long trained to obey may remain politically inert after its ruling line is extinguished, whereas a free community preserves a vigorous memory of its former laws and liberty. Naples is not described through a single local constitutional portrait in these passages, but its position in the discussion is unmistakably strategic: it is a major acquisition whose management affects the balance of power throughout Italy.

The Partition by France and Spain

Louis XII of France sought to possess the Kingdom of Naples but chose to divide it with Ferdinand II of Aragon. This decision differed fundamentally from the earlier partition of Lombardy with the Venetians, which could be defended as a necessary means of gaining a foothold in Italy. The division of Naples, by contrast, was not compelled by an equivalent necessity. If France possessed sufficient strength to attack Naples alone, it should have done so; if it lacked that strength, it should not have divided the kingdom in a way that created a powerful competitor.

The immediate political consequence was the displacement of a king who might have remained willing to hold Naples as a tributary. In his place came a ruler strong enough to help expel France. The error therefore lay not simply in sharing territory but in installing, within Italy, an independent power capable of attracting the ambitious and discontented. Naples became a source of leverage for opponents of French authority, rather than a secure extension of French power.

Naples and the Collapse of French Power

The Neapolitan decision formed part of a larger chain of mistakes. Louis XII of France had weakened lesser states, strengthened the Church by assisting Pope Alexander VI in occupying Romagna, alienated friends who had sought French protection, failed to reside in Italy, and neglected the use of colonies as instruments of control. By dividing Naples with Spain, he added a powerful stranger to a country where France had previously been supreme. By later diminishing Venice, he removed another state that might have restrained attempts against Lombardy.

Naples thus exposes the difference between acquisition and possession. The desire to acquire territory is natural, and attempts within a ruler’s power may deserve praise; but an attempt beyond his power produces both misfortune and blame. The French king’s ambition in Naples gave Spain an Italian foothold and enabled forces hostile to France to find support there. The kingdom consequently became one of the principal sites through which French supremacy was converted into vulnerability.

The broader principle drawn from the episode is that a ruler who creates another power’s greatness prepares his own ruin. France helped enlarge both the Church and Spain in Italy, and those strengthened powers contributed to France’s destruction. Naples is therefore significant less as an isolated possession than as the decisive example of how an apparently profitable alliance can rearrange the political field against the initiator.

Naples in the Book’s Historical Comparisons

The discussion of Naples belongs to a comparative method that sets different conquests beside one another. Alexander the Great’s conquest of Asia could be preserved with relative ease because the kingdom of Darius III resembled a centralized monarchy: once Darius was defeated and died, no independent baronial structure remained capable of organizing sustained resistance. Alexander’s successors faced disorder chiefly because of their own ambition and mutual jealousy.

Other acquisitions present a different problem. States resembling France, with powerful hereditary lords and established subordinate rulers, can be entered through the assistance of dissatisfied elites but are much harder to hold afterward. The conqueror must contend both with those who helped him and with those whom he displaced. The examples of Spain, Gaul, and Greece under Roman rule show that repeated risings persisted while the memory of their former princes remained strong; only prolonged Roman authority gradually extinguished that political memory.

The comparison makes Naples part of a general theory rather than a local anecdote. Its fate demonstrates that military success does not guarantee political security, and that the constitutional structure, local loyalties, and surrounding balance of power determine whether a conquest becomes durable or turns into an invitation to intervention.

Naples in the Final Appeal for Italy

Near the close of the work, Italy is depicted as more enslaved than the Hebrews in Egypt, more oppressed than the Persians under the Medes, and more divided than the Athenians before Theseus. The country is described as beaten, plundered, dismembered, overrun, and abandoned. Within this catalogue of suffering, Lombardy bears devastation, while Naples and Tuscany suffer exactions and imposts that have become enduring wounds.

Naples therefore reappears not only as an object of dynastic competition but also as evidence of Italy’s broader political misery. The territory’s exploitation is joined to the devastation of Lombardy and the burdens imposed upon Tuscany, producing a national landscape without a head or order. The appeal that follows calls upon an illustrious Italian house to become a deliverer, arguing that the justice and necessity of such a war would make the cause sacred and that Italy is ready to follow any standard raised for its rescue. In this final perspective, Naples embodies the costs of foreign rivalry and misrule, while its suffering helps establish the urgency of political unification and liberation.