Pesaro is mentioned as one of the Italian lordships that approached Louis XII with offers of friendship after the French recovery of Lombardy. Its importance lies less in a narrated local history than in the political pattern it exemplifies: a newly successful foreign power could rapidly attract the allegiance of smaller states, yet could lose the advantage if it failed to protect and consolidate those relationships.

Appearance in the Italian Political Landscape

Pesaro is listed alongside Mantua, Ferrara, Forlì, Faenza, Rimini, Camerino, and Piombino, as well as Lucca, Pisa, and Siena, among the places that came forward after Louis XII recovered Lombardy. The sequence presents a broad movement of diplomatic realignment. Once French arms restored the reputation that Charles VIII had lost, cities and ruling houses that had previously been uncertain or vulnerable saw advantage in attaching themselves to the successful king.

Pesaro therefore belongs to the class of smaller Italian powers whose position depended heavily on the balance among France, Venice, the Church, and other stronger states. The text does not describe its institutions, population, or military actions separately; it uses the city as evidence of how quickly political allegiance could follow a change in military reputation.

The Offer of Friendship to Louis XII

The offer from Pesaro forms part of a collective response to French success. Genoa submitted, Florence reached terms, and numerous lords and cities offered friendship. This response shows the immediate political yield of recovering Lombardy: Louis XII gained not only territory but also credit, recognition, and the appearance of a widening circle of allies.

The Venetian role gives the episode its irony. Venice had encouraged Louis XII to enter Italy in the hope of acquiring part of Lombardy, but the resulting French advance made the Venetians regret their bargain. Pesaro's inclusion in the list of friendly powers thus helps show how a single campaign altered the calculations of nearly every Italian state. Allegiance was presented as a response to changing power rather than as evidence of permanent loyalty.

Strategic Significance of the City

Pesaro's significance becomes clearest in the narrator's criticism of Louis XII's subsequent policy. The king could, in the narrator's judgment, have secured himself by protecting the weak and fearful allies who had been forced to rely on him. Their number could have made him safe against another powerful state. Instead, once in Milan, he assisted Pope Alexander in occupying Romagna, thereby alienating friends who had placed themselves under French protection while adding temporal power to the Church's existing spiritual authority.

Although Pesaro is not named again in the immediate criticism, its earlier appearance makes the general argument concrete. It represents the kind of smaller state whose friendship could have strengthened French authority if treated as a political asset. By helping the Church expand, Louis XII weakened the very network of dependent allies that the Lombard victory had brought within his reach.

Place in the Book's Comparative Argument

Pesaro is also part of a larger method of historical comparison. The discussion contrasts Louis XII's difficulties in retaining Italy with Alexander the Great's success in holding the former kingdom of Darius. Alexander faced a centralized state in which authority was concentrated in the prince and his servants; after Darius's defeat and death, there were no powerful hereditary lords able to organize resistance, apart from disputes created by Alexander's successors themselves.

France, by contrast, is used as an example of a kingdom containing established barons with their own authority, subjects, and inherited claims. Such political structures could make conquest easy when a dissatisfied lord opened the way, but they made preservation difficult because surviving nobles could lead new movements. Pesaro belongs to the Italian field in which these shifting local powers mattered: the city helps evoke a landscape where foreign rulers needed not merely to conquer territory but to manage a multitude of local allegiances.

The city is finally connected to the book's broader contrast between dependent friendship and secure self-command. In the discussion of Cesare Borgia, French auxiliaries first helped him take Imola and Forlì, while mercenary forces associated with the Orsini and Vitelli later proved fickle and treacherous; his reputation increased when he relied on troops of his own. Pesaro itself is not described as a military base or battlefield, but its place among the Italian states offered friendship reinforces the same principle: power gained through others' temporary calculations must be converted into durable authority, or it remains exposed to the next reversal of Fortune.