how to use this first method, can with difficulty be brought to employ even the second.  This, as I said at the beginning, is the kind of blunder made by the princes of our times when they have to decide on matters of moment, from their not considering how those men acted who in ancient days had to determine under like conditions.  For the weakness of the present race of men (the result of their enfeebling education and their ignorance of affairs), makes them regard the methods followed by the ancients as partly inhuman and partly impracticable.  Accordingly, they have their own newfangled ways of looking at things, wholly at variance with the true, as when the sages of our city, some time since, pronounced that Pistoja was to be held by feuds and Pisa by fortresses, not perceiving how useless each of these methods is in itself.

Having spoken of fortresses already at some length, I shall not further refer to them here, but shall consider the futility of trying to hold subject cities by keeping them divided.  In the first place, it is impossible for the ruling power, whether prince or republic, to be friends with both factions.  For wherever there is division, it is human nature to take a side, and to favour one party more than another.  But if one party in a subject city be unfriendly to you, the consequence will be that you will lose that city so soon as you are involved in war, since it is impossible for you to hold a city where you have enemies both within and without.  Should the ruling power be a republic, there is nothing so likely to corrupt its citizens and sow dissension among them, as having to control a divided city.  For as each faction in that city will seek support and endeavour to make friends in a variety of corrupt ways, two very serious evils will result:  first, that the governed city will never be contented with its governors, since there can be no good government where you often change its form, adapting yourself to the humours now of one party and now of another; and next, that the factious spirit of the subject city is certain to infect your own republic.  To which Biondo testifies, when, in speaking of the citizens of Florence and Pistoja, he says, “In seeking to unite Pistoja the Florentines themselves fell out."[1] It is easy, therefore, to understand how much mischief attends on such divisions.  In the year 1501, when we lost Arezzo, and when all the Val di Tevere and Val di Chiana were occupied by the Vitelli and by Duke Valentino, a certain M. de Lant was sent by the King of France to cause the whole of the lost towns to be restored to the Florentines; who finding in all these towns men who came to him claiming to be of the party of the Marnocco[2], greatly blamed this distinction, observing, that if in France any of the king’s subjects were to say that he was of the king’s party, he would be punished; since the expression would imply that there was a party hostile to the king, whereas it was his majesty’s desire that all his subjects should be his friends and live united without any distinction of party.  But all these mistaken methods and opinions originate in the weakness of rulers, who, seeing that they cannot hold their States by their own strength and valour, have recourse to like devices; which, if now and then in tranquil times they prove of some slight assistance to them, in times of danger are shown to be worthless.