WHEN the old state is replaced by a new state, Machiavelli tells us, it is often a result of people wishing to better themselves through force of arms and then realising to their horror that they have, unwittingly, ushered in something far worse.

This is partly a result of another natural and common necessity, which is that those who have submitted to the new prince have to support his army and suffer infinite other hardships which he must put upon his new acquisition.

In other words, the new prince must strengthen his own position by ensuring that he has the necessary might to subject both the former administration and those among his allies who become disillusioned when he fails to live up to his promises. This can lead to a short-lived ‘acquisition’, as Machiavelli likes to describe it, that is then replaced by those whom they originally sought to conquer. Once back in power, the old state is quick to suppress those who had rebelled against them and it is rarely the case that it is overthrown for a second time. Moreover, if the old state is swept aside then the most successful transitions often rely on the existence of a a common heritage:

New additions to an ancient state are either of the same country and language, or they are not. When they are, it is easier to hold them, especially when they have not been accustomed to self-government. To hold them securely it is enough to have destroyed the family of the prince who was ruling them, because the two peoples preserving in other things the old conditions, and not being unlike in customs, will live quietly together.

Language, he argues, is rather less important than shared customs, whilst retaining economic stability and liquidating one’s dynastic rivals are also said to be crucial:

The prince who wishes to hold such additions, has only to bear in mind two considerations: first that the family of their former prince is destroyed, and second, that neither their laws nor their taxes are altered, so that in a very short time they will become entirely integrated in the old principality.

In addition, if the new ruler chooses to reside within the principality concerned then it will be easier for him to hang on to power. Machiavelli’s thoughts on ‘mixed’ settlement within a conquered territory, meanwhile, have distinctly colonialist undertones:

The other and better course is to establish settlements in one or two places which will tie the state to you. If you do not do this, you will have to keep part of your army there. A prince does not have to spend much on such settlements, for with little or no expense he can send the settlers there and keep them there.

Winning territory, he says, is also futile if newly-acquired state taxes have to go into maintaining an occupying force and therefore ethics do not enter into it. Furthermore, he believes that obtaining fresh territory should not lead the prince to become complacent:

The prince who holds a country differing in language, customs and law ought to make himself the head and defender of his less powerful neighbours. He should weaken the more powerful amongst them, taking care that no foreigner as powerful as himself shall, by any accident, get established there. It will always happen that some powerful foreigner will be invited in by those who are unhappy with the prince, either through excess of ambition or through fear.

Machiavelli compares the statesmanship of Imperial Rome to that of the Venetians who, having invited King Louis XII (1462-1515) of France to Italy on account of their intention to gain control of a sizeable portion of Lombardy, embarked upon such a profound display of mismanagement by having failed to help Louis gain a decent political, economic and military foothold in their territory, that the King went on to forge a series of disastrous alliances with their hostile neighbours:

Only then the Venetians realized the foolishness of the course taken by them. In order that they might secure two towns in Lombardy, they had made the king master of two-thirds of Italy.

Louis himself was also guilty of poor statesmanship in that by weakening some of the other Italian principalities he inadvertently increased the power of the Church. As a result, he was eventually forced to relinquish Lombardy altogether. Keeping the ambitious designs of the Church at bay, therefore, is another key part of the Machiavellian modus operandi.

Frederick’s thoughts on mixed principalities are as follows. He begins by comparing his own eighteenth-century world to that of the ‘cruelty’ in sixteenth-century Italy, although his remarks do seem rather exaggerated in terms of the amount of time that he spent fighting on the battlefield:

Now, gentleness and fairness win respect, and is considered good statecraft; I see that people prefer a humane ruler to one with the qualities of a conqueror, both bad and good. The insanity which praised and therefore encouraged the cruel passions, which caused the upheaval of the world, is gone.

Sadly, of course, the nature of man is such that these things will never disappear from the world completely and in that sense Frederick’s suggestion is both naive and unrealistic. Nonetheless, he continues by questioning Machiavelli’s bizarre obsession with power for power’s sake:

I ask: what can sustain a man that seeks power for the sake of power? And what incentives can such a man, intent on raising his own power on the misery and the destruction of other men, offer others? How can these others believe that the misery will only be suffered by only the “losers”?

Indeed, is is certainly the case that Machiavelli’s lack of empathy fails to take into consideration anything other than what happens within the upper echelons of society. The wars that take place between rival dynasties and princes are often viewed in complete isolation to that which affects the people on the ground. Machiavelli also seems to place too much emphasis on the alleged interest of the conquerors themselves:

The new conquests of a sovereign do not make the States which he has already more opulent or rich; the people do not benefit from it, and he is mistaken if he thinks that expanding his borders will satisfy him. How many princes, at the urging of their Generals, conquer provinces which they never see? These conquests are in some way imaginary; they have only little reality for the princes who made them.

This infatuation with power, he argues, is merely a figment of Machiavelli’s own imagination. A prince should also be judged on his own actions, not on the basis of how much territory he acquires. According to Frederick, one must also consider the moral dimension and he reacts with indignation at Machiavelli’s suggestion that the family of the conquered ruler should be slaughtered:

It is to stomp on all that is saintly and regal in the world; it is to permit those who have the interest to take the path of all crimes. What if an ambitious usurper seized violently the States of a Prince: does this give him the right to assassinate, to poison? To murder wholesale? But this same conqueror, acting as Machiavel recommends, introduces a precedent into the world which can lead only to ruin: another more ambitious and more “skilful” than him, will use it in retaliation, will invade his States, and will kill him and all of his own “line” with the same kind of cruelty with which he killed his predecessors.

Frederick is absolutely correct in that such mindless cycles of violence rarely end with the latest princely imposition and he employs an entire succession of historical examples to prove his point. Morality, he claims, is becoming more widespread, leading to more peaceful times. Again, this does not ring true with his own personal record as a military campaigner but it nonetheless displays the kind of subjectively modernist mindset that went hand-in-hand with the so-called Enlightenment.

Frederick is less critical of Machiavelli’s claim that a new prince should go and live in the conquered territory in order to secure it, but points out that such developments often lead to the collapse of the centre and the inevitable strengthening of the periphery at the expense of the core. As far as the present writer is concerned, decentralisation of this kind is extremely positive, but the German sovereign obviously had other ideas and was aware, for example, that sending troops to occupy foreign soil led to far less security at home. Not to mention the cost, as Machiavelli also highlights.

Turning now to Machiavelli’s thoughts on how to win the support of those rulers surrounding the new territory, Frederick finds it difficult to believe that a prince of the Machiavellian kind would be able to have a positive effect when his own strategy is so underhand. The superior man would lead by example:

His prudence would make him the father of his subjects, and not their oppressor; he would be their protector, not their destroyer!

Assassination, usurpation, violence and injustice are each dismissed by Frederick as methods which lead to disaster. Not simply for those on the receiving end of the new master, but also for the master himself when he finds that he has sown the seeds of his own destruction:

To turn the art of reasoning against the good of humanity is to be wounded, or die, by the sword which is given to us only for self-defence.

TO BE CONTINUED…