MACHIAVELLI believes that there are three ways to dominate a conquered people which has become used to its own specific codes of practice:

The first is to ruin them, the next is to reside there in person, the third is to permit them to live under their own laws, drawing a regular payment from the state, and establishing within it a governing group which will keep it friendly to you.

Given that the principality is not ‘ruined’, to use Machiavelli’s expression, the objective is either to demand tribute or manipulate the existing state from within. This, he believes, would command the loyalty of those who have been subjected to foreign rule. In reality, of course, unless they wished to see the eradication of their own governmental and judicial customs they would have very little choice. Once again, Machiavelli attempts to sway his readers by furnishing his argument with another selective history lesson:

There are, for example, the Spartans and the Romans. The Spartans held Athens and Thebes, establishing there a governing group, nevertheless they lost them. The Romans, in order to hold Capua, Carthage, and Numantia largely destroyed them, and did not lose them. They wished to hold Greece as the Spartans held it, making it free and permitting its laws, and did not succeed. So to hold it they were forced to destroy many cities in the country. There was, in fact, no safe way to retain them otherwise than by ruining them.

The logical outcome of Machiavelli’s theories are that in order for a new ruler to retain power all traces of freedom on the part of the host nation must be extinguished. Only by scattering any resistance to the four corners of the earth will he ensure that the cherished values of a vanquished principality will be incapable of ever reforming at a later date. Machiavelli repeats his claim that if a prince’s family is destroyed, those who followed him will be incapable of choosing a new prince from among themselves and therefore the potential for rebellion can be more easily contained. The newly-arrived prince, on the other hand, will step into the void and command their obedience. If not, then wholesale destruction is the only option.

Unsurprisingly, Frederick has little time for Machiavelli’s characteristic ruthlessness and provides a fitting anecdote of his own:

An Englishman had the insanity to kill himself a few years ago in London; on his table was found a note where he justified his action, which said that this way, he would never become sick again. Here is the case of a prince who ruins a State not to lose it.

Without doubt, this reference to ‘insanity’ is no accident and the German is keen to remove Machiavelli’s uncompromising ideas from the contextual sanctity of rational debate. Anti-Machiavel, therefore, clearly betrays a very personal animosity towards its subject:

I do not speak about humanity with Machiavel, for it would desecrate the species; one can refute Machiavel without appeal to ideals. And also destroy the heart of his book, this devil-god of his policy, and the crime it advocates.

Frederick suggests that whilst his sixteenth-century opponent is busy advocating the murder of a principality’s citizenry, he has failed to explain why the principality was worth seizing in the first place. A prospective ruler does not invade an empty desert, because it contains nothing of value. A principality, however, is valuable in terms of its inhabitants and that is what the invader is really seeking. To destroy them, therefore, is to completely defeat the object. Natural resources are one thing, but a sizeable array of prospective taxpayers another:

The force of a State does not consist in the extent of a country, nor in the possession of a vast loneliness, or of an immense desert of any terrain, but in the richness of its people, and their number. The interest of a prince is thus to populate a country, to make it flourish, and not to devastate it and to destroy it. If the spite of Machiavel makes for horror, its reasoning makes for pity, the kind a ruler feels for his overly patriotic surveyors – or for the man who can justify every action as a success.

Frederick II then dissects Machiavelli’s claim that, by residing in the principality concerned, the new prince can effectively strengthen his grip on the territory. In the view of the former, if the victorious ruler fails to restore the freedom of the common people – even in the event that he is forced to occupy the country with a large number of troops – then the invasion itself can never be justified. This, particularly in light of the fact that an invasion may sometimes become necessary to keep the peace, seems pretty self-explanatory. Machiavelli, as always, is more concerned with power than with its application as a force for good.

TO BE CONTINUED…