might then have felt better disposed towards you. And the event shows
that in times of adversity this very fortress of Milan has been of no
advantage whatever, either to the Sforzas or to the French; but, on the
contrary, has brought ruin on both, because, trusting to it, they did
not turn their thoughts to nobler methods for preserving that State.
Guido Ubaldo, duke of Urbino and son to Duke Federigo, who in his day
was a warrior of much renown, but who was driven from his dominions by
Cesare Borgia, son to Pope Alexander VI., when afterwards, by a sudden
stroke of good fortune, he was restored to the dukedom caused all the
fortresses of the country to be dismantled, judging them to be hurtful.
For as he was beloved by his subjects, so far as they were concerned he
had no need for fortresses; while, as against foreign enemies, he saw
he could not defend them, since this would have required an army kept
constantly in the field. For which reasons he made them be razed to the
ground.

When Pope Julius II. had driven the Bentivogli from Bologna, after
erecting a citadel in that town, he caused the people to be cruelly
oppressed by his governor; whereupon, the people rebelled, and he
forthwith lost the citadel; so that his citadel, and the oppressions to
which it led, were of less service to him than different behaviour
on his part had been. When Niccolo da Castello, the ancestor of the
Vitelli, returned to his country out of exile, he straightway pulled
down the two fortresses built there by Pope Sixtus IV., perceiving that
it was not by fortresses, but by the good-will of the people, that he
could be maintained in his government.

But the most recent, and in all respects most noteworthy instance, and
that which best demonstrates the futility of building, and the advantage
of destroying fortresses, is what happened only the other day in Genoa.