Such are the evils that befall when you withhold arms from your
subjects; and this course is attended by the still greater disadvantage,
that the closer an enemy presses you the weaker he finds you. For any
one who follows the evil methods of which I speak, must, in order to
support troops whom he thinks can be trusted to keep off his enemies, be
very exacting in his dealings with those of his subjects who dwell in
the heart of his dominions; since, to widen the interval between himself
and his enemies, he must subsidize those princes and peoples who adjoin
his frontiers. States maintained on this footing may make a little
resistance on their confines; but when these are passed by the enemy no
further defence remains. Those who pursue such methods as these seem not
to perceive that they are opposed to reason and common sense. For the
heart and vital parts of the body, not the extremities, are those which
we should keep guarded, since we may live on without the latter, but
must die if the former be hurt. But the States of which I speak, leaving
the heart undefended, defend only the hands and feet. The mischief which
has thus been, and is at this day wrought in Florence is plain enough
to see. For so soon as an enemy penetrates within her frontiers, and
approaches her heart, all is over with her. And the same was witnessed a
few years ago in the case of the Venetians, whose city, had it not been
girdled by the sea, must then have found its end. In France, indeed, a
like result has not been seen so often, she being so great a kingdom
as to have few enemies mightier than herself. Nevertheless, when the
English invaded France in the year 1513, the whole kingdom tottered; and
the King himself, as well as every one else, had to own that a single
defeat might have cost him his dominions.

But with the Romans the reverse of all this took place. For the nearer
an enemy approached Rome, the more completely he found her armed for
resistance; and accordingly we see that on the occasion of Hannibal's