I say, therefore, that the arms with which a prince defends his state
are either his own, or they are mercenaries, auxiliaries, or mixed.
Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds
his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe;
for they are disunited, ambitious, and without discipline, unfaithful,
valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the
fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so
long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war
by the enemy. The fact is, they have no other attraction or reason for
keeping the field than a trifle of stipend, which is not sufficient
to make them willing to die for you. They are ready enough to be
your soldiers whilst you do not make war, but if war comes they take
themselves off or run from the foe; which I should have little trouble
to prove, for the ruin of Italy has been caused by nothing else than by
resting all her hopes for many years on mercenaries, and although they
formerly made some display and appeared valiant amongst themselves, yet
when the foreigners came they showed what they were. Thus it was that
Charles, King of France, was allowed to seize Italy with chalk in
hand;(*) and he who told us that our sins were the cause of it told the
truth, but they were not the sins he imagined, but those which I have
related. And as they were the sins of princes, it is the princes who
have also suffered the penalty.

(*) "With chalk in hand," "col gesso." This is one of the
_bons mots_ of Alexander VI, and refers to the ease with
which Charles VIII seized Italy, implying that it was only
necessary for him to send his quartermasters to chalk up the
billets for his soldiers to conquer the country. Cf. "The
History of Henry VII," by Lord Bacon: "King Charles had
conquered the realm of Naples, and lost it again, in a kind