Italy has been harried by Charles, plundered by Louis, forced by
Ferdinand, insulted by the Swiss. Their method has been to enhance the
reputation of their cavalry by depressing the infantry. Being without
dominion of their own, and making war their commerce, a few foot
soldiers brought them no repute, while they were unable to support many.
Therefore they confined themselves to cavalry, until in a force of
20,000 men you could not number 2,000 infantry. Besides this they
employed all their ingenuity to relieve themselves and their soldiers of
fatigue and peril, by refraining from slaughter and from taking
prisoners without ransom. Night attacks and sorties were abandoned;
stockades and trenches in the camp were given up; no one thought of a
winter campaign. All these things were allowed, or rather introduced, in
order to avoid, as I have said, fatigue and peril. Whereby they have
reduced Italy to slavery and insult.' Auxiliaries, such as the French
troops borrowed by Cesare Borgia, and the Spaniards engaged by Julius
II., are even worse. 'He who wants to be unable to win the game should
make use of these forces; for they are far more dangerous than
mercenaries, seeing that in them the cause of ruin is ready made--they
are united together, and inclined to obey their own masters. Machiavelli
enforces this moral by one of those rare but energetic figures which add
virile dignity to his discourse. He compares auxiliary troops to the
armor of Saul, which David refused, preferring to fight Goliath with his
stone and sling. 'In one word, arms borrowed from another either fall
from your back, or weigh you down, or impede your action.' It remains
for a prince to form his own troops and to take the field in person,
like Cesare Borgia, when he discarded his French allies and the
mercenary aid of the Orsini captains. Republics should follow the same
course, dispatching, as the Romans did, their own citizens to the war,
and controlling by law the personal ambition of victorious generals. It
was thus that the Venetians prospered in their conquests, before they