Chapter V

How Cities or Principalities Should Be Governed That, before They Were Occupied, Lived under Their Own Laws

When the states that are acquired, as has been said, are accustomed to living under their own laws and in freedom, there are three ways of holding them. The first is to ruin them; the second is to go and live there in person; the third is to let them live under their own laws, drawing a tribute from them and setting up within them a government of the few who will keep the state friendly to you. For since that government has been created by that prince, it knows that it cannot stand without his friendship and power, and must do everything to maintain him. And a city used to living in freedom is more easily held by means of its own citizens than in any other way, if one wishes to preserve it.

There are, for example, the Spartans and the Romans. The Spartans held Athens and Thebes by setting up a government of the few there; nevertheless they lost them. The Romans, to hold Capua, Carthage and Numantia, destroyed them, and did not lose them. They wished to hold Greece much as the Spartans had held it, making it free and leaving it its own laws, and they did not succeed; so that they were forced to destroy many cities in that province in order to hold it. For in truth there is no sure way of possessing such cities except to ruin them. And whoever becomes master of a city accustomed to living in freedom and does not destroy it may expect to be destroyed by it; for in rebellion it always has as its refuge the name of liberty and its ancient institutions, which are never forgotten either through length of time or through benefits received. And whatever is done or provided, unless the inhabitants are divided or dispersed, they do not forget that name or those institutions, but at once have recourse to them at every opportunity, as Pisa did after so many years in which it had been held in servitude by the Florentines. But when cities or provinces are used to living under a prince, and his family has been extinguished, being on the one hand used to obeying, and on the other not having their old prince, they cannot agree to make one from among themselves, and they do not know how to live in freedom; so that they are slower to take up arms, and a prince can win them over and make himself secure of them more easily. But in republics there is greater hatred, a greater desire for revenge; the memory of their ancient liberty does not and cannot let them rest; so that the surest way is to destroy them or to live there.