s, by
what arts and practices Milan may be kept, and Naples, that has so often
slipped out of their hands, recovered; how the Venetians, and after them
the rest of Italy, may be subdued; and then how Flanders, Brabant, and
all Burgundy, and some other kingdoms which he has swallowed already in
his designs, may be added to his empire? One proposes a league with the
Venetians, to be kept as long as he finds his account in it, and that he
ought to communicate counsels with them, and give them some share of the
spoil till his success makes him need or fear them less, and then it will
be easily taken out of their hands; another proposes the hiring the
Germans and the securing the Switzers by pensions; another proposes the
gaining the Emperor by money, which is omnipotent with him; another
proposes a peace with the King of Arragon, and, in order to cement it,
the yielding up the King of Navarre's pretensions; another thinks that
the Prince of Castile is to be wrought on by the hope of an alliance, and
that some of his courtiers are to be gained to the French faction by
pensions. The hardest point of all is, what to do with England; a treaty
of peace is to be set on foot, and, if their alliance is not to be
depended on, yet it is to be made as firm as possible, and they are to be
called friends, but suspected as enemies: therefore the Scots are to be
kept in readiness to be let loose upon England on every occasion; and
some banished nobleman is to be supported underhand (for by the League it
cannot be done avowedly) who has a pretension to the crown, by which
means that suspected prince may be kept in awe. Now when things are in
so great a fermentation, and so many gallant men are joining counsels how
to carry on the war, if so mean a man as I should stand up and wish them
to change all their counsels--to let Italy alone and stay at home, since
the kingdom of France was indeed greater than could be well governed by
one man; that therefore he ought not to think of adding others to it; and
if, after this, I should propose to them the resolutions of the
Achorians, a people that lie on the south-east of Utopia, who long ago
engaged in war in order to add to the dominions of their prince another
kingdom, to which he had some pretensions by an ancient alliance: this
they conquered, but found that the trouble of keeping it was equal to
that by which it was gained; that the conquered people were always either
in rebellion or exposed