ware,
that thei prepared theim selves to bee a praie, to whom so ever should
assaulte theim. Hereby grewe then in the thousande fower hundred nintie
and fower yere, the greate feares, the sodain flightes, and the
marveilous losses: and so three most mightie states which were in
Italie, have been divers times sacked and destroied. But that which is
worse, is where those that remaine, continue in the verie same erroure,
and live in the verie same disorder, and consider not, that those, who
in old time would kepe their states, caused to be dooen these thynges,
which of me hath been reasoned, and that their studies wer, to prepare
the body to diseases, and the minde not to feare perilles. Whereby grewe
that Cesar, Alexander, and all those menne and excellente Princes in old
tyme, were the formoste emongest the faighters, goyng armed on foote:
and if thei loste their state, thei would loose their life, so that thei
lived and died vertuously. And if in theim, or in parte of theim, there
might bee condempned to muche ambicion to reason of: yet there shall
never bee founde, that in theim is condempned any tendernesse or any
thynge that maketh menne delicate and feable: the whiche thyng, if of
these Princes were redde and beleved, it should be impossible, that thei
should not change their forme of living, and their provinces not to
chaunge fortune. And for that you in the beginnyng of this our
reasonyng, lamented your ordinaunces, I saie unto you, that if you had
ordained it, as I afore have reasoned, and it had given of it self no
good experience, you might with reason have been greved therewith: but
if it bee not so ordained, and exercised, as I have saied, it maie be
greeved with you, who have made a counterfaite thereof, and no perfecte
figure. The Venecians also, and the Duke of Ferare, beganne it, and
followed it not, the whiche hath been through their faulte, not through
their menne. And therfore I assure you, that who so ever of those,
whiche at this daie have states in Italie, shall enter firste into this
waie, shall be firste, before any other, Lorde of this Province, and it
shall happen to his state, as to the kyngdome of the Macedonians, the
which commyng under Philip, who had learned the maner of settyng armies
in order of Epaminondas a Thebane, became with this order, and with
these exercises (whileste the reste of Grece stoode in idlenesse, and
attended to risite comedes) so puisant, that he was able in few yeres to