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
acquired their provinces in Italy and adopted the Condottiere system
from their neighbors. 'A prince, therefore, should have but one object,
one thought, one art--the art of war.' Those who have followed this rule
have attained to sovereignty, like Francesco Sforza, who became Duke of
Milan; those who have neglected it have lost even hereditary kingdoms,
like the last Sforzas, who sank from dukedom into private life. Even
amid the pleasures of the chase a prince should always be studying the
geographical conformation of his country with a view to its defense, and
should acquire a minute knowledge of such strategical laws as are
everywhere applicable. He should read history with the same object, and
should keep before his eyes the example of those great men of the past
from whom he can learn lessons for his guidance in the present.

This brings us to the peroration of the _Principe_, which contains the
practical issue toward which the whole treatise has been tending, the
patriotic thought that reflects a kind of luster even on the darkest
pages that have gone before. Like Thetis, Machiavelli has dipped his
Achilles in the Styx of infernal counsels; like Cheiron, he has shown
him how the human and the bestial natures should be combined in one who
has to break the teeth of wolves and keep his feet from snares; like
Hephaistos, he has forged for him invulnerable armor. The object toward
which this pr