Prince IV (Redux)
What can we learn from a loser like Louis XII?
In Chapter III, Machiavelli seems to think we can learn something from the example of Louis XII, who lost Italy twice. What are these lessons?
If the annexed state has the same language and customs, you simply kill the prince and extinguish his bloodline. If the annexed state has a different language and similar customs, you simply kill the prince and keep prior laws and taxes. If they have a different language and customs, you need to go there in person so they learn to love or fear you, or to send colonies to strategic points in the country so you do not need to send armies.
In every case, however, one should do all harm that is necessary at the beginning so that over time you seem to be good. One should weaken neighboring powers so that those displaced do not have allies to find. In addition and related, one should either pamper men or eliminate them, because the dead cannot seek revenge.
This is part of planning ahead, that is, one should always think ahead and provide for future disorders, including war, which should not be avoided but waged when you need to.
At the end of the chapter you should pause and reflect on Machiavelli’s emphasis on the uglier side of human nature. He says earlier, “men should either be caressed or eliminated, because they avenge themselves for slight offenses but cannot do so for grave ones; so the offense one does to a man should be such that one does not fear revenge for it.”
This is because people easily forget benefactions but not grievances.
Moreover, people do not thank you for injuring them less than you could have.
Finally, the only certainty you can have that someone is harmless, that they are politically-dead, is if they are dead-dead.
This connects up to the final lesson of the chapter found in the last sentence: “From this one may draw a general rule that never or rarely fails: whoever is the cause of someone’s becoming powerful is ruined; for that power has been caused either with industry or with force, and both the one and the other of these two are suspect to whoever has become powerful.”
You ruin yourself because you demonstrate that you are energetic or forceful and all political actors are potential rivals, that is, allies can become enemies and enemies can become allies.
At the end of the day, what were Louis XII’s mistakes?
First, he fought weak powers.
Second, he made the Pope stronger, giving him temporal power.
Third, he brought in the King of Spain
Fourth, he did not go there to live, nor did he send colonies.
The fifth, and biggest, mistake was to keep his promise to the Pope to put down the Venetians.
Why did he make this promise? He wanted an annulment.
Why didn’t he break faith with the Pope? He made the mistake of thinking that something might actually happen.
What we see from this is that there is a tension between religious obligation and political necessity. Louis XII wanted to get Brittany, but to do so he had to marry Ann of Brittany. This is not a problem, right? Wrong. Louis was already married and so he had to ask the Pope for an annulment. Now in ancient times, say ancient Rome, this would not be needed. Louis would just get a divorce and remarry. Ancient religion did not stand in the way of political necessity, but Christianity does.
Marriage is a promise, just like a treaty or a contract. We see that Louis is able to break his promise to his first wife to marry Ann because it is necessary. Why can’t he then break his promise to the Pope?
Because Louis fearer hellfire; he believed in hell. This could point to the conclusion that one should simply ignore the myths told to you as a child – think here of Cephalus in Plato’s Republic – but that too would be a mistake.
Presume Louis did not believe in hell; why might he still keep his promise? To ask this another way, presume he doesn’t believe and he breaks his promise, what happens then?
The Pope likely would have excommunicated him. As a result, he still would have had a problem because his people believe in both God and hell. The penalty for associating with an excommunicated man is damnation. The people would have sought to overthrow Louis is he had been excommunicated. In the end, regardless of whether Louis believed in God and hell, he had a problem because his people believed.
What does this reveal to us? That there are two rulers in France: the church and the state, the Pope and the King – this holds for other Christian and Muslim states as well.
Everywhere in the third chapter we run up against the difference between ancients and moderns. The gods of Rome were politically tame; they wanted the success of Rome. In pre-Christian times, as Machiavelli would have us believe, there was only political authority; in Christian times, however, there is political and spiritual authority. In the end, it is the trans-political authority that wins because even the non-believers have to abide by this division.