Things reached the point where an army of 20,000 would have fewer than 2,000 infantry. Aside from this the mercenaries did everything possible to avoid hard work and danger; they wouldnt kill each other in combat but took prisoners, then didnt even ask for a ransom. They wouldnt attack fortications at night; and they wouldnt leave their own fortications to attack a besieging armys camp. They didnt dig ditches or build stockades round their camps; in winter they didnt camp out at all. All these omissions became accepted practice for the simple reason, as I said, that they wanted to steer clear of danger and hard work. Thus they brought Italy to slavery and humiliation. 9780141442259_ThePrince_TXT.indd 53 28/05/2015 14:14 54

So anyone looking for a no-win situation should turn to auxiliaries, because they are far more dangerous even than mercenaries. With auxiliaries your ruin is guaranteed: they are a tightly knit force and every one of them obedient to someone else; when mercenaries win they need time and a convenient opportunity before they can attack you, if only because theyre not a solid united force, you chose them, youre paying them, and hence it will take the man you put in command a while to build up sufcient authority to turn against you. To summarize, the big danger with mercenaries is their indecision, with auxiliaries their determination.

So, sensible rulers have always avoided using auxiliaries and mercenaries, relying instead on their own men and even preferring to lose with their own troops than to win with others, on the principle that a victory won with foreign forces is not a real victory at all. As always Cesare Borgia offers a good example. He invaded Romagna with an army entirely made up of French auxiliaries and took Imola and Forl` with them; but since he felt they werent reliable he turned to mercenaries as a less dangerous option. He hired the Orsini and Vitelli armies, but when he found that they dithered in battle and were disloyal and dangerous, he had them killed and trained his own men. Its easy to see the difference between these various kinds of armies if you look at the dukes standing when he had just the French, when he had the Orsinis and the Vitellis, and when he had his own soldiers and relied on his own resources. With each change his prestige grew and he was only truly respected when everyone

I had planned to stick to these recent Italian examples, but I wouldnt like to leave out Hiero of Syracuse since he is one of the men I talked about before. Given command, as I 9780141442259_ThePrince_TXT.indd 54 28/05/2015 14:14 auxiliaries, combined forces and citizen armies 55 explained, of the Syracusan armies, Hiero soon realized that the mercenaries among them were no good, led as they were by men like our Italian commanders. Realizing that he could neither make use of them nor let them go, he had them all cut to pieces, and from then on fought only with his own soldiers. Id also like to bring in a parable from the Old Testament. When David offered to go and ght the Philistine troublemaker, Goliath, on Sauls behalf, Saul gave him his own weapons to bolster the boys courage. But no sooner had David put them on than he refused the gift, saying he wouldnt feel condent with them, he would rather face the enemy with