Looking at Agathocles' life and achievements, you won't find much that can be attributed to luck. As I said, he had no backers or benefactors when he took power but rose through the ranks, surviving all kinds of hardships and dangers. And when he'd got power he knew how to take tough, dangerous decisions to hold on to it. On the other hand, we can hardly describe killing fellow citizens, betraying friends and living without loyalty, mercy or creed as signs of talent. Methods like that may bring you power, but not glory. If you consider Agathocles' ability to take risks and come out on top, and his remarkable spirit when it came to facing and overcoming obstacles, it's hard to see why he isn't rated as highly as the most outstanding military leaders. But his brutality, cruelty and inhumanity, together with the endless crimes he committed, mean he has no place among the men we most admire. In conclusion, we can't attribute Agathocles' achievements to luck or to positive qualities, since he needed neither.
In our own times, we have the example of Oliverotto, a man from the town of Fermo who lived during the papacy of Alexander VI. Orphaned of his father while still very young, Oliverotto was brought up by his uncle, Giovanni Fogliani, who had him join the army under Paulo Vitelli in the hope that, with military discipline, he would rise to a high rank. On Paulo's death, Oliverotto served under his brother, Vitellozzo, and being very capable, with a strong personality and powerful physique, he soon became the army's top man. But since he felt that working with others was demeaning, he decided to take Fermo for himself. Having got the support of some of the town's citizens, people who preferred to see their city enslaved rather than free, and with the backing of Vitellozzo, he wrote to Giovanni Fogliani saying that now so many years had gone by he was eager to come home and see his uncle again, visit the town, and check over some of his property. And since, he wrote, he'd been working hard for nothing but the prestige of his position, he wanted to ride into town in style with a hundred mounted friends and servants beside him; that way his fellow citizens would see that he hadn't been wasting his time. And he asked his uncle please to arrange for the people of Fermo to organize an appropriate reception, something that would not only honour him but also his uncle, who had brought him up.
Giovanni spared no effort to do his nephew proud and, after the people of Fermo had given him a formal reception, Oliverotto was welcomed into his uncle's house. A few days later, having used the time to make secret arrangements for the crime he was planning, he threw an impressive banquet to which he invited Giovanni Fogliani and all the town's leading men. After they'd finished eating and sat through all the entertainments you get on these occasions, Oliverotto slyly launched into some weighty reflections on the power and achievements of Pope Alexander and his son Cesare Borgia. When Giovanni and the others joined the conversation, Oliverotto suddenly got to his feet and said these were matters best discussed in a more private place and he headed for another room with Giovanni and all the other citizens trailing after him. They had barely sat down before Oliverotto's soldiers rushed out of their hiding places and killed the lot of them.
After the massacre, Oliverotto got on his horse, rode round the town and surrounded the chief magistrate in the state palace, with the result that people were forced to do what he said and set up a government with Oliverotto as the ruler. Having killed everyone who opposed the coup and might hit back, he strengthened his position by setting up a new army and new civil institutions, so that within the year he was not only undisputed master of Fermo but also a serious threat to the neighbouring towns. And as with Agathocles, it would have been very hard to unseat Oliverotto, had he not let himself be fooled by Cesare Borgia, when, as explained earlier on, Borgia lured the Orsini and Vitelli men to Senigallia. Oliverotto went with them and so, just a year after killing his uncle, he was strangled along with Vitellozzo Vitelli, his mentor in courage and crime.
You might well wonder how on earth, after all their countless betrayals and cruelties, men like Agathocles could sit safe on their thrones for years and even defend themselves against foreign enemies without their citizens ever conspiring against them; and this while many others, equally ready to use cruelty, weren't even able to hold on to their power in peacetime, never mind in war. I think it's a question of whether cruelty is well or badly used. Cruelty well used (if we can ever speak well of something bad) is short-lived and decisive, no more than is necessary to secure your position and then stop; you don't go on being cruel but use the power it has given you to deliver maximum benefits to your subjects. Cruelty is badly used when you're not drastic enough at the beginning but grow increasingly cruel later on, rather than easing off. A leader who takes the first approach has a chance, like Agathocles, of improving his position with his subjects and with God too; go the other way and you have no chance at all.
It's worth noting that when you take hold of a state, you must assess how much violence and cruelty will be necessary and get it over with at once, so as not to have to be cruel on a regular basis. When you've stopped using violence your subjects will be reassured and you can then win them over with generosity. If you don't do all it takes at the beginning, because you were badly advised or didn't have the nerve, then you'll always have to be wielding the knife; and you'll never be able to count on your subjects, since with all the violence you're handing out they won't be able to count on you. So get the violence over with as soon as possible; that way there'll be less time for people to taste its bitterness and they'll be less hostile. Favours, on the other hand, should be given out slowly, one by one, so that they can be properly savoured. Most of all, though, a ruler should have the kind of relationship with his subjects where nothing that can happen, good or bad, will force him to change his approach, because if hard times demand it, your cruelty will come too late, while any concessions you make will be seen as wrung out of you and no one will be impressed.
9
Monarchy with public support
Now let's turn to our second case, where a private citizen becomes king in his own country not by crime or unacceptable violence, but with the support of his fellow-citizens. We can call this a monarchy with public support and to become its king you don't have to be wholly brilliant or extraordinarily lucky, just shrewd in a lucky way. Obviously, to take control of this kind of state you need the support of either the common people or the wealthy families, the nobles. In every city one finds these two conflicting political positions: there are the common people who are eager not to be ordered around and oppressed by the noble families, and there are the nobles who are eager to oppress the common people and order them around. These opposing impulses will lead to one of three different situations: a monarchy, a republic, or anarchy.
A monarchy can be brought about either by the common people or the nobles, when one or the other party finds it convenient. Seeing that they can't control the people, the wealthy families begin to concentrate prestige on one of their number and make him king so as to be able to get what they want in his shadow. Likewise, the people, seeing that they can't resist the power of the nobles, concentrate prestige on one citizen and make him king so that his authority will protect them. A king who comes to power with the help of the rich nobles will have more trouble keeping it than the king who gets there with the support of the people, because he will be surrounded by men who consider themselves his equals, and that will make it hard for him to give them orders or to manage affairs as he wants.
But a man coming to power with the support of the common people holds it alone and has no one, or hardly anyone, around him who's unwilling to obey. What's more, you can't in good faith give the nobles what they want without doing harm to others; but you can with the people. Because the people's aspirations are more honourable than those of the nobles: the nobles want to oppress the people, while the people want to be free from oppression. What's more, a king can never be safe if the common people are hostile to him, because there are so many of them; but he can protect himself against the nobles, since there are not so many. The worst a king can expect if the people turn hostile is that they will desert him; but when the nobles turn against him, he has to fear not only desertion, but a direct attack. The nobles are smarter, they see further ahead, they always move early enough to save their skins, ingratiating themselves with whoever they think will turn out the winner. Then, of necessity, a king will always have to live with the same common people; but he can perfectly well get by without the same nobles, since he can make and unmake noblemen every day, giving and taking away honours as he likes.
Let's settle this question of the nobles. As I see it, they can be divided for the most part into two categories: either they behave in such a way as to tie themselves entirely to your destiny, or they don't. Those who do tie themselves and aren't greedy should be honoured and loved; the ones who don't can be further divided into two groups. Maybe they are anxious men, naturally lacking in character, in which case you'd better make use of them, especially the ones with good advice to offer, since when things are going well they'll respect you and when things are tough you needn't fear them; but if they're hanging back out of calculation and ambition that's a sign they're looking more to their own interests than to yours. These are the ones you have to watch out for and guard against as if they were already declared enemies, because, inevitably, when things start going wrong, these men will be working to bring you down.
A man who becomes king with the support of the people, then, must keep those people on his side. This is easy enough since all they want is to be free from oppression. But the man who becomes king against the will of the majority and with the support of the wealthy nobles must make it an absolute priority to win over the affection of the common people. This will be easy if he takes them under his protection. When people are treated well by someone they thought was hostile they respond with even greater loyalty; they'll go over to his side at once and be even more devoted than if he had taken power with their support. There are all kinds of ways a king can win the people's affection, but since these depend on particular circumstances and one can hardly lay down rules, I'll leave them out of our discussion. I'll just conclude, then, that a ruler must have the people on his side; otherwise when things get tough there'll be no way out.
Nabis, the Spartan king, was besieged by forces from all over Greece plus a hugely successful Roman army, but he held out and defended his country and his position against the lot of them. All he had to do when danger threatened was take precautions to deal with a few internal enemies, but if he'd had the people against him, this wouldn't have been enough. And if anyone objects to my reasoning here with that trite proverb: the man who builds his house on the people is building on mud, my answer is that this is true if it's a private citizen doing the building and imagining the people will come to his rescue when he's in trouble with the law or his enemies. Men like this usually find themselves being let down, as did the Gracchi brothers in Rome and Giorgio Scali in Florence. But when it's a king building on the people, and when he's a man of spirit who knows how to lead and doesn't panic when things get tough, a man who takes the right precautions and whose personality and style of government keeps everybody in a positive state of mind, then the people will never let him down and time will show what solid foundations he laid.
This kind of ruler is most at risk when passing from publicly supported leadership to absolute rule. At this point he either commands directly himself or gives orders by proxy through magistrates. If he's ruling by proxy he'll be weaker and exposed to greater risks, since he now depends entirely on the good will of the men appointed as magistrates and they can very easily strip him of his power, particularly when times are hard, either by attacking him directly or by just not carrying out his orders. Once the trouble has begun, the ruler won't have time to take absolute command himself because his citizens and subjects will be used to taking orders from magistrates and they aren't going to start obeying him in a moment of crisis; so when he's up against it, he'll always be struggling to find anyone he can trust. A ruler in this position mustn't count on what he sees when things are going well and the citizens need his government. Then everybody comes running, everyone is promising this and that, everyone is ready to die for him, since there is no question of dying. But when things get tough and it's the government that needs the citizens, then hardly anyone shows. And what's so dangerous about a critical moment like this is that you only get one shot at it. So if he's sensible the ruler must work out a situation where his citizens will always need both his government and him, however well or badly things are going. Then they will always be loyal.
10
Assessing a state's strength
When looking at the nature of these various states one important question to ask is: if attacked, does a ruler have sufficient power to defend himself with his own resources, or will he always have to rely on the protection of others? To make the question more precise, let's say that a ruler who has enough men or enough money to put together an army that can take on all comers is, by my definition, capable of defending himself, while a ruler who can't take on an enemy in the field but has to withdraw behind his city walls and defend those, is one who will always be in need of outside help. We've already said something about the first kind of ruler [Chapter 6] and later on there'll be more [Chapters 11-13]. As for the second kind, one can only encourage them to fortify their home towns and keep them well supplied, while leaving the surrounding countryside entirely to its fate. If a ruler has built good fortifications and managed his relationship with his subjects as suggested above and further elaborated in the following pages, his enemies will always think twice before attacking him. People are always wary of projects that present obvious difficulties, and attacking a well-defended town and a ruler whose subjects don't hate him is never an easy proposition.