The Auron MacIntyre Show - Machiavelli on the Difficulty of Conquest

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00:00:30.960 Hey everybody, how's it going? Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:00:35.560 I am Oren McIntyre.

00:00:38.820 I realized as we were looking at the different political theorists that we have talked about

00:00:44.660 that while we have mentioned Machiavelli many times and even had a few episodes dedicated to him,

00:00:49.140 we had never read through any of his texts together.

00:00:51.740 And since The Prince is such an approachable text, at least in length,

00:00:56.440 it's under 100 pages long, depending on your translation,

00:01:00.860 I thought that that was something that we should do together.

00:01:03.820 It's really just not that long of a book.

00:01:06.040 It's, however, dense with a lot of wisdom.

00:01:08.720 And we can go through and think together about what Machiavelli is saying

00:01:12.880 and how it applies to us today.

00:01:15.020 So I'm going to break this down across several episodes.

00:01:17.320 Obviously, we're not going to do this all in one sitting.

00:01:19.700 However, you can get a basic audio book of this for, you know, it's maybe four or five hours,

00:01:26.700 I think, maybe six, but I think it's even shorter than that.

00:01:29.900 So this is something that you can easily read, like I said, if you want to see it in print

00:01:35.400 or if you want to listen to it.

00:01:37.600 It's a very short book.

00:01:39.540 You might have to pay attention several times.

00:01:41.500 In fact, I try to reread The Prince every year for this reason,

00:01:45.660 because I think great books would demand to be read and reread in order for us to properly grasp them.

00:01:51.940 And I think that, you know, as we go back in and dig through each one of these,

00:01:56.320 we can find new ways which we can apply that wisdom to the current day.

00:02:01.300 So I know we've been doing a lot of current events recently, that kind of thing.

00:02:06.440 However, I wanted to get back to doing a little bit of political theory.

00:02:11.040 Let's get a little crunchy.

00:02:12.580 And so we're going to be going through The Prince today.

00:02:16.100 Now, you probably already know this from listening to my channel,

00:02:20.140 but remember that The Prince is only one of Machiavelli's works.

00:02:24.000 This is the one where he discusses monarchies.

00:02:26.380 And because this is the shorter book and the more famous book,

00:02:29.280 most people assume that's what he ultimately supported.

00:02:32.840 He is this guy who supports tyrants and wants people to rule with an iron fist.

00:02:37.980 But actually, Machiavelli was a supporter of Republican government,

00:02:41.520 which we see over and over again popping up,

00:02:44.800 especially in his works on discourses on Livy.

00:02:48.760 However, each one is divided into the areas he believes are important for that.

00:02:54.340 So when we're talking about kings in The Prince,

00:02:57.740 then that's what we focus on, monarchs, princes.

00:03:00.380 When we're talking about republics and we're looking at Rome

00:03:02.800 and the Roman Republic and how it came about,

00:03:04.960 that's what we're looking at in discourses on Livy.

00:03:06.760 He is trying to divide these and give proper focus to each,

00:03:10.340 even though he supports one over the other,

00:03:12.740 like a good political scientist should.

00:03:15.200 Many people think of Machiavelli as one of the first political scientists.

00:03:19.380 And so it's important to understand him in that context.

00:03:22.980 Now, I believe that Twitter is having some streaming problems.

00:03:26.980 So if you're somebody who often catches these live on Twitter,

00:03:31.160 I just want to let you know, it is technically going out to Twitter,

00:03:33.860 but it's not, for some reason, Twitter is not sending announcements out to people.

00:03:37.060 So if you want to make sure to catch these,

00:03:39.320 and normally you catch them on Twitter, but you're like,

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00:03:52.660 Of course, Blaze TV, if you want to support the channel.

00:03:55.540 But if you're relying on Twitter to always bring you the episodes,

00:03:59.220 it might not be doing that for you right now.

00:04:01.180 So I just wanted to make you aware that if you're wondering what happened

00:04:03.960 to your Oren McIntyre show on Twitter, we're still streaming there.

00:04:06.720 It's just a weird thing that Twitter is doing right now.

00:04:09.000 So I wanted to make you aware of that.

00:04:10.700 All right.

00:04:10.920 So we're going to start with the introduction.

00:04:12.540 Many books, we wouldn't necessarily read the introduction.

00:04:15.200 However, in this case, I think it's actually very important

00:04:18.420 because it gives us context for who Machiavelli is writing this for,

00:04:24.340 what the audience is, right?

00:04:26.480 Now, Machiavelli is somebody who was tortured because of his support

00:04:30.860 for the Republican government in Italy.

00:04:37.420 However, he's also a man who recognizes the difficulties of a divided Italy, right?

00:04:43.900 Like Italy right now is all city-states at the time.

00:04:49.080 And so you have this desire and this vision of him, you know,

00:04:54.440 that he ultimately sees this is a kind of a weakness, a divided Italy,

00:04:58.100 and also, you know, necessarily supports perhaps a Republican government

00:05:03.620 in the middle of all that.

00:05:05.180 However, he's still writing to the Medicis, letting them know,

00:05:09.000 hey, I'm still honoring you.

00:05:11.100 I'm still looking for a post inside of the government.

00:05:14.380 He's in exile when he's writing these.

00:05:17.540 He's been sent back to the farm, as it were,

00:05:20.560 and is not allowed to participate in public political life

00:05:23.940 at the time of writing this.

00:05:25.520 So, you know, there have been disputes over who he originally started writing this,

00:05:30.860 you know, volume to.

00:05:32.800 It received multiple dedications.

00:05:34.320 But ultimately, this is the one that survives in most printings,

00:05:37.880 and this is his appeal to Lorenzo Medici, as we can see at the beginning here.

00:05:42.320 So let's read the introduction here.

00:05:46.120 People trying to attract the goodwill of a sovereign usually offer him

00:05:49.200 something they care a lot about themselves

00:05:51.920 or something they've seen he particularly likes.

00:05:57.880 So rulers are always being given horses, arms, gold, brokheads, jewels,

00:06:02.720 and whatever finery seems appropriate.

00:06:06.320 Eager myself to bring your highness some token of my loyalty,

00:06:09.680 I realized there was nothing more precious or important to me

00:06:14.080 than my knowledge of great men and their doings,

00:06:16.800 a knowledge gained through long experience of contemporary affairs

00:06:19.740 and constant study of ancient history.

00:06:22.120 Having thought over all I have learned

00:06:24.680 and analyzed it with the utmost care,

00:06:27.640 I've written everything down in a short book

00:06:29.800 that I am now sending to your highness.

00:06:31.520 So at the beginning here, we can see he says,

00:06:33.580 yeah, I know most people, they bring like gold or beautiful horses

00:06:37.380 or arms or jewels, but I'm going to bring something far more valuable.

00:06:41.600 My brain, my knowledge, a certain level of arrogance from Machiavelli

00:06:47.940 about kind of the importance of his own work and observations.

00:06:52.100 However, seeing as this is considered the foundation of modern political theory,

00:06:56.380 it turns out that I was actually kind of right.

00:06:59.360 Like actually this book probably would have in the long run

00:07:02.240 been more useful than gold or silver,

00:07:04.700 though I'm sure at the time the nobility went out of mind

00:07:08.320 receiving that instead of your thoughts on politics.

00:07:11.920 But yeah, arrogance ultimately, you know, did catch up there.

00:07:15.740 He shot, he called a shot and was correct.

00:07:19.520 But, you know, history has judged him to be that valuable.

00:07:22.340 And though this gift is no doubt unworthy of you,

00:07:25.260 I feel sure the experience it contains will make it welcome,

00:07:28.200 especially when you think I could hardly offer anything better

00:07:30.980 than the chance to grasp in a few hours

00:07:32.760 what I have discovered and assimilated over many years of danger and discomfort.

00:07:36.700 I haven't, uh, uh, I haven't prettified this book or padded it

00:07:40.980 out with long sentences or pompous pretentious words

00:07:44.100 or any of the irrelevant flourishes and attractions so many writers use.

00:07:48.280 I didn't want it to please, want it to please for anything, uh,

00:07:52.880 but the range and seriousness of the subject matter,

00:07:55.460 nor I hope will you think it presumptuous of the man of low, of low,

00:07:59.880 really the lowest station should set out to discuss the way of, uh,

00:08:04.020 that princes ought to govern their peoples.

00:08:06.820 So he's saying, uh, you know, I look,

00:08:09.020 I know that I'm maybe unworthy of giving this advice,

00:08:12.440 but he doesn't really believe that he believes, uh,

00:08:15.500 that it's actually quite where these also says, look,

00:08:17.660 I'm getting right to the, uh, point with this.

00:08:20.040 This is going to be a short book.

00:08:21.060 It's going to be a sweet book.

00:08:22.020 It's not full of flowery or language.

00:08:23.680 I'm not here to impress you with my Bervos, uh, you know, uh, writing.

00:08:28.080 I'm here to give you the truth straight up,

00:08:31.420 give it to you as quickly and efficiently as possible.

00:08:33.840 Something I've always appreciated about Machiavelli.

00:08:35.600 Now there are layers to Machiavelli's writing.

00:08:37.740 Uh, many people, including Leo Strauss,

00:08:39.840 have talked about a level of nuance hidden in different layers of Machiavelli.

00:08:44.040 Uh, but one thing is for sure.

00:08:45.900 One of the reasons his text has been so enduring and so often consumed is

00:08:49.880 because it is highly readable.

00:08:51.100 It is something that you, again, it's short, it's concise, uh,

00:08:55.780 that you can pull a lot of truth out of there.

00:08:58.000 Even if you're not grasping all of the depth of the document, uh, you know,

00:09:01.380 you're, you're still getting something valuable out of the,

00:09:04.000 he writes on many levels.

00:09:05.500 And so I think this is a relatively accurate description.

00:09:09.620 Something I aim for my own work.

00:09:11.540 Hopefully, uh, just as artists, uh, artists who draw landscapes,

00:09:15.580 get down in the valley to study the mountain and go up on the mountain to

00:09:18.540 look down in the valley.

00:09:19.480 So one has to be a prince to get to know the character of the people and a

00:09:22.960 man of the people to know the character of a prince, your highness,

00:09:26.540 please take this small gift and spirit in which it was given study, uh,

00:09:30.180 study it carefully.

00:09:31.000 And you will find that my most earnest wishes that you should achieve

00:09:34.140 greatness that your, uh, status and qualities, uh, and qualities promise.

00:09:38.880 Then if from the high peak of your position, you ever look down on those far

00:09:43.360 below, you will see how very, uh, ungenerously and unfairly life continues

00:09:47.640 to treat me.

00:09:49.840 All right.

00:09:51.560 So let's get into the document proper.

00:09:53.880 Now, uh, I'm going to mispronounce a lot of Italian, so be ready for that.

00:09:58.780 I'm sorry in advance to those who might care.

00:10:05.480 Different kinds of states and how to conquer them.

00:10:07.780 Chapter one, all states and governments that have, that ever ruled over men have

00:10:12.800 either, are either republics or monarchies.

00:10:16.040 Monarchies may be hereditary if the ruler, if the ruler's family, uh, has governed by

00:10:21.500 generations or, or new, uh, new monarchies are either by, uh, can either be entirely

00:10:28.500 new or when, uh, Francesco Sorza captured Milan, or they could be territories a ruler has

00:10:35.820 added in, uh, to his existing hereditary state by conquest as when the King of Spain took

00:10:42.360 Naples.

00:10:42.760 An additional territory won by conquest will be accustomed either to living under the

00:10:47.940 mon, uh, under a monarchy or to freedom of self-government and may be conquered by the

00:10:53.260 new ruler's own army or that of a third party by luck or deservedly.

00:10:58.480 So he says, all right, most, he said, basically you have two types of government.

00:11:02.760 So he's, he's shaking this up a little bit from the classical real Aristotelian break.

00:11:07.240 Aristotelian break is the one, the few, and the many, uh, the monarchy, the aristocracy

00:11:12.660 and the polity, uh, or democracy.

00:11:15.540 Uh, so that's the Aristotelian understanding.

00:11:18.780 He's defining it a little more narrowly.

00:11:21.020 He says, look, either you have a King, either you got some kind of monarch, you have some kind

00:11:24.740 of tyrant, you have one guy in charge, or you have like more of a Republic, which is

00:11:29.560 more of the people being in charge expected to govern themselves.

00:11:32.940 And in those two, you have either those who have always been a Republic in which case conquering

00:11:39.360 them will do something different to them because they're not used to having a King or you will

00:11:44.920 have, uh, you know, the, the places that already had a King and they will already be

00:11:49.160 used to having a King.

00:11:50.240 So that will make things somewhat easier on you.

00:11:52.560 Uh, you also have to look at whether or not the land has been acquired newly, uh, or if

00:11:58.080 it was always part of your hereditary, uh, acquisition, or if you're a brand new King,

00:12:03.600 a brand new Prince, uh, then it will matter, uh, that you have just conquered these people.

00:12:09.020 You don't have a long line, uh, tying you to them book, uh, chapter two, these chapters,

00:12:15.480 as I said, the, the, the book is very short.

00:12:17.720 Uh, the chapters are very easy, uh, to, to get through.

00:12:21.500 Uh, so many of them are, are only a page or two, uh, throughout hereditary monarchies.

00:12:27.800 I won't be considered, uh, I won't be considering Republics since I've written about them at length

00:12:33.120 elsewhere.

00:12:33.520 He's talking about his discourses on Livy.

00:12:35.700 So like I said, he's going to say pretty much everything here about kingdoms.

00:12:39.400 He's going to say very little about Republics.

00:12:41.360 If you want to know more about what he believes about Republics, you have to go to the other book.

00:12:45.120 That doesn't mean that he supports the kingdom.

00:12:47.420 In fact, he prefers the Republic, but given that these are the options and he's trying

00:12:52.840 to give a thorough study of politics and how they work and what you should do.

00:12:56.660 He's saying, that's where we're going to be focused today.

00:12:59.320 It's not about my preference.

00:13:00.380 It's about understanding the reality of rule by princes.

00:13:04.800 Instead, I'll concentrate on monarchies, taking the situation mentioned above and discussing

00:13:08.520 how each kind of state can best be governed and held.

00:13:11.440 So I begin by noting that hereditary monarchies where people have long, uh, been used to the

00:13:16.740 rulers of families are far easier to hold the new ones.

00:13:20.280 All right.

00:13:20.720 So if your family has been in control of this area for a long time, people are used to living

00:13:26.160 under a monarch.

00:13:27.000 They're used to the form of government already, and they've known your family.

00:13:31.300 They kind of see your family as rightfully ruling the area, or at least there's a tradition

00:13:35.640 of perpetuation and understanding that this family has been in charge.

00:13:39.460 Then that's going to be easier.

00:13:41.380 It's far easier if you're inheriting your kingdom rather than winning it yourself, because the

00:13:45.860 people are already conditioned to be ruled by a monarch, and they're already familiar

00:13:49.440 with your line, your heritage, your lineage.

00:13:52.140 So they're more likely to accept you.

00:13:55.940 All a monarch need do is avoid upsetting the order established by his predecessors, trim policies

00:14:02.120 to circumstances when they're in trouble, and assuming he is of average ability, he will

00:14:07.360 keep his kingdom for life.

00:14:08.640 So he says, basically, if you inherit a kingdom, just don't be an idiot.

00:14:12.680 Like, do more or less what your predecessors have done.

00:14:16.280 Don't go in there and shake everything up.

00:14:18.780 Don't have a revolution.

00:14:20.220 The people are used to this type of rule.

00:14:22.040 The people trust this type of rule.

00:14:23.840 They already are familiar with you and your family.

00:14:27.380 Just go in there.

00:14:28.420 Try to fix things a little bit.

00:14:29.860 Trim some policies.

00:14:31.300 Look at some circumstances where you need to make some adjustments.

00:14:33.680 And if you had gotten an average ability, you're not going to blow it, right?

00:14:37.340 Like, you kind of already had this handed to you.

00:14:40.460 Only extraordinary and overwhelming force will be able to take it off him.

00:14:45.400 Even then, he'll win it back as soon as the occupying power runs into trouble.

00:14:50.460 So he says, not only is it going to be easier for you to maintain that as an inheritance, as a prince, but also, if someone tries to take it from you, if you're maybe someone who's looking to take over another kingdom or another area, if you're conquering a place that already has a hereditary monarch, it's going to be harder.

00:15:08.460 Because the people there are already loyal to the monarch, they're already used to the monarch, and as soon as you kind of back out, as soon as you are not constantly occupying the area, they're going to revert back to that monarch.

00:15:19.660 So unless you, like, completely wipe him out, unless you have extraordinary force, overwhelming force, it's going to be really hard to dislodge long-term hereditary monarchs.

00:15:29.300 It can happen.

00:15:29.960 It's not impossible.

00:15:31.180 We'll get examples of it.

00:15:32.280 But if you're a prince making decisions on who should you conquer, where should you go, it's wiser to choose places that are not long-term established under other monarchs, because they're already going to be loyal to that king, they're going to be used to that way, and it's very hard to dislodge.

00:15:50.560 An example of the situation in Italy is the Duchy of Ferrara.

00:15:54.180 In 1484 and 1510, the Duchy was previously conquered by foreign powers, first Venetians and then Pope Julius, but these defeats had nothing to do with the territory having a well-established family ruling family.

00:16:10.720 A ruler who inherits power has less reason or need to upset his subjects than a new one, and as a result is better love.

00:16:18.920 So if you've been a monarch for a decent amount of time, you're less likely to have to visit a lot of problems on the people in order to keep power.

00:16:28.660 Your power's already established, it's already settled, and it's easier to stay loved by the people because you don't have to ask as much of them.

00:16:35.200 You don't have to tax them heavily to secure riches.

00:16:38.900 You don't have to draw heavily for troops.

00:16:41.760 You've already got the establishment.

00:16:43.160 You don't need to raise massive armies and go conquer a bunch of land or defend your position.

00:16:48.920 So it's a lot easier for the people to love you.

00:16:51.780 If he doesn't go out of his way to get himself hated, it's reasonable to suppose his people will wish him well.

00:16:58.380 Then a dynasty survives.

00:16:59.980 When a dynasty survives for generations, memories fade and likewise motives for change, upheaval, or on the contrary, always leaves the scaffolding for building further change.

00:17:12.180 So you have this situation where the longer you have the dynasty in place, the less likely people are to think about why they'd want to change it.

00:17:22.580 It just kind of feels that the momentum is there for you.

00:17:25.900 However, if you've got like this constant upheaval, then you're going to have much more understanding that perhaps we're going to continue to change things.

00:17:34.000 It'll be ongoing.

00:17:39.700 All right.

00:17:40.740 Chapter three, mixed monarchies.

00:17:43.180 When a monarchy is new, things are harder.

00:17:45.980 It's not entirely new for a territory added to an existing monarchy.

00:17:50.340 Let's call this overall situation mixed.

00:17:53.040 Instabilities are caused first and foremost by what is an inevitable problem for all new regimes.

00:17:58.420 That men are quick to change rulers when they imagine that they can improve their lot.

00:18:03.840 And it is this conviction that prompts them to take up arms and rebel.

00:18:07.660 Then later they discover that they were wrong and things were not got worse rather than better.

00:18:14.300 Something to think about as many people look at, you know, possibly trying to unsettle the dynamic in the United States.

00:18:22.680 Some people will call this a strategy accelerationism.

00:18:25.980 I don't like the term because I tend to think about Nick Land's understanding of accelerationism, which has nothing to do with this really.

00:18:33.620 But the point is, for those who are encouraging the overthrow of governments, rebellions, Machiavelli says, you know, a lot of people will look at this and say, oh, well, we don't like this.

00:18:45.020 We don't like what's going on.

00:18:46.480 We'll change it.

00:18:47.480 And then when they get that change, they ultimately hate it.

00:18:50.220 They find out that they're actually better off under the other ruler.

00:18:53.120 Maybe things weren't as good as they wanted them to be, but they were far more stable than they were under the new guy.

00:18:59.040 So they have the situation where this creates a high degree of instability.

00:19:04.180 And it's always difficult to go in and like conquer these nations and then and then control them.

00:19:10.260 Even if you think, oh, well, OK, I'll be like maybe a new monarch of this area because they're already kind of in this upset state.

00:19:17.640 Right. Like they're already in this mode of revolution, of overthrow, and they're less likely to be able to settle down and appreciate a new ruler.

00:19:25.820 Again, this is in the normal natural way of things.

00:19:35.660 A ruler is bound to upset the people in his new territory, first with his occupying army and then with all the endless injustices consequent of any invasion.

00:19:45.480 So not only do you make enemies of all those interests who you damage when you occupy the territory, but you can't keep the friends of the people who help you take power.

00:19:54.600 This is for this is for the simple reason that you can't give them as much as they expected.

00:20:01.060 So Machiavelli is recognizing here that in most instances, the overthrow of a regime is not from the outside.

00:20:08.020 That in most cases to upset an established regime regime, you need the help of the people.

00:20:14.140 So this is important because when we talk about elite theory, we talk about elites driving action.

00:20:19.800 And it's true. It's true that elites drive most political action.

00:20:23.420 But it doesn't mean that the people are then just become unimportant, that the opinions of the people, the will of the people that just vanishes.

00:20:30.580 Right. Like, yes, it can be highly manipulated. Yes, the elites can drive it.

00:20:34.540 But ultimately, as Machiavelli points out here, if you want to topple an existing regime, you kind of need the population to be angry at the rulers, to be welcoming you in.

00:20:46.100 He notes that for the most part, you know, new conquerors are welcome in by some section of the populace that thinks they're going to benefit from this.

00:20:54.580 Right. We see this all the time.

00:20:56.780 You know, that this is how many people that the Roman Empire was, of course, a a a fantastic example of this.

00:21:04.240 Alexander the Great. What do you do when you go into a new place and conquer it?

00:21:07.400 You find one tribe that hates the other tribe and you turn them against each other.

00:21:10.880 By the way, this is how Americans defeated so many Indian tribes.

00:21:14.180 You find one Indian tribe that hates the other Indian tribe.

00:21:16.920 You get them on your side. Again, tale as old as time.

00:21:20.680 So and once you do that, when you come in, he says it's very difficult once you conquer the country to keep people happy because you've already upset all the people who like the old regime.

00:21:30.540 Like they're already angry at you. But even the people who helped you come in, even if they ultimately help you come in and conquer things, they're going to be angry that you could not deliver as much as they want it.

00:21:43.740 They're never going to be happy because they always think that you're going to get more than they actually get with the new ruler.

00:21:48.540 So it's very difficult when you're conquering a new area because the people who wanted you there will sour on you because they didn't get everything they wanted.

00:21:56.880 And the people who were already there and did and liked what was going on are upset because you are obviously overthrowing the old order.

00:22:06.020 However, this is not exactly one to one what's happening with Donald Trump, but you can see the echoes of this, right?

00:22:12.200 Donald Trump, in theory, was going to come in and create new modes and orders.

00:22:15.580 He's going to come in and he's going to crush the deep state.

00:22:18.900 He's going to crush the swamp, right?

00:22:21.220 Now, the people who are already part of the swamp, who are a part of the establishment, they don't want him to do that.

00:22:26.520 So they're upset because he's overthrowing the order.

00:22:30.640 However, he didn't totally overthrow the order.

00:22:33.100 He didn't sufficiently overthrow the order.

00:22:35.000 He didn't deliver to everybody who wanted the order gone what they were looking for.

00:22:40.300 And so he's also got backlash from the people who didn't get everything they wanted from Trump.

00:22:45.520 So in a way, he's conquered the American government.

00:22:49.840 But the people who were lying on the original American government hate him because he overthrew their order.

00:22:55.480 And the people who wanted him to overthrow the order more didn't get what they wanted out of him.

00:23:00.880 So it's a little bit of a lose-lose situation.

00:23:03.100 Again, not a perfect analogy.

00:23:04.500 He's obviously not conquering in the way that Machiavelli is implying here directly.

00:23:07.740 But I think we can see the shadows of this dynamic playing itself out in our current situation.

00:23:13.020 Let me see where we left off here.

00:23:16.540 So not only do you make enemies...

00:23:18.260 I already read that part.

00:23:19.520 We'll just start from there.

00:23:20.160 So not only do you make enemies of those whose interests you damage when you occupy the territory, but you can't keep the faith of the people who helped you take power.

00:23:28.960 This is for the simple reason that you can't give them as much as they expected.

00:23:33.520 And you can't get tough with them either since you still need them because however strong your armies are, you always need local support to occupy a new territory.

00:23:41.880 So yet again, we see he says recognize, look, you might be powerful, you might be a king, you might be a prince, but you still need the local people, especially if you overthrew this government.

00:23:51.880 So you can't come in there and just start cracking down on people who are misbehaving because you kind of need their support.

00:23:57.620 You don't have the long-term established power in the area.

00:24:01.960 You don't have the level of assistance you would normally receive if you are closer to your home, closer to your supply lines.

00:24:09.360 You don't have that ancient authority that comes from ruling over.

00:24:13.120 And so you really need the goodwill of the people.

00:24:15.420 So you're in this tough balance.

00:24:17.160 You can't crack down as much as you might want to when people are behaving badly because you really need that support.

00:24:25.100 This is why Louis XII, King of France, took Milan so quickly and equally quickly lost it.

00:24:32.080 The first time this happened, Duke Ludvico was able to retake the city with his own forces because the people who had previously opened the gates to Louis made their mistake,

00:24:44.280 realizing that they wouldn't be getting the benefits they'd hoped for and didn't want to submit to the harsh conditions imposed by the new king.

00:24:52.780 So once again, you know, he's giving historical examples of the principle he is laying out.

00:24:58.340 Machiavelli is always connecting what he is asserting back to historical examples so we know he's not just kind of making up out of nowhere.

00:25:05.960 So he's like, look, OK, you know, the king of France comes in.

00:25:09.140 He takes Milan.

00:25:10.380 Many of the people of Milan might have welcomed him because they thought they were going to get something out of it.

00:25:15.000 However, once they realize that they're just not getting anything and that they're getting these harsher conditions that the new king is imposing,

00:25:23.580 they're just going to go back to their old guy.

00:25:25.760 They're just going to go back to the Duke because, like, ultimately, they didn't they didn't get what they were really hoping for.

00:25:31.360 And so this is his example of a powerful king coming in, taking over a territory, then recognizing he can't hold it because he can't please the people who welcomed him.

00:25:40.800 He doesn't have the support anymore.

00:25:42.160 And without that support, even though he's a mighty king, he has to ultimately lose that territory back to those he took it from.

00:25:50.080 Of course, when a king returns to to win back a territory that is rebelled like this, he's less likely to lose a second time.

00:25:56.860 Having learned from the rebellion, he'll have fewer scruples when it comes to punishing troublemakers, interrogating suspects and strengthening any weak points in his defense.

00:26:05.560 So the first time Louis invaded Milan, it took no more than a little sword rattling from the borders from Ludvico to force a retreat.

00:26:12.700 The second time would take the whole world to defeat his armies and drive them out of Italy.

00:26:17.140 This is for the reasons listed above all that all the same.

00:26:20.820 They were driven out both times.

00:26:22.180 So he says, look, OK, you go back, you conquer this area, they rebel because they don't like the new king.

00:26:27.680 They didn't get what they wanted.

00:26:29.060 They become, you know, very disdainful.

00:26:31.880 They won't give you the support anymore.

00:26:33.380 It doesn't take much to run you out.

00:26:35.680 You come back for a second time.

00:26:36.920 OK, now the king's fed up right now.

00:26:38.960 He doesn't care if people like him anymore.

00:26:40.800 He's going to be harsher.

00:26:42.060 He's going to crack down.

00:26:43.340 He's going to interrogate people.

00:26:44.760 He's going to punish people.

00:26:46.580 And he's going to send more troops.

00:26:48.920 He's going to be familiar with defenses, the political realities, what he's going to need to fortify the area.

00:26:55.260 But even then, even though it's much harder the second time to drive him out, he was still driven out.

00:27:01.040 So even with all these advantages, all these willingness, all this willingness to crack down everything that's going on,

00:27:06.900 ultimately, he still goes ahead and loses this area.

00:27:10.640 The general reason behind the first French defeat have been discussed.

00:27:16.540 It remains to explain why Louis lost Milan the second time and see what countermeasures he could have taken

00:27:22.180 and what options a ruler has in a situation like this if he wants to hold on to his conquest.

00:27:29.740 Needless to say, any territory annexed to the realm of a conquering ruler may or may not be in the same geographical region

00:27:36.760 and share the same language.

00:27:38.420 If it is, the language is shared and the territory will be much easier to hold on to,

00:27:43.280 especially if its people are not used to the freedom of self-government.

00:27:47.740 All right.

00:27:48.080 So right away, he says two things.

00:27:50.520 One, if you don't have a tradition of Republican self-government,

00:27:54.720 you're going to be much easier to hold when a prince conquers you.

00:27:59.200 You're already used to monarchy.

00:28:00.500 You're used to a single ruler.

00:28:01.860 So you're not going to buck up against this as much as if you had a tradition of Republican government and freedom.

00:28:08.500 Second, if you're conquering a place, it's easier if it's culturally adjacent to you.

00:28:13.700 If it's culturally adjacent to you, that means that you have a much easier time working with the people,

00:28:20.480 talking to the people, communicating with the people, understanding what's going on.

00:28:23.880 Just that shared basis of language is critical because your troops can naturally speak it.

00:28:31.900 They at least have some familiarity with the culture.

00:28:34.700 It makes it easier for the people don't feel like they're being ruled by someone who's so foreign.

00:28:39.080 Overall, it's just much easier to conquer and hold places that have some level of cultural continuity with your own.

00:28:46.960 In that case, all you have to do is eliminate the family of the previous ruler and your hold on power is guaranteed.

00:28:54.540 Alright, so that sounds pretty simple.

00:28:57.280 It's also a pretty brutal sentence.

00:28:58.920 He's saying you got to kill all the other ruling family.

00:29:02.700 All of them.

00:29:03.260 You have to eliminate the family of the previous ruler.

00:29:07.480 It's like if they're already used to being ruled by a monarchy and they're already kind of sharing your culture and your language,

00:29:13.120 then if you just get rid of the ruling family, they won't really notice a difference.

00:29:15.760 As long as there isn't some prince of the old line hanging out somewhere, threatening your power,

00:29:22.240 they're probably yours and it's no problem.

00:29:24.380 All you got to do is murder everybody.

00:29:27.100 Brutal, but again, there's lots of history backing up that is kind of right about that.

00:29:33.260 In that case, all you have to do is eliminate the family of the previous ruler and your hold on power is guaranteed.

00:29:40.900 Everything else in the territory can then be left as it was,

00:29:44.040 and given that there's no profound difference in custom, people will accept the situation quietly enough.

00:29:50.320 So this is so important.

00:29:52.140 Everything else in the territory can be left as it was,

00:29:55.560 and given that there's no profound difference in custom, people will accept the situation quietly enough.

00:30:00.640 Again, if you have this cultural continuity,

00:30:02.380 if the people you are involved with are already used to more or less the same language and the same religion,

00:30:09.100 the same custom, then you're probably not going to buck up against them.

00:30:12.340 But critically, he says, you got to leave them alone.

00:30:15.660 You got to leave them alone.

00:30:16.740 Don't make big changes.

00:30:18.140 They're more likely to accept your new rule if it's more or less like the old rule.

00:30:22.120 If it's just a new guy sitting in the same seat, they're less likely to get angry.

00:30:26.500 What happens, what people don't like is when you rule them in a foreign way,

00:30:30.480 a way that is very different to the way they are used to.

00:30:32.980 This is the problem that America had with ideological empires, right?

00:30:36.540 This is actually the whole problem of the 20th century.

00:30:40.820 It was a bunch of ideological empires, Soviet Union, Western kind of American empire.

00:30:47.000 They kept trying to enforce their way of life on people rather than have like a shared tradition.

00:30:52.320 They're like, we show up and we tell you exactly what to believe and exactly what to think.

00:30:56.560 And you have to behave exactly the way we do.

00:30:58.800 And you need to speak the language we have.

00:31:00.380 And you need to use the currency we use and the systems we use.

00:31:03.460 And people hate this.

00:31:05.500 This is bad.

00:31:06.700 It's terrible for the people trying to conquer.

00:31:09.880 They fail more often than not because they keep things so ideological.

00:31:14.640 It's like, just don't rock the boat.

00:31:16.280 Get in there, conquer, kill all the royal family,

00:31:19.120 and then just kind of put your own family in charge and keep everything the same.

00:31:22.300 What people don't like is foreign rule.

00:31:25.160 If you can make it feel as less foreign as possible,

00:31:28.620 it won't feel tyrannical unless you start changing everything.

00:31:33.080 They're already used to having a prince in charge and having certain laws.

00:31:36.940 So if you can just swap yourself in,

00:31:39.300 that's much better than if you come in there and say,

00:31:40.920 I'm changing everything so you know who's in charge.

00:31:43.140 No, wrong, bad move, according to Machiavelli.

00:31:47.080 Certainly, this was proved true in Burgundy, Brittany, Gascony, and Normandy,

00:31:51.700 all which have been under French rule for many years.

00:31:54.560 Even where there is some difference in language and the customs of these territories are similar,

00:31:59.120 the people can get along with each other.

00:32:00.580 So even though there's a little bit of a different language here,

00:32:03.080 we're more or less, you know, similar cultures.

00:32:06.140 There aren't radical differences.

00:32:07.680 It's still relatively easy for us to interact.

00:32:10.320 So a ruler who has taken territories in these circumstances must have two priorities.

00:32:14.380 First, to eliminate the family of the previous ruler.

00:32:16.940 Again, he reiterates, you got to kill the whole royal family.

00:32:20.340 Again, this is why Machiavelli gets the reputation as a teacher of evil.

00:32:26.100 First priority, kill the royal family, every one of them.

00:32:30.160 Make sure there's no one left.

00:32:34.580 Second, to leave all laws and taxes as they were.

00:32:38.180 So he says, don't change the laws.

00:32:40.080 Don't change the taxes.

00:32:41.840 Don't suddenly impose a bunch of new stuff when you show up.

00:32:45.300 That's going to rock the boat.

00:32:46.920 Just leave things where they are.

00:32:48.520 People are already used to that.

00:32:50.340 If you just let them know that the thing they've gotten used to is going to continue

00:32:53.080 to happen, they're far less likely to rebel.

00:32:55.820 It's the intense change that causes violence and resistance.

00:33:01.280 Make it smooth.

00:33:02.540 Make it easy.

00:33:04.240 In this way, the acquiring of territory and the king's original possession will soon form

00:33:08.600 a single entity.

00:33:10.040 So, you know, over time, if you share a language, you share a culture, they're already used to

00:33:14.060 being ruled by a prince.

00:33:15.120 Then all you're really doing is just kind of smoothing them into your system.

00:33:19.060 You don't change their taxes.

00:33:20.340 You don't change their laws.

00:33:21.700 You don't put any big penalties on them.

00:33:24.720 You just get rid of their ruling class and you swap yourself in for your own.

00:33:28.400 And then eventually you'll just kind of merge into a different kingdom.

00:33:31.960 And remember, this is before nations, as we understand it, really exist.

00:33:38.300 So our idea of like individual nation states, just that wasn't how the world existed.

00:33:45.840 The world is a patchwork of empires and kingdoms.

00:33:48.400 And in some cases, like city-state republics.

00:33:51.620 But for the most part, this kind of slow addition and subtraction of like territories to kingdoms

00:33:58.440 was more the norm than this idea of like a coherent nation state or really ethno state,

00:34:05.440 which is what especially Woodrow Wilson was also pushing for.

00:34:10.000 But when a ruler occupies a state in an area that has a different language,

00:34:14.280 different customs and different institutions, then things get tough.

00:34:18.400 To hold on to a new position in these circumstances takes a lot of luck and hard work.

00:34:22.900 By the way, Machiavelli is always noticing that luck is a part of this.

00:34:28.560 You'll see him talk about Fortuna.

00:34:30.060 You'll see him talk about fortune, about luck.

00:34:32.360 He recognizes that that is always a possibility.

00:34:35.080 He never excuses failure on the part.

00:34:38.860 In fact, he will constantly say, you need to take control of that luck.

00:34:42.680 You need to make sure that fortune factors in as little as possible

00:34:47.220 because you have secured victory through hard work.

00:34:49.700 However, it's always a factor.

00:34:52.380 Perhaps the most effective solution is for the new ruler to go and live there himself.

00:34:56.880 This will improve security and make the territory more stable.

00:35:00.680 The Turkish sultan did this in Greece and all other measures he took to hold on to the country

00:35:05.660 would have been inefficient or ineffective if he hadn't.

00:35:08.820 When you're actually there, you can see when things are starting to start going wrong and nip rebellion in the bud.

00:35:18.780 When you're far away, you can only find out about it when it's too late.

00:35:22.840 Another advantage is that the new territory won't be plundered by your officials.

00:35:26.700 Its subjects will be happy when they can appeal to a ruler who's living among them.

00:35:31.020 So if you're intending to be obedient, they'll have no more.

00:35:34.780 So if they're intending to be obedient, they'll have one more reason to love you.

00:35:39.480 And if they're not, all the more reason to fear you.

00:35:43.160 Anyone planning an attack from outside will think twice about it.

00:35:46.800 So if you go and live in the new territory you've taken, you're very unlikely to lose it.

00:35:52.540 So he says, look, if you conquer a new territory and then you just like send some surrogates, a governor, some functionaries, some bureaucrats, an underling to rule, there's going to be a lot of problems.

00:36:05.200 First, that person is usually going to want to take some kind of graph out of it.

00:36:10.060 Like they're not the ruler.

00:36:11.260 They're not the rich guy.

00:36:12.640 They're not the one in charge.

00:36:13.880 So they needed a benefit for running the area.

00:36:16.200 So they're going to want to abuse the people because it's not part of their hereditary line.

00:36:20.540 If you've ever read Joseph de Maestra or you've ever read Bertrand de Juvenal or if you've read Hans Hermann Hopp, you'll have seen this argument before that the continued ownership of the area by the ruler creates this like basically property incentive to care for and maintain because you have a long term view.

00:36:43.840 The king is not going to go into a province that he won and just looted immediately because he intends to rule these people for decades.

00:36:52.860 In fact, he expects his child and his child's child to inherit this.

00:36:56.620 So he doesn't want to just go in there and burn everything down.

00:36:58.840 But a governor or a low level official, a functionary, they are incentivized to that because their kids aren't going to get to have this.

00:37:05.520 They're not going to hand this territory off to their great, great grandkid.

00:37:08.660 And they can only get what they can get, why they can get it while they're in a position of power.

00:37:13.080 So they're going to be inclined to plunder.

00:37:15.220 So he says, if you're there, you don't have to worry about your officials plundering.

00:37:19.160 Also, you don't have to worry about getting secondhand knowledge.

00:37:22.000 You don't have to wait for everything to come back to you, get a decision.

00:37:24.840 You're on the ground.

00:37:26.260 So if the people are having problems, you can answer them right there.

00:37:29.160 You can be a good king right there for them.

00:37:32.100 And if they're thinking about rebellion or someone's considering invading, you and your armies, your bodyguards are all right there.

00:37:39.380 You don't have to marshal forces and send reinforcements.

00:37:42.320 You're already in the area.

00:37:44.200 So if you're going into a place where the language isn't the same, the customs aren't the same, you don't have any of those positive things going for you.

00:37:51.560 It's a radically different culture.

00:37:53.260 You really should go yourself and show them that you can rule and show them that you're listening and ensure that your governors aren't taking a bunch of stuff from them, aren't embezzling them, aren't taking a bunch of graft from them, aren't imbusing them, and making sure there's no lag between your leadership and others.

00:38:10.200 And if they even think that they're going to rebel against you, you're already here.

00:38:13.960 You've already got your forces.

00:38:15.340 There is no option.

00:38:16.280 So a lot of rulers would just want to conquer and then go back home.

00:38:19.480 He says, don't do that.

00:38:20.380 If you're going to go and conquer a place that is very different from your own, you need to occupy it yourself.

00:38:25.820 Don't let other people do it.

00:38:26.840 This is what leadership is about.

00:38:28.760 Monarchy is a very different form of government.

00:38:31.240 You have to go.

00:38:32.540 Your personal presence is the big deal.

00:38:35.120 You have to go.

00:38:37.820 Some say the bubbles in an arrow truffle piece can take 34 seconds to melt in your mouth.

00:38:42.740 Sometimes the very amount you're stuck at the same red light.

00:38:46.240 Rich, creamy, chocolatey arrow truffle.

00:38:48.800 Feel the arrow bubbles melt.

00:38:51.280 It's mind bubbling.

00:38:55.260 Another good solution is to establish colonies in one or two places.

00:38:59.720 He's getting this from Aristotle, by the way.

00:39:01.960 Like, this is very much blow for blow.

00:39:04.660 A lot of what Aristotle said in the politics about conquering foreign nations that you don't share things with.

00:39:10.800 These work rather like chains to bind the captured state to your own.

00:39:15.360 If you don't do this, you'll have to keep the large number of infantry and cavalry in the territory.

00:39:20.980 Colonies don't cost a great deal.

00:39:23.380 You can send and maintain them very cheaply, and they only arouse the hostility of the people whose houses and lands are expropriated to give to the colonists.

00:39:31.920 Since they will only be a very small portion of the population, and since these people will now be poor and will have fled into different places, they can hardly cause much trouble.

00:39:41.620 So, again, kind of brutal, but he's not wrong.

00:39:45.060 He says, look, if you've got this foreign place that's very different, you need to establish a cultural beachhead for yourself.

00:39:51.980 You need to go and send a couple, like, cities worth of people in there to occupy areas in this new conquered territory.

00:40:00.040 They're going to give you a population base there.

00:40:02.400 They're going to have a culture base there.

00:40:04.020 They're going to give you economic ties.

00:40:05.960 They're going to give you a place to house your soldiers where they're not going to be in a hostile situation all the time.

00:40:11.080 And the only people you're really going to be making angry are the people you displace because you're going to come in and take their stuff.

00:40:17.420 And what are they going to do?

00:40:18.120 They're too poor, right?

00:40:19.320 Like, they can't really do anything about it.

00:40:21.640 They're too poor.

00:40:22.780 And they just kind of kind of have to put up with it.

00:40:26.380 You know, this is a classic strategy to be to be sure.

00:40:30.640 And we can see this in places like Israel right now.

00:40:34.380 Right.

00:40:34.760 One of the big things the Palestinians want is they want the right to return and take back the places that they lost when the Jewish people moved in to Israel.

00:40:43.400 When they moved in the place that was once Palestine, a lot of the houses, a lot of the areas are still the same.

00:40:48.860 And but what can the Palestinians do?

00:40:50.640 Right.

00:40:51.040 Like, they're all poor.

00:40:52.460 You know, they're all displaced.

00:40:54.020 You know, they don't really have the ability to organize or fight back because they lost all their wealth and their ability.

00:40:59.080 So it just kind of makes it hard for them to do this.

00:41:00.920 Now, again, different scenario.

00:41:03.520 But, you know, we can see these modern applications.

00:41:06.940 And this is a time tested strategy to give you that beachhead and make sure that you can control an area.

00:41:13.380 So once again, Machiavelli suggests the ability of going in and just, you know, recognizing that once you've displaced these people,

00:41:21.040 there's not much they can do.

00:41:22.120 Brutal advice, to be sure, but accurate advice nonetheless.

00:41:27.500 Everyone else will be unaffected, hence prone to keep quiet and at the same time frightened of stepping out of line for fear of having their own houses and land taken away.

00:41:36.320 So you've already displaced these people.

00:41:39.420 They're weak.

00:41:40.060 They're poor.

00:41:40.520 They can't do anything.

00:41:41.580 And everyone else is going to be more likely to stay in line because they're like, oh, I don't want to end up like those guys.

00:41:46.020 Apparently, I could just lose everything.

00:41:47.740 At least I at least I get to maintain what I had before.

00:41:50.780 Better not to cross this new sovereign.

00:41:53.040 In conclusion, colonies are cheap, more loyal, provoke less hostility among your new subjects.

00:41:58.660 And as I've said, those few who are provoked can't fight back since they've been dispossessed refugees.

00:42:03.980 In this regard, it's worth noting that in general, you must either pamper people or destroy them, harm them just a little, and they'll hit back.

00:42:12.920 Harm them seriously, and they won't be able to.

00:42:15.460 Again, another classic Machiavellian understanding, right?

00:42:20.000 He says, look, you either go in and you destroy somebody or you harm them as little as possible.

00:42:28.840 But whatever you do, don't go the middle road.

00:42:30.920 Don't go the middle road and harm them just enough to where they're wounded, but they're ready to fight back.

00:42:36.900 You do not want them to be able to fight back.

00:42:39.300 Either keep someone in good graces or destroy them.

00:42:43.320 Do not wound somebody, insult somebody, and leave them there to come back for you.

00:42:48.140 Again, you're going to see this over and over again in Machiavelli.

00:42:50.760 A brutal truth, a difficult truth.

00:42:53.520 This is where he gets his reputation, but a truth nonetheless.

00:42:56.800 That if you continually, you know, make people angry, take things from them, hurt them, but allow them to hang around,

00:43:04.340 eventually they're going to come back for revenge.

00:43:07.100 And because you didn't completely destroy them, they'll have the capacity to exact revenge.

00:43:11.680 So don't wound people.

00:43:14.300 Either completely destroy them or keep them in their good graces.

00:43:17.740 Do not make someone angry, slight them, harm them, and then leave them.

00:43:22.480 That is the worst thing you can do.

00:43:24.980 So if you're going to harm people, make sure you don't worry about their reaction.

00:43:28.840 If, on the other hand, you decide to send an occupying army rather than an established colony,

00:43:34.040 the operation will be far more expensive and all the revenues from the new territory will be used up in defending it,

00:43:40.640 turning what you have been, again, into a loss.

00:43:45.300 Again, we can see this very often with, like, U.S. military occupation of something like Afghanistan.

00:43:50.080 Obviously, we didn't, like, move our president to Afghanistan, so we didn't listen to Machiavelli there.

00:43:58.620 We didn't send, like, a large amount of our people to just start taking over the most important parts of Afghanistan

00:44:03.660 and creating, like, a cultural beachhead and start transforming them into our way of life.

00:44:09.480 We just kind of sent an army there and then, like, had guys come around and prop up some of their people and be like, be like us.

00:44:16.320 But we really just had an occupying army.

00:44:18.180 That was all that was holding things together.

00:44:20.080 That's why as soon as our army left, all those institutions we built for Afghanistan just completely crumbled, right?

00:44:26.520 They immediately crumbled and the Taliban just took over the country immediately.

00:44:29.980 It was all just a paper tiger held together entirely by the occupation.

00:44:34.660 The very expensive, very costly, and very difficult occupation from a U.S. government, from a U.S. army.

00:44:43.460 And as soon as that was gone, the whole facade collapsed.

00:44:46.320 Let's see here.

00:44:50.660 And you'll provoke more hostility.

00:44:52.340 An army moving about the requisitioning lodging will do damage across the entire territory,

00:44:58.380 something that has consequences for the whole population and turns them all into enemies.

00:45:03.140 And these are enemies who can hit back, people beaten but still on their own ground.

00:45:11.200 So however you look at it, military garrisons are as pointless as colonies are useful.

00:45:19.580 So this is a little different because of modern supply chains.

00:45:24.000 However, this is still essentially correct for today.

00:45:27.140 At that time, you had to get most of your supplies off the land.

00:45:30.800 You simply couldn't get enough supplies from your home territory to this far-flung foreign territory.

00:45:37.640 And so you needed to requisition supplies, which means you had to steal them from the people.

00:45:42.120 Today, we still kind of do that, but not as much because we actually do have the ability to fly things over.

00:45:47.600 However, it's a lot faster.

00:45:49.660 It's still very expensive.

00:45:51.400 It's still very costly, very dangerous.

00:45:53.000 But we do have the ability to send a large amount of food or ammunition or whatever to our troops without necessarily taking everything from the people.

00:46:04.720 However, in either situation, it does create this enmity between people.

00:46:09.440 So the longer you have this occupying force without kind of this more cultural, territorial transformation, the more you're going to be creating ill will because your soldiers are naturally going to kind of wear on the citizens as they take things they need to support themselves.

00:46:25.400 It's going to just create bad blood between the occupying force and the people there who are wounded, but you didn't take enough from them so they can still hit back from you.

00:46:34.420 Again, Machiavelli has that mindset.

00:46:36.120 Either leave things alone, make it cool, or crush them.

00:46:39.980 But do not just go in there half-heartedly, cause these people injury, and then let them sit around on their home turf where they still have power and wait for them to rebel because they will.

00:46:52.000 A ruler who has moved into a new region with a different language and custom must also make himself leader and protector of the weaker neighboring powers while doing what he can to undermine the stronger.

00:47:02.860 In particular, he must take care that no foreign power is strong enough to compete with his own, gets a chance to penetrate the area.

00:47:11.780 People who are discontented, whether out of fear or frustrated ambition, will always encourage a foreign power to intervene.

00:47:19.020 So if you go in and you take an area that is not in your culture, does not have your language, any of that, you need to make sure that the surrounding powers, you do not want them to start collaborating against you.

00:47:32.980 You want to help out the weaker ones, the ones that are afraid, and you want to kind of suppress and push out any that might be as strong as you that can actually challenge you.

00:47:41.200 Because the people you just conquered, as we said, they're not going to be happy with you.

00:47:45.240 Like, whoever let you in there, they're not going to think you did enough, right?

00:47:49.080 Like we talked about previously.

00:47:50.400 And those that didn't want you there, they're going to be angry that you're there in the first place.

00:47:54.080 And so now that their power has really been displaced, they're going to be looking for some other forwarder to displace you.

00:48:00.780 So you don't want other competing strong foreign powers in the same area because it's already ripe for takeover.

00:48:07.800 And so if you allow other people to be strong in the area, the people who don't want you there are going to appeal to those strong powers, and they're going to try to use them to leverage you out of the area.

00:48:16.780 So it's not just enough to control the area itself.

00:48:19.180 You want to bolster and make friends with the weaker powers in the area.

00:48:22.160 You want to keep down and push out the stronger powers in the area that might compete with you because ultimately they're a threat to your power because they might be recruited by the people to help throw you out because they're already under a new foreign prince that they don't like.

00:48:38.620 So what's a different new foreign prince that they don't like?

00:48:40.960 Maybe they get a better deal with him.

00:48:42.280 Again, often not.

00:48:43.540 As Machiavelli said earlier, often rolling those dice is dangerous and it hurts them, but they're more willing to do it and you don't want to leave them the option.

00:48:50.240 People who are discontented, whether out of fear or frustrated and ambition, will always encourage a foreign power to intervene.

00:48:56.800 It was the Aetolians who invited the Romans into Greece.

00:49:00.840 Every time the Romans moved into a new region, it was on the invitation of a local people.

00:49:05.980 And it's in the nature of things that as soon as a powerful foreign ruler moves into a region, all the weaker local political powers support him, if only out of resentment towards the stronger states that previously kept them down.

00:49:19.800 So again, we talked about how Rome is a master of this strategy, going in, being welcomed in by the locals.

00:49:25.460 Oh, look, we're not conquering an area.

00:49:27.700 We're coming to an aid of a brother who needs us.

00:49:30.820 That's so often the way that the Romans would frame their conquest.

00:49:34.460 Oh, it's a neighboring country who shares our beliefs and wants to be a part of our greatness.

00:49:40.940 And so we're going to go in there.

00:49:42.360 That's why we have to invade.

00:49:44.300 That is so often how the Romans moved in.

00:49:46.440 This is a constant theme that you see throughout all conquests.

00:49:50.560 You know, Machiavelli is just pulling together what is a recognized historical phenomenon and using it to support his political theory.

00:49:58.620 So the new ruler will have no trouble winning their support and they'll all run to ally themselves with the territory he has taken.

00:50:05.920 He just has to watch out that they don't grab too much power and authority.

00:50:09.420 Then with his own power and strength and their support, he can easily undermine the more powerful neighbors and hence dominate the region.

00:50:17.580 However, an invader who fails to manage relations with his new neighbors will soon lose the territory he has taken.

00:50:25.220 And even while he's still holding on to it, he'll be up against all kinds of trouble and hostility.

00:50:30.980 So when you take over a foreign area as a new prince, you need to be careful.

00:50:35.440 You have to elevate those weak powers.

00:50:37.420 You have to push back the strong powers.

00:50:38.940 You can't just come in and focus on the area itself.

00:50:41.400 You have to be aware of the political dynamics surrounding you.

00:50:44.200 If you don't, then all of a sudden you're going to find yourself trapped in this situation.

00:50:48.360 The Romans followed these principles whenever they took a new province.

00:50:53.680 They sent colonists.

00:50:55.060 They established friendly relations with weaker neighbors, though without allowing them to increase their power.

00:51:00.380 They undermined stronger neighbors and they prevented powerful rulers outside the region for gaining influences.

00:51:06.600 So again, just giving the example that the Romans carried out this exact plan.

00:51:13.060 And so much of what Machiavelli talks about, you know, his other book, His Discourses on Livy,

00:51:17.520 he's drawing so often from the example of the Romans for obvious reasons.

00:51:21.780 There's a reason that we almost always go back to this, is that we're constantly looking to recreate the glory of the Roman Empire.

00:51:31.200 People recognize this is one of the most powerful and successful civilizations of all time.

00:51:36.540 So they obviously look to it for answers on how to conduct themselves.

00:51:40.800 Their handling of Greece will be an example.

00:51:43.360 It will be example enough.

00:51:44.680 They established good relations with the Achaeans and Aetolians.

00:51:48.960 Macedonia, Macedonia's power was undermined.

00:51:52.800 They drove out Antiochus.

00:51:55.120 They didn't reward the good behavior of the Achaeans and the Aetolians by allowing them any new territory.

00:52:02.540 And whenever Philip can convince them to establish friendly relations with him,

00:52:07.280 they made sure that he was weakened as a result.

00:52:10.340 Antiochus, for all his strengths, was never allowed any influence in the region.

00:52:14.680 The Romans were simply doing what all wise rulers do, not restricting themselves to dealing with present threats,

00:52:21.280 but using every means at their disposal to foresee and forestall future problems as well.

00:52:27.440 Seen in advance, trouble is easily dealt with.

00:52:31.020 Wait until it is on top of you and your reaction will come too late.

00:52:34.580 The malaise is already irreversible.

00:52:36.240 So he says the Romans are proactive.

00:52:38.500 They're never letting anyone have too much power, never letting anyone have too much control,

00:52:47.500 never letting any of the surrounding countries have too much influence.

00:52:50.800 Even when they elevate some, even if they reward some, it's always the weaker ones.

00:52:55.460 And when the stronger ones do something good, even when they help, they don't give them more power.

00:52:59.340 They don't reward them because they don't want to throw off that balance.

00:53:02.720 And by making sure the balance is always right, they're in control.

00:53:05.980 They get to control the future.

00:53:07.640 They're not surprised by what comes next because they're constantly paying attention to this dynamic.

00:53:12.940 Remember that the, remember what the doctors tell us about tuberculosis.

00:53:20.400 In early stages, it's easy to cure and hard to diagnose.

00:53:23.460 But if you don't spot it and treat it at time, as time goes by, it gets easy to diagnose and hard to cure.

00:53:30.340 So it is with affairs of state.

00:53:32.520 See trouble in advance, but you have to be shrewd and you can clear it up quickly.

00:53:38.800 Miss it.

00:53:39.400 And by the time it's big enough for everyone to see it, it's too late.

00:53:42.940 To do anything about it.

00:53:44.380 So again, you have to have that vision.

00:53:46.380 The leader has to have the vision and the awareness.

00:53:48.820 They have to see it in, see into the future.

00:53:51.140 To see those small things that are kind of presaging what will come next.

00:53:56.040 They have to be tied in and understand it.

00:53:58.520 You can't just sit back and look at the numbers.

00:54:01.740 This is where managerialism fails, right?

00:54:05.200 Because it's always trying to predict the future through like these really rigid constraints.

00:54:10.140 It's not in the day-to-day life.

00:54:13.520 It's not understanding the dynamics.

00:54:15.520 And so it becomes very difficult for it to predict long into the future what these new dynamics will be.

00:54:21.620 But if you're on the ground, if you're constantly managing the situation, if you're aware of the political situation, if you're providing direct leadership, then you're far more likely to be able to address these things.

00:54:31.860 If you wait too long, if you're lazy, or if you don't pay attention, or you don't properly manage it, this stuff's going to sneak up on you.

00:54:38.100 And if it sneaks up on you, that's when you're in trouble.

00:54:41.480 However, since they had this capacity for seeing a threat in advance, the Romans always knew how to respond.

00:54:48.020 They never put off war when they saw trouble coming.

00:54:50.460 They knew it couldn't be avoided in the long run and that the odds would simply shift in favor of their enemies.

00:54:56.580 So again, the Romans have this foresight.

00:54:58.200 They don't wait. They don't wait for the war to come to them.

00:55:02.020 Once they see that the war is inevitable, they make it happen.

00:55:04.720 They are on the initiative.

00:55:06.140 They have the first action.

00:55:07.620 They have the advantage of that action.

00:55:10.020 They don't lie to themselves and say, oh, well, we can have peace for a few more years.

00:55:13.340 That'll be worth it.

00:55:13.960 No.

00:55:14.680 They take the action when they must in order to address the issue before it festers and becomes a larger problem.

00:55:21.020 They chose to fight Philip and Antiochus in Greece so as to not have to fight them in Italy.

00:55:29.680 They could have put off both wars, but they didn't.

00:55:32.520 And they never took the line our pundits are constantly giving today.

00:55:38.580 Relax time is on your side.

00:55:40.840 Rather, they put their faith in their own foresight and spirit.

00:55:44.240 Time hurries everything on and can just as easily make things worse as better.

00:55:50.060 So, again, he recognizes that you have to take matters into your own hands.

00:55:54.740 Yes, fate is a factor.

00:55:56.420 Yes, you do have a certain amount of random control beyond or random things beyond your control.

00:56:03.260 You can't actually figure out what they're doing, but you can be proactive with the things you do understand.

00:56:09.020 So sitting around and telling yourself, oh, we'll be fine for a few more years.

00:56:13.560 We're ultimately going to be able to handle this wrong.

00:56:16.200 Bad, bad plan.

00:56:17.520 Be proactive.

00:56:18.340 Make the thing happen before it gets too bad.

00:56:21.900 But let's get back to the king of France and see if he took any of the measures we've been discussing.

00:56:29.420 And when I say the king, I mean Louis, not Charles, since Louis held territory in Italy for longer than Charles,

00:56:35.160 and it's easier to see what his methods were.

00:56:37.400 You'll notice that he did the opposite of what a ruler must do to hold on conquest in a region

00:56:43.840 whose customs and language differ from those of your home kingdom.

00:56:47.200 It was a Venetian ambition that brought Louis into Italy.

00:56:52.700 The Venetians planned to take half of Lombardy while he seized the other half.

00:56:58.400 I'm not going to criticize Louis for agreeing to this.

00:57:01.900 He wanted to get first foothold into Italy.

00:57:04.260 He didn't have any friends in the region.

00:57:05.760 On the contrary, thanks to King Charles' behavior, before him, all doors were barred,

00:57:10.740 so he was forced to accept what allies he found.

00:57:13.980 And the arrangement would have worked if he didn't make mistakes in other departments.

00:57:19.260 Taking Lombardy and the king, taking Lombardy, the king recovered in one blow the reputation that Charles had lost.

00:57:25.840 Genoa surrendered.

00:57:27.700 The Florentines offered an alliance.

00:57:30.400 The Marquis of Mantua, the Duke of Ferrara, I don't know how to say that one promptly,

00:57:36.160 Bento Vigoli of Bologna, Caterina Sforza of Fiori, and Lords of Finza,

00:57:45.560 Passero, Rimini, Camerno, Pompino, you know, you can just have me mispronounce everything here,

00:57:52.000 as well as republics of Lucca, Pisa, and Siena, all queued up to make friends.

00:57:58.220 At which point, the Venetians were in a position to see how rash they had been when they proposed the initial deal.

00:58:04.780 For two towns in Lombardy, they had made Louis king over a third of Italy.

00:58:09.300 So as he says so often, once they actually got what they wanted, they realized they hadn't gotten enough.

00:58:14.580 They wanted much more from allowing Louis to come in, and because they didn't get it, now they've become hostile.

00:58:20.500 Think of how easily Louis could have held onto his position in Italy if he had observed the rules outlined above

00:58:26.980 and guaranteed security and protection for all of his friends.

00:58:30.600 There were so many of them, and they were so weak and frightened, either of Venice or Rome,

00:58:35.840 and they could simply force to side with Louis.

00:58:41.560 Then, with their help, he could have easily defended himself against the states that were still powerful.

00:58:46.720 But no sooner had he arrived in Milan than Louis did the opposite.

00:58:49.820 He helped Pope Alexander to invade Romagna.

00:58:53.500 He didn't see that this decision weakened his own position, losing him friends and the support of those who had run to him for help,

00:59:01.280 while reinforcing the Pope, adding temporal dominion to the spiritual power that always gives the Pope so much authority.

00:59:08.740 Having made the first mistake, he was dragged in deeper.

00:59:12.200 However, since to curb Alexander's ambitions and prevent him from taking control of Tuscany,

00:59:17.880 he was forced to advance further into Italy himself.

00:59:20.880 Not content with having lost his friends and increased the power of the church,

00:59:24.300 he was eager now to get a hold of the kingdom of Naples,

00:59:28.620 and so made an agreement to split it with the king of Spain.

00:59:34.700 Until then, Louis had been the dominant power in Italy.

00:59:37.600 But this move introduced another great power, equally great power into the peninsula,

00:59:41.780 and with the result that anyone in the region who had ambitions or disgruntled with Louis now came,

00:59:48.580 now had someone else to turn to.

00:59:50.940 Louis could have kept Naples under a quiet king,

00:59:53.620 but instead he kicked the man out and brought in a king who was powerful enough to kick him out.

00:59:58.180 All right, so he's giving, again, the historical examples and backup for his previous assertions when it came to political theory.

01:00:05.180 So he says, look, Louis came in there, he got way more than he bargained for,

01:00:08.820 he got to control so much of Italy, everyone was afraid.

01:00:11.700 If he had just taken these smaller, minor leaders and made them dependent on him,

01:00:16.700 if he had made those inroads, if he had built that relationship,

01:00:20.060 if he had planted some colonies, if he had gone there himself,

01:00:23.000 he could have created this dynamic where he was now providing stability to so much of the people who had been displaced in Italy,

01:00:31.120 and he could have cemented himself and probably expanded out further over time.

01:00:36.980 Instead, instead, he prioritized giving power to the Pope.

01:00:41.280 So instead of building his own power, he built the power of another entity, the church, inside the area.

01:00:47.660 In addition to giving that power to the Pope, he also invited Spain to come in because he was too busy.

01:00:54.820 He wanted to get in deeper into Italy, control Naples, control more of the peninsula.

01:01:02.480 And so he went ahead and made deals with another strong power.

01:01:06.380 So instead of him putting little vassal kings who owned everything to him in charge,

01:01:11.840 instead of taking some of those weak nobles in that area,

01:01:14.940 the native nobles in that area, and putting them in charge and having them owe him everything

01:01:19.780 and slowly expanding his influence by moving into the area and having colonies, those kind of things,

01:01:24.760 instead of doing any of that, he empowers the church and empowers a foreign power, Spain,

01:01:30.340 that is just as equal to him in dominance.

01:01:34.600 And basically now there are multiple other powers competing where he was the one dominant great power in this area.

01:01:41.280 So if he had just had a little more caution, if he had been a little wiser about how he went about this

01:01:47.480 and didn't try to rush to the finish line, he could have slowly expanded his power with everyone owing their space in Italy to him.

01:01:57.260 Instead, he tried to race through, tried to empower the church, gave power to Spain in the area

01:02:03.720 because he wanted to be able to move faster, do things he couldn't do on his own in a short amount of time,

01:02:09.380 and classic blunder because he introduced too many different powers into the area.

01:02:15.000 The desire to conquer more territory really is a very natural and ordinary thing,

01:02:18.840 and whenever men have the resources to do so, they'll always be praised, or at least not blamed.

01:02:24.840 So people love conquers.

01:02:27.080 No matter what anyone tells you, I know right now we're having this discussion,

01:02:31.640 look, I'm somebody who ultimately hopes that the United States scales back some of its imperial ambitions,

01:02:36.200 but the truth is people love conquers, and if you conquer a land successfully,

01:02:40.980 people are going to find a way to justify it.

01:02:43.860 They just are.

01:02:44.720 They're going to find some way to say, you know what?

01:02:46.760 That wasn't so bad.

01:02:48.280 Actually, you're pretty great.

01:02:50.160 You're usually going to be blamed, or you're usually going to be praised for pulling this off,

01:02:55.280 and you're rarely going to be blamed.

01:02:56.680 So just conquering successfully in general is usually just a positive for you no matter what.

01:03:02.960 But when they don't have the resources yet carry on regardless,

01:03:06.560 when they're at fault and deserve what blame they get,

01:03:09.620 then they're at fault and deserve what blame they get.

01:03:12.320 If Louis was in a position to capture the kingdom of Naples with his own forces,

01:03:16.700 then he should have gone ahead and done it.

01:03:19.420 And if he wasn't, he certainly shouldn't have split the territory with another king.

01:03:23.060 I think sharing Lombardy with the Venetians was forgivable in that it gave him a foothold into Italy,

01:03:28.960 but there was nothing necessary about sharing Naples with Spain, and hence it was a mistake.

01:03:33.920 So don't bring foreign powers in.

01:03:36.860 Don't ally with a foreign power and give them control of an area.

01:03:39.980 That's always going to be a mistake.

01:03:41.920 If you can do it with your own forces, then do it with your own forces.

01:03:44.600 If you can't, don't get overly ambitious.

01:03:46.800 Again, another theme we'll see popping up in Machia Valley all the time.

01:03:51.580 You must control the forces.

01:03:53.760 The swords must be under your control and no one else's.

01:03:57.460 All right, guys, that's the, as far as we're going to get today,

01:04:02.160 like I said, this is going to be an ongoing series.

01:04:03.760 We'll return back to where we left off and continue to pull different aspects

01:04:07.720 of Machiavelli's wisdom out of the prince.

01:04:11.540 But that is where we're going to stop for the moment.

01:04:14.040 Let's go to the questions of the people real quick.

01:04:16.020 Jacob Zindel says, I love the booksell content.

01:04:22.360 The right needs to patronize more booksells.

01:04:25.080 Well, thank you very much.

01:04:26.280 You know, this has been a theory-based channel as much as it can be.

01:04:31.880 We're always going to have to do current events.

01:04:34.620 We have to have the ability to talk about relevant things that are going on in the world.

01:04:38.980 People want that as well.

01:04:40.300 People tend to watch a lot of that content.

01:04:41.780 But the core of this channel, you know, I've always tried to bring political theory in

01:04:46.080 and see how that applies.

01:04:47.760 And that's kind of been the hallmark of kind of what I've been doing here.

01:04:51.920 And so I'm glad that you appreciate the content.

01:04:55.260 It's always, you know, people always say they want more crunchy content.

01:04:59.160 They're like, oh, you're doing too many fluff things.

01:05:01.280 You're doing too much in the news.

01:05:02.660 But those are the things that perform the best, you know.

01:05:04.660 So if you like this kind of stuff, if you want more of this,

01:05:08.540 I love making this type of content.

01:05:09.960 But, you know, share the episode out, you know, get more people subscribed.

01:05:14.700 Help me know that this has got positive impact.

01:05:17.220 I'm going to keep doing this no matter what.

01:05:18.560 I'll be honest.

01:05:19.380 But ultimately, very much helpful to continue this type of content if this content performs well.

01:05:24.820 If it's all like Budweiser hired a tranny or something like that, you know, that content,

01:05:31.040 you know, sorry, like it just outperforms videos like this 10 to 1.

01:05:34.200 I'd rather do videos like this, but we got to throw in some of those Budweiser,

01:05:37.320 you know, stories if we want to bring new people in.

01:05:41.140 It doesn't help if you just do everything in a little echo chamber.

01:05:44.380 So I do appreciate that, though.

01:05:45.920 And I really do.

01:05:46.940 I am very lucky to have an audience that has kept me doing what I'm doing while addressing content like this.

01:05:52.880 It's something that most people don't have.

01:05:55.020 It's very easy for people to, you know, try to put content like this out and ultimately get buried in the algorithm or that kind of thing.

01:06:01.900 Don't get me wrong.

01:06:03.180 It's always a hard climb to do more of this type of show in podcasts and YouTube and everything else.

01:06:09.340 It's just not as rewarded as much.

01:06:11.060 But I'm lucky enough to have an audience that has stayed with me through all this.

01:06:14.420 So I am very grateful for you guys.

01:06:17.140 All right.

01:06:18.120 I'm going to go ahead and wrap it up here.

01:06:19.220 Like I said, we will pick up with the prints in our next episode in the series.

01:06:24.360 I'm not sure if that will be Wednesday or not, but we will certainly be this will be ongoing.

01:06:30.860 It'll be mixed into more, you know, topic news topics and that kind of thing as well.

01:06:36.620 So we'll see more of the prints.

01:06:38.440 Don't worry.

01:06:39.220 All right, guys.

01:06:40.100 Again, if it is your first time here on YouTube, please click subscribe, the bell, the notifications, all that stuff.

01:06:46.080 So, you know, when we go live, if you would like to get these broadcast as podcasts and you subscribe to the Ory McIntyre show on your favorite podcast platform.

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01:06:56.840 Thank you for watching.

01:06:57.640 And as always, I will talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - February 16, 2026

Machiavelli on the Difficulty of Conquest ｜ 2⧸16⧸26

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