The Prince

who did not withstand the assaults of the Venetians in [14]84, nor those of Pope Julius in [15]10, for any reason other than being ancient in that Dominion; because the natural Prince has fewer reasons and less necessity to offend; whence it is fitting that he be more loved, and if extraordinary vices do not make him hated, it is reasonable that he be naturally well-liked by his own people, and in the antiquity and continuity of the dominion, the memories and causes of innovations are extinguished; because one change always leaves the notch for the building of another.

C H A P T E R I I I.

Of Mixed Principalities.

But the difficulties consist in the new Principality, and firstly if it is not entirely new, but like a limb, which can be called all together almost mixed. Its variations arise first from a natural difficulty which exists in all new Principalities; because men willingly change their Lord believing they will improve, and this belief makes them take up arms against those who rule, of which they are deceived, because they see later by experience that they have worsened. This depends on another natural and ordinary necessity, which makes it so that one must always offend those of whom one becomes a new Prince, both with armed forces and with infinite other injuries that the new acquisition brings with it. So that you find you have as enemies all those whom you have offended in occupying that principality, and you cannot maintain as friends those who put you there, because you cannot satisfy them in the way they had presupposed, and because you cannot use strong medicine against them, being obliged to them. Because always, even if one is very strong in armies, one needs the favor of the provincials to enter a province. For these reasons, Louis XII, King of France, occupied Milan quickly and lost it quickly, and the forces of Lodovico alone were enough to take it from him the first time; because those people who had opened the doors to him, finding themselves deceived in their opinion and in that future good they had anticipated, could not bear the annoyances of the new Prince. It is indeed true that when the rebelled territories are acquired a second time, they are lost with