The Prince

more difficulty; because the Lord, taking the occasion from the rebellion, is less hesitant to secure himself by punishing the delinquents, clearing up the suspects, and providing for the weakest parts. So that if to make France lose Milan the first time, a Duke Lodovico was enough, who clamored on the borders; to make him lose it the second time, he needed to have the whole world against him, and for his armies to be destroyed and driven out of Italy; which arose from the aforementioned causes. Nevertheless, both the first and the second time it was taken from him. The universal causes of the first have been discussed; it remains now to see those of the second, and to say what remedies he had, and what ones someone who was in his terms could have, to be able to maintain himself better in what is acquired than the King of France did. I say, therefore, that these states, which when acquired are added to an ancient state of the one who acquires them, are either of the same province and the same language, or they are not. When they are, there is great ease in holding them, especially when they are not used to living free, and to possess them securely it is sufficient to have extinguished the line of the prince who dominated them, because in other things, by maintaining their old conditions for them, and there being no dissimilarity of customs, men live quietly, as has been seen that Burgundy, Brittany, Gascony, and Normandy have done, which have been with France for so long; although there may be some dissimilarity of language, nevertheless the customs are similar and they can easily be compatible with one another; and whoever acquires them, wanting to hold them, must have two considerations: the one, that the blood of their ancient prince be extinguished; the other, not to alter either their laws or their taxes, such that in a very short time it becomes one body with their ancient principality. But when states are acquired in a province dissimilar in language, customs, and orders, here are the difficulties, and here one needs great fortune and great industry to hold them; and one of the greatest and most vivid remedies would be that the person of the one who acquires them should go there to live. This would make that possession more secure and more durable, as the Turk has done in Greece, who, with all the other orders observed by him to hold that state, if he had not gone to live there, it would not have been possible for him to hold it. Because by being there, one sees disorders arise and one can soon remedy them; by not being there, one hears of them when they are great, and