CHAPTER XI

IT IS NOT A PRUDENT PROCEEDING TO MAKE AN ALLIANCE WITH A PRINCE WHO HAS MORE REPUTATION THAN POWER

Titus Livius, wanting to show the error of the Sidicians in trusting to the aid of the Campanians, and the error of the Campanians in believing themselves able to defend them, could not say it with more forceful words, saying, The Campanians brought a greater name in aid of the Sidicians, than they did men for protecting them. Where it ought to be noted that leagues made with Princes who have neither the convenience of aiding you because of the remoteness of their location nor the strength to do so because of disorganization or other reasons of theirs, bring more notoriety than aid to those who trust in them: as happened in our times to the Florentines, when in one thousand four hundred seventy nine [1479] the Pope and the King of Naples assaulted them, that being friends of the King of France derived from that friendship more notoriety than protection; as also would happen to that Prince who should undertake some enterprise trusting himself to the Emperor Maximilian, because this is one of those friendships that would bring to whoever made it more notoriety than protection, as is said in this treatise of what that of the Campanians brought to the Sidicians.

¶ The Campanians, therefore, erred in this part by imagining themselves to have more strength than they had. And thus little prudence sometimes does to men, who not knowing how nor being able to defend themselves, want to undertake enterprises to defend others; as also the Tarentines did, who, when the Roman armies encountered the Samnites, sent ambassadors to the Roman Consul to make him understand that they wanted peace between those two people, and that they were ready to make war against the one that should refuse peace. So that the Consul, laughing at this proposition, in the presence of the ambassadors, had the [bugle] sound for battle and commanded his army to go and meet the enemy, showing the Tarentines by acts and not words of what a reply they were worthy.

¶ And having in the present chapter discussed the wrong proceedings which Princes undertake for the defense of others, in the following one I want to talk of those means they should undertake for their own defense.