The Prince (14 page)

So, a leader doesn't have to possess all the virtuous qualities I've mentioned, but it's absolutely imperative that he seem to possess them. I'll go so far as to say this: if he had those qualities and observed them all the time, he'd be putting himself at risk. It's seeming to be virtuous that helps; as, for example, seeming to be compassionate, loyal, humane, honest and religious. And you can even be those things, so long as you're always mentally prepared to change as soon as your interests are threatened. What you have to understand is that a ruler, especially a ruler new to power, can't always behave in ways that would make people think a man good, because to stay in power he's frequently obliged to act against loyalty, against charity, against humanity and against religion. What matters is that he has the sort of character that can change tack as luck and circumstances demand, and, as I've already said, stick to the good if he can but know how to be bad when the occasion demands.

So a ruler must be extremely careful not to say anything that doesn't appear to be inspired by the five virtues listed above; he must seem and sound wholly compassionate, wholly loyal, wholly humane, wholly honest and wholly religious. There is nothing more important than appearing to be religious. In general people judge more by appearances than first-hand experience, because everyone gets to see you but hardly anyone deals with you directly. Everyone sees what you seem to be, few have experience of who you really are, and those few won't have the courage to stand up to majority opinion underwritten by the authority of state. When they're weighing up what someone has achieved - and this is particularly true with rulers, who can't be held to account - people look at the end result. So if a leader does what it takes to win power and keep it, his methods will always be reckoned honourable and widely praised. The crowd is won over by appearances and final results. And the world is all crowd: the dissenting few find no space so long as the majority have any grounds at all for their opinions. There's a certain king today
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- I'd better not call him by name - who never stops preaching peace and trust and is actually sworn enemy to both; and if he had ever practised either he would have lost his authority or his kingdom many times over.

19

Avoiding contempt and hatred

Now that I've discussed the most important of the qualities I listed I'd like to look at the others more briefly in relation to the principle, already mentioned, that a ruler must avoid any behaviour that will lead to his being hated or held in contempt; every time he manages this he's done what a ruler should and can indulge other bad habits without worrying about the consequences. As I've already said, what most leads to a ruler being hated is seizing and stealing his subjects' property and women; that he must not do. As long as you don't deprive them of property or honour most men will be happy enough and you'll only have to watch out for the ambitious few who can easily be reined back in various ways. You'll be held in contempt, on the other hand, if you're seen as changeable, superficial, effeminate, fearful or indecisive. So a ruler must avoid those qualities like so many stumbling blocks and act in such a way that everything he does gives an impression of greatness, spirit, seriousness and strength; when presiding over disputes between citizens he should insist that his decision is final and make sure no one imagines they can trick or outwit him.

The ruler who projects this impression of himself will be highly thought of and it's hard to conspire against a man who is well thought of. Then so long as he has a reputation for excellence and is respected by his people it will be hard for outside enemies to attack him either. A ruler must guard against two kinds of danger: one internal, coming from his own people; the other external, coming from foreign powers. To defend yourself against foreign powers you need a good army and good allies. And if you have a good army you'll always have good allies, and when you're secure against foreign powers you'll always be secure internally too, assuming there wasn't already a conspiracy under way. Then even when a foreign power does move against you, if you've lived and organized yourself as I've suggested, you only have to keep your nerve and you'll survive any and every attack, like the Spartan ruler Nabis in the example I gave earlier.

To get back to the internal situation: when there is no threat from outside, a ruler must take care that his subjects don't start conspiring against him. He can guard against this by making sure he isn't hated or despised and that people are happy with him, all of which is very important, as I've explained at length. In fact, one of the most powerful preventive measures against conspiracies is simply not being hated by a majority of the people. People planning a conspiracy must believe that killing the ruler will be popular; when they realize that, on the contrary, it would be unpopular they lose heart, because conspiracies are always beset with endless difficulties. Experience shows that for every successful conspiracy there are any number of failures. A conspirator can't act alone and can look for accomplices only among people he believes are unhappy with the situation. But as soon as he reveals his intentions to someone else he's giving that person the chance to improve his position, since obviously there are all kinds of advantages to be had from betraying a conspiracy. When you reckon that the benefits of betrayal are assured, while joining a conspiracy is a risky and extremely dangerous business, the man will have to be a rare friend indeed, or a very bitter enemy of the government, if he's going to keep faith.

To summarize: on the conspirator's side all you have is fear, envy and the demoralizing prospect of punishment, while the ruler on his side has the authority of the government and its laws plus the protection of his friends and the state. Add to all that the good will of the people and it's extremely unlikely that anyone will be so crazy as to start a conspiracy. Because, while in general a conspirator has most to fear prior to the coup, in this case, with the people against him, he's going to be in danger afterwards too and the fact that he's seen off the ruler doesn't mean he can expect to escape unscathed.

I could give infinite examples of this but let's make do with just one that happened in our fathers' times. Annibale Bentivogli, grandfather of the present Annibale, was Duke of Bologna when the Canneschis conspired against him and killed him. At that point the only surviving Bentivogli was his son, Giovanni, who was still a baby. All the same, immediately after the murder, the people rose up and killed all the Canneschis. This was because the Bentivogli family was extremely popular at the time. In fact, when the Bolognese realized that with Annibale dead there were no family members capable of ruling the town, they went to Florence to get a man who was supposedly a Bentivogli, though until shortly before that he had passed himself off as the son of a blacksmith; they asked him to govern Bologna and he duly did so until Giovanni was old enough to take over.

My conclusion, then, is that so long as he has the people on his side a ruler needn't worry about conspiracies, but when they are against him and hate him he'll have to watch everyone's every move. Sensible rulers and well-run states have always done all they can not to drive the nobles to despair and to keep the people happy and satisfied; indeed this is one of a ruler's most important tasks.

One of the better organized and well-governed states in our own times is France. It is full of good institutions which guarantee the king's security and freedom of action. The most important of these is parliament and parliamentary authority. In fact the king who set up the country's constitution was aware of the ambition and presumption of the nobles and reckoned they needed a bit in their mouths to rein them back. He also knew how much the people hated and feared the nobles and he wanted to protect them. But it was important that the king shouldn't be personally responsible for doing this since then he might be blamed by the nobles for favouring the people or by the people for favouring the nobles. So he introduced an independent body, parliament, that could keep the nobles in their place and protect the people without the king's being responsible. There really couldn't be a better or more sensible institution, nor one more conducive to the security of the king and the realm. This prompts the following reflection: that a ruler must get others to carry out policies that will provoke protest, keeping those that inspire gratitude to himself. In conclusion, let me repeat that a ruler should respect the nobles but must make sure he is not hated by the people.

Perhaps many readers familiar with the fate of certain Roman emperors will feel that their examples contradict these opinions of mine, in that they consistently behaved well and showed great character but nevertheless lost their empire or even their lives at the hands of subjects who conspired against them. To meet these objections, I shall consider the qualities of some of these emperors, showing how the causes of their downfall are not at all out of line with my reasoning above, and bringing into the argument some of the context that historians of the period consider important. I hope it will be enough to take all the emperors who held power from the philosopher Marcus Aurelius down to Maximinus, which is to say: Marcus, his son Commodus, Pertinax, Julian, Severus, Antoninus Caracalla his son, Macrinus, Heliogabalus, Alexander and Maximinus.

The first thing to note is that, while in other states a ruler has only to guard against the ambition of the nobles and the disrespect of the people, Roman emperors faced a third hazard: the greed and cruelty of the army. This was such a tough problem that it proved the downfall of many emperors, because it was so hard to keep both the people and the army happy. The people were for a quiet life and hence loved low-profile leaders, while the soldiers loved leaders with military ambitions, men who were brazen, grasping and cruel; they wanted the emperor to unleash these qualities on the people so that they could double their incomes and give vent to their own greed and cruelty.

As a result, emperors who for lack of natural authority or political flair didn't have the kind of standing that could hold both soldiers and people in check always ended badly. When they saw how difficult it was to deal with these conflicting demands, most of them, and especially those new to power, chose to satisfy the army and more or less ignored the people's suffering. It was a policy dictated by necessity: if a ruler can't avoid hatred altogether, he must first try to avoid the hatred of the country as a whole, and when that proves impossible he must do everything he can to escape the hatred of the classes that wield the most power. So emperors new to their positions and in need of special support turned to the army rather than the people, a policy that worked for as long as they were able to maintain their prestige in the eyes of the soldiers.

This is why, although Marcus, Pertinax and Alexander were benign, humane men, who led unassuming lives, loving justice and hating cruelty, only Marcus managed to avoid a sad end and still commanded respect at his death. This was because he succeeded to the emperor's throne by hereditary right and owed nothing to either the soldiers or the people. Possessing many good qualities that aroused general admiration, he kept both the people and the army in their place throughout his reign and was never either hated or despised. But Pertinax was made emperor against the army's will; under Commodus the soldiers had got used to a degenerate lifestyle and wouldn't accept the standards of honesty Pertinax tried to impose on them. This aroused their hatred and since Pertinax was also despised for being old he was soon overthrown.

In this regard it's worth noting that you can be hated just as much for the good you do as the bad, which is why, as I said before, a ruler who wants to stay in power is often forced not to be good. Because when a powerful group - whether they be the common people, the army or the nobility - is corrupt, then if you reckon you need their support you'll have to play to their mood and keep them happy, and at that point any good you do will only put you at risk. But let's move on to Alexander. He was such a good man that among the many things he was praised for was the fact that over fourteen years in power he never had anyone executed without a trial. All the same, people despised him; they thought him effeminate and said he let his mother run the show; as a result the army conspired against him and killed him.

Going to the opposite extreme and looking at the characters of Commodus, Severus, Antoninus Caracalla and Maximinus, we find they were extremely cruel and grasping; to keep the army happy they committed every crime a leader can commit against his people and all of them, with the exception of Severus, came to a sad end. Severus had such a strong character that though he tyrannized the people to keep the army friendly he was always able to govern with success; his qualities amazed and awed the people, impressed and pleased the army, so that both groups in their different ways admired him.

Since, for a man who took power rather than inheriting it, Severus achieved such a lot, I'd like very briefly to show how well he was able to play both the fox and the lion, animals that, as I said, a ruler must learn to imitate.

Aware that the emperor Julian was weak and indecisive, Severus persuaded the army he commanded in Slavonia to march on Rome and avenge Pertinax, who had been murdered by the Praetorian Guard. With this pretext and betraying no sign of any ambition to become emperor, he led his army towards Rome and was already in Italy before people realized he'd set out. When he arrived in Rome, the Senate, out of fear, elected him emperor and had Julian killed. Having got thus far, Severus faced two obstacles if he was to take complete control of the empire: one in Asia, where the commander of the Asian armies, Pescennius Niger, had declared himself emperor; and the other in the west, where Albinus also aspired to become emperor. Deciding it would be dangerous to show he was hostile to both opponents at once, Severus chose to attack Niger and trick Albinus. So he wrote to Albinus, in France, saying that now that the Senate had elected him emperor he wanted to share the honour with him, Albinus. He sent him the title of Caesar and had the Senate vote to make him co-emperor. Albinus was taken in, but as soon as Severus had defeated and killed Niger and got control of the eastern empire, he went back to Rome and complained in the Senate that Albinus, far from being grateful for everything Severus had given him, had set a trap to kill him; as a result, he, Severus, would have to go and punish his ingratitude. In fact he went to France, stripped Albinus of his power and had him killed.