ions between a prince and his subjects. A considerable emphasis is placed upon the military. Machiavelli was in favor of citizen-soldiers engaging in combat, instead of mercenaries, for the purpose of protecting the state.
The opening chapters of The Prince are concerned with the many varieties of principalities; and more specifically, the problems of maintaining power in a newly acquired nation. Examples of how stateheads of the past and present dealt with new conquests imply that a person must be ruthlessly despotic besides being cleverly magnanimous to hold blemished humanity in check. Cesare Borgia is presented as a model prince, whose tactics of force and fraud enabled him to maintain territories originally secured by way of the influence of his fathe
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