Why Italian Leaders Lost Everything: The Exact Mistakes That Destroyed Them — The Prince

Machiavelli opens by tying this chapter to everything before it. A new prince is watched more closely than an hereditary one, and capable actions bind men tighter than old blood because people care about the present, not the past. It is double glory to found a state and strengthen it with good laws, arms, allies, and example. It is double disgrace for a born prince to lose his state through lack of wisdom.

The Italian rulers who fell in Machiavelli's time, such as the King of Naples and the Duke of Milan, share predictable faults. All failed on arms for reasons already discussed. Beyond that, each either made the people hostile or, when the people were friendly, did not know how to secure the nobles. States strong enough to keep an army in the field are not lost when those defects are absent.

Philip of Macedon, the one conquered by Titus Quintius and not Alexander's father, held a small kingdom against Rome and Greece for years because he was warlike, knew how to attract the people, and knew how to secure the nobles. He lost some cities but kept the crown.

Machiavelli's closing verdict is blunt: princes should not blame fortune after long possession. They lost through sloth. In quiet years they never imagined change, a common human failure to prepare in calm for the storm. When trouble came they planned escape, not defense, and hoped the people, tired of conquerors, would recall them. That hope may work when all else fails, but it is ruinous to neglect every other remedy and trust that someone will restore you. Deliverance that does not depend on yourself and your valour is neither reliable nor secure.