representatives of the two types of government into which he thinks all
principalities are divided. Lo stato del Turcois difficult to seize because
it is divided into sanjaks administered by servants who are entirely the
creation of the sultan, but by the same token it is easy to hold once
captured. On the other hand, lo stato di Franciais easy to take, because
the king of France is placed in the middle of a host of hereditary lords
with their own ‘subjects’ and recognized ‘state’, and some of these
barons can always be won over by an invader: but equally they can
change their allegiance back again, so that France is difficult to hold.
Machiavelli is clearly looking back to the events of the Anglo-French
wars, the outcome of which he describes more optimistically when he
discusses ‘mixed principalities’. Conquered territories can be integrated
with ‘an old state’, if their language, way of life, and institutions
are similar, and if the conqueror changes their governors but not
their customs: this he believes explains the permanence of the French
annexation of Burgundy, Brittany, Gascony, and Normandy, and the
failure of Louis XII to hold on to Milan.^96
(^96) Machiavelli, Il Principe, caps. 3, 4: pp. 58–9, 71–2 in Opere Politiche, ed. Puppo, and
pp. 8, 15–16 in the tr. by Skinner and Price.
294 Monarchical State of the Later Middle Ages