# 23. That One should not stake the Whole of One’s Fortune except on the Whole of One’s Forces; and that, consequently, it is frequently Harmful to defend Passes

It has never been thought a wise course to risk the whole of your fortune without employing all your forces. This may be done in several ways. One way is to act as Tullus and Mettius did when they entrusted the whole of their country’s fortune and the virtue of all the troops each of them had in his army to the virtue and fortune of three of their citizens, who came to but a tiny fraction of the forces each had at his disposal. Nor did they realize that in adopting such a course they were treating as of no account all the pains to which their ancestors had put themselves in order so to organize the commonwealth that it might enjoy a long life of freedom and that the citizens of each might be themselves the defenders of their freedom, for it lay within the power of so few to lose it. Than this these kings could hardly have done anything more stupid.

Those also almost always incur an inconvenience of this kind who, when the enemy is at hand, decide to hold difficult positions and to defend passes; for such a decision is almost always harmful unless the difficult position is such that you can conveniently hold it with all your forces. In that case this course should be adopted. But if the place is so awkward that it will not hold all your forces, such a course is dangerous. What leads me to think so is that those who have been attacked by a powerful foe in a land surrounded by mountains and in an Alpine terrain, have never attempted to engage the enemy in their passes and their mountains but have gone forth from them to meet him beyond them; or, when reluctant to do this, have awaited him behind their mountains, but in open country, not in country of the Alpine type. The reasons for this are, as has been said, that it is not easy to bring many men to the defence of an Alpine terrain, both because there is not enough for them to live on for very long, and because, the place being confined and capable of holding but a few, it is not possible to withstand an enemy who comes with a large force to attack it; and for the enemy to come with a large force is easy since his purpose is to get through, not to make it a stronghold. Nor is it possible for the defender to await in force, since he does not know when the enemy intends to pass that way, and so must find accommodation for a lengthy period in places which I am supposing to be both confined and sterile. When, therefore, the pass which you proposed to hold and on which your people and your army were relying, has been lost, your people and what remains of your forces will more often than not be so filled with terror that they will give up without awaiting a further chance of putting their valour to the test. You will thus have lost your whole fortune though you have employed but a part of your forces.

Everybody knows how difficult Hannibal found it to cross the Alps which separate Lombardy from Gaul and again how difficult he found it to cross those which separate Lombardy from Tuscany. Yet the Romans, in spite of this, awaited him first on the Ticinus and afterwards in the plain of Arezzo, for they preferred their army to be wiped out by the enemy in a place where it had a chance of winning rather than to lead it up the Alps to be destroyed by the malignant situation.

He who reads with appreciation history as a whole will find that very few generals of any virtuosity have attempted to hold such passes, both for the aforesaid reasons and because it is impossible to close them all, for in mountains, as in open country, there are not only the commonly frequented routes, but many others which, if not known to foreigners, are known to peasants, whose help you can always enlist in any place to the discomfiture of your opponent.

Of this quite a recent example may be cited. In 1515 when Francis, king of France, was intending to cross into Italy in order to regain control of Lombardy, the chief objection raised by those who were averse to the undertaking was that the Swiss would be a menace to the passes over their mountains. But experience showed that the objection was without foundation for, avoiding the two or three places which the Swiss were guarding, the king came by another route of which they were unaware, and was in Italy and down on them before they knew of it. Whereupon the Swiss in their alarm retreated on Milan, and the whole population of Lombardy came out to welcome the French forces when they found they were mistaken in thinking that the French would be held up in their mountains.