# 27. How Unity may be restored to a Divided City, and how mistaken are those who hold that to retain Possession of Cities one must needs keep them divided

From the example set by the Roman consuls who reconciled the people of Ardea we may learn how to deal with a divided city. The only way to cure it is to kill the ringleaders responsible for the disturbances. For there are but three ways of dealing with them: either to kill them as the consuls did; or to expel them from the city; or to force them to make peace with one another and to undertake not to attack one another. Of these three methods the last is the most hurtful, the least reliable and the most futile. For, where there has been considerable bloodshed or other such-like outrages, it is impossible that a forced peace should last where people are meeting one another every day, and it is difficult to prevent them attacking one another since in their daily intercourse fresh occasions for quarrelling are liable to arise.

Of this no better example can be given than what happened in the city of Pistoia. Fifteen years ago that city was divided, as it is still, into the Panciatichi and the Cancellieri, but in those days they were armed, whereas today they have given this up. Between them there had been many disputes, which led to bloodshed, the destruction of houses, the plundering of property, and other hostile acts of all kinds. The Florentines, whose job it was to compose this strife, always used the third method in doing this, and always there arose worse tumults and greater troubles. So that they got tired of it and tried the second method, which consists in removing the party leaders. Some they put in prison; others they banished to various places; so that the concord thus established might last, as it has lasted, until now.

Yet it would unquestionably have been safer to use the first method. Since, however, in executions of this kind there is something great and grand, a weak republic cannot do such things. So alien, indeed, are they to its character that it is with difficulty that it brings itself to use the second remedy.

These are some of the mistakes which, as I said at the beginning, rulers in our day make when they have to deal with affairs of importance, for they should be ready to hear of how those acted who in olden days had to deal with such problems, whereas, instead, so feeble are men today owing to their defective education and to the little knowledge they have of affairs, that they look upon the judgements of their forefathers as inhuman in some cases and in others as impossible. Yet the modern views they held to are quite unsound; for instance, that advocated a while ago by wise folk in our city who said that Pistoia should be held by means of factions and Pisa by means of fortresses. They fail to see how futile such means are in both cases.

I shall say nothing here about fortresses because I have elsewhere discussed them at length. What I propose to discuss here is the futility of trying to keep the towns you have to govern, divided. First of all, whether it be a prince or a republic that is governing them, it is impossible for you to remain friends with both of two factions. For it is natural and inevitable that men should take sides in any dispute, and should be more drawn to this side than to that. So that, if one party in the town you hold is discontented, it will cause you to lose it as soon as war comes along, for it is impossible to hold a city which has enemies without as well as within. If it is a republic that governs the city, there is no surer way of making its citizens bad subjects and of provoking divisions in your own city than to have to govern a divided city; for each party will seek to win favour, and each will use corrupt practices in order to gain supporters. From which two very serious inconveniences arise. First you will never make them your friends owing to your inability to govern them well so long as their government changes frequently according as now one and now another humour prevails. Secondly, the encouragement of parties in the city must needs provoke divisions in your republic. To this Biondo bears witness when he says of the Florentines and the Pistoians that: ‘In their endeavour to restore unity to Pistoia, the Florentines themselves became divided.’ Hence it is easy to see to what evils a divided city gives rise.

When in 1502 Arezzo was lost, together with the whole of the Val di Tevere and the Val di Chiana, which were occupied by the Vitelli and by the Duke of Valentino, a Monsieur de Lanques was sent by the French king to restore to the Florentines all the towns they had lost. Since in every city which Lanques visited, he found men who said they belonged to Marzocco’s party,a he strongly criticized these divisions. If in France, he said, a man were to claim to belong to the king’s party, he would be punished, for such a statement would imply that in that town there were people hostile to the king, whereas it was the king’s wish that all the towns should support him, and should be united, not split into parties.

All such behaviour and such distorted views are due to the weakness of the overlords, who, because they cannot hold their dominions by force and by virtue, have recourse to such devices, which in quiet times may occasionally be of use, but which, when adversity comes and the times are troubled, show how fallacious they are.