# CHAPTER 27 — Victory Should Be Sufficient for Prudent Princes and Republics, for Most Often When It Does Not Suffice, They Lose

Employing insulting words against the enemy arises, in most instances, from an insolence you gain either from victory or from the false hope of victory; this false hope makes men err not only in their speech but also in their actions. For when this kind of hope enters men’s breasts, it makes them go too far and, in most cases, lose the opportunity of possessing a certain good in the hope of acquiring an uncertain but better one. Given that this is a rule that deserves consideration, since men are very often deceived about it to the detriment of their state, I think it is fit to demonstrate it in detail with ancient and modern examples, since it is impossible to provide as clear a demonstration solely with arguments. After he had defeated the Romans at Cannae, Hannibal sent his emissaries to Carthage to announce his victory and to ask for assistance. The senate debated over what was to be done. Hanno, an old and prudent Carthaginian citizen, advised them to employ this victory wisely in making peace with the Romans, since they had won and could obtain it with honourable conditions, something they could not expect to do after a defeat, because the intention of the Carthaginians should be to demonstrate to the Romans that defeating them was enough and that after having achieved their victory, they did not seek to lose it in the hopes of gaining even a greater one. This policy was not adopted, but it was later recognized as a very wise one by the Carthaginian senate, when the opportunity was lost.

After Alexander the Great had already conquered the entire East, the republic of Tyre—in those times a noble and powerful republic, because its city was surrounded by water, like that of the Venetians—recognized Alexander’s greatness and sent him emissaries to inform him that they wished to be his good servants and to give him the obedience he required, but that they were not yet prepared to accept either him or his troops inside their city; whereupon, indignant that a city would wish to close their gates to someone to whom the entire world had thrown them open, Alexander rebuffed them and, refusing to accept their conditions, besieged the city. The city was surrounded by water and was well supplied with provisions and other munitions necessary for its defence; after four months, Alexander finally realized that a single city, to its glory, was taking more of his time than many of his other acquisitions had taken, and he decided to try to come to an agreement and to concede to them what they themselves had asked of him. But the citizens of Tyre, puffed up with pride, not only were unwilling to accept such an agreement but they murdered the envoy who came to negotiate it. Indignant at this, Alexander turned to the assault with such force that he took the city and destroyed it and killed and enslaved its people.

In 1512 a Spanish army entered Florentine territory to restore the Medici in Florence and to levy a tribute upon the city; they had been brought there by citizens inside who had led them to hope that as soon as they were inside Florentine territory, the inhabitants would take up arms in their support; and after they entered the plain and no one showed himself, the troops tried to reach an agreement, since they were short of provisions; the people of Florence, puffed up with pride, did not accept it, which resulted in the loss of Prato and the ruin of the Florentine state. *

Rulers who are attacked cannot, therefore, commit a greater error, when the attack is carried out by men of far greater power than their own, than to refuse every agreement, especially when it is offered to them, because there will never be an offer so mean that it will not contain something beneficial to the party who accepts it and will, in some respects, represent a partial victory for him. Thus, it should have been enough for the people of Tyre that Alexander accepted the conditions he had initially refused, and it was victory enough to have constrained such a man to their will with arms in hand. It should also have been enough for the Florentine people, since it was a sufficient victory for them, that the Spanish army yielded to some of their demands and did not satisfy all its own, because the aim of that army was to overturn the Florentine state, to remove it from the alliance with France, and to extract money from it. Once the army had achieved two of its three goals, that is, the last two, and the Florentines had achieved one of theirs, which was the preservation of their government, each party in this affair had some honour and satisfaction. The people should not have cared about the first two goals, since they remained alive, nor should they have been willing, even though they looked toward an even greater and almost certain victory, to leave the outcome in any way at the discretion of fortune, thus going to their last stake, which no prudent man ever risks unless he is forced to do so.

Having left Italy where he had gained glory for sixteen years, recalled by his own Carthaginians to rescue his native city, Hannibal found Hasdrubal * and Syphax defeated, the kingdom of Numidia lost, and Carthage confined within the limits of its city walls, with no other refuge remaining except him and his army. Recognizing that this was his city’s last stake, he did not, first of all, want to put his city at risk until he had exhausted every other remedy, and he was unashamed to sue for peace, concluding that if his native city had any remedy, it lay in that and not in war; but when peace was denied to him, he decided not to avoid fighting even if he had to lose, concluding that he might yet be able to win or, losing, to lose gloriously. If Hannibal, who was so able and had his army intact, first sought peace rather than a battle when he saw that if he lost the battle, his native city would become enslaved, what should another man of less ability and experience do? But men commit this error, that is, they do not know how to set limits to their hopes, and when they base their actions on such hopes, without otherwise measuring themselves, they come to ruin.