# CHAPTER 7 — Why Changes from Liberty to Servitude and from Servitude to Liberty Are Sometimes Without Bloodshed and Sometimes Full of It

Some will perhaps ask themselves why, in the many changes from free government to tyranny and the opposite, some occur with bloodshed and others without it; because, as we learn from the histories, during similar changes a great many men on some occasions, have been killed, while on others no one has been injured: this happened in the transition that Rome underwent from the kings to the consuls, where no one was exiled except the Tarquins, without harm to anyone else. This depends on the following circumstance: that is, the state that is changing is either born in violence or it is not, and since when it is born in violence, it is, of necessity, born amid injuries to many people, it is then necessary that in their downfall, the injured wish to seek revenge, and that from this desire for revenge arises bloodshed and the death of men. But when such a state is created by the common consensus of an entire people who have made it great, that people has no reason later on, when the state collapses, to attack anyone but the leader. The state of Rome after the exile of the Tarquins was of this type, as was, too, the government of the Medici, since when they came to ruin in 1494, no one was injured except them. Thus, such transitions do not turn out to be very dangerous, but those that are brought about by men who have to seek revenge are extremely dangerous and have been of the kind that, if nothing else, terrify those who read about them. But since the histories are full of such examples, I want to leave them out.