# CHAPTER 27 — How to Unify a Divided City, and Why the Opinion that It Is Necessary to Keep Cities Divided in Order to Hold Them Is Not True

By the example of the Roman consuls who reconciled the inhabitants of Ardea, the method of how to reunite a divided city may be noted; this method consists of nothing else, nor can the wound be healed in any other way, but executing the leaders of the disturbances. For it is necessary to choose one of three methods: either execute them, as the Romans did; or remove them from the city; or force them to make peace among themselves under the obligation of causing no more harm. Of these three methods, the last is the most damaging, the least certain, and the most useless, because where much blood has been spilled or other similar injuries have been inflicted, it is impossible for a peace made by force to endure, with the parties meeting face to face every day; it is difficult for them to abstain from offending each other, with new occasions for complaints arising among them every day through their close association.

On this subject, no better example can be given than the city of Pistoia. That city was divided fifteen years ago * (as it still is) into the Panciatichi and the Cancellieri factions, but at that time Pistoia was up in arms, while today it has laid them down. After many disputes between them, the factions came to bloodshed, to the destruction of one another’s houses, to plundering each other’s property, and to every other sort of hostility. The Florentines, who had to reconcile them, always employed this third method there, and greater disorders and greater embarrassments always arose from it until, exhausted, they came to the second method, that of removing the leaders of the factions, some of whom were sent to prison while others were confined in various places, so that the accord reached could endure, and it has up to the present day. But without any doubt, the first method would have been more secure. But, since such punishments have in them something of the great and generous, a weak republic will not know how to carry them out and is so reluctant to use such methods that it barely manages to make use of the second remedy. As I said at the beginning, * these are the kinds of errors that princes of our times commit when they have to make decisions on important matters; thus, they should want to hear how those who in ancient times had to make decisions in similar cases took action. But the weakness of men in the present, caused by their poor education and their slight knowledge of affairs, makes them consider ancient punishments as partly inhumane and partly impossible. And they hold certain modern opinions far removed from the truth, such as the one the wise men of our city used to repeat some time ago— that it was necessary to hold Pistoia with factions and Pisa with fortresses; they did not realize that both of these two methods are useless.

I want to omit fortresses, because we spoke of them at length above, * and I want to discuss the disadvantage that derives from keeping the cities you possess divided. * In the first place, it is impossible for you to keep both factions your friends, whether you who are governing them are a prince or a republic, because nature causes men to choose sides in any matter with two sides, where one side may please them more than the other. Thus, by having one part of that city discontented, you lose the city in the first war that arises, because it is impossible to guard a city with enemies both inside and outside. If a republic governs it, there is no finer method of making your citizens wicked and causing divisions in your own city than to control a city that is divided, because each faction seeks to win favours and each creates friends through various corrupt means. Thus, two extremely great disadvantages arise from this: one is that you never make them your friends, for the reason that you cannot govern them well, since you must often vary the government, now with one humor, now with another; the other is that such concern with factions of necessity divides your republic. Biondo, speaking of the Florentines and the Pistoians, bears witness to this when he says: ‘while the Florentines tried to reunite Pistoia, they divided themselves.’ * It is easy, however, to consider the harm that arises from such a division.

In 1502, when Florence lost Arezzo and the entire Valditevere and the Valdichiana, which had been occupied by the Vitelli family and Duke Valentino, a certain Monsieur de Lant * came on the scene, sent by the king of France to restore all those lost cities to the Florentines, and when de Lant found in every castle men who, in paying him honour, declared that they were in the Marzocco faction, * he harshly criticized this division, stating that if in France one of the king’s subjects declared he was in the king’s faction, he would be punished, because such a statement signified nothing other than that people who were the king’s enemies lived in that city; and that this king wanted all the cities to be friendly to him, united, and without factions. But all these methods and opinions contrary to the truth arise from the weakness of those who are rulers; with the realization that they cannot hold states with force and with exceptional skill, they turn to similar schemes, which are occasionally useful in quiet times, but when adversities and hard times arrive, they display their fallacious nature.