CHAPTER XXIII.: one should never risk one’s whole fortune unless supported by one’s entire forces, and therefore the mere guarding of passes is often dangerous.

It was never deemed wise to risk one’s whole fortune without employing at the same time one’s whole forces, and which may be done in different ways. One is the acting like Tullus and Metius, when they committed the entire fortunes of their countries, and so many brave men as both had in their armies, to the valor of only three of their citizens, who constituted but a minimum part of their respective forces. They did not perceive that by so doing all the labors of their predecessors in organizing the republic so as to insure it a long and free existence, and to make her citizens defenders of their liberty, were as it were made nugatory, by putting it in the power of so few to lose the whole. On the part of the Romans, they could certainly not have done a more ill considered thing. The same fault is almost always committed by those who, upon the approach of an enemy, attempt to hold the difficult approaches, and to guard the passes; which course will almost always prove dangerous, unless you can conveniently place all your forces there, in which case that course may be adopted; but if the locality be so rugged that you cannot keep and deploy all your forces there, then it is dangerous. I am induced to think so by the example of those who, when assailed by a powerful enemy, their country being surrounded by mountains and rugged places, never attempted to combat the enemy in the passes or mountains, but have always gone either to meet him in advance of these, or, when they did not wish to do that, have awaited his coming in easy and open places; the reason of which is the one I have above alleged. For you cannot employ a large force in guarding rugged and mountainous places;

be it that you cannot obtain provisions there for any length of time, or that the defiles are so narrow as to admit of only a small number of men, so that it becomes impossible to sustain the shock of an enemy who comes in large force. Now for the enemy it is easy to come in full force, for his intention is to pass, and not to stop there; whilst on the contrary he who has to await the approach of the enemy cannot possibly keep so large a force there, for the reason that he will have to establish himself for a longer time in those confined and sterile places, not knowing when the enemy may come to make the attempt to pass. And once having lost the pass which you had hoped to hold, and upon which your people and army had confidently relied, they are generally seized with such terror that they are lost, without your having even been able to test their courage; and thus you lose your whole fortune from having risked only a portion of your forces.

It is well known what difficulties Hannibal encountered in passing the Alps that separate Lombardy from France, as well as the mountains that divide Lombardy from Tuscany; nevertheless, the Romans awaited him first on the Ticino, and afterwards in the plains of Arezzo; for they preferred rather to expose their army to being defeated in a place where they themselves had a chance of being the victors, than to move it to the mountains, to be destroyed there by the difficulties of the locality. And whoever reads history attentively will find that very few of the best commanders have attempted to hold such passes, for the very reasons which I have given, and because they cannot close them all; the mountains being in that respect like the open country, in having not only well known roads that are generally used, but also many others, which, if unknown to strangers, are yet familiar to the people of the country, by whose aid any invader may always be guided to any desired point. Of this we have a most notable and recent example in 1515, when Francis I., king of France, wanted to enter Italy for the purpose of recovering the state of Lombardy. Those who opposed him in this attempt, relied mainly upon their confident expectations that the Swiss would arrest his march in the mountain passes. But the event proved that their confidence was vain, for the king of France, leaving aside the two or three passes that were guarded by the Swiss, came by another route hitherto quite unknown, and was in Italy

and upon them before they knew anything of it; so that their terror-stricken troops retreated to Milan, and the entire Milanese population yielded themselves to the French, having been disappointed in their hopes that the French would be kept out by the difficulty of passing the Alps.