CHAPTER XXXI.: great men and powerful republics preserve an equal dignity and courage in prosperity and adversity.

Amongst the admirable sayings and doings related of Camillus by our historian, Titus Livius, for the purpose of showing how a great man conducts himself, he puts the following words into his mouth: “My courage has neither been inflated by the dictatorship nor abated by exile.” These words show that a truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances; and

if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage, which is so closely interwoven with his character that every one can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him. The conduct of weak men is very different. Made vain and intoxicated by good fortune, they attribute their success to merits which they do not possess, and this makes them odious and insupportable to all around them. And when they have afterwards to meet a reverse of fortune, they quickly fall into the other extreme, and become abject and vile. Thence it comes that princes of this character think more of flying in adversity than of defending themselves, like men who, having made a bad use of prosperity, are wholly unprepared for any defence against reverses. These virtues and vices are met with in republics as well as in individuals.

Rome and Venice furnish us an example of this. No ill fortune ever made the former abject, nor did success ever make her insolent. This was clearly shown after the defeat which the Romans experienced at Cannæ, and after their victory over Antiochus. For this defeat, although most alarming, being the third, never discouraged them; but they put new armies into the field, and refused to violate their constitution by ransoming their prisoners. Nor did they sue for peace with either Hannibal or Carthage; and repelling all such base suggestions, they thought only of combating anew, and supplied their want of men by arming their old men and slaves. When the Carthaginian Hanno heard this, he pointed out to the Senate of Carthage of how little importance the defeat of the Romans at Cannæ really was. And thus we see that periods of difficulty neither alarmed nor discouraged the Romans. On the other hand, they were not made insolent by prosperity; for when Antiochus, before engaging in battle with them, in which he was defeated, sent messengers to Scipio to ask for peace, the latter named the conditions on which he was willing to grant it; which were, that Antiochus should retire beyond Syria, and leave the rest of the country to the control of the Romans. Antiochus declined these terms, but accepted battle, and was defeated; whereupon he sent his messengers back to Scipio with orders to accept the conditions previously offered by him. Scipio added no further conditions to those which he had named before his victory,

saying: “The Romans do not lose their courage in defeat, nor does victory make them overbearing.”

The conduct of the Venetians was exactly the opposite of this; for in good fortune (which they imagined entirely the result of a skill and valor which they did not possess) they carried their insolence to that degree that they called the king of France a son of St. Mark. They had no respect for the Church, nor for any other power in all Italy; and had the presumption to think of creating another empire similar to that of the Romans. Afterwards, when their good fortune abandoned them, and they suffered a partial defeat at Vaila at the hands of the king of France, they not only lost the greater part of their state by a rebellion, but, under the influence of their cowardly and abject spirit, they actually made large concessions of territory to the Pope and the king of Spain, and were so utterly demoralized that they sent ambassadors to the Emperor, and made themselves tributary to him; and by way of moving the Pope to compassion, they addressed him the most humiliating letters of submission. And to this wretchedness were they reduced within the short space of four days, and after a but partial defeat. Their army, after having sustained a fight, retreated; about the half of it was attacked and beaten; but one of their Proveditori saved himself, and reached Verona with over twenty thousand men, horse and foot. If there had been but one spark of true valor in the Venetians, they could easily have recovered from this check, and faced Fortune anew; for they would still have been in time either to have conquered, or to have lost less ignominiously, or to have concluded a more honorable peace. But their miserable baseness of spirit, caused by a wretched military organization, made them lose at a single blow their courage and their state. And thus it will ever happen to those who are governed in the same way that the Venetians were; for insolence in prosperity and abjectness in adversity are the result of habit and education. If this be vain and feeble, then their conduct will likewise be without energy. But if the education be of an opposite nature, then it will produce men of a different character; it will enable them to know the world better, and will teach them to be less elated in good fortune, and less depressed by adversity. And what we say of individuals applies equally to the many who constitute a republic, and who will form themselves according to the manners and institutions that prevail there.

Although I have elsewhere maintained that the foundation of states is a good military organization, yet it seems to me not superfluous to repeat here that, without such a military organization, there can neither be good laws nor anything else good. The necessity of this appears on every page of Roman history. We also see that troops cannot be good unless they are well disciplined and trained, and this cannot be done with any troops other than natives of the country; for a state is not and cannot be always engaged in war, therefore troops must be trained and disciplined in time of peace, and this can only be done with subjects of the state, on account of the expense. Camillus had taken the field with his army against the Tuscans, as has been related above; and when his soldiers beheld the extent of the enemy’s army, they were alarmed by their own inferiority in numbers, believing that they would not be able to resist the enemy’s onset. When this apprehension of the troops came to the ears of Camillus, he showed himself to his army, and, going through the camp, he spoke personally to the men here and there; and then, without making any change in the disposition of his forces, he said, “Let every man do what he has learned, and is accustomed to do.” In reflecting upon the conduct and words of Camillus to reanimate his troops, we cannot but conclude that he would not have acted and spoken thus to his troops unless they had been disciplined and trained in time of peace as well as in war. For a commander cannot depend upon untrained soldiers who have learned nothing, nor can he expect them to do anything well. And if a second Hannibal were to command such troops, he would nevertheless be ruined, for a general cannot be everywhere during a battle. If he have not beforehand filled his soldiers with the same spirit that animates himself, and if he have not trained them promptly and precisely to obey his orders, he will inevitably be beaten. Now, any republic that adopts the military organization and discipline of the Romans, and strives by constant training to give her soldiers experience and to develop their courage and mastery over fortune, will always and under all circumstances find them to display a courage and dignity similar to that of the Romans. But a republic unprovided with such military force, and which relies more upon the chances of fortune than upon the valor of her citizens, will experience all the vicissitudes of fortune, and will have the same fate as the Venetians.