Free The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

surprising how easy it was for Alexander to hold Asia, nor how hard it was for many others, Pyrrhus for example, to hold on to the territories they took. It wasn’t a question of the abilities of each particular conqueror, but of the different kinds of state they had invaded.

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    How to govern cities and states that were previously self-governing
    When the states you invade have been accustomed to governing themselves without a monarch and living in freedom under their own laws, then there are three ways of holding on to them: the first is to reduce them to rubble; the second is to go and live there yourself; the third is to let them go on living under their own laws, make them pay you a tax and install a government of just a few local people to keep the state as a whole friendly. Since this government has been set up by the invading ruler, its members know they can’t survive without his support and will do everything they can to defend his authority. Once you’ve decided not to destroy it, the best way to hold a previously self-governing city is with the help of its own citizens.
    Let’s take our examples from Sparta and Rome. The Spartans held Athens and Thebes by setting up governments run by a few local people, but in the end they lost these towns. The Romans razed Capua, Carthage and Numantia to the ground and that way held on to them. They tried to hold Greece in much the same way the Spartans had, granting it self-government and leaving it its own laws, but it didn’t work and eventually they were forced to destroy quite a number of cities so as to keep hold of the region as a whole.
    The truth is that the only sure way to hold such places is to destroy them. If you conquer a city accustomed to self-government and opt not to destroy it you can expect it to destroy you. Rebelling, its people will always rally to the cry of freedom and the inspiration of their old institutions. It doesn’t matter how long they’ve been occupied or how benevolent the occupation, these things will never be forgotten. Whatever you do, whatever measures you take, if the population hasn’t been routed and dispersed so that its freedoms and traditions are quite forgotten, they will rise up to fight for those principles at the first opportunity; just as the Pisans did after a hundred years of Florentine dominion.
    But when a people has been accustomed to living under a ruler and the ruler’s family has been eliminated, then, since they’re used to obeying but now have no one to follow, they won’t be able to choose a new leader from among themselves nor to live in freedom without one, so they’ll be slower to rebel and an invader can win them over and gain their loyalty more easily. Republics, on the other hand, have more life in them, more hatred and a greater thirst for revenge. Their memory of old freedoms lingers on and won’t let them rest. In these cases, your only options are to reduce the place to rubble or go and live there yourself.

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    States won by the new ruler’s own forces and abilities
    In the following discussion dealing with states where both the ruler and the form of government are entirely new, no one should be surprised if I choose to cite the most impressive examples. The fact is that although people almost always proceed by imitation, following in another man’s footsteps, you can never tread a model’s path or reproduce his qualities exactly. So, if you’re sensible, you set out to follow a trail blazed by someone who was truly great, someone really worth imitating, so that even if you’re not on the same level yourself at least you’ll reflect a little of his brilliance. It’s like the clever archer who senses that his target is too far off, knows the limitations of his bow, and so aims far higher than he normally would, not because he really wants his arrow to go that high, but to have it fall from a height on to his target.
    So let’s