Lehal Library

Different kinds of armies and a consideration of mercenary forces Now that I’ve given a detailed account of the characteristics of the states I set out to talk about, and examined to some extent the reasons for their being powerful or weak and the ways people in the past have tried to take and to hold them, I shall offer a more general discussion of the means of attack and defence available to each kind of state. We’ve already said that a ruler’s power must be based on solid foundations; otherwise he’s bound to fall. And the main foundations of any state, whether it be new, or old, or a new territory acquired by an old regime, are good laws and good armed forces. And since you can’t have good laws if you don’t have good armed forces, while if you have good armed forces good laws inevi- tably follow, I’ll leave aside a discussion of the law and go straight to the question of the army. Now, the armies a ruler is depending on to defend his state will either be his own, or mercenaries, or auxiliaries, or some combination of these. Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous. If you are counting on mercenaries to defend your state you will never be stable or secure, because mercen- aries are ambitious, undisciplined, disloyal and they quarrel among themselves. Courageous with friends and cowardly with enemies, they have no fear of God and keep no promises. With mercenaries the only way to delay disaster is to delay the battle; in peacetime they plunder you and in wartime they let the enemy plunder you. Why? Because the only interest troops engaged in the service of a nation at war but not part of the regular army, and often of foreign origin