Lehal Library

the prince ruler turns out to be so talented that he immediately sets to work to defend what luck has brought his way and to build the foundations that another leader would have established before coming to power. I’d like to mention two men from our own times who achieved power in these different ways, one through his own abilities and one by luck. The people I have in mind are Francesco Sforza and Cesare Borgia. With the right policies and great courage, Sforza, a commoner, became Duke of Milan and, having won power with enormous effort, held on to it easily enough. Borgia, on the other hand, or Duke Valentino as he was commonly known, received his territories thanks to his father’s position, and when his father died he lost them, this despite the fact that he used all means available and did everything a sensible, capable man could have done to lay the foundations for his own rule in the lands that another man’s army and position had won for him. As we said earlier on, if you haven’t laid the foundations before becoming king, it takes very special qualities to do it after- wards, and even then it’ll be tough for the architect and risky for the building. If we look carefully at Borgia’s strategies, we’ll see that he did in fact lay down good foundations for future power; and I think it makes sense to discuss how he did it, because I wouldn’t know what better advice to give a ruler new to power than to follow his example. If his efforts eventually came to nothing, it was not due to his own short- comings, but to an extraordinary run of bad luck. When Pope Alexander VI decided to turn his son into a powerful duke, he faced all kinds of obstacles, present and future. First, he couldn’t see how he could make him ruler of anywhere that wasn’t Church territory. But he knew that if he gave away Church land, the Duke of Milan and the Venetians would block him, since Faenza and Rimini were already under Venetian protection. What’s more, the armies then operating in Italy, particularly those the pope might have called on for