Besides this they employed all their ingenuity to relieve themselves and their soldiers of fatigue and peril, by refraining from slaughter and from taking prisoners without ransom.

Night attacks and sorties were abandoned; stockades and trenches in the camp were given up; no one thought of a winter campaign.

All these things were allowed, or rather introduced, in order to avoid, as I have said, fatigue and peril.

Whereby they have reduced Italy to slavery and insult.' Auxiliaries, such as the French troops borrowed by Cesare Borgia, and the Spaniards engaged by Julius II., are even worse.

'He who wants to be unable to win the game should make use of these forces; for they are far more dangerous than mercenaries, seeing that in them the cause of ruin is ready made--they are united together, and inclined to obey their own masters.