Machiavelli enforces this moral by one of those rare but energetic figures which add virile dignity to his discourse.

He compares auxiliary troops to the armor of Saul, which David refused, preferring to fight Goliath with his stone and sling.

'In one word, arms borrowed from another either fall from your back, or weigh you down, or impede your action.' It remains for a prince to form his own troops and to take the field in person, like Cesare Borgia, when he discarded his French allies and the mercenary aid of the Orsini captains.

Republics should follow the same course, dispatching, as the Romans did, their own citizens to the war, and controlling by law the personal ambition of victorious generals.

It was thus that the Venetians prospered in their conquests, before they acquired their provinces in Italy and adopted the Condottiere system from their neighbors.