User:Luisa Moura/reading/book/machiavelli

- people's mistake on believing that a new prince will change anything (ease to take an invader's party)

- holding on to foreign states and control them: set up colonies. They are cheap and easy to maintain. The only problem has to do with the expelled locals, but those will be too dispersed and too poor to actually be able to react. The new occupiers will feel that they were given a good opportunity and they will constantly fear the expropriation, they will consequently act with some sort of loyalty and pay obedience to the new prince.

- whenever there is an offense it must be enormous. It should destroy the offended, otherwise he will come back for revenge.

- military occupation is very expensive. Food and shelter must be provided extra for the soldiers and their permanent presence generates a whole series of humiliations for the local inhabitants feeding anger and resistance.

- it is important to create links of friendship with the weak neighbors. They will be willing to follow a strong leader that can knock down the strongest in rule, they will do it out of discontentment, frustration or envy. There must be a lot of care though, on not letting them grow too much.

- the example of the Romans: they did found colonies, seducing the weak without strengthening them, knocking out the strongest and avoiding the presence of powerful foreigners.

- the one that helps out building out someone Else's power is working on his own destruction. The demonstration of efficiency and smartness will later always be suspect for the one in charge.

- on occupying different structures: when the power is all concentrated around one prince, its very hard to attack, but once things break through, taking over all the strings at once guarantees a nice and easy control of the conquered estate. But when the power within one state is split among several barons, too many interests are at stake and is very hard to get control in all the involved parties. Its hard to destroy them and its hard to satisfy them.

- there are three ways to conquer an estate that is used to freedom: destroy it; inhabiting it personally; leaving their laws intact but charging a tribute and spreading among them some loyal minorities.

- easy context for a conqueror: oppressed people; discontentment; division; excess of peace.

- It is necessary to use violence to keep people convinced about something. Its not hard to convince them, but its hard to keep them in that conviction

- reforms are extremely difficult because the one's that benefit from the actual state of things will always oppose to it and the one's that might eventually benefit form the change have troubles to believe in it.