And if we consider those “signori” who in Italy have lost their states in our times, as the king of Naples, the duke of Milan, and others, we find on their part, first, a common failure in their armies…. Then we see that some of them either suffered hostility from the people or, if the people were friendly to them, did not know how to secure themselves against the “grandi”.’ This is the terse diagnosis of the political ruin of Renaissance Italy made by Machiavelli in the twenty-fourth chapter of The Prince. One of the three causes for the political decadence of the nation is the failure on part of the individual rulers to secure themselves against the ‘grandi’.

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