PART TWO
If a republic is small, it is destroyed by a foreign force ; if it is large, it destroys itself by an inner vice.
This double vulnerability infects both democracies and aristocracies, be they good or bad. The problem lies in the thing itself ; there is no form that can provide a remedy. (…)
The Canaanites were destroyed because they were small monarchies which had not confederated, and did not defend themselves in common. For confederation is not the nature of small monarchies.
The federative republic of Germany is composed of free cities and small states under the rule of (…)
In the republic of Holland, one province can make no alliance without the consent of the others. This is a very good law, and even a necessary one in a federative republic. It is absent from the Germanic constitution, where it would prevent the misfortunes that can befall all its members through (…)
As republics provide for their security by uniting, despotic states do so by separating and keeping themselves, in a manner of speaking, separate. They sacrifice part of the country, ravage the borderlands and leave them barren ; the body of the empire becomes inaccessible.
It is accepted in (…)
Monarchy does not destroy itself the way the despotic state does, but a state of middling size could be swiftly invaded. It therefore has fortifications to defend its borders, and armies to defend its fortifications. The smallest terrain is fought over with art, courage, and determination. (…)
For a state to be at full strength, its size must be such that there is a ratio between the speed with which an aggression can be carried out against it and the swiftness with which it can neutralize it. As the attacker can show up everywhere at once, the defender must also be able to show (…)
The enemies of a great prince who reigned for so long have accused him a thousand times – based rather on their fears, I think, than their reasoning – of having created and implemented the project of universal monarchy. If he had succeeded in that, nothing would have been more fatal to Europe, (…)
It was Sir de Coucy who said to King Charles V that “the English are never so weak nor so easy to defeat as at home.” That is what was said of the Romans ; it is what the Carthaginians experienced ; it is what will befall every power which has sent its armies far afield to unite by the strength (…)
All size, all strength, all power is relative. A state is well advised, in seeking to increase its real size, not to diminish its relative size.
Towards the middle of Louis XIV’s reign, France was at the pinnacle of her relative size. Germany did not yet have the great monarchs which she has (…)
When your neighbor is a state in decline, it would be a mistake to hasten its ruin, because you are in this respect in the most fortunate situation that can be hoped for, there being nothing so convenient for a prince as neighboring another who absorbs for him all the blows and calamities of (…)
Montesquieu
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