HKB
1 passages · search this phrase →
Often appears with: treaties, truces, and peacemaking · hannibal stratagem · conquest, plunder, and captives · broken promises
Usually: argument (1) · betrayal (1) · censure (1)
“This, however, I desire to say, that I would not have it understood that any fraud is glorious which leads you to break your plighted word, or to depart from covenants to which you have agreed; for though to do so may sometimes gain you territory and power, it can never, as I have said elsewhere, gain you glory.” Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius · precept
Machiavelli argues fraud is acceptable and even glorious in war when it targets an untrusting enemy, but never when it breaks sworn word or treaties.
Although in all other affairs it be hateful to use fraud, in the operations of war it is praiseworthy and glorious; so that he who gets the better of his enemy by fraud, is as much extolled as he who prevails by force. This appears in the judgments passed by such as have written of the lives of great warriors, who praise Hannibal and those other captains who have been most noted for acting in this way. But since we m…