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This is a discussion of Machiavelli\u2019s view of an armed citizenry in The Art of War, <\/em>as authored by Cary Nederman, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.<\/p>\n Machiavelli holds that one of the consequences of such\u00a0vivere<\/em>\u00a0sicuro<\/em>\u00a0is the disarmament of the people. He comments that regardless of \u201chow great his kingdom is\u201d, the king of France \u201clives as a tributary\u201d to foreign mercenaries.<\/p>\n This all comes from having disarmed his people and having preferred \u2026 to enjoy the immediate profit of being able to plunder the people and of avoiding an imaginary rather than a real danger, instead of doing things that would assure them and make their states perpetually happy. This disorder, if it produces some quiet times, is in time the cause of straitened circumstances, damage and irreparable ruin (Discourses<\/em>\u00a0CW 410).<\/p>\n A state that makes security a priority cannot afford to arm its populace, for fear that the masses will employ their weapons against the nobility (or perhaps the crown). Yet at the same time, such a regime is weakened irredeemably, since it must depend upon foreigners to fight on its behalf. In this sense, any government that takes\u00a0vivere<\/em>\u00a0sicuro<\/em>\u00a0as its goal generates a passive and impotent populace as an inescapable result. By definition, such a society can never be free in Machiavelli’s sense of\u00a0vivere<\/em>\u00a0libero<\/em>, and hence is only minimally, rather than completely, political or civil.<\/p>\n Confirmation of this interpretation of the limits of monarchy for Machiavelli may be found in his further discussion of the disarmament of the people, and its effects, in\u00a0The Art of War<\/em>. Addressing the question of whether a citizen army is to be preferred to a mercenary one, he insists that the liberty of a state is contingent upon the military preparedness of its subjects. Acknowledging that \u201cthe king [of France] has disarmed his people in order to be able to command them more easily\u201d, Machiavelli still concludes \u201cthat such a policy is \u2026 a defect in that kingdom, for failure to attend to this matter is the one thing that makes her weak\u201d (Art<\/em>\u00a0CW 584, 586\u2013587). In his view, whatever benefits may accrue to a state by denying a military role to the people are of less importance than the absence of liberty that necessarily accompanies such disarmament. The problem is not merely that the ruler of a disarmed nation is in thrall to the military prowess of foreigners.<\/p>\n More crucially, Machiavelli believes, a weapons-bearing citizen militia remains the ultimate assurance that neither the government nor some usurper will tyrannize the populace: \u201cSo Rome was free four hundred years and was armed; Sparta, eight hundred; many other cities have been unarmed and free less than forty years\u201d (Art<\/em>\u00a0CW 585).<\/p>\n Excerpted from:\u00a0 https:\/\/plato.stanford.edu\/entries\/machiavelli\/<\/a><\/p>\n