An army may be planted nationally or provincially. To
plant it nationally, it must be in one of the four ways
mentioned, that is, either monarchically in part, as the Roman
beneficiarii; or monarchically, in the whole, as the Turkish
Timariots; aristocratically that is, by earls and barons, as the
Neustrians were planted by Turbo; or democratically, that is, by
equal lots, as the Israelitish army in the land of Canaan by
Joshua. In every one of these ways there must not only be
confiscations, but confiscations to such a proportion as may
answer to the work intended.
Confiscation of a people that never fought against you, but
whose arms you have borne, and in which you have been victorious,
and this upon premeditation and in cold blood, I should have
thought to be against any example in human nature, but for those
alleged by Machiavel of Agathocles, and Oliveretto di Fermo, the
former whereof being captain-general of the Syracusans, upon a
day assembled the Senate and the people, as if he had something
to communicate with them, when at a sign given he cut the
senators in pieces to a man, and all the richest of the people,
by which means he came to be king. The proceedings of Oliveretto,
in making himself Prince of Fermo, were somewhat different in
circumstances, but of the same nature.
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