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They are ready enough to be your soldiers whilst you do not make

war, but if war comes they take themselves off or run from the

foe; which I should have little trouble to prove, for the ruin of

Italy has been caused by nothing else than by resting all her

hopes for many years on mercenaries, and although they formerly

made some display and appeared valiant amongst themselves, yet

when the foreigners came they showed what they were. Thus it was

that Charles, King of France, was allowed to seize Italy with

chalk in hand;[1] and he who told us that our sins were the cause

of it told the truth, but they were not the sins he imagined, but

those which I have related. And as they were the sins of princes,

it is the princes who have also suffered the penalty.