Among the other precepts for destroying a state, Machiavelli in book 3, chapter 12, also thinks that a necessity of fighting must be imposed. These are his words:
“We have shown elsewhere how useful Necessity is for bringing human actions to completion, and at the same time we have demonstrated that men compelled by necessity have often performed deeds by which they were raised to singular glory. The moral philosophers also declared that the tongue and the hands, although in themselves they are most noble instruments, would nevertheless never have been able to advance and bring human affairs to the perfection and dignity in which they now stand unless some necessity had compelled them.
“Because this matter was not unknown to ancient commanders, and they readily understood that the spirits of soldiers compelled by necessity become brave and obstinate in fighting, they strove especially to impose upon their own men a necessity for battle by seizing any opportunity, but deliberately to remove that same necessity from the enemy. For this purpose they very often opened to the enemy a passage through routes which could easily have been guarded and closed to their own men a route which they could easily have opened.
“Therefore, whoever desires either to make the citizens of some city brave, bold, and obstinate in its defense, or to render another army brave and persistent in fighting in battle, ought to strive with the greatest effort to impose upon them the necessity of this thing, or at least to persuade their minds that such a necessity presses upon them.”
This is evil and dangerous teaching. To impose upon oneself the necessity of encountering the utmost danger is not the act of a prudent or a good man. But those who did this either were rash or were already pressed by necessity; they did not cast themselves into a new necessity but displayed the one into which they had been cast. For who is so senseless as to reduce himself to such a condition that he is compelled to conduct the matter according to the enemy’s will and judgment? The man who is compelled to battle is already in the enemy’s power.
Who can approve Julian’s rashness in a foolish plan harmful to himself and the entire empire, when he burned his ships so that the soldier, as a captive, might fight more bravely? Ammianus immediately says in book 23: “After crossing, he commanded that the bridge be torn away, so that none of the soldiers might retain confidence of returning from his own column.”
And afterward: “Leaving the river on his left, with ill-fated guides going before him, he resolved to take the inland roads at a swift pace. And as though the deadly torch of Bellona had been applied, he ordered all the ships to be burned with fire except twelve smaller ones, which he arranged to be carried on wagons because they would be useful for constructing bridges. He thought that he had ordered this advantageously, lest the fleet left behind be of use to the enemy, or lest, just as had certainly been done from the beginning of the expedition, almost twenty thousand armed men be occupied in hauling and steering the same ships.
“Then, when every man, fearing for himself, murmured, and manifest truth showed that the soldiery, if perhaps repulsed by the aridity or height of the mountains, would not be able to return to the waters, and deserters under torture openly confessed that they had deceived them, it was ordered, with the greatest rush, that the flames be extinguished. And because the fire, having increased enormously, consumed most of them, only twelve could be preserved untouched; these were separated so that they might be guarded.”
The army itself blamed these actions and Julian as well, for sadness entered everyone in place of courage.
No prudent man therefore casts himself into this danger. Instead, each man must act so that he can fight to his own advantage.
How much more prudently did Hannibal act when he feared Marcellus. He did not cast himself into an absolute necessity in which, if defeated, nothing but death remained; instead, he so arranged his battle-line that he could have a retreat into fortified places.
I add this also: you have been defeated if a cunning enemy thinks you have been placed under a necessity of fighting. For if he wishes to fight only to his own advantage, he has without doubt conquered.