El arte de la guerra

How to recruit and train soldiers, how to deploy infantry against cavalry, how to set or avoid an ambush, and how to maintain army cohesion during a retreat—these are the issues Machiavelli addresses in this work. It was a seminal text for Frederick the Great, Napoleon, and Clausewitz, and for centuries, it has held the same place in Western strategic thought that Sun Tzu’s *The Art of War* holds in the East. Yet this book—the only one of his major works Machiavelli published during his lifetime—is also more than a treatise on military tactics. Through a dialogue between the *condottiero* Fabrizio Colonna and a group of young Florentine intellectuals, Machiavelli argues that the strength of a state depends less on its wealth or technology than on the quality of the bond between the soldier and the community he serves.