The Greatness of Cities [18]
rampiers and with bulwarks, to make the lading and unlading of merchandise both quick and easy, to scour the seas of pirates and of rovers, to make the rivers navigable, to build storehouses apt and large enough to contain great quantity of wares, and to defend and maintain the ways as well on the plains as on the mountains and hilly places. In this point the kings of China have deserved all praise that may be. For they have with an incredible expense and charge paved with stone all the highways of that most famous kingdom, and have made stone bridges over mighty great rivers, and cut in sunder hills and mountains of inestimable height and craggedness. They have also strewed the plains and bottoms with very fair stone, so that a man may there pass either on horse or afoot as well in the winter as in the summer time, and merchandise may be easily carried to and fro there by load, either on carts or on horse, mules or camels. And in this point, no doubt, some princes in Italy are much to blame, in whose countries in the winter-time horses are bemired in sloughs up to the belly, and carts are stabled and set fast in the tough dirt and mire. So that carriages by cart or horse are thereby very cumbersome, and a journey that might be well dispatched in a day can hardly be performed in three or four. And the ways are as bad in many parts of France, as in the country of Poitiers, Saintonge, Beauce and in Burgundy. But this is no place to censure so famous provinces, and therefore let us proceed.
9. Of dominion and power
The greatest means to make a city populous and great is to have supreme authority and power; for that draweth dependency with it, and dependency concourse, and concourse greatness. In the cities that have jurisdiction and power over others, as well the public wealth as the wealth of private men is drawn by divers arts and means unto them. Thither do repair the ambassadors of princes, and the agents of dukes and commonwealths, there are the greatest causes heard, as well criminal as civil, and all appeals are brought to trial there. There are the suits and causes, as well of men of quality as of the commonweal and common persons debated and decided, the revenues of the state are there laid up, and there spent out again when there is need. The richest citizens of other countries seek to ally themselves and to get an habitation there. Out of all which causes here recited there must needs follow an abundance of wealth and riches, a most strong and forcible bait to allure and draw forth the merchants, the artificers and the people of all sorts that live upon their labour and their service, to run amain from the furthest coasts unto it. After this sort a city soon increaseth both in magnificency of building, in multitude of people and abundance of wealth, and also groweth to the proportion of a principality. The truth whereof these cities all of them declare it plain, that either have had or have any notable jurisdiction in them; Pisa, Siena, Genoa, Lucca, Florence and Brescia, whose countries do extend an hundred miles in length and forty in breadth, and not only contain the most fruitful and fertile plains but also many rich and goodly valleys, many towns and castles that have above a thousand houses in them and do feed very near three hundred and forty thousand persons. Many free and imperial cities in Germany are like to these: Nuremberg, Lubeck and Aachen, and such was Ghent in Flanders, that when the standard was advanced and spread sent out at once an hundred thousand men of war. I speak not here of Sparta, Carthage, Athens, Rome nor Venice, whose greatness grew as fast as their power, even so far that, to pass the rest, Carthage, in the height of her pride and glory, was twenty-four miles about, and Rome was fifty besides the suburbs, which were in a matter so infinite and great as on the one side they extended even to Ostia and on the other side, in a matter, to Utricoli, and round about they occupied and possessed a mighty deal of the country. But let us proceed, for to this chapter
9. Of dominion and power
The greatest means to make a city populous and great is to have supreme authority and power; for that draweth dependency with it, and dependency concourse, and concourse greatness. In the cities that have jurisdiction and power over others, as well the public wealth as the wealth of private men is drawn by divers arts and means unto them. Thither do repair the ambassadors of princes, and the agents of dukes and commonwealths, there are the greatest causes heard, as well criminal as civil, and all appeals are brought to trial there. There are the suits and causes, as well of men of quality as of the commonweal and common persons debated and decided, the revenues of the state are there laid up, and there spent out again when there is need. The richest citizens of other countries seek to ally themselves and to get an habitation there. Out of all which causes here recited there must needs follow an abundance of wealth and riches, a most strong and forcible bait to allure and draw forth the merchants, the artificers and the people of all sorts that live upon their labour and their service, to run amain from the furthest coasts unto it. After this sort a city soon increaseth both in magnificency of building, in multitude of people and abundance of wealth, and also groweth to the proportion of a principality. The truth whereof these cities all of them declare it plain, that either have had or have any notable jurisdiction in them; Pisa, Siena, Genoa, Lucca, Florence and Brescia, whose countries do extend an hundred miles in length and forty in breadth, and not only contain the most fruitful and fertile plains but also many rich and goodly valleys, many towns and castles that have above a thousand houses in them and do feed very near three hundred and forty thousand persons. Many free and imperial cities in Germany are like to these: Nuremberg, Lubeck and Aachen, and such was Ghent in Flanders, that when the standard was advanced and spread sent out at once an hundred thousand men of war. I speak not here of Sparta, Carthage, Athens, Rome nor Venice, whose greatness grew as fast as their power, even so far that, to pass the rest, Carthage, in the height of her pride and glory, was twenty-four miles about, and Rome was fifty besides the suburbs, which were in a matter so infinite and great as on the one side they extended even to Ostia and on the other side, in a matter, to Utricoli, and round about they occupied and possessed a mighty deal of the country. But let us proceed, for to this chapter