Winning the people's support is absolutely necessary if a prince faces the possibility of a siege. Sieges were commonplace in medieval and Renaissance warfare, and many medieval cities were surrounded by high walls in anticipation of just such an event. Sieges were often lengthy affairs, with the attacking army camped outside the city walls, hoping to starve out or wear down the residents inside the city's fortifications. As Machiavelli observes, a prince in this position could only wait out the siege or hope for outside help. Machiavelli considers it better for the prince to have an army he can put into the field on the offensive, so that the prince need not be dependent on the favor of others. However, a prince with a strong and loyal city is still in a good position, as long as he has made adequate preparations and keeps his people's spirits up. Finally, he gives some attention to the prince's ability to "spin" political events to his advantage; in this case, to reassure his people that the siege will be short, to remind them of the cruelty of the enemy, and to take measures to deal with anyone who is a little too outspoken in his criticism of the prince's policies.
The absolute necessity of maintaining one's own troops is a point Machiavelli revisits throughout the book, and particularly in Chapters 12 through 14, which concern how a prince should behave in military matters. Machiavelli had been active in raising a native militia to defend Florence, and he detested the common practice of hiring foreign mercenaries to fight, a practice he believed had helped to ruin Italy. Here, he praises the independence of the German cities, which had their own armies to fight for them.
