Citizens who become princes through luck or the favor of others find it easy to acquire their states, but difficult to keep them. They are not used to being in command, and they have no armies of their own.
Francesco Sforza became a prince by his own strength and kept his state. Cesare Borgia became a prince by his father's influence, and, despite his best efforts, could not maintain his state after his father's influence failed. This was not his fault, but was caused by extraordinary bad luck. Alexander VI wanted to make his son great, but had no troops he could rely on. Alexander allowed the French into Italy in exchange for the use of their troops to conquer the Romagna region. Borgia succeeded and made more conquests, but worried about the French king and the loyalty of his Roman troops, led by the Orsini family. He lured the Orsini leaders with gifts and promises of friendship, then killed them all. He won the loyalty of the people in Romagna. He had at first found the Romagna to be lawless, so he put Remirro de Orco in charge of restoring order, which he did well. However, Remirro de Orco was so cruel that everyone hated him, so to deflect bad feeling from himself, Borgia had him publicly executed.
At this point Borgia had laid good foundations for his power. But abruptly Alexander died, and Borgia himself was extremely ill. Borgia then made a mistake by not preventing the election of a Pope hostile to him. In short, Borgia was a model prince and did all things well, except for his poor judgment about Julius II, which caused his downfall.
