Besides The Prince, Machiavelli, Napoleon's favorite writer, also wrote Florentine Histories, beginning with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ending with the Medici family's return to power and Lorenzo de' Medici's death.
Its fifth book recounted Florence's internal strife and papal intervention. In the very first sentence, he wrote:
It can be seen that, governed by the laws of rise and decline, regions often pass from order to chaos, then from chaos to order. For the nature of human affairs does not permit any region to travel forever along a level road; once they reach the height of perfection, they soon decline. Likewise, when they have become utterly disordered and sunk into the deepest despair, unable to fall any further, they must begin to rise again. Thus, good gradually turns bad, and bad turns good again. The reason is no more than this: brave deeds create peace; peace gives people a sense of security; security breeds disorder; disorder leads to ruin. Thus chaos inevitably gives rise to order, order to virtue, virtue to honor and fortune. Therefore, wise men have observed that an age of great works follows military achievement, and that the great soldiers of every city-state and region must inevitably appear before great philosophers.
In Eastern philosophy, this could be understood as: when All Under Heaven has been united for too long, it must divide; when divided for too long, it must unite. Of course, those words were not written by any philosopher, but by the novelist who wrote Romance of the Three Kingdoms. In terms of the Book of Changes, it meant that when the moon was full, it began to wane; once goodness reached its peak, it would begin to decline.
If this had been the "former" Napoleon, all he needed to ask the