By Richard Martin | The Strategic Code
Machiavelli and the Citizen Militia
In the early sixteenth century, Niccolò Machiavelli confronted a problem that had plagued Italy for generations: the reliance on mercenaries and foreign auxiliaries. In The Prince, The Discourses on Livy, and The Art of War, he denounced the corruption and unreliability of hired soldiers. Condottieri fought only for pay, deserted at the first sign of danger, and sometimes turned their weapons against the very cities that had employed them. A republic that entrusted its defence to outsiders, he argued, was destined to fall.
Machiavelli’s solution was the citizen militia. Farmers, artisans, and townsmen, properly trained and organised, made better soldiers than mercenaries because they had the greatest stake in the fight. They were defending their own homes and liberties. His model was ancient Rome, where military service was inseparable from citizenship. To fight for the republic was to prove oneself invested in its survival. Only citizens, he concluded, could reliably defend a free people.
Seven Samurai and the Parable of Self-Defence
Four centuries later, Akira Kurosawa retold this truth in the form of a parable. In Seven Samurai (1954), a poor farming village, terrorised by bandits, seeks to hire warriors for protection. What the villagers receive instead are seven masterless samurai who not only pledge their swords but also train the peasants to fight for themselves. The story is not about professional soldiers saving helpless farmers. It is about a community transforming itself into a militia.
Toshiro Mifune’s character, Kikuchiyo, embodies this principle. Born a peasant but pretending to be a samurai, he berates the villagers: “You weaklings! Always hiding behind others to fight your battles!” His words cut because they are true. Yet it is Kikuchiyo, straddling both worlds, who forces the farmers to face their own responsibility. Under the samurai’s guidance, they dig trenches, build barricades, and drill with bamboo spears. When the final battle comes, it is the villagers who form the bulk of the defenders. The samurai lead, but the farmers fight.
The message is unmistakable: a people unwilling to fight for themselves cannot be saved by others. A citizen militia, organised under experienced leadership, can prevail even against hardened raiders. Kurosawa’s folktale is a cinematic restatement of Machiavelli’s political theory.
Eugene Sledge and the Testimony of War
If Machiavelli offered the theory, and Kurosawa the parable, Eugene Sledge provided the testimony. In With the Old Breed, his memoir of combat on Peleliu and Okinawa, Sledge recounts war in unflinching detail: mud, terror, and degradation. He never romanticises the experience. Yet at the book’s close, after cataloguing the horror, he delivers his final judgment. War is terrible, never to be wished on anyone. But if a country is good enough to live in, then it is good enough to defend.
Here is the voice of the citizen-soldier. Sledge does not glorify war. He affirms instead that the willingness to fight is the price of preserving all that makes life worth living. His testimony gives human weight to the principle that defence must be borne by those who value what they stand to lose.
The Enduring Lesson
Across centuries and cultures, the same lesson holds. Machiavelli taught that mercenaries cannot safeguard liberty, only citizens can. Kurosawa showed, through Kikuchiyo and the peasants, that a community can be transformed into a militia capable of resisting predation. Sledge reminded us, from the mud of Okinawa, that war is horrific, but the refusal to defend one’s home is worse.
Defence cannot be outsourced or bought. It cannot be delegated to mercenaries, private companies, or hired guns. It must be owned politically, communally, and personally by those who stand to lose everything if it fails. A land good enough to live in is also good enough to defend.
About Richard
Richard guides leaders and thinkers through the terrain of sovereignty, power, and the individual, illuminating parasovereign technologies and systems that enable human action and cooperation beyond the reach of the state and sovereign-dependent institutions and corporations.
© 2025 Richard Martin
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