If they listen to our ambassadors, best of all; if not, then two or three years passing over our heads, being better appointed, we may war upon them if we will.

And when they see our preparation and hear words that import no less, they will perhaps relent the sooner, especially having their grounds unhurt and consulting upon commodities extant and not yet spoiled.

For we must think their territory to be nothing but an hostage, and so much the more by how much the better husbanded. The which we ought therefore to spare as long as we may, lest making them desperate, we make them also the harder to expugn.