Chapter V · (continued 2)

This letter, invaluable to the student of Machiavelli's works, is prejudicial to his reputation. It was written only ten months after he had been imprisoned and tortured by the Medici, just thirteen months after the republic he had served so long had been enslaved by the princes before whom he was now cringing. It is true that Machiavelli was not wealthy; his habits of prodigality made his fortune insufficient for his needs.[1] It is true that he could ill bear the enforced idleness of country life, after being engaged for fifteen years in the most important concerns of the Florentine Republic. But neither his poverty, which, after all, was but comparative, nor his inactivity, for which he found relief in study, justifies the tone of the conclusion to this letter. When we read it, we cannot help remembering the language of another exile, who while he tells us— another exile, who while he tells us— Come sa di sale Lo pane altrui, e com' è duro calle Lo scendere e 'l salir per l' altrui scale

—can yet refuse the advances of his factious city thus: 'If Florence cannot be entered honorably, I will never set foot within her walls. And what? Shall I not be able from any angle whatsoever of the earth to gaze upon the sun and stars? shall I not beneath whatever region of the heavens have power to meditate the sweetest truths, unless I make myself ignoble first, nay ignominious, in the face of Florence and her people? Nor will bread, I warrant, fail me!' If Machiavelli, who in this very letter to Vettori quoted Dante, had remembered these words, they ought to have fallen like drops of molten lead upon his soul. But such was the debasement of the century that probably he would have only shrugged his shoulders and sighed, 'Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.'

In some respects Dante, Machiavelli, and Michael Angelo Buonarroti may be said to have been the three greatest intellects produced by Florence. Dante in exile and in opposition, would hold no sort of traffic with her citizens. Michael Angelo, after the siege, worked at the Medici tombs for Pope Clement, as a makepeace offering for the fortification of Samminiato; while Machiavelli entreats to be put to roll a stone by these Signori Medici, if only he may so escape from poverty and dullness. Michael Angelo, we must remember, owed a debt of gratitude as an artist to the Medici for his education in the gardens of Lorenzo. Moreover, the quatrain which he wrote for his statue of the Night justifies us in regarding that chapel as the cenotaph designed by him for murdered Liberty. Machiavelli owed nothing to the Medici, who had disgraced and tortured him, and whom he had opposed in all his public action during fifteen years. Yet what was the gift with which he came before them as a suppliant, crawling to the footstool of their throne? A treatise De Principatibus; in other words, the celebrated Principe; which, misread it as Machiavelli's apologists may choose to do, or explain it as the rational historian is bound to do, yet carries venom in its pages. Remembering the circumstances under which it was composed, we are in a condition to estimate the proud humility and prostrate pride of the dedication. 'Niccolo Machiavelli to the Magnificent Lorenzo, son of Piero de' Medici:' so runs the title. 'Desiring to present myself to your Magnificence with some proof of my devotion, I have not found among my various furniture aught that I prize more than the knowledge of the actions of great men acquired by me through a long experience of modern affairs and a continual study of ancient. These I have long and diligently revolved and examined in my mind, and have now compressed into a little book which I send to your Magnificence. And though I judge this work unworthy of your presence, yet I am confident that your humanity will cause you to value it when you consider that I could not make you a greater gift than this of enabling you in a few hours to understand what I have learned through perils and discomforts in a lengthy course of years.' 'If your Magnificence will deign, from the summit of your height, some time to turn your eyes to my low place, you will know how unjustly I am forced to endure the great and continued malice of fortune.' The work so dedicated was sent in MS. for the Magnificent's private perusal. It was not published until 1532, by order of Clement VII., after the death of Machiavelli.

I intend to reserve the Principe, considered as the supreme expression of Italian political science, for a separate study; and after the introduction to Macaulay's Essay on Machiavelli, I need hardly enter in detail into a discussion of the various theories respecting the intention of this treatise.[1] Yet this is the proper place for explaining my view about Machiavelli's writings in relation to his biography, and for attempting to connect them into such unity as a mind so strictly logical as his may have designed.

With regard to the circumstances under which the Prince was composed, enough has been already said. Machiavelli's selfish purpose in putting it forth seems to my mind apparent. He wanted employment: he despaired of the republic: he strove to furnish the princes in power with a convincing proof of his capacity for great affairs. Yet it must not on this account be concluded that the Principe was merely a cheap bid for office. On the contrary, it contained the most mature and the most splendid of Machiavelli's thoughts, accumulated through his long years of public service; and, strange as it may seem, it embodied the dream of a philosophical patriot for the restitution of liberty to Italy. Florence, indeed, was lost. 'These Signori Medici' were in power. But could not even they be employed to purge the sacred soil of Italy from the Barbarians?

If we can pretend to sound the depths of Machiavelli's mind at this distance of time, we may conjecture that he had come to believe the free cities too corrupt for independence. The only chance Italy had of holding her own against the great powers of Europe was by union under a prince. At the same time the Utopia of this union, with which he closes the Principe, could only be realized by such a combination as would either neutralize the power of the Church, or else gain the Pope for an ally by motives of interest. Now at the period of the dedication of the Principe to Lorenzo de' Medici, Leo X. was striving to found a principality in the states of the Church.[1] In 1516 he created his nephew Duke of Urbino, and it was thought that this was but a prelude to still further greatness. Florence in combination with Rome might do much for Italy. Leo meanwhile was still young, and his participation in the most ambitious schemes was to be expected. Thus the moment was propitious for suggesting to Lorenzo that he should put himself at the head of an Italian kingdom, which, by its union beneath the strong will of a single prince, might suffice to cope with nations more potent in numbers and in arms.[2] The Principe was therefore dedicated in good faith to the Medici, and the note on which it closes was not false. Machiavelli hoped that what Cesare Borgia had but just failed in accomplishing, Lorenzo de' Medici, with the assistance of a younger Pope than Alexander, a firmer basis to his princedom in Florence, and a grasp upon the states of the Church made sure by the policy of Julius II., might effect. Whether so good a judge of character as Machiavelli expected really much from Lorenzo may be doubted.

These circumstances make the morality of the book the more remarkable. To teach political science denuded of commonplace hypocrisies was a worthy object. But while seeking to lay bare the springs of action, and to separate statecraft from morals, Machiavelli found himself impelled to recognize a system of inverted ethics. The abrupt division of the two realms, ethical and political, which he attempted, was monstrous; and he ended by substituting inhumanity for human nature. Unable to escape the logic which links morality of some sort with conduct, he gave his adhesion to the false code of contemporary practice. He believed that the right way to attain a result so splendid as the liberation of Italy was to proceed by force, craft, bad faith, and all the petty arts of a political adventurer. The public ethics of his day had sunk to this low level. Success by means of plain dealing was impossible. The game of statecraft could only be carried on by guile and violence. Even the clear genius of Machiavelli had been obscured by the muddy medium of intrigue in which he had been working all his life. Even his keen insight was dazzled by the false splendor of the adventurer Cesare Borgia.

To have formulated the ethics of the Principe is not diabolical. There is no inventive superfluity of naughtiness in the treatise. It is simply a handbook of princecraft, as that art was commonly received in Italy, where the principles of public morality had been translated into terms of material aggrandizement, glory, gain, and greatness. No one thought of judging men by their motives but by their practice; they were not regarded as moral but as political beings, responsible, that is to say, to no law but the obligation of success. Crimes which we regard as horrible were then commended as magnanimous, if it could be shown that they were prompted by a firm will and had for their object a deliberate end. Machiavelli and Paolo Giovio, for example, both praise the massacre at Sinigaglia as a masterstroke of art, without uttering a word in condemnation of its perfidy. Machiavelli sneers at Gianpaolo Baglioni because he had not the courage to strangle his guest Julius II. and to crown his other crimes with this signal act of magnanimity. What virtue had come to mean in the Italian language we have seen already. The one quality which every one despised was simplicity, however this might be combined with lofty genius and noble aims. It was because Soderini was simple and had a good heart that Machiavelli wrote the famous epigram— La notte che morì Pier Soderini L' alma n' andò dell' inferno alla bocca; E Pluto le gridò: Anima sciocca, Che inferno? va nel limbo de' bambini. The night that Peter Soderini died, His soul flew down unto the mouth of hell: 'What? Hell for you? You silly spirit!' cried The fiend: 'your place is where the babies dwell.'

As of old in Corcyra, so now in Italy, 'guilelessness, which is the principal ingredient of genuine nobleness, was laughed down, and disappeared.'[1] What men feared was not the moral verdict of society, pronouncing them degraded by vicious or violent acts, but the intellectual estimate of incapacity and the stigma of dullness. They were afraid of being reckoned among feebler personalities; and to escape from this contempt, by the commission even of atrocities, had come to be accounted manly. The truth, missed almost universally, was that the supreme wisdom, the paramount virility, is law-abiding honesty, the doing of right because right is right, in scorn of consequence. Nothing appears more clearly in the memoirs of Cellini than this point, while the Italian novels are full of matter bearing on the same topic. It is therefore ridiculous to assume that an Italian judged of men or conduct in any sense according to our standards. Pinturicchio and Perugino thought it no shame to work for princes like the Baglioni and for Popes like Alexander VI. Lionardo da Vinci placed his talents as an engineer at the service of Cesare Borgia, and employed his genius as a musician and a painter for the amusement of the Milanese Court, which must have been, according to Corio's account, flagrantly and shamelessly corrupt. Leo Battista Alberti, one of the most charming and the gentlest spirits of the earlier Renaissance, in like manner lent his architectural ability to the vanity of the iniquitous Sigismondo Malatesta. No: the Principe was not inconsistent with the general tone of Italian morality; and Machiavelli cannot be fairly taxed with the discovery of a new infernal method. The conception of politics as a bare art of means to ends had grown up in his mind by the study of Italian history and social customs. His idealization of Cesare Borgia and his romance of Castruccio were the first products of the theory he had formed by observation of the world he lived in. The Principe revealed it fully organized. But to have presented such an essay in good faith to the despots of his native city, at that particular moment in his own career, and under the pressure of trivial distress, is a real blot upon his memory.

We learn from Varchi that Machiavelli was execrated in Florence for his Principe, the poor thinking it would teach the Medici to take away their honor, the rich regarding it as an attack upon their wealth, and both discerning in it a death-blow to freedom.[1] Machiavelli can scarcely have calculated upon this evil opinion, which followed him to the grave: for though he showed some hesitation in his letter to Vettori about the propriety of presenting the essay to the Medici, this was only grounded on the fear lest a rival should get the credit of his labors. Again, he uttered no syllable about its being intended for a trap to catch the Medici, and commit them to unpardonable crimes. We may therefore conclude that this explanation of the purpose of the Principe (which, strange to say, has approved itself to even recent critics) was promulgated either by himself or by his friends, as an after-thought, when he saw that the work had missed its mark, and at the time when he was trying to suppress the MS.[2] Bernardo Giunti in the dedication of the edition of 1532, and Reginald Pole in 1535, were, I believe, the first to put forth this fanciful theory in print. Machiavelli could not before 1520 have boasted of the patriotic treachery with which he was afterwards accredited, so far, at any rate, as to lose the confidence of the Medicean family; for in that year the Cardinal Giulio de' Medici commissioned him to write the history of Florence.

The Principe, after its dedication to Lorenzo, remained in MS., and Machiavelli was not employed in spite of the continual solicitations of his friend Vettori.[1] Nothing remained for him but to seek other patrons, and to employ his leisure in new literary work. Between 1516 and 1519, therefore, we find him taking part in the literary and philosophical discussions of the Florentine Academy, which assembled at that period in the Rucellai Gardens.[2] It was here that he read his Discourses on the First Decade of Livy—a series of profound essays upon the administration of the state, to which the sentences of the Roman historian serve as texts. Having set forth in the Principe the method of gaining or maintaining sovereign power, he shows in the Discorsi what institutions are necessary to preserve the body politic in a condition of vigorous activity. We may therefore regard the Discorsi as in some sense a continuation of the Principe. But the wisdom of the scientific politician is no longer placed at the disposal of a sovereign. He addresses himself to all the members of a state who are concerned in its prosperity. Machiavelli's enemies have therefore been able to insinuate that, after teaching tyranny in one pamphlet, he expounded the principles of opposition to a tyrant in the other, shifting his sails as the wind veered.[3] The truth here also lies in the critical and scientific quality of Machiavelli's method. He was content to lecture either to princes or to burghers upon politics, as an art which he had taken great pains to study, while his interest in the demonstration of principles rendered him in a measure indifferent to their application.[4] In fact, to use the pithy words of Macaulay, 'the Prince traces the progress of an ambitious man, the Discourses the progress of an ambitious people. The same principles on which, in the former work, the elevation of an individual is explained, are applied in the latter to the longer duration and more complex interest of a society.'

The Seven Books on the Art of War may be referred with certainty to the same period of Machiavelli's life. They were probably composed in 1520. If we may venture to connect the works of the historian's leisure, according to the plan above suggested, this treatise forms a supplement to the Principe and the Discorsi. Both in his analysis of the successful tyrant and in his description of the powerful commonwealth he had insisted on the prime necessity of warfare, conducted by the people and their rulers in person. The military organization of a great kingdom is here developed in a separate Essay, and Machiavelli's favorite scheme for nationalizing the militia of Italy is systematically expounded. Giovio's flippant objection, that the philosopher could not in practice maneuver a single company, is no real criticism on the merit of his theory.

By this time the Medici had determined to take Machiavelli into favor; and since he had expressed a wish to be set at least to rolling stones, they found for him a trivial piece of work. The Franciscans at Carpi had to be requested to organize a separate Province of their Order in the Florentine dominion; and the conduct of this weighty matter was intrusted to the former secretary at the Courts of Maximilian and Louis. Several other missions during the last years of his life devolved upon Machiavelli; but none of them were of much importance: nor, when the popular government was instituted in 1527, had he so far regained the confidence of the Florentines as to resume his old office of war secretary. This post, considering his recent alliance with the Medicean party, he could hardly have expected to receive; and therefore it is improbable that the news of Gianotti's election at all contributed to cause his death.[1] Disappointment he may indeed have felt: for his moral force had been squandered during fifteen years in the attempt to gain the favor of princes who were now once more regarded as the enemies of their country. When the republic was at last restored, he found himself in neither camp. The overtures which he had made to the Medici had been but coldly received; yet they were sufficiently notorious to bring upon him the suspicion of the patriots. He had not sincerely acted up to the precept of Polonius: 'This above all,—to thine own self be true.' His intellectual ability, untempered by sufficient political consistency or moral elevation, had placed him among the outcasts:— consistency or moral elevation, had placed him among the outcasts:— che non furon ribelli, Nè fur fedeli a Dio, ma per sè foro.

The great achievement of these years was the composition of the Istorie Fiorentine. The commission for this work he received from Giulio de' Medici through the Officiali dello Studio in 1520, with an annual allowance of 100 florins. In 1527, the year of his death, he dedicated the finished History to Pope Clement VII. This masterpiece of literary art, though it may be open to the charges of inaccuracy and superficiality,[2] marks an epoch in the development of modern historiography. It must be remembered that it preceded the great work of Guicciardini by some years, and that before the date of its appearance the annalists of Italy had been content with records of events, personal impressions, and critiques of particular periods. Machiavelli was the first to contemplate the life of a nation in its continuity, to trace the operation of political forces through successive generations, to contrast the action of individuals with the evolution of causes over which they had but little control, and to bring the salient features of the national biography into relief by the suppression of comparatively unimportant details. By thus applying the philosophical method to history, Machiavelli enriched the science of humanity with a new department. There is something in his view of national existence beyond the reach of even the profoundest of the classical historians. His style is adequate to the matter of his work. Never were clear and definite thoughts expressed with greater precision in language of more masculine vigor. We are irresistibly compelled, while characterizing this style, to think of the spare sinews of a trained gladiator. Though Machiavelli was a poet, he indulges in no ornaments of rhetoric.[3] His images, rare and carefully chosen, seem necessary to the thoughts they illustrate. Though a philosopher, he never wanders into speculation. Facts and experience are so thoroughly compacted with reflection in his mind, that his widest generalizations have the substance of realities. The element of unreality, if such there be, is due to a misconception of human nature. Machiavelli seems to have only studied men in masses, or as political instruments, never as feeling and thinking personalities.

Machiavelli, according to the letter addressed by his son Pietro to Francesco Nelli, died of a dose of medicine taken at the wrong time. He was attended on his deathbed by a friar, who received his confession. His private morality was but indifferent. His contempt for weakness and simplicity was undisguised. His knowledge of the world and men had turned to cynicism. The frigid philosophy expressed in his political Essays, and the sarcastic speeches in which he gave a vent to his soured humors, made him unpopular. It was supposed that he had died with blasphemy upon his lips, after turning all the sanctities of human nature into ridicule. Through these myths, as through a mist, we may discern the bitterness of that great, disenchanted, disappointed soul. The desert in which spirits of the stamp of Machiavelli wander is too arid and too aerial for the gross substantial bugbears of the vulgar conscience to inhabit. Moreover, as Varchi says, 'In his conversation Machiavelli was pleasant, serviceable to his friends, a friend of virtuous men, and, in a word, worthy of having received from nature either less genius or a better mind.'