UNDER THE RULE of Piero Soderini, Florence was gradually becoming at ease with its more republican style of government – the emphasis here being on style, rather than form, for apart from the gonfaloniere being elected for life, the structure of the administration in fact remained much the same. The Signoria and the separate committees were still elected in the same fashion, and were still limited to members of families who had previously provided office-holders (in practice, about 3,000 people). But the crucial point was that the elections were no longer manipulated by the ruling families, or by a single ruling clique such as the Medici. The remaining powerful cliques amongst the leading families were now more evenly balanced and merely jockeyed for position. This situation was reinforced by Soderini’s more permanent presence as gonfaloniere; and though his political expertise continued to be somewhat limited, he had sufficient astuteness to choose his advisers well. Amongst the most talented of these was an ambitious dark-eyed young man called Niccolò Machiavelli, a talented writer renowned amongst his friends for his sardonic wit, who would exercise his brilliance as a diplomatic emissary for the Florentine Republic and as a leading member of the Council of War.
Niccolò Machiavelli was born in 1469 and grew up in the glory days of Lorenzo the Magnificent. His father was an impoverished lawyer, a member of a long-established Florentine family that had been rich and distinguished well over a century beforehand, during Florence’s great banking era prior to the Black Death. Niccolò’s mother died while he was still a young man, but appears to have had a formative influence; she is known to have read widely and to have written verse. Another crucial influence was Niccolò’s education; the Machiavellis were too poor to afford a humanist education for their son, so instead he learned Latin and absorbed the medieval Aristotelianism that still pervaded fifteenth-century European education, even in Florence. Only later would his friends introduce him to the Roman poets, rhetoricians and historians who so inspired the humanist young men of Florence. It was through such authors that Machiavelli became conscious of how Italy had once been the centre of a great empire which had ruled the known world. The contrast with its present condition of squabbling city states and rampaging foreign armies was all too plain to see.
But at the same time Italy was undergoing a cultural transformation, and many were beginning to recognise this fact: it cannot have been long after this that the word Rinascimento. (Renaissance) was first coined. And as the effects of this cultural transformation permeated to countries further afield, it became clear that Europe was entering a new age. This is more than mere cliché or hindsight, for the intimation was widespread and becoming pan-European: it is explicit in works from Pico della Mirandola to the early sixteenth-century Dutch scholar Erasmus, all of which were becoming widely available. The spread of printing meant that even a comparatively poor young man such as Machiavelli could afford to buy books of his favourite authors from one of the several booksellers that had now sprung up in Florence. Machiavelli is known to have possessed works by the Latin historian Tacitus, who described the lives of such monstrous emperors as Caligula and Nero. Amongst the poets, Machiavelli favoured Lucretius, whose recently rediscovered long philosophical poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) described how the world originated and also outlined the stark realities of the human condition. Lucretius’s assertion that man’s life is decided by the disparate factors of his own nature and chance would make a deep impression. Whatever belief Machiavelli had in God fell into abeyance at an early age, and for the rest of his life he would merely go through the motions of attending church on major festivals and feast days. In this, he would not have been exceptional amongst his circle of lively intellectual friends.
The humanist world that had given birth to a renaissance in the arts, and the early stirrings of a modern scientific outlook, had now been affected by developments that extended far beyond the intellectual world. The Portuguese had rounded the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean; in the very year that Lorenzo de’ Medici died, Columbus had crossed the Atlantic to the New World, whose riches were now pouring into Spain, making it the most wealthy nation in Europe. Columbus may have been Genoese, but he worked for the Spanish; Italy benefited less than most from these new discoveries. Amongst the plethora of Spanish, Portuguese, English and Dutch names in the New World, Italian names are significantly the exception: Colombia, America, Venezuela (little Venice), but remarkably few others. And though named by Italian explorers, these did not become Italian colonies.
Meanwhile the parochial bickering of Italian inter-state wars had entered a drastic new phase with the arrival of French armies from the north, a situation further worsened by the arrival of Spanish troops in the south: the whole of Italy was increasingly being torn apart by war. Machiavelli would grow up amidst an atmosphere of political turbulence, both in Italy at large and at home in Florence. He was a boy of nine when Florence was convulsed by the Pazzi conspiracy; by the time he was twenty-five he had witnessed the rise of Savonarola, the banishment of Piero the Unfortunate, and the humiliation of Charles VIII’s triumphal entry into his native city.
Little is known of this early period of Machiavelli’s life, and he only emerges from the shadows in 1498, just a month after the execution of Savonarola, when he is elected as secretary to the Second Chancery. The twenty-nine-year-old Machiavelli appears as a rather unprepossessing, not to say curious, figure; he is described as slender, with beady black eyes, black hair, a small head, aquiline nose and tightly closed mouth. His biographer Pasquale Villari comments that ‘everything about him conveyed the impression of a very acute observer and sharp mind, though not someone who was liable to influence people much’. Villari also mentions Machiavelli’s ‘sarcastic expression’, ‘air of cold and inscrutable calculation’ and ‘powerful imagination’. Hardly a sympathetic type: yet he was certainly popular amongst his circle of young intellectual friends, and Gonfaloniere Soderini seems to have favoured him highly. Machiavelli’s new post as secretary of the Second Chancery meant that he was responsible for the administration of the Florentine territories beyond the city. Later he was to be made secretary to the Council of War, putting him in charge of the foreign relations of the republic. Machiavelli would remain in high office for the next fourteen years, doing his best to further Soderini’s policies.
Fig 12 Niccolò Machiavelli
During the course of this work Machiavelli would travel on diplomatic missions as far afield as France and Germany. His task was to maintain Florence’s alliances amidst the ever-changing Italian political scene and beyond; as a result, he would encounter some of the major political figures in Europe, including Louis XII, the new king of France, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, and later the new Pope Julius II. As a relief from the seriousness of these long and arduous diplomatic travels, Machiavelli would write letters to his friends back in Florence detailing various ludicrous amorous episodes that had befallen him. His marriage, which took place in 1501 when he was thirty-two, appears to have been typical of the time and place, and when he went on his long diplomatic missions his wife was left behind to look after the children (there would be four). Meanwhile, his letters to his friends continued to detail his absurd peccadilloes, for despite his unprepossessing appearance, women seem to have found him attractive.
There was a curious dichotomy which ran right through Machiavelli’s character. He was a serious admirer of the great men he encountered, and in many ways he sought to emulate them, at least in their ways of thought; on the other hand, he felt the need to make himself appear ridiculous to his friends. However, his admiration of great men was far from uncritical; and the joke element of his character was not displayed in public. With Machiavelli we begin to see aspects of humanism penetrating beyond the charmed circle of the Palazzo Medici and other similar houses of the rich and privileged. The sharp, sardonic eye of Machiavelli belonged to no elitist clique, and the conclusions to which this clear vision now led him were guardedly pragmatic, rather than openly celebratory of any privileged position. His political experience would lead him to understand what worked in one’s dealings with the world. He learned to rely on empiricism rather than idealism – and like other creative expressions of humanism, this would rely on skill and science. But his field would be reality, rather than art. Machiavelli’s humanism relied on human instincts and judgement of experience, rather than any idealistic or religious principles – and in this it was a direct descendant of the humanism practised by Lorenzo the Magnificent. But where Lorenzo’s humanism was one of gesture, Machiavelli’s would be one of hard-headedness; though both were based on the premise of a humanity living, and being responsible for, its own life, with little or no reference to any transcendent life. Lorenzo had realised that anything was possible, anything was worth trying. Machiavelli would read the implications of this: if anything was possible, anything was permitted – in order to survive one had to take into account the full range of human character, especially its treacherous elements. Cold calculation, rather than noble gesture, was what succeeded in the end. Machiavelli’s views gradually hardened as he experienced the constant deviousness and subterfuge of a diplomatic scene that he was impotent to control. Others might have despaired at the futility of it all; Machiavelli sought a remedy. If Italy was to become great again, as it had been in the days of the Roman Empire, it needed a leader who was willing to be utterly ruthless, and who would not shrink from adopting the most extreme measures.
One man, above all others, appeared to possess such qualities: this was Cesare Borgia, whom Machiavelli would encounter on two separate occasions. By 1502, at the time of Machiavelli’s first mission, Borgia was acting as the military wing of his father Alexander VI’s papal power. With the aid of inspired military strategy and well-disciplined troops, Borgia was carving out an expanding territory in the Romagna.
Cesare Borgia was born in Rome in 1475, the illegitimate second son of the man who would become Pope Alexander VI. Despite being born in Italy, Cesare’s family life and culture were entirely Spanish; he was charming, highly intelligent and handsome, but he also inherited the amoral ruthlessness of his father, who intended him for high office in the Church. It soon became plain that Cesare was even more unsuited for such a career than his reprobate father, but Alexander VI insisted, making his son Archbishop of Valencia at the age of sixteen, and a cardinal a year later. Cesare’s older brother Juan was intended by his father to become military commander of the papal forces, but Cesare decided to take matters into his own hands and poisoned Juan. Alexander VI pragmatically accepted that Cesare was now the only person he could trust to command his forces, and Cesare was permitted to resign from his cardinalate and renounce his holy orders. Alexander VI then arranged for Cesare to marry a French princess and receive the title of Duke of Valentinois from the French king Louis XII. With the French as his allies, and providing military support, Cesare was now ready to launch a military campaign in the Romagna.
By 1502, after three years campaigning, Cesare Borgia had successfully conquered vast swathes of central Italy as far as the Adriatic, and in recognition of his services Alexander VI created him Duke of the Romagna. When Borgia finally turned inland and took Urbino, on the borders of the Florentine Republic, Machiavelli was despatched on a diplomatic mission to try and discover Borgia’s intentions. We know details of this meeting from Machiavelli’s letters to the authorities back in Florence. The twenty-seven-year-old Borgia received the Florentine mission at night amidst the dramatic torchlight of the magnificent ducal palace (built thirty years previously by the retired condottiere Federigo da Montefeltro). Borgia’s bearded, flickeringly illuminated face was intended to strike a chill in the hearts of the visiting delegates, and it succeeded. Unsettlingly, Borgia began by flattering the Florentine delegation with deceptive charm, saying how much he respected the Florentines for maintaining their neutrality during his campaigns. But if they were not willing to be his friends now – and here Borgia’s manner abruptly changed – he would not hesitate to over run the republic and reinstate the Medici, whose leader Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici was now a friend of his father, the pope. The Florentine delegation insisted that Florence had no intention of invading the territory held by Borgia; but Borgia was not satisfied with this. He told the Florentine delegation that he did not trust their republican style of government, and if they did not change it, he would change it for them. The Florentines stood their ground, bravely informing Borgia that the people of Florence were well pleased with their new republican government, and they were the only ones who mattered where this was concerned. Borgia just laughed in their faces. As a last resort, the Florentine delegation reminded Borgia that their city still remained in alliance with France; if Florence was attacked, Louis XII was bound by treaty to come to its rescue. Once again Borgia just laughed and said: ‘I know better than you what the King of France will do. You will be deceived.’ The Florentine delegation was well aware of the truth of what Borgia was saying, but their nerve held. They knew that Borgia was bluffing too; he had no wish to risk making an enemy of Louis XII. Next day, Machiavelli set off at full gallop back to Florence to inform the Signoria of the precariousness of the situation. His assessment was that Borgia would not attack; on the other hand, given Borgia’s character, there was no telling what he might do.
Fortunately, Borgia was now distracted by more pressing concerns, for he learned that his commander Vitellozzo Vitelli and several senior officers had revolted, taking their soldiers with them. This left Borgia vulnerable, so he immediately used money from the papal exchequer to hire French troops. Vitelli and his fellow conspirators then had second thoughts, and sent word to Borgia suggesting that they meet and resolve their differences, to which Borgia readily agreed.
It was now that Machiavelli was despatched on a second mission to Borgia, which would result in Machiavelli staying with the military commander for several months; and it was during this period that Borgia would demonstrate to Machiavelli the full scope of his abilities. In order to settle his differences with Vitelli, Borgia arranged for a reconciliation at the small town of Senigallia on the Adriatic coast. Borgia dismissed his French troops as a goodwill gesture to reassure Vitelli and the others, turning up at Senigallia with only a skeleton force. Here he welcomed Vitelli and his commanders ‘with a pleasant countenance . . . greeting them like old friends’. As he did so, Borgia manoeuvred them so that they were separated from their troops, whereupon he had them bundled off and flung into a dungeon. That night, as they ‘wept and begged for mercy, frantically blaming each other’, Borgia had them strangled.
This incident proved inspirational to Machiavelli; he would write of it in his report ‘The Treachery of Duke Valentinois Toward Vitelli and Others’, and it would play an exemplary role in his masterpiece of political philosophy, The Prince. What Machiavelli described in these works was not some improving example of how politics should be conducted; instead, he described what we would recognise as realpolitik.
Yet we should not mistake Machiavelli’s description of this realpolitik for reality. Machiavelli was an artist who believed in the skilful embodiment of his ideas. Despite Machiavelli’s later report, we now know that Borgia did not in fact dismiss his French troops in order to reassure Vitelli – they were suddenly recalled, leaving Borgia badly exposed, with no alternative but to bluff his way through his plan. Machiavelli’s delegation accompanied Borgia on his trip to the fateful meeting at Senigallia, and his original report tellingly describes how the news of the French flight ‘turned this court’s brains topsy-turvy’. Likewise, all the weeping and blaming as the victims were strangled was an embellishment: no mention of this was made in the original report. Machiavelli’s intention was to heighten and deepen the character of Borgia, not to make the embodiment of his ideas appear to be a panicky double-crosser. Machiavelli was interested not in Borgia the man, but in his method; and this had been a science of action, independent of morals. Here was an entirely new science, the science of politics. What Machiavelli sought, and would describe in The Prince, was a formal method that could encompass both the gestures of Lorenzo the Magnificent and the ruthlessness of Cesare Borgia. This would be a science where such daring, such bluff, such opportunism and such viciousness were set down as rational courses of action, each to be applied when the circumstances dictated them. Successful politics was a science, and thus had no room for morality.
Intriguingly, whilst Machiavelli was staying with Borgia he met and became friends with Borgia’s chief military engineer, who was arguably the greatest scientific mind of the period. This was still the age prior to the emergence of modern science, and this scientist was an artist – Leonardo da Vinci. Here was another man riven by dichotomies, and this may well have drawn Machiavelli to him; Leonardo had a horror of war, yet spent hours in his study designing military engines far in advance of his time. He also hated tyranny, yet saw nothing wrong in hiring out his talents to tyrants such as Lodovico Sforza of Milan, and now Cesare Borgia.
In the meeting of Machiavelli and Leonardo we see two embryo scientists, who believed in empirical method. Leonardo believed in looking closely at everything in the world, and trying to see how it worked; whilst in his own, political way Machiavelli did precisely the same. Yet with Leonardo and Machiavelli we also see the further development of the humanist spirit, to the point where it diverges: the humanism that had once informed art, poetry and philosophy was now extending into a divergent practical reality – into politics, and into embryo science.
When Machiavelli returned to Florence, Soderini secured a place for him as secretary to the Council of War, in charge of Florence’s military strategy, which was now in disarray. Pisa had revolted in 1494, cutting off Florence’s main route to the sea; the consequent Florentine siege of the city proved unsuccessful, mainly because the mercenaries hired to do the job were unwilling to submit themselves to danger. Machiavelli proposed that instead of hiring mercenaries, Florence should create its own standing army. This was a revolutionary suggestion, for previously no Italian city had maintained its own fully trained full-time militia. Soderini agreed, and Machiavelli was soon drilling his men in their new red uniforms with white caps and waistcoats, complete with red-and-white socks: an army that represented the pride of Florence had to dress accordingly.
Machiavelli decided to hire Leonardo da Vinci as his military engineer, and Leonardo immediately came up with an ingenious idea to defeat Pisa. If they diverted the Arno so that it flowed around Pisa to the coast, this would at a stroke bring two great advantages, Florence would have direct access to the sea via the diverted Arno, and the drying up of the river downstream would leave Pisa literally high and dry, Machiavelli, attracted as ever to the notion of bold action, was delighted; but Leonardo’s scheme was to suffer from the fatal defect that hampered so many of his practical ideas. It was ahead of its time, and the contemporary technology was simply not up to the task; the result was a farce, with hundreds of soldiers in mud-splattered uniforms digging a large trench knee-deep in mud. Soderini quickly called a halt to this costly exercise, and Leonardo was encouraged to seek employment elsewhere. Fortunately, this tale would have a happy ending, and Pisa would finally succumb to Machiavelli’s new militia; this was his greatest triumph, and he received word from Florence that bonfires were being lit to celebrate his momentous victory. ‘You alone have restored the fortunes of the Florentine state,’ wrote one of his admiring friends.
But Machiavelli and Borgia, both of whom in their own way sought to control history, would eventually find themselves swept away by it. In 1503 when Pope Alexander VI fell ill, Borgia hastened back to Rome; after his father died, Borgia seized the Vatican in an attempt to retain power, but was unable to prevent a papal election. However, the new pope Pius III agreed to retain Borgia as ‘gonfaloniere of the Papal forces’, which virtually guaranteed him control of the territories he had overrun. Although Borgia himself was now seriously ill, he would remain Duke of the Romagna, both in fact and in name; but when Pius III died a few months later he was succeeded by Julius II, a sworn enemy of the Borgias. It looked as if Borgia’s position was untenable, but Julius II unexpectedly chose to confirm him in his position, even using Borgia to pacify an uprising against papal authority in the Romagna. With a masterstroke worthy of Borgia himself, Julius II then arrested Borgia; in order to regain his freedom, he was obliged to surrender the Romagna cities to direct papal control. With no power base, or powerful backers, Borgia was forced to flee Italy and died three years later in Spain.
In The Prince, Machiavelli would attribute this drastic reversal of fortune to Borgia’s illness and consequent lack of ruthless decisiveness. ‘He should never have allowed the papacy to go to one of those cardinals he had offended, nor to someone who, once elected, had cause to fear him, for men attack either through fear or hate.’ Having started in Machiavellian fashion, Julius II continued likewise. His first move was to ally with the French in order to drive out the Venetians from papal territory, which they had occupied after Borgia’s flight. In keeping with his vigorous views on clerical behaviour, Julius II led the campaign himself, insisting that his twenty-four resident cardinals should accompany him. The result was a lamentable sight: aged and overweight cardinals were soon trailing far behind the papal troops and their enthusiastic commander. Only young Cardinal Giovanni Medici acquitted himself with valour; plump and near sighted he may have been, but he certainly knew how to encourage the troops – and Julius II was highly impressed.
Having used the French to defeat the Venetians, Julius now revealed his underlying strategy, which was to rid Italy of the ‘barbarian invaders’ (that is, the French). He summoned another Holy League, which included Naples, the Holy Roman Emperor and a somewhat chastened Venice; Florence, which remained allied to France, prudently decided to remain neutral. The French king Louis XII was so outraged at the pope’s volte-face that he ordered a convocation of French cardinals with the aim of deposing Julius II; and to the consternation of Florence, Louis XII decided to hold this convocation in the newly recaptured city of Pisa.
Pope Julius II chose to see Florence’s neutral stance as a betrayal of Italy and the Holy League, for which he vowed Florence would pay dearly. But first he had to deal with the French, who still held Bologna and much of Lombardy. Julius II now despatched his papal army, which included both Italian and formidable Spanish troops, under the leadership of Cardinal Medici. The papal army consisted of no fewer than 3,000 cavalry supported by 20,000 infantry; and Julius II promised his faithful young cardinal that if he was successful against the French, he could then march on Florence and install himself as ruler of the city.
On Easter Saturday 1512 the large French army, under its dashing young commander Gaston de Foix, lined up in formation on the flat plain outside Ravenna, by the banks of the Ronco. Arrayed in line were 24,000 French infantry and 4,000 archers. Opposite them, the Spanish and Italian troops of the papal forces took up their positions under the shouts of their ensigns. Then Cardinal Medici, dressed in his red cardinal’s robes, rode out on his white charger to address his massed troops. In a ringing voice, he called upon them to fight valiantly for the pope and pray to God for a glorious victory over the foreigners. (What did his Spanish listeners make of this, one wonders?) The troops then marched bravely into battle under the proud gaze of their commander, though as the contemporary historian Guicciardini records: ‘For the more active part of warlike operations, the Cardinal Medici was, indeed, in a great degree disqualified by the imperfection of his sight.’
By now the papal troops, as well as the French, were equipped with a formidable array of cannons, and as the battle began the rows of advancing infantrymen on either side were soon being mown down by the constant volleys of cannonballs. The result was one of the worst slaughters in European history up to this date: 10,500 French were killed, but there were even more casualties amongst the Spanish troops. As a result the French claimed victory, and when this news reached Florence the relieved citizens lit celebratory bonfires in the streets.
After the battle, Cardinal Medici dismounted from his horse and passed amongst the fallen, attempting to give solace to the wounded and dying. This would have been all they received; there were no physicians wandering the battlefield as the spring daylight slowly failed over the howling, the groaning and the more fortunate dead. Even the French commander Gaston de Foix, lying in his death throes beside his horse, his tunic spattered with his own brains, could have expected no medical assistance. One can only imagine the feelings of Cardinal Medici as he for once fulfilled the true role for which he had been ordained; though it is easier to imagine his consequent feelings when a passing troop of French soldiers arrived on the scene and took him prisoner.
Despite their ‘Victory’, the French decided to return north across the Alps; Cardinal Medici’s object had been achieved, though ironically he was forced to accompany them – such a favoured cardinal would fetch a fine ransom. But there was always a lot more to Giovanni de’ Medici than met the eye. Astonishingly he effected a daring escape: dressed as an unlikely foot soldier, he managed to slip past his captors, whereupon he is said to have eluded his pursuers by secreting himself in a pigeon house.
When Cardinal Medici arrived back at the headquarters of his Spanish troops, he received word from Julius II that he could now march on Tuscany and install himself as the ruler of Florence. Anxious to avoid bloodshed, Cardinal Medici sent a note ahead to Soderini, asking him to surrender. Soderini refused – though not without first calling a Parlamento and consulting the assembled inhabitants of the city. Soderini knew that he now had Machiavelli’s militia of 9,000 men at his disposal; by this stage, Cardinal Medici’s depleted Spanish troops numbered only just over half as many.
Machiavelli began preparing the city’s defences as Cardinal Medici advanced towards the small town of Prato, some ten miles to the northwest. Unfortunately, at the approach of the dreaded Spanish troops, the Prato militia simply threw down their arms and ran away. Geared up to fight, the Spanish forces stormed the defenceless city and a scene of hideous mayhem ensued: for two days the Spanish soldiers went on a rampage of raping, looting and murder. According to a contemporary report: ‘the nuns of the invaded convents were forced to submit to the unnatural as well as the natural lusts of the soldiers. In the streets, mothers threw their daughters into wells and jumped in after them . . .’ The troops were well beyond the control of their commander, who did his best to alleviate the situation; in the midst of the panic and pandemonium, Cardinal Medici attempted to barricade as many women as possible in the local church for their own safety. In all, more than 4,000 people would eventually be killed during the sacking of Prato, one of the worst atrocities of the time.
When news of this reached Florence, terror spread throughout the city. A group of Medici supporters made their way to the Palazzo della Signoria and demanded Soderini’s resignation. He complied at once, despatching Machiavelli to inform Cardinal Medici of his actions and requesting safe passage out of the city. This was granted, and Soderini fled. Later, papal agents were sent in pursuit of him, but he managed to escape across the Adriatic to the port of Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik), which was a Christian vassalate of the Ottoman Empire beyond papal reach, and here he began a life in exile.
On 1 September 1512 Cardinal Medici, accompanied by his cousin Giulio, entered Florence. After eighteen years, the Medici were back as rulers of the city. For the first few months Cardinal Giovanni himself would rule the city, before handing over to his younger brother Giuliano de’ Medici, named after his uncle who had been murdered in the Pazzi conspiracy.
Surprisingly, it was two months after the Medici return before Machiavelli was finally dismissed from his post. He was then punished; stripped of office (for supporting Soderini), stripped of his citizenship (a deep public humiliation) and fined 1,000 florins (effectively bankrupted), he was banished from the city and exiled to the smallholding seven miles south of the city that he had inherited from his father. Just forty-three, his life was in ruins.
Yet worse was to come. Four months later, in February 1513, a plot to assassinate Giuliano de’ Medici, the new ruler of the city, was uncovered. One of the conspirators was found to have a list of twenty leading citizens who might be in favour of their cause, if they succeeded. Machiavelli’s name was on the list, and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
As soon as news of this reached Machiavelli, he hurried to Florence and surrendered himself to the authorities. He had wished to demonstrate his innocence, but to his consternation he was flung into the Bargello. Eventually he was subjected to torture: four excruciating drops on the strappado (which had proved enough to make Savonarola confess to heresy). Machiavelli was middle-aged and of no great physique, but nonetheless he bore up well; referring later to these events and to his torture, he stressed his pride that 1 have borne them so straightforwardly that I love myself for it.’ This is probably no exaggeration: had he confessed to any knowledge of the plot – even falsely, just to put an end to the agony – he would certainly have been executed.
Fortunately, it was accepted that he was innocent; even so, this experience had a marked effect upon Machiavelli. When he came to write his political theory, it would emphasise the role of torture; in order to rule successfully, a prince must ‘be held in constant fear, owing to the punishment he may inflict’. Machiavelli was speaking from first-hand experience here – laws and moral sanctions carried extra force when they were backed by fear of torture.
Machiavelli was detained in the Bargello for a further two months and then released, whereupon he returned to his country smallholding in despair. He would later tell of his life here, and of how amidst the Tuscan hills he cultivated his olive trees and his vineyard, supervising the husbandry of his few goats and sheep; when the sun went down at the end of the day, he retired to the local inn and played cards with the baker and the miller. A pleasant easy-going life, yet he hated it; he still dreamed of returning to politics.
Machiavelli began sending a stream of letters to the new rulers of Florence, but these make sad reading. He set his considerable literary talents to composing abject begging letters, as well as winsomely flattering poems, which would be interspersed with occasional snippets of advice on matters of the day, drawn from the wealth of his experience. But all his letters were ignored; enemies and former rivals now stood between him and the seat of power, and they made sure that his letters were never received – his expert and original advice would frequently be used, but only to further the career of someone else. Machiavelli’s despair curdled into bitterness, and he wrote to a friend of his situation: ‘Caught in this way among the lice, I wipe the mould from my brain and relive the feeling of being ill-treated by fate.’
In the autumn of 1513, Machiavelli sat down and began writing The Prince. Working in the white heat of inspiration, he had completed it by the end of the year. This contained the distillation of his life’s experience in politics; all that he had learned in the service of Florence during one of the most difficult and dangerous periods of its history was boiled down to a series of simple but profound truths – each illustrated by telling examples from past history. This would be a new political philosophy of government, no less; and unlike all previous attempts, this would be practical, rather than theoretical or utopian. It would describe what did happen (and its consequences), rather than what ought to happen.
Machiavelli’s despair had stripped bare the illusions of life; now, as if for the first time, he saw (and wrote down) the pitiless truth that underlay all political reality. What he claimed to describe was a clear and uncompromising picture of the world as it is, and always has been throughout history. The Prince addressed the ruler of a state, informing him of the best way to use his power, and maintain it, as long and as efficiently as possible. These pragmatic and efficient rules were Machiavelli’s political science: A prince who desires to maintain his position must learn to be not always good, but to be so or not as needs may require.’ A ruler had to learn to lie, to cheat, to deceive – in order to survive; he had to learn how (and when) to betray even his closest allies and friends. In this science there were no moral principles, only practical ones; ruthlessness was obligatory if one wished to stay in power, and a ruler was only a ruler as long as he was in power.
However, there were always events that remained beyond a prince’s immediate control. The reality of politics was simply a struggle between two forces. One was virtù, which was not to be mistaken for virtue: in Machiavelli’s Italian sense, virtù meant potency or power, deriving from the Latin vir, meaning ‘man’, and the exercise of virtù was control. The other force was fortuna – chance, destiny or fortune, which attempted to disrupt virtù, but was not entirely beyond its control. Reflecting the prejudices of his age, and the Italian language, Machiavelli characterised virtù as masculine and fortuna as feminine: his advice for dealing with fortuna was as politically incorrect (in our modern sense) as the rest of his philosophy: It is better to be impetuous than cautious, because fortuna is a woman, and if you wish to control her it is necessary to restrain and beat her.’
Machiavelli understood that science, as such, was neither ethical nor compassionate – it either worked or it did not. What he set down was filled with amoral psychological insight; what he sought was the most successful and ruthless way in which political science can be made to work. Machiavelli is often misunderstood here; his ultimate motive was to make Italy great again, as it was in Roman times, and his ruthless ‘science’ would enable a ruler to achieve that aim. His means would be justified by this end – though Machiavelli did not emphasise this aim sufficiently, and as a result we tend to concentrate on the means that he advocated.
The importance of The Prince would be profound, marking a crucial step in our European political self-understanding. Here was the necessary hypocrisy we needed to live as moral beings within an efficiently ruled society, one that sought to thrive (or simply survive) on the international scene. This remains the pluralism at the heart of Western culture: the inherent contradiction between spiritual and civil life, between the values of our principles and the values of our practice. Such pluralism involves the ability to accept this dichotomy and live with it, which in turn involves a logic-defying sophistication (or cynicism). Not always wittingly, the Medici and Florence well illustrate the steps towards this Western self-understanding. First, Cosimo de’ Medici wrestled with the contradiction between the sin of usury and the salvation of his soul, being willing in fact to give up neither. Next, Savonarola demonstrated the impossibility of religious fundamentalism in a commercially and politically viable society. Later Machiavelli showed the fundamental division between ethics and the science of government: the pluralism by which we have learned to live. This is the uncomfortable and unsettling truth, an unresolvable contradiction, which many see as the grit in the oyster that would in the coming centuries drive Western civilisation to its world dominance.
But Machiavelli’s message would not bring him any success. Although he dedicated The Prince first to one member of the Medici family and then to another, they were not interested; such ideas win few friends. In his exile he would turn to literature, and his bitter black comedy La Mandragola (The Mandrake) is widely regarded as the first comic masterpiece written in the Italian language. Years later the Medici would relent slightly, and Machiavelli would be commissioned to write The History of Florence. This is an illuminating work, but is of course biased in favour of the Medici view of events, for Machiavelli hoped it would lead to a government appointment. He did receive two minor jobs – an unimportant mission to Lucca, and a post as a supervisor of the city walls – but never returned to high office, and in 1527 he died an impoverished and disappointed man. Five years later the first edition of The Prince would appear in Italian, and it would soon be translated into all major European languages. As a result, Machiavelli’s name would become a byword for evil throughout the continent, which found his uncomfortable truth so difficult to accept. Despite this, The Prince has not been out of print in English for more than 400 years. The Medici’s rejection of The Prince would be particularly ironic: here was the ideal handbook on how to be a godfather of the Italian Renaissance.