of Machiavelli. There is no book more lucidly, directly, and plainly
written. There is no book that has aroused more vehement, venomous, and
even truculent controversy from the moment of its publication until
to-day. And it is asserted with great probability that _The Prince_ has
had a more direct action upon real life than any other book in the
world, and a larger share in breaking the chains and lighting the dark
places of the Middle Ages. It is a truism to say that Machiavellism
existed before Machiavelli. The politics of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, of
Louis XI. of France, of Ferdinand of Spain, of the Papacy, of Venice,
might have been dictated by the author of _The Prince_. But Machiavelli
was the first to observe, to compare, to diagnose, to analyse, and to
formulate their principles of government. The first to establish, not a
divorce, but rather a judicial separation between the morals of a man
and the morals of a government. It is around the purpose and possible
results of such a separation in politics, ethics, and religion that the
storm has raged most fiercely. To follow the path of that storm through
near four centuries many volumes would be needed, and it will be more
convenient to deal with the more general questions in summing up the
influence of Machiavelli as a whole. But the main lines and varying
fortunes of the long campaign may be indicated. During the period of its
manuscript circulation and for a few years after its publication _The
Prince_ was treated with favour or at worst with indifference, and the
first mutterings were merely personal to the author. He was a scurvy
knave and turncoat with neither bowels nor conscience, almost
negligible. But still men read him, and a change in conditions brought a
change in front. He had in _The Prince_, above all in the _Discorsi_,
accused the Church of having ruined Italy and debauched the world. In
view of the writer's growing popularity, of the Reformation and the
Pagan Renaissance, such charges could no longer be lightly set aside.
The Churchmen opened the main attack. Amongst the leaders was Cardinal
Pole, to whom the practical precepts of _The Prince_ had been
recommended in lieu of the dreams of Plato, by Thomas Cromwell, the
_malleus monachorum_ of Henry VIII. The Catholic attack was purely
theological, but before long the Jesuits joined in the cry. Machiavelli
was burnt in effigy at Ingoldstadt. He was _subdolus diabolicarum
cogitationum faber_, and _irrisor et atheos_ to boot. The Pope himself
gave commissions to unite against him, and his books were placed on the
Index, together, it must be admitted, with those of Boccaccio, Erasmus,
and Savonarola so the company was goodly. But meanwhile, and perhaps in
consequence, editions and translations of _The Prince_ multiplied apace.
The great figures of the world were absorbed by it. Charles V., his son,
and his courtiers studied the book. Catherine de Medici brought it to
France. A copy of _The Prince_ was found on the murdered bodies of Henry
III. and Henry IV. Richelieu praised it. Sextus V. analysed it in his
own handwriting. It was read at the English Court; Bacon was steeped in
it, and quotes or alludes to it constantly. Hobbes and Harrington
studied it.
But now another change. So then, cried Innocent Gentillet, the Huguenot,
the book is a primer of despotism and Rome, and a grammar for bigots and
tyrants. It doubtless is answerable for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.
The man is a _chien impur_. And in answer to this new huntsman the whole
Protestant pack crashed in pursuit. Within fifty years of his death _The
Prince_ and Machiavelli himself had become a legend and a myth, a
haunting, discomforting ghost that would not be laid. Machiavellism had
grown to be a case of conscience both to Catholic and Protestant, to
Theologian, Moralist, and Philosopher. In Spain the author, damned in
France for his despotism and popery, was as freshly and freely damned
for his civil and religious toleration. In England to the Cavaliers he
was an Atheist, to the Roundheads a Jesuit. Christina of Sweden
annotated him with enthusiasm. Frederick the Great published his
_Anti-Machiavel_ brimming with indignation, though it is impossible not
to wonder what would have become of Prussia had not the Prussian king so
closely followed in practice the precepts of the Florentine, above all
perhaps, as Voltaire observed, in the publication of the
_Anti-Machiavel_ itself. No doubt in the eighteenth century, when
monarchy was so firmly established as not to need Machiavelli, kings and
statesmen sought to clear kingship of the supposed stain he had
besmirched them with. But their reading was as little as their
misunderstanding was great, and the Florentine Secretary remained the
mysterious necromancer. It was left for Rousseau to describe the book of
this 'honnête homme et bon citoyen' as 'le livre des Républicains,' and
for Napoleon, the greatest of the author's followers if not disciples,
to draw inspiration and suggestion from his Florentine forerunner and to
justify the murder of the Due d'Enghien by a quotation from _The
Prince_. 'Mais après tout,' he said, 'un homme d'Etat est-il fait pour
être sensible? N'est-ce pas un personnage--complètement excentrique,
toujours seul d'un côté, avec le monde de l'autre?' and again 'Jugez
done s'il doit s'amuser à ménager certaines convenances de sentiments si
importantes pour le commun des hommes? Peut-il considérer les liens du
sang, les affections, les puérils ménagements de la société? Et dans la
situation où il se trouve, que d'actions séparées de l'ensemble et qu'on
blâme, quoiqu'elles doivent contribuer au grand oeuvre que tout le monde
n'aperçoit pas? ... Malheureux que vous êtes! vous retiendrez vos éloges
parce que vous craindrez que le mouvement de cette grande machine ne
fasse sur vous l'effet de Gulliver, qui, lorsqu'il déplaçait sa jambe,
écrasait les Lilliputiens. Exhortez-vous, devancez le temps, agrandissez
votre imagination, regardez de loin, et vous verrez que ces grands
personnages que vous croyez violents, cruels, que sais-je? ne sont que
des politiques. Ils se connaissent, se jugent mieux que vous, et, quand
ils sont réellement habiles, ils savent se rendre maîtres de leurs
passions car ils vont jusqu'à en calculer les effets.' Even in his
carriage at Waterloo was found a French translation of _The Prince_
profusely annotated.
[Sidenote: The Defence.]
But from the first the defence was neither idle nor weak. The assault
was on the morals of the man: the fortress held for the ideas of the
thinker. He does not treat of morals, therefore he is immoral, cried the
plaintiff. Has he spoken truth or falsehood? Is his word the truth and
will his truth prevail? was the rejoinder. In Germany and Italy
especially and in France and England in less degree, philosophers and
critics have argued and written without stint and without cease. As
history has grown wider and more scientific so has the preponderance of
opinion leaned to the Florentine's favour.
It would be impossible to recapitulate the arguments or even to indicate
the varying points of view. And indeed the main hindrance in forming a
just idea of _The Prince_ is the constant treatment of a single side of
the book and the preconceived intent of the critic. Bacon has already
been mentioned. Among later names are Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibnitz. Herder
gives qualified approval, while Fichte frankly throws down the glove as
_The Prince's_ champion. 'Da man weiss dass politische Machtfragen nie,
am wenigsten in einem verderbten Volke, mit den Mitteln der Moral zu
lösen sind, so ist es unverständig das Buch von Fürsten zu verschreien.
Macchiavelli hatte einen Herrscher zu schildern, keinen Klosterbruder.'
The last sentence may at least be accepted as a last word by practical
politicians. Ranke and Macaulay, and a host of competent Germans and
Italians have lent their thought and pens to solve the riddle in the
Florentine's favour. And lastly, the course of political events in
Europe have seemed to many the final justification of the teaching of
_The Prince_. The leaders of the Risorgimento thought that they found in
letters, 'writ with a stiletto,' not only the inspirations of patriotism
and the aspirations to unity, but a sure and trusted guide to the
achievement. Germany recognised in the author a schoolmaster to lead
them to unification, and a military instructor to teach them of an Armed
People. Half Europe snatched at the principle of Nationality. For in
_The Prince_, Machiavelli not only begat ideas but fertilised the ideas
of others, and whatever the future estimation of the book may be, it
stands, read or unread, as a most potent, if not as the dominant, factor
in European politics for four hundred years.
[Sidenote: The _Discorsi_.]
The _Discorsi_, printed in Rome by Blado, 1537, are not included in the
present edition, as the first English translation did not appear until
1680, when almost the entire works of Machiavelli were published by an
anonymous translator in London. But some account and consideration of
their contents is imperative to any review of the Florentine's political
thoughts. Such Discorsi and Relazioni were not uncommon at the time. The
stronger and younger minds of the Renaissance wearied of discussing in
the lovely gardens of the Rucellai the ideas of Plato or the allegories
of Plotinus. The politics of Aristotle had just been intelligibly
translated by Leonardo Bruni (1492). And to-day the young ears and eyes
of Florence were alert for an impulse to action. They saw glimpses, in
reopened fields of history, of quarries long grown over where the ore of
positive politics lay hid. The men who came to-day to the Orti
Oricellarii were men versed in public affairs, men of letters,
historians, poets, living greatly in a great age, with Raphael, Michael
Angelo, Ariosto, Leonardo going up and down amongst them. Machiavelli
was now in fair favour with the Medici, and is described by Strozzi as
_una persona per sorgere_ (a rising man). He was welcomed into the group
with enthusiasm, and there read and discussed the _Discorsi_. Nominally
mere considerations upon the First Decade of Livy, they rapidly
encircled all that was known and thought of policy and state-craft, old
and living.
[Sidenote: Their Plan.]
Written concurrently with _The Prince_, though completed later, the
_Discorsi_ contain almost the whole of the thoughts and intents of the
more famous book, but with a slightly different application. '_The
Prince_ traces the progress of an ambitious man, the _Discorsi_ the
progress of an ambitious people,' is an apt if inadequate criticism.
Machiavelli was not the first Italian who thought and wrote upon the
problems of his time. But he was the first who discussed grave questions
in modern language. He was the first modern political writer who wrote
of men and not of man, for the Prince himself is a collective
individuality.
'This must be regarded as a general rule,' is ever in Machiavelli's
mouth, while Guicciardini finds no value in a general rule, but only in
'long experience and worthy discretion.' The one treated of policy, the
other of politics. Guicciardini considered specifically by what methods
to control and arrange an existing Government. Machiavelli sought to
create a science, which should show how to establish, maintain, and
hinder the decline of states generally conceived. Even Cavour counted
the former as a more practical guide in affairs. But Machiavelli was the
theorist of humanity in politics, not the observer only. He
distinguished the two orders of research. And, during the Italian
Renaissance such distinction was supremely necessary. With a crumbled
theology, a pagan Pope, amid the wreck of laws and the confusion of
social order, _il sue particolare_ and _virtù_, individuality and
ability (energy, political genius, prowess, vital force: _virtù_ is
impossible to translate, and only does not mean virtue), were the
dominating and unrelenting factors of life. Niccolò Machiavelli, unlike
Montesquieu, agreed with Martin Luther that man was bad. It was for both
the Wittenberger and the Florentine, in their very separate ways, to
found the school and wield the scourge. In the naked and unashamed
candour of the time Guicciardini could say that he loathed the Papacy
and all its works. 'For all that, he adds, 'the preferments I have
enjoyed, have forced me for my private ends to set my heart upon papal
greatness. Were it not for this consideration, I should love Martin
Luther as my second self.' In the _Discorsi_, Machiavelli bitterly
arraigns the Church as having 'deprived Italians of religion and
liberty.' He utterly condemns Savonarolà, yet he could love and learn
from Dante, and might almost have said with Pym, 'The greatest liberty
of the Kingdom is Religion. Thereby we are freed from spiritual evils,
and no impositions are so grievous as those that are laid upon the
soul.'
[Sidenote: Religion.]
The Florentine postulates religion as an essential element in a strong
and stable State. Perhaps, with Gibbon, he deemed it useful to the
Magistrate. But his science is impersonal. He will not tolerate a Church
that poaches on his political preserves. Good dogma makes bad politics.
It must not tamper with liberty or security. And most certainly, with
Dante, in the _Paradiso_, he would either have transformed or omitted
the third Beatitude, that the Meek shall inherit the earth. With such a
temperament, Machiavelli must ever keep touch with sanity. It was not
for him as for Aristotle to imagine what an ideal State should be, but
rather to inquire what States actually were and what they might actually
become. He seeks first and foremost 'the use that may be derived from
history in politics'; not from its incidents but from its general
principles. His darling model of a State is to be found where Dante
found it, in the Roman Republic. The memory and even the substance of
Dante occur again and again. But Dante's inspiration was spiritual:
Machiavelli's frankly pagan, and with the latter Fortune takes the place
of God. Dante did not love the Papacy, but Machiavelli, pointing out how
even in ancient Rome religion was politic or utilitarian, leads up to
his famous attack upon the Roman Church, to which he attributes all the
shame and losses, political, social, moral, national, that Italy has
suffered at her hands. And now for the first time the necessity for
Italian Unity is laid plainly down, and the Church and its temporal
power denounced as the central obstacles. In religion itself the
Secretary saw much merit. 'But when it is an absolute question of the
welfare of our country, then justice or injustice, mercy or cruelty,
praise or ignominy, must be set aside, and we must seek alone whatever
course may preserve the existence and liberty of the state.' Throughout
the _Discorsi_, Machiavelli in a looser and more expansive form,
suggests, discusses, or re-affirms the ideas of _The Prince_. There is
the same absence of judgment on the moral value of individual conduct;
the same keen decision of its practical effect as a political act. But
here more than in _The Prince_, he deals with the action and conduct of
the people. With his passion for personal and contemporary incarnation
he finds in the Swiss of his day the Romans of Republican Rome, and
reiterates the comparison in detail. Feudalism, mercenaries, political
associations embodied in Arts and Guilds, the Temporal power of the
Church, all these are put away, and in their stead he announces the new
and daring gospel that for organic unity subjects must be treated as
equals and not as inferiors. 'Trust the people' is a maxim he repeats
and enforces again and again. And he does not shrink from, but rather
urges the corollary, 'Arm the people.' Indeed it were no audacious
paradox to state the ideal of Machiavelli, though he nominally preferred
a Republic, as a Limited Monarchy, ruling over a Nation in Arms. No
doubt he sought, as was natural enough in his day, to construct the
State from without rather than to guide and encourage its evolution from
within. It seemed to him that, in such an ocean of corruption, Force
_was_ a remedy and Fraud no sluttish handmaid. 'Vice n'est-ce pas,'
writes Montaigne, of such violent acts of Government, 'car il a quitté
sa raison à une plus universelle et puissante raison.' Even so the
Prince and the people could only be justified by results. But the public
life is of larger value than the private, and sometimes one man must be
crucified for a thousand. Despite all prejudice and make-belief, such a
rule and practice has obtained from the Assemblies of Athens to the
Parliaments of the twentieth century. But Machiavelli first candidly
imparted it to the unwilling consciences and brains of men, and it is he
who has been the chosen scape-goat to carry the sins of the people. His
earnestness makes him belie his own precept to keep the name and take
away the thing. In this, as in a thousand instances, he was not too
darkly hidden; he was too plain. 'Machiavelli,' says one who studied the
Florentine as hardly another had done, 'Machiavelli hat gesündigt, aber
noch mehr ist gegen ihn gesündigt worden.' Liberty is good, but Unity is
its only sure foundation. It is the way to the Unity of Government and
People that the thoughts both of _The Prince_ and the _Discorsi_ lead,
though the incidents be so nakedly presented as to shock the timorous
and vex the prurient, the puritan, and the evil thinker. The people must
obey the State and fight and die for its salvation, and for the Prince
the hatred of the subjects is never good, but their love, and the best
way to gain it is by 'not interrupting the subject in the quiet
enjoyment of his estate.' Even so bland and gentle a spirit as the poet
Gray cannot but comment, 'I rejoice when I see Machiavelli defended or
illustrated, who to me appears one of the wisest men that any nation in
any age hath produced.'
[Sidenote: The Art of War.]
Throughout both _The Prince_ and the _Discorsi_ are constant allusions
to, and often long discussions on, military affairs. The Army profoundly
interested Machiavelli both as a primary condition of national existence
and stability, and also, as he pondered upon the contrast between
ancient Rome and the Florence that he lived in, as a subject fascinating
in itself. His _Art of War_ was probably published in 1520. Before that
date the Florentine Secretary had had some personal touch both with the
theory and practice of war. As a responsible official in the camp before
Pisa he had seen both siege work and fighting. Having lost faith in
mercenary forces he made immense attempts to form a National Militia,
and was appointed Chancellor of the Nove della Milizia. In Switzerland
and the Tyrol he had studied army questions. He planned with Pietro
Navarro the defence of Florence and Prato against Charles V. At Verona
and Mantua in 1509, he closely studied the famous siege of Padua. From
birth to death war and battles raged all about him, and he had personal
knowledge of the great captains of the Age. Moreover, he saw in Italy
troops of every country, of every quality, in every stage of discipline,
in every manner of formation. His love of ancient Rome led him naturally
to the study of Livy and Vegetius, and from them with regard to
formations, to the relative values of infantry and cavalry and other
points of tactics, he drew or deduced many conclusions which hold good
to-day. Indeed a German staff officer has written that in reading the
Florentine you think you are listening to a modern theorist of war. But
for the theorist of those days a lion stood in the path. The art of war
was not excepted from the quick and thorough transformation that all
earthly and spiritual things were undergoing. Gunpowder, long invented,
was being applied. Armour, that, since the beginning, had saved both man
and horse, had now lost the half of its virtue. The walls of fortresses,
impregnable for a thousand years, became as matchwood ramparts. The
mounted man-at-arms was found with wonder to be no match for the
lightly-armoured but nimble foot-man. The Swiss were seen to hold their
own with ease against the knighthood of Austria and Burgundy. The Free
Companies lost in value and prestige what they added to their corruption
and treachery. All these things grew clear to Machiavelli. But his
almost fatal misfortune was that he observed and wrote in the mid-moment
of the transition. He had no faith in fire-arms, and as regards the
portable fire-arms of those days he was right. After the artillery work
at Ravenna, Novara, and Marignano it is argued that he should have known
better. But he was present at no great battles, and pike, spear, and
sword had been the stable weapons of four thousand years. These were
indeed too simple to be largely modified, and the future of mechanisms
and explosives no prophet uninspired could foresee. And indeed the
armament and formation of men were not the main intent of Machiavelli's
thought. His care in detail, especially in fortifications, of which he
made a special study, in encampments, in plans, in calculations, is
immense. Nothing is so trivial as to be left inexact.
[Sidenote: The New Model.]
But he centred his observation and imagination on the origin, character,
and discipline of an army in being. He pictures the horror, waste, and
failure of a mercenary system, and lays down the fatal error in Italy of
separating civil from military life, converting the latter into a trade.
In such a way the soldier grows to a beast, and the citizen to a coward.
All this must be changed. The basic idea of this astounding Secretary is
to form a National Army, furnished by conscription and informed by the
spirit of the New Model of Cromwell. All able-bodied men between the
ages of seventeen and forty should be drilled on stated days and be kept
in constant readiness. Once or twice a year each battalion must be
mobilised and manoeuvred as in time of war. The discipline must be
constant and severe. The men must be not only robust and well-trained,
but, above all, virtuous, modest, and disposed to any sacrifice for the
public good. So imbued should they be with duty and lofty devotion to
their country that though they may rightly deceive the enemy, reward the
enemy's deserters and employ spies, yet 'an apple tree laden with fruit
might stand untouched in the midst of their encampment.' The infantry
should far exceed the cavalry, 'since it is by infantry that battles are
won.' Secrecy, mobility, and familiarity with the country are to be
objects of special care, and positions should be chosen from which
advance is safer than retreat. In war this army must be led by one
single leader, and, when peace shines again, they must go back contented
to their grateful fellow-countrymen and their wonted ways of living. The
conception and foundation of such a scheme, at such a time, by such a
man is indeed astounding. He broke with the past and with all
contemporary organisations. He forecast the future of military Europe,
though his own Italy was the last to win her redemption through his
plans. 'Taken all in all,' says a German military writer, 'we may
recognise Machiavelli in his inspired knowledge of the principles of
universal military discipline as a true prophet and as one of the
weightiest thinkers in the field of military construction and
constitution. He penetrated the essence of military technique with a
precision wholly alien to his period, and it is, so to say, a new
psychological proof of the relationship between the art of war and the
art of statecraft, that the founder of Modern Politics is also the first
of modern Military Classics.'
But woe to the Florentine Secretary with his thoughts born centuries
before their time. As in _The Prince_, so in the _Art of War_, he closes
with a passionate appeal of great sorrow and the smallest ray of hope.
Where shall I hope to find the things that I have told of? What is Italy
to-day? What are the Italians? Enervated, impotent, vile. Wherefore, 'I
lament mee of nature, the which either ought not to have made mee a
knower of this, or it ought to have given mee power, to have bene able
to have executed it: For now beeing olde, I cannot hope to have any
occasion, to be able so to doo: In consideration whereof, I have bene
liberall with you who beeing grave young men, may (when the thinges said
of me shall please you) at due times, in favoure of your Princes, helpe
them and counsider them. Wherin I would have you not to be afraied, or
mistrustfull, because this Province seemes to bee altogether given to
raise up againe the things deade, as is seene by the perfection that
Poesie, painting, and writing, is now brought unto: Albeit, as much as
is looked for of mee, beeing strooken in yeeres, I do mistrust. Where
surely, if Fortune had heretofore graunted mee so much state, as
suffiseth for a like enterprise, I would not have doubted, but in most
short time, to have shewed to the world, how much the auncient orders
availe: and without peradventure, either I would have increased it with
glory, or lost it without shame.'
[Sidenote: _The History of Florence_.]
In 1520 Machiavelli was an ageing and disappointed man. He was not
popular with any party, but the Medici were willing to use him in minor
matters if only to secure his adherence. He was commissioned by Giulio
de Medici to write a history of Florence with an annual allowance of 100
florins. In 1525 he completed his task and dedicated the book to its
begetter, Pope Clement VII.