Most dangerous of all is the failure to appreciate that the quality of virtú matters more than anything else in military just as in civil affairs. This is why it is so ruinous to measure your enemies by their wealth, for what you ought to be measuring is obviously their virtú, since ‘war is made with steel and not with gold’ (350). So too with relying on artillery to win your battles. Machiavelli concedes, of course, that the Romans ‘would have made their gains more quickly if there had been guns in those times’ (370). But he persists in thinking it a cardinal error to suppose that, ‘as a result of these fire-weapons, men cannot use and show their virtú as they could in antiquity’ (367). He therefore continues to draw the somewhat optimistic conclusion that, although ‘artillery is useful in an army where the virtú of the ancients is combined with it’, it still remains ‘quite useless against a virtuoso army’ (372). Finally, the same considerations explain why it is especially dangerous to refuse negotiations in the face of superior forces. This is to ask more than can realistically be demanded even of the most virtuosi troops, and is thus ‘to turn the outcome over’ to ‘the pleasure of Fortune’ in a way that ‘no prudent man risks unless he must’ (403).
As in both his other Discourses, Machiavelli’s survey of Roman history prompts him to end with an agonized comparison between the total corruption of his native city and the exemplary virtú of the ancient world. The Florentines could easily ‘have seen the means the Romans used’ in their military affairs, ‘and could have followed their example’ (380). But in fact they have taken no account of Roman methods, and in consequence have fallen into every conceivable trap (339). The Romans understood perfectly the dangers of acting indecisively. But Florence’s leaders have never grasped this obvious lesson of history, as a result of which they have brought ‘damage and disgrace to our republic’ (361). The Romans always recognized the uselessness of mercenary and auxiliary troops. But the Florentines, together with many other republics and principalities, are still needlessly humiliated by their reliance on these corrupt and cowardly forces (383). The Romans saw that, in keeping watch over their associates, a policy of ‘building fortresses as a bridle to keep them faithful’ would only breed resentment and insecurity. By contrast, ‘it is a saying in Florence, brought forward by our wise men, that Pisa and other like cities must be held with fortresses’ (392). Finally — with the greatest anguish — Machiavelli comes to the gambit he has already stigmatized as the most irrational of all, that of refusing to negotiate when confronted by superior forces. All the evidence of ancient history shows that this is to tempt Fortune in the most reckless way. Yet this is exactly what the Florentines did when Ferdinand’s armies invaded in the summer of 1512. As soon as the Spanish crossed the border, they found themselves short of food and tried to arrange a truce. But ‘the people of Florence, made haughty by this, did not accept it’ (403). The immediate result was the sack of Prato, the surrender of Florence, the collapse of the republic, and the restoration of the Medicean tyranny — all of which could easily have been avoided. As before, Machiavelli feels driven to conclude on a note of almost despairing anger at the follies of the regime he himself had served.
Chapter 4
The Historian of Florence
Shortly after the completion of the Discourses, a sudden turn of Fortune’s wheel at last brought Machiavelli the patronage he had always craved from the Medicean government. Lorenzo de’ Medici — to whom he had rededicated The Prince after the death of Giuliano in 1516 — died prematurely three years later. He was succeeded in the control of Florentine affairs by his cousin, Cardinal Giulio, soon to be elected pope as Clement VII. The cardinal happened to be related to one of Machiavelli’s closest friends, Lorenzo Strozzi, to whom Machiavelli later dedicated his Art of War. As a result of this connection, Machiavelli managed to gain an introduction to the Medicean court in March 1520, and soon afterwards he received a hint that some employment — literary even if not diplomatic — might be found for him. Nor were his expectations disappointed, for in November of the same year he obtained a formal commission from the Medici to write the history of Florence.
The composition of The History of Florence occupied Machiavelli almost for the rest of his life. It is his longest and most leisured work, as well as being the one in which he follows the literary prescriptions of his favourite classical authorities with the greatest care. The two basic tenets of classical — and hence of humanist — historiography were that works of history should inculcate moral lessons, and that their materials should therefore be selected and organized in such a way as to highlight the proper lessons with maximum force. Sallust, for example, had offered an influential statement of both these principles. In The War with Jugurtha he had argued that the aim of the historian must be to reflect on the past in a ‘useful’ and ‘serviceable’ way (IV.1–3). And in The War with Catiline he had drawn the inference that the correct approach must therefore consist of ‘selecting such portions’ as seem ‘worthy of record’, and not trying to furnish a complete chronicle of events (IV.2).
5. Machiavelli’s writing desk in his house in Sant’ Andrea in Percussina, south of Florence, where he composed The Prince in 1513.
Machiavelli is assiduous about meeting both these requirements, as he reveals in particular in his handling of the various transitions and climaxes of his narrative. Book II, for example, ends with an edifying account of how the duke of Athens came to rule Florence as a tyrant in 1342 and was driven from power in the course of the following year. Book III then switches almost directly to the next revealing episode — the revolt of the Ciompi in 1378 — after a bare sketch of the intervening half-century. Similarly, Book III concludes with a description of the reaction following the revolution of 1378, and Book IV opens after a gap of another forty years with a discussion of how the Medici managed to rise to power.
A further tenet of humanist historical writing was that, in order to convey the most salutary lessons in the most memorable fashion, the historian must cultivate a commanding rhetorical style. As Sallust had declared at the start of The War with Catiline, the special challenge of history lies in the fact that ‘the style and diction must be equal to the deeds recorded’ (III.2). Machiavelli again takes this ideal very seriously, so much so that in the summer of 1520 he decided to compose a stylistic ‘model’ for a history, the draft of which he circulated among his friends from the Orti Oricellari in order to solicit their comments on his approach. He chose as his theme the biography of Castruccio Castracani, the early fourteenth-century tyrant of Lucca. But the details of Castruccio’s life — some of which Machiavelli simply invents — are of less interest to him than the business of selecting and arranging them in an elevated and instructive way. The opening description of Castruccio’s birth as a foundling is fictitious, but it offers Machiavelli the chance to write a grand declamation on the power of Fortune in human affairs (533–4). The moment when the young Castruccio — who was educated by a priest — first begins ‘to busy himself with weapons’ similarly gives Machiavelli an opportunity to present a version of the classic debate about the rival attractions of letters and arms (535–6). The dying oration pronounced by the remorseful tyrant is again in the best traditions of ancient historiography (553–4). And the story is rounded off with numerous instances of Castruccio’s epigrammatic wit, most of which are in fact stolen directly from Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Philosophers and are simply inserted for rhetorical effect (555–9).