Machiavelli’s most graphic image for this sense of man as the master of his fate is again classical in inspiration. He stresses that ‘Fortune is a woman’ and is in consequence readily allured by manly qualities (87). So he sees a genuine possibility of making oneself the ally of Fortune, of learning to act in harmony with her powers, neutralizing her varying nature and thus remaining successful in all one’s affairs.
This brings Machiavelli to the key question the Roman moralists had originally posed. How can we hope to forge an alliance with Fortune, how can we induce her to smile on us? He answers in precisely the terms they had already used. He stresses that she is the friend of the brave, of those who are ‘less cautious and more aggressive’. And he develops the idea that she is chiefly excited by, and responsive to, the virtus of the true vir. First he makes the negative point that she is most of all driven to rage and hatred by lack of virtú. Just as the presence of virtú acts as an embankment against her onrush, so she always directs her fury where she knows ‘that no dykes or dams have been built’. He even goes so far as to suggest that she only shows her power when men of virtú fail to stand up to her — the implication being that she so greatly admires the quality that she never vents her most lethal spite on those who exhibit it (85, 87).
As well as reiterating these classical arguments, Machiavelli gives them an unusual erotic twist. He implies that Fortune may actually take a perverse pleasure in being violently handled. He not only claims that ‘fortune is a woman, and if you want to control her, it is necessary to treat her roughly’. He adds that she is actually ‘more inclined to yield to men’ who ‘treat her more boldly’ (87).
The suggestion that men may be able to take advantage of Fortune in this way has sometimes been presented as a peculiarly Machiavellian insight. But even here Machiavelli is drawing on a stock of familiar imagery. The idea that Fortune must be opposed with violence had been emphasized by Seneca, while Piccolomini in his Dream of Fortune had even gone on to explore the erotic overtones of the belief. When he asks Fortune ‘Who is able to hold on to you more than others?’, she confesses that she is most of all attracted by men ‘who keep my power in check with the greatest spirit’. And when he finally dares to ask ‘Who is most acceptable to you among the living?’, she tells him that, while she views with contempt ‘those who run away from me’, she is most aroused ‘by those who put me to flight’.[3]
If men are capable of curbing Fortune and thus of attaining their highest goals, the next question to ask must be what goals a new prince should set himself. Machiavelli begins by stating a minimum condition, using a phrase that echoes throughout The Prince. The basic aim must be mantenere lo stato, by which he means that a new ruler must preserve the existing state of affairs, and especially keep control of the prevailing system of government. As well as sheer survival, however, there are far greater ends to be pursued; and in specifying what these are, Machiavelli again reveals himself to be a true heir of the Roman historians and moralists. He assumes that all men want above all to acquire the goods of Fortune. So he totally ignores the orthodox Christian injunction (emphasized, for example, by St Thomas Aquinas in The Government of Princes) that a good ruler ought to avoid the temptations of worldly glory and wealth in order to be sure of attaining his heavenly rewards. On the contrary, it seems obvious to Machiavelli that the highest prizes for which men are bound to compete are ‘glory and riches’ — the two finest gifts that Fortune has it in her power to bestow (85).
Like the Roman moralists, however, Machiavelli sets aside the acquisition of riches as a base pursuit, and argues that the noblest aim for ‘a far-seeing and virtuoso’ prince must be to introduce a form of government ‘that will bring honour to him’ and make him glorious (87). For new rulers, he adds, there is even the possibility of winning a ‘double glory’: they not only have the chance to inaugurate a new princedom, but also to strengthen it ‘with good laws, strong arms, reliable allies and exemplary conduct’ (83). The attainment of worldly honour and glory is thus the highest goal for Machiavelli no less than for Livy or Cicero. When he asks himself in the final chapter of The Prince whether the condition of Italy is conducive to the success of a new ruler, he treats this as equivalent to asking whether a man of virtú can hope to ‘mould it into a form that will bring honour to him’ (87). And when he expresses his admiration for Ferdinand of Spain — whom he respects most of all among contemporary statesmen — the reason he gives is that Ferdinand has done ‘great things’ that have made him ‘the most famous and glorious king in Christendom’ (76).
These goals, Machiavelli thinks, are not especially difficult to attain — at least in their minimum form — where a prince has inherited a dominion ‘accustomed to the rule of those belonging to the present ruler’s family’ (6). But they are very hard for a new prince to achieve, particularly if he owes his position to a stroke of good Fortune. Such regimes ‘cannot sufficiently develop their roots’ and are liable to be blown away by the first unfavourable weather that Fortune chooses to send them (23). And they cannot — or rather, they emphatically must not — place any trust in Fortune’s continuing benevolence, for this is to rely on the most unreliable force in human affairs. For Machiavelli, the next — and the most crucial — question is accordingly this: what maxims, what precepts, can be offered to a new ruler such that, if they are ‘put into practice skilfully’, they will make him ‘seem very well established’ (83)? It is with the answer to this question that the rest of The Prince is chiefly concerned.
Machiavelli’s advice to new princes comes in two principal parts. His first and fundamental point is that ‘the main foundations of all states’ are ‘good laws and good armies’. Moreover, good armies are even more important than good laws, because ‘it is impossible to have good laws if good arms are lacking’, whereas ‘if there are good arms there must also be good laws’ (42–3). The moral — put with a typical touch of exaggeration — is that a wise prince ‘should have no other objective and no other concern’ than ‘war and its methods and practices’ (51–2).
Machiavelli goes on to specify that armies are basically of two types: hired mercenaries and citizen militias. In Italy the mercenary system was almost universally employed, but Machiavelli proceeds in chapter 12 to launch an all-out attack on it. ‘For many years’ the Italians have been ‘controlled by mercenary armies’ and the results have been appalling: the entire peninsula ‘has been overrun by Charles, plundered by Louis, ravaged by Ferdinand and treated with contempt by the Swiss’ (47). Nor could anything better have been expected, for all mercenaries ‘are useless and dangerous’. They are ‘disunited, ambitious, undisciplined and treacherous’ and their capacity to ruin you ‘is only postponed until the time comes when they are required to fight’ (43). To Machiavelli the implications are obvious, and he states them with great force in chapter 13. Wise princes will always ‘avoid using these troops and form armies composed of their own men’. So strongly does he feel this that he even adds the almost absurd claim that they will ‘prefer to lose using their own troops rather than to conquer through using foreign troops’ (49).