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Part III
Part III
On this subject, Machiavelli felt most strongly. Indeed, the expulsion of
the foreign tyrants, and the restoration of that golden age which had preceded
the irruption of Charles VIII, were projects which, at that time, fascinated
all the master-spirits of Italy. The magnificent vision delighted the great
but ill-regulated mind of Julius. It divided with manuscripts and saucers,
painters and falcons, the attention of the frivolous Leo. It prompted the
generous treason of Morone. It imparted a transient energy to the feeble mind
and body of the last Sforza. It excited for one moment an honest ambition in
the false heart of Pescara. Ferocity and insolence were not among the vices of
the national character. To the discriminating cruelties of politicians,
committed for great ends on select victims, the moral code of the Italians was
too indulgent. But, though they might have recourse to barbarity as an
expedient, they did not require it as a stimulant. They turned with loathing
from the atrocity of the strangers who seemed to love blood for its own sake;
who, not content with subjugating, were impatient to destroy; who found a
fiendish pleasure in razing magnificent cities, cutting the throats of enemies
who cried for quarter, or suffocating an unarmed population by thousands in
the caverns to which it had fled for safety. Such were the cruelties which
daily excited the terror and disgust of a people among whom, till lately, the
worst that a soldier had to fear in a pitched battle was the loss of his horse
and the expense of his ransom. The swinish intemperance of Switzerland; the
wolfish avarice of Spain; the gross licentiousness of the French, indulged in
violation of hospitality, of decency, of love itself; the wanton inhumanity
which was common to all the invaders - had made them objects of deadly hatred
to the inhabitants of the Peninsula. The wealth which had been accumulated
during centuries of prosperity and repose was rapidly melting away. The
intellectual superiority of the oppressed people only rendered them more
keenly sensible of their political degradation. Literature and taste, indeed,
still disguised with a flush of hectic loveliness and brilliancy the ravages
of an incurable decay. The iron had not yet entered into the soul. The time
was not yet come when eloquence was to be gagged, and reason to be hoodwinked,
when the harp of the poet was to be hung on the willows of Arno, and the right
hand of the painter to forget its cunning. Yet a discerning eye might even
then have seen that genius and learning would not long survive the state of
things from which they had sprung, and that the great men whose talents gave
lustre to that melancholy period had been formed under the influence of
happier days, and would leave no successors behind them. The times which shine
with the greatest splendor in literary history are not always those to which
the human mind is most indebted. Of this we may be convinced, by comparing the
generation which follows them with that which had preceded them. The first -
fruits which are reaped under a bad system often spring from seed sown under a
good one. Thus it was, in some measure, with the Augustan age. Thus it was
with the age of Raphael and Ariosto, of Aldus and Vida.
Machiavelli deeply regretted the misfortunes of his country, and clearly
discerned the cause and the remedy. It was the military system of the Italian
people which had extinguished their valor and discipline, and left their
wealth an easy prey to every foreign plunderer. The secretary projected a
scheme, alike honorable to his heart and to his intellect, for abolishing the
use of mercenary troops, and for organizing a national militia.
The exertions which he made to effect this great object ought alone to
rescue his name from obloquy. Though his situation and his habits were
pacific, he studied with intense assiduity the theory of war. He made himself
master of all its details. The Florentine government entered into his views. A
council of war was appointed. Levies were decreed. The indefatigable minister
flew from place to place in order to superintend the execution of his design.
The times were, in some respects, favorable to the experiment. The system of
military tactics had undergone a great revolution. The cavalry was no longer
considered as forming the strength of an army. The hours which a citizen could
spare from his ordinary employments, though by no means sufficient to
familiarize him with the exercise of a man-at-arms, might render him a
useful foot-soldier. The dread of a foreign yoke, of plunder, massacre, and
conflagration, might have conquered that repugnance to military pursuits which
both the industry and the idleness of great towns commonly generate. For a
time the scheme promised well. The new troops acquitted themselves respectably
in the field. Machiavelli looked with parental rapture on the success of his
plan, and began to hope that the arms of Italy might once more be formidable
to the barbarians of the Tagus and the Rhine. But the tide of misfortune came
on before the barriers which should have withstood it were prepared. For a
time, indeed, Florence might be considered as peculiarly fortunate. Famine and
sword and pestilence had devastated the fertile plains and stately cities of
the Po. All the curses denounced of old against Tyre seemed to have fallen on
Venice. Her merchants already stood afar off, lamenting for their great city.
The time seemed near when the sea-weed should overgrow her silent Rialto,
and the fisherman wash his nets in her deserted arsenal. Naples had been four
times conquered and reconquered by tyrants equally indifferent to its welfare,
and equally greedy for its spoils. Florence, as yet, had only to endure
degradation and extortion, to submit to the mandates of foreign powers, to buy
over and over again, at an enormous price, what was already justly her own, to
return thanks for being wronged, and to ask pardon for being in the right. She
was at length deprived of the blessings, even of this infamous and servile
repose. Her military and political institutions were swept away together. The
Medici returned, in the train of foreign invaders, from their long exile. The
policy of Machiavelli was abandoned; and his public services were requited
with poverty, imprisonment, and torture.
The fallen statesman still clung to his project with unabated ardor. With
the view of vindicating it from some popular objections, and of refuting some
prevailing errors on the subject of military science, he wrote his "Seven
Books on the Art of War." This excellent work is in the form of a dialogue.
The opinions of the writer are put into the mouth of Fabrizio Colonna, a
powerful nobleman of the ecclesiastical State, and an officer of distinguished
merit in the service of the King of Spain. Colonna visits Florence on his way
from Lombardy to his own domains. He is invited to meet some friends at the
house of Cosimo Rucellai, an amiable and accomplished young man, whose early
death Machiavelli feelingly deplores. After partaking of an elegant
entertainment, they retire from the heat into the most shady recesses of the
garden. Fabrizio is struck by the sight of some uncommon plants. Cosimo says,
that, though rare in modern days, they are frequently mentioned by the
classical authors, and that his grandfather, like many other Italians, amused
himself with practising the ancient methods of gardening. Fabrizio expresses
his regret that those who, in later times, affected the manners of the old
Romans, should select for imitation the most trifling pursuits. This leads to
a conversation on the decline of military discipline, and on the best means of
restoring it. The institution of the Florentine militia is ably defended, and
several improvements are suggested in the details.
The Swiss and the Spaniards were, at that time, regarded as the best
soldiers in Europe. The Swiss battalion consisted of pikemen, and bore a close
resemblance to the Greek phalanx. The Spaniards, like the soldiers of Rome,
were armed with the sword and the shield. The victories of Flaminius and
Aemilius over the Macedonian kings seem to prove the superiority of the
weapons used by the legions. The same experiment had been recently tried with
the same result at the battle of Ravenna, one of those tremendous days into
which human folly and wickedness compress the whole devastation of a famine or
a plague. In that memorable conflict, the infantry of Aragon, the old
companions of Gonsalvo, deserted by all their allies, hewed a passage through
the thickest of the imperial pikes, and effected an unbroken retreat, in the
face of the gendarmerie of De Foix, and the renowned artillery of Este.
Fabrizio, or rather Machiavelli, proposes to combine the two systems, to arm
the foremost lines with the pike for the purpose of repulsing cavalry, and
those in the rear with the sword, as being a weapon better adapted for every
other purpose. Throughout the work, the author expresses the highest
admiration of the military science of the ancient Romans, and the greatest
contempt for the maxims which had been in vogue amongst the Italian commanders
of the preceding generation. He prefers infantry to cavalry, and fortified
camps to fortified towns. He is inclined to substitute rapid movements and
decisive engagements for the languid and dilatory operations of his
countrymen. He attaches very little importance to the invention of gunpowder.
Indeed, he seems to think that it ought scarcely to produce any change in the
mode of arming or of disposing troops. The general testimony of historians, it
must be allowed, seems to prove that the ill-constructed and ill-served
artillery of those times, though useful in a siege, was of little value on the
field of battle.
On the tactics of Machiavelli we will not venture to give an opinion, but
we are certain that his book is most able and interesting. As a commentary on
the history of his times, it is invaluable. The ingenuity, the grace, and the
perspicuity of the style, and the eloquence and animation of particular
passages, must give pleasure, even to readers who take no interest in the
subject.
"The Prince" and the "Discourses on Livy" were written after the fall of
the republican government. The former was dedicated to the young Lorenzo de`
Medici. This circumstance seems to have disgusted the contemporaries of the
writer far more that the doctrines which have rendered the name of the work
odious in latter times. It was considered as an indication of political
apostasy. The fact, however, seems to have been, that Machiavelli, despairing
of the liberty of Florence, was inclined to support any government which might
preserve her independence. The interval which separated a democracy and a
despotism Soderini and Lorenzo, seemed to vanish when compared with the
difference between the former and the present state of Italy, between the
security, the opulence, and the repose which she had enjoyed under its native
rulers, and the misery in which she had been plunged since the fatal year in
which the first foreign tyrant had descended from the Alps. The noble and
pathetic exhortation with which "The Prince" concludes shows how strongly the
writer felt upon this subject.
"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. To a
modern statesman the form of the "Discourses" may appear to be puerile. In
truth, Livy is not a historian on whom implicit reliance can be placed, even
in cases where he must have possessed considerable means of information. And
the first Decade, to which Machiavelli has confined himself, is scarcely
entitled to more credit than our Chronicle of British Kings who reigned before
the Roman invasion. But the commentator is indebted to Livy for little more
than a few texts which he might as easily have extracted from the Vulgate or
"The Decameron." The whole train of thought is original.
On the peculiar immorality which has rendered "The Prince" unpopular, and
which is almost equally discernible in the "Discourses" we have already given
our opinion at length. We have attempted to show that it belonged rather to
the age than to the man, that it was a partial taint, and by no means implied
general depravity. We cannot, however, deny that it is a great blemish, and
that it considerably diminishes the pleasure which, in other respects, those
works must afford to every intelligent mind.
It is, indeed, impossible to conceive a more healthful and vigorous
constitution of the understanding than that which these works indicate. The
qualities of the active and the contemplative statesman appear to have been
blended in the mind of the writer into a rare and exquisite harmony. His skill
in the details of business had not been acquired at the expense of his general
powers. It had not rendered his mind less comprehensive; but it had served to
correct his speculations, and to impart to them that vivid and practical
character which so widely distinguishes them from the vague theories of most
political philosophers.
Every man who has seen the world knows that nothing is so useless as a
general maxim. If it be very moral and very true, it may serve for a copy to a
charity boy. If, like those of Rochefoucauld, it be sparkling and whimsical,
it may make an excellent motto for an essay. But few indeed of the many wise
apophthegms which have been uttered, from the time of the Seven Sages of
Greece to that of "Poor Richard," have prevented a single foolish action. We
give the highest and the most peculiar praise to the precepts of Machiavelli
when we say that they may frequently be of real use in regulating conduct, not
so much because they are more just or more profound than those which might be
culled from other authors, as because they can be more readily applied to the
problems of real life.
There are errors in these works. But they are errors which a writer,
situated like Machiavelli, could scarcely avoid. They arise, for the most
part, from a single defect which appears to us to pervade his whole system. In
his political scheme, the means had been more deeply considered than the ends.
The great principle, that societies and laws exist only for the purpose of
increasing the sum of private happiness, is not recognized with sufficient
clearness. The good of the body, distinct from the good of the members, and
sometimes hardly compatible with the good of the members, seems to be the
object which he proposes to himself. Of all political fallacies, this has
perhaps had the widest and the most mischievous operation. The state of
society in the little commonwealths of Greece, the close connection and mutual
dependence of the citizens, and the severity of the laws of war, tended to
encourage an opinion which, under such circumstances, could hardly be called
erroneous. The interests of every individual were inseparably bound up with
those of the State. An invasion destroyed his corn-fields and vineyards,
drove him from his home, and compelled him to encounter all the hardships of a
military life. A treaty of peace restored him to security and comfort. A
victory doubled the number of his slaves. A defeat perhaps made him a slave
himself. When Pericles, in the Peloponnesian war, told the Athenians, that, if
their country triumphed, their private losses would speedily be repaired, but
that, if their arms failed of success, every individual amongst them would
probably be ruined, he spoke no more than the truth. He spoke to men whom the
tribute of vanquished cities supplied with food and clothing, with the luxury
of the bath and the amusements of the theatre, on whom the greatness of their
country conferred rank, and before whom the members of less prosperous
communities trembled; to men who, in case of a change in the public fortunes,
would, at least, be deprived of every comfort and every distinction which they
enjoyed. To be butchered on the smoking ruins of their city, to be dragged in
chains to a slave-market, to see one child torn from them to dig in the
quarries of Sicily, and another to guard the harems of Persepolis, these were
the frequent and probable consequences of national calamities. Hence, among
the Greeks, patriotism became a governing principle, or rather an ungovernable
passion. Their legislators and their philosophers took it for granted, that,
in providing for the strength and greatness of the State, they sufficiently
provided for the happiness of the people. The writers of the Roman Empire
lived under despots, into whose dominion a hundred nations were melted down,
and whose gardens would have covered the little commonwealths of Phlius and
Plataea. Yet they continued to employ the same language, and to cant about the
duty of sacrificing everything to a country to which they owed nothing.
Causes similar to those which had influenced the disposition of the
Greeks operated powerfully on the less vigorous and daring character of the
Italians. The Italians, like the Greeks, were members of small communities.
Every man was deeply interested in the welfare of the society to which he
belonged, a partaker in its wealth and its poverty, in its glory and its
shame. In the age of Machiavelli this was peculiarly the case. Public events
had produced an immense sum of misery to private citizens. The Northern
invaders had brought want to their boards, infamy to their beds, fire to their
roofs, and the knife to their throats. It was natural that a man who lived in
times like these should overrate the importance of those measures by which a
nation is rendered formidable to its neighbors, and undervalue those which
make it prosperous within itself.
Nothing is more remarkable in the political treatises of Machiavelli than
the fairness of mind which they indicate. It appears where the author is in
the wrong, almost as strongly as where he is in the right. He never advances a
false opinion because it is new or splendid, because he can clothe it in a
happy phrase, or defend it by an ingenious sophism. His errors are at once
explained by a reference to the circumstances in which he was placed. They
evidently were not sought out: they lay in his way, and could scarcely be
avoided. Such mistakes must necessarily be committed by early speculators in
every science.
The political works of Machiavelli derive a peculiar interest from the
mournful earnestness which he manifests whenever he touches on topics
connected with the calamities of his native land. It is difficult to conceive
any situation more painful that of a great man, condemned to watch the
lingering agony of an exhausted country, to tend it during the alternate fits
of stupefaction and raving which precede its dissolution, and to see the
symptoms of vitality disappear one by one, till nothing is left but coldness,
darkness, and corruption. To this joyless and thankless duty was Machiavelli
called. In the energetic language of the prophet, he was "mad for the sight of
his eyes which he saw" - disunion in the Council, effeminacy in the camp,
liberty extinguished, commerce decaying, national honor sullied, an
enlightened and flourishing people given over to the ferocity of ignorant
savages. Though his opinions had not escaped the contagion of that political
immorality which was common among his countrymen, his natural disposition
seems to have been rather stern and impetuous than pliant and artful. When the
misery and degradation of Florence, and the foul outrage which he had himself
sustained, recur to his mind, the smooth craft of his profession and his
nation is exchanged for the honest bitterness of scorn and anger. He speaks
like one sick of the calamitous times and abject people among whom his lot is
cast. He pines for the strength and glory of ancient Rome, for the fasces of
Brutus and the sword of Scipio, the gravity of the curule chair, and the
bloody pomp of the triumphal sacrifice. He seems to be transported back to the
days when 800,000 Italian warriors sprung to arms at the rumor of a Gallic
invasion. He breathes all the spirit of those intrepid and haughty Senators
who forgot the dearest ties of nature in the claims of public duty, who looked
with disdain on the elephants and on the gold of Pyrrhus, and listened with
unaltered composure to the tremendous tidings of Cannae. Like an ancient
temple deformed by the barbarous architecture of a later age, his character
acquires an interest from the very circumstances which debase it. The original
proportions are rendered more striking by the contrast which they present to
the mean and incongruous additions.
The influence of the sentiments which we have described was not apparent
in his writings alone. His enthusiasm, barred from the career which it would
have selected for itself, seems to have found a vent in desperate levity. He
enjoyed a vindictive pleasure in outraging the opinions of a society which he
despised. He became careless of the decencies which were expected from a man
so highly distinguished in the literary and political world. The sarcastic
bitterness of his conversation disgusted those who were more inclined to
accuse his licentiousness than their own degeneracy, and who were unable to
conceive the strength of those emotions which are concealed by the jests of
the wretched, and by the follies of the wise.
The historical works of Machiavelli still remain to be considered. The
life of Castruccio Castracani will occupy us for a very short time, and would
scarcely have demanded our notice had it not attracted a much greater share of
public attention than it deserves. Few books, indeed, could be more
interesting than a careful and judicious account, from such a pen, of the
illustrious Prince of Lucca, the most eminent of those Italian chiefs, who,
like Pisistratus and Gelon, acquired a power felt rather than seen, and
resting, not on law or on prescription, but on the public favor and on their
great personal qualities. Such a work would exhibit to us the real nature of
that species of sovereignty, so singular and so often misunderstood, which the
Greeks denominated tyranny, and which, modified in some degree by the feudal
system, reappeared in the commonwealths of Lombardy and Tuscany. But this
little composition of Machiavelli is in no sense a history. It has no
pretensions to fidelity. It is trifle, and not a very successful trifle. It is
scarcely more authentic than the novel of "Belphegor," and is very much
duller.
The last great work of this illustrious man was the history of his native
city. It was written by command of the Pope, who, as chief of the house of
Medici, was at that time sovereign of Florence. The characters of Cosimo, of
Piero, and of Lorenzo, are, however, treated with a freedom and impartiality
equally honorable to the writer and to the patron. The miseries and
humiliations of dependence, the bread which is more bitter than every other
food, the stairs which are more painful than every other ascent, has not
broken the spirit of Machiavelli. The most corrupting post in a corrupting
profession had not depraved the generous heart of Clement.
The history does not appear to be the fruit of much industry or research.
It is unquestionably inaccurate. But it is elegant, lively, and picturesque,
beyond any other in the Italian language. The reader, we believe, carries away
from it a more vivid and a more faithful impression of the national character
and manners than from more correct accounts. The truth is, that the book
belongs rather to ancient than to modern literature. It is in the style, not
of Davila and Clarendon, but of Herodotus and Tacitus. The classical histories
may almost be called romances founded in fact. The relation is, no doubt, in
all its principel points, strictly true. But the numerous little incidents
which heighten the interest, the words, the gestures, the looks, are evidently
furnished by the imagination of the author. The fashion of later times is
different. A more exact narrative is given by the writer.
It may be doubted whether more exact notions are conveyed to the reader.
The best portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of
caricature, and we are not certain that the best histories are not those in
which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously
employed. Something is lost in accuracy, but much is gained in effect. The
fainter lines are neglected, but the great characteristic features are
imprinted on the mind forever.
The history terminates with the death of Lorenzo de` Medici. Machiavelli
had, it seems, intended to continue his narrative to a later period. But his
death prevented the execution of his design, and the melancholy task of
recording the desolation and shame of Italy devolved on Guicciardini.
Machiavelli lived long enough to see the commencement of the last
struggle for Florentine liberty. Soon after his death monarchy was finally
established, not such a monarchy as that of which Cosimo had laid the
foundations deep in the institutions and feelings of his countrymen, and which
Lorenzo had embellished with the trophies of every science and every art, but
a loathsome tyranny, proud and mean, cruel and feeble, bigoted and lascivious.
The character of Machiavelli was hateful to the new masters of Italy, and
those parts of his theory which were in strict accordance with their own daily
practice afforded a pretext for blackening his memory. His works were
misrepresented by the learned, misconstrued by the ignorant, censured by the
Church, abused with all the rancor of simulated virtue by the tools of a base
government and the priests of a baser superstition. The name of the man whose
genius had illuminated all the dark places of policy, and to whose patriotic
wisdom an oppressed people had owed their last chance of emancipation and
revenge, passed into a proverb of infamy. For more than two hundred years his
bones lay undistinguished. At length an English nobleman paid the last honors
to the greatest statesman of Florence. In the Church of Santa Croce a monument
was erected to his memory, which is contemplated with reverence by all who can
distinguish the virtues of a great mind through the corruptions of a
degenerate age, and which will be approached with still deeper homage when the
object to which his public life was devoted shall be attained, when the
foreign yoke shall be broken, when a second Procida shall avenge the wrongs of
Naples, when a happier Rienzi shall restore the good estate of Rome, when the
streets of Florence and Bologna shall again resound with their ancient war -
cry, "Popolo; popolo; muoiano i tiranni!"^10
[Footnote 10: "The people! the people! Death to the tyrants!" - Machiavelli`s
"History of Florence, " Book III.]
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