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Oeuvres completes de Machiavel, traduites par J. V. Perier Paris: 1825.
Those who have attended to the practice of our literary tribunal are well aware
that, by means of certain legal fictions similar to those of Westminster Hall,
we are frequently enabled to take cognizance of cases lying beyond the sphere of
our original jurisdiction. We need hardly say, therefore, that in the present
instance M. Perier is merely a Richard Roe, who will not be mentioned in any
subsequent stage of the proceedings, and whose name is used for the sole purpose
of bringing Machiavelli into court.
We doubt whether any name in literary history be so generally odious as that of
the man whose character and writings we now propose to consider. The terms in
which he is commonly described would seem to import that he was the Tempter, the
Evil Principle, the discoverer of ambition and revenge, the original inventor of
perjury, and that, before the publication of his fatal Prince, there had never
been a hypocrite, a tyrant, or a traitor, a simulated virtue, or a convenient
crime. One writer gravely assures us that Maurice of Saxony learned all his
fraudulent policy from that execrable volume. Another remarks that since it was
translated into Turkish, the Sultans have been more addicted than formerly to
the custom of strangling their brothers. Lord Lyttelton charges the poor
Florentine with the manifold treasons of the house of Guise, and with the
massacre of St. Bartholomew. Several authors have hinted that the Gunpowder Plot
is to be primarily attributed to his doctrines, and seem to think that his
effigy ought to be substituted for that of Guy Faux, in those processions by
which the ingenious youth of England annually commemorate the preservation of
the Three Estates. The Church of Rome has pronounced his works accursed things.
Nor have our own countrymen been backward in testifying their opinion of his
merits. Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of
his Christian name a synonym for the Devil.1
It is indeed scarcely possible for any person, not well acquainted with the
history and literature of Italy, to read without horror and amazement the
celebrated treatise which has brought so much obloquy on the name of
Machiavelli. Such a display of wickedness, naked yet not ashamed, such cool,
judicious, scientific atrocity, seemed rather to belong to a fiend than to the
most depraved of men. Principles which the most hardened ruffian would scarcely
hint to his most trusted accomplice, or avow, without the disguise of some
palliating sophism, even to his own mind, are professed without the slightest
circumlocution, and assumed as the fundamental axioms of all political science.
It is not strange that ordinary readers should regard the author of such a book
as the most depraved and shameless of human beings. Wise men, however, have
always been inclined to look with great suspicion on the angels and daemons of
the multitude: and in the present instance, several circumstances have led even
superficial observers to question the justice of the vulgar decision. It is
notorious that Machiavelli was, through life, a zealous republican. In the same
year in which he composed his manual of King-craft, he suffered imprisonment and
torture in the cause of public liberty. It seems inconceivable that the martyr
of freedom should have designedly acted as the apostle of tyranny. Several
eminent writers have, therefore, endeavored to detect in this unfortunate
performance some concealed meaning, more consistent with the character and
conduct of the author than that which appears at the first glance.
One hypothesis is that Machiavelli intended to practice on the young Lorenzo de
Medici a fraud similar to that which Sunderland is said to have employed against
our James the Second, and that he urged his pupil to violent and perfidious
measures, as the surest means of accelerating the moment of deliverance and
revenge. Another supposition which Lord Bacon seems to countenance, is that the
treatise was merely a piece of grave irony, intended to warn nations against the
arts of ambitious men. It would be easy to show that neither of these solutions
is consistent with many passages in The Prince itself. But the most decisive
refutation is that which is furnished by the other works of Machiavelli. In all
the writings which he gave to the public, and in all those which the research of
editors has, in the course of three centuries, discovered, in his Comedies,
designed for the entertainment of the multitude, in his Comments on Livy,
intended for the perusal of the most enthusiastic patriots of Florence, in his
History, inscribed to one of the most amiable and estimable of the Popes, in his
public dispatches, in his private memoranda, the same obliquity of moral
principle for which The Prince is so severely censured is more or less
discernible. We doubt whether it would be possible to find, in all the many
volumes of his compositions, a single expression indicating that dissimulation
and treachery had ever struck him as discreditable.
After this, it may seem ridiculous to say that we are acquainted with few
writings which exhibit so much elevation of sentiment, so pure and warm a zeal
for the public good, or so just a view of the duties and rights of citizens, as
those of Machiavelli. Yet so it is. And even from The Prince itself we could
select many passages in support of this remark. To a reader of our age and
country this inconsistency is, at first, perfectly bewildering. The whole man
seems to be an enigma, a grotesque assemblage of incongruous qualities,
selfishness and generosity, cruelty and benevolence, craft and simplicity,
abject villainy and romantic heroism. One sentence is such as a veteran
diplomatist would scarcely write in cipher for the direction of his most
confidential spy; the next seems to be extracted from a theme composed by an
ardent schoolboy on the death of Leonidas. An act of dexterous perfidy, and an
act of patriotic self-devotion, call forth the same kind and the same degree of
respectful admiration. The moral sensibility of the writer seems at once to be
morbidly obtuse and morbidly acute. Two characters altogether dissimilar are
united in him. They are not merely joined, but interwoven. They are the warp and
the woof of his mind; and their combination, like that of the variegated threads
in shot silk, gives to the whole texture a glancing and ever-changing
appearance. The explanation might have been easy, if he had been a very weak or
a very affected man. But he was evidently neither the one nor the other. His
works prove, beyond all contradiction, that his understanding was strong, his
taste pure, and his sense of the ridiculous exquisitely keen.
This is strange: and yet the strangest is behind. There is no reason whatever to
think, that those amongst whom he lived saw anything shocking or incongruous in
his writings. Abundant proofs remain of the high estimation in which both his
works and his person were held by the most respectable among his contemporaries.
Clement the Seventh patronised the publication of those very books which the
Council of Trent, in the following generation, pronounced unfit for the perusal
of Christians. Some members of the democratical party censured the Secretary for
dedicating The Prince to a patron who bore the unpopular name of Medici. But to
those immoral doctrines which have since called forth such severe reprehensions
no exception appears to have been taken. The cry against them was first raised
beyond the Alps, and seems to have been heard with amazement in Italy. The
earliest assailant, as far as we are aware, was a countryman of our own,
Cardinal Pole. The author of the Anti-Machiavelli was a French Protestant.
It is, therefore, in the state of moral feeling among the Italians of those
times that we must seek for the real explanation of what seems most mysterious
in the life and writings of this remarkable man. As this is a subject which
suggests many interesting considerations, both political and metaphysical, we
shall make no apology for discussing it at some length.
During the gloomy and disastrous centuries which followed the downfall of the
Roman Empire, Italy had preserved, in a far greater degree than any other part
of Western Europe, the traces of ancient civilization. The night which descended
upon her was the night of an Arctic summer. The dawn began to reappear before
the last reflection of the preceding sunset had faded from the horizon. It was
in the time of the French Merovingians and of the Saxon Heptarchy that ignorance
and ferocity seemed to have done their worst. Yet even then the Neapolitan
provinces, recognizing the authority of the Eastern Empire, preserved something
of Eastern knowledge and refinement. Rome, protected by the sacred character of
her Pontiffs, enjoyed at least comparative security and repose, Even in those
regions where the sanguinary Lombards had fixed their monarchy, there was
incomparably more of wealth, of information, of physical comfort, and of social
order, than could be found in Gaul, Britain, or Germany.
That which most distinguished Italy from the neighboring countries was the
importance which the population of the towns, at a very early period, began to
acquire. Some cities had been founded in wild and remote situations, by
fugitives who had escaped from the rage of the barbarians. Such were Venice and
Genoa, which preserved their freedom by their obscurity, till they became able
to preserve it by their power. Other cities seem to have retained, under all the
changing dynasties of invaders, under Odoacer and Theodoric, Narses and Alboin,
the municipal institutions which had been conferred on them by the liberal
policy of the Great Republic. In provinces which the central government was too
feeble either to protect or to oppress, these institutions gradually acquired
stability and vigor. The citizens, defended by their walls, and governed by
their own magistrates and their own by-laws, enjoyed a considerable share of
republican independence. Thus a strong democratic spirit was called into action.
The Carlovingian sovereigns were too imbecile to subdue it. The generous policy
of Otho encouraged it. It might perhaps have been suppressed by a close
coalition between the Church and the Empire. It was fostered and invigorated by
their disputes. In the twelfth century it attained its full vigor, and, after a
long and doubtful conflict, triumphed over the abilities and courage of the
Swabian princes.
The assistance of the Ecclesiastical power had greatly contributed to the
success of the Guelfs. That success would, however, have been a doubtful good,
if its only effect had been to substitute a moral for a political servitude, and
to exalt the Popes at the expense of the Caesars. Happily the public mind of
Italy had long contained the seeds of free opinions, which were now rapidly
developed by the genial influence of free institutions. The people of that
country had observed the whole machinery of the Church, its saints and its
miracles, its lofty pretensions and its splendid ceremonial, its worthless
blessings and its harmless curses, too long and too closely to be duped. They
stood behind the scenes on which others were gazing with childish awe and
interest. They witnessed the arrangement of the pulleys, and the manufacture of
the thunders. They saw the natural faces and heard the natural voices of the
actors. Distant nations looked on the Pope as the Vicegerent of the Almighty,
the oracle of the All-wise, the umpire from whose decisions, in the disputes
either of theologians or of kings, no Christian ought to appeal. The Italians
were acquainted with all the follies of his youth, and with all the dishonest
arts by which he had attained power. They knew how often he had employed the
keys of the Church to release himself from the most sacred engagements, and its
wealth to pamper his mistresses and nephews. The doctrines and rites of the
established religion they treated with decent reverence. But though they still
called themselves Catholics, they had ceased to be Papists. Those spiritual arms
which carried terror into the palaces and camps of the proudest sovereigns
excited only contempt in the immediate neighborhood of the Vatican. Alexander,
when he commanded our Henry the Second to submit to the lash before the tomb of
a rebellious subject, was himself an exile. The Romans apprehending that he
entertained designs against their liberties, had driven him from their city; and
though he solemnly promised to confine himself for the future to his spiritual
functions, they still refused to readmit him.
In every other part of Europe, a large and powerful privileged class trampled on
the people and defied the Government. But in the most flourishing parts of
Italy, the feudal nobles were reduced to comparative insignificance. In some
districts they took shelter under the protection of the powerful commonwealths
which they were unable to oppose, and gradually sank into the mass of burghers.
In other places they possessed great influence; but it was an influence widely
different from that which was exercised by the aristocracy of any Transalpine
kingdom. They were not petty princes, but eminent citizens. Instead of
strengthening their fastnesses among the mountains, they embellished their
palaces in the market-place. The state of society in the Neapolitan dominions,
and in some parts of the Ecclesiastical State, more nearly resembled that which
existed in the great monarchies of Europe. But the Governments of Lombardy and
Tuscany, through all their revolutions, preserved a different character. A
people, when assembled in a town, is far more formidable to its rulers than when
dispersed over a wide extent of country. The most arbitrary of the Caesars found
it necessary to feed and divert the inhabitants of their unwieldy capital at the
expense of the provinces. The citizens of Madrid have more than once besieged
their sovereign in his own palace, and extorted from him the most humiliating
concessions. The Sultans have often been compelled to propitiate the furious
rabble of Constantinople with the head of an unpopular Vizier. From the same
cause there was a certain tinge of democracy in the monarchies and aristocracies
of Northern Italy.
Thus liberty, partially indeed and transiently, revisited Italy; and with
liberty came commerce and empire, science and taste, all the comforts and all
the ornaments of life. The Crusades, from which the inhabitants of other
countries gained nothing but relics and wounds, brought to the rising
commonwealths of the Adriatic and Tyrrhene seas a large increase of wealth,
dominion, and knowledge. The moral and geographical position of those
commonwealths enabled them to profit alike by the barbarism of the West and by
the civilization of the East. Italian ships covered every sea. Italian factories
rose on every shore. The tables of Italian moneychangers were set in every city.
Manufactures flourished. Banks were established. The operations of the
commercial machine were facilitated by many useful and beautiful inventions. We
doubt whether any country of Europe, our own excepted, have at the present time
reached so high a point of wealth and civilization as some parts of Italy had
attained four hundred years ago. Historians rarely descend to those details from
which alone the real state of a community can be collected. Hence posterity is
too often deceived by the vague hyperboles of poets and rhetoricians, who
mistake the splendor of a court for the happiness of a people. Fortunately, John
Villani has given us an ample and precise account of the state of Florence in
the early part of the fourteenth century. The revenue of the Republic amounted
to three hundred thousand florins; a sum which, allowing for the depreciation of
the precious metals, was at least equivalent to six hundred thousand pounds
sterling; a larger sum than England and Ireland, two centuries ago, yielded
annually to Elizabeth. The manufacture of wool alone employed two hundred
factories and thirty thousand workmen. The cloth annually produced sold, at an
average, for twelve hundred thousand florins; a sum fully equal in exchangeable
value to two millions and a half of our money. Four hundred thousand florins
were annually coined. Eighty banks conducted the commercial operations, not of
Florence only but of all Europe. The transactions of these establishments were
sometimes of a magnitude which may surprise even the contemporaries of the
Barings and the Rothschilds. Two houses advanced to Edward the Third of England
upwards of three hundred thousand marks, at a time when the mark contained more
silver than fifty shillings of the present day, and when the value of silver was
more than quadruple of what it now is. The city and its environs contained a
hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants. In the various schools about ten
thousand children were taught to read; twelve hundred studied arithmetic; six
hundred received a learned education.
The progress of elegant literature and of the fine arts was proportioned to that
of the public prosperity. Under the despotic successors of Augustus, all the
fields of intellect had been turned into arid wastes, still marked out by formal
boundaries, still retaining the traces of old cultivation, but yielding neither
flowers nor fruit. The deluge of barbarism came. It swept away all the
landmarks. It obliterated all the signs of former tillage. But it fertilized
while it devastated. When it receded, the wilderness was as the garden of God,
rejoicing on every side, laughing, clapping its hands, pouring forth, in
spontaneous abundance, everything brilliant, or fragrant, or nourishing. A new
language, characterized by simple sweetness and simple energy, had attained
perfection. No tongue ever furnished more gorgeous and vivid tints to poetry;
nor was it long before a poet appeared who knew how to employ them. Early in the
fourteenth century came forth the Divine Comedy, beyond comparison the greatest
work of imagination which had appeared since the poems of Homer. The following
generation produced indeed no second Dante: but it was eminently distinguished
by general intellectual activity. The study of the Latin writers had never been
wholly neglected in Italy. But Petrarch introduced a more profound, liberal, and
elegant scholarship, and communicated to his countrymen that enthusiasm for the
literature, the history, and the antiquities of Rome, which divided his own
heart with a frigid mistress and a more frigid Muse. Boccaccio turned their
attention to the more sublime and graceful models of Greece.
From this time, the admiration of learning and genius became almost an idolatry
among the people of Italy. Kings and republics, cardinals and doges, vied with
each other in honoring and flattering Petrarch. Embassies from rival States
solicited the honor of his instructions. His coronation agitated the Court of
Naples and the people of Rome as much as the most important political
transaction could have done. To collect books and antiques, to found
professorships, to patronize men of learning, became almost universal fashions
among the great. The spirit of literary research allied itself to that of
commercial enterprise. Every place to which the merchant princes of Florence
extended their gigantic traffic, from the bazaars of the Tigris to the
monasteries of the Clyde, was ransacked for medals and manuscripts.
Architecture, painting, and sculpture, were munificently encouraged. Indeed it
would be difficult to name an Italian of eminence, during the period of which we
speak, who, whatever may have been his general character, did not at least
affect a love of letters and of the arts.
Knowledge and public prosperity continued to advance together. Both attained
their meridian in the age of Lorenzo the Magnificent. We cannot refrain from
quoting the splendid passage, in which the Tuscan Thucydides describes the state
of Italy at that period. "Ridotta tutta in somma pace e tranquillita, coltivata
non meno ne' luoghi piu montuosi e piu sterili che nelle pianure e regioni piu
fertili, ne sottoposta ad altro imperio che de' suoi medesimi, non solo era
abbondantissima d' abitatori e di ricchezze; ma illustrata sommamente dalla
magnificenza di molti principi, dallo splendore di molte nobilissime e
bellissime citta, dalla sedia e maesta della religione, fioriva d' uomini
prestantissimi nell' amministrazione delle cose pubbliche, e d'ingegni molto
nobili in tutte le scienze, ed in qualunque arte preclara ed industriosa." When
we peruse this just and splendid description, we can scarcely persuade ourselves
that we are reading of times in which the annals of England and France present
us only with a frightful spectacle of poverty, barbarity, and ignorance. From
the oppressions of illiterate masters, and the sufferings of a degraded
peasantry, it is delightful to turn to the opulent and enlightened States of
Italy, to the vast and magnificent cities, the ports, the arsenals, the villas,
the museums, the libraries, the marts filled with every article of comfort or
luxury, the factories swarming with artisans, the Apennines covered with rich
cultivation up to their very summits, the Po wafting the harvests of Lombardy to
the granaries of Venice, and carrying back the silks of Bengal and the furs of
Siberia to the palaces of Milan. With peculiar pleasure, every cultivated mind
must repose on the fair, the happy, the glorious Florence, the halls which rang
with the mirth of Pulci, the cell where twinkled the midnight lamp of Politian,
the statues on which the young eye of Michael Angelo glared with the frenzy of a
kindred inspiration, the gardens in which Lorenzo meditated some sparkling song
for the May-day dance of the Etrurian virgins. Alas for the beautiful city! Alas
for the wit and the learning, the genius and the love!
"Le donne, e i cavalier, gli affanni, e gli agi, Che ne 'nvogliava amore e
cortesia La dove i cuor son fatti si malvagi."
A time was at hand, when all the seven vials of the Apocalypse were to be poured
forth and shaken out over those pleasant countries, a time of slaughter, famine,
beggary, infamy, slavery, despair.
In the Italian States, as in many natural bodies, untimely decrepitude was the
penalty of precocious maturity. Their early greatness, and their early decline,
are principally to be attributed to the same cause, the preponderance which the
towns acquired in the political system.
In a community of hunters or of shepherds, every man easily and necessarily
becomes a soldier. His ordinary avocations are perfectly compatible with all the
duties of military service. However remote may be the expedition on which he is
bound, he finds it easy to transport with him the stock from which he derives
his subsistence. The whole people is an army; the whole year a march. Such was
the state of society which facilitated the gigantic conquests of Attila and
Tamerlane.
But a people which subsists by the cultivation of the earth is in a very
different situation. The husbandman is bound to the soil on which he labors. A
long campaign would be ruinous to him. Still his pursuits are such as give to
his frame both the active and the passive strength necessary to a soldier. Nor
do they, at least in the infancy of agricultural science, demand his
uninterrupted attention. At particular times of the year he is almost wholly
unemployed, and can, without injury to himself, afford the time necessary for a
short expedition. Thus the legions of Rome were supplied during its earlier
wars. The season during which the fields did not require the presence of the
cultivators sufficed for a short inroad and a battle. These operations, too
frequently interrupted to produce decisive results, yet served to keep up among
the people a degree of discipline and courage which rendered them, not only
secure, but formidable. The archers and billmen of the middle ages, who, with
provisions for forty days at their backs, left the fields for the camp, were
troops of the same description.
But when commerce and manufactures begin to flourish a great change takes place.
The sedentary habits of the desk and the loom render the exertions and hardships
of war insupportable. The business of traders and artisans requires their
constant presence and attention. In such a community there is little superfluous
time; but there is generally much superfluous money. Some members of the society
are, therefore, hired to relieve the rest from a task inconsistent with their
habits and engagements.
The history of Greece is, in this, as in many other respects, the best
commentary on the history of Italy. Five hundred years before the Christian era,
the citizens of the republics round the Aegean Sea formed perhaps the finest
militia that ever existed. As wealth and refinement advanced, the system
underwent a gradual alteration. The Ionian States were the first in which
commerce and the arts were cultivated, and the first in which the ancient
discipline decayed. Within eighty years after the battle of Plataea, mercenary
troops were everywhere plying for battles and sieges. In the time of
Demosthenes, it was scarcely possible to persuade or compel the Athenians to
enlist for foreign service. The laws of Lycurgus prohibited trade and
manufactures. The Spartans, therefore, continued to form a national force long
after their neighbors had begun to hire soldiers. But their military spirit
declined with their singular institutions. In the second century before Christ,
Greece contained only one nation of warriors, the savage highlanders of Aetolia,
who were some generations behind their countrymen in civilization and
intelligence.
All the causes which produced these effects among the Greeks acted still more
strongly on the modern Italians. Instead of a power like Sparta, in its nature
warlike, they had amongst them an ecclesiastical state, in its nature pacific.
Where there are numerous slaves, every freeman is induced by the strongest
motives to familiarize himself with the use of arms. The commonwealths of Italy
did not, like those of Greece, swarm with thousands of these household enemies.
Lastly, the mode in which military operations were conducted during the
prosperous times of Italy was peculiarly unfavorable to the formation of an
efficient militia. Men covered with iron from head to foot, armed with ponderous
lances, and mounted on horses of the largest breed, were considered as composing
the strength of an army. The infantry was regarded as comparatively worthless,
and was neglected till it became really so. These tactics maintained their
ground for centuries in most parts of Europe. That foot-soldiers could withstand
the charge of heavy cavalry was thought utterly impossible, till, towards the
close of the fifteenth century, the rude mountaineers of Switzerland dissolved
the spell, and astounded the most experienced generals by receiving the dreaded
shock on an impenetrable forest of pikes.
The use of the Grecian spear, the Roman sword, or the modern bayonet, might be
acquired with comparative ease. But nothing short of the daily exercise of years
could train the man-at-arms to support his ponderous panoply, and manage his
unwieldy weapon. Throughout Europe this most important branch of war became a
separate profession. Beyond the Alps, indeed, though a profession, it was not
generally a trade. It was the duty and the amusement of a large class of country
gentlemen. It was the service by which they held their lands, and the diversion
by which, in the absence of mental resources, they beguiled their leisure. But
in the Northern States of Italy, as we have already remarked, the growing power
of the cities, where it had not exterminated this order of men, had completely
changed their habits. Here, therefore, the practice of employing mercenaries
became universal, at a time when it was almost unknown in other countries.
When war becomes the trade of a separate class, the least dangerous course left
to a government is to force that class into a standing army. It is scarcely
possible, that men can pass their lives in the service of one State, without
feeling some interest in its greatness. Its victories are their victories. Its
defeats are their defeats. The contract loses something of its mercantile
character. The services of the soldier are considered as the effects of
patriotic zeal, his pay as the tribute of national gratitude. To betray the
power which employs him, to be even remiss in its service, are in his eyes the
most atrocious and degrading of crimes.
When the princes and commonwealths of Italy began to use hired troops, their
wisest course would have been to form separate military establishments.
Unhappily this was not done. The mercenary warriors of the Peninsula, instead of
being attached to the service of different powers, were regarded as the common
property of all. The connection between the State and its defenders was reduced
to the most simple and naked traffic. The adventurer brought his horse, his
weapons, his strength, and his experience, into the market. Whether the King of
Naples or the Duke of Milan, the Pope or the Signory of Florence, struck the
bargain, was to him a matter of perfect indifference. He was for the highest
wages and the longest term. When the campaign for which he had contracted was
finished, there was neither law nor punctilio to prevent him from instantly
turning his arms against his late masters. The soldier was altogether disjoined
from the citizen and from the subject.
The natural consequences followed. Left to the conduct of men who neither loved
those whom they defended, nor hated those whom they opposed, who were often
bound by stronger ties to the army against which they fought than to the State
which they served, who lost by the termination of the conflict, and gained by
its prolongation, war completely changed its character. Every man came into the
field of battle impressed with the knowledge that, in a few days, he might be
taking the pay of the power against which he was then employed, and, fighting by
the side of his enemies against his associates. The strongest interests and the
strongest feelings concurred to mitigate the hostility of those who had lately
been brethren in arms, and who might soon be brethren in arms once more. Their
common profession was a bond of union not to be forgotten even when they were
engaged in the service of contending parties. Hence it was that operations,
languid and indecisive beyond any recorded in history, marches and
counter-marches, pillaging expeditions and blockades, bloodless capitulations
and equally bloodless combats, make up the military history of Italy during the
course of nearly two centuries. Mighty armies fight from sunrise to sunset. A
great victory is won. Thousands of prisoners are taken; and hardly a life is
lost. A pitched battle seems to have been really less dangerous than an ordinary
civil tumult.
1 Nick Machiavel had ne'er a trick, Tho' he gave his name to
our old Nick.
Hudibras, Part iii. Canto i.
But, we believe, there is a schism on this subject among the antiquarians.
Critical And Historical Essays, Volume II
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