The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

The commencement of the sixteenth century found Italy suffering from the foreign interference of France and Spain. The chief Italian states at this period were the kingdom of Naples, the Papal States, the duchy of Milan, and the republics of Venice, Florence, and Genoa. Ferdinand V of Aragon and Louis XII of France, who had hereditary claims through his grandmother Valentina Visconti, had concluded a secret and perfidious treaty for the partition of the kingdom of Naples, the effects of which Frederick II, the King, vainly sought to avert. They conquered Naples in 1501, but disagreed over the division of the spoil, and, the French army being defeated by the Spanish on the Garigliano in 1503, Spanish influence soon after became dominant in Italy.

In the march of the French army on Naples in 1501, the French commander had for lieutenant Caesar Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI, whose career furnishes a vivid illustration of the internal conditions of Italy at this period. Borgia, who had resigned from the cardinalate conferred on him by his father, had been created Duke of Valentinois by the King of France, had married the daughter of the King of Navarre, and was invested with the duchy of Romagna by his father in 1501.

By force and treachery he reduced the cities of Romagna, which were ruled by feudatories of the papal see, and, with the assistance of his relations, endeavored to found an independent hereditary power in Central Italy.

The contemporaneous account of these events, by the celebrated Niccolo Machiavelli, possesses a fascinating interest, which is greatly enhanced by the fact that Machiavelli himself was a participant in the events of which he writes.

A Florentine by birth, Machiavelli was sent by his fellow-citizens, in 1502, on a mission to Borgia, who had just returned from a visit to the King of France in Lombardy. During Borgia's absence, friends and former colleagues, alarmed at his ambition and cruelty, had entered into a league with his enemies, and invited the Florentines to join them. The Florentines refused, but sent Machiavelli to make professions of friendship and offers of assistance to the Duke, and at the same time to watch his movements, to discover his real intentions, and endeavor to obtain something in return for their friendship. Borgia, who had the reputation of being the closest man of his age, had to deal with a negotiator who, though young, was a match for him, and the account of the mission is very curious; there was deep dissimulation on both sides.

Machiavelli returned to Florence in January, 1503, after three eventful months passed in the court and camp of Borgia.

The treatise The Prince has been described as "a display of cool, judicious, scientific atrocity on the part of Caesar Borgia (Duke Valentino), which 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."

On being reproved for the maxims contained in the work, Machiavelli replied, "If I taught princes how to tyrannize, I also taught the people how to destroy them"; and in these words posterity has vindicated the reputation of the talented Italian statesman and author.

Those who from a private station have ascended to the dignity of princes, by the favor of fortune alone, meet with few difficulties in their progress, but encounter many in maintaining themselves on the throne. Obstructed by no impediments during their journey, they soar to a great height, but all the difficulties arise after they are quietly seated. These princes are chiefly such as acquire their dominions by money or by favor. Such were the men whom Darius placed in Greece, in the cities of Ionia and of the Hellespont, whom, for their own security and glory, he raised to the rank of sovereigns.

Such were the emperors who from a private station arrived at the empire by corrupting the soldiery. They sustained their elevation only by the pleasure and fortune of those who advanced them, two foundations equally uncertain and insecure. They had neither the experience nor the power necessary to maintain their position. For, unless men possess superior genius or courage, how can they know in what manner to govern others who have themselves always been accustomed to a private station? Deficient in knowledge, they will be equally destitute of power for want of troops on whose attachment and fidelity they can depend. Besides, those states which have suddenly risen, like other things in nature of premature and rapid growth, do not take sufficient root in the minds of men, but they must fall with the first stroke of adversity; unless the princes themselves—so unexpectedly exalted—possess such superior talents that they can discover at once the means of preserving their good-fortune, and afterward maintain it by having recourse to the same measures which others had adopted before them.

To adduce instances of supreme power attained by good-fortune and superior talent, I may refer to two examples which have happened in our own time, viz., Francis Sforza and Caesar Borgia. The former, by lawful means and by his great abilities, raised himself from a private station to the dukedom of Milan, and maintained with but little difficulty what had cost him so much trouble to acquire. Caesar Borgia, Duke of Valentinois—commonly called the duke of Valentino—on the other hand, attained a sovereignty by the good-fortune of his father, which he lost soon after his father's decease; though he exerted his utmost endeavors, and employed every means that skill or prudence could suggest, to retain those states which he had acquired by the arms and good-fortune of another. For, though a good foundation may not have been laid before a man arrives at dominion, it may possibly be accomplished afterward by a ruler of superior mind; yet this can only be effected with much difficulty to the architect and danger to the edifice. If therefore we examine the whole conduct of Borgia, we shall see how firm a foundation he had laid for future greatness. This examination will not be superfluous—for I know no better lesson for the instruction of a prince than is afforded by the actions and example of the Duke—for, if the measures he adopted did not succeed, it was not his fault, but rather owing to the extreme perversity of fortune. Pope Alexander VI, wishing to give his son a sovereignty in Italy, had not only present but future difficulties to contend with. In the first place, he saw no means of making him sovereign of any state independent of the Church; and, if he should endeavor to dismember the ecclesiastical state, he knew that the Duke of Milan and the Venetians would never consent to it, because Faenza and Rimini were already under the protection of the latter; and the armies of Italy, from whom he might expect material service, were in the hands of those who had the most reason to apprehend the aggrandizement of the papal power, such as the Orsini, the Colonni, and their partisans.