The essential writings of Machiavelli (60 page)

T
O
G
IOVAN
B
ATISTA
S
ODERINI

P
ERUGIA, MID
-S
EPTEMBER
1506

Machiavelli’s letter to Giovan Batista Soderini, the twenty-two-year-old nephew of the Gonfalonier of Florence, for whose government Machiavelli was working, opens with a witty response to the young man’s short letter of September 12, 1506, and segues into a lengthy discourse on Fortune. The ideas Machiavelli expounds in this letter are mirrored (in some cases almost verbatim) in chapter 25 of The
Prince,
which it is believed Machiavelli worked on some seven years later. In the letter Giovan Batista Soderini had sent to Machiavelli, he had written: “If my affection for you did not lead me to doing many things without purpose, I would beg your pardon for writing you, or would find some pretext or excuse. But I do not have anything to tell you, nor do I want you to write back to me
. […]
I cannot tell you how much Filippo di Banco and I want to go to Piombino [to meet King Ferdinand the Catholic], but if one of us is impeded by the stars, the other is impeded by the sun.”

—

A disguised letter of yours reached me, but I recognized your hand within ten words. Knowing you, I believe you will manage to get to Piombino, though I am also certain of your impediments and Filippo’s, one of you challenged by too little light, the other by too much.
¹¹
I do not mind returning in January, though I know by February I’ll be sinking with all hands. I am sorry about Filippo’s misgivings, and await the outcome with suspense.
¹²
Your letter was short, but I made it longer by rereading it. I was grateful, because it gave me the opportunity to do what I might not have done and which you suggested I not do
¹³
—that was the only part of your letter I found without purpose. This would have surprised me, had Fate not shown me so many and varied things that I am rarely astonished and can seldom confess that I have not savored—through reading or experience—the deeds of men or their manner of behaving. I know you and the compass of your navigation, and how it might be blamed, though in fact it cannot be, nor would I blame it, considering what ports it has steered you to and what hope it can nurture in you (hence I do not think from your perspective, where one can see only wisdom, but from the perspective of the multitude where one sees the ends and not the means). One can see that various kinds of action achieve the same outcome, and acting in different ways the same result.
¹⁴
If this idea was untested, the actions of our pope and their results have proved it true.
¹⁵

Hannibal and Scipio excelled equally in their military approach, but Hannibal kept his army in Italy united by means of cruelty, deceit, and unscrupulousness, attracting the admiration of the people who rebelled against the Romans in order to follow him, while in Spain, Scipio achieved the same admiration through kindness, loyalty, and scrupulousness. Both achieved countless victories. But as we have a tendency to ignore Roman examples,
¹⁶
let me provide some from our times: Lorenzo de’ Medici disarmed the populace in order to hold Florence, while Messer Giovanni Bentivogli armed it in order to hold Bologna; Vitelli of Città di Castello and the current duke of Urbino destroyed their fortresses in order to hold on to their states, while Count Francesco [Sforza] in Milan and many others built fortresses in order to secure their states.
¹⁷
Emperor Titus believed he would lose his state the day he did not do something good for someone, while another might believe he would lose his the day he did something good. Many achieve their aims by measuring and pondering over every matter; but our current pope, who has neither scales nor yardstick in his house, with a flick of the wrist achieved, unarmed as he was, what he would have been hard put to obtain through organization and arms.
¹⁸
We see in all the examples I have cited, and in countless other examples I could give, that you acquire states, are subjugated, or are chased out of them depending on the turn of events. Often the same approach that was praised when you conquered the state is condemned when you lose it, and sometimes, when you lose a state after a long period of prosperity, you will not blame your own actions but accuse Heaven and Fate.
¹⁹
I do not know why different courses of action sometimes succeed and sometimes fail, though I would like to. So in order to hear your opinion on this I shall presume to tell you mine. I believe that just as Nature has given man different faces, she has also given him different kinds of intelligence and imagination. The result is that everyone comports himself according to his own intelligence and imagination. But on the other hand, because the times and the order of things vary, some men’s aims succeed according to their wishes: He who conforms his course of action to the times will fare well, and conversely, he whose actions go against the times and the order of things will fare badly
²⁰
Hence it can come about that two men acting differently might achieve the same result, because each man can conform to what he encounters, there being as many orders of things as there are states and countries. Times and events change often, both in general and in particular, and yet men’s imagination and behavior do not change, and so it comes about that one man at one time has good fortune while another has bad. In fact, he who is so wise that he understands the times and the order of things and can adapt to them will always have good fortune or guard himself against bad, and would learn that it is true that wise men can control the stars and the fates. But because one cannot find such wise men, as man tends to be shortsighted and unable to control his nature, we see that changing Fortune controls men and keeps them under her yoke.
²¹

I would like the examples I have offered to suffice as proof of my view. I have based it on them and hope that they will sustain each other. Cruelty, deceit, and unscrupulousness do much to give standing to a new ruler in a land where kindness, loyalty, and scrupulousness have thrived for a long time, just as kindness, loyalty, and scrupulousness give standing where cruelty, deceit, and unscrupulousness have reigned for a time. Just as bitter things perturb the taste and sweet things cloy, men become weary of the good and are irked by the bad. It was this, among other things, that opened up Italy to Hannibal and Spain to Scipio, both men adapting their course of action to the situation and the times. Someone like Scipio would not have been able to achieve Hannibal’s success in Italy during that era, just as someone like Hannibal would have been unable to achieve Scipio’s success in Spain.

11.
A pun on Soderini’s mention in his letter that the stars and the sun were impeding them.

12.
Soderini mentions in his letter to Machiavelli that Filippo “is expecting any moment now a verdict against him.”

13.
Soderini’s letter gave Machiavelli the opportunity to respond (which he would perhaps not have done), despite Soderini’s having written that Machiavelli need not bother responding.

14.
See
The Prince
, chapter 25: “Hence two men operating differently can obtain the same result, while when two men operate in the same way, one might achieve his goal, the other not.”

15.
Machiavelli is referring to Pope Julius’s victory over Giampaolo Baglioni, the particularly ruthless tyrant of Perugia.
Discourses
, Book I, chapter 27: “[Pope Julius II], escorted only by his personal entourage, and driven by the rage with which he conducted all his affairs, put himself in the hands of his enemy Giampaolo, who then meekly followed him out of the city.”

16.
Discourses
, Preface: “The most skillful actions that the histories show us […] are admired rather than imitated—or, I should say, they are avoided in every way.”

17.
Niccolò Viteli and Guido Ubaldo da Montefeltro, the last of his family to rule Urbino. Machiavelli makes the same argument in
The Prince
, chapter 20: “And yet in our own times Niccolò Vitelli tore down two fortresses in Città di Castello in order to hold on to that state, while Guido Ubaldo, the Duke of Urbino, when he returned to his dominions from which Cesare Borgia had driven him, razed all the fortresses of that province to the ground, judging that he would be less likely to lose his state a second time without them. […] The Castle of Milan built by Francesco Sforza has done and will do more harm to the house of Sforza than any turmoil in that state.”

18.
Machiavelli is again referring to Pope Julius’s capture of Giampaolo Baglioni, the tyrant of Perugia.

19.
Machiavelli develops this idea in
The Prince
, chapter 25, titled “On the Extent to Which Fortune Wields Power in the Affairs of Men, and on How This Is to Be Resisted.”

20.
This line appears almost verbatim in
The Prince
, chapter 25: “In my view, he who conforms his course of action to the quality of the times will fare well, and conversely he whose course of action clashes with the times will fare badly.”

21.
This idea is also reflected in
The Prince
, chapter 25: “One cannot find a man prudent enough to be capable of adapting to these changes, because man cannot deviate from that to which nature inclines him.”

T
O
A
LAMANNO
S
ALVIATI

F
LORENCE
, 28 S
EPTEMBER
1509

In 1509 Pisa capitulated to Florence after more than ten years of war and siege
²²
(The city’s surrender on June 4 had been signed by Florence’s First Secretary and Machiavelli.) The following letter to Florence’s new governor of Pisa, Alamanno Salviati, demonstrates Machiavelli’s lucid tactical analysis as he informs the governor of the immediate details of the progress of Emperor Maximilian I’s invasion of Padua and the dangers this presents to Florence. Maximilian had entered into the League of Cambrai with Pope Julius II, France, and Spain, their aim being to conquer and destroy the Republic of Venice and partition its territories (to which Padua belonged). Thirty years later, Francesco Guicciardini, the foremost historian of the Renaissance, confirmed in his book
The History of Italy
many of the details of Machiavelli’s firsthand evaluation of the siege
.

—

Honored Sir. Since I do not believe I can offer you a more welcome gift than to inform you of the matters of Padua and the emperor, I shall write you about the circumstances and what evaluation is made and could be made of their aim and outcome. Should my opinion seem in any way presumptuous, I crave Your Magnificence’s forgiveness, and beg you to take for granted that I speak with utter frankness.

On the tenth of this month, the emperor and his army were in Sancta Croce, about a mile from Padua, but he sought to move his forces to a position both more favorable for striking Padua and suitable for blocking any supplies that might come from Venice. He therefore had to make a large arc around the city in order to avoid the marshes. He finally set up camp at Bovolento on the river Bacchiglione, seven miles from Padua, where his army plundered and slaughtered many peasants who had taken refuge there with their livestock.

He then set up another camp at Stra, an estate four miles from Padua where the Bacchiglione and Brenta rivers meet. From there he approached the city and began battering it on the 21st.

He positioned his army from the gates of Portello to the gates leading to Treviso, which I hear is a stretch of about three miles, and in width his men have taken up a mile. They say his army has thirty thousand foot soldiers, of which seventeen thousand are German, the rest having been sent to him by Ferrara, the pope, and France. The word is that every day new German infantrymen arrive, their only pay being present plunder and the hope for more. There are in addition twelve thousand or so horsemen, half Burgundians and Germans, the rest all Italian and French, and forty pieces of heavy artillery and up to a hundred pieces of medium and light artillery.

Our Florentine emissaries arrived in the field on the 21st, and their letters are from the 24th. They inform us that the emperor has set up the majority of his artillery during this time, that he has already demolished Padua’s wall from Sancto Stefano to Mercato Nuovo, and that some of his heaviest artillery has shot three hundred pounds of iron. They make admirable strikes and no defense can resist them, and those who have managed to flee Padua have reported that many people have been killed, among them, they say, II Zitolo
²³
and Messer Perecto Corso.

Our emissaries report that the emperor is resolved to conquer Padua and excel as a military man and general, and that his army is thoroughly united and extremely well-provisioned.

Our emissaries write nothing of the goings-on inside Padua, except that their army is continually firing at the emperor’s camp and has caused much damage, and that Messer Lucio Malvezzo went to Venice for funds with a good escort and returned to Padua without much hindrance.
²⁴

That is what our emissaries have reported. We have also been apprised of the city’s military setup and defenses by a friar who came from Padua eight days ago. He informs us that they first filled the moats surrounding the city with water, and have erected fortifications by the walls to defend the moats and the outer walls. Then there are the inside walls, which they have bolstered with logs that are six feet from the walls and linked to each other with beams and girders, creating a barrier. The space beyond this barrier is heaped with earth that they have pummeled as flat as they can. Furthermore, they have dug a deep moat—also on the inside—the way the French do, about 22 feet deep, beyond which they have raised a twelve-foot barrier above the moat. On the inside this barrier is leveled in such a way that horses can gallop on top. Behind this barrier they have set up wide spaces for grouping the horses.

The friar reports that there is a swarm of munitions and artillery spread out over the ramparts and the defenses of the moats I have mentioned. He says that there is a paid infantry often thousand, four thousand horses, ten thousand men brought in from Venice, and more than four thousand peasants, all united and set on defending Padua, showing every confidence in the preparations and in the weather, which is turning bad for the siege.

This is how things stand, while here in Florence the argument is first whether Padua should be lost or not, and then, in either event, whether one need fear that the emperor will now bring turmoil to Tuscany and Rome.

I shall pass over what is said for and against the loss of Padua, because I do not see anyone informed discussing it—everyone talks about it according to his opinion—but propose that we consider only whether one ought to fear either outcome.

First, most people here in Florence are extremely worried about the emperor’s conquering Padua, but they are also worried about his not managing to conquer it. They believe that if he is successful, his standing will increase to such an extent that France will side with him and he will be given the Holy Roman crown by the pope without hindrance,
²⁵
and we and the rest of Italy will be at his disposal. If, on the other hand, he does not manage to conquer Padua, he might reach an agreement with Venice to our detriment with the same result: Because he is so well armed, no one will be able to stand up to him should he unite his army with that of Venice.

But I am of the opposite opinion, and do not fear the emperor whether he conquers Padua or not. Let me say to begin with that if he does not take Padua, he must do one of three things: return to Germany and leave Italian matters in the hands of others; retreat to Vicenza and Verona, shedding to a large extent the expense of the infantry and expecting instead with the aid of the French to wage a sustainable war with the Venetians during the winter; or, indeed, to enter into a treaty with the Venetians.

In the first two cases there is no need to fear him. As for the third—his entering into a treaty with the Venetians—this would have to be done either with the consent of his allies or against the will of all or some of his allies. In the first case there is not much to fear, because his allies will hold him back and will want to secure themselves entirely and their protectorates at least in part. If he reaches an agreement with Venice against the will of his allies, I cannot see what harm that could do us, nor do I see how such an agreement could be reached that would be in his and Venice’s interest, because wanting to see if a treaty should ensue, one must examine first what motives move the parties and then, if there are such motives, to believe them.

The motives that would move the emperor are honor and profit. Those that would move the Venetians are the opportunity to gain time, temporarily sidestepping the dangers that shadow their liberty, and also the opportunity to lighten their expenses.

I cannot see at this stage what kind of treaty could be entered into against the wishes of the emperor’s allies that would be of advantage to the emperor and to Venice, or that would serve the motives of either side. First, for the emperor to have his profit and honor, the Venetians must give him Padua, or at least so much money that he and his army would make the kind of profit that would correspond to the campaign for Padua he will have renounced. In either of these two cases it seems to me that the Venetians gain neither time nor money, because while right now they have only a single enemy on their backs, they will then have three—France, Spain, and the pope—who have all but sheathed their swords, but will be very quick to unsheath them. Hence, such an accord between the emperor and Venice will alleviate neither danger nor expense but will in fact double both, because besides the great amount of money the Venetians would have to give the emperor, they would also have to continue paying the army they have now, in order not to find themselves at the mercy of someone they cannot trust.

Consequently, I do not know how or why Venice would enter into a treaty with an emperor who cannot conquer Padua, only to double their expenditure and end up in a greater war than before. Hence, in conclusion, I do not see how this treaty could be made against the wishes of his allies, and, even if it were to be made, I cannot see that it should be feared. Nor can I see either how it could be reached with the consent of only a part of his allies, since for the emperor to achieve greatness in Italy is not to the advantage of France, Spain, or the pope, for reasons so obvious that I need not mention them. Thus, if the emperor does not conquer Padua we need not fear him, regardless of whether or not he enters into a treaty with Venice.

Nor is he to be feared if he does conquer Padua, because should he do so, he will have to undertake one of two things: either conform to the treaty entered at Cambrai, or break the treaty.

If he abides by the treaty, he will have to be in agreement with the members of the league
²⁶
on what is to be done with the Venetians, and must put an end to the war with Venice either through a treaty with them or through their total destruction. Their destruction, however, seems difficult: first, because some of the emperor’s allies want Venice to remain as it is, particularly Spain and the pope, who see Venice as an opportune thorn in the emperor’s side and in that of France. The other problem is the season, which poses difficulties for the provision of water. This could lead to the dissolution of the army, with the result that the allies will have to opt for an agreement that the Venetians remain there and live under their own laws. In that case, the emperor might turn his thoughts to collecting his crown, which, once it is settled, is not to be feared much, as I have already pointed out.

If the emperor does not want to keep to the agreement of Cambrai, he will find himself suddenly lacking a third of his forces, because if you look at his army, as he has been given so many soldiers by France, the pope, and Ferrara, a third is not his. Should he seize Padua, these foreign soldiers will immediately draw together, as the rulers who sent them will be wary of his new eminence in Italy, which, as I have already pointed out, would not be to the advantage of any of them. And the French, one can say, are well armed indeed, as they are extensively equipped with soldiers and money and have the Swiss at hand, so that the emperor would have much to counter before he could come down to Tuscany at his leisure. Much time would pass before he could consider doing this, because I cannot see how he can move beyond Padua, should he occupy it, without having first settled things there; and settling things by force takes time and much expenditure. And if the emperor found himself alone and without the financial support of allies, he would doubtless be made to wait by whoever was in a position to fund him. In the shortest time he would find himself without an army, which has happened to him often enough in his campaigns. And I would laugh were someone to suggest that the Venetians might fund him, because their wound has already bled so much that whenever it begins to staunch they are in such a weakened condition that they would not dare reopen it (and we can presume that their wounds hurt them in the same way they would hurt anyone else).

That is how I see these matters, and while all these princes are alive I am not particularly afraid, even though that goes against the common opinion.

I was driven to write to you by my desire to hear your opinion, but also to amuse you with this whimsical trifle.

Farewell. From Florence. On the 28th day of September 1509.

Your servant, Niccolò Machiavelli, secretary
.

22.
See also “Discourse on Pisa.”

23.
Il Zitolo was a renowned general from Perugia who had come with his army to Padua’s defense. Francesco Guicciardini in his
History of Italy
(Book VIII, chapter 11) writes: “The fortification of the moat was impressive, as was the prowess of the defenders (among whom Il Zitolo of Perugia, fighting most gloriously, was gravely injured).”

24.
A general and nobleman from Bologna who had also been involved in the Pisan campaign. Guicciardini in
History of Italy
(Book VIII, chapter 11) seconds Machiavelli: “Lucio Malvezzo also rode out of Padua with many horsemen in order to collect forty thousand ducats sent by Venice. Though on his return his rearguard was assaulted by the enemy, he brought back the ducats safely despite losing a number of his horsemen.”

25.
Maximilian I had not actually been crowned Holy Roman Emperor, as Venice would not allow his progression to Rome. Officially, he held only the title Emperor Elect, bestowed on him with the consent of Pope Julius II the previous year (1508).