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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 the Eighth, 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 sauces, 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 luster 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 value 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 an 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 practicing 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 Flamininus 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 Arragon, 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.
Of 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 di Medici.
This circumstance seems to have disgusted the contemporaries of the writer far
more than the doctrines which have rendered the name of the work odious in later
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 her 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 an
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 Rochefoucault, 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.
In this respect it is amusing to compare The Prince and the Discourses with the
Spirit of Laws. Montesquieu enjoys, perhaps, a wider celebrity than any
political writer of modern Europe. Something he doubtless owes to his merit, but
much more to his fortune. He had the good luck of a Valentine.
He caught the eye of the French nation, at the moment when it was waking from
the long sleep of political and religious bigotry; and, in consequence, he
became a favorite. The English, at that time, considered a Frenchman who talked
about constitutional checks and fundamental laws as a prodigy not less
astonishing than the learned pig or the musical infant. Specious but shallow,
studious of effect, indifferent to truth, eager to build a system, but careless
of collecting those materials out of which alone a sound and durable system can
be built, the lively President constructed theories as rapidly and as slightly
as card-houses, no sooner projected than completed, no sooner completed than
blown away, no sooner blown away than forgotten. Machiavelli errs only because
his experience, acquired in a very peculiar state of society, could not always
enable him to calculate the effect of institutions differing from those of which
he had observed the operation. Montesquieu errs, because he has a fine thing to
say, and is resolved to say it. If the phenomena which lie before him will not
suit his purpose, all history must be ransacked. If nothing established by
authentic testimony can be racked or chipped to suit his Procrustean hypothesis,
he puts up with some monstrous fable about Siam, or Bantam, or Japan, told by
writers compared with whom Lucian and Gulliver were veracious, liars by a double
right, as travelers and as Jesuits.
Propriety of thought, and propriety of diction, are commonly found together.
Obscurity and affectation are the two greatest faults of style. Obscurity of
expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to
dazzle at any cost which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is
likely to produce sophistry in his reasonings. The judicious and candid mind of
Machiavelli shows itself in his luminous, manly, and polished language. The
style of Montesquieu, on the other hand, indicates in every page a lively and
ingenious, but an unsound mind. Every trick of expression, from the mysterious
conciseness of an oracle to the flippancy of a Parisian coxcomb, is employed to
disguise the fallacy of some positions, and the triteness of others. Absurdities
are brightened into epigrams; truisms are darkened into enigmas. It is with
difficulty that the strongest eye can sustain the glare with which some parts
are illuminated, or penetrate the shade in which others are concealed.
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 than 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 eye 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 no
escaped the contagion of that political immorality which was common among his
countrymen, his natural disposition seem 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 eight hundred thousand 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 a
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 Cosmo, 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, had 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
principal 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 for ever.
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 Cosmo had laid the foundations deep in the
institution and feelings of his countryman, 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 as 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!
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