Machiavelli’s Science of Statecraft

Diplomacy and Statecraft, 16: 227–250, 2005Copyright © Taylor & Francis, Inc.ISSN 0959-2296 print / 0000-0000 onlineDOI: 10.1080/09592290590948306

Diplomacy and Statecraft162Taylor & FrancisTaylor and Francis 325 Chestnut StreetPhiladelphiaPA191060959-2296FDPSTaylor & Francis, Inc.5844810.1080/095922905909483062005125Greg RussellMachiavelli’s Science of Statecraft

MACHIAVELLI’S SCIENCE OF STATECRAFT: THE DIPLOMACY AND POLITICS OF DISORDER

Greg Russell

This paper calls into question the extent to which ethical dualism, broadlyconceived as raison d’ état, does justice to Machiavelli’s understandingand practice of the diplomatic arts. Arguments are advanced herein thatMachiavelli did not so much abandon morality as he sought, through theexamples of Rome and antiquity, to find a different remedy for the dis-order and violence rampant in the Italy of his day. Machiavelli’s reportsin the diplomatic service of Florence illustrate qualities and skills of thediplomat often at odds with the caricature of the immoral statesman.

This paper calls into question the extent to which ethical dualism, broadlyconceived as raison d’état, does justice to Machiavelli’s understandingand practice of the diplomatic arts. An argument is advanced herein thatMachiavelli did not so much abandon morality as he sought, through theexamples of Rome and antiquity, to find an entirely different justificationor remedy for the disorder and violence rampant in the Italy of his day.His science of statecraft, as Herbert Butterfield reminds us, was not so muchthe creation of modern empirical political science as it was designed toproduce an actual change in the practice of his day. Rather than seekingsimply to apportion Machiavellian ideas on to the diplomatic and inter-national events of his day, a more revealing assessment might begin bytracing how Machiavelli’s own diplomatic assignments gave rise to thekind of theorizing typical in The Prince and the Discourses on the FirstTen Books of Titus Livius. In fact, Machiavelli’s reports in the diplomaticservice of Florence illustrate qualities and skills of the diplomat often atodds with the caricature of the immoral statesman or prince with a reputa-tion for unparalleled infamy.

Philosophers and churchmen throughout the ages have canonizedNiccolò Machiavelli as the patron saint of immoral raison d’état vari-ously understood either as an inventory of ruthless foreign policy tacticsor as a fraudulent justification of war and imperialism. The Machiavellianspecter in politics still lies in the shadow of moralistic condemnation.

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Twenty years after Machiavelli’s death, the papacy moved to ban all thewritings of the “atheist Machiavel.” In England, Cardinal Reginald Polealluded to the “satanic influence” of Machiavelli behind Henry VIII’sefforts to seize ecclesiastical control from the pope in order to fortifythe secular power of the monarch.1 On the Elizabethan stage, he couldbe portrayed as the sinister perpetrator of stratagems and crookedpranks—the teacher of ruses whether for accomplished rogues orbaffled lovers.2 For Leo Strauss, Machiavelli was a “teacher of evil” andsomething of an intellectual renegade who manipulates patriotism as afoil to undermine the “Great Tradition” of Western philosophy. Of thenew state to be established by Machiavelli’s revolutionary prince,Strauss allows:

not the one end by nature common to all which is visible in the sky—a pattern laid out in heaven—but the roots hidden in the earth revealthe true character of the man or society. The teaching which derivesfrom this principle is obviously opposed to that of classical politicalphilosophy or that of the Socratic tradition.3

The implication of this observation is that Machiavelli rejects the classicalidea that there is a natural hierarchy of goods, accepts the proposition thatman is infinitely malleable, and defends the belief that the exercise ofpower is the essence of politics in the modern world. Harvey Mansfield,Jr., describes Chapter 15 of The Prince as “a fundamentalist assault on allmorality and political science, both Christian and classical, as understoodin Machiavelli’s time.”4

Machiavelli’s legacy, no less in the competitive arena of diplomacythan in the clash of political ideas, has also signified for many a pre-occupation with expediency and artifice to the detriment of good faith andtruthfulness in upholding interstate obligations. The diplomacy of the Italiancity states, as Harold Nicolson observed, “ignored the practical purposesof true negotiation, and introduced an abominable filigree of artifice intowhat ought always to be a simple machine.” He acknowledged that Louis XI“long before Machiavelli . . . asserted the principle that the raison d’étatwas above morality. . . and . . . introduced duplicity as an element of dip-lomatic technique.” Machiavelli nonetheless provided the “generalconception” that animated Italian leaders in “their ceaseless fiddlings withthe balance of power.” The art of negotiation became a hazardous business,“conducted in an atmosphere of excitement” and propelled by baseemotions. Machiavelli’s aim to propound la verità effettuale, a new effec-tive truth as he experienced in his lifetime, amounted to little more (asNicolson saw it) than disguising recklessness and cunning in the costumeof virtù.5

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A MACHIAVELLIAN CAVEAT

Extraordinary caution is necessary in trying to discern the precise motivesof Machiavelli, not to mention reducing the corpus of his work to politicaldoctrine or ideological formula. There is a sense in which the analysthimself might be too “Machiavellian” in lifting discrete passages outof the peculiar circumstances that inspired him to synthesize the ideas ofthe age in the symbol of the prince who, through fortuna and virtù, willbe the savior and restorer of Italy. Biographer J. R. Hale acknowledges thatthe contradictions and irony in Machiavelli’s thought must begin with theFlorentine himself.

His main topics are scandal and politics, but the tone constantly variesfrom boredom and depression on the one hand, to exhilaration andconviction on the other, now relaxed and desultory, now indulging inflights of fantasy or burlesque. Lyrical and ardent in one place, foul-mouthed and off-hand in another, sensitive, changeable, self-conscious:it is in these letters rather than in his measured works that Machiavellicomes near to convincing us of one of his favorite themes: that humannature always remains the same.6

Those who see in Machiavelli the vulgar realist can always point to theliteral meaning of some of his statements; indeed, one must admit that hisown manner of writing left itself open to the charge that the author shouldhave taken into account the fact that many readers in future generationswould read him literally and out of context.7 As Machiavelli once said ina letter to Francesco Guicciardini: “For a long time I have not said whatI believed, nor do I ever believe what I say, and if indeed I happen to tellthe truth, I hide it among so many lies that it is hard to find.”8 Perhapsthere is more than meets the eye here on the score of truth-telling. One ofthe purposes in his writing The Prince may well have been to pleaseLorenzo and the House of Medici. Yet, aside from indulging his hoped-forbenefactors, there may have been a further objective: to teach his view ofpolitics. Harvey Mansfied has just this objective in mind when he writesof Machiavelli’s enterprise (la mia impresa) as one that does not:

refer to the horizon that marks the daily limits of his conventionalthoughts or to a self-centered Nietzschean perspective that he meansto impose upon us. His undertaking refers to what, in view of the truthabout his situation, he means to do. His situation is the weakness ofmodern times, for which he has a political, not an aesthetic, remedy.The remedy is a great revolution in thought, to be followed by greatchanges in society.9

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Still another possibility is that Machiavelli resorted to irony and shock-ing examples to expose the cruelties and corruption of both foreign andItalian princes. Certainly he had a low opinion of the manner in whichpolicy was conducted by his Italian contemporaries. Many of the disasterswhich his countrymen attributed to misfortune were, in Machiavelli’seyes, the product of misrule and improvidence. In Chapter 24 of ThePrince, Machiavelli avers that “these princes of ours” are not entitled toblame fortune for the loss of their territories. “Their own indolence was toblame, because, having never imagined when times were quiet that theycould change (and this is a common failing of mankind, never to anticipatea storm when the sea is calm), when adversity came their first thoughtswere of flight and not resistance.”10 Machiavelli was writing for an Italyinvaded by Charles VIII of France in 1494, ravaged repeatedly by mercenaryforces, and consumed by political instability as the various city statesbecame the coveted prizes of foreign powers.

Machiavelli was for the most part indifferent to moral philosophy. Hepreferred, as Kenneth W. Thompson explains the Machiavellian heritagefor international politics, the life of action with its moral dilemmas andmoral paradoxes. The complexity of this man, and the world in which helived, is captured in a letter he wrote to Francesco Vettori:

Anybody who saw our letters . . . and saw their diversity, would won-der greatly, because he would suppose now that we were grave men,wholly concerned with important matters, and that into our breasts nothought could fall that did not have in itself honor and greatness. But,then, turning the page, he would judge that we, the very same persons,were light-minded, inconstant, lascivious, concerned with emptythings. And this way of proceeding, if to some it may appear censur-able, to me seems praiseworthy because we are imitating Nature, whois variable; and he who imitates her cannot be rebuked.11

The ends and means of politics crisscross and intersect in subtle and oftenunpredictable ways. The late Dante Germino tried to encapsulate thiscomplexity by explaining Machiavelli as a “spiritual realist.”12 The spiritualrealist is one who holds in balance both the power drive and the aspira-tional side of the consciousness of humans as political actors. A shadowof tragedy is cast over human affairs, with humans (following the Platonicformulation) forever longing after appearances (or mutable goods like thelust for power or bodily pleasure) to the exclusion of an immutable goodor truth (e.g., Plato’s Agathon). This kind of spiritual realism is seldompopular inasmuch as it acknowledges that we continue as inhabitants ofthe Cave with few residents open and responsive to the golden cord ofreason.13


THE ORDER OF POWER IN EUROPE AND THE ITALIAN STATE SYSTEM

Of crucial importance for understanding Machiavelli as both thinker anddiplomat is how the disorder in Florence, and throughout the Italianpeninsula, was precipitated by international developments that eliminatedthe institutions of imperial Christianity. By the fifteenth century, themedieval respublica christiana—with its evocation of a multiplicity ofpeoples into a political community whose boundaries were religious andcivilizational rather than national—was in disarray.14 Europe was fallingapart into the church and national states. This disintegration affected bothspiritual and temporal orders in two ways. First, no longer was there anycommon spirit to promote effective cooperation between persons despitedivergent interests. There was no moral or theological basis by which toshape a political obligation to compromise in the spirit of the whole.Second, this falling apart transformed what was a spiritually-animatedwhole into legal jurisdictions; it meant the insistence on rights, and thepursuit of personal and institutional interests without regard to thedestruction of the total order.15

For interstate relations, national interests could no longer be effectivelysubordinated to general interests. The Hundred Years War between Englandand France illustrated how personal and feudal associations disentangledand gave way to new national and territorial realms. The Wars of theRoses—a last gasp in the feudal struggle over the head of the nation—settled the matter in England with the establishment of the Tudor monar-chy in 1485. In France, Louis XI consolidated his absolute monarchythrough administrative decree by 1469. The marriage between Ferdinandof Aragon and Isabella of Castile, in addition to victory at Grenada in1492, secured both the territory and the political unification of Spain.Machiavelli would look back to Rome in order to go forward to newmodes and orders—to a world in which Italy might take its place withFrance, Spain, and England as major powers.16 Machiavelli saw thatcontrol of the destinies of the state had passed into the hands of rulers ofeach state, and that the survival of the state (lo stato) depended upon thewisdom of its governors rather than any universal imperial or spiritual power.

As Hans Morgenthau noted, the invasion of Italy in 1494 by CharlesVIII of France signified a decisive shift in power which, militarily andpolitically, marks the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of themodern era of history.17 With infantry and artillery, the French sovereignbroke the power of the Italian city states, until then secure behind theirwalls. The invasion, with its consequences, was the revolutionary eventthat offered the more immediate topics for Machiavelli’s speculation; buthe brought to bear on it a tradition of secular statecraft that was peculiarly

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Italian.18 By the time Machiavelli entered into the diplomatic service ofFlorence in 1498, Italy was divided into five smaller states: the kingdomof Naples in the south; the aristocratic republic of Venice in the northeast;the duchy of Milan in the northwest, and Florence and the papal states inthe center. The balance of power on the peninsula, by about the middle ofthe fifteenth century, was largely the handiwork of Cosimo de’ Medici,who sought a closer understanding between Naples, Florence, and Milanagainst the papacy and Venice. By 1474, the balance shifted with Milan,Florence, and Venice lining up against the papacy and Naples. Internecinewarfare prevailed on the peninsula until the diplomatic intervention ofLorenzo the Magnificent recreated Cosimo’s triple alliance that lasteduntil Lorenzo’s death in 1492.19 Events after 1480 proved favorable forLorenzo, whose political wisdom enabled the Italian balance to restraincompeting powers. No other wars of the period impinged on the Floren-tine Republic: not the war of Lombardy that came to an end with the deathof Sixtus IV (he died, it was said, at the sound of the word “peace”), northe war of the Barons (1486), which thrust the Florentines in league withKing Ferdinand of Naples against the new Pope Innocent VIII. The youngNiccolò, around seventeen years of age, took from these campaigns animpression—one that he would develop and refine in his later writings—about the appalling conduct of mercenary armies.20

A secret alliance directed against Milan by Florence and Naplesprompted Ludovico Sforza (Duke of Milan) to conclude an offensivealliance with Charles VIII of France. The alliance enabled the Duke todivert French ambitions from Milan and to protect himself from thehostility of the king of Naples. The French invasion coincided with aseries of regional wars, over a sixty year period, brought on by the effortsof the great European powers to control the small independent states ofItaly. In explaining the success of French, German, and Spanish invaders,the philosopher Eric Voegelin looks to how the clash of ideas and powerimpacted on Machiavelli’s generation. The reduction of the Italian states topolitical impotence, Voegelin argued, was an event without sense beyondthe sphere of naked power.

The upheaval did not make sense in terms of a reduction of a poor,backward colonial region by economically progressive countries; neitherdid it make sense in terms of a social revolution, perhaps the rise of athird estate, or a populist uprising; neither were any issues of moral orpolitical principles involved; neither was there any question of a religiousmovement, as later in the wars of the Reformation.21

Clearly, Machiavelli was witness to a kind of shock and trauma thatcan only come when otherwise intelligent individuals confront power in


all its existential darkness, when the horror of violence is without reasonor apology. This kind of experience does not lead many men to tell storiesabout morality in politics. As Voegelin points out, the victim of such anordeal is more apt to diagnose the moralist in politics as the profiteer ofthe status quo, as the noisy hypocrite who invites all others to follow inthe footsteps of peace and goodwill after his own power drive has deliveredhim to a position that accommodates few compromises.22 Admittedly, themystery of power is not the whole of politics, for this is not all there is tohuman nature. And, even if Machiavelli was not blind to other factors inpolitics, the disorder he experienced helps to explain both his pre-occupation with the rationality of politics divorced from principles (moralor otherwise) as well as with the importance of effective military organi-zation. Diplomacy and war were the means to power. Wars requiredmoney and the services of the condottieri. Diplomacy required secrecy,espionage, plot, and counterplot.

The problem of establishing order among Italian states required theconciliation of enemies and the acquisition of allies. Modern diplomacywas born in northern Italy. Here there existed from the thirteenth centuryonward a microcosmic state system that served as the matrix for modernstatecraft. The Republic of Venice—“school and touchstone of ambas-sadors”—contributed most to this development because of its extensiveinterests and contacts with Byzantium. The emperors of the latter werethe first to organize a special governmental department for dealing withexternal affairs, and to train professional negotiators to serve as ambas-sadors at foreign courts. The Venetian authorities soon began the practiceof registering treaties, keeping diplomatic archives, as well as maintainingan elaborate system of commissions, records, and dispatches.23 The earlydiplomatic missions were first limited to a few months’ duration and,later, extended to several years. The first clear instance of a permanentdiplomatic post was the establishment of a permanent embassy by Milanat Genoa in 1455. By the time Machiavelli entered into the diplomaticservice of Florence, “the art of negotiation became a game of hazard forhigh immediate stakes . . . with that combination of cunning, recklessness,and ruthlessness which . . . [was often] lauded as Virtù.”24

MACHIAVELLI AS DIPLOMAT

Aside from a few notable exceptions, little attention has been devoted tothe relationship between Machiavelli the secretary and Machiavelli thepolitical theorist. International thinkers, no less than political philosophers,might profit by investigating the extent to which Machiavelli’s activitiesin the service of Florence were shaped by his distinctive personality andintellect, not to mention how far his chancery service followed patterns

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and traditions well-established in the Florentine chancery. In his fourteenyears of public service, he devoted the same kind of intense energy (andoutspokenness) to his official duties as he would later dedicate to his literary,political, and historical writings. In particular, Fredi Chiapelli makes thecase that many of the characteristics of Machiavelli’s mature style—hishabit of stating propositions in their polar extremes, the frequent use ofLatinisms, the constant tendency to seek general rules of human conduct,even the vivid imagery—can be found in nuce in his early diplomaticreports.25 The popular view that Machiavelli remains a man of publicaffairs, who only developed an interest in reflection to pass the time afterhis abrupt exile from the chancllery in 1512, is open to debate; moreover,the persistence of this viewpoint might explain why so many of Machia-velli’s writings in the chanclery were slow to be published.

From June 1498 until November 1512, Machiavelli served in thechancery of the Florentine Republic. The Florentine chancery consistedmainly of a body of semi-permanent officials who administered therepublic’s internal and external affairs, carrying out policies that had beendistributed by the city’s magistrates and councils. External policies weredecided by the chief magistracy, the Signoria, as well as by an occasionalmagistracy, the Dieci di Balia.26 The business of these magistracies wasadministered by one department, presided over by the first chancellor;second in command of this department of external affairs was the secondchancellor. While in theory the first chancellor took command of adminis-tering relations with foreign states, and the second chancellor looked tosupervise the business of Florence within subject territories, there wasconsiderable overlap (and often ambiguity) in the duties of the first andsecond chancellors.27 On June 19, 1498, at barely twenty-nine years ofage, Machiavelli was elected second chancellor. Less than a month later,he was also given the opportunity of serving the Dieci di Balia.28 Most ofMachiavelli’s chancery duties consisted of preparing detailed reports onforeign affairs. These reports were usually in the form of letters, writtenon behalf of the Signoria or the Dieci, to foreign individuals and states, toFlorentine diplomats and citizens abroad, to Florentine officials serving inthe subject territories, to military captains on various campaigns, to militarycommissioners supervising the military captains, and to Florentine sub-jects and subject cities.29 One of his most important duties was as a courier,negotiator or diplomat, often with the title of mandatario; as such heundertook missions not just in Florentine territory or elsewhere in Italybut abroad to France and Germany.30

To conceive of Machiavelli’s diplomatic teachings as nothing morethan a manual for swindle is to ignore the fact that (as Nicolson concedes)“there did exist a few rules of the game.”31 One such rule is that diplomacyhad an important role to play even within a fairly anarchic war-prone


system. While Machiavelli found skill in the art of war to be the foremostconcern of the state, suggesting that “good laws” invariably follow “goodarms,”32 diplomacy was still invaluable under certain conditions for themaintenance of a state’s power. States did not always have the where-withal to prevail in war; and it was out of this necessity that diplomacywas born.33 Republics, much like “what princes have to do at the outset oftheir careers,” also “must do until such time as they become powerful andcan rely on force alone.”34 Given the clear imbalances of power on theItalian peninsula in the fifteenth century, as well as the unpredictability ofmercenary forces, rulers had to remain vigilant for “deceptions . . . tricksand schemes.”35 Machiavelli, as Geoffrey Berridge points out, believedthat diplomacy remained important for the prince who wishes “to do greatthings” even after he has acquired a powerful army, because prudencedictated the avoidance of military overstretch.36 Ancient Rome avoidedthe misfortune of having “two very big wars going on at the same time.”A far better approach was to isolate the most formidable threat amongnearby powers “and industriously to foster tranquility among the rest.”37

Most of Machiavelli’s reports speak to the events and personalities ofdiplomacy rather than to the functions and techniques of the diplomaticart itself. The one notable exception, throughout the Legations, is the“Advice to Raffaello Girolami When He Went As Ambassador To TheEmperor.”38 Diplomatic service represented “one of those civic functionswhich bring honor to a citizen.” That an ambassador ought to be faithfulto his commission “is known to everybody who is good,” although preciselyhow “to carry it out adequately is the difficulty.” Among the prerequisitesof success in a foreign court is the ability to know “well the nature of theprince and those who control him.” Being able to judge a ruler’s tempera-ment, no less than the delegation of influence among advisers, is “whatmakes easiest and clearest the way to a hearing, inasmuch as any difficultbusiness, if one has the ear of the prince, becomes easy.”39

Another requirement for an ambassador is the matter of reputation,which he accomplishes “by striking actions which show him an able manand by being liberal and honest, not stingy and two-faced . . . [or] by notappearing to believe one thing and say another.” Hypocrisy and needlesssubterfuge betray the trust of the prince and undermine the prospect ofmeaningful negotiations. If the ambassador finds it necessary to “conceala fact with words,” then it should be done in such a way “that it does notbecome known or, if it does become known, that . . . a ready and quickdefense” is near at hand.40 Truth telling in diplomacy is sometimeslimited by the fact that diplomacy is not a system of moral philosophy.Machiavelli’s estimation of the human qualities of the diplomat is notaltogether inconsistent with the view expressed by Nicolson. The ablediplomat, Nicolson declared, is “a man, above all who is not swayed by

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emotion or prejudice, who is profoundly modest in all his dealings, who isguided only by a sense of public duty, and who understands the perils ofcleverness and the virtues of . . . moderation, discretion and tact.”41 Machi-avelli offers the traditional realist counsel that principles and large ideasoften have to be filtered through circumstances of time and place.

Honor and prestige for the ambassador can be based upon the qualityof reports that he sends back to his own home country. Machiavellioutlines three different kinds of reports: those dealing “with things beingnegotiated”; those taking up “things decided and finished”; and thosecovering “things to be done.” Of the three, two are relatively difficult andone is simple. Knowing what has been done is easy enough most of thetime, excepting when “two princes, for the injury of a third, make aleague that must be kept secret” until the opportune time. A knowledge ofcontemporary or ongoing dealings, or the likely significance of thesenegotiations over time, is much more arduous work. These politicalcalculations require “judgment and inference.”42 But the form of thatjudgment, and how it was to be communicated within a report, was all-important. Simply “to put your judgment in your own mouth would beoffensive.” The diplomat, Machiavelli advised, was obliged to “use suchwords as these: Considering, then, everything about which I have written,prudent men here judge that the outcome will be such and such.” Handledproperly, this method “has brought great honor to many ambassadors”;handled improperly, “it has dishonored many.”43 But the diplomat wassomething more than a journalist or tablet keeper.

Coming to details, I say that you are to observe the nature of the man:whether he rules for himself or lets himself be ruled; whether he isstingy or liberal; whether he loves war or peace; whether fame or anyother passion influences him; whether the people love him; . . . whatmen he has about him who advise him and their leanings . . . and howmuch control they have over him; whether he changes them or keepsthem fixed . . . [and] whether they can be bribed.44

Peter Bondanella argues that there is a unity in Machiavelli’s thoughtand style that spans the date of his exile from politics, a continuity that nolonger should permit scholars to speak of Machiavelli the thinker andMachiavelli the politician as two separate personalities.45 Although mostdiplomats of the period refrained from injecting their own subjectiveviewpoints into reports, Machiavelli was not always so circumspect. Afterreading Machiavelli’s report on Cesare Borgia’s court in Imola, his friendBiagio Buonaccorsi told Machiavelli that “sometimes you are too hasty inyour conclusions when you write.” But, as Machiavelli saw it, diplomatshad a duty to report even unwanted advice: “And if we have expressed


ourselves too boldly, it is because we preferred to write and to be in errorrather than to fail to write, thus harming ourselves instead of failing in ourduty to the republic.”46 Granted this diplomatic correspondence did notafford much room for artistic sophistication in developing the kind ofcharacter sketches that would predominate in his later works. But thesedespatches provide what may be considered preliminary sketches of lead-ers that speak to the basic qualities of individual character, or humannature, that mold the political or military behavior of the statesman orwarrior.

Machiavelli completed four missions to the court of Louis XII (1500,1503, 1510, and 1511). His first assignment was to appease the Frenchleader after a disaster in their alliance against Pisa. The Pisans rebelled in1496 and, over a period of four years, held off all attempts by foreignpowers to thwart their independence. By 1500, the French agreed to helpFlorence recapture the city though with disastrous results in the ensuingmilitary campaign. While the Gascon mercenaries hired by Florencedeserted, the Swiss auxiliaries took leave for lack of adequate pay. Machi-avelli’s diplomatic instructions were “to establish that it was not due toany shortcoming on our part that this undertaking yielded no results” andto convey the unwelcome message that the French commander had acted“corruptly and with cowardice.”47 He quickly learned that Florence'ssense of its own importance was clearly at odds with the realities of itsmilitary position and relative wealth. Machiavelli warned the Signoria:“Your excellencies should not imagine that good letters or good argu-ments are of any use, because they are not understood.” The good faiththat Florence had exhibited to the French sovereign, the advantages thatwould occur to France from Florentine prosperity, the security the kingwould gain from the greatness of Florence-“all this is superfluous,”Machiavelli suggested, “because they [the French] are blinded by theirown power and the thought of immediate advantage, and [they] esteemonly those who are well-armed or those who are prepared to givemoney.”48 These early diplomatic lessons—the folly of procrastination,the danger of appearing irresolute, the need for bold and decisive action inwar—are elaborated at length in his mature political writings.

Machiavelli also devotes attention to the ruling attributes of the Frenchmonarch. His success as a statesman was compromised by his unfailinggreed and avarice. “The king’s nature concerning the spending of funds,”Machiavelli observes, compels the sovereign “to draw all he can from hiscountry but never willing to spend anything there, seeming to think moreabout present convenience than that which might result of it later.”49

Short term self-interest, and the lure of material gain, often militateagainst the formulation of more ambitious strategic goals over the long-term.In addition, Machiavelli reported a conversation with one of the king’s

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counselors whereby the latter confided that Louis was “very, very prudent;that his ears were long, but his belief short; that he listened to everythingbut put faith only in what he could touch with his hands and prove true.”50

Louis fixated “upon the wrong which he imagines he . . . received at thehands of the pope, and his mind is filled with nothing but thoughts ofvendetta.” Florence was not prepared to sacrifice itself in a war againstthe pope merely to rescue the king’s fanciful sense of honor. This wouldleave the people of Florence “unarmed in the midst of their enemies.” Thesame wording informed Machiavelli’s comment about Savonarola inChapter 6 of The Prince: “That is why all armed prophets have conquered,and unarmed prophets have come to grief.”51

Other important diplomatic despatches refer to Cesare Borgia and PopeJulius II. Machiavelli observed Borgia during three missions—at Urbino(1502), at Imola (1502–03), and at Rome (1503). Early in 1501, Borgiawas created Duke of Romagna by his father, Pope Alexander VI. Borgialaunched a series of campaigns in the region (against Faenza, Piombiono,and the Duchy of Urbino). He pressed Florence for a formal alliance andasked for an envoy. Machiavelli was sent to work out the details. In manyrespects, this represented the most formative period of Machiavelli’sdiplomatic career. Machiavelli spent about four months in the company ofthe Duke. Initially impressed, he recorded that Borgia is “superhuman inhis courage,” and “thinks himself capable of attaining anything hewants.”52 The Duke, Machiavelli observed, is one who “governs withextreme secrecy” and who “controls everything by himself.”53 In addition,Borgia “cannot be considered like other petty princes . . . but must beregarded as a new power in Italy.”54 On these occasions, Machiavelli sawdiplomacy from the seamy underside, learned the secrets of success andfailure, and sent back to Florence reports that showed not only penetrationbut a remarkable detachment.55

Many of these observations from Machiavelli’s Legations prefigurearguments from Chapter 7 of The Prince. For example, on the issue ofBorgia’s nature, he wrote:

The lord is very splendid and magnificent, and is so courageous inarms that even the greatest undertaking appears small to him, andboth for the acquisition of glory and for more territory he never restsnor recognizes weariness nor danger. In battle he arrives at a placebefore one can even realize that his men have been moved; he hashired the best soldiers in Italy. All of which make him victorious andformidable together with his perpetual good fortune.56

One historian points out that virtù is coupled with fortuna seventeen timesin The Prince and “in every coupling it can be translated in its broader


meaning of ingenuity.”57 The manner in which Machiavelli depicts Borgiaunderscores this ingenuity”, i.e., a quality which combines aptness andskill with inventive power and cleverness in originating and contriving.Borgia “made use of every means and action possible” for “putting downhis roots,” and managed to lay “mighty foundations for future power” insuch a short time that, if his luck had not finally deserted him, he “wouldhave mastered every difficulty.”58

Even though Machiavelli’s evaluation of Borgia in The Prince remainsfavorable, he well understood the hubris and vanity that led to the Duke’sundoing. Machiavelli’s mission to Rome was prompted by a crisis in thepapal court. Borgia’s father, Pope Alexander VI, died in 1503. A successor,Pius III, lasted no more than three months. The Florentine Signoriadesired daily reports about papal politics, insofar as Borgia arrived inRome to promote the candidacy of cardinal Giuliano della Rovere. TheFlorentines were uneasy that Borgia’s support had been bought by Roverewith the promise that, upon his election, the new pope would appointBorgia to be general of the papal armies. The outcome of the negotiationcarried the prospect of fortifying the Duke’s forces for a renewal of hos-tile military campaigns on the borders of Florence. Rovere was dulyelected, took the name of Julius II, and progressively ensnared the Dukein the cardinal political sin of putting more trust in the words of others(e.g., the ephemeral promise and good will of the new pope) rather than inhis own strength.59

Machiavelli often used the conversations of others to report his ownopinions. Francesco Soderini (Duke of Volterra) found Borgia “changed,irresolute, suspicious, and unstable in all his conclusions.” The Bishop ofElna unhappily reported that “the duke seemed to have lost his wits, forhe appeared not to know himself or what he wanted, so confused andirresolute was he.” Weeks passed and the Duke never received the trea-sured papal commission even as all of Romagna was to rise up in revolt.The Duke, Machiavelli reported, had “become stupefied” by “these blowsof Fortune, which he is not accustomed to taste.”60 Borgia looms in theend as a kind of villain who is unable to redeem himself through somefinal spark of cleverness or boldness. As Machiavelli wrote later in TheDiscourses: “In any action one may gain glory: for it is generally acquiredin victory, and in defeat it is acquired . . . by performing immediately somecourageous action which wipes out that defeat.”61 Similarly, in the firstDecennale of 1506, he wrote:

in altrui trovar credettequella pietà che non conobbe mai.

[he hoped to find in others that compassion he had never felt].62

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Noteworthy in this connection is that Machiavelli resorts to religiouslanguage to depict Borgia’s demise. The Florentine says “we see now thatthe duke’s sins have little by little brought him to penitence.” In the Lega-tions, Machiavelli is able to deplore Borgia’s low moral qualities even if,as a politician, he came to accept them.

The overlap between the Legations and The Prince carries over intoMachiavelli’s assessment of Julius II through missions both to the papalcourt in 1506 and to France in 1510. The foreign policy concern forFlorence was twofold. On the one hand, Julius sought to recover Perugia,Bologna, and other once-held papal territories. On the other hand, thepope was determined to drive the “barbarians” out of Italy, thereby placingFlorence in an awkward position. The Florentines wanted neither to giveoffense to the pope nor to undercut their traditional French allies (whohad recaptured Milan). Machiavelli first expressed skepticism about thecampaign to reconquer the papal states. “No one believes,” he wrote, thatnew pope “will be able to accomplish what he originally wanted.”63 YetJulius defied all expectations by winning the surrender of both Perugiaand, later, Bologna, “her ambassadors throwing themselves at the feet ofthe pope and handing their city over to him.”64

Machiavelli was much more apprehensive about the pope’s decision, in1510, to launch his rather thin forces against the might of France. Whilethe “sheer audacity and authority” of the pope might yield some successesin the mad rush to victory, the pope’s own ambassador admitted that hewas “completely astounded” by the whole venture. Machiavelli’s accountof the pope’s progress reappears in the pages of The Prince. In Chapter 25,he notes that Julius was “impetuous in everything” and that “he found . . .time and circumstances so favorable to his way of proceeding that healways met with success.”65 The first campaign against Bologna is a casein point. Both the Venetians and the Spaniards were “disconcerted andarrested” by the expedition while the French, with whom “Julius was stillarguing,” had no choice but to follow in his path. They could not refusetroops to the pope inasmuch as they hoped for his assistance in theirattempts to subdue the Venetians. With this impetuous move, then,“Julius achieved what no other pontiff, with the utmost human prudence,would have achieved.” Despite these successes, Machiavelli feelsjustified in taking a dim view of the pope’s statecraft. It was only “thebrevity of his pontifical life” that leaves one with the vision of a magnifi-cent leader. Admittedly, Machiavelli advises the prince “that it is better tobe impetuous than circumspect,” insofar as womanly fortune can only beruthlessly tamed. Yet he also recognized that the great leader mustbe prepared for just the opposite contingency. “If there had come a timewhen it was necessary for him [Julius] to act with circumspection, hewould have come to grief.”66 A limitation in his own character would


have prevented him from turning away from those methods to which hisnature inclined him.

What is striking in many of Machiavelli’s diplomatic reports on rulersand statesmen is that so many shared a fatal inflexibility in the face ofchanging circumstances. Many succeeded more by luck than by soundpolitical judgment. Clearly, Machiavelli often condemns the restlessacquisition of power for its own sake if fortune and circumstances requirecaution, delay, and equivocation. The diplomat or statesman is notexempt from the general rules of human imperfection. Even if the leaderattempts to display all the moral virtues, he will certainly not succeed.Human nature itself does not permit a man to have all the virtues. AsMachiavelli noted, “a prince should be so prudent that he knows how toescape the evil reputation attached to those vices which could lose him hisstate,”67 and to avoid the less damaging ones as much as possible. Insofaras Machiavelli’s reports from the Legations in some ways anticipate hispolitical analysis of leadership in The Prince, and insofar as the latter istaken by many as a glorification of power politics, it remains useful toconsider briefly the so-called “science” of his statecraft and the some-times obscured (and often ignored) normative dimension therein.

NORMS AND THE SCIENCE OF STATECRAFT

Some have seen in Machiavelli’s rejection of Hellenic episteme politike,in the tradition of Plato and Aristotle, the stirring of modern politicalscience in an empirical and value-free mode. Whether Machiavelli was athorough-going empiricist, and whether he ever looked for neutralitybefore some objective reality of power, deserves reconsideration. HerbertButterfield noticed that the first dawning of his science of statecraft was“visible in the epistles and reports of ambassadors and statesmen.”68 Butthat science was not equivalent to “the creation of that particular sciencewhich we today call political science; and it is important that we . . . cometo his work as historians, not as theorists who hanker after synthesis.”69

This turned out to be a science neither inductive nor impartial. His writingaimed to produce a change in the political and diplomatic practice of hisday. Machiavelli’s science relied upon “a collection of concrete maxims—warnings and injunctions in regard to certain points of policy, rules ofconduct for . . . emergencies, and expositions of tactical moves.” Machia-velli, as Butterfield points out, did not invent statecraft nor was he the firstto put his political advice in writing. Political thinkers should avoid thetemptation to erroneously assert that Machiavelli “took hold of politicaltheory and transported it from speculative realms to a region of empiricalobservation.”70 The science of statecraft was always a particular policy orexpedient course that he was recommending.

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By his claim that statecraft could be erected into a permanent science,Machiavelli showed an interest in the realm where human ingenuity orself-assertion could steal a victory over time and chance. He relied uponthe doctrine of historical recurrence (i.e., the idea that human nature isunchanging and that human passions move men in all periods to the samerepeating pattern of crises and conjectures) for the discovery of generalrules and precepts. His faith in Republican Rome, his imitation of antiq-uity, is more about “making deductions from classical theses” concerninghuman nature or the historical process.

From all these considerations the true method appears to be the onewhich the Romans used, and it is all the more remarkable in that it hasnever been adopted by any other people before or since. . . .We mightadd by way of conclusion that many other rules which the Romansobserved in conducting their affairs both at home and abroad are notonly imitated in these days but are treated with definite lack of consid-eration; some of them being looked upon as mere fables, others asimpossible and others again as not appropriate or of no utility; and tothis ignorant attitude we owe the fact that our country of late has beenthe prey of every invader who cared to come.71

Machiavelli’s statecraft, Butterfield contends, is not the result of obser-vations about the contemporary world. His political science is not about howmen actually conduct political business. Indeed, he more often criticizes thepractices of his time and “tells statesmen how they ought to behave.”72

Yet his recipe for political action rests on a larger philosophicalfoundation. Antiquity, particularly Roman antiquity, acquires politicalimportance since it offers the spectacle of a completed sequence ofpolitical events from the foundation to the fall of a republic. The ancientbackground functions as a mythical paradigm of which contemporaryevents are the “repetition.” Indeed, “prudent men” are apt to say “thatanyone wishing to see what is to come should examine what has been,for all the affairs of the world in every age have had their counterparts inancient times.”73 Eric Voegelin finds in Machiavelli a fairly unoriginalrestatement of Polybius’ cyclical interpretation of the order of nature andgovernment. Organized society is understood by Machiavelli as a “natu-ral growth” within the cosmos; it is accepted as whole, complete with itspolitical, religious, and civilizational order. The nature of this “growth”is the Stoic nature that comprises the life of the spirit and intellect.74 Thepoint is an important one insofar as it does not exclude freedom of actionin the moral or political realms. Voegelin offers a spirited rebuttal tothose who reduce Machiavelli’s political ethics to mere utilitarianscheming.


The founding and restoring activities are a manifestation of that partof the cosmic force that lives in human individuals . . . and while in thecourse of political action means must be rationally related to theirends, these ends themselves are of interest only insofar as they aremanifestations of the ordering virtù. Without relation to the myth ofthe hero and his virtù, the ethics of Machiavelli make no sense. Hence,we must . . . beware of misunderstanding him as the propagator of anethics of self-interest, or as an “expert” who gives advice for gainingpower regardless of its substance.75

Political scientists and diplomatists might well reconsider BenedettoCroce’s influential judgment that Machiavelli discovered “the necessityand autonomy of politics, of politics which are beyond good and evil,which have their own laws against which it is useless to rebel, whichcannot be exorcized and driven from this world with holy water.”76 Theartful Florentine sometimes aids and abets such a verdict, insofar as hedoes not mention natural law and summarily dispenses with Christianpsychology and theology. Certainly the medieval heritage has grownexceedingly thin in his corpus–no trace of Platonic or Aristotelian teleol-ogy, no reference to an ideal order, and no doctrine of man’s location inthe great chain of being. The only freedom he appears to recognize is notrooted in concern for individual conscience so much as in a general kindof political freedom from despotic rule–i.e., republicanism, and the freedomof one state from control by other states (with state here perhaps under-stood as the city or patria).77 So one does not find in Machiavelli’s writingsany systematic evolution of the individual or society as a self-transformingentity. Society forever remains an arena in which there are conflictsbetween and within groups. Only the judicious use of force and persua-sion can stem the tide of violence and control these conflicts.

But there remains an element of choice, a kind of normative calculus,within Machiavelli’s universe. Statecraft operates within the limits of humanpossibilities. First, the very restoration of order implies a kind of societythat can and ought to be realized on earth. It was obvious to Machiavellithat the Italy of his day was materially and morally weak. The examplesof Periclean Athens, or the Roman republic before its decline, representeddifferent glimpses into good societies that reconciled security and justice,a sense of power and sense of splendor. “Truly it is a marvelous thing toconsider,” he wrote in the Discourses, “what greatness Athens came inthe space of a hundred years after she freed herself from the tyranny ofPisistratus. But above all, it is . . . marvelous to observe what greatnessRome came to after she freed herself from kings.”78 Second, Machiavelli’scriticism of Christian ethics does not rob all ethical content from theChristian conception of the good man. He does not say saints are not

244 Greg Russell

saints or that honorable behavior is not honorable behavior. But thosequalities (or values) necessary for a revival of the Roman antiqua virtus—self assertion and love of glory—were not to be delivered by the church ofRome through the message of meekness and resignation. Machiavelli’sposition builds on Aristotle’s argument, from the Politics, that the goodman may not be identical with the good citizen. Third, Machiavelli makesclear that the unregulated pursuit of power is destructive. Leaders likePisistratus, Dionysius, and Caesar were tyrants who did harm. The travailof Agathocles of Syracuse, dealt with in Chapter 8 of The Prince, remindsthe reader that “it cannot be called prowess to kill fellow citizens, tobetray friends, to be treacherous, pitiless, irreligious.”79 Yet to be totallywithout these qualities can guarantee failure. As Eric Cochrane pointedout, Machiavelli did not deny the validity of Christian morality, and hedid not pretend that a crime required by political necessity was any less acrime. “Rather he discovered . . . that morality simply put did not hold inpolitical affairs and that any policy based on the assumptions that it didwould end in disaster.”80 Therefore, Machiavelli’s ethical perspective ismarked less by immoralism than by anguish.

International thinkers have all-too-often taken to heart FriedrichMeinecke’s assertion that Machiavelli’s doctrine “was a sword thrust inthe body politic of Western humanity, causing it to cry out and to struggleagainst itself.”81 The basis of that struggle may speak less to Machia-velli’s supposed rejection of ethics and more to the fact that he was able toprovide a moral alternative to the blessings of Christianity. As Isaiah Ber-lin notes, Machiavelli is rejecting Christian ethics “in favor of anothersystem, another moral universe—the world of Pericles or of Scipio . . . asociety geared to ends just as ultimate as the Christian faith, a society inwhich men fight and are ready to die for (public) ends which they pursuefor their own sakes.”82 At stake here, if we are to follow Berlin, is not achoice between a realm of means (called politics) and a realm of ends(calls morals), but a revival (Roman or classical) of morality, an alter-native realm of ends. This calls into question the viability of separatingthe realm of politics and the realm of ethics. In short, Machiavelli’s valuesare not simply instrumental but moral and ultimate. The moral idea forwhich he thought no sacrifice too great did not fall outside the realm ofhuman capacity. His is a vision of “the strong, united, effective, morallyregenerated, splendid and victorious patria, whether it is saved by thevirtù of one man or many.83

Machiavelli’s dagger poses an insoluble dilemma insofar as it risesfrom his de facto recognition that “ends equally ultimate, equally sacred,may contradict each other, that entire systems of value may come intocollision without possibility of rational arbitration.”84 He may have beenconfused and guilty of much, particularly in working out the implications


of incompatible moral possibilities in politics. The incompatibility thesis,however, is a far cry from the very different proposition that the moreconventional ideals—founded on natural law, brotherly love, and humangoodness—are unrealizable and dangerous. Despite the limitations ofMachiavelli’s outlook, there may be one valuable lesson in his criticismof Christian ethics. To hold up too highly one ultimate end in politics is toimply that no means can be too difficult or no price too high. This kind ofcertainty easily enough can breed fanaticism and the crusading of theideological warrior. “By breaking the original unity, he helped to causemen to become aware of the necessity of having to make agonizing choicesbetween incompatible alternatives in public and private life (for the twocould not, it became obvious, be genuinely kept distinct).”85

CONCLUSION

The various character sketches and reports filed by Machiavelli the diplomatforeshadow many of the leadership issues later refined in The Prince andDiscourses. The idiosyncrasies of particular rulers enabled him to speakabout both the neglect and overextension of power. Moreover, the con-solidation of power and restoration of order in Italian states was as muchan ethical, as a political, exercise. Raison d’état fails to do justice to thekind of apocalyptic idealism in Chapter 25 of The Prince, whereby mannafrom Heaven is to descend on the new, liberating leader of Italy andwhich is entitled “An Exhortation to Liberate Italy from BarbarianDomination that Stinks in Our Nostrils.” This appeal is balanced byMachiavelli’s other and less well-known Exhortation, The Exhortation toRepentance, wherein he quotes lines from Petrarch that exemplify thespiritual underside of his realism: “And to repent, and understand clearlythat all that pleases the world is but a brief dream.”86

Unlike the “might makes right” argument advanced by Callicles, whichPlato discusses in the Gorgias, Machiavelli would likely say that mightmakes for order, the liberation of Italy, or the onore del mondo.87 He wouldnot suggest that these add up to morality and justice. He seems keenlyaware that these values can be realized only by actions that in themselvesare dishonorable and immoral. Rather the problem here is that the beatificvision of God has been replaced by a pagan myth of nature. The mundaneincarnation of the spirit has as its fulfillment the flowering of virtù intothe order of the commonwealth. The spirito italiano should manifest itselfin the order of a national republic through which a great and gloriousfounder receives grace through fame. The sanctification of means throughthe end served is a perennial feature of all politics. What remainstroubling is that, for Machiavelli, the expediency and immorality of actiondo not affect the destiny of the soul; his is holy, and has found its destiny,

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when it claims its virtù in the world. This was the ethical universe withinwhich he would track the designs of diplomats and statesmen. He wasconcerned that states that have lost their appetite for power are doomed todecadence and are more likely to be destroyed by more vigorous andbetter-armed neighbors.88

Reconsidering Machiavelli’s career as a diplomat may yield a numberof benefits. First, his public service exemplifies how professional diplo-macy, by the end of the fifteenth century, became one of the branches ofstatesmanship. Nicolson, tracing the evolution of the diplomatic methodamong Italian diplomats following the death of Lorenzo de Medici in1492, observed that “the general conception that animated their ceaselessfiddlings with the balance of power . . . can be deduced from the works ofMachiavelli.”89 The conduct of a nation’s foreign policy by its diplomatsis for national power in peace what military strategy and tactics by its mil-itary leaders are for national power in war. Machiavelli exhibited the typ-ical realist inclination to treat diplomacy as a symptom of the struggle forpower among co-sovereign entities that seek to maintain orderly andpeaceful relations among themselves.

Second, while the diplomatic arts might serve as an auxiliary componentof statesmanship broadly conceived, the diplomat had to observe certainrules of negotiation and communication in his capacity as a reliable liaison.It is probably true to say that Machiavelli was by far the most active dip-lomat among the chancery secretaries during his years of service from1498 to 1512.90 Machiavelli’s Legations provide a record, still beingmined by scholars, of the kind of qualities appropriate for the successfulambassador or diplomat—a man of erudition able to cultivate the societyof writers, scientists, and artists; one infinitely patient who is willing tospin out negotiations and perfect the art of procrastination; an even-tempered servant often tolerant of the ignorance and foolishness of hisown home government; a seasoned politician who will always rememberthat diplomatic victories often bring feelings of humiliation and a desirefor revenge.91

Third, the volatile emotions and “atmosphere of excitement” thattypified diplomatic intercourse among the Italian communities in the latefifteenth century more often subordinated empathy and compassion toopportunism and deception. Conditions of virtual anarchy associated withthe breakdown of a civilizational and political order render very difficult aleader’s embrace of any kind of spiritual or universal morality (i.e., onewhere the doing of evil is worse than the suffering of evil). The statesmanwho does not answer an attack on his country with an order to return fireis unlikely to win much praise for the spiritual refinement of his moralityin turning the other cheek. The existence of man is burdened withconflicts of value.92 The social and political consequences of political acts


can often be more important than the moral intent of the decision-maker.For Machiavelli, both the intent and the consequences are likely to consti-tute good and evil inputs and outcomes or some subtle mixture of the two.Machiavelli’s diplomatic missions involved him in situations that wereconspiratorial and counter-conspiratorial. Leadership in such circum-stances, where information is incomplete and motives always illusive,“resembles the conduct of diplomacy, calling for foresight, secrecy, andinitiative.”93 Reclaiming the cultural and intellectual self-understandingof a people—especially amid the physical ruins from war and revolt—require something more than blueprints for self-government, judicialreview, and libertarian fulfillment.

NOTES

1. Roberto Ridolfi, The Life of Niccolò Machiavelli (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1963); Dante Germino, Machiavelli to Marx: Modern Western PoliticalThought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 20; The CollectedWorks of Eric Voegelin, eds. David L. Morse and William M. Thompson,(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998), XXII: 31.

2. Sir Herbert Butterfield, The Statecraft of Machiavelli (London: G. Bell & Sons,1955), pp. 10–11.

3. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1953), p. 8.

4. Introduction to Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr.(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. x.

5. Harold Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method (London: Cassell, 1954),pp. 25, 31–32.

6. J. R. Hale, Machiavelli and Renaissance Italy (New York: Macmillan, 1960),pp. 4–5.

7. Dante Germino, “Was Machiavelli a Spiritual Realist?” Paper presented to the2000 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association(Washington, D.C.): 2.

8. Machiavelli to Guicciardini, May 17, 1521, in Machiavelli: The Chief Works andOthers, 3 vols., ed. and trans. Allan H. Gilbert (Durham, N.C.: Duke UniversityPress, 1965), II: 973.

9. Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., Machiavelli’s Virtue (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1996), p. x.

10. Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. George Bull (New York: Penguin, 1977), p. 129.11. Machiavelli to Vettori, 31 January 1514 [or 1515], in Machiavelli: The Chief

Works, II: 961.12. Germino borrowed the concept from Eric Voegelin, who used the topic to

describe a stream of secular, modern thinkers in his History of Political Ideas. SeeThe Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vols. 19–26.

13. Quoted in Germino, “Was Machiavelli a Spiritual Realist,” pp. 2–3. For twoadditional dissenting opinions on the Straussian portrait of Machiavelli, see the

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following: Sebastian de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell (New York: Vintage Books,1994); and Maurizio Viroli, Niccolo’s Smile (New York: Farrar, Straus andGiroux, 2002).

14. Germino, Machiavelli to Marx, p. 44.15. The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, XXII: 34–35.16. Germino, Machiavelli to Marx, p. 44.17. Frederick H. Hartmann, The Relations of Nations, 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan,

1966), pp. 23–24. See also Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 6th ed.(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985), p. 139.

18. The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, XXII: 38.19. Ibid., p. 36.20. Roberto Ridolfi, The Life of Niccolò Machiavelli, trans. Cecil Grayson (London:

Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), p. 6.21. The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, XXII: 36.22. Ibid., p. 37.23. Frederick L. Schuman, International Politics, 6th ed. (New York: McGraw Hill,

1958), p. 62.24. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, p. 31.25. Chiapelli cited in Peter E. Bondanella, Machiavelli and the Art of Renaissance

History (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1973), p. 26.26. Robert Black, “Machiavelli, servant of the Florentine Republic,” in Machiavelli

and Republicanism, eds. Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, Maurizio Viroli(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 70.

27. N. Rubinstein, “The Beginnings of Niccolò Machiavelli Career in the FlorentineChancery,” Italian Studies 11 (1956): 90.

28. Machiavelli was given a third chancery office—the newly created Nove Ufficialidell’Ordinanza e Milizia Fiorentina—on January 12, 1507. Here he was incharge of administering the business of newly created Florentina militia.

29. Black, “Machiavelli, servant of the Florentine Republic,” p. 72.30. For an excellent, though somewhat abbreviated, account of Machiavelli’s

diplomatic missions, see Ridolfi, The Life of Niccolò Machiavelli, pp. 15–132.31. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, p. 37.32. Machiavelli, The Prince, p. 77.33. Geoffrey R. Berridge, Maurice Keens-Soper, and T. G. Otte, eds., Diplomatic

Theory from Machiavelli to Kissinger (New York: Palgrave, 2001), p. 11.34. Machiavelli, The Discourses, trans. Leslie J. Walker (New Haven: Yale Univer-

sity Press, 1950), II.13, p. 311.35. Machiavelli cited in Berridge, Diplomatic Theory from Machiavelli to Kissinger,

p. 11.36. Ibid.37. The Discourses, II, 1, pp. 271–72.38. The letter is in reality autobiographical, showing what Machiavelli himself

attempted to do as Florentine agent abroad (the rank of ambassador he neverheld). Any page of his letters to Florentine authorities exemplifies parts of hisadvice, as do his “Report On The Affairs Of Germany” and his “Summary OfThe Government Of the City Of Lucca.” Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Oth-ers, I: 116.


39. Ibid.40. Ibid.41. Sir Harold Nicolson, Diplomacy (London: Oxford University Press, 1939),

pp. 45–46, 76. See also Kenneth W. Thompson, Moralism and Morality InPolitics And Diplomacy (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985), p. 21.

42. Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, I: 117.43. Ibid., p. 118.44. Ibid., p. 119.45. Bondanella: Machiavelli and the Art of Renaissance History, p. 26.46. Ibid., p. 27.47. Machiavelli’s passages from the Legations are cited in Quentin Skinner, Machiavelli

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 6.48. Ridolfi, The Life Of Niccolò Machiavelli, pp. 38–39.49. Machiavelli quoted in Bondanella, Machiavelli and the Art of Renaissance

History, p. 28.50. Peter Bondanella questions whether such an exchange took place. One often

finds in these despatches a surprising level of agreement between the reportedconversations and speeches and Machiavelli’s own biases. The use of the wordprudence, or prudentissima, in this connection is laced with sarcasm as is thebiting remark about the king’s inability to see his way clearly beyond his ownsmall corporeal existence. Ibid., p. 29.

51. Machiavelli, The Prince, p. 52.52. Skinner, Machiavelli, p. 9.53. Ibid.54. Letter dated 8 November 1502, quoted in Hale, Machiavelli and Renaissance

Italy, p. 69.55. Lee Cameron McDonald, Western Political Theory, From Machiavelli to Burke

(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968), p. 190.56. Quoted in Bondanella, Machiavelli and the Art of Renaissance Italy, p. 33.57. Machiavelli’s The Prince: A Bilingual Edition, ed. and trans. Mark Musa (New York:

St. Martin’s Press, 1964), p. xv.58. Quoted in Skinner, Machiavelli, p. 10.59. Ridolfi explains that Machiavelli laughed inwardly at the Duke’s varied and vain

hopes, seeing only too clearly that the Pope was temporizing with him to avoidkeeping his promises and to avoid telling him too soon. The Duke hoped hewould be made Gonfalonier of the Church, continuing to believe in both theKing of France and the Pope, the latter pressing him to go to Romagna so as toremove him from his own vicinity. Ridolfi, The Life Of Niccolò Machiavelli,pp. 71–72.

60. Quoted in Skinner, Machiavelli, p. 11.61. Quoted in Ridolfi, The Life of Niccolò Machiavelli, p. 73.62. Ibid.63. Quoted in Skinner, Machiavelli, p. 12.64. Ibid., p. 13.65. Machiavelli, The Prince, p. 132.66. Ibid., p. 133. See also Skinner, Machiavelli, p. 14.67. Machiavelli, The Prince, p. 92.

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68. Butterfield, The Statecraft of Machiavelli, p. 20.69. Ibid., p. 19.70. Ibid., p. 22.71. Quoted in Butterfield, The Statecraft of Machiavelli, p. 54.72. Ibid., p. 70.73. The Portable Machiavelli, trans. Peter Bondanella and Mark Musa (New York:

Viking Penguin, 1979), p. 41374. The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, XXII: 63.75. Ibid., p. 64.76. Croce cited in Federico Chabod, Machiavelli and the Renaissance, trans. David

Moore (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), p. xii.77. Isaiah Berlin, Against the Current, Essays in the History of Ideas (New York:

Viking Press, 1980), pp. 37–38.78. Machiavelli, Discourses, II, 2.79. Machiavelli, The Prince, p. 63.80. Eric W. Cochrane, “Machiavelli: 1940–1960,” Journal of Modern History 33

(1961): 115.81. Friedrich Meinecke, Machiavellianism, The Doctrine of Raison D’État and its

Place in Modern History, trans. Douglass Scott (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1957), p. 49.

82. Berlin, Against the Current, p. 54.83. Ibid., p. 56.84. Ibid., p. 74.85. Ibid., p. 79.86. Quoted in Germino, “Was Machiavelli a Spiritual Realist,” p. 3.87. The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, XXII: 84.88. Berlin, Against the Current, p. 60.89. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, pp. 32–33.90. Black, “Machiavelli, servant of the Florentine republic,” p. 81.91. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, pp. 35–36.92. The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, XXII: 82.93. Thompson, Fathers Of International Thought, p. 67.

Documents

Machiavelli’s Science of Statecraft