History of Florence and Italy | Page 3

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Etext prepared by John Bickers, [email protected] and Dagny,
[email protected]

HISTORY OF FLORENCE
AND OF THE AFFAIRS OF ITALY
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE DEATH OF LORENZO
THE MAGNIFICENT
by NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI

With an Introduction by
HUGO ALBERT RENNERT, Ph.D. Professor of Romanic Languages
and Literature, University of Pennsylvania.

PREPARER'S NOTE
This text was typed up from a Universal Classics Library edition,
published in 1901 by W. Walter Dunne, New York and London. The
translator was not named. The book contains a "photogravure" of
Niccolo Machiavelli from an engraving.

INTRODUCTION

Niccolo Machiavelli, the first great Italian historian, and one of the
most eminent political writers of any age or country, was born at
Florence, May 3, 1469. He was of an old though not wealthy Tuscan
family, his father, who was a jurist, dying when Niccolo was sixteen
years old. We know nothing of Machiavelli's youth and little about his
studies. He does not seem to have received the usual humanistic
education of his time, as he knew no Greek.[*] The first notice of
Machiavelli is in 1498 when we find him holding the office of
Secretary in the second Chancery of the Signoria, which office he
retained till the downfall of the Florentine Republic in 1512. His
unusual ability was soon recognized, and in 1500 he was sent on a
mission to Louis XII. of France, and afterward on an embassy to Cæsar
Borgia, the lord of Romagna, at Urbino. Machiavelli's report and
description of this and subsequent embassies to this prince, shows his
undisguised admiration for the courage and cunning of Cæsar, who was
a master in the application of the principles afterwards exposed in such
a skillful and uncompromising manner by Machiavelli in his /Prince/.
The limits of this introduction will not permit us to follow with any
detail the many important duties with which he was charged by his
native state, all of which he fulfilled with the utmost fidelity and with
consummate skill. When, after the battle of Ravenna in 1512 the holy
league determined upon the downfall of Pier Soderini, Gonfaloniere of
the Florentine Republic, and the restoration of the Medici, the efforts of
Machiavelli, who was an ardent republican, were in vain; the troops he
had helped to organize fled before the Spaniards and the Medici were
returned to power. Machiavelli attempted to conciliate his new masters,
but he was deprived of his office, and being accused in the following
year of participation in the conspiracy of Boccoli and Capponi, he was
imprisoned and tortured, though afterward set