Introduction

HISTORY OF FLORENCE

AND OF THE AFFAIRS OF ITALY

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE
DEATH OF LORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT

by NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI

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

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 at liberty by Pope Leo X. He now retired to a small
estate near San Casciano, seven miles from Florence. Here he devoted
himself to political and historical studies, and though apparently
retired from public life, his letters show the deep and passionate
interest he took in the political vicissitudes through which Italy was
then passing, and in all of which the singleness of purpose with which
he continued to advance his native Florence,