IN this section, Il Principe appears to express a modicum of snobbery:

Those who solely by good fortune become princes from being private citizens have little trouble in rising, but have much trouble in staying at the top. They do not have any difficulties on the way up, because they fly, but they have many when they reach the top.

Taken at face value, this claim seems rather innocuous, but Machiavelli’s preference for hereditary principalities – as well as his own aristocratic pretensions – lead him to assume that a man who is not of the right type, so to speak, is incapable of displaying good leadership. He goes on to cite the example of Darius I (550-486 BCE) of Persia, or Darius the Great, who selected new princes to control both Iona and Hellespont in his stead. Another method by which ordinary men ascend the princely ladder, he tells us, is through bribing the soldiery. He goes on to cite two examples from his own century:

These are Francesco Sforza and Cesare Borgia. Francesco, by proper means and with great ability, from being a private person rose to be Duke of Milan, and that which he had acquired with a thousand anxieties he kept with little trouble. On the other hand, Cesare Borgia acquired his state while his father, Pope Alexander the Sixth, was in power. On his father’s decline he lost it notwithstanding that he had taken every measure and done all that ought to be done by a wise and able man to firmly fix his roots in the states which the arms and fortunes of others had given to him.

Machiavelli’s point, of course, is that whilst one can lay the foundations for one’s own political and economic stability later on, it is usually the case that such a delayed process can meet with problems later on.

Examining the methods by which Pope Alexander secured a principality for his son, Cesare Borgia, Machiavelli explains that any move towards providing him with a Papal State would have met with fierce resistance and therefore the Pontiff ensured that he took full advantage of the political intrigue that was going on at the time. He was opposed to the Venetian desire to allow King Louis XII (1462-1515) of France into Italy, for example, but pretended to support this decision in order to have the monarch arrested as soon as he arrived in Milan. The pretext for this was the King’s own designs on the Romagna region, which was subsequently handed over to Cesare. The latter was then faced with two problems:

(1) his army, the Orsini, were not showing him enough loyalty, and

(2) the population of Romagna, on the whole, was very pro-French.

This led Cesare to acknowledge the fact that he could no longer depend on his own troops and he therefore hatched a plan to weaken the Orsini and Colonnesi parties by winning the favour of their more prestigious supporters. He achieved this by raising their salaries and offering them higher positions within the state apparatus, a strategy that brought them all under his spell. Eventually, he even managed to turn the Orsini against the Colonnesi, but the former soon realised that Cesare’s connections with the Church spelt utter disaster and launched a rebellion at Urbino. Ironically, Cesare used the French to bring the revolt to an end. Once he had regained power, he chose never to rely on others again and thus

act more cleverly and to hide his intentions well. By the mediation of Signor Pagolo – whom Cesare secured with all kinds of attention, giving him money, clothes, and horses – the Orsini became more sympathetic, so that their simple trust brought them into his power. Having got rid of the leaders, and turned their supporters into his friends, and having all the Romagna and the Dukedom of Urbino, Cesare had laid sufficiently good foundations for his power. Moreover, the people were now beginning to appreciate their improved living conditions, so they were happy to support him.

Machiavelli also notes that Cesare Borgia took advantage of Romagna’s weak leadership and installed a man by the name of Ramiro d’Orco (1452-1502), whom he describes as ‘cruel and efficient’. This, it must be said, is something of an understatement and Cesare was eventually forced to have the tyrant himself executed in order to pacify the local population and win their loyalty. Cesare then dealt with the French by delaying his original offer of help in the country’s quest to move into Naples and push back the approaching Spaniards.

Now that his father was dead, however, Cesare took care that his successor, Pope Pius III (1439-1503), had little chance of removing him from power. This was achieved in four ways:

Firstly, by killing the families of those lords whom he had defeated, so that the new Pope could not use them as an excuse to attack him. Secondly, by winning the loyalty of all the gentlemen of Rome, so that they would not support the Pope. Thirdly, by gaining the support of the college of cardinals. Fourthly, by acquiring so much power before Pope Alexander died that he could by his own means resist the first shock. He had completed three of these four things, at the death of Alexander.

Cesare, it seems, was one of the first real proto-Machiavellians and by laying the foundations for his own future security he hoped to prolong his tenure. In effect, however, despite these precautions and the fact that Pius III had occupied the papal throne for less than one month, a combination of ill-health and bad decision-making in relation to appointing Pope Julius II (1443-1513) as Pius III’s replacement meant that he became a casualty in a renewed campaign to rid the Borgias from the Papal States. He remains, nonetheless, one of Machiavelli’s great heroes.

The fact that Machiavelli has further revealed the merciless, cold-blooded nature of which he became so renowned, leads Frederick to respond with indignation. The fact that the Italian chose one of the Borgias as an example worthy of emulation is itself testimony to the kind of man that Machiavelli really was:

It is thus very necessary to know who César Borgia was, in order to form an idea of Machiavel’s hero, and of the author who praises him.

Frederick proceeds to list some of Borgia’s other famous ‘achievements’, among them the assassination of his own brother, the incestuous desire that he expressed towards his sister, the persecution of the Church hierarchy, his massacre of the Pope’s Swiss Guard and the cruel defilement of a Venetian aristocrat.

Of Machiavelli’s admiration for Borgia’s political stratagems, Frederick says:

To misuse the good faith of men, to use of the tricks of the infamous, to betray, perjure, to assassinate: here are the actions that the doctor of degeneracy calls “prudent.” But I ask whether it is prudent to show how aloyal one can be, how faithless, and how easily one can lie? If you reverse good faith and the oath, what are the assurances that you will keep the fidelity of your men? Do you set good examples of treason? If you in turn fear to be betrayed, do you teach assassination? To fear the hand of your disciples? Is this “prudence” not the slinking of a coward?

Comparing the murderous actions of Borgia towards his rivals, Frederick compares him to the recently-deceased Augustus II the Strong (1670-1733), King of Poland, who had shown great pity to one of his adulterous subjects by ignoring the laws of Saxony and saving him from the executioner’s axe. In reality, however, Augustus had also committed adultery in secret and is possibly not the best example. Nonetheless, he believes that nothing can compare with Machiavelli and that he

is so arrogant, that to grant any praise to this most abominable monster, which would make Satan himself vomit on the ground, is to justify his cold blood, and his hatred of mankind.

No doubt the title of the next section in Machiavelli’s work was greeted with some irony.

TO BE CONTINUED…