(*) Maximilian I, born in 1459, died 1519, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. He married, first, Mary, daughter of Charles the Bold; after her death, Bianca Sforza; and thus became involved in Italian politics.
A prince ought to have no other aim or thought, nor select anything else for his study, than war and its rules and discipline; for this is the sole art that belongs to him who rules, and it is of such force that it not only upholds those who are born princes, but it often enables men to rise from a private station to that rank. And, on the contrary, it is seen that when princes have thought more of ease than of arms they have lost their states. And the first cause of your losing it is to neglect this art; and what enables you to acquire a state is to be master of the art. Francesco Sforza, through being martial, from a private person became Duke of Milan; and the sons, through avoiding the hardships and troubles of arms, from dukes became private persons. For among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised, and this is one of those ignominies against which a prince ought to guard himself, as is shown later on. Because there is nothing proportionate between the armed and the unarmed; and it is not reasonable that he who is armed should yield obedience willingly to him who is unarmed, or that the unarmed man should be secure among armed servants. Because, there being in the one disdain and in the other suspicion, it is not possible for them to work well together. And therefore a prince who does not understand the art of war, over and above the other misfortunes already mentioned, cannot be respected by his soldiers, nor can he rely on them. He ought never, therefore, to have out of his thoughts this subject of war, and in peace he should addict himself more to its exercise than in war; this he can do in two ways, the one by action, the other by study.
(*) Catherine Sforza, a daughter of Galeazzo Sforza and Lucrezia Landriani, born 1463, died 1509. It was to the Countess of Forli that Machiavelli was sent as envy on 1499. A letter from Fortunati to the countess announces the appointment: "I have been with the signori," wrote Fortunati, "to learn whom they would send and when. They tell me that Nicolo Machiavelli, a learned young Florentine noble, secretary to my Lords of the Ten, is to leave with me at once." Cf. "Catherine Sforza," by Count Pasolini, translated by P. Sylvester, 1898.
The first who gave renown to this soldiery was Alberigo da Conio,(*) the Romagnian. From the school of this man sprang, among others, Braccio and Sforza, who in their time were the arbiters of Italy. After these came all the other captains who till now have directed the arms of Italy; and the end of all their valour has been, that she has been overrun by Charles, robbed by Louis, ravaged by Ferdinand, and insulted by the Switzers. The principle that has guided them has been, first, to lower the credit of infantry so that they might increase their own. They did this because, subsisting on their pay and without territory, they were unable to support many soldiers, and a few infantry did not give them any authority; so they were led to employ cavalry, with a moderate force of which they were maintained and honoured; and affairs were brought to such a pass that, in an army of twenty thousand soldiers, there were not to be found two thousand foot soldiers. They had, besides this, used every art to lessen fatigue and danger to themselves and their soldiers, not killing in the fray, but taking prisoners and liberating without ransom. They did not attack towns at night, nor did the garrisons of the towns attack encampments at night; they did not surround the camp either with stockade or ditch, nor did they campaign in the winter. All these things were permitted by their military rules, and devised by them to avoid, as I have said, both fatigue and dangers; thus they have brought Italy to slavery and contempt.
(*) Francesco Sforza, born 1401, died 1466. He married Bianca Maria Visconti, a natural daughter of Filippo Visconti, the Duke of Milan, on whose death he procured his own elevation to the duchy. Machiavelli was the accredited agent of the Florentine Republic to Cesare Borgia (1478- 1507) during the transactions which led up to the assassinations of the Orsini and Vitelli at Sinigalia, and along with his letters to his chiefs in Florence he has left an account, written ten years before "The Prince," of the proceedings of the duke in his "Descritione del modo tenuto dal duca Valentino nello ammazzare Vitellozzo Vitelli," etc., a translation of which is appended to the present work.
Concerning these two methods of rising to be a prince by ability or fortune, I wish to adduce two examples within our own recollection, and 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, called by the people Duke Valentino, acquired his state during the ascendancy of his father, and on its 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 fix firmly his roots in the states which the arms and fortunes of others had bestowed on him.
The new are either entirely new, as was Milan to Francesco Sforza, or they are, as it were, members annexed to the hereditary state of the prince who has acquired them, as was the kingdom of Naples to that of the King of Spain.
(*) Duke Lodovico was Lodovico Moro, a son of Francesco Sforza, who married Beatrice d'Este. He ruled over Milan from 1494 to 1500, and died in 1510.
FERDINAND I. (1423-1494), also called Don Ferrante, king of Naples, the natural son of Alphonso V. of Aragon and I. of Sicily and Naples, was horn in 1423. In accordance with his father's will, he succeeded him on the throne of Naples in 1458, but Pope Calixtus III. declared the line of Aragon extinct and the kingdom a fief of the church. But although he died before he could make good his claim (August 1458), and the new Pope Pius II. recognized Ferdinand, John of Anjou, profiting by the discontent of the Neapolitan barons, decided to try to regain the throne conquered by his ancestors, and invaded Naples. Ferdinand was severely defeated by the Angevins and the rebels at Sarno in July 1460, but with the help of Alessandro Sforza and of the Albanian chief, Skanderbeg, who chivalrously came to the aid of the prince whose father had aided him, he triumphed over his enemies, and by 1464 had re-established his authority in the kingdom. In 1478 he allied himself with Pope Sixtus IV. against Lorenzo de' Medici, but the latter journeyed alone to Naples when he succeeded in negotiating an honourable peace with Ferdinand. In 1480 the Turks captured Otranto, and massacred the majority of the inhabitants, but in the following year it was retaken by his son Alphonso, duke of Calabria. His oppressive government led in 1485 to an attempt at revolt on the part of the nobles, led by Francesca Coppola and Antonello Sanseverino and supported by Pope Innocent VIII.; the rising having been crushed, many of the nobles, notwithstanding Ferdinand's promise of a general amnesty, were afterwards treacherously murdered at his express command. In 1493 Charles VIII. of France was preparing to invade Italy for the conquest of Naples, and Ferdinand realized that this was a greater danger than any he had yet faced. With almost prophetic instinct he warned the Italian princes of the calamities in store for them, but his negotiations with Pope Alexander VI. and Ludovico il Moro, lord of Milan, having failed, he died in January 1494, worn out with anxiety. Ferdinand was gifted with great courage and real political ability, but his method of government was vicious and disastrous. His financial administration was based on oppressive and dishonest monopolies, and he was mercilessly severe and utterly treacherous towards his enemies. Entry: FERDINAND
CASTIGLIONE, BALDASSARE (1478-1529), Italian diplomatist and man of letters, was born at Casanatico near Mantua, and was educated at Milan under the famous professors Merula and Chalcondyles. In 1496 he entered the service of Lodovico Sforza, duke of Milan, returning to Mantua in 1500 when Lodovico was carried prisoner into France. In 1504 he was attached to the court of Guidobaldo Malatesta, duke of Urbino, and in 1506 he was sent by that prince on a mission to Henry VII. of England, who had before conferred on Federigo Malatesta, "the Good Duke," the most famous mercenary of his age, the order of the Garter. Guidobaldo dying childless in 1508, the duchy of Urbino was given to Francesco Maria della Rovere, for whom Castiglione, envoy at the court of Leo X. (Medici), obtained the office of generalissimo of the Papal troops. Charged with the arrangement of the dispute between Clement VII. (Medici) and Charles V., Castiglione crossed, in 1524, into Spain, where he was received with highest honours, being afterwards naturalized, and made bishop of Avila. In 1527, however, Rome was seized and sacked by the Imperialists under Bourbon, and in July of the same year the surrender of the castle of Sant' Angelo placed Clement in their hands. Castiglione had been tricked by the emperor, but there were not wanting accusations of treachery against himself. He had, however, placed fidelity highest among the virtues of his ideal "courtier," and when he died at Toledo in 1529 it was said that he had died of grief and shame at the imputation. The emperor mourned him as "one of the world's best cavaliers." A portrait of him, now at the Louvre, was painted by Raphael, who disdained neither his opinion nor his advice. Entry: CASTIGLIONE
VII. _Spanish-Austrian Ascendancy._--It was high time, after the sack of Rome in 1527, that Charles V. should undertake Italian affairs. The country was exposed to anarchy, of which this had been the last and most disgraceful example. The Turks were threatening western Europe, and Luther was inflaming Germany. By the treaty of Barcelona in 1529 the pope and emperor made terms. By that of Cambray in the same year France relinquished Italy to Spain. Charles then entered the port of Genoa, and on the 5th of November met Clement VII. at Bologna. He there received the imperial crown, and summoned the Italian princes for a settlement of all disputed claims. Francesco Sforza, the last and childless heir of the ducal house, was left in Milan till his death, which happened in 1535. The republic of Venice was respected in her liberties and Lombard territories. The Este family received a confirmation of their duchy of Modena and Reggio, and were invested in their fief of Ferrara by the pope. The marquessate of Mantua was made a duchy; and Florence was secured, as we have seen, to the Medici. The great gainer by this settlement was the papacy, which held the most substantial Italian province, together with a prestige that raised it far above all rivalry. The rest of Italy, however parcelled, henceforth became but a dependence upon Spain. Charles V., it must be remembered, achieved his conquest and confirmed his authority far less as emperor than as the heir of Castile and Aragon. A Spanish viceroy in Milan and another in Naples, supported by Rome and by the minor princes who followed the policy dictated to them from Madrid, were sufficient to preserve the whole peninsula in a state of somnolent inglorious servitude. Entry: VII
In 1513 and 1514 appeared the three most famous of Dürer's works in copper-engraving, "The Knight and Death" (or simply "The Knight," as he himself calls it, 1513), the "Melancolia" and the "St Jerome in his Study" (both 1514). These are the masterpieces of the greatest mind which ever expressed itself in this form of art. Like other masterpieces, they suggest much more than they clearly express, and endless meanings have been, rightly or wrongly, read into them by posterity. Taken together as a group, they have been supposed to be three out of an uncompleted series designed to illustrate the four "temperaments" and complexions of men. Again, more reasonably, they have been taken as types severally of the moral, the intellectual and the theological virtues. The idea at the bottom of the "Knight and Death" seems to be a combination of the Christian knight of Erasmus's _Enchiridion militis Christiani_ with the type, traditional in medieval imagery, of the pilgrim on his way through the world. The imaginative force of the presentation, coming from a man of Dürer's powers, is intense; but what consciously occupied him most may well have been the problem how to draw accurately the proportions and action of a horse in motion. This problem he here solves for the first time, with the help of an Italian example: at least his design so closely repeats that of Leonardo da Vinci's famous and early destroyed equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza that we must certainly suppose him to have seen either the model itself or such a drawing of it as is still preserved by Leonardo's own hand. The face of the rider seems to recall that of the statue of Bartolommeo Colleoni at Venice; for the armour Dürer had recourse to an old drawing of his own, signed and dated in 1498. The "Melancolia," numbered "1" as though intended to be the first of a series, with its brooding winged genius sitting dejectedly amidst a litter of scientific instruments and symbols, is hard to interpret in detail, but impossible not to recognize in general terms as an embodiment of the spirit of intellectual research (the student's "temperament" was supposed to be one with the melancholic), resting sadly from its labours in a mood of lassitude and defeat. Comparatively cheerful beside these two is the remaining subject of the student saint reading in his chamber, with his dog and domestic lion resting near him, and a marvellous play of varied surface and chequered light on the floor and ceiling of his apartment and on all the objects which it contains. Besides these three masterpieces of line-engraving, the same years, 1512-1515, found Dürer occupied with his most important experiments in etching, both in dry-point ("The Holy Family and Saints" and the "St Jerome in the Wilderness") and with the acid bath. At the same time he was more taken up than ever, as is proved by the contents of a sketch-book at Dresden, with mathematical and anatomical studies on the proportions and structure of the human frame. A quite different kind of study, that of the postures of wrestlers in action, is illustrated by a little-known series of drawings, still of the same period, at Vienna. Almost the only well-authenticated painting of the time is a "Virgin and Child" in the Imperial Museum at Vienna. The portraits of the emperors Charles the Great and Sigismund (1512), in their present state at any rate, can hardly be recognized as being by the master's hand. An interval of five years separates the Vienna "Madonna" from the two fine heads of the apostles Philip and James in the Uffizi at Florence, the pair of boys' heads painted in tempera on linen in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, the "Madonna with the Pink" at Augsburg, and the portrait of Wolgemut at Munich, all of 1516. Among engravings of the same time are three Madonnas, the apostles Thomas and Paul, a bagpiper and two peasants dancing, and three or four experiments in etching on plates of iron and zinc. In wood-engraving his energies were almost entirely given to bearing a part--which modern research has proved to have been not nearly so large as was traditionally supposed--in the great decorative schemes commanded by the Emperor Max in his own honour, and devised and carried out by a whole corps of men of letters and artists: namely, the Triumphal Gate and the Triumphal March or Procession. A third and smaller commemorative design, the Triumphal Car, originally designed to form part of the second but in the end issued separately, was entirely Dürer's own work. A far more successful and attractive effort of his genius in the same service is to be found in the marginal decorations done by him in pen for the emperor's prayer-book. This unequalled treasure of German art and invention has in later times been broken up, the part executed by Dürer being preserved at Munich, the later sheets, which were decorated by other hands, having been transported to Besançon. Dürer's designs, drawn with the pen in pale lilac, pink and green, show an inexhaustible richness of invention and an airy freedom and playfulness of hand beyond what could be surmised from the sternness of those studies which he made direct from life and nature. They range from subjects of the homeliest and most mirthful realism to others serious and devout, and from literal or almost literal transcripts of natural form to the most whimsically abstract combinations of linear pattern and tendril and flourish. Entry: DÜRER
In October 1500 Cesare again set out for the Romagna, on the strength of Venetian friendship, with an army of 10,000 men. Pandolfo Malatesta of Rimini and Giovanni Sforza of Pesaro fled, and those cities opened their gates to Cesare. Faenza held out, for the people were devoted to their lord, Astorre Manfredi, a handsome and virtuous youth of eighteen. Manfredi surrendered in April 1501, on the promise that his life should be spared; but Cesare broke his word, and sent him a prisoner to Rome, where he was afterwards foully outraged and put to death. After taking Castel Bolognese he returned to Rome in June, to take part in the Franco-Spanish intrigues for the partition of Naples. He was now lord of an extensive territory, and the pope created him duke of Romagna. His cruelty, his utter want of scruple, and his good fortune made him a terror to all Italy. His avidity was insatiable and he could brook no opposition; but, unlike his father, he was morose, silent and unsympathetic. His next conquests were Camerino and Urbino, but his power was now greatly shaken by the conspiracy of La Magione (a castle near Perugia where the plotters met). Several of the princes deposed by him, the Orsinis, and some of his own captains, such as Vitellozzo Vitelli (q.v.), Oliverotto da Fermo, and G.P. Baglioni, who had been given estates but feared to lose them, joined forces to conspire against the Borgias. Risings broke out at Urbino and in Romagna, and the papal troops were defeated; Cesare could find no allies, and it seemed as though all Italy was about to turn against the hated family, when the French king promised help, and this was enough to frighten the confederates into coming to terms. Most of them had shown very little political or military skill, and several were ready to betray each other. But Cesare, while trusting no one, proved a match for them all. During his operations in northern Romagna, Vitelli, Oliverotto, Paolo Orsini, and the duke of Gravina, to show their repentance, seized Senigallia, which still held for the duke of Urbino, in his name. Cesare arrived at that town, decoyed the unsuspecting _condottieri_ into his house, had them all arrested, and two of them, Vitelli and Oliverotto, strangled (December 31, 1502). Entry: BORGIA
Biographical sketches of Manzoni have been published by Cesare Cantù (1885), Angelo de Gubernatis (1879), Arturo Graf (1898). Some of his letters have been published by Giovanni Sforza (1882). Entry: MANZONI
In July 1497 Cesare went to Naples as papal legate and crowned Frederick of Aragon king. Now that the duke of Gandia was dead, the pope needed Cesare to carry out his political schemes, and tried to arrange a wealthy marriage for him. Cesare wished to marry Carlotta, the daughter of the king of Naples, but both she and her father resolutely refused an alliance with "a priest, the bastard of a priest." In August 1498, Cesare in the consistory asked for the permission of the cardinals and the pope to renounce the priesthood, and the latter granted it "for the good of his soul." On the 1st of October he set forth for France with a magnificent retinue as papal legate to Louis XII., to bring him the pope's bull annulling his marriage with Jeanne of France (Louis wished to marry Anne of Brittany). In exchange he received the duchy of Valentinois, as well as military assistance for his own enterprises. He found Carlotta of Naples in France, and having again tried to win her over in vain, he had to content himself with Charlotte d'Albret, sister of the king of Navarre (May 1499). Alexander now contemplated sending Cesare to Romagna to subdue the turbulent local despots, and with the help of the French king carve a principality for himself out of those territories owing nominal allegiance to the pope. Cesare made Cesena his headquarters, and with an army consisting of 300 French lances, 4000 Gascons and Swiss, besides Italian troops, he attacked Imola, which surrendered at once, and then besieged Forli, held by Caterina Sforza (q.v.), the widow of Girolamo Riario. She held out gallantly, but was at last forced to surrender on the 22nd of January 1500; Cesare treated her with consideration, and she ended her days in a convent. The Sforzas having expelled the French from Milan, Cesare returned to Rome in February, his schemes checked for the moment; his father rewarded him for his successes by making him _gonfaloniere_ of the church and conferring many honours on him; he remained in Rome and took part in bull fights and other carnival festivities. In July occurred the murder of the duke of Bisceglie, Lucrezia Borgia's third husband. He was attacked by assassins on the steps of St Peter's and badly wounded; attendants carried him to a cardinal's house, and, fearing poison, he was nursed only by his wife and Sancha, his sister-in-law. Again Cesare was suspected as the instigator of the deed, and in fact he almost admitted it himself. Bisceglie was related to the Neapolitan dynasty, with whose enemies the pope was allied, and he had had a quarrel with Cesare. When it appeared that he was recovering from his wounds, Cesare had him murdered, but not apparently without provocation, for, according to the Venetian ambassador Cappello, the duke had tried to murder Cesare first. Entry: BORGIA
The most marked proof of the change which came over Italy towards the middle of the 14th century is furnished by the companies of adventure. It was with their own militia that the burghers won freedom in the war of independence, subdued the nobles, and fought the battles of the parties. But from this time forward they laid down their arms, and played the game of warfare by the aid of mercenaries. Ecclesiastical overlords, interfering from a distance in Italian politics; prosperous republics, with plenty of money to spend but no leisure or inclination for camp-life; cautious tyrants, glad of every pretext to emasculate their subjects, and courting popularity by exchanging conscription for taxation--all combined to favour the new system. Mercenary troops are said to have been first levied from disbanded Germans, together with Breton and English adventurers, whom the Visconti and Castruccio took into their pay. They soon appeared under their own captains, who hired them out to the highest bidder, or marched them on marauding expeditions up and down the less protected districts. The names of some of these earliest captains of adventure, Fra Moriale, Count Lando and Duke Werner, who styled himself the "Enemy of God and Mercy," have been preserved to us. As the companies grew in size and improved their discipline, it was seen by the Italian nobles that this kind of service offered a good career for men of spirit, who had learned the use of arms. To leave so powerful and profitable a calling in the hands of foreigners seemed both dangerous and uneconomical. Therefore, after the middle of the century, this profession fell into the hands of natives. The first Italian who formed an exclusively Italian company was Alberico da Barbiano, a nobleman of Romagna, and founder of the Milanese house of Belgiojoso. In his school the great condottieri Braccio da Montone and Sforza Attendolo were formed; and henceforth the battles of Italy were fought by Italian generals commanding native troops. This was better in some respects than if the mercenaries had been foreigners. Yet it must not be forgotten that the new companies of adventure, who decided Italian affairs for the next century, were in no sense patriotic. They sold themselves for money, irrespective of the cause which they upheld; and, while changing masters, they had no care for any interests but their own. The name condottiero, derived from _condotta_, a paid contract to supply so many fighting men in serviceable order, sufficiently indicates the nature of the business. In the hands of able captains, like Francesco Sforza or Piccinino, these mercenary troops became moving despotisms, draining the country of its wealth, and always eager to fasten and found tyrannies upon the provinces they had been summoned to defend. Their generals substituted heavy-armed cavalry for the old militia, and introduced systems of campaigning which reduced the art of war to a game of skill. Battles became all but bloodless; diplomacy and tactics superseded feats of arms and hard blows in pitched fields. In this way the Italians lost their military vigour, and wars were waged by despots from their cabinets, who pulled the strings of puppet captains in their pay. Nor were the people only enfeebled for resistance to a real foe; the whole political spirit of the race was demoralized. The purely selfish bond between condottieri and their employers, whether princes or republics, involved intrigues and treachery, checks and counterchecks, secret terror on the one hand and treasonable practice on the other, which ended by making statecraft in Italy synonymous with perfidy. Entry: V