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War and Foreign Affairs in Machiavelli's Florentine Histories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2012

Christopher Lynch
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Abstract

This article argues that issues of war and foreign affairs predominate in Machiavelli's Florentine Histories, a work generally taken to be devoted to the internal politics of Florence. The well-known narrative of the rise and fall of Medici rule is in fact driven by a counternarrative of the rise of mercenaries such as Francesco Sforza to the point of becoming the true arbiters of Italian affairs. The Florentine Histories lays out the progressive disarming of Italian powers, details the rise of a corrupt system of foreign affairs dominated by mercenary arms and their attendant papal meddling, and urgently counsels statesmen to arm their cities with arms of their own. Seeking to reframe interpretive approaches in this manner, the article sheds new light on Machiavelli's teaching on the desirability of well-managed domestic discords as they relate to military preparedness.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 74 , Issue 1 , Winter 2012 , pp. 1 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2012

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References

1 See Mansfield, Harvey C., Machiavelli's Virtue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 137CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bock, Gisela, “Civil Discord in Machiavelli's Istorie Fiorentine,” in Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. Bock, Gisela, Skinner, Quentin, and Viroli, Maurizio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 181–201Google Scholar; Parel, Anthony J., The Machiavellian Cosmos (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 140–52Google Scholar; Najemy, John M., “Machiavelli and the Medici: The Lessons of Florentine History,” Renaissance Quarterly 35, no. 4 (1982): 551–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 In citations of the Florentine Histories (FH) Roman numerals refer to book, followed by Arabic numerals referring to chapter and then page numbers in Machiavelli, Niccolò, Florentine Histories, trans. Mansfield, Harvey C. and Banfield, Laura F. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; “DL” refers to the dedicatory letter. Unless otherwise indicated the Italian edition of Machiavelli's works used is Tutte le opere, ed. Martelli, Mario (Florence: Sansoni, 1992)Google Scholar.

3 One hundred sixty-four are on outside things and 80 on inside things; the remaining chapters are on both.

4 See Godman, Peter, From Poliziano to Machiavelli: Florentine Humanism in the High Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 303Google Scholar.

5 See Strauss, Leo, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 35, 102, 106, 138, 171–72Google Scholar.

6 The phrase “so long as life does not leave me” clearly encourages a broader reading in that Machiavelli might well have hoped to live beyond the moment he completed the final installment, if he in fact genuinely intended to write the promised sequel (see note 54 below). This broader reading would comport well with Mansfield's thesis that the Florentine Histories is part of a long-term intellectual war against Christianity. Although my argument does not proceed on this intellectual plane, its results can be transferred to it.

7 Mansfield translates ombra as “shelter” (FH, DL 4); cf. the shade under which the discussion staged in the Art of War takes place (AW I 12–15). The Art of War, which is explicitly on arming oneself with one's own arms, takes place under the protective shadow or shade of cultivated but natural ancient growths; the narration in Florentine Histories of the disarming of Italy takes place under the shadow of a “house” inhabited by popes.

8 Mansfield asserts that Machiavelli says his “‘intent’ … is to write on ‘the things done inside and outside by the Florentine people’” (Machiavelli's Virtue, 137). Yet Machiavelli says only what his intent had been before he looked more deeply into Bruni's and Bracciolini's histories of Florence and, later in the preface, what his “intention” (intenzione) is not, namely, to take the place of others. Thus Machiavelli says what his intention had been but no longer is by the time of writing, as well as what his intention is not: he never says explicitly what his intention is. The work's intention—as opposed to its overt “problem or theme,” the causes of Florence's divisions (Machiavelli's Virtue, 127)—is therefore something of a puzzle.

9 The problem or theme itself (namely, “the causes of the hatreds and divisions”) may turn out to be both more general and more practical than it might appear even to the most careful interpreters (see Mansfield, Machiavelli's Virtue, 127). For in Martelli's text (Tutte le opere, 632) the passage is about the causes of the hatreds and divisions of “cities” in the plural and therefore in general, not those of the city of Florence in particular, as Gaeta (used by Mansfield) takes it to be. If Martelli's text is correct, as the context would seem to indicate, then the problem or theme concerns the practical utility to citizens governing republics of writings that “show” the causes of these hatreds and divisions more than it does the theoretical striving to seek those causes.

10 The division is his own in the sense that it seems not to have been part of his commission. His predecessor, Leonardo Bruni, made the same distinction in the opening of his History of the Florentine People, even if Machiavelli faults him for excluding civil discords from his discussion of inside things. Consider also the structure of the Discourses on Livy, where the distinction between inside and outside things, as well as that between public and private counsel, determines the work's structure (see Discourses on Livy I 1.6 and II pr. 3); see Gilbert, Felix, History: Choice and Commitment (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977), 141, 488n53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Mansfield, Machiavelli's Virtue, on the public–private distinction.

11 Mansfield, Machiavelli's Virtue, 140.

12 There are only two mentions of Florence and six mentions of Florentines in book I proper (excluding, that is, the last, summary chapter [39]), and not one concerns things inside Florence. More precisely, and adding Tuscany into the equation, in chapters 1–38 there are nineteen mentions of Tuscany in thirteen chapters, one mention of Tusculans and one of Tusculum in two separate chapters, two mentions of Florence in two chapters, and six mentions of Florentines in four chapters. In chapter 39, there is one mention of Tuscany, two of Florence, and three of the Florentines.

13 Gilbert notes the “rather artificial” organization of the work and comments on the “form of presentation, which, because of its complexity, has not been carried through by Machiavelli in any systematic manner” (History: Choice and Commitment, 146), without noting Machiavelli's explicit observations on and reasons for his deviations, thereby precluding the discovery of his purposes. For a good précis of the genetic accounts of the order of the work see Cochrane, Eric, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 267–68 and 533n39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 The only events named by Machiavelli in his outline relate to hostile outsiders: the duke of Athens, the pope against the Florentines under the rule of the “Otto Santi,” and Ladislas of Naples.

15 There are 286 chapters in the Florentine Histories; FH V 1 is the 144th chapter.

16 In book IV, only nine of the thirty-two chapters proper (the first being an inquiry into the theme of liberty and license, in keeping with the custom of the other books) can be said to concern inside things only (chapters 9, 10, 16, 27–29, 31–33, though even these last three involve very significant papal intervention in Florentine affairs and could therefore be considered in the group including inside and outside more or less equally); only one can be said to be predominantly about inside things while including some outside things (chapter 14); ten can be said to concern inside and outside things more or less equally (chapters 2–5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 26, 30); the remaining twelve concern outside things predominantly or exclusively. Therefore, only seven to ten chapters can be said to concern themselves primarily with inside things, and only six of these are exclusively on inside things.

17 Not without a smile, in that neither benefited Florence.

18 See Discourses on Livy I 33.3 for a summary assessment of Niccolò da Uzzano's stance toward Cosimo's rise.

19 Only V 4, 15, 27 and VI 6, 7, 23 deal with events inside Florence; contrast Mansfield's assertion that the shift to foreign affairs in book V “accords with Machiavelli's plan” (Mansfield, Machiavelli's Virtue, 144).

20 See Mansfield, Machiavelli's Virtue, 331n17; Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 307n22 and 222, esp. n117, for a more complete treatment of the issue.

21 Machiavelli's treatment here and elsewhere in the Florentine Histories of the ancient and modern Romes helps to confirm the thesis of Sullivan, Vickie B., Machiavelli's Three Romes (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996), 3–4 and passimGoogle Scholar; for allusions to the possibility of a third Rome, see next note below.

22 See Mansfield, Machiavelli's Virtue, 332n28, for the suggestion that this “Niccolò” stands for Machiavelli; consider the suspicion of Gilbert, History: Choice and Commitment, 150, that Machiavelli “inserted a kind of self-portrait in the Istorie Fiorentine when he reported at somewhat astounding length on the execution … for his opposition to tyranny” of one “Girolamo Machiavelli.” A “Niccolò Savonarola” would have completed the thought and partially filled the historical lacuna discussed by Mansfield, Machiavelli's Virtue, 146–48.

23 See Discourses on Livy II 8.

24 See The Prince 13.57: “If one considers the first cause of the ruin of the Roman Empire, one will find it to have begun only with the hiring of Goths, because from that beginning the forces of the Roman empire began to weaken, and all the virtue that was taken from it was given to them.”

25 A final reminder of the defects of ancient Rome: see Discourses on Livy II 18; Art of War II 80 and III 123.

26 See Discourses on Livy, I 29–30.

27 Note both the significant reference to persecution (24 of the 33 uses of “persecute” and derivatives in Machiavelli's corpus occur in the Florentine Histories) and the acknowledgment of the psychic afflictions endemic to religious uncertainty, as well as the more expected acknowledgement of the human tendency (sogliono, the first word of The Prince) to seek help in God: “Living … among so many persecutions, men bore the terror of their spirit written in their eyes, because, aside from the infinite evils they endured, for a good part of them the ability of seeking refuge in God, in whom all the miserable are wont to hope [sogliono sperare], was lacking. Therefore, as the greater part of them were uncertain as to which God they ought to turn to, they died miserably, deprived of all help and all hope” (FH I 5.15; Mansfield translation modified).

28 This foreshadowing of the decline of the papal ability to inspire awe and terror through censures and arms leads one to wonder whether papal censures and arms could have been used well, at least from the popes’ point of view, but perhaps also from others’; contrast Mansfield's assertion (Machiavelli's Virtue, 161–62) that they were misused because they had to be.

29 See pp. 4–5 above.

30 Discourses on Livy II 20.

31 See The Prince 13.

32 A common misunderstanding of Machiavelli's own censure of the sin of relying on mercenary arms is the belief that they are always bad to use. But he is explicit in The Prince that it is their use over a “period of many years” that presents a problem; to use them for a time may be not only excusable but necessary, as in the case of Cesare Borgia (The Prince 12.49, 13.55).

33 Not to be confused with being the arbiter of Italy itself; see pp. 2–3 above.

34 See Mansfield, Machiavelli's Virtue, 67, 150, and 156–61.

35 See the translators’ note on FH I 32 for an instance of Machiavelli's inflation of papal power; see Caferro, William, John Hawkwood: An English Mercenary in Fourteenth-Century Italy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 130, 376n92Google Scholar.

36 See The Prince 1, 7, 12, and 14; Discourses on Livy II 24.2.

37 Indeed, in the Art of War (I 56–57) Machiavelli's Fabrizio compares Sforza and his seizing of Milan favorably to other mercenaries who made less of their arms and victories.

38 Consider Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1177b1–25.

39 The Prince 3, 14.

40 Macfarland, Joseph, “Machiavelli's Imagination of Excellent Men: An Appraisal of the Lives of Cosimo de’ Medici and Castruccio Castracani,” American Political Science Review 93, no. 1 (1999): 137CrossRefGoogle Scholar, rightly notes the unarmed Cosimo's “dependency on” the armed Sforza but stops short of recounting Cosimo's tortured condition due to Sforza's perfidy and ingratitude; see Mansfield, Machiavelli's Virtue, 145–46.

41 On this theme, see Discourses on Livy II 10.1.

42 Among Machiavelli's most radical departures from previous political philosophy is his teaching that domestic discord (tumulto), properly managed, is salutary. This teaching is rooted in another, that there are two natural humors, that of the people and that of the great; the people want not to be oppressed while the great want to oppress (Discourses on Livy I 5; The Prince 9).

43 See Discourses on Livy I 4–6; Art of War I 85.

44 See Mansfield, Machiavelli's Virtue, 166, 242–43.

45 Connell, William, “Machiavelli on Growth as an End,” in Historians and Ideologues: Essays in Honor of Donald R. Kelley, ed. Grafton, Anthony T. and Salmon, J. H. M. (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2001), 268Google Scholar.

46 Mansfield, Machiavelli's Virtue, 174. Consider also Discourses I 52 and I 9 for the implications of the destruction of the party of the nobility for Machiavelli's own activity: what could he do given that his natural party had destroyed itself by means of impossible alliances with its natural enemy? Arming himself with the people's favor in diverse modes was necessary (for which consider Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 344n108).

47 Bock, “Civil Discord in Machiavelli's Istorie Fiorentine,” 200–201.

48 Mansfield, Machiavelli's Virtue, 154.

49 Gilbert, History: Choice and Commitment, 148, 151; cf. Najemy, “Machiavelli and the Medici,” 551–52; and Hörnqvist, Mikael, Machiavelli and Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 286–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 Discourses on Livy II 25.1; later in the same chapter is another instance of fleeting Florentine unity.

51 Of equal importance is his attribution of domestic unity to both the Romans and the Swiss in Discourses on Livy II 12.3–4. For general statements favorable to domestic unity, see Discourses on Livy I 12.1–2 and III 11.1; Art of War I 241–52 (see IV 148–52). For other statements favorable respectively to French and Spanish, Roman, and Swiss unity, see Discourses on Livy I 55.2, I 33.5, and II 19.2; consider instances pertaining to Hannibal's diverse army (Discourses on Livy III 21.4) and Roman military unity (Discourses on Livy II 16.1, III 33; and Art of War, passim).

52 A useful treatment of the external channeling of internal disorder in Machiavelli's works is Fischer, Markus, Well-Ordered License (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000)Google Scholar.

53 Hörnqvist, Machiavelli and Empire, 144–45; for Machiavelli's own defense of his ordering of the Florentine militia, see Art of War I 148–70, VII 241; see also Bayley, C. C., War and Society in Renaissance Florence: The “De Militia” of Leonardo Bruni (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961), 283Google Scholar; and Lynch, Christopher, introduction to Art of War, by Machiavelli, Niccolò, ed. Lynch, C. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), xvi–xviiGoogle Scholar.

54 Cochrane, Eric, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 268CrossRefGoogle Scholar, weighs the ultimately inconclusive evidence about whether Machiavelli intended to continue his history; contrast the conviction of Gilbert, History: Choice and Commitment, 140–41, that it is incomplete. For more recent efforts that shed light on the question, see Fubini, Riccardo, Storiografia dell'umanesimo in Italia da Leonardo Bruni ad Annio da Viterbo (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2003), 195–210Google Scholar; and Jurdjevic, Mark, “Machiavelli's Sketches of Francesco Valori and the Reconstruction of Florentine History,” Journal of the History of Ideas 63, no. 2 (2002): 185–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The current study takes ex hypothesi as an ordered whole the work presented in May 1525 by Machiavelli to the Medici pope, Clement VII. Consider also Mansfield, Virtue, 146.

55 Gilbert, History: Choice and Commitment, 151; see Viroli, Maurizio, Niccolò's Smile: A Biography of Machiavelli, trans. Shugaar, Anthony (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 228–30Google Scholar; and Bayley, War and Society, 291–92.

56 See note 9 above.