Niccolò Machiavelli: Monster or Misunderstood?

At some point in the void of time that was 2020, I binged my way through Medici on Netflix in about a week and a half (100% recommend giving it a go if historical dramas are your thing). At the end of the last series, one of the side characters is revealed to be Niccolò Machiavelli. For the producers it was supposed to be a bit of, and I believe this is the technical term, an ‘Ahhh. Nice one,’ moment. And I’m sure it was for a lot of people. For me however, it was an ‘Ahhh. Doesn’t that guy’s surname mean something?’ moment. So, I did what any inquisitive mind would do in that situation and asked Google to tell me. Google was good enough to come back with, ‘cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous, especially in politics.’ Some consider him to be the father of modern philosophy, but I also found he is widely perceived to have possessed one of the most malevolent minds in political philosophy’s history. A Cruella Deville of Renaissance Florence if you will.

Being someone too interested in historical figures, particularly cunning and scheming ones, I became curious to learn more about this supposedly tyrannical thinker. His most famous works ‘The Prince’ and ‘The Discourses on Livy’ offer a sceptical view of the benefits ruling for the love of the people brings to rulers. He also accused the Catholic church and papacy of being too focused on involving themselves in political matters, which was having an adverse effect on society. In 1559, all of Machiavelli’s work was put on the Catholic Church’s ‘Index of Prohibited Books’. He wasn’t particularly popular with the Protestants either. In 1572, the French leadership (all devout Catholics) decided it was time to purge the Huguenots (the Protestant section of French society) from France’s population. In just a few weeks 50,000 Protestants were dead. Behind the attack on the Protestants was the France’s Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici. It was believed by the Huguenots that she had been inspired to instigate what could be classified as a genocide after reading Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’. So, despite dying 45 years before the genocide, Machiavelli copped much of the blame for the purge. Machiavelli also inspired many of Shakespeare’s most despicable characters, including Iago in Othello and Macbeth. In more recent popular culture, a search of Machiavellian characters will bring up comparisons to deviants like Littlefinger from Game of Thrones, Walter White from Breaking Bad and the evilest of all, Scar from the Lion King. And yet, when digging a little deeper into his life, the conclusion that Machiavelli was a tyrant seems harsh. He was a realist, it is probably fair to say an extreme pessimist, and I’m not sure he’d be getting an invite for the momentous return to The Barrel Project on 21 June. Crucially though, when you consider the context in which his beliefs were founded, his reputation as an arch-villain and philosopher of the most evil persuasions seem to me to be a stretch too far. But who wants to let the truth get in the way of a good story? Apparently I do. Enjoy.

Niccolò Machiavelli was born on 3 May 1469 in his family home, situated in the beautiful Tuscan countryside, south of Tuscany’s capital city, Florence. His family, though far from facing economic hardship, were the poorest family in the Machiavellian line. As such, the efforts that they made to create a perception of living a life of grandeur and majesty could be considered to be overcompensation; the reality of the situation was they lived on a shoestring budget in comparison to many of their peers. Niccolò’s father, Bernardo, was extremely well educated, kind and very well connected. Yet he never reached his full potential. There were three main reasons for this. Firstly, he was a public debtor and under Florentine law this made him ineligible to hold public office. Secondly, a member of his family was involved in a plot against Florence’s de facto rulers, the Medici family and although this plot occurred sometime before Bernardo was trying to forge a career for himself, it had yet to be forgotten. Finally, there were also question marks over his legitimacy, which had the effect of him being excluded from certain places in Florentine high society. Growing up in a household that was somewhat marginalised and always on the lookout for an opportunity to move up the social ladder, the young Niccolò would have been taking mental notes already.

Despite the shortcomings of his own career, Bernardo was still able to provide his children with an education capable of enabling them to excel in their own. In Florence, intellect and ability was seen as a more qualifying factor in employment than a person’s surname (although the right surname still remained a powerful tool and generally speaking it afforded you the best education). Therefore, in a Republic such as Florence, social mobility was more common than in most other European states. A good education meant a good chance of working as a lawyer or as part of the Florentine ‘civil service’, even if your father had not been up to scratch.

Throughout Machiavelli’s early life, it had also been a career boost to be on good terms with the Medici’s, the dominant family in Florentine politics throughout much of the fifteenth century. In 1492, Lorenzo de Medici (aka Lorenzo the Magnificent and star of season 2 & 3 of Netflix’s Medici) the man who had negotiated a fragile peace between the previously warring Italian states, a great patron of the Renaissance movement, and widely regarded as the most impressive of all the Medici’s, died. His son Piero assumed his father’s role in Florentine political life but possessed very little of Lorenzo’s diplomatic agility or political sense. This was to be to his detriment in 1494, when the French King, Charles VIII, embarked on a military exhibition backed by 25,000 soldiers (8,000 being Swiss mercenaries) to Southern Italian Kingdom of Naples, a Kingdom Charles had a loose claim on. His route there meant going across the Alps and then moving south through the Italian peninsula, which included a stop off at Florence.

After initially telling Charles VIII that Florence would remain neutral in his Neapolitan conquest, Piero became intimidated when Charles’ forces came marching into Tuscany with scant regard for the welfare of its land or inhabitants. In true Lorenzo the Magnificent style, Piero rode out to meet his potential foe and negotiated a deal that would see no harm come to Florence. Unfortunately for Piero (who would become known as Piero the Unfortunate) the agreement was wholly unacceptable to the people of Florence. The deal resulted in Piero agreeing to all of Charles’ demands, which included handing over a number of fortresses and two port towns, Livorno and Pisa. The Pisans were having none of it and rebelled, which pushed Florence’s economy further south than Pisa’s tower. After a revolt broke out back in the Tuscan capital, Piero and his family had to flee the city. Piero made three efforts to return in his lifetime, all of which failed, and he drowned in the Garigliano River in 1503, fleeing from a battle in the South of Italy after supporting the French in their second Neapolitan campaign (presumably with the expectation that should the French win back Naples, they would march up to Tuscany and hand Florence back to Piero). How unfortunate.

But before I continue further with the history of Florence and what this all has to do with Machiavelli, let me clear up the French invasion of Naples as succinctly as I can. After passing through Tuscany, and then the rest of Italy unopposed, Charles reached Naples on 22 February 1495, and was crowned King of Naples on 12 May. However, the states that had been so shocked by the French advance in 1494 had regained their composure; on 31 March 1495, the League of Venice was formed with the single purpose of defeating Charles VIII. The league consisted of the Republic of Venice (shock), the Papal States, the Kingdoms of Spain (mostly in the form of the Kingdom of Aragon (nothing to do with the King of Gondor)), the Holy Roman Empire, the Duchy of Milan, the Kingdom of Naples, the Republic of Genoa, the Duchy of Mantua and, from 1496, England. Hell of a lot of people to piss off that. On 20 May 1495, Charles VIII began his march back to France, leaving Naples heavily guarded. However, the Aragonese forces led by Ferdinand II (King of Aragon and who the League agreed was the rightful King of Naples) attacked the city and were victorious. Following the removal of Naples from French hands, the League went after Charles himself. They caught him, and on 6 July the Battle of Fornovo was fought. The League won, but Charles escaped and made it back to France. In 1498, at the age of 27, he died whilst preparing for another campaign. His invasion triggered fifty years of almost continuous warfare in Italy. The French would play a part in those wars to come, because they were not quite done with Naples. In 1501, Charles’ successor Louis XII reiterated the French claim on Naples and once again the city was occupied by French soldiers. The resulting war ended in victory for Ferdinand II once again, and Louis XII returned to France empty handed just as his cousin Charles VIII had done before him. Now the French were done with Naples.

Back to Florence. The departure of Piero and his family in 1494 had put a stop to Machiavelli’s plans of getting a job by means of sweet talking the Medici’s before it ever got going. It also left a power vacuum in Florence. That vacuum was soon filled by a highly controversial religious preacher, Girolamo Savonarola. Savonarola was a particularly divisive figure, who gained popularity in the early 1490s by exposing the corruption in Florence, largely sponsored or actively performed by the Medici’s. By 1494, he had built up quite the following, but he had also begun to make enemies of much of Florence’s elite. These Florentine elites formed a party called the Arrabbiati, and in that capacity went to the Pope to explain that the reason Florence would not join the League of Venice if asked was because of Savonarola’s influence. They told the Pope something needed to be done about him. Sure enough, Florence formally rejected the offer to join the League that came shortly after those discussions. On 21 July 1495, Pope Alexander VI invited Savonarola to Rome, asking him to preach what he was preaching to the people of Florence to the people of Rome also. Knowing the corruption that Pope Alexander VI himself was partial to, Savonarola feared it could end in his assassination and rejected the invitation. From that point on the communication from the Pope to Savonarola grew gradually more threatening. In 1498, as the forces opposing the preacher clawed back influence in the city, Savonarola saw his grip on power weaken. Eventually, the Arrabbiati were able to create a swell of protest amongst the people of Florence against Savonarola, whose prayers and preaching had failed to address the growing misfortune in Florence. He was arrested and taken from his convent in San Marco. Whilst imprisoned he was subjected to torture, along with two of his most fervent followers. The trial that followed was a forgone conclusion, his charges completely fabricated, but as the trial was backed by the Pope there was little he could do. He was sentenced to death by hanging and burning. Once again, Florence was left in political obscurity.

Up until this point, Machiavelli had been a political outsider. It was for precisely this reason that in 1498 Niccolò Machiavelli was elected as head of the Second Chancery at just twenty-nine years of age. This role put him in charge of Florence’s foreign affairs. In all, Machiavelli embarked on more than forty diplomatic missions in the role. It was during his time as head of the Second Chancery that he became close to Florence’s Gonfalonier (chief magistrate), Piero Soderini. Playing on their friendship, Machiavelli convinced Soderini that mercenaries were too unreliable and expensive to defend the city, and instead a people’s militia should be formed. Machiavelli took charge of this militia. By 1505, Machiavelli had control of Florence’s military and their diplomatic affairs. But a status quo was hard to impress during this period of Italy’s history, especially in the Florentine power struggle. In 1512 the Medici’s were back, this time with the support of the Holy League-backed Spanish. Soderini was deposed, and Machiavelli was also sent into exile (not before he’d been imprisoned and tortured). Stranded, he lived in his family home outside Florence’s walls; walls guarded by men that used to be his. Just as the tide of political turmoil had thrust Machiavelli into an improbable position of influence for a man of his inexperience, so too had it pushed his political career into the abyss.

This has been a fairly lengthy preface before discussing Machiavelli’s writing, but it was a necessary one all the same if I was to provide enough context to the motivations behind Machiavelli’s work. His most famous political treatise ‘The Prince’ (1513) was not meant to spark a political legacy that would survive for centuries. It was, in principle if not in practice, a job application to the Medici’s – now headed by Lorenzo II de Medici. Machiavelli, despite any misgivings he might have had about being tortured, saw the situation for what it was; the Medici’s were in power and he needed to regain their trust. The Medici’s returned to power in yet another time of upheaval. Florence needed, in Machiavelli’s opinion, a firmer hand than it had previously been shown. He had seen the inner workings of the courts and political mechanisms around much of Italy and in a decent chunk of the rest of Europe in his post as head of the Second Chancery. He saw the approaches that worked; more than that, he recognised the approaches that led directly to dissent. He had seen the people turn against the powerful and he had surmised that, in Florence at least, leniency was a synonym of complacency.

Perhaps the most striking argument Machiavelli makes in ‘The Prince’, and why his name has been given to mean cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous is, ‘it is much safer to be feared than loved because ... love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.’ Taken at face value, it is no surprise Machiavelli has been cast as a tyrant. But he saw the rise and ultimately fatal fall of Girolamo Savonarola. The preacher built up a fan base so passionate and obedient to his word they’d make Harry Styles stans look as tame as sloths on Xanax. On the back of that devotion Savonarola was able to elevate himself to be the primary authority figure in Florence despite making enemies of powerful individuals in Florence and Italy more broadly. But as his ability to deliver for the people faltered, he started to lose the love of the people. And that loss of love removed his armour. When blind love turns to blind rage, the previously devoted can turn vicious (just ask Zayn Malik). For all their money and influence, a disgruntled noble or dissatisfied Pope could not bring down Savonarola alone. They needed to turn the people against him. Had Savonarola been feared as well as or instead of loved, perhaps the people would not have felt buoyed enough to revolt. In the savage and sinister world of fifteenth and then sixteenth century Italian politics, Machiavelli’s advice had some merit from a logistical and authoritative viewpoint. Another quote that lends itself to the modern day understanding of Machiavellianism is, ‘never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.’ It ticks all the boxes of the modern day understanding of ‘Machiavellian’ behaviour. It would also tick all the boxes of a modern-day national intelligence agency’s strategic playbook. This piece of advice might not have been interpreted as deplorably conniving had Ian Fleming written those words to come out of James Bond’s fictitious mouth. The statement is also contradictory to the actions of Catherine de Medici in 1572, but maybe she, like the Huguenots, skipped that page.

Modern dictatorships and authoritarian regimes, such as those lorded over today by Kim Jong-un, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have zero tolerance towards dissent (perhaps it would be fair to say Putin’s Russia allows for the smallest notch of dissent, if it’s quiet enough – but that is only permitted begrudgingly). They also surround themselves with sycophants who fear the consequences of telling their leader no, just as the generations of dictators did before them. This is a situation Machiavelli warns against. ‘There is no other way to guard yourself against flattery than by making men understand that telling you the truth will not offend you.’ In layman’s terms, don’t surround yourself with Yes Men. This is a lesson taught throughout history. In 1592 (79 years after ‘The Prince’ was written) Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the man who unified Japan, was so enamoured by his own abilities to bring the sparring Japanese factions to heel that he believed his Samurai were capable of taking on the combined forces of Korea and China. After an initial push northward by the invading Japanese, the fighting in the Korean Peninsula soon turned into a stalemate. When the Chinese got involved though, the Japanese began to be pushed back. Hideyoshi had such a fierce and unpredictable temperament that his generals felt unable to tell him anything other than the campaign was going well. Hideyoshi became so out of touch with the situation that when it came to negotiating a peace deal, he demanded the Chinese allow Japan to take a sizeable portion of Korean land. The Chinese were so shocked by his outrageous demands that they returned with an offer of their own. Japan would become a Chinese subject. This was not good for Hideyoshi’s ego, but the situation was entirely of his own making. The war continued a little while longer, and when peace was eventually made, the Japanese gained nothing for the price of many Samurai lives. Had a copy of ‘The Prince’ washed up on the shores of Tokyo Bay, perhaps the end of his reign would have been less of a disaster.

Niccolò Machiavelli’s views on strong leadership are potentially macabre and definitely cynical, and if you were to apply the logic found in works such as ‘The Prince’ to the politics of today, when diplomacy and leadership is conducted in a much more civilised manner (despite the odd outlier to this slipping through the net) it would be more than concerning. But Machiavelli was writing this against the backdrop of a war-ravaged Italy when stability was difficult to attain. He aimed not to start a political movement, but to start a new career. He used his understanding of Florence’s troubles not to prolong them, but to suggest a way to bring them to an end. For that, I think it’s about time we cut Machiavelli a little slack.

Sources:

Podcast: Dan Snow’s History Hit – Machiavelli (with Alexander Lee)

https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/the-prince/critical-essays/machiavelli-the-devil

https://whatculture.com/offbeat/8-greatest-modern-day-machiavellian-characters

Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici | Italian ruler | Britannica

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Niccolo-Machiavelli

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1335445-de-principatibus-il-principe

Thanks for the help with that sentence Ollie.