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The Art of War.

Throughout both The Prince and the Discorsi are constant allusions to, and often long discussions on, military affairs. The Army profoundly interested Machiavelli both as a primary condition of national existence and stability, and also, as he pondered upon the contrast between ancient Rome and the Florence that he lived in, as a subject fascinating in itself. His Art of War was probably published in 1520. Before that date the Florentine Secretary had had some personal touch both with the theory and practice of war. As a responsible official in the camp before Pisa he had seen both siege work and fighting. Having lost faith in mercenary forces he made immense attempts to form a National Militia, and was appointed Chancellor of the Nove della Milizia. In Switzerland and the Tyrol he had studied army questions. He planned with Pietro Navarro the defence of Florence and Prato against Charles V. At Verona and Mantua in 1509, he closely studied the famous siege of Padua. From birth to death war and battles raged all about him, and he had personal knowledge of the great captains of the Age. Moreover, he saw in Italy troops of every country, of every quality, in every stage of discipline, in every manner of formation. His love of ancient Rome led him naturally to the study of Livy and Vegetius, and from them with regard to formations, to the relative values of infantry and cavalry and other points of tactics, he drew or deduced many conclusions which hold good to-day. Indeed a German staff officer has written that in reading the Florentine you think you are listening to a modern theorist of war. But for the theorist of those days a lion stood in the path. The art of war was not excepted from the quick and thorough transformation that all earthly and spiritual things were undergoing. Gunpowder, long invented, was being applied. Armour, that, since the beginning, had saved both man and horse, had now lost the half of its virtue. The walls of fortresses, impregnable for a thousand years, became as matchwood ramparts. The mounted man-at-arms was found with wonder to be no match for the lightly-armoured but nimble foot-man. The Swiss were seen to hold their own with ease against the knighthood of Austria and Burgundy. The Free Companies lost in value and prestige what they added to their corruption and treachery. All these things grew clear to Machiavelli. But his almost fatal misfortune was that he observed and wrote in the mid-moment of the transition. He had no faith in fire-arms, and as regards the portable fire-arms of those days he was right. After the artillery work at Ravenna, Novara, and Marignano it is argued that he should have known better. But he was present at no great battles, and pike, spear, and sword had been the stable weapons of four thousand years. These were indeed too simple to be largely modified, and the future of mechanisms and explosives no prophet uninspired could foresee. And indeed the armament and formation of men were not the main intent of Machiavelli's thought. His care in detail, especially in fortifications, of which he made a special study, in encampments, in plans, in calculations, is immense. Nothing is so trivial as to be left inexact.

The New Model.

But he centred his observation and imagination on the origin, character, and discipline of an army in being. He pictures the horror, waste, and failure of a mercenary system, and lays down the fatal error in Italy of separating civil from military life, converting the latter into a trade. In such a way the soldier grows to a beast, and the citizen to a coward. All this must be changed. The basic idea of this astounding Secretary is to form a National Army, furnished by conscription and informed by the spirit of the New Model of Cromwell. All able-bodied men between the ages of seventeen and forty should be drilled on stated days and be kept in constant readiness. Once or twice a year each battalion must be mobilised and manoeuvred as in time of war. The discipline must be constant and severe. The men must be not only robust and well-trained, but, above all, virtuous, modest, and disposed to any sacrifice for the public good. So imbued should they be with duty and lofty devotion to their country that though they may rightly deceive the enemy, reward the enemy's deserters and employ spies, yet 'an apple tree laden with fruit might stand untouched in the midst of their encampment.' The infantry should far exceed the cavalry, 'since it is by infantry that battles are won.' Secrecy, mobility, and familiarity with the country are to be objects of special care, and positions should be chosen from which advance is safer than retreat. In war this army must be led by one single leader, and, when peace shines again, they must go back contented to their grateful fellow-countrymen and their wonted ways of living. The conception and foundation of such a scheme, at such a time, by such a man is indeed astounding. He broke with the past and with all contemporary organisations. He forecast the future of military Europe, though his own Italy was the last to win her redemption through his plans. 'Taken all in all,' says a German military writer, 'we may recognise Machiavelli in his inspired knowledge of the principles of universal military discipline as a true prophet and as one of the weightiest thinkers in the field of military construction and constitution. He penetrated the essence of military technique with a precision wholly alien to his period, and it is, so to say, a new psychological proof of the relationship between the art of war and the art of statecraft, that the founder of Modern Politics is also the first of modern Military Classics.'

But woe to the Florentine Secretary with his thoughts born centuries before their time. As in The Prince, so in the Art of War, he closes with a passionate appeal of great sorrow and the smallest ray of hope. Where shall I hope to find the things that I have told of? What is Italy to-day? What are the Italians? Enervated, impotent, vile. Wherefore, 'I lament mee of nature, the which either ought not to have made mee a knower of this, or it ought to have given mee power, to have bene able to have executed it: For now beeing olde, I cannot hope to have any occasion, to be able so to doo: In consideration whereof, I have bene liberall with you who beeing grave young men, may (when the thinges said of me shall please you) at due times, in favoure of your Princes, helpe them and counsider them. Wherin I would have you not to be afraied, or mistrustfull, because this Province seemes to bee altogether given to raise up againe the things deade, as is seene by the perfection that Poesie, painting, and writing, is now brought unto: Albeit, as much as is looked for of mee, beeing strooken in yeeres, I do mistrust. Where surely, if Fortune had heretofore graunted mee so much state, as suffiseth for a like enterprise, I would not have doubted, but in most short time, to have shewed to the world, how much the auncient orders availe: and without peradventure, either I would have increased it with glory, or lost it without shame.'

The History of Florence.

In 1520 Machiavelli was an ageing and disappointed man. He was not popular with any party, but the Medici were willing to use him in minor matters if only to secure his adherence. He was commissioned by Giulio de Medici to write a history of Florence with an annual allowance of 100 florins. In 1525 he completed his task and dedicated the book to its begetter, Pope Clement VII.

In the History, as in much of his other work, Machiavelli enriches the science of humanity with a new department. 'He was the first to contemplate the life of a nation in its continuity, to trace the operation of political forces through successive generations, to contrast the action of individuals with the evolution of causes over which they had but little control, and to bring the salient features of the national biography into relief by the suppression of comparatively unimportant details.' He found no examples to follow, for Villani with all his merits was of a different order. Diarists and chroniclers there were in plenty, and works of the learned men led by Aretino, written in Latin and mainly rhetorical. The great work of Guicciardini was not published till years after the Secretary's death. Machiavelli broke away from the Chronicle or any other existing form. He deliberately applied philosophy to the sequence of facts. He organised civil and political history. He originally intended to begin his work at the year 1234, the year of the return of Cosimo il Vecchio from exile and of the consolidation of Medicean power on the ground that the earlier periods had been covered by Aretino and Bracciolini. But he speedily recognised that they told of nothing but external wars and business while the heart of the history of Florence was left unbared. The work was to do again in very different manner, and in that manner he did it. Throughout he maintains and insistently insinuates his unfailing explanation of the miseries of Italy; the necessity of unity and the evils of the Papacy which prevents it. In this book dedicated to a Pope he scants nothing of his hatred of the Holy See. For ever he is still seeking the one strong man in a blatant land with almost absolute power to punish, pull down, and reconstruct on an abiding foundation, for to his clear eyes it is ever the events that are born of the man, and not the man of the events. He was the first to observe that the Ghibellines were not only the Imperial party but the party of the aristocrats and influential men, whereas the Guelphs were the party not only of the Church but of the people, and he traces the slow but increasing struggle to the triumph of democracy in the Ordinamenti di Giustizia (1293). But the triumph was not final. The Florentines were 'unable to preserve liberty and could not tolerate slavery.' So the fighting, banishments, bloodshed, cruelty, injustice, began once more. The nobles were in origin Germanic, he points out, the people Latin; so that a racial bitterness gave accent to their hate. But yet, he adds impartially, when the crushed nobility were forced to change their names and no longer dared be heard 'Florence was not only stripped of arms but likewise of all generosity.' It would be impossible to follow the History in detail. The second, seventh and eighth books are perhaps the most powerful and dramatic. Outside affairs and lesser events are lightly touched. But no stories in the world have been told with more intensity than those of the conspiracies in the seventh and eighth books, and none have given a more intimate and accurate perception of the modes of thought and feeling at the time. The History ends with the death of Lorenzo de Medici in 1492. Enough has been said of its breadth of scope and originality of method. The spirit of clear flaming patriotism, of undying hope that will not in the darkest day despair, the plangent appeal to Italy for its own great sake to rouse and live, all these are found pre-eminently in the History as they are found wherever Machiavelli speaks from the heart of his heart. Of the style a foreigner may not speak. But those who are proper judges maintain that in simplicity and lucidity, vigour, and power, softness, elevation, and eloquence, the style of Machiavelli is 'divine,' and remains, as that of Dante among the poets, unchallenged and insuperable among all writers of Italian prose.