Machiavelli's Florentine Histories is a work that is little read. It is consulted with some regularity, but rarely is it interpreted as a whole from which one might learn something of real significance. This neglect is understandable. It is not a comprehensive work like the Discourses on Livy or The Prince, each of which according to Machiavelli himself contains all he knows. The object and scope of the Florentine Histories is relatively limited, focusing more narrowly on what Machiavelli is willing to say to a Florentine pope about the actions of the Florentine people. Not only does the work seem to offer less; it requires more: it is Machiavelli's longest, appreciably longer than the already sizeable Discourses on Livy and seven times longer than The Prince. More forbidding still is that no writing—except perhaps the Book of Numbers—seems to contain as many names per square inch. Yet among the stalwart few to have sifted through the intricate accounts of Italian and Florentine affairs, there exists a consensus as to what the work is really about: the internal disorders of the city of Florence. The agreement is shared by interpreters as diverse as Harvey C. Mansfield, Gisela Bock, Anthony J. Parel, and John Najemy.Footnote 1 There are good reasons for believing that this is Machiavelli's subject, problem, or theme, the foremost of which is that he seems to say as much in the preface to the work (FH, preface 6–7).Footnote 2
Amid so much scholarly concord and with encouragement from Machiavelli himself, it is easy to lose sight of the straightforward sense in which foreign affairs and war, “outside things,” predominate in the work: more than twice the number of chapters overall are devoted to outside things than to inside things. Indeed, the individual discussed more frequently than any other in the work is a non-Florentine mercenary captain: Francesco Sforza. Even more striking is the fact that more chapters mention this one mercenary than mention the two figures most often taken to be the chief subjects (or even protagonists) of the work, Cosimo de’ Medici and his grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent.
This predominance is not merely quantitative;Footnote 3 it extends to matters pertaining to the very intention, structure, and substance of the work. For although the work's intention is almost universally taken to pertain to internal as over against external affairs, a careful reading of the dedicatory letter and preface suggests that Machiavelli's intention is to lay bare the essential character of the relation between outside and inside things in the modern world. And although it purports to be structured around Medici ascendancy in Florence, the Florentine Histories is at least as much organized with respect to the rise of the “two sects” of mercenary arms to heights from which they are able to act as “the arbiters of Italy” (The Prince 12.53; FH V 2.187). In addition, a substantive examination of the first and most comprehensive of its eight books and of the relation between the house of Medici and the house of Sforza will reveal the fundamental dependence of the former on the latter to be the chief factor determining the narrative line of the work overall. Finally, a sketch of the work's key transitions and structural anomalies confirms the importance to the work as a whole of foreign affairs and war and sheds revealing light on Machiavelli's teaching regarding the desirability of a certain type of domestic unity.
Overall, I will suggest that 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, papal meddling, and rentier wealth, and urgently counsels statesmen to furnish their cities with their own arms as the indispensible condition for resisting (without, however, fundamentally reforming) the corrupt system of foreign affairs and its pernicious influence on domestic politics. The chief theoretical insight gained from my overall account of the rise and influence of this system pertains to the magnitude and character of the influence of foreign affairs on domestic affairs under the Christian dispensation: when a universal religion (one that transcends the boundaries of individual states and, not incidentally, appeals to the hopes of the peoples of those states) gains predominance and seeks to influence states by means of its vicars, affairs transcending the boundaries of those states (foreign affairs and war) become especially determinative factors of domestic affairs, and attempts to counteract those factors require deliberate efforts to construct domestic unity of a particular kind. The domestic affairs of Florence were decisively affected by outside powers, most clearly by papal intervention, various versions of the strife between Guelf and Ghibelline, and the resulting destruction of the Florentine nobility, to which Machiavelli himself attributes Florence's unarmed condition. This condition (shared by the other major Italian powers for different but related reasons) is part of the corrupt system; by changing that condition from unarmed to armed in an individual state, the overall system will not be changed; nonetheless, it allows that one state to resist and, to some degree, opt out of this corrupt system, as shown by the career of the true protagonist of the work, Francesco Sforza.
Intention and Structure
The work's dedicatory letter and preface direct our attention to events redolent with military and foreign-policy significance and provide the basis for inferring the work's intention, which pertains to the relation between inside and outside things; an examination of how the actual structure of the work deviates from the plan proposed in the preface indicates that foreign policy considerations provide the literal context for all other considerations, further underlining the importance of outside things and focusing attention on mercenaries in general and on Francesco Sforza in particular.
Dedication and Preface
A more or less naive cataloguing of allusions and references to foreign affairs and wars in the Dedicatory Letter leads us face to face with a most fateful event in the history of Florence: the destruction of the nobility and, therewith, the prospect of a natural locus for an armed citizenry. Three allusions to foreign affairs and war and one explicit reference to arms find their way into the Dedicatory Letter, which is addressed to the Medici pope who, before he ascended to the papacy, had facilitated Machiavelli's commission by another Medici pope to write about “the things done by the Florentine people” (FH, DL 3). The three allusions refer to (1) the many “disasters” and princes with which Italy overturned its states after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, (2) the “ranks and commands” attained by the four principal powers of Italy other than Florence, and (3) Florence's removal from submission to the Holy Roman emperor. While naming the third, Machiavelli mentions, without yet identifying it as such, a major subject of books II–IV, the divisions within Florence, usually taken to be the most important theme of the work as a whole. Machiavelli writes, “You will see how your fatherland, which had removed itself, through its division, from submission to the emperors, remained divided until the time when it began to govern itself under the shadow of Your House” (FH, DL 4). The time when Florence began to govern itself under the Medici's protection or shadow could be said to date as far back as when Giovanni de’ Medici began to secure the preeminence of his family (FH IV 3), but no later than when Cosimo returned from exile in 1434 (FH IV 33). The specific division referred to is the conflict between the Guelfs, in general affiliated with the pope, and the Ghibellines, usually associated with the Holy Roman emperor. The Guelf victory over the Ghibellines in Florence represented a major step in the destruction of the Florentine nobility, the decisive factor, as we shall see, in Florence's lack of its own arms.
Machiavelli makes only one explicit mention of arms, in the letter's conclusion. He expresses to the pope the hope that he will be “helped and defended by the armed legions of your most holy judgment” (FH, DL 5). Machiavelli here refers explicitly to more than the personal favor the pope has shown him; whether he refers to the pope's general function as the leader of the Church Militant or anticipates the advent of the Inquisition some thirty years in the future,Footnote 4 this much is clear: Machiavelli's only explicit martial reference is to intellectual, spiritual, or moral, as opposed to physical, arms.Footnote 5 He goes on to add the pledge that he will continue to “pursue [his own] campaign [impresa]” with “the same intent and confidence” with which he has written until now as long as he lives and is not abandoned by “Your Holiness.” Under this broad construal, the reference to spiritual arms is a bow within this more limited work to Machiavelli's larger project, undertaken in his posthumous, comprehensive writings. Most narrowly construed, the passage alludes to Machiavelli's full commission to continue his treatment of the deeds of the Florentine people up to his own times; more broadly understood it refers to his overall activity as a writer.Footnote 6 Machiavelli writes as though he intends to remain on a spirited and confident campaign that is supported and defended by the armed legions of the pope's holy judgment. Indeed, his own campaign is carried out by means of writing and under the “shadow” of the Medici house.Footnote 7
Be this as it may, it is in the preface that Machiavelli explicitly links the question of his intention to that of the work's plan—and this despite the fact that he says precisely nothing about his ultimate intention in writing the Florentine Histories. The preface does say, in its very first words, what Machiavelli's “intention” (Lo animo mio) had been when he initially decided to write on the actions of the Florentine people at home and abroad (dentro e fuora); and, toward its conclusion, it says what his “plan” (proposito) became by the time he actually wrote the work (FH, preface 6, 8). His intention, he explains, had been to begin with “the year of the Christian religion 1434,” but after noticing the complete or near silence on internal discords and their effects in the histories written by Leonardo Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini, he critically considered the factors that may have accounted for these writers’ restraint regarding internal affairs. He reports at last that these factors “made me change my plan, and I decided to begin my history from the beginning of our city.” This decision led in turn to an adjustment of his initial decision to treat, apparently in equal detail, inside and outside affairs: he will now shift more attention to internal affairs. Then raising for the second time the question of his intention, he identifies his principle for including outside events before 1434: only those necessary for knowing inside events will be included. He states, “And because it is not my intention [intenzione] to take the place of others, I will describe in detail until 1434 only things happening inside the city, and of those outside I will tell only what is necessary to a knowledge of the things inside” (FH, preface 8). It turns out that a great many outside things are required for understanding considerably fewer inside things.
This disproportion must be seen in light of the clear implication contained in his assertion that he will recount only those outside things necessary for an understanding of inside things: we are informed in advance that every outside event mentioned by Machiavelli has a necessary connection, whether as condition or cause, to some inside event or events. The question becomes what that connection is.Footnote 8 My contention is that to answer this question is the intention of the work: to lay bare the necessities governing the relations between outside things and inside things for modern Florence. It is worth adding that this intention is to be fulfilled without giving offense unnecessarily (FH, preface 7–8) and in a manner useful to republican statesmen (FH, preface 6).Footnote 9 Accurately situating the place of foreign affairs and war (outside things) within the work is, therefore, all the more important.
The very distinction between the inside and the outside of cities constitutes the ground on which Machiavelli deliberates regarding the plan of his work. Though Machiavelli said in the letter that he had been commissioned to write on “the things done by the Florentine people” (FH, DL 3), at the beginning of the preface he imposes a particular division of Florentine actions, distinguishing the things done inside from the things done outside.Footnote 10 His decision (deliberazione) so to divide his subject matter would seem to have been concurrent with his initial intention to begin his narration in 1434, the year of Cosimo's return from exile and the rise to preeminence of the Medici; his decision would have preceded, and was therefore the condition of, his reconsideration of his initial intention and his arrival at the resulting plan for the whole work. Had he not so divided his subject matter he would not have found the treatment of his predecessors wanting with respect to one side of the division, that of inside things. What, then, is the plan built on the distinction between inside and outside things?
The Plan of the Work
The work as presented is “constructed to and from 1434,” as Mansfield observes.Footnote 11 That initial presentation is as follows.
Book I: Events in Italy (from around the time of Rome's fall [AD 410]) up to 1434.
Books II–IV: Events in Florence up to 1434.
Book II: From its origins through the expulsion of the duke of Athens and up to the war (of the Otto Santi) against the pope (in 1375).
Book III: Up to the death of Ladislas, king of Naples, in 1414.
Book IV: Up to 1434.
Books V–VIII: Events inside and outside Florence up to “our present times.”
This outline indicates that book I will deal with things throughout Italy, and therefore with things outside Florence,Footnote 12 up to 1434; books II–IV will treat inside things up to 1414, dealing with only those outside things “necessary to a knowledge of the things inside” (FH, preface 8); and V–VIII will deal with inside things and outside things together. How well does Machiavelli stick to his plan? The answer: not very, as he himself acknowledges and explains on more than one occasion.Footnote 13 For war and foreign policy obtrude into this scheme earlier, more often, and in more significant ways than the initial presentation of the plan would lead one to expect.Footnote 14
The preface raises the expectation that book I is to proceed through 1434, but an examination of the relevant passages at the end of book I upsets this expectation and does so in such a way as to underline further the central importance of foreign affairs and mercenaries in the Florentine Histories. More specifically, the passages point to the leaders of the “two sects of arms” whose story will begin to dominate the entire narration near the very center of the work (V 1 end, 2 beginning).Footnote 15 For when we turn to the last chapter of the first book (FH I 39), we find that Machiavelli has taken us not all the way to 1434, but only “nearly to those times that [he had] planned.” More precisely, he stops abruptly at the deaths of Braccio da Montone at the hands of Francesco Sforza and of Braccio's son, Oddo, while in the hire of Florence, and the consequent rise of the mercenary Niccolò Piccinino to the “highest reputation” among those who had fought with Braccio himself (FH I 38). This squaring off of Francesco Sforza against Niccolò Piccinino had taken place by 1427, seven years short of the explicitly promised date of 1434. What occurs in the intervening years?
When we turn to the delayed treatment of these missing seven years, we find accounts of two extremely costly wars for Florence which dominate book IV, purportedly dedicated to things inside Florence.Footnote 16 These two wars, one pitting Florence and Venice against Filippo Visconti's Milan and the other between Lucca and Florence, were two of the three “outside actions” mentioned in the preface as evidence of Florence's great potential,Footnote 17 but also as reasons for Machiavelli to treat inside actions occurring before 1434 as opposed to outside actions during the same period (FH, preface 7). These wars cost Florence dearly in financial terms, but more significantly they precipitate the exile of Cosimo de’ Medici. For it is the virulent civil discord regarding payment for the wars that pushes Cosimo to the brink of being executed and, in the end, forces him to take exile as a bargain. In the midst of these partisan tempests it is noted by the even-handed Niccolò da Uzzano that Cosimo has regularly “helped” certain condottieri with his own money (FH IV 27).Footnote 18 The “favors” Cosimo had used within to gain support (which now makes him difficult if not impossible to oppose internally) were used without to gain “partisans” there as well. Cosimo's wealth is revealed to transcend the difference between the inside and the outside of Florence perhaps as effectively as the spiritual powers of popes. In any case, this notice of Cosimo's pay to condottieri prepares for the revelation in his eulogy that Cosimo's most bitter regret in his dying days was his relationship with Francesco Sforza. For although Sforza was in his pay, he failed to do Cosimo's bidding when Cosimo felt he needed Sforza most (FH VII 6.284). Thus the premature stop near the end of book I at 1427 rather than at 1434 as promised in the preface has led us to detect a key textual link between Cosimo and Sforza—which is as much to say between money and arms, a subject to which we will return.
More importantly, the fact that the stopping point itself is the thread picked up again at the beginning of book V reinforces the suspicion that the crucial event of the work is less the return of Cosimo than it is the rise of these mercenary armies. Indeed, the first chapter of book V presents itself as a new beginning. It mirrors book I in scope and manner of treatment. It treats all of Italy; it recapitulates the ruin of ancient Rome; and its theme is Italy's unarmed condition due in large part to mercenary captains whose names are listed at the end of book I and whose ways are identified at the beginning of book V. The Medicean glory years—from the time of Cosimo's return to Florence in 1434 to the ousting of Lorenzo's son in 1494 two years after Lorenzo's death—are introduced as a distinct period in a mere subordinate clause and only as an example of the vileness in which Italy as a whole is kept by “weak and badly directly armies” (FH V 1.186). After the thematic reassessment of Italy's unarmed condition and the role of mercenaries therein, the narrative proper of book V begins by providing the true outside source of Cosimo's return. Neither the machinations of his supporters nor the simple missteps of his opponents within the city were sufficient to facilitate Cosimo's return; instead, the pope's persuasion of Cosimo's enemy, Rinaldo degli Albizzi, to lay down his arms was the key factor, as underlined at the end of book IV (FH IV 32–33). Then at the very beginning of the narrative of book V we are informed of the cause of the pope's presence in Florence: he had been driven out of Rome by the Romans who hoped to stave off attacks by both “sects of arms,” Braccio's and Sforza's (FH V 2.187). If up until now armed mercenaries and unarmed popes had been correlative terms, from now on the mercenaries become the masters; and if sects in general are the cause of Italy's ruin (FH VII 1), these sects of mercenary soldiers have become the chief such cause. Filling out the picture of the structure of the work as a whole, in the transition to what can now be called the last part of the work (books VII–VIII), Machiavelli admits that for an entire two books, ever since the “two sects of arms” came on the scene at the beginning of book V, he has given his readers over to a narrative nearly unalloyed with any considerations of internal Florentine politics.Footnote 19 He begins with a justification of his deviation from the plan to keep inside and outside things together. He says that “our history would be less understood and less pleasing, especially since the wars in which the Florentines were compelled of necessity to intervene arose most times from the actions of other Italian peoples and princes: thus, from the war of Jean of Anjou and King Ferdinand arose the hatreds and grave enmities that later ensued between Ferdinand and the Florentines, and particularly with the Medici family.” The king's indignation over the favor granted by the Florentines to his enemy in that war “was the cause of very great evils, as our narration will show” (FH VII 1.276). That narration will be sketched below in the account of relations between Sforza and Cosimo.
We can now say that book I bears the same general relation to books II–IV that books V–VI bear to books VII–VIII. That relation is one of outside things to inside things in which the rise of mercenary arms outside Florence provide the context for treating the discords inside Florence.Footnote 20 To develop and test the utility of this insight (which is essentially literary rather than substantive or theoretical), I will turn first to the substance of the first book and its continued narrative in books V–VIII and then to key transitions and anomalies of the structure I have just sketched.
The Substance
Examinations of the first, most comprehensive book of the Florentine Histories, and of the relation between the house of Medici and the house of Sforza that unfolds later in the work, reveal the fundamental dependence of the major Italian powers on mercenary arms.
Book I
Book I deals with events outside of Florence up to 1427; it establishes the context for the next three books, which are supposed to be preoccupied with things inside Florence. The foreign is literally prior to the domestic in the Florentine Histories. Machiavelli writes book I so that “this history … may be better understood in all times.” This timeless understanding will be provided in what Machiavelli later calls “our universal treatise” (FH II 2.54) by tracing the many “accidents” in Italy from just before the fall of the Roman Empire up to or near 1434; but it will not be a random recitation of events. Instead, it proves to be a retrospective account, one whose telling of past events is deliberately determined by a later state of affairs. For Machiavelli says that he “will describe by what means Italy came to be under those powers that governed it in that time,” that is, by or around 1434. What were the powers that governed Italy in that time, and why does Machiavelli bestow on them the distinction of functioning as the lens through which we must view his only overarching treatment of the history of Italy?
The end of that treatment is one obvious place to turn for an answer: the substance of the last chapter of that book makes arms the crucial consideration. In it Machiavelli wishes to “call to mind briefly in what straits Italy found itself, in regard to both princes and arms, in the times at which we have arrived in our writing.” The pair “princes and arms” might appear to give equal weight to politics and to war, but when he goes on to discuss these straits, it turns out that they are so dire precisely because princes, both republican and monarchical, lack their own arms for a variety of reasons, and Italy has become a playing field for the ambitions—petty and otherwise—of mercenary captains. By 1427, the pope lacks arms because they do not befit him as a man of religion, Queen Giovanna II of Naples lacks them because she is a woman, Milan and Venice through their own bad choice, and Florence because it lacks a genuine nobility, relying instead on men sustained by trade.
When one keeps firmly in mind the specific reason Machiavelli offers this sketch of Italian history, book I takes on a discernible form. As it relates major events from just before the fall of Rome up to 1434, it gives accounts of the genesis of four of the five major powers named above, leaving the account of the genesis of Florentine power for books II–IV (though significant asides regarding Tuscany and Florence occur throughout book I). Pervading the book are the fate and effects of Rome as the seat first of the dying Roman Empire and then of the rising papacy. The destruction of ancient Rome and the initial rise of modern Rome are recounted in chapters 1–9.Footnote 21 Although the tale of how each Rome came to its unarmed condition is the most striking feature of the book, one should not underestimate the significance of the three parallel accounts. The three other major powers dealt with explicitly in book I are treated respectively in the next three sections of book I: Naples in chapters 10–21 on the papal-imperial rivalry; Milan in chapters 22–27 on the declining influences of the French, the emperor, and the church; Venice in chapters 28–30 on Italy's “new condition” (FH I 28) in the aftermath of the pervasive influence the Guelf-Ghibelline humors. After a suggestive, one-chapter interlude on one “Niccolò di Lorenzo” (referred to after his first mention as just “Niccolò”)Footnote 22 who sought to “restore [Rome] to its ancient form” with himself as tribune, the remaining chapters, 32–38, chart the final course toward the unarmed condition of all the major powers. The last section thereby prepares the way for the recounting of the dominance of mercenaries in the book's last chapter. What were the means, then, by which “Italy came to be under those powers?”
The first section of book I, on the fall of ancient Rome and the rise of modern Rome, begins with the vestiges of the ancient Roman Empire. It is common knowledge that in the Discourses on Livy, and to a lesser extent in The Prince, the ancient Romans serve as a kind of model for Machiavelli; hints regarding the pernicious effects and the ultimate corruption and collapse of empire of the ancient Romans are easily missed amid the glowing praise of their exemplary virtue. Ancient Rome's virtues are in full view while its defects are kept just over the horizon. In the first chapters of the Florentine Histories the situation is just the reverse: we are fleetingly reminded of ancient Rome's grandeur and are then straightaway subjected to a narration of its death and dismemberment, followed by accounts of the invasion of Italy by Attila (said to have been thwarted by the pontiff's prayers), the seizure of Rome by the Heruli king Odovacer, his death at the hands of the Ostrogoth Theodoric who established order and protected against new barbarian invasions, and, finally, the forays into Italy of the Eastern emperors’ generals which issue at last in the Longobards’ division of Italy and the rise of papal authority. For our purposes, the main points to be noted are what can be called the causes of Rome's fall, of the subsequent integrity of Italy as an entity, and of the rise of the papacy.
The first chapter offers a sketch of the destruction of the Western Roman Empire. The necessity of peoples in the productive regions of northern Europe to unburden themselves of inhabitants is complemented by an opportunity in the south afforded them when the emperors vacated Rome in their eastward move from Rome to Constantinople.Footnote 23 The barbarians had to leave the north, and they had somewhere plentiful to go. This necessity and this opportunity of the barbarians were not sufficient, however, to account for the fall of the empire. “And truly, the ruin of so great an empire, founded on the blood of so many virtuous men, could not have occurred except with the indolence of princes, the infidelity of ministers, and the force and considerable obstinacy of those who attacked” (FH I 1.9; my translation). In what did this indolence of princes, infidelity of ministers, and force and obstinacy of enemies consist? There is one and the same answer for each: the payment of mercenaries. For the emperor Theodosius was the first to give “a stipend” to the Goths,Footnote 24 the minister Stilicho denied pay to the barbarians in order to stir them up, and the barbarians sacked Rome as retribution for this denial and as recompense for their loss.
After a century of devastation related to the difficulties of managing mercenaries, it is unclear whether Italy would have existed as a distinct entity if not for Theodoric, who “was in war and peace a most excellent man” (FH I 4.13). He established his seat in Ravenna and restored to the Romans all honors except, of course, that of military training. His military prowess and prudent management of the many barbarian kings—not to mention cruelties inflicted on well-known holy men—gave not just Rome and Italy but much of the Western empire a respite from continual barbarian batterings (FH I 4.14).
After Theodoric's death, in an effort to unseat the usurper and murderer of Theodoric's daughter, the Eastern emperor Justinian sent the great general Belisarius. Following two forays into Italy, the first more successful than the second, Belisarus is recalled in order to repel a Parthian invasion of the Eastern Empire,Footnote 25 and he is replaced by Narses, a “most excellent man in war,” who entirely eliminates the Goths from Italy. Then comes the event that precipitates the Longobard invasion of Italy and consequent rise of papal authority. After his successful military campaign against the invading barbarians, Narses is recalled by the Eastern emperor at the behest of the emperor's wife Sophia. Wise it is for a prince to secure himself against his own successful captains. Machiavelli's advice elsewhere, however, is to do so before, not after, the success, lest the captain punish in advance the prince's inevitable ingratitude.Footnote 26 Rather than strike the blow himself, the indignant Narses persuades the Longobards to conquer Italy, thereby supplying the pope the lever he needs to increase his authority. For the pope then successfully plays the Longobards off against the emperors in the East (i.e., “the Greeks”). The indignation of a successful foreign captain at the ingratitude of his prince thus precipitates the rise of papal authority.
The sketch of papal authority at its peak is revealing. Initially, princes had “necessarily” to submit to the Christian religion (which was much extended by examples of the holy lives and miracles of popes) so as to dispel the great confusion in the world (FH I 9). This confusion was presumably the uncertainty described at the end of I 5: struggles between the customs of the ancient pagan faith and the miracles of the new Christian faith caused tumults and discords, and the Christian religion itself was disunited by struggles among the churches of Greece, Rome, and Ravenna and among heretical and “catholic sects,” leaving miserable men uncertain as to where to turn, thereby adding misery to misery.Footnote 27 Despite princes’ need to submit to the Christian religion, papal authority initially did not increase beyond reverence for the popes’ “customs and learning.” Until, that is, the popes’ abovementioned triangular diplomacy, which led to a significant increase in their temporal authority. In particular, the Roman people itself looked to the pope as “almost” its ruler because of the protection he was able to provide (cf. FH I 14 and I 19.30).
Machiavelli then makes the announcement that “in describing what has happened from those times until our own, no more will be shown about the ruin of the Empire, which is all in dust, but rather the expansion of the pontiffs and of the other principalities that governed Italy afterwards until the arrival of Charles VIII will be shown” (FH I 9). As to the papacy, the reader will see how popes became “terrible and awesome” first through censures, then through indulgences mixed with censures and arms; and how through using both badly they have lost censures—an effective tool for inspiring awe and terror—and remain at others’ discretion with regard to arms.Footnote 28
The disjunction between “censure and arms” is puzzling. The Dedicatory Letter led us to think of the pope's arms as spiritual.Footnote 29 This meaning is indeed held to by Machiavelli throughout the Florentine Histories, as when he talks about the severe spiritual wounds suffered by Henry IV and the ineffectuality of the pope's spiritual arms when manifestly used for the pope's own benefit against fellow Christians. In these cases, his censures are his arms. A pope also makes indirect use of literal arms when he declares crusades and hires mercenaries. The arms used with some success in the Crusades were in the decisive Machiavellian respect the pope's own auxiliaries,Footnote 30 since they were in some measure “under his captains … and paid by him” and most decidedly “under his insignia,” which is the central consideration.Footnote 31 He seems even to have used mercenary arms well, at least for a time.Footnote 32 In any case, Machiavelli's strange announcement alerts us to the fact that the expansion of the principal powers of Italy, especially of the papacy, will remain a theme not just to the end of book I but for the rest of the work. He thereby bolsters the idea that the Florentine Histories is at least as much a book about foreign affairs and war throughout Italy as it about the internal affairs of Florence.
In the succeeding sections of book I, Machiavelli turns to the origins and eventual disarming of three other major powers. The Kingdom of Naples is presented in the next section as a papal invention, and we are given a suggestive if specious account for its customary name of “the Kingdom”: it is so named because it is the modern, Italian “Jerusalem” (I 20). It was created by the pope to counterbalance the power of the emperor in Italy just as the emperor had been used to counterbalance the Longobards and other Italian powers when the Eastern empire could no longer perform that function. Machiavelli's account of the Kingdom's creation is bounded on one end by Henry's bringing of the “seed” of the Guelf and Ghibelline parties in chapter 15 and, on the other, by Frederick II's sowing of that same seed six chapters later in chapter 21, for it is in chapters 16 and 20 that he tells the tale of the Kingdom. Machiavelli goes on in the third section of book I to present the rise of the Visconti in Milan as a chief instance of the “sprouting” and “multiplying” of those Guelf and Ghibelline seeds. But leaving no male offspring of his own, Filippo Visconti is left with no heir. “Thus,” says Machiavelli in one of the few instances of explicit foreshadowing in book I, “that state was transferred from the house of Visconti to that of Sforza in the mode and for the causes that will be told in their place” (I 27). We are thereby alerted to stand by for the account of the mercenary Sforza's seizure of Milan, deemed, with Machiavellian tact, a transfer. Finally, as the Guelf and Ghibelline humors wane, Venice is shown to emerge as the arbiter of disputes in ItalyFootnote 33 from its long relative isolation from the rest of Italy. This isolation had resulted from having been chased from fertile regions by the invasion of Attila the Hun and later spared by the same, perhaps because of papal prayers, and then having been left alone as an unintended result of papal meddling (FH I 29.40–41).
Florence, the fifth major Italian power, is dealt with only briefly in book I, as already mentioned. When Machiavelli does turn his attention to Florence in earnest at the beginning of book II, he culls those elements from the preceding book that are most crucial to his account of Florence's decline into its unarmed condition. The “Villa Arnina,” the trading post that eventually becomes Florence, begins in the safety of the peace due to Rome's conquest of Carthage and grows during Rome's civil wars when Sulla and then the second triumvirate send colonies to Fiesole. It is later destroyed by Totila during barbarian invasions and rebuilt by Charlemagne, from whose time until 1215 Florence could not “grow or do anything worthy of memory” because of its subjection to the Roman Empire, presumably the Holy Roman Empire (FH II 2). Doubly born in peaceful times, initially for the sake of trade as Villa Arnina under ancient Rome and again as a colony under the second triumvirate, Florence was at the mercy of subsequent invasion and holy subjection—hardly a martial provenance in any regard.Footnote 34
In the midst of these principal powers emerge the Italian condottieri. Like the major Italian powers, they arise in no small part from papal machinations. For they evolve from the foreign mercenary and auxiliary troops left over after the crusades, from functioning as papal bodyguards, and from papal-imperial struggles (FH I 34; see the mention of John Hawkwood [I 32]).Footnote 35 They are readily seized upon by the five major powers and put to use from then on. But of all these mercenaries, of most interest to us is he who from mercenary made himself prince, as delicately underlined in book I (FH I 27.39):Footnote 36 Francesco Sforza, for it is he who dominates the latter half of the Florentine Histories, explicitly in books V–VI and implicitly to the very end of the work.
Francesco Sforza versus Cosimo de’ Medici
Sforza's brilliant seizure of power from his Milanese paymasters is recounted with relish by Machiavelli (FH VI 17–24). Yet it ultimately issues in a puzzle: why does Sforza stop with Milan? He does make a brief bid to take Venice, but thwarted by French fecklessness and Florentine fears of his growing power (FH VI 26–31), he retreats into a defensive posture for the remainder of his days. Never once does Machiavelli blame his refusal to make something more grand of his dukedom in Milan.Footnote 37 Cosimo de’ Medici, by contrast, is haunted unto death by Sforza's betrayal of him in not taking Lucca as promised; Sforza had instead “changed his mind with his fortune and, when he became a duke, wanted to enjoy that state in the peace that he had acquired with war; therefore, he did not try to satisfy either Cosimo or anyone else by any campaign. Nor, after he became duke, did he wage any wars other than those necessary to defend himself” (FH VII 6.284). In a work by nearly any other author, no puzzle would be presented by the change in a victorious warrior from a mind bent on war to one dedicated to enjoying the fruits of peace. In fact, nothing would seem more reasonable.Footnote 38 However, in a writing by an author infamous for praising “his Romans” for thinking only of war—and offensive war at that—and for exhorting princes to have no other object nor take up any other art than that of war,Footnote 39 we cannot help but wonder at Machiavelli's apparent approval of Sforza's inaction and subsequent defensive posture.
A partial solution is suggested by the problem of the structure of the work detailed above: it purports to be about the discords of Florence and ordered around the rise of the Medici but is in fact more about the disordering forces outside of Florence and the rise of the condottieri. Substantively, the narrative of the work focuses attention on the severe limitations of Cosimo de’ Medici's abilities to deal with discords within Florence (whose government was “unbearable and violent for the eight years it lasted” up to Cosimo's death [FH VII 4.279]) and to make any glorious acquisition outside Florence—limits linked to his inability to control the mercenary arms that dominated events. Having sought to assist Sforza in his hour of greatest need, and having always been Sforza's faithful counselor and lavish benefactor (FH VI 23, see VII 19.298), Cosimo ended his days in deep distress over Sforza's steadfast failure to reciprocate his benefactions.
It distressed the greatness of his spirit that it did not appear to him that he had increased the Florentine empire by an honorable acquisition and he grieved all the more as it appeared to him that he had been deceived by Francesco Sforza, who while he was count had promised him that as soon as he had become lord of Milan he would make a campaign against Lucca on behalf of the Florentines. … This was the cause of very great vexation to Cosimo, for it appeared to him that he had endured trouble and expense to make an ungrateful and unfaithful man great. It appeared to him, besides this, that, because of the infirmity of his body, he could not bring his former diligence to public or private affairs, so that he saw both being ruined because the city was being destroyed by the citizens [through discord] and his substance by his agents and his sons. All these things made him pass the last years of his life in disquiet. (FH VII 6.284)
In the midst of civil discord and debilitating corruption, the unarmed Cosimo dies the anguished dupe of Francesco Sfroza, duke of Milan and erstwhile mercenary.Footnote 40
Contrasted with the picture of Sforza's relatively peaceful and satisfying success, Machiavelli's depiction of Cosimo's end underlines the fact that Sforza wields the most reliable temporal power; he and his kind are the arbiters of Italy. Indeed, Sforza correctly identifies the only real obstacle to his own and his heirs’ continued security: fellow mercenary Jacopo Piccinino, whom he handily dispatches by means of guile, now using rather than being used by both the king of Naples and the pope (FH VII 7–8). Machiavelli's condensed treatment of Sforza's death and its aftermath sharpens further the contrast and connection between Sforza's and Cosimo's respective fates. He reports in the last lines of one chapter, “The pope died in the year 1454, and Paul II, of Venetian birth, was elected to the pontificate. And so that almost all the principates of Italy would change government, in the following year Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, also died, sixteen years after having seized the dukedom, and his son Galeazzo was declared duke” (FH VII 9.287). In the immediate sequel he asserts that “the death of this prince caused divisions in Florence to become stronger and to produce their effects more quickly. After Cosimo died, his son Piero” called on Cosimo's trusted advisor—who nearly ruined him, aided in no small part by discords consequent to Sforza's death (FH VII 9–10.287; VII 11–15). The vexations of the unarmed House of Medici at the hands of the armed “House of Sforza” do not end until the work itself is concluded. It literally closes with an ominous backhanded eulogy of Lorenzo, echoing an earlier assertion that the “ruin of Italy” (FH VIII 18.339) would arise from the unchecked ambition of Ludovico Sforza, governor of Galeazzo's young son. In 1494 Ludovico Sforza would call in the barbarian French, who would in turn throw Italy into turmoil and cause the Medici to be thrown out of power: “But whether [the princes of Italy] had just cause to mourn [Lorenzo], the effect of his death demonstrated shortly after; for when Italy was left deprived of his advice, no mode was found for those who remained either to satisfy or to check the ambition of Ludovico Sforza, governor of the duke of Milan. Therefore, as soon as Lorenzo was dead, those bad seeds began to grow which, not long after, since the one who knew how to eliminate them was not alive, ruined and are still ruining Italy” (FH VIII 36.363; see I 22.33). As the overall narrative reveals, it was not so much the content of Cosimo's and Lorenzo's advice that afforded them some influence in Italian affairs; rather, their erstwhile management of their external affairs, much as that of their internal, had been entirely dependent on their wealth which could induce but cannot compel.Footnote 41
The case of Cosimo and Sforza shows how very dangerous it was to use a mercenary soldier at that time and place; but by just that much and for just the same reasons, it could be a very good thing—at least for a time—to be a mercenary soldier. The most successful temporal power within Florence, the unarmed Cosimo de’ Medici, saw better than other Florentines that the surest way to beat—at least for a time—his domestic opponents was by using his “fortune” to induce to action the least unreliable powers of his times, the mercenaries. In the absence of arms of one's own, the only way to gain credit for protecting one's city was by means of wealth, underlining how the system of foreign affairs drives the internal affairs of such a city: the wealth can rise to the top since only they can pay the price, namely, cash to condottieri. Nothing could make more clear the precariousness of this type of rule and the firmness of rule based on one's own arms than Sforza's seizing of Milan, his betrayal of the wealthy Cosimo, and his ability to opt out of the inherently unstable system after his demonstrated inability to dominate it—let alone transform it altogether. On the other hand, it is just as clear that Sforza, too, is enmeshed in a perverse system (FH VI 1) whose origin and center is the papacy. Indeed, mercenary captains and priests are correlative terms, mirror images of one another, the armed and the unarmed, maintaining one another in existence even as they undermine the integrity of the political powers that fill their coffers.
Domestic Unity and Arms of One's Own
Having established (1) the importance of foreign affairs and war in the Florentine Histories as well as (2) the function of Francesco Sforza as a marker of sorts for the possibility of resisting or withdrawing from the corrupt system of foreign affairs and war, we are at last in a position to turn with clearer eyes to the question generally taken to be the question of the work: domestic discord and unity. The work's key transitions not yet discussed (from book II to III, III to IV, and VI to VII) contain problematic accounts of the relation between having arms of one's own, on the one hand, and discord and unity, on the other. The resolution of these problematic accounts issues in a crucial clarification of what we can provisionally call Machiavelli's doctrine of tumults as it relates to military preparedness.Footnote 42 To anticipate, there are two senses of domestic “unity” in Machiavelli's lexicon, one that cannot be attained and ought not to be striven for and another that is generally desirable and even necessary for military success. In the first sense, “unity” is understood as harmony among domestic parties dedicated to the common good. In the second, it is understood as standing together against outside forces. The former type of unity is a chimera, while the latter is of the essence of Machiavelli's counsel to republican rulers—and having arms of one's own is the indispensible condition of its success.
The first transition to consider, that from the second to the third books, occasions some of Machiavelli's most revealing comments on the essential difference between antiquity and modernity, represented respectively by the Roman republic and Florence. Machiavelli describes pitched battles throughout the streets between the people and the nobles; military language abounds, though he does not go so far as to use the word “war.” He notes that “the cause by which Florence was stripped not only of its arms but of all generosity” was “the ruin of the nobles” in these street battles. The ruin “was so great and afflicted [the nobles’] party so much that they never again dared to take up arms against the people” (FH II 41–42; emphasis added). Directly following this conclusion of book II is a reflection on the character of domestic discord that one would expect to be relatively free of military considerations. On the contrary, the chief cause and chief effect of domestic divisions pertain to “arms.”
The table 1 below shows how clashes between the people and the great in Florence and in Rome differed in their immediate effects, the goals of the parties, and the ultimate results of the conflicts within the two cities. (Factors related to arms are in bold.) Whereas in Rome the enmity led to disputes, new laws, an increase in military virtue, and a change from equality to inequality, in Florence it led to fighting, exiles and executions, the elimination of military virtue, and a change from inequality to equality. In Rome the people had the reasonable desire to enjoy honors with the great, so the great yielded without recourse to arms, while in Florence the people had the “injurious and unjust desire” to be alone in government without participation from the nobles, with the result that the nobles readied powerful forces for their own defense which in turn gave rise to the exiles and deaths already mentioned. When the people beat the great in Rome, the people were elevated to the level of the great, thus increasing Rome's virtue and power; in Florence, by contrast, the nobles were dragged down to the level of the people, eliminating both their virtue in arms and their generosity of spirit with the consequence that the city became humble and abject. The end result, however, is a potentially happy one for Florence: in Rome virtue was eventually converted into arrogance, making a principality a necessity, but in Florence such a low point has been reached that it could be easily reordered into “any form” by a wise lawgiver.
Table 1 Natural Enmity between People and Nobles in Florentine Histories III 1
Part of the secret of Rome's success during its republican period was the ability to prevent a particular version of the eruption of war into politics, or the intrusion of the means of foreign policy and war into the sphere of domestic politics. It did so—in Machiavelli's presentation, at least—by making its domestic policy the perfect servant of its foreign policy, by ordering itself for perpetual war.Footnote 43 Yet the result was not only that the Romans were able to keep foreigners from conquering them and to enrich themselves through the conquest of others; they also very rarely took up arms against one another. Their tumults did not become civil wars, at least not for hundreds of years. There is little reason to think that Machiavelli considered this relative domestic peace to be an end in itself; nonetheless, a—if not the—crucial difference between Rome and Florence is that the former's inside remained a zone of peace—tumultuous peace to be sure, but peace all the same—while the latter's inside was a perpetual battleground.
One might hope to find an institutional, domestic reform that would issue in the transformation of self-destructive Florentine discord into other-destructive Roman tumult. One such reform with special promise can be sought in the means of administering civil disputes through laws requiring witnesses as opposed to unsubstantiated calumny.Footnote 44 Yet at its fleeting high point, Florence had such institutions (FH II 12, 15), and “unity” as well,Footnote 45 but to no avail: precipitous is its decline from this peak to the already mentioned destruction of the nobility and therewith of military excellence. In fact, as Machiavelli offers the account schematized in the table above, he directs his readers to take a retrospective glance at book II, “which showed the birth of Florence and the beginning of its freedom, with the causes of its divisions, and how the parties of the nobles and people ended with the tyranny of the duke of Athens and ruin of the nobility” (FH III 1.106). Throughout book II, the Florentine people seeks time and again to constitute itself as an entity independent of the nobility by depending on the intervention of one or another outside force, whether papal, imperial, or mercenary: the people is not content to share in the great's authority but seeks instead to exclude the great from any authority through recourse to outside authorities or forces.Footnote 46 These outsiders alternately tyrannize over both parties (as does the duke of Athens), ineffectually seek to bring about the unity of the two groups (as do the pope, one of his legates, and one of his bishops), and more effectually give greater authority to the people (as does the pope). For their part, the nobles prepare ever more extreme measures to protect themselves, issuing in the abovementioned street battles that result in the nobles’ destruction as a natural locus of military excellence. These three types of actors (the people, outside powers, and the great) are trapped in a dynamic fueled from without primarily by papal and mercenary ambitions and from within by the people's unreasonable desire to be alone as well as by the purses—and credit—of the rich such as Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici. Every reader of Machiavelli knows that the effectual truth of papal power is the predominance of fortune (as opposed especially to virtue); our reading of the Florentine Histories brings into sharp relief the fact that within Florence the meaning of fortune is wealth. The effectual truth of papal power is, indeed, the reign of fortune: that of soldiers of fortune without and bankers’ fortunes within.
Other instances of less fleeting Florentine unity are noted by Machiavelli. Among the most significant is that contained in the work's next key transition, from book III to book IV, wherein both unity and military success seem to go hand in hand. At the end of book III, outside things predominate in a transition replete with dates from 1400 to 1434 (FH III 29). Machiavelli nearly begins by noting that Pisa was “won gloriously” and ends by commenting that “the state that had ruled from 1381 to 1434 … had made so many wars with such glory and had acquired” many towns “for its empire. And greater things would have been accomplished if the city had maintained itself united and if the old humors had not been rekindled in it.” Military success might be thought to have issued from unity, but Machiavelli is quick to observe its origin in chance: were it not for the unanticipated death of Florence's enemy, Ladislas, king of Naples, the outcome could easily have been otherwise. Nonetheless, for the third time Florence is said to have enjoyed “unity.” These claims are especially odd in light of a pronouncement made in the last key transition, from book VI to book VII. There Machiavelli asserts that unity is impossible. In keeping with his revolutionary celebration of tumults in the Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli says that “those who hope that a republic can be united are very much deceived in this hope” (FH VII 1.276). How to account for the contradictory assertions of the reality and the impossibility of unity?
Gisela Bock resolves this contradiction by shifting the terms: Machiavelli means not that unity is impossible but that it is undesirable in that it tends to accompany repressive principalities (which she assumes Machiavelli opposes) while disunity tends to accompany diverse republicanism (which she assumes he supports).Footnote 47 Mansfield, by contrast, suggests that Machiavelli's deep bows to unity early in the work should be disregarded as merely provisional indulgences of his audience in preparation for the later unveiling of the genuinely Machiavellian truth of the necessity of tumults.Footnote 48 Gilbert reports others’ consideration of the possibility that the contradiction should be attributed to a development in Machiavelli's thought over time.Footnote 49 No such explanations are called for, however, since Machiavelli's use of “unity” is consistently inconsistent, from the earlier and more clearly Machiavellian Discourses on Livy to the later, less obviously Machiavellian Florentine Histories. Machiavelli attributes unity both to his putatively despised modern Florentines and to the ancient Romans whom he extolled precisely because of their tumultuous domestic affairs. In one of Machiavelli's most important statements on domestic discord, he refers without ado to Roman unity: “So great was [the Veientes’] temerity and insolence that the Romans from being disunited became united and, coming to fight, broke [the Veientes] and won. … The Veientes believed that by assaulting the disunited Romans they would conquer them; and this assault was the cause of the union of the latter and of their own ruin. For the cause of the disunion of republics is usually idleness and peace; the cause of union is fear and war.”Footnote 50 A fearless, insolent enemy caused the apparently divided Romans to unify out of fear of losing in war.Footnote 51 From such use of the language of unity in both works we should infer that for Machiavelli there is a chimerical unity of domestic harmony born of dedication to the common good and a martial unity of standing together due to manifest military necessity. For the latter unity to have even a chance of success, there must be well-ordered arms with which to fend off the common enemy. In the exemplary case of the ancient Romans as presented by Machiavelli, the arms are well ordered and deeply embedded in the heart of the regime; in lesser cases, the arms are as close to the heart of the regime as circumstances allow.Footnote 52 In the Florence of Machiavelli's aspirations when he served as secretary of the Second Chancery, circumstances required that the arms be literally neither too close nor too far: they could not be given to citizens within the walls of Florence proper owing to widespread fears they would be used on fellow citizens, nor could they be given to subject cities in Florence's Tuscan dominions which might use them to rebel. Instead, they would be given to contadini, denizens of the countryside surrounding Florence who were far enough away to be free of Florentine factions and close enough to be thoroughly subject to Florentine authorities.Footnote 53
Indeed, from Machiavelli's playful suggestions that the Florentine Histories is an unfinished work,Footnote 54 Gilbert earnestly derives the most plausible explanation for what Machiavelli is driving at. “If one takes into account the drift of the Istorie Fiorentine toward an evaluation of the present and the increasing stress on the need for ‘armi proprie,’ it is not far-fetched to infer that Machiavelli wanted to end the Istorie Fiorentine as he had ended his other political writings: that Florentine and Italian history were joined in the same grim fate, that the desperate situation in Italy could be remedied if the Italian themselves took up arms.” Gilbert goes on to suggest not just the unity of Machiavelli's thought over time but “the unity of [his] thought and action. For when Machiavelli appeared in Rome in 1525 he presented to the Pope not only the manuscript of the Istorie Fiorentine. He submitted to him also a political plan to arm the people of the Romagna; it was his old project of the armi proprie adjusted to the situation of the Papacy.”Footnote 55 Gilbert attributes Machiavelli's recurrent and profligate agitation for arms of one's own to his passionate desire for Italy's liberation from the barbarians. All well and good. It is nonetheless important to consider seriously the possibility that any passion he might have felt never clouded his ability to choose well the rhetoric in which to couch his particular counsels born of clear-eyed recognition of the necessities of human life. That counsel—given as freely to his fellow republican Florentines when he held office as to both the Medici rulers of Florence shortly after they threw him out of office and the aspiring super-Borgias in The Prince and would-be neo-Roman republican rulers in his Discourses on Livy—was to arm yourself with arms of your own. It was an action as ironic as it was consistent to submit to a Florentine pope a book that relates the progressive disarming of Italy and Florence due to the meddling of popes and the predations of their mercenary counterparts and to offer at the same time to the same man a proposal to arm his papal dominions in the Romagna.
Irony and theoretical consistency notwithstanding, practical utility to citizens governing republics is what Machiavelli sought to provide.Footnote 56 In the preface he says, “If any lesson is useful to the citizens who govern republics, it is that which shows the causes of the hatreds and divisions in cities, so that when they have become wise through the dangers of others, they may be able to maintain themselves united” (FH, preface 6). I have sought to show that unity of a kind was a practical goal consistent with Machiavelli's writings on civil discord and that possessing arms of one's own was an urgently needed remedy to the debilitating effects of contemporary corruption and the type of domestic discord peculiar to the Christian era. Indeed, the destruction of nobility in that era, as represented by Florence, and of the natural hierarchy and attendant systems of honor, represented by Rome, make clear that “to maintain themselves united” will require a new foundation that will allow for a reconfiguration of the relation between inside and outside powers. For a full explication and justification of such a founding, one must turn to Machiavelli's truly comprehensive works, The Prince and Discourses on Livy.
