MACHIAVELLI, NICCOLO Italian states man and writer, was born at Florence on May 3, 1469. His an cestry claimed blood relationship with the lords of Montespertoli, a fief situated between Val di Pesa and Val d'Elsa, at no great distance from the city. Niccolo's father, Bernardo (b. 1428), fol lowed the profession of a jurist. He held landed property worth something like £250 a year in English money. His son, though not wealthy, was never wholly dependent upon official income.
Of Niccolo's early years and education little is known. His works show wide reading in the Latin and Italian classics, but it is almost certain that he had not mastered the Greek language.
To the defects of Machiavelli's education we may, in part at least, ascribe the peculiar vigour of his style and his speculative origin ality. He is free from the scholastic trifling and learned frivolity which tainted the rhetorical culture of his century. He made the world of men and things his study, learned to write his mother tongue with idiomatic conciseness, and nourished his imagination on the masterpieces of the Romans.
Official Life.—The year of Charles VIII.'s invasion and of the Medici's expulsion from Florence (1494) saw Machiavelli's first entrance into public life. He was appointed clerk in the second chancery of the commune under his old master, the grammarian, Marcello Virgilio Adriani. Early in 1498 Adriani became chan cellor of the republic, and Machiavelli succeeded as second chan cellor and secretary. This post he retained for 14 years—until 1512. The masters he had to serve were the dieci di liberta e pace, who, though subordinate to the signoria, exercised a separate con trol over the departments of war and the interior. They sent their own ambassadors to foreign powers, transacted business with the cities of the Florentine domain, and controlled the military estab lishment of the commonwealth. Machiavelli was fully occupied in the correspondence of his bureau, in diplomatic missions, and in the organization of a Florentine militia. The first of his many missions to petty courts of Italy was in 1499, when he negotiated the continuance of a loan to Catherine Sforza, countess of Forli and Imola. In 1500 Machiavelli travelled into France, to deal with Louis XII. about the affairs of Pisa. These embassies were
the school in which Machiavelli formed his political opinions, and gathered views regarding the state of Europe and the relative strength of nations. They introduced him to the subtleties of Italian diplomacy, and extended his observation over races very different from the Italians. He acquired principles and settled ways of thinking which later he expressed in writing.
In 1502 Machiavelli married Marietta Corsini, with whom, in spite of his own infidelities, he lived on good terms; she bore him several children, and survived him twenty-six years. In the same year Piero Soderini was chosen gonfalonier for life, in accordance with certain changes in the constitution of the state, which were intended to bring Florence closer to the Venetian type of govern ment. Machiavelli suggested military reforms which Soderini adopted, and finally was involved in ruin by his fall.
In October 1502 he was sent, much against his will, as envoy to the camp of Cesare Borgia, in Romagna, and it was Machiavelli's duty to wait upon and watch him. He witnessed the intrigues which culminated in Cesare's murder of his disaffected captains. From Machiavelli's official letters, and from his tract upon the Modo the tenne it duca Valentino per ammazzar Vitellozzo Vitelli, we are able to appreciate the relations between the two men, and the growth in Machiavelli's mind of a political ideal based upon his study of the duke's character. Machiavelli conceived the strongest admiration for Cesare's combination of audacity with diplomatic prudence, for his adroit use of cruelty and fraud, for his self-reliance, avoidance of half-measures, employment of na tive troops, and firm administration in conquered provinces. More than once, in letters to his friend Vettori, no less than in the pages of the Principe, Machiavelli expressed his belief that Cesare Borgia's methods of conquest, the cementing of a new state out of scattered elements, and the dealing with false friends or doubtful allies, was worthy of commendation and imitation. Cesare Borgia became idealized in his reflective but imaginative mind. That Machiavelli separated the actual Cesare Borgia, whom he afterwards saw ruined and contemptible at Rome, from his radiant Duca Valentino, is probable.