MACHIAVELLI

Am  I politic?" asks the host of the Garter Inn in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor. "Am I subtle? Am I a Machiavel?"
Niccold Machiavelli has been called worse things than "subtle." Since his death over four and a half centuries ago, the rules laid down by this Italian writer-statesman have frequently been thought of as a blueprint for aggression and dictatorship. Thomas Jefferson identified Machiavelli's name with "mean, wicked and cowardly cunning." Frederick the Great of Prussia became so disturbed by Machiavelli's writings that he wrote his own refutation of them. In England, it was long believed that Machiavelli's Christian name, NiccoI5, or Nicholas, was at the bottom of the phrase "Old Nick"-the Devil!
This uncomplimentary reputation rests largely on Machiavelli's best-known work, The Prince, a slender volume first published five years after the author's death and since translated into almost every known tongue. Among its "Machiavellian" passages: "There are two ways of fighting, the one by law, the other by force. The first is that of  men, the second of beasts. But as the first method is often insufficient, one must have recourse to the second. On "A prudent ruler ought not to keep faith when by so doing it would be against his interest."
But do such precepts, read out of context, justify dismissing the author as a total cynic? Studying his dramatic life and vast literary output, modern historians see him as one of the most impressive figures of his age, the first to probe into the rules of modern statecraft, brilliantly describing the game of power politics as, with minor variants, it is played today.

His driving force, they believe, was a devotion to his fatherland, which he "loved more than his own soul." And it is against the somber background of his "Italy"-an assortment of squabbling states whose petty jealousies made the beautiful peninsula a playing field of the great nations, France, Germany, Spain-that we must view his genius.
At the time of Machiavelli's birth there in 1469, the city of Florence was an independent state ruled with absolute power by the Medici family of wealthy bankers. When he was 25, the Medici were driven out, and four years later he was named Second Chancellor of what was now a free republic. Moving briskly through the gilded halls of Florence's Palazzo Vecchio, discussing urgent business with the city fathers, Machiavelli soon became known as a man whose knife-edge mind could penetrate a complex problem.
The questions put before Machiavelli covered the whole range of foreign and domestic politics. Thus the poorly paid bureaucrat often found himself riding across hot plains and over the snowy Apennines, bound on some diplomatic errand. His lack of wealth and family connections excluded him from being an "ambassador." But the Republic often staked its destiny on his superior judgment. Not without pride he styled himself, "Niccol6 Machiavelli, Secretary of Florence."

Mutual Admiration
An early assignment took him to the King of France, Louis XII, an ally who had sent the Florentines a mercenary army that had mutinied, and who expected to be paid for services not rendered. His most memorable mission was a winter spent with Duke Cesare Borgia, the bloodstained adventurer who was carving out a state in central Italy and who later became Machiavelli's "model" for The Prince. An illegitimate son of the infamous Pope Alexander VI, Cesare began operating close to Florence. Machiavelli rushed to Cesare's encampment to keep tabs on his intentions. All that Florence wanted, Machiavelli explained, was to observe neutrality.
The Duke, however, wanted an "alliance"-or, failing that, a golden ransom. During the long, tense sparring match that ensued, the two disparate men conceived a certain admiration for one another. The Duke savored his visitor's keen wit; Machiavelli, in turn, was fascinated with his host's vast plans and methods of consolidating his dominion. Eventually, Machiavelli's stalling tactics were successful. Florence never paid the demanded ransom, and before Borgia could attack, the Pope, his father, died, and his ill-gotten empire collapsed.
In all, Machiavelli was employed on about 30 major diplomatic missions and scores of minor ones. He went to France four times; travelled in Switzerland and the Tyrol; even visited Monaco for negotiations. He moved so swiftly that at times superiors addressed their letters to him "wherever the devil he maybe."
Machiavelli's instructions, as a rule, were deliberately vague," Keep an eye on things, and report often" or, "Along with facts, let us have your opinions." His natural curiosity made him the perfect spy, and his judgment  usually proved uncannily correct. On a mission, he was all eyes and ears. He thought nothing for example, of standing by the road-side and counting the pack mules in a hostile force.
Between such chores, there were moments of domestic happiness. Niccolo had married Marietta Corsini, a woman utterly devoted to him. In the narrow townhouse where they lived, friends came and went. Niccol6 played the lute, and there was gaiety and music.
Then, when he was 43, Machiavelli's happy state came to an end. The recently elected Pope Julius II, backed by Spanish allies, threatened Florence with assault unless the Medici were permitted to return from exile. The hard-pressed Florentines agreed, and the Medici resumed the political power from which the people had dislodged them 18 years before.

Finest Comedy
Dyed-in-the-wool republicans were purged from the administration, Machiavelli among them. Citizens were arrested right and left on charges of conspiracy against the ruling family, and Machiavelli himself was thrown into a dungeon for three weeks and tortured on the rack. Finally, in March 1513, an amnesty cleared out the jails, and Machiavelli was a free man again. But he was unemployed, and he found it unbearable. "Fortune has decreed that knowing nothing of silk manufacture nor the wool business, nor of profit or loss, I must talk politics, and unless I take a vow of silence, I must discuss them," he wrote.
Falling back on an inheritance, he settled, with his family, in a small stone house on the old Machiavelli farm some seven miles south of  Florence. There he wrote The Prince. The book was conceived as a manual for newcomers to power, and as a plea to the Medici to drive the foreigners from Italy and thus create-by force, if necessary-an Italian nation. "This barbarous foreign domination stinks in the nostrils of everyone," he wrote. "May your house therefore assume this task with that courage and those hopes which are inspired by a just cause, so that under its banner our fatherland may be raised up."
But his ringing challenge evoked no response, and Machiavelli turned to other writing. He felt that history was man's great teacher, and in his Discourses he probed into the life and death of nations. This and its penetrating companion volume, The Art of War, contrast sharply with some flights of fancy that point up Niccol6's indomitable zest for living. His play, Mandragola, which is performed to bursting houses to this day, is in the opinion of many critics the finest comedy in Italian.
But Machiavelli missed the bustle of his former office, the drama of his diplomatic errands. "Isn't there anyone," he wrote to a friend, "who remembers my services or believes that I can be useful?" When, at long last, the Medici remembered him, they did so without grace. For modest pay, he was to write the History of Florence, a work which kept him busy for some five years. But the public career for which he so passionately longed remained closed. Clearly, his deep commitment to the people of Florence, which shone through all his writings, disqualified him from a key position under a "prince".
And herein lay the final irony of Machiavelli's life. In 1527, the approach of imperial troops from Germany and Spain encouraged Florence to expel the Medici and set up a free republic. The Secretary's job was open! Yet no one asked Machiavelli to take up his old desk. Had he not eaten the bread of the Medici? To the lifelong observer of the human comedy, the play was over. He died, presumably of stomach ulcers, a month after the founding of the people's state.