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Updated: May 10, 2025
No English writers have written well of Pistoja, for first they always write from a Florentine point of view, and then they quit too soon. I plead guilty too. The key-note to Pistoja is given in that saying of Macchiavelli's, that the Florentine people "per fuggire il nome di crudele lascio distruggere Pistoia." Il Principe, cap. xvii. Cf. also Discorsi iii. 27.
He added that he had gone after Paolo Orsini to beg the addition of another clause, intentionally omitted by the duke. "If they accept that clause," concluded Messer Agabito, "it will open a window; if they refuse it, a door, by which the duke can issue from the treaty." Macchiavelli's wonder increased.
Macchiavelli's account of him is, that he was about to marry a young lady of the Amidei family, when a widow of one of the Donati, who had designed her own daughter for him, contrived that he should see her; the consequence of which was, that he broke his engagement, and was assassinated. Tu proverai sì come sa di sale Lo pane altrui, e com'è duro calle Lo scendere e 'l salir per l'altrui scale.
That those who engage in it are ashamed of their doings is clear by the fact that governments loudly protest their reluctance to appeal to arms except for purposes of self-defence. Instead of trying to excuse themselves by telling public and official lies, which are almost more revolting than war itself, they should take their stand, as bold as brass, on Macchiavelli's doctrine.
He has made Macchiavelli's words his own: 'A short and vigorous war insures victory! He must, therefore, be opposed by a protracted and desultory war his enemies must fight long, not with heavy columns, but with light battalions, now here, now there; they must take care not to bring on a general battle, but slowly thin the ranks of his army, and exhaust his resources and his patience.
"The reason of his death is not properly known," wrote the Florentine secretary. Another envoy of that day would have filled his dispatches with the rumours that were current, with the matters that were being whispered at street corners. But Macchiavelli's habit was to disregard rumours as a rule, knowing their danger a circumstance which renders his evidence the most valuable which we possess.
Buonaccorsi compiled his diary carefully from the letters of Macchiavelli to the Ten, in so far as this and other affairs are concerned; and to Buonaccorsi we must now turn for what immediately follows, which is no doubt from Macchiavelli's second letter of December 31, in which the full details of the affair are given. Between these and the actual relation there are some minor discrepancies.
Ercole Strozzi sought to console her in pompous verse; in 1508 he dedicated to her his elegy on Cæsar. This fantastic poem is remarkable as having been the production of this man, and it might be defined as the poetic counterpart of Macchiavelli's "Prince."
Were not these masterstrokes of diplomacy worthy of a King whom his mother, from boyhood upwards, had caused to study Macchiavelli's "Prince," and who had thoroughly taken to heart the maxim, often repeated in those days, that the "Science of reigning was the science of lying"? The joy in the Spanish camp before Mons was unbounded.
And there the matter hung, for Macchiavelli's legation had for only aim to ensure the immunity of Tuscany and to safeguard Florentine interests without conceding any advantages to Cesare as the latter had perceived from the first.
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