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Updated: May 27, 2025
In the present case Machiavelli's advice will find an easy application, since the Duke's death could be advantageous only to Bonaparte, who considered it indispensable to his accession to the crown of France. The motives may be explained, but can they be justified? How could it ever be said that the Due d'Enghien perished as a presumed accomplice in the conspiracy of Georges?
For it should be observed that men ought either to be caressed or trampled out, seeing that small injuries may be avenged, whereas great ones destroy the possibility of retaliation; and so the damage that has to be inflicted ought to be such that it need involve no fear of vengeance. I quote this passage as a specimen of Machiavelli's direct and scientific handling of the most inhuman necessities of statecraft, as conceived by him.
Catharine of Medicis brought into France the practical atheism of Machiavelli's prince the Bible, as she blasphemously called it, of her class. The maxims which, when confined to the petty courts of Italy, did not undermine the prosperity of any considerable portion of the human race, when disseminated among a valiant, politic, and powerful nation, brought Iliads of desolation in their train.
He would not hear of a remodelled version of ARMIDA, but declared his intention to set to work on some new dramatic material which he had taken from Machiavelli's FLORENTINE HISTORIES. He would not specify what this material was more definitely, lest I should dissuade him from using it, inasmuch as it contained only situations, and absolutely no indication of any purpose.
All these Bacon called the good arts, as distinguished from the evil arts that had been described years before by Machiavelli in his famous book The Prince, and also in his Discourses. Bacon called Machiavelli's sayings depraved and pernicious, and a corrupt wisdom, as indeed they are.
The military organization of a great kingdom is here developed in a separate Essay, and Machiavelli's favorite scheme for nationalizing the militia of Italy is systematically expounded. Giovio's flippant objection, that the philosopher could not in practice maneuver a single company, is no real criticism on the merit of his theory.
There are certain fundamental principles underlying Machiavelli's science of politics, which he has indicated incidentally in his unsystematic way, but which are essential to the comprehension of his doctrines.
And that pithy chapter in Machiavelli's Prince which treats of cruelty and clemency, and whether it be better to be loved or feared, anticipates the defence of the Terrorists, in the maxim that for a new prince it is impossible to avoid the name of cruel, because all new states abound in many perils.
Willoughby must have been a dull place to him after his adventures, but he says he was glutted with company, and retired into a woody pasture, surrounded by forests, a good ways from any town, and there built himself a pavilion of boughs less substantial than the cabin of Thoreau at Walden Pond and there he heroically slept in his clothes, studied Machiavelli's "Art of War," read "Marcus Aurelius," and exercised on his horse with lance and ring.
You will not be content, after reading one of these pieces, without knowing the character and personality of the man who conceived it, and until you have spent an hour or two and an hour or two will go a long way with Burke still fresh in your mind over other compositions in political literature, over Bacon's civil pieces, or Machiavelli's Prince, and others in the same order of thought.
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