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Updated: June 29, 2025
By sowing dissensions among her own children, by inflaming party against party, by watching with care the oscillations of France so than none of the great divisions should obtain preponderance by alternately caressing and massacring the Huguenots, by cajoling or confronting Philip, by keeping, as she boasted, a spy in every family that possessed the annual income of two thousand livres, by making herself the head of an organized system of harlotry, by which the soldiers and politicians of France were inveigled, their secrets faithfully revealed to her by her well-disciplined maids of honour, by surrounding her unfortunate sons with temptation from earliest youth, and plunging them by cold calculation into deepest debauchery, that their enervated faculties might be ever forced to rely in political affairs on the maternal counsel, and to abandon the administration to the maternal will; such were the arts by which Catharine had maintained her influence, and a great country been governed for a generation Machiavellian state-craft blended with the more simple wiles of a procuress.
None of these three had ever seen her; the squire had been to London but once in his life, his two guests never. Yet they talked of her, of her state-craft, of her romanticism; they told little tales, one to the other, as if she lived in the county town. All this, then, was harmless enough.
The great master of state-craft could more easily have borne to hear himself condemned as a ruler than to see his work of art despised. A man who is sure of having done some thing great can smile at blame, but he, who is not confident in himself has reason to dread it, and is easily drawn into hating the critic who utters it.
But in 1527 Henry had developed a single purpose; he had set his mind on one object to the achievement whereof every political consideration was to be subordinated. The state-craft of the great minister was dominated by and subjected to the king-craft of a master who never brooked opposition to his will; and Wolsey, failing to carry out that will, was hurled without remorse from his high estate.
As time went on the scope of his state-craft widened; its exigencies became more varied, and exacted new and often barbarous deeds, that the position won with years of thought and energy might be maintained. Mahomet has now paid complete homage to the fickle goddesses force and craft. The sacred month Dzul-Cada of 628 came round, bringing with it disturbing dreams and yearnings for Mahomet.
As, in the studies of her youth, she had adopted the Machiavelism of ancient State-craft as a rule admissible in private life, so she seemed scarcely to admit as a crime that which was but the removal of a barrier between her aim and her end. Before she had become personally acquainted with Percival she had rejected all occasion to know him.
It inculcated the truth that virtue is the glory of princes and the happiness of nations, and while describing the adventures of the son of Ulysses its author strove to establish the true system of state-craft, and his work is imbued with a sense of beauty and refinement which renders it a most pleasurable book to read.
As I make no pretensions to state-craft or soldiership, and could promote the common weal neither by valor nor counsel, it seemed, at first, a pity that I should be debarred from such unsubstantial business as I had contrived for myself, since nothing more genuine was to be substituted for it.
Italy becomes self-conscious and attains the spiritual primacy of modern Europe. Art, Learning, Literature, State-craft, Philosophy, Science build a sacred and inviolable city of the soul amid the tumult of seven thousand revolutions, the dust and crash of falling cities, the tramplings of recurrent invasions, the infamies and outrages of tyrants and marauders who oppress the land.
But the battles were bloodless games of strategy, and military energy declined. At the same time intrigue and state-craft were the instruments of political aggrandizement. One of these new leaders was Sforza Attendolo, whose son became Duke of Milan.
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