family, his father, who was a jurist, dying when Niccolo was sixteen
years old. We know nothing of Machiavelli's youth and little about
his studies. He does not seem to have received the usual humanistic
education of his time, as he knew no Greek.[*] The first notice of
Machiavelli is in 1498 when we find him holding the office of Secretary
in the second Chancery of the Signoria, which office he retained till
the downfall of the Florentine Republic in 1512. His unusual ability was
soon recognized, and in 1500 he was sent on a mission to Louis XII.
of France, and afterward on an embassy to Cæsar Borgia, the lord of
Romagna, at Urbino. Machiavelli's report and description of this and
subsequent embassies to this prince, shows his undisguised admiration
for the courage and cunning of Cæsar, who was a master in the
application of the principles afterwards exposed in such a skillful and
uncompromising manner by Machiavelli in his _Prince_.

The limits of this introduction will not permit us to follow with any
detail the many important duties with which he was charged by his native
state, all of which he fulfilled with the utmost fidelity and with
consummate skill. When, after the battle of Ravenna in 1512 the holy
league determined upon the downfall of Pier Soderini, Gonfaloniere of
the Florentine Republic, and the restoration of the Medici, the efforts
of Machiavelli, who was an ardent republican, were in vain; the troops
he had helped to organize fled before the Spaniards and the Medici were
returned to power. Machiavelli attempted to conciliate his new masters,
but he was deprived of his office, and being accused in the following
year of participation in the conspiracy of Boccoli and Capponi, he was
imprisoned and tortured, though afterward set at liberty by Pope Leo
X. He now retired to a small estate near San Casciano, seven miles from
Florence. Here he devoted himself to political and historical studies,
and though apparently retired from public life, his letters show the