Career--Concerning those who have attained to Sovereignty by
Crimes--Oliverotto da Fermo--The Uses of Cruelty--Messer Ramiro d'
Orco--The pessimistic Morality of Machiavelli--On the Faith of
Princes--Alexander VI.--The Policy of seeming virtuous and
honest--Absence of chivalrous Feeling in Italy--The Military System of a
powerful Prince--Criticism of Mercenaries and Auxiliaries--Necessity of
National Militia--The Art of War--Patriotic Conclusion of the
Treatise--Machiavelli and Savonarola.


After what has been already said about the circumstances under which
Machiavelli composed the _Principe_, we are justified in regarding it as
a sincere expression of his political philosophy. The intellect of its
author was eminently analytical and positive; he knew well how to
confine himself within the strictest limits of the subject he had
chosen. In the _Principe_ it was not his purpose to write a treatise of
morality, but to set forth with scientific accuracy the arts which he
considered necessary to the success of an absolute ruler. We may
therefore accept this essay as the most profound and lucid exposition of
the principles by which Italian statesmen were guided in the sixteenth
century. That Machiavellism existed before Machiavelli has now become a
truism. Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Louis XI. of France, Ferdinand the
Catholic, the Papal Curia, and the Venetian Council had systematically
pursued the policy laid down in the chapters of the _Prince_. But it is
no less true that Machiavelli was the first in modern times to formulate
a theory of government in which the interests of the ruler are alone
regarded, which assumes a separation between statecraft and morality,
which recognizes force and fraud among the legitimate means of attaining
high political ends, which makes success alone the test of conduct, and
which presupposes the corruption, venality, and baseness of mankind at