of all diplomatists to be. In 1500 he smelt powder at the siege at Pisa,
and was sent to France to allay the irritations of Louis XII. Many
similar and lesser missions follow. The results are in no case of great
importance, but the opportunities to the Secretary of learning men and
things, intrigue and policy, the Court and the gutter were invaluable.
At the camp of Cæsar Borgia, in 1502, he found in his host that
fantastic hero whom he incarnated in _The Prince_, and he was
practically an eye-witness of the amazing masterpiece, the Massacre of
Sinigaglia. The next year he is sent to Rome with a watching brief at
the election of Julius II., and in 1506 is again sent to negotiate with
the Pope. An embassy to the Emperor Maximilian, a second mission to the
French King at Blois, in which he persuades Louis XII. to postpone the
threatened General Council of the Church (1511), and constant
expeditions to report upon and set in order unrestful towns and
provinces did not fulfil his activity. His pen was never idle. Reports,
despatches, elaborate monographs on France, Germany, or wherever he
might be, and personal letters innumerable, and even yet unpublished,
ceased not night nor day. Detail, wit, character-drawing, satire,
sorrow, bitterness, all take their turn. But this was only a fraction of
his work. By duty and by expediency he was bound to follow closely the
internal politics of Florence where his enemies and rivals abounded. And
in all these years he was pushing forward and carrying through with
unceasing and unspeakable vigour the great military dream of his life,
the foundation of a National Militia and the extinction of Mercenary
Companies. But the fabric he had fancied and thought to have built
proved unsubstantial. The spoilt half-mutinous levies whom he had spent
years in odious and unwilling training failed him at the crowning moment
in strength and spirit: and the fall of the Republic implied the fall of
Machiavelli and the close of his official life. He struggled hard to
save himself, but the wealthy classes were against him, perhaps afraid