seen how great were the foundations he had laid to future power. Upon
these I do not think it superfluous to discourse, because I should not
know what better precept to lay before a new prince than the example of
his actions; and if success did not wait upon what dispositions he had
made, that was through no fault of his own, but the result of an
extraordinary and extreme malignity of fortune."

In its proper place shall be considered what else Macchiavelli had to say
of Cesare Borgia and what to report of events that he witnessed connected
with Cesare Borgia's career.

Meanwhile, the above summary of Macchiavelli's judgement is put forward
as a justification for the writing of this book, which has for scope to
present to you the Cesare Borgia who served as the model for The Prince.

Before doing so, however, there is the rise of the House of Borgia to be
traced, and in the first two of the four books into which this history
will be divided it is Alexander VI, rather than his son, who will hold
the centre of the stage.

If the author has a mercy to crave of his critics, it is that they will
not impute it to him that he has set out with the express aim of
"whitewashing"--as the term goes--the family of Borgia. To whitewash is
to overlay, to mask the original fabric under a superadded surface. Too
much superadding has there been here already. By your leave, all shall
be stripped away. The grime shall be removed and the foulness of
inference, of surmise, of deliberate and cold-blooded malice, with which
centuries of scribblers, idle, fantastic, sensational, or venal, have
coated the substance of known facts.