Niccolò Machiavelli, in diplomatic missions abroad between…
August 1512 CE
Niccolò Machiavelli, in diplomatic missions abroad between 1499 and 1508, has met many of the most powerful political figures of the age.
From 1502 to 1503, he had witnessed the brutal reality of the state-building methods of Cesare Borgia and his father, Pope Alexander VI, who had been engaged in the process of trying to bring a large part of central Italy under their possession.
The pretext of defending Church interests had been used as a partial justification by the Borgias.
Other excursions to the court of Louis XII and the Spanish court influence his writings, such as The Prince.
Machiavelli had been responsible for the Florentine militia between 1503 and 1506.
He distrusts mercenaries (a distrust he explains in his official reports and later in his theoretical works as due to their unpatriotic and uninvested nature in war, making their allegiance fickle and often too unreliable when most needed) and had instead staffed his army with citizens, a policy which proves to be successful many times.
Under his command, Florentine citizen-soldiers had defeated Pisa in 1509.
However, Machiavelli's success does not last.
In August 1512, the Medici, backed by Pope Julius II use Spanish troops to defeat the Florentines at Prato, although many historians have argued that this was due to Piero Soderini's unwillingness to compromise with the Medici, who were holding Prato under siege.
In the wake of the siege, Soderini resigns as Florentine head of state and leaves in exile.
This experience will, like Machiavelli's time in foreign courts and with the Borgia, heavily influence his political writings.
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