"Machiavelli, Niccolo - Prince, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Machiavelli Niccolo)

It is impossible to follow here the varying fortunes of the Italian
states, which in 1507 were controlled by France, Spain, and Germany,
with results that have lasted to our day; we are concerned with those
events, and with the three great actors in them, so far only as they
impinge on the personality of Machiavelli. He had several meetings
with Louis XII of France, and his estimate of that monarch's character
has already been alluded to. Machiavelli has painted Ferdinand of
Aragon as the man who accomplished great things under the cloak of
religion, but who in reality had no mercy, faith, humanity, or
integrity; and who, had he allowed himself to be influenced by such
motives, would have been ruined. The Emperor Maximilian was one of the
most interesting men of the age, and his character has been drawn by
many hands; but Machiavelli, who was an envoy at his court in 1507-8,
reveals the secret of his many failures when he describes him as a
secretive man, without force of character--ignoring the human agencies
necessary to carry his schemes into effect, and never insisting on the
fulfilment of his wishes.

The remaining years of Machiavelli's official career were filled with
events arising out of the League of Cambrai, made in 1508 between the
three great European powers already mentioned and the pope, with the
object of crushing the Venetian Republic. This result was attained in
the battle of Vaila, when Venice lost in one day all that she had won
in eight hundred years. Florence had a difficult part to play during
these events, complicated as they were by the feud which broke out
between the pope and the French, because friendship with France had
dictated the entire policy of the Republic. When, in 1511, Julius II
finally formed the Holy League against France, and with the assistance
of the Swiss drove the French out of Italy, Florence lay at the mercy
of the Pope, and had to submit to his terms, one of which was that the
Medici should be restored. The return of the Medici to Florence on 1st
September 1512, and the consequent fall of the Republic, was the
signal for the dismissal of Machiavelli and his friends, and thus put
an end to his public career, for, as we have seen, he died without
regaining office.



LITERATURE AND DEATH
Aet. 43-58--1512-27

On the return of the Medici, Machiavelli, who for a few weeks had
vainly hoped to retain his office under the new masters of Florence,
was dismissed by decree dated 7th November 1512. Shortly after this he
was accused of complicity in an abortive conspiracy against the
Medici, imprisoned, and put to the question by torture. The new
Medicean people, Leo X, procured his release, and he retired to his
small property at San Casciano, near Florence, where he devoted
himself to literature. In a letter to Francesco Vettori, dated 13th