I

Cesare Borgia is no doubt the most memorable—and enigmatic—figure in The Prince. No other actor so completely dominates a long chapter as does his political biography in chapter 7. So central is Borgia to some readings of The Prince that it is often asserted, or assumed, that he is the model for the prince theorized in the work as a whole, or at least the closest approximation to it Machiavelli could find among modern princes. Many consider Borgia the inspiration behind the call for Italy's redeemer in the last chapter, nothing less than Machiavelli's “hero,” the farsighted innovator who caused Machiavelli to rethink the skills needed to forge a “new principality.”Footnote ¹ In this essay I question such interpretations by rereading chapter 7 against the background of Machiavelli's direct experience of Borgia a decade earlier and by comparing what The Prince appears to claim about Borgia with Machiavelli's awareness of the historical Borgia's failure.

The Florentine Republic sent Machiavelli to Borgia three times: first, in June 1502, when he accompanied ambassador Francesco Soderini to a meeting requested by Borgia, who was then at the height of his success, having previously subdued the Romagna and now taken the duchy of Urbino as well; second, from October 1502 to January 1503, the dramatic months when Borgia's condottieri conspired against him and then let themselves be lured into a trap in which he had them killed; and a third time in October–December 1503, when the death of Cesare's father, Pope Alexander VI, and the election of Julius II brought sudden ruin to Borgia and his fledgling principality. The view that Borgia became Machiavelli's “hero/prince” often begins with claims that the first and second encounters inspired Machiavelli to awed admiration of the duke's boldness, causing him to identify with his ambitions and merge his own political vision with Borgia's—what Gennaro Sasso, in the most important study of Machiavelli's evolving judgment of Borgia, called a form of “psychological projection” in which “the duke was really becoming Machiavelli's ‘hero.’”Footnote ²

The dispatches from the June 1502 mission were signed by Soderini, and, while many assume that Machiavelli composed them, the question of authorship remains open. Much importance has been attached to a passage in the dispatch of 22 June that attributes Borgia's seizure of Urbino to his “prudence,” “stratagem,” “speed,” and “extraordinary success” (estrema felicità). Evidence of Machiavelli's admiration of Borgia is seen in the long dispatch of 26 June that reports Borgia's arrogant demand that the Florentines come to an agreement with him and change their government because he cannot trust the popular republic and his threat that “if you don't want me as a friend, you'll know what it is to have me as an enemy.” The envoys then give this memorable portrait of Borgia, assumed to have been written by Machiavelli: “This lord is very splendidFootnote ³ and magnificent; he is so bold in military actions that the greatest task seems small to him; he never rests or acknowledges fatigue or danger in the quest for glory and gain. He arrives in places before one is even aware of his departure from where he had been; he makes himself well-liked by his hired soldiers, and he has hired the best men in Italy. All this makes him successful and fearsome, in addition to constant good fortune [una perpetua fortuna].”Footnote ⁴

Many readers see in chapter 7 of The Prince echoes of this and other passages from the 1502 legations. Near the beginning, Machiavelli expresses the apparently unambiguous laudatory judgment that “if one considers all the steps taken by the duke, it will be seen that he established great foundations for his future power which I do not think it superfluous to discuss, because I would not know what better precepts to give to a new prince than the example of his actions.” He quickly points out, of course, that these “exemplary” actions and foundations did not bring Borgia success. His initial explanation for the collapse of Borgia's aims exonerates him from any blame: “if his methods did not bring him success, this was not his fault, because it resulted from an exceptional and extreme malice of fortune,” an apparent reference to the death in August 1503 of Pope Alexander, just when, or so Machiavelli asserts, Borgia was on the verge of achieving his objectives.

Machiavelli reiterates his praise of Borgia near the end of the chapter: “Having pieced together all the duke's actions, I would not know how to criticize him; on the contrary, it seems to me that he should be put forward as worthy of imitation to all those who rise to power through fortune and the arms of others.” This is followed by the observation that Borgia's plans were foiled by the death of his father, by his own illness at the moment Alexander died, and by the one grave error which Machiavelli says was the “cause of his ultimate ruin”—the first explicit mention of any error or fault on Cesare's part—namely, his disastrous decision to support the election to the papacy of Giuliano della Rovere as Julius II, the implacable enemy of the Borgia who destroyed the duke in short order at the end of 1503.

Despite its seemingly obvious praise of Borgia, chapter 7 contains several puzzles. First is the tension, perhaps contradiction, between the praise and the frank admission of his failure. A second problem, much discussed, is the apparently double explanation of this failure: that it was not his fault, because it resulted from “una estraordinaria ed estrema malignità di fortuna”; and that his downfall proceeded from one colossal error—the “only thing for which he can be reproached.” Was it fortune's “malice” or this error that destroyed Borgia?Footnote ⁵ And if it was the latter—as the text plainly says—how can Machiavelli declare, as he does just before discussing it, that “all the actions of the duke” were exemplary beyond reproach? A third puzzle is the discrepancy between the claims of chapter 7 and what other sources, including Machiavelli's dispatches, reveal of the historical Borgia, particularly the fact that many of his exemplary “actions” were never actually implemented or completed.

Chapter 7's conceptual framework is provided in chapter 6's discussion of “new principalities acquired by one's own arms and by virtù.” The examples in chapter 6 of princes who acquired “new principalities” with their own arms, and hence through virtù, are three figures of ancient legend (Moses, Romulus, and Theseus), the ancient Persian king Cyrus, and Hiero, king of Syracuse in the third century BCE. Chapter 6 affirms that, to understand the success or failure of “innovators,” one must “examine” whether they “stand on their own [stanno per loro medesimi] or whether they depend on others [dependono da altri]: that is, whether, in order to carry out their work, they must entreat others or can use force.” Those who need to ask for help “always end badly and accomplish nothing.” Those who “depend on themselves [dependono da loro propri] seldom find themselves in danger.” The critical distinction is between autonomy and dependence.

Chapter 7 then turns to “new principalities acquired with the arms of others and through fortune,” asserting that those who rise “only through fortune [solamente per fortuna]” from a private to a princely station achieve it easily but maintain it with great difficulty, because they depend on the “volontà” and “fortuna” of those who give them their states, two “very fickle and unstable” things. Such new princes “neither know how [non sanno] nor are able [non possono]” to maintain their states; and if such a prince is “not a man of great intelligence [ingegno] and virtù, it is not reasonable that, having lived his whole life in a private station, he should know how to command.” This suggestion that “intelligence and virtù” might allow exceptions to the general rule of “not knowing how” will be relevant to Borgia. But Machiavelli allows no potential exceptions to the second reason why such princes fail—namely, that “they have no [armed] forces that can be loyal or faithful to them.” Machiavelli adds a third reason for the difficulties of princes who acquire states through fortune: states that appear suddenly, “like all things in nature that grow quickly,” cannot put down “roots” (barbe), and consequently “the first bad weather kills them, unless those who become princes so quickly are of such virtù that they know immediately how to make preparations to maintain that which fortune has thrown into their laps and build afterwards the foundations that others build beforehand.” Machiavelli's only example of a modern prince who constructed foundations beforehand and with his own military forces is Francesco Sforza, who “became duke of Milan with the requisite methods and with his great virtù.” The principality that Sforza “gained with a thousand difficulties he maintained with little effort.”

The rest of chapter 7 is devoted to Machiavelli's prime example—Cesare Borgia—of a prince whose rise and fall he attributes to fortune, which is to say, dependence on others. Borgia “acquired his state with the fortuna of his father and lost it with the same” when Alexander's financial and political support vanished. Despite Machiavelli's praise for Borgia's efforts to remedy his dependence on his father, on the French, and on mercenaries, Machiavelli never wavers from the fundamental fact that Borgia failed and lost his state, “even though he used every means and did everything that a prudent and virtuoso man must do to put down roots in states that the arms and fortune of others had given him.” Machiavelli restates the possibility that a prince of great virtù “could” construct the needed foundations after acquiring his state, but quickly qualifies this with the warning that building foundations after acquiring a state through fortune—in other words, establishing autonomy from a condition of dependence—necessarily entails “difficulty for the architect and danger to what is built.” He then asserts that Borgia did in fact construct “great foundations for his future power” after acquiring his state; indeed, Machiavelli “would not know what better precepts to give to a new prince than the example of his actions,” even though, as he immediately acknowledges, those foundations and actions did not bring Borgia success. How are we to understand the tension between the assertion of Borgia's “great foundations” and the admonition that building foundations after acquiring a state through fortune poses difficulties and dangers so great that, precisely in Borgia's case, such foundations did not prevent failure?

Machiavelli's account of Borgia's rise begins with the aims and actions, not of Cesare, but of Alexander. It is Alexander who decides that the only way for Cesare to acquire a state in the Romagna is to ally the papacy with Louis XII of France, which opened the way for the French invasion of 1499 and conquest of Milan, and Alexander who secures troops from Louis for the “undertaking in the Romagna.” Machiavelli emphasizes that Cesare initially achieved successes with forces provided by the French and by the powerful Roman family of the Orsini, but also that this dependence limited his actions. Once the Romagna was conquered, Machiavelli says, Borgia's aims of preserving and enlarging his state were impeded by the disloyalty of the Orsini, who refused to support his attempt to seize Bologna, and by divergences between his aims and those of King Louis, who ordered him to desist from hostile actions against Florence. Only after these rebuffs—and this was three years after launching his campaigns, according to Machiavelli's account—did the duke “determine no longer to be dependent [deliberò di non dependere piú] on the arms and fortune of others.” To this end, he lured away from the Orsini and Colonna families some of their military captains and planned to destroy these families altogether. Fearful of Borgia's growing power, the Orsini and several condottieri who had collaborated with him in subduing the Romagna conspired against him, fomenting rebellion in Urbino and “uprisings throughout the Romagna” that caused “infinite dangers for the duke,” which he survived, Machiavelli says, again emphasizing Borgia's dependence on others, “with the help of the French.” Deciding yet again, however, that he could trust neither the French nor “other outside forces,” Borgia resolved to crush the conspiracy by “trickery,” inviting its leaders to the feigned reconciliation at Senigallia where he had them trapped, arrested, and murdered.

Although the conspiracy might seem actually to be evidence of weak “foundations,” Machiavelli nonetheless says that Borgia had “laid good foundations for his power” by eliminating the conspirators and controlling both the Romagna and Urbino (regained after the rebellion), and also because “it seemed to him [parendoli]” above all that he had acquired the “friendship” of the people of the Romagna by bringing order to a previously lawless region through the administration of his “cruel and efficient” minister, messer Ramiro de Lorqua, to whom he gave full powers to pacify and unify the region. Fearing, however, that such excessive authority might become “hateful,” Borgia instituted a civil court in which each of the Romagna's cities had a representative. The court was announced in October 1502—two months before Borgia had messer Ramiro murdered—and began operations only in mid-1503, which suggests that it was a late attempt to halt the growing disaffection of the population. Machiavelli's dramatic description of the murder of messer Ramiro, whose elimination was meant to separate Borgia from the “hatred” generated by the minister's severities, confirms that Borgia's government was not in fact winning Romagnol hearts and minds. Like Borgia's “good foundations,” the “friendship” of the Romagna seems more a matter of aspirations—and the duke's blinkered perception—than actual accomplishment.

Machiavelli nonetheless repeats that Borgia was in a strong position, because he had “extinguished” the forces of the conspirators and was now “armed his own way [armato a suo modo].” Exactly what Machiavelli had in mind (or thought Borgia had in mind) in saying that he was “armed his own way” is not at all clear. The only additions to his forces mentioned thus far are some condottieri previously employed by the Orsini and the Colonna, which did nothing to diminish his dependence on mercenaries and on France. In fact, Machiavelli says that Borgia, “wishing to continue acquiring [territory], still had to be concerned about the king of France, because he knew he would not be allowed to do so by the king, who had belatedly realized his error” (presumably in supporting Cesare's ambitions). Borgia now began to “vacillate with France” and “look for new friendships,” which again underscores the lack of autonomy that forced him to choose between France and other allies, particularly Spain. Borgia, he says, “intended to secure himself vis-à-vis the French and would have done so if Alexander had lived”—but exactly how is again left unexplained.

II

Chapter 7's claim that, after crushing the conspiracy, Borgia was “armed his own way” is the central issue. Machiavelli elaborates on it in chapter 13, writing that Borgia, “whose actions I shall never hesitate to cite,” first entered the Romagna with French auxiliaries. But because “it did not seem to him [non gli parendo]” that such arms were trustworthy, he engaged the mercenary forces of the Orsini and Vitelli, “judging [iudicando] them less risky,” only to discover that they too were disloyal and dangerous, whereupon he eliminated them and turned to his own forces. “When he had his own troops and was on his own [quando e' rimase con i soldati sua e sopra sé stesso],” his reputation grew, and “never was he so esteemed as when everyone could see that he completely possessed his own arms.” But when did Machiavelli think Borgia acquired “his own arms” and won such esteem? Did Cesare ever have an army neither borrowed nor hired?

In fact, Borgia never escaped dependence on mercenaries and auxiliaries. When the French forces with which he took Imola and Forlì suddenly abandoned him and rushed north in January 1500 to repel Lodovico Sforza's attempt to retake Milan, Borgia was left with only 1,000 infantry and 500 horse. This halted his Romagna campaign until Louis, after defeating Sforza, promised him in August 2,000 infantry and 300 lances,Footnote ⁶ later reinforced by more French cavalry and Italian mercenaries including the Orsini, Vitellozzo Vitelli, and Gianpaolo Baglioni. According to a contemporary chronicler, the army Borgia brought to the conquest of Cesena in 1500 included a total of 8,500 infantry, 7,000 of them paid mercenaries, including 500 Spaniards. Of 3,800 cavalry, 2,500 were French and only 400 “borgiani.”Footnote ⁷

In June 1502, Machiavelli and Francesco Soderini reported from Urbino that envoys of the Vitelli and Pandolfo Petrucci of Siena attempted to stoke fears that might push Florence into the alliance Borgia desired by magnifying his military strength with claims that he had 6,000 infantry nearby and another 2,000 coming from the Romagna: “and they say that infantry is continuously coming from several units [bande], because [Cesare] summons many and then chooses the best ones and pays them. It is estimated that, between those here and those in Tuscany [Vitellozzo's troops],” Borgia “can put together 16,000 men, even as they claim between 20,000 and 25,000.”Footnote ⁸ Borgia had evidently sent these envoys to intimidate Soderini and Machiavelli, who, however, calmly concluded that the figure of 20,000–25,000 was exaggerated. The envoys' assertion that the duke “summons [comanda] many” and then “chooses the best ones [fa scelta delle migliori]” has sometimes been read as evidence that he was assembling a militia force from the population of his territories. But Borgia made it clear to Soderini that this “selection” involved mercenaries and not a popular militia: he said he wanted units of “carefully selected soldiers [gente electa],” not “troops gathered from here and there [gente collectitia]. … I form my companies with both Italians and Oltramontani, wherever I find skilled men [uomini da bene].”Footnote ⁹

Writing from Borgia's camp at Imola on 9 October 1502, Machiavelli assessed Borgia's strength after the defection of the conspirators. He says Borgia “believed” (pensò) he could hold on to the Romagna “with the forces he had,” provided he continued to receive “favors” from many others. Borgia sent Miguel de Corella (“don Michele”) with funds to “reorganize” (rassettare) some 1,000 infantry and authorized payments to 800 infantry from the Val di Lamone, near Faenza. Machiavelli calculated that “at present [Borgia] does not have more than 2,500 paid infantry,” and “what is left” of his cavalry amounts to “about 100 lances of his gentiluomini, such that he could put into battle more than 400 combat-ready cavalry,” not counting three Spanish-led units of 50 lances each, which were “much diminished on account of their not having been paid for a long time.” Machiavelli enumerates the infantry and cavalry that Borgia “is attempting to assemble afresh [cerca fare di nuovo]” and the “favors he hopes for,” among the latter 500 Gascon and 1,500 Swiss mercenaries. There follows a statement that some read as evidence of Borgia's institution of a Romagnol militia: “five days ago he reviewed [fece … la mostra] 6,000 infantry selected from his territories, which he can put together in two days.”Footnote ¹⁰ John Larner interpreted this to mean an ad hoc, emergency levy of troops (perhaps assembled on the traditional basis of “one man per household” often employed by earlier Romagnol signori), who “after the mostra … were sent home to be recalled again when needed,” although “they do not seem to have been called out again once Cesare had built up his new mercenary army to replace that of the rebellious condottieri.”Footnote ¹¹ A somewhat different possibility is suggested by Machiavelli's dispatch a month later. Although he was told that Borgia's “plan” (disegno) was “to be armed with his own arms,” an appendix to the dispatch lists thirteen units of Borgia's “fanterie,” each consisting of between 150 and 600 “fanti” and identified by the names of their professional, mercenary commanders, including Spaniards (the list begins with Don Michele's 600 “fanti”), Romagnols, and others, plus 600 Gascons and Germans and a still awaited contingent of Swiss who, “they say,” number 3,000. The total of 5,350 (not counting the absent Swiss) is close enough to the 6,000 reviewed by Borgia in October to suggest that this was Borgia's rough estimate of the forces his condottieri could muster. But this was not a Romagnol militia. Larner estimated that the infantry included 1,500 Swiss, Gascons, and Germans, 1,200 Romagnols, 1,050 Spaniards, and 2,500 non-Romagnol Italians; moreover, “the overlordship of the army as a whole rested with Spaniards.”Footnote ¹² Machiavelli also lists several hundred cavalry units of which only fifty are described as recruited from Borgia's territories (“raccolti de' paesi suoi”), the rest either foreign or belonging to condottieri.Footnote ¹³

These were not inconsiderable forces, but most were still either mercenaries or auxiliaries. At the end of November Machiavelli told his government that Borgia was as lamentably dependent on mercenaries as was Florence: since the beginning of October he had spent over 60,000 ducats trying to strengthen his army, evidently with little to show for it: “I have eagerly written this to Your Lordships, so that you may see that others do not spend less than you do when they are in difficulty, nor are they any better served by hired soldiers than you are; by contrast, he who is well armed with his own arms attains the same [good] results whichever way he turns.”Footnote ¹⁴ When, at the end of December, the French suddenly withdrew from Borgia's camp (whether because, as a French officer told Machiavelli, their depredations were making the countryside “hostile” [inimico] to Cesare, or because, as was rumored, Louis needed these forces in Lombardy, or because disagreements had arisen between Louis and Alexander), Machiavelli judged that, even with the arrival of 600 infantry from the Val di Lamone and 1,000 Swiss, the departure of the French caused Borgia the loss of “more than half his forces and two-thirds of his reputation.”Footnote ¹⁵

Cesare may have wanted to build his own army, but in early 1503, four years into his campaigns, he still had not done so. Months before Alexander's death, Machiavelli knew that Borgia's military strength was deteriorating. On 3 May, he told the Florentine commissioner in Sansepolcro that Borgia had recently dismissed “all his Italian infantry and most of the ultramontane units as well” and “hasn't got even a thousand left.” Although Machiavelli cautioned that Florence needed to remain vigilant concerning the movements of Borgia's remaining troops, he concluded that “his having so thinned out his forces [lo essersi lui alleggerito di genti]” made it unlikely that he would “proceed against the wishes of [King Louis] and … attack us.”Footnote ¹⁶ This assessment is corroborated by contemporaries. In July the Venetian ambassador, Giustinian, reported that Borgia's men were inflating the size of his forces and that in reality he had no more than 500 men-at-arms, 600 light horse, and 4,000 infantry.Footnote ¹⁷ The Florentine chronicler Bartolomeo Cerretani noted that, after Alexander died in August, Cesare was still hiring mercenaries as he waited to see what the conclave would bring.Footnote ¹⁸ Hiring new troops at this eleventh hour implies that he still lacked an army worthy of the name.

Cesare withdrew from Rome and took refuge in the Borgia fortress in Nepi, near Viterbo. When the Spanish viceroy in Naples, Consalvo, ordered all Spanish soldiers in Italy to return south,Footnote ¹⁹ Borgia released 200 of his lances and two of his captains. Under the terms of his latest agreement with Louis, he also sent 100 lances to the lord of Mirandola to fight with the French. These diminutions of his forces again underscored his continuing, indeed deepening, dependence on vastly more powerful allies. Cerretani also noted that Borgia “could no longer sustain the expense [of those forces],” and kept only 70 lances and 200 light horse. Uprisings against Borgia's rule were spreading throughout the Romagna and the Marche, and a Florentine military commissioner sent into the Romagna with instructions to enter Faenza with 150 cavalry found the inhabitants, not only of Faenza but of “all the Romagna,” ready to “jump into the lap of our rule [tutta la Romagna voltta al gittarssi in grembbo alla nostra signoria]” and accept Florentine governance.Footnote ²⁰ Before the end of October, most of the former rulers had returned to the cities of the Romagna and the Marche, and only Cesena and Imola were still under the control of Cesare's forces.Footnote ²¹ Back in Rome, Borgia wanted to settle his differences with the Orsini militarily, but the infantry he had recently hired, “seeing that Valentino's fortunes were declining, refused to follow him.”Footnote ²² Even in early August, before Alexander died, Machiavelli told the Florentine commissioner in Arezzo that, despite the troops Borgia “is hiring and has hired,” he thought it unlikely he would initiate operations against Florence, first because the French would restrain him, and second, because “in a thousand ways it is possible to light fires under his bed”—Machiavelli's colorful way of emphasizing Borgia's vulnerability even in his own territories.Footnote ²³

Larner concluded that “the extravagant claims … for Cesare's military establishment in the Romagna have no basis in reality. The Borgia duke did not abandon the use of condottieri in favour of native forces, he established nothing new or revolutionary, [and] his measures did not come close to creating a standing army.”Footnote ²⁴ Careful reading of chapter 7 confirms that Machiavelli too saw Borgia as completely dependent on the arms of others.

III

We can now return to chapter 7 and ask why Machiavelli—against all the facts, of which he was fully aware—attributes to Cesare Borgia the acquisition of “his own arms” and “good foundations.” Emphasizing Borgia's continuing dependence on papal power and treasure after Alexander's death, Machiavelli says Cesare had a four-point plan by which he “thought he could be secure [pensò assicurarsi]” and maintain his power if a new pope “who was not his friend” sought to deprive him of what his father “had given him.” His four aims were, first, to eliminate the heirs of the signori he had dispossessed, making it impossible for an unfriendly pope to enlist them in a campaign against him; second, to win Rome's noble families to his side and thus limit the pope's power; third, to establish as much control as he could over the college of cardinals; and fourth, to acquire a large enough territorial state before Alexander died “to be able to withstand a military assault on his own [per sé medesimo].” These objectives have about them an air of delusional unreality. The first three—in effect, to win as many allies as possible and weaken his opponents—were nothing new: Borgia had been trying to do this for years and now—only now?—realized how little had been accomplished. When Machiavelli then says that, “of these four things, he had achieved three by the time of Alexander's death, and the fourth [the last] he considered nearly achieved”—which was, as we shall see, plainly untrue—he can only be echoing Borgia's own improbable and overly optimistic assessment of his situation in the summer of 1503. In actuality, although a few members of the dispossessed former ruling families were assassinated, most of these families survived the Borgia storm and returned to power; the Orsini remained implacably hostile and awaited a chance for revenge; and if, in the first conclave of 1503, Borgia had enough support to block the election of Giuliano della Rovere and help elect the politically neutral (and ill) Francesco Piccolomini as Pius III, at the next conclave a month later Cesare's support dwindled to only four of thirty-eight cardinals,Footnote ²⁵ a collapse of influence that forced him to agree to the election of his archenemy Della Rovere. It is impossible that Machiavelli could have thought, especially after the outcome of the second papal election, that Borgia ever achieved the first three objectives. This can only be a mimicking of Borgia's capacity for self-deception.Footnote ²⁶

Both Borgia's delusions and Machiavelli's mimicry of them are fully revealed with regard to the fourth objective, namely, his having “planned [disegnato] to become lord of Tuscany,” which “he considered nearly achieved” at the moment his father died, because he “already possessed Perugia [near, not in, Tuscany] and Piombino and had taken Pisa under his protection.” The Pisans, searching for allies in their struggle for independence against Florence, sent envoys to Alexander asking for help and offering him the city.Footnote ²⁷ But Pisa was never actually under Cesare's military “protection,” and here too Machiavelli must be echoing Borgia's own unrealistically confident assessment. This becomes even clearer when Machiavelli writes that “as soon as [Borgia] no longer had to fear France—which he no longer had to do because the French had already been deprived of the Kingdom [of Naples] by the Spaniards, so that both [France and Spain] were forced to buy his friendship—he was about to jump into Pisa. After that, Lucca and Siena would yield … and the Florentines would have no hope. And if he had succeeded [in becoming lord of Tuscany]—which he was about to do in the very year Alexander died—he would have gained enough strength and prestige to stand on his own and would no longer have depended [non sarebbe piú dependuto] on fortune and the arms of others, but on his own power and virtù.” These were fantasies realizable only in Cesare's mind, nourished by endless delusions of what would and could have happened if only he had been his own man, dreams not remotely related to reality.

Machiavelli knew that Borgia had no chance of becoming “lord of Tuscany.” When Cesare briefly invaded Tuscany in May 1501, his aim was to secure an alliance and employment as Florence's captain. The chronicler Piero Parenti wrote that “for the security of his stato, Valentino wanted to ally with us and become our captain, because, needing the support of some power in Italy, he thought none more to his purpose than [Florence].” Not that Borgia represented no danger, for (as he would repeat to Machiavelli and Francesco Soderini in Urbino a year later) he “did not like our government, because of its popular nature and because it would not easily come to an agreement with a tyrant.” Parenti says Borgia wanted an alliance either with a restored Medici regime or with “certain other citizens” whom he knew to be hostile to the popular republic, “the better to maintain his own stato.”Footnote ²⁸ Parenti describes an attitude of defiance, with some citizens declaring that, if in 1494 the Florentines “had not feared the king of France and his 30,000 soldiers, why would they now fear the 10,000 shoeless soldiers of a defrocked, bastard son of a priest?” Wiser heads knew that he was more dangerous than that, but Borgia, ever dependent on France, was ordered by Louis to leave Florentine territory and stop plundering the countryside. The behavior of Borgia's army in Florentine territory—a “great error,” Parenti says, for, “if he desired an alliance with us for the safety of his own state, he should have showered us with favors, not injuries”—earned him the “eternal” hatred of the Florentines.Footnote ²⁹ In the light of this antagonism, the assertion that Cesare would have succeeded in becoming “lord of Tuscany” if his father had not died when he did can only be an echo of Cesare's fantasy, not Machiavelli's own assessment of the likelihood of such an outcome. Borgia was never militarily capable of seizing Florence, much less Tuscany, and what he consistently sought from Florence was an alliance to enhance his own precarious security. He was always in need of assistance and support from others and never achieved the autonomy that Machiavelli associates with virtù.

Between 1501 and 1503 Borgia simultaneously entreated and threatened Florence. He unpersuasively denied involvement in the seizure of Arezzo and the Valdichiana by his condottiere Vitellozzo Vitelli in June 1502, a bit of adventurism to which the French king also put a stop. In the dispatches from his second mission to Borgia, Machiavelli commented on the duke's frustrated desire for more conquest even as he was under siege by the conspirators. On 13 November 1502, reporting a reconciliation between Borgia and the Orsini and Vitelli, Machiavelli commented that if anyone should deem an accord unlikely thinking “the duke would find it distressing not to satisfy his desire to take Bologna” (which the agreement forced him to forgo), “the answer is what I have written several times before, namely, that it has been demonstrated to him that it is better to make an alliance that will endure than to seize a city that can't be held. In fact, the Orsini and Vitelli have given him a lesson [in the rebellion of Urbino] that should make him wise, if he is not already; they have shown him that he needs to think more about preserving what he has acquired [mantenere lo acquistato] than about acquiring more. And the way to preserve is to be armed with one's own arms, to pamper one's subjects, and to make friends of one's neighbors. And this is his plan, as that friend about whom I wrote … told me.”Footnote ³⁰ This is quite a different plan from the one attributed to him in The Prince for further territorial aggrandizement. In 1502 Machiavelli clearly believed Borgia was overextending himself, and, far from admiring or, as some would have it, supporting Borgia's ambitions, Machiavelli judged that his ambitions exceeded his ability to create a stable state from his many and sudden “acquisitions.” In December of that year, Machiavelli told his government that it could now hope that “the duke will begin to get used to restraining his desires and to realize that fortune won't grant him all his wishes.”Footnote ³¹

Near the end of chapter 7, Machiavelli follows Borgia into the fatal crisis that began “five years after Cesare unsheathed his sword.” Alexander's death “left him with only the stato of Romagna fully under control, with the others [in Umbria and the Marche] in the air, between two hostile armies [of France and Spain], and with himself seriously ill.” Machiavelli recalls Cesare saying (during their third encounter in Rome when he was slipping into oblivion) that the causes of his political demise were Alexander's death and his own illness: “and he told me [e lui mi disse] in the days in which Julius II was elected that he had thought about what might happen when his father died and had found a solution for everything, but that he never thought that, at the moment his father was dying, he himself would be near death” (he was ill but did not die in 1503). Here the echoing of Cesare's voice becomes explicit, as Machiavelli reproduces the duke's self-dramatizing and self-pitying lament of his ill fortune. The following combination of extravagant praise and exculpatory rationalization of failure (with yet a third reason for the failure) similarly mimics Borgia: “There was such fierceness and virtù in the duke, and so well did he know how men must be either won over to one's side or else eliminated, and so firm were the foundations he had laid in so short a time, that if he had not had those armies [of France and Spain] on his back or if he had been healthy he would have overcome every difficulty.” This is another of Borgia's many excuses for failure—desperate self-justifications by a prince who acquired everything through fortune and the arms of others and never understood that half measures toward autonomy late in the game would not suffice. The assertion that the proof of Cesare's “good foundations” was that “the Romagna waited for him for one month” (when in fact uprisings against him began immediately after Alexander's death) echoes his unrealistic insistence, expressed to Machiavelli and others, that he would soon raise troops, return to the Romagna, and regain control.

In this light, Machiavelli's allegedly contradictory explanations of Borgia's failure—the “extreme and exceptional malice of fortune” and the “error” in allowing Julius's election—are not mutually exclusive and need not be understood as alternative explanations for his collapse. Borgia no doubt lamented fortune's “extreme malice” as uncontrollable fate, but Machiavelli wants his readers to understand that Borgia failed to understand that his “error” resulted from the lack of autonomy that forced him to depend on the conclave to give him a friendly pope and then to rely—foolishly—on the mistaken notion that “recent favors” would make Julius forget “former injuries.” The “error” is not separate from the “malice of fortune.” It is the culminating example of how fortune—dependence—shackled him. He committed the error because he lacked the autonomy and arms that would have allowed him not to depend on the College of Cardinals to provide him with a friendly pope. Machiavelli reproduces Valentino's misunderstanding of the “malice of fortune” in his failure to recognize that “fortune” is not external to one's choices and actions. Cesare had chosen the easy route to the acquisition of a state and was now paying the inevitable price.

Just before faulting Borgia for his great “error,” Machiavelli lavishes expansive praise on him, curiously juxtaposing apparently unconditional approval with stern rebuke for supporting the election of Julius II. Borgia's actions are said to furnish “the most recent” (and hence most pertinent) “examples” (or useful lessons) for the ruler of a “new principality.” But Machiavelli does not say that Cesare actually accomplished the objectives toward which the allegedly exemplary actions were directed. Machiavelli says Borgia's actions are useful to a prince who needs to do the following:

• — “Gain security against enemies and win friends” (but he was never secure against the enmity of Venice, the Orsini, Baglioni, Vitelli, Della Rovere, or the signori he dispossessed, and he never succeeded in persuading Florence to ally with him).

• — “Conquer either by force or by fraud” (his early conquests were achieved by force supplied by others, and with fraud he subsequently took Urbino and eliminated his faithless former allies; but neither fraud nor force worked against Florence and, once his lack of force became evident, he himself fell victim to fraud, or deception, at the hands of Della Rovere).

• — “Make himself loved and feared by the populations [of the territories he acquired]” (despite his wishful thinking about the friendship of the Romagnol people, Borgia actually made himself, or his rule, hated).

• — “Make himself followed and respected by his hired soldiers” (his chief condottieri conspired against him, and later his hired troops refused to fight because they saw his power crumbling).

• — “Eliminate those who can or must do you harm” (he eliminated the conspirators, but not the families of the rulers he dispossessed and only a few of the rulers themselves, nor did he purge the College of Cardinals or neutralize Della Rovere).

• — “Renovate old institutions with new ones” (the tardily instituted civic tribunal was his only institutional innovation).

• — “Be severe and well-liked, magnanimous and generous [liberale]” (Borgia allowed messer Ramiro to practice severity, albeit fearing its consequences, but where are instances of his magnanimity and generosity? And how is the seeming praise of Borgia's “liberality” compatible with Machiavelli's denunciation of this false virtue in Prince 16?).

• — “Disband disloyal military units and create new ones” (Borgia did indeed disband his disloyal condottieri—by murdering them—but continued to rely on paid professional soldiers as much as any ruler or state in Italy, possibly more).

• — “Maintain the friendship of kings and princes so that they will gladly do you favors and only reluctantly do you harm” (Borgia's actions against Florence caused Louis to rein him in on several occasions, and neither Louis nor King Ferdinand of Spain rescued him when his power evaporated).

Borgia never fully accomplished the “actions” that Machiavelli enumerates and seemingly praises, but he kept insisting, to Machiavelli and anyone willing to listen, that he intended to achieve them. Machiavelli ascribes to Borgia the awareness that he needed to do these things to escape the condition of dependence that limited what he could do, but this awareness was rhetorical and theoretical, more talk than action. In reproducing Borgia's empty bluster, chapter 7's message is that a new prince must not believe that bravado alone can bring success. In October 1503 Florence sent Machiavelli to Rome to observe the second conclave and report on Borgia's intentions and movements. With everything crumbling around the once feared duke, Machiavelli found him angry but helpless, still full of bold plans and threats but lacking arms and the support he once enjoyed from his papal father and French allies. Here too Machiavelli echoes Borgia's self-deceptions and delusions. Commenting on the naiveté of his expectation that Julius would honor the promises made in return for Borgia's support in his election, Machiavelli mocked him, in a dispatch of 4 November, for “letting himself be carried away by that bold self-confidence of his” and in “believing that the words of others were more to be trusted than his own.” And two days later he reported with bemused contempt Borgia's overheated but empty threats against the Florentines: “he let himself go on at length with words full of poison and anger. … I did not lack for things to reply … but decided instead to calm him down and got away from him as deftly as I could, although it seemed to take a thousand years.”Footnote ³²

IV

Machiavelli's Borgia emerges as another unarmed, or at least poorly armed, failure, who believed his own inflated rhetoric and did not understand that all his cleverness, ambition, cruelty (even well used), and tough talk could not overcome the handicap of dependence. He failed—and was destined to fail—because he could not escape the original sin of dependence on his father and the French. Borgia's function in The Prince is that of a particularly egregious example of “these princes of ours” taken to task in chapter 24 for railing against fortune for the loss of their states instead of blaming their “common weakness as regards arms.” They should never have counted on being rescued by others, because it happens rarely, and even when it does, “it does not make you secure, since such a defense is cowardly and does not depend on yourself [non dependere da te]; only those defenses are good, certain, and lasting that depend on yourself [che dependono da te proprio] and your own virtù.” Machiavelli's excoriation of princes who blame everything and everyone except themselves for their failures applies as well to Cesare Borgia as to the former rulers of Naples and Milan mentioned in chapter 24.

The Prince is a study of failed princes and of the many ways they fail. The special case of Borgia is that of a prince who, despite undeniable abilities, failed to understand the most important thing of all—having his own arms. On these grounds alone, it seems inconceivable that Machiavelli could have seen Borgia as a model “new prince.” If anything, he is the negative model, the cautionary lesson and demonstration that princes who lack their own arms, who fail to win the support of the people, and who cannot maintain what they acquire will inevitably fail. Stranger still would it have been for Machiavelli to imagine him a decade later as the inspiration for the prince/redeemer of chapter 26, who acquires and maintains his state with his own arms, creates new institutions and good soldiers, and has the autonomy needed to survive challenges and deflect crises. Borgia simply does not fit the profile. Moreover, the imagined “hero” of The Prince is he who undertakes and fulfills the redemptive task of liberating Italy from the “barbarous domination” of foreigners. In this light, one detail in chapter 26 must definitively exclude Borgia from being identified with the one in whom a “glimmer” of hope led some to believe he had been “ordained” by the Almighty for Italy's redemption. Among that chapter's dolorous list of military defeats suffered by Italian armies “in the past twenty years” is the seizure of Capua, north of Naples, and the massacre of thousands of its inhabitants in July 1501 by a French army to which, as Machiavelli certainly remembered, Cesare Borgia joined his forces.Footnote ³³ Whatever his role in the sack, his very presence at Capua with the murderous French made him, to say the least, a highly incongruous model for a prince called to liberate Italy from the barbarians.

Machiavelli's final judgment of Borgia's attempt to build a state on the “fortuna” of his father appears in chapter 23 of book 1 of the Florentine Histories and echoes a key passage at the beginning of Prince 7. Beginning in the late thirteenth century, Machiavelli says, popes inaugurated the practice of promoting and benefitting their “nephews and relatives,” a practice now so common that in due course, he says, the history he is writing will even have to make mention of the “sons” of popes. And whereas “up to our own time” the aim of the pontiffs has been to make their relatives princes, “all that remains for them to attempt is to bequeath the papacy to their heirs as an inheritance.” However, the states that popes created for their “nephews and relatives” have been of brief duration, “because in most cases popes, who live only a short time, either do not succeed in firmly planting them or leave them with so few and such weak roots [con sì poche e deboli barbe] that, once the virtù that sustains them is gone, the least bit of wind causes them to shrivel.”