Machiavelli and the Medici

Servant of the Republic That Expelled Them

Machiavelli entered public service in 1498, four years after the Medici were expelled from Florence following the French invasion of 1494. The republic he served was explicitly anti-Medici: it had been established in the power vacuum left by their departure and was led by men who wanted to prevent any single family from dominating Florentine politics again.

For fourteen years, Machiavelli was a loyal servant of this republican government. His diplomatic missions, his militia project, and his administrative work all served the republic's interests. When the Medici returned to power in 1512, backed by Spanish arms, Machiavelli was identified as a republic man and paid the price: dismissal, arrest, torture, and exile. There was no ambiguity about which side he had been on.

The Paradox of The Prince

The greatest puzzle in Machiavelli studies is why a committed republican wrote a manual for autocrats. The Prince was dedicated to Lorenzo de' Medici — the grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent and a member of the family that had destroyed Machiavelli's republic. Scholars have proposed several explanations.

The most straightforward is the careerist interpretation: Machiavelli was desperate to return to political life and wrote The Prince as a resume. He was offering his expertise to the only people who could employ him, setting aside his republican principles for pragmatic reasons. This reading is supported by the letter to Vettori, in which Machiavelli explicitly discusses his hope of gaining Medici employment.

A more subtle interpretation sees The Prince as a trap or a warning. By exposing the techniques of princely rule so transparently, Machiavelli was arming the people against tyrants. Rousseau advanced this reading in The Social Contract: 'Machiavelli, while pretending to instruct kings, has done much to instruct the people.' A third interpretation treats The Prince and the Discourses as complementary rather than contradictory: The Prince describes what is necessary when a republic has already been corrupted, while the Discourses describes the superior form of government to aim for.

The Final Irony

In May 1527, the Medici were expelled from Florence for the second time following the Sack of Rome. The republic was restored — the very form of government Machiavelli had served and championed all his life. But the new republic's leaders distrusted Machiavelli precisely because he had accepted Medici commissions during the intervening years. The man who had been punished by the Medici for being a republican was now punished by the republic for having worked with the Medici.

Machiavelli died on June 21, 1527, weeks after the republic's restoration, without receiving any appointment. The irony is almost too neat: the great analyst of fortune and political calculation was undone by the very forces he had spent his life trying to understand. His relationship with the Medici remains the most human element of his biography — the compromises of a brilliant man trying to find relevance in a political world that had no place for him.