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which took place in a Florentine Garden. The chief character is Fabrizio Colonna, a member of a noble family of that name which had disturbed the peace of Rome for centuries. Like others of his kind, this Fabrizio had served as a mercenary commander under Spain’s “Catholic Kings,” Ferdinand and Isabel, during their wars in northern Italy. Now he is traveling back to his native Rome and, stopping at Florence, ready to hold forth on his experiences.
    During his years in office (1498–1512) Machiavelli himself had been in charge of conducting Florence’s war against Pisa. The conflict dragged on and on; to save money, Machiavelli at one point persuaded the
signoria
to supplement the mercenaries which were doing the fighting with the conscripted inhabitants of Florence’s own
contado
or countryside. The experiment, which was the subject of much skepticism, worked and Pisa was duly taken. Not long thereafter, however, the same troops scattered to the four winds in front of Emperor Maximilian’s hard-bitten
Landsknechte
. As the Medici family, which had been expelled in 1494, returned, Florence’s republican government fell. Machiavelli himself was briefly imprisoned and tortured.
    Nothing daunted, eight years later Machiavelli put his predilection for conscripts into the mouth of Fabrizio Colonna. The common opinion, which had it that civilians could not be successful soldiers, was wrong. “My Romans” during the Republic (both in this work and in others Machiavelli all but ignored the Imperial period) had been the best soldiers in the world. Since they had consisted of conscripts, so ought others in the “modern” age. Having thus proven the superiority of conscripts to his own satisfaction, Machiavelli proceeds to describe their selection, training, discipline, equipment, marching order, methods of castrametation, and the like. All of this was to be done in the Roman manner, partly as could be culled from Livy but mainly as described by Vegetius although Vegetius himself belonged to the late Imperial period rather than to the Republican one which Machiavelli so much admired.
    Having shown what good soldiers his imaginary Romans were, Machiavelli draws them up for an equally imaginary battle. They are armed with a mixture of Greek and Roman weapons; since the formations he suggests are hopelessly out of date, to prevent them from being blown to pieces he must first of all pretend that artillery is of little use, even at the risk of having his audience laugh at him. Having done so, he is now in a position where he can dispense some useful advice. “In the midst of battle, to confuse the hostile army, it is necessary to make something happen that will bewilder them, either by announcing some reinforcement that is coming or by showing something that appears like it.” “When a general wins, he ought with all speed to follow up his victory.” A commander “should never fight a battle if he does not have the advantage, or if he is not compelled by necessity.” “The greatest and most important matter that a general should attend to is to have near him faithful men, very skillful in war and prudent, with whom he continually advises.” “When either hunger or other natural necessity or human passion has brought your enemy to complete desperation … you ought to avoid battle in so far as is in your power.” These and similar pearls of wisdom are provided with plentiful illustrations at the hands of examples, most of them taken from the ancient world. After all, if Minucius Rufus and Acilius Glabrio, “Roman consuls” in 217 and 191 BC respectively, could carry out this or that maneuver, why not we?
    Thus three of Machiavelli’s key propositions—his underestimation of artillery, his recommendation that pikes be supplemented with swords and bucklers, and his preference for citizen-soldiers over professionals—proved to be dead wrong. The last of these ideas even compelled him to strike some decidedly