The Project Gutenberg EBook of History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of
Italy, by Niccolo Machiavelli

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Title: History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy
From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent

Author: Niccolo Machiavelli

Commentator: Hugo Albert Rennert

Release Date: March 31, 2006 [EBook #2464]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF FLORENCE ***

Produced by John Bickers; Dagny

HISTORY OF FLORENCE AND OF THE AFFAIRS OF ITALY

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE DEATH OF LORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT

By Niccolo Machiavelli

With an Introduction by

HUGO ALBERT RENNERT, Ph.D. Professor of Romanic Languages and
Literature, University of Pennsylvania.

PREPARER'S NOTE

This text was typed up from a Universal Classics Library edition,
published in 1901 by W. Walter Dunne, New York and London. The
translator was not named. The book contains a "photogravure" of
Niccolo Machiavelli from an engraving.

INTRODUCTION

Niccolo Machiavelli, the first great Italian historian, and one of
the most eminent political writers of any age or country, was born
at Florence, May 3, 1469. He was of an old though not wealthy Tuscan
family, his father, who was a jurist, dying when Niccolo was sixteen
years old. We know nothing of Machiavelli's youth and little about
his studies. He does not seem to have received the usual humanistic
education of his time, as he knew no Greek.[*] The first notice of
Machiavelli is in 1498 when we find him holding the office of Secretary
in the second Chancery of the Signoria, which office he retained till
the downfall of the Florentine Republic in 1512. His unusual ability was
soon recognized, and in 1500 he was sent on a mission to Louis XII.
of France, and afterward on an embassy to Caesar Borgia, the lord of
Romagna, at Urbino. Machiavelli's report and description of this and
subsequent embassies to this prince, shows his undisguised admiration
for the courage and cunning of Caesar, who was a master in the
application of the principles afterwards exposed in such a skillful and
uncompromising m