might stand untouched in the midst of their encampment.' The infantry
should far exceed the cavalry, 'since it is by infantry that battles are
won.' Secrecy, mobility, and familiarity with the country are to be
objects of special care, and positions should be chosen from which
advance is safer than retreat. In war this army must be led by one
single leader, and, when peace shines again, they must go back contented
to their grateful fellow-countrymen and their wonted ways of living. The
conception and foundation of such a scheme, at such a time, by such a
man is indeed astounding. He broke with the past and with all
contemporary organisations. He forecast the future of military Europe,
though his own Italy was the last to win her redemption through his
plans. 'Taken all in all,' says a German military writer, 'we may
recognise Machiavelli in his inspired knowledge of the principles of
universal military discipline as a true prophet and as one of the
weightiest thinkers in the field of military construction and
constitution. He penetrated the essence of military technique with a
precision wholly alien to his period, and it is, so to say, a new
psychological proof of the relationship between the art of war and the
art of statecraft, that the founder of Modern Politics is also the first
of modern Military Classics.'

But woe to the Florentine Secretary with his thoughts born centuries
before their time. As in _The Prince_, so in the _Art of War_, he closes
with a passionate appeal of great sorrow and the smallest ray of hope.
Where shall I hope to find the things that I have told of? What is Italy
to-day? What are the Italians? Enervated, impotent, vile. Wherefore, 'I
lament mee of nature, the which either ought not to have made mee a
knower of this, or it ought to have given mee power, to have bene able
to have executed it: For now beeing olde, I cannot hope to have any
occasion, to be able so to doo: In consideration whereof, I have bene
liberall with you who beeing grave young men, may (when the thinges said
of me shall please you) at due times, in favoure of your Princes, helpe
them and counsider them. Wherin I would have you not to be afraied, or
mistrustfull, because this Province seemes to bee altogether given to
raise up againe the things deade, as is seene by the perfection that
Poesie, painting, and writing, is now brought unto: Albeit, as much as
is looked for of mee, beeing strooken in yeeres, I do mistrust. Wh