As noted above, chapters 6 and 7 constitute a pair, with chapter 6 on new principalities acquired by one’s own virtue and arms and chapter 7 on new principalities acquired “with the arms and fortune of others,” as the title tells us. Note already that the question in chapter 7 is therefore not merely relying on the arms of others and fortune but, worse, on the fortune of others. To rely on the fortune of others is to be doubly reliant on fortune. The “greatest examples” of new princes in chapter 6 relied on fortune solely for

the opportunity to exercise their virtue, but now it seems Machiavelli will discuss new princes who continue to rely on fortune, and even the fortune of others, beyond the initial opportunity. Such princes, he tells us, acquire their states with little trouble but can only maintain themselves with a great deal of labor, the opposite of the case of the new princes of chapter 6, who acquire their states with great effort but then maintain them with relative ease. As noted in the introduction to this chapter, the status of Machiavelli’s main example in chapter 7 of a new prince who acquires through the fortune and arms of others, Cesare Borgia, is problematic. Although Machiavelli comes to Cesare’s defense by claiming that his ultimate failure was not his fault but instead “arose from an extraordinary and extreme malignity of fortune,” we might suspect that Cesare’s downfall was instead due to his continuing to rely on the fortune and arms of others. Or are we to applaud Cesare’s apparent attempts to free himself of reliance on others, even if he ultimately failed? In short, what sort of exemplar is Cesare Borgia? Before turning to modern examples of princes who rely on the

fortune and arms of others, and especially to his discussion of Cesare Borgia, Machiavelli first presents us with a few brief ancient examples of a state being obtained by money or by someone else’s “grace.” He cites the petty tyrants the Persian king Darius set up in Greece (Darius I the Great, who ruled in the fifth century BCE, and not the Darius III we encountered in chapter 4 who was defeated by Alexander the Great) and those Roman emperors who owed their becoming emperor to the army, which quickly made and just as quickly unmade these emperors, a subject to which Machiavelli will return in chapter 19. “These persons rely simply on the will and fortune of whoever has granted it to them, and those are two things that are very volatile and unstable, and they neither know how nor are able to maintain that rank.” That said, Machiavelli does allow that if fortune throws a state in a prince’s lap, he might succeed if he is “a man of great genius and virtue” and acts quickly-“right away,” he writes-to lay foundations to maintain the state. In other words, such a virtuous prince would thereby succeed in becoming like one of those princes discussed in chapter 6 who owe nothing more to fortune than the opportunity

and strike with their virtue while the iron is hot. Machiavelli thus invites us to ask what the modern princes he will discuss in chapter 7 failed to do in order to be reckoned among those great examples. In chapter 6 all of Machiavelli’s models of new princes who

acquired a principality by their own virtue and arms were ancient examples, but now he presents us with two modern examples, and in fact he goes out of his way to underscore this by stating that he will adduce examples “that took place during days that are within our memory.” Is there something about modern times that makes princes less likely to rely on their own virtue and own arms, or more likely to rely on the arms and fortune of others? At any rate, these contemporary examples of new princes who have acquired their state by the arms and fortune of others should be of particular interest to the dedicatee of The Prince, Lorenzo de’ Medici, who is himself in this situation. Perhaps Machiavelli offers Lorenzo these two recent examples to see which he will choose to imitate. The way in which Machiavelli introduces these two examples

forces us to compare them. “Concerning the first and the second of the modes stated for becoming a prince, by virtue or by fortune,” he writes, “I want to adduce two examples that took place during days that are within our memory, and these are Francesco Sforza and Cesare Borgia.” He describes Sforza as rising from private individual to become duke of Milan by “proper means and with great virtue of his own.” As noted when we first encountered Sforza in chapter 1 as an example of an entirely new prince, Machiavelli exaggerates somewhat in characterizing him as an entirely “new” prince, given that Sforza was the son-in-law of the previous duke. Now he also overstates the “proper means” through which Sforza attained his principality, for the brief and tumultuous republican government that was established after the death of Sforza’s father-in-law capitulated to Sforza under threat of arms and granted him the duchy. What seems to be essential about the example of Sforza, then, is the “great virtue of his own,” and we can add having his own arms as well since Sforza rose to prominence as a successful mercenary captain, in fact using his “own arms” to threaten Milan. Why didn’t Machiavelli mention Sforza in chapter 6? If Sforza is an example of a prince

who attained his state by virtue, Cesare Borgia is Machiavelli’s example of a prince who rose to power through fortune. “On the other hand, Cesare Borgia, who was called Duke Valentino by the people, acquired his state through his father’s fortune, and on the same account he lost it, even though he took every care, and did all those things that ought to have been done by a prudent and virtuous man to put down roots in those states that the arms and fortune of others had granted him.” Several things should be noted by the way in which Machiavelli

introduces Cesare. First, he is said to have acquired his state not only through fortune, but through the fortune (and arms) of someone else: his father, Pope Alexander VI. The example of Cesare therefore matches the subject announced in the title of chapter 7. Second, Machiavelli goes out of his way to point to Cesare’s relationship with “the people” by mentioning that he was popularly called “Duke Valentino” (a reference to his being duc de Valentinois), and so it seems we are being asked to pay particular attention to the relationship between Cesare and the people. Third, and most importantly, despite having stated that Cesare gained and lost his state through the fortune and arms of others, Machiavelli nonetheless presents him as having done “all those things that ought to have been done by a prudent and virtuous man to put down roots in those states that the arms and fortune of others had granted him.” Note that Machiavelli does not himself actually say that Cesare was prudent or virtuous, but instead circuitously characterizes him as having done those things which a prudent and virtuous man should do, namely to “put down roots” in states given to him by the arms and fortune of others. Machiavelli retains this emphasis on putting down roots when he goes on to explain why he will focus on Cesare: “For, as was said above, he who does not lay his foundations in advance may, with great virtue, lay them afterward, although they be laid with pain for the builder and peril for the building.” Such actions would convert a prince who comes to power through the arms and virtue of another into an example of a prince who acquired a state through his own virtue, as we saw above. “Thus if one will consider all the steps of the duke,” Machiavelli continues, “one will see that he lay great foundations for his future power. These I do not judge superfluous to discuss,

for I would not know what better precepts to give to a new prince than the example of his actions. And if he did not profit by his orders, it was not his fault, because this arose from an extraordinary and extreme malignity of fortune.” Again, what sort of example is Cesare meant to be? Is he an

example that should be followed, or an example of what should be avoided? If he was indeed as prudent and virtuous as Machiavelli suggests, or almost suggests, then why did he fail? We are told that “an extraordinary and extreme malignity of fortune” was the cause of his failure (thereby also reminding us of what Machiavelli says in the Dedicatory Letter about his own “great and continuous malignity of fortune”). But was Cesare indeed not at fault for allowing this to occur? We will have to follow Machiavelli in his extended analysis of Cesare’s actions to identify the causes of his ultimate failure. Given that the case of Cesare Borgia is Machiavelli’s most

extensive treatment in The Prince of any example he gives, and given the ambiguity surrounding the lesson we are supposed to learn from this example, it would be useful to briefly provide some historical background before turning to this analysis. As noted, Cesare Borgia was the son of Pope Alexander VI, and we should note that it was not uncommon for Renaissance popes to have children, though since the practice was not condoned these offspring were often claimed to be the “nephews” and “nieces” of a pope. Pope Alexander was named Rodrigo Borgia (or Borja) and came from Spain. After his uncle was created Pope Calixtus III in 1455, Rodrigo Borgia entered a career in the papal service and later became a cardinal, and was himself elected pope in 1492 as Alexander VI. Like his uncle and many other popes before and after him, Alexander VI used his power to aggrandize his family, in his case his children, notably Cesare and Lucrezia, the latter of whom he married off to several princes in order to create alliances. Cesare Borgia (b. 1475/76) was originally destined for a career in the Church, becoming a bishop at the age of fifteen and a cardinal at eighteen. After the death in 1497 of Cesare’s elder brother Giovanni (allegedly Cesare’s own doing), who was Captain General of the papal forces, Alexander VI turned to Cesare to realize his dynastic goals. Cesare resigned his cardinalate in 1498 and on the

very same day was made duc de Valentinois by Louis XII of France as part of a deal where the pope annulled Louis’ marriage in exchange for the duchy for his son. Cesare then began a military career, with the French invasion of Louis XII of 1499 providing the opportunity to begin to carve out a state in the Romagna and the Marche, roughly the eastern region of the Italian peninsula lying south of Venice and east of Florence, an area that had traditionally been under the domination of the Papal States. In 1500, Cesare was able, thanks to his father, to hire mercenary forces and to expand his campaign of conquest. In addition, he threatened Florence and was paid handsomely not to attack the city. During this period Machiavelli himself witnessed many of the events he recounts in The Prince since during this period he was sent by his Florentine superiors on a series of diplomatic missions to Cesare’s camp as well as to the Papal Court in Rome. Pope Alexander VI died in August 1503 and Cesare was also seriously ill at the time, allegedly because he and his father mistakenly drank poisoned wine intended for a cardinal. Cesare was nonetheless able to control the conclave of cardinals, arranging for the election of the elderly Pius III, who reaffirmed Cesare’s role as head of the papal forces. However, when Pius died after just twenty-six days, Cesare witnessed the election of his longtime enemyGiuliano della Rovere as Pope Julius II. Julius had promised Cesare that he could continue his conquests in the Romagna, but then the new pope promptly turned on him. Cesare was betrayed by an ally, imprisoned, and his conquered territories were taken by the pope. Cesare managed to escape and served for the next few years as a military captain for the king of Navarre before being killed in an ambush on March 11, 1507. As we shall see, Machiavelli alternately condenses and expands the time frame of these historical events in his own narrative. Tellingly, Machiavelli begins his analysis of Cesare’s career as a

new prince not with Cesare, but with Pope Alexander. “Alexander VI, when he wanted to make a great name of the duke, his son, had many difficulties, both present and future.” The Pope, not Cesare, seems to be the prime mover in this story, a point Machiavelli will fully confirm later in the work. The difficulties faced by Alexander concerned the present balance of political

forces in Italy and his inability to trust the military arms of other princes or states, which had reason to fear the power of the papacy. “Thus it was necessary that those orders should be disturbed, and the states of those men put in disorder, so that he could securely assume the lordship of part of them.” The occasion for sowing disorder amidst this order came with the events that led to the French invasion of 1499, an event that Alexander facilitated by annulling the French king’s marriage. Once the French had successfully taken Milan, the Pope borrowed troops in order to invade the Romagna. Only at this point does Cesare enter the picture. “When, therefore, the duke had acquired the Romagna and defeated the Colonnesi, and he wanted to maintain it and proceed farther ahead, two things impeded him.” Namely, he realized that his mercenary forces were not faithful to him and also that he could not trust the king of France, who held Cesare back from further attacks after his initial successes. So far, then, we have Pope Alexander maneuvering to make a name for Cesare by disrupting the existing political order in Italy, and Cesare acting as a successful military captain using the arms of others and coming to realize that those arms were not dependable. “Whence it was that the duke decided no longer to depend on

the arms and fortune of others,” Machiavelli suddenly writes, adding the “fortune” of others to the “arms” of others he has just discussed. To what degree did Cesare succeed in making himself no longer so dependent? Machiavelli relates that Cesare took advantage of the partisan rivalries in Rome, especially between the Orsini and Colonna clans, in order to divide and conquer, making their adherents his own. This was part of his strategy of no longer relying on the arms of others since these powerful Roman families and their allies were the source of much of the funds and many of the military forces upon which Cesare had relied to this point. After the Orsini realized too late that the fall of their rivals was augmenting “the greatness of the duke and of the Church,” they rebelled, and Cesare was able to maintain his conquests in the Romagna only with French help. Wanting to rid himself of dependence on the French as well, Cesare turned to deceit. After reassuring the Orsini and plying one of their leaders with “money, clothing and horses” (gifts reminiscent of those

Machiavelli stated in the Dedicatory Letter are customarily given to princes), he lured them into a trap at Senigallia and had them all murdered. (Machiavelli himself was present on this memorable occasion.) So far, then, Cesare had at least begun to lay plans to no longer depend on the arms of others.7 What about the fortune of others? Machiavelli now pauses in his narrative to consider Cesare’s

accomplishments to this point. He states in his own name that Cesare “had thrown down very good foundations for his power, since he had all of the Romagna and the duchy of Urbino,” and then adds, writing now from Cesare’s viewpoint, “and it appeared to him that he had especially acquired the friendship of the Romagna and won its peoples wholly to himself because they had begun to savor their own well-being.” To what extent Machiavelli agrees with how things “appeared” to Cesare is unclear, although we know that he argues that appearances are often treacherous. For the present it should be noted that these peoples had only “begun” to experience well-being, suggesting that Cesare’s “very good foundations” were only just in place. Continuing with his analysis, Machiavelli emphasizes what he

is about to write by calling the reader’s attention to its importance: “And because the following point is worthy of notice and should be imitated by others, I do not want to leave it out.” He explains: “After the duke had taken the Romagna, since he found it commanded by impotent lords who preferred to despoil their subjects rather than correct them, and who had given them motive for disunion not unity, so that that province was completely full of robberies, feuds and every other kind of insolence, he judged it necessary, since he wanted to render it peaceful and obedient to the royal power, to give them good government.” Before turning to the chilling example Machiavelli provides of how he did so, let us note that he attributes to Cesare the motive of wanting to render his conquered province “peaceful and obedient,” not to give it “good government” for its own sake. “Good government” seems to be a means toward the end of acquiring and maintaining Cesare’s own power, and the previous lawlessness of the states in the Romagna provided him with the opportunity to do so. Nonetheless, it would seem that Cesare’s actions, even if self-serving, had a

positive effect for these peoples. One way of reading The Prince based in part on this passage is that Machiavelli’s intention is to harness the ambition of princes to act in ways that benefit peoples. In this case we would have to contrast the rapacious actions of the lords who previously ruled in the Romagna to Cesare’s apparently more effective methods, methods that simultaneously benefited himself and the people. Even if Cesare and these petty princes were all driven by the same desire to acquire and maintain power, Cesare’s mode of doing so would seem to be more successful, at least potentially, and therefore to be imitated. We will continue to test this reading of The Prince as we proceed. In order to illustrate how Cesare brought “good government” to

the Romagna, Machiavelli relates a chilling story. Cesare appointed a certain Messer Remirro de Orco, “a cruel and expeditious man,” who in short order made the province peaceful and united, “and had a very great reputation.” He goes on to state that Cesare now “judged that such excessive authority was not necessary because he worried that it would become hateful.” Was Cesare perhaps instead worried that Remirro’s growing reputation was a threat to his power? Perhaps, but Machiavelli continues by relating how Cesare set up a civil tribunal in the province to hear cases.8 But once again he raises our suspicions about Cesare’s motives when he continues: “And because Valentino knew that the past rigors had generated some hatred toward him, to purge the spirits of those peoples and to win them wholly to himself, he wanted to show that if any cruelty had taken place, it was caused not by himself, but by the harsh nature of his minister.” Of course, Remirro’s actions were taken on Cesare’s orders, and so any hatred directed at Cesare for these cruel deeds would rightly be attributed to him and not solely to his minister. So he makes Remirro a scapegoat. Machiavelli writes that Cesare seized an opportunity that arose and had Remirro placed in two pieces-namely his head and his now headless body-in the town square in Cesena, a city in the Romagna, with a piece of wood and a bloody knife at his side. “The ferocity of that spectacle left those peoples at once satisfied and stupefied,” Machiavelli comments. And he would know: he was present at that event as well. The hatred of the people, now directed at Remirro, was “satisfied” by this bloody spectacle, but

they are also left “stupefied”—speechlessly afraid-and thus motivated to obey Cesare. Such were Cesare’s methods in bringing “good government.” As though having hardly written anything remarkable, Machiavelli returns to his narrative: “But let us return to where we left off.” Returning to his account, Machiavelli states that, having taken

these actions, Cesare ended by “finding himself very powerful and in part secure against present dangers.” (Machiavelli’s formulation, that Cesare “finding himself”—trovandosi-in this situation seems to suggest that this is Cesare’s own estimation of his position, and not necessarily Machiavelli’s.) Therefore, he turned to the problem of the French king holding him back from making further acquisitions and tried to form other alliances so that he would no longer be dependent on the French. “His intention was to secure himself against the French, which he would have succeeded quickly in doing if Alexander had lived. And such was his conduct as regards present things.” How does Machiavelli know Cesare would have succeeded in doing this? Did Cesare focus on “present things” to the detriment of looking toward the future, and especially the death of his father, who recently turned seventy? Machiavelli continues: “But as regards future things, he had to worry, first, that a new successor to the Church might not be his friend, and might try to take away what Alexander had given him.” In other words, Cesare still remained dependent on his father and the Church. Machiavelli enumerates four ways in which Cesare thought to defend himself against an unfriendly new pope: first, to eliminate the bloodlines of those lords he had despoiled to prevent them from becoming the means of revenge against him; second, to win over the noblemen of Rome to hold a new pope in check; third, to gain as much influence in the College of Cardinals as possible; fourth, and most importantly, to acquire as much of a dominion of his own so as to be able to resist an unfriendly pontiff. Machiavelli claims that Cesare had accomplished the first three goals at the death of Pope Alexander, but not the fourth. Machiavelli’s discussion of Cesare’s progress on the fourth goal,

of acquiring enough power to stand on his own, is curious for its hypothetical language.9 “As for the new acquisition, he had planned to become lord of Tuscany … .” Such were Cesare’s

“plans,” but how realistic were they? “And as soon as he did not have to fear France …” (although Machiavelli parenthetically remarks that in fact he no longer did have to fear France, whether or not Cesare was aware of this) “… he would have jumped to Pisa.” Note the conditional phrasing: if x had happened, Cesare would have done y. Machiavelli continues with this conditional language: “After this, Lucca and Siena would have surrendered immediately … and the Florentines would have had no remedy.” In other words, Machiavelli lays out a hypothetical plan for Cesare to become “lord of Tuscany” which Cesare in fact never carried out. Indeed, it is not clear whether this plan was Cesare’s or Machiavelli’s own. “If this had succeeded for him (it would have happened in the same year that Alexander died),” Machiavelli concludes his plan, “he would have acquired so many forces and such a reputation that he would have been able to stand alone, and he would not have depended any longer on the fortune and forces of others, but on his own power and virtue.” In other words, without saying so directly, Machiavelli indicates that Cesare in fact still depended on the fortune of others, namely his father’s fortune. What about his “virtue”? The sentence just quoted is in fact the first time Machiavelli ever refers to Cesare’s “virtue.” Yet even this reference is conditional: if things had happened thus, he “would have” depended on his own power and virtue.10 We will further entertain the possibility that the plan laid out is less Cesare’s than Machiavelli’s when wrapping up the analysis of this chapter. Recall that at the outset of chapter 7 Machiavelli considers the

possibility that a prince who gains a state through the arms and fortune of others might possibly succeed if he is “a man of great genius and virtue” and acts quickly-“right away”—to lay foundations to maintain the state. One interpretation of his analysis of Cesare’s failure to accomplish his fourth goal of making sufficient acquisitions to hold on to his power was that he acted too late, perhaps because he was not fully aware of how dependent he was on his father’s fortune. This possibility is underscored by how Machiavelli continues his analysis: “But Alexander died five years after he had started to draw his sword.”11 Who is “he” in this sentence? Alexander or Cesare? We have already seen from the

way that Machiavelli begins his analysis of Cesare’s career that Alexander was in fact the prime mover. Alexander’s death left Cesare with only his state in the Romagna consolidated, and that not for long. Machiavelli comments: “Yet there were such a great ferocity and so much virtue in the duke, and so well did he understand how men are won or lost, and so strong were the foundations that he had made in so little time, that, if he had not had those armies on top of him, or if he had been healthy, he would have stood through every difficulty.” Such is Machiavelli’s counterfactual evaluation; but, of course, the fact is that Cesare did not do these things. If Machiavelli’s assessment so far of Cesare’s would-be actions

raises doubts as to whether Cesare had indeed acted to make himself no longer dependent on the fortune of others, the way in which he concludes his narrative sows further doubts.12 “And one could see that his foundations were good, since for more than a month the Romagna waited for him,” he begins. That a month does not seem like a very long time is bad enough, but in fact Cesare’s subjects in the Romagna, the only area where his state was relatively consolidated, were already in rebellion at this time. As for his being able to at least prevent anyone he did not want to become pope from doing so, if this was true then Cesare’s action in this regard was his fatal undoing, as we shall see momentarily. “But if on the death of Alexander he had been healthy, everything would have been easy for him,” Machiavelli claims, but as we saw in the brief historical background about his life presented above, Cesare was in fact able to control the initial conclave of cardinals that elected his ally Pius III despite being ill. In his account, Machiavelli fails to mention this first conclave and instead discusses only the second conclave a month later after Pius’ death that elected Julius II, as we shall see. Before summing up with an evaluation of Cesare’s actions, Machiavelli reports a conversation with him: “And he told me, in the days when Julius II was created pope, that he had thought through what might happen if his father died, and for everything he had found a remedy, except that he never thought that at his father’s death he too would be close to death.”13 Does Machiavelli agree with Cesare that he had found a remedy for what would happen with his father’s death?

Or is he reporting wishful thinking on Cesare’s part? Whatever his planned remedies, Cesare nonetheless continued to be dependent on the fortune of his father and the Church. The conversation Machiavelli reports having had with Cesare

should remind us of another conversation he has related, namely at the end of chapter 3 when he reports responding to Cardinal Rouen’s remark that the Italians did not understand war by saying that the French did not understand the state, “since, if they understood it, they would not allow the Church to come into such greatness” (chap. 3, 50). What is common to these two reported conversations is the growing temporal power of the Church, a power augmented by Pope Alexander and Cesare, whatever their own intentions. Having narrated the story of Cesare’s career, Machiavelli con-

cludes chapter 7 with an assessment. “Thus, having summarized all of the actions of the duke, I would not know how to reproach him. On the contrary, I would like to put him forward, as I have done, as one to be imitated by all those who have risen to rule through fortune and the arms of others. For, since he had a great spirit, and his intention was high, he could not conduct himself otherwise.” And yet, as Machiavelli himself has underscored, Cesare failed.14 He attempts to exculpate this new prince: “And only the brevity of the life of Alexander and his own sickness opposed his designs.” Yet Alexander was over seventy when he died, hardly a brief life for the time. And to what extent was Cesare’s own sickness an excuse rather than an explanation? Machiavelli explains that he can find “no fresher examples” of the sort of qualities and actions of Cesare, such as succeeding through force and fraud, but Cesare nonetheless remains an ambiguous example for a new prince given his failure. Machiavelli finally accuses Cesare: “Only in the creation of Julius as pontiff, since he made a poor choice, may the duke be criticized.”15 Machiavelli alludes at the very end to the fact that Julius had been a long-time enemy of Cesare and his father when he writes: “And whoever believes, in dealing with great personalities, that new benefits make old injuries forgotten deceives himself. Thus the duke erred in this choice, and it was the cause of his final ruin.” In other words, Cesare deceived himself, and in doing so he allowed Julius

to deceive him. As Tarcov explains: “Cesare Borgia is here revealed to have been a believer, one who believes in the possibility of forgiveness for the injuries he has committed … . He turns out to have been Christian in this decisive respect. His belief weighed more heavily than his arms in determining his ultimate ruin.”16