The Prince waited nineteen years for print, yet scandal reached readers first
Machiavelli was drafting a handbook for new rulers in 1513, but it only appeared in print in 1532, five years after he died. By then the manuscript had already stirred controversy, and its cool advice about cruelty, loyalty and power eventually turned his own surname into an insult.
Niccolò Machiavelli, an Italian diplomat, framed the book as a guide for princes and dedicated it to Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino. Its working Latin title was De Principatibus, meaning Of Principalities. The printed edition came out with permission from the Medici pope Clement VII. On the surface it looked like a familiar genre, the mirror for princes, but Machiavelli turned away from classical authors he judged too fixated on ideal regimes and asked instead what actually works.
His focus was unusual. Older advice books spoke mostly to hereditary rulers, whose subjects tend to accept them unless they become hated. Machiavelli cared far more about the newcomer who must seize and keep a state against custom. He also dropped Aristotle's tidy scheme of monarchy, oligarchy and democracy, along with the old line between a good king and a tyrant. Change, he argued, is the hardest thing a ruler can attempt: those who gained from the old order fight fiercely, while the likely winners of the new one offer only lukewarm help. Only armed prophets such as Moses, in his view, manage lasting reform.
Cesare Borgia, whose violent career Machiavelli had watched as a diplomat, supplies many of the examples. Placed at the head of the Church's troops by his father, Pope Alexander VI, Borgia bought the loyalty of rival mercenaries with better pay and posts. He sent a henchman, Remirro de Orco, to crush disorder in the Romagna, then had him executed so the cruelty would seem to belong to someone else. Machiavelli also advised that a free city which is not destroyed will likely destroy its conqueror, and that injuries should be severe enough to rule out revenge.
Some commentators rank the book among the first works of modern political philosophy, since it values results over abstract ideals and clashed with Catholic and scholastic teaching on ethics. Its reputation fed the pejorative word Machiavellian and even darkened how Western readers hear politics and politician. Scholars still argue over one small detail: how its neutral use of stato helped the word state gain its modern sense.
Source: The Prince
