(2) Machiavelli's ideas could form a point of depar-
ture for all those who transformed Machiavelli into
a devil incarnate recommending evil-doing in all
spheres of life. But actually the connection between
Machiavelli's views and such recommendations for a
general code of human behavior is tenuous. Machia-
velli's writings aimed at political action; therefore, only
interpretations of his thought concerned with questions
of political conduct should be closely linked to his views.
In political Machiavellism we find the outgrowth of
Machiavelli's own ideas although he might not always
have liked the conclusions which were drawn, or
approved of the extreme simplifications into which his
views were condensed.
Machiavelli's Principe was addressed to a man who
wanted to found a new state in divided Italy. The slow
rise of absolutism in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries made this advice appropriate and timely for
the handling of internal affairs all over Europe. The
absolute monarch tried to cut off all outside inter-
ference in the affairs of the territory which he was
ruling and to make his power independent of the
approval of those he was ruling; this involved subordi-
nation of the Church, reduction of the power of the
estates, disregard of old rights, and infringement of
privileges. Because Machiavelli had allowed and
recommended violations of legal commitments in the
interest of self-preservation and aggrandizement, it was
easy to see his spirit behind the actions of the absolute
rulers or their ministers.
In France and England the cry “Machiavellist” was
raised against all those who tried to enlarge royal
power. In France the writers of the Fronde claimed
that Mazarin, in his attempt to destroy the old French
liberties, followed Maximes Italiennes et Machiavélistes
which he had brought into France from the other side
of the Alps (Claude Joly, 1652). In England the opposi-
tion to the financial and religious policy of Charles I
saw in this Stuart king a disciple of Machiavelli “who
counseled his Prince to keepe his subjects low, by taxes
and impositions and to foment divisions among them,
that he might awe them at his pleasures” (from a
pamphlet of 1648).
One issue in particular drew Machiavelli's name into
the political discussions of this period, that of religion
and the Church. Machiavelli was believed to have been
an atheist to whom religion was primarily a useful
instrument in the hands of the rulers. When in France
a group of politicians suggested the possibility of end-
ing the civil war by tolerating two churches in one
state these men (politiques) were immediately called
Machiavellists, that is, men who subordinated religion
to worldly political interests. When in England dissen-
sion developed among the various religious groups
about the part of religion and of the Church in the
ordering of society each group accused the other of
Machiavellism; in particular the Presbyterians were
accused of “Jesuitical and Machiavellian policy.” The
same criticism—that of pursuing politics under the
name of religion—was used against Cromwell after he
had become Lord Protector; to his opponents Crom-
well was also a Machiavellian.
The tone changed somewhat when in the eighteenth
century the struggle about the extension of royal power
had ended and at least on the continent monarchical
absolutism had won out. The critics of the existing
regimes—the philosophes—were no opponents of
monarchy or even absolutism; what they demanded
was that the ruler follow the rules of reason and moral-
ity, that he carry out his functions in the interest of
all. Their fight was directed against despotic arbitrari-
ness which imprisoned people in order to gratify per-
sonal wishes and desires, which burdened the subjects
with taxes in order to waste money on luxurious build-
ings, which sacrificed the lives of peoples in wars for
prestige and fame, and which maintained the irrational
rule of the Church in order to keep people quiet and
obedient. Machiavelli was a chief target of the philoso-
phes because he preached an amoralistic selfishness
which promoted despotic arbitrariness.
Voltaire characterized as the great principles of
Machiavellism ruinez qui pourrait un jour vous ruiner;
assassinez votre voisin qui pourrait devenir assez fort
pour vous tuer (“ruin anyone who might someday ruin
you; assassinate your neighbor who might become
strong enough to kill you”). And Diderot defined
Machiavellism briefly as l'art de tyranniser. This
moralistic view colored also the views which eight-
eenth-century statesmen held about Machiavelli. Al-
though Bolingbroke, well acquainted with the political
literature of the past, had great respect for Machia-
velli's understanding of political techniques, his Patriot
King (Idea of a Patriot King, 1749), faced like Machia-
velli's prince by the task of restoring political life in
a corrupted society, contained a sharp rejection of
Machiavelli because, according to Bolingbroke, he
lacked true patriotism which was concerned with the
well-being of everyone. The most famous eighteenth-
century condemnation of Machiavelli, of course, is the
Anti-Machiavel (1740) of Frederick the Great in which
every one of Machiavelli's maxims is refuted.
Since, in Catholic countries during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, Machiavelli was an author
whom one was not supposed to know and therefore
not to quote exactly, the qualities which in the eyes
of the people of these centuries distinguished a man
as a Machiavellist, must be deduced primarily from
the image which anti-Machiavellists had formed.
However, because the defenders of the old rights and
privileges saw in Machiavelli an inspirer of the new
absolutist policy, their opponents, the advocates of
royal power, became anxious to know whether these
bitter attacks against Machiavelli meant that the Flor-
entine offered a reasonable justification of absolutist
policy, and they took a careful look at his writings.
Therefore in the seventeenth century there were not
only anti-Machiavellists but also men who defended
Machiavelli as a political thinker of insight and under-
standing.
In Venice, where the long struggle with the Papacy
over the boundaries between political and ecclesiastical
jurisdiction reached its critical highpoint in the first
years of the seventeenth century, Machiavelli was said
to enjoy great popularity, and in the writings defending
the position of the Venetian government, particularly
in those of Paolo Sarpi, echoes of Machiavelli's theories
can be found. The first openly positive evaluations of
Machiavelli's theories, however, were composed in
France and came from the surroundings of the great
royal ministers who led the fight against the restricting
and inhibiting influence of the French nobility: Riche-
lieu and Mazarin. Gabriel Naudé in his Considérations
politiques sur les coups d'état (1639) started with the
traditional thesis that the bonum commune justified
actions neglecting legal forms. But he then argued that
such justification of violence ought to be extended to
sudden Coups d'état like the assassination of the Duc
de Guise; politicians condemned Machiavelli in theory
but acted according to him in practice. In Louis
Machon's Apologie pour Machiavelle (1641) a vehement
anti-clericalism was combined with an exaltation of
monarchical absolutism resulting in an appreciation of
Machiavelli's theories. The climate of the decade in
which the German emperor found it necessary to order
the murder of his General Wallenstein was certainly
conducive to a better understanding of Machiavelli.
The tendency to recognize Machiavelli as an impor-
tant political thinker received impetus and confirma-
tion from a group of writers whose views on Machia-
velli were diametrically opposed to the interpretation
given by the anti-Machiavellists. These political writers
did not regard Machiavelli as an advocate of despotism
or power politics; if Machiavellism is understood as
an intellectual attitude which permits amoral actions
for political ends, it is questionable whether the views
of these admirers of Machiavelli form part of the his-
tory of Machiavellism. The thinkers of this group saw
in Machiavelli primarily an advocate of republican
freedom. The Principe was meant as a warning. The
book showed what would happen if people became
negligent in protecting their liberty. The idea that the
Principe was meant to put people on guard against the
rise of tyrants had been suggested already in the six-
teenth century; it can be found, for instance, in
Alberico Gentili's
De legationibus (1585) and it has had
adherents ever since, even in the twentieth century,
although all the documents bearing on the composition
of the
Principe show that there is no substance behind
it. For the history of Machiavelli's reputation, however,
the suggestion was important because it directed at-
tention away from the
Principe to the
Discorsi as con-
taining Machiavelli's authentic message. Thus Machia-
velli began to take on a Janus face. The inspirer of
despotism was also the defender of freedom.
The discovery of the republican Machiavelli in the
seventeenth century was chiefly the work of a group
of English political writers. In England alone a rela-
tively free discussion of political ideas was possible and
a radical trend of ideas, generated in the period of the
Commonwealth, lived on under the Restoration. The
chief representatives of this opposition have been
called “classical republicans.” They were steeped in
the admiration of classical political wisdom and wanted
to reorganize English political life according to classi-
cal principles. They were attracted by Machiavelli's
writings because he was one of the few if not the only
republican political theorist in modern times. More-
over, they considered him to be the most important
transmitter of classical teachings to the modern world.
There were also some more particular reasons for their
interest in Machiavelli. His insistence on the necessity
of going back to the beginnings, “the principles,” was
compatible with their plan for rebuilding society on
new foundations. And Machiavelli had given some
praise to the notion of mixed government which they
believed would secure England from another civil war
between extremes. Thus James Harrington, the author
of the Commonwealth of Oceana (1656), called Machia-
velli the “prince of polititians” and for Henry Neville,
the author of the Plato Redivivus, Machiavelli was the
“divine Machiavel.”
Although the particular emphasis which these
writers placed on Machiavelli's ideas was conditioned
by the political situation in England, their views indi-
cate that below the surface of criticism and condem-
nation there were students of politics who recognized
that one could learn from Machiavelli because his
views were based on acute and realistic observations
of political life. This attitude can be traced back to
Bacon who in his De augmentis scientiarum (Advance-
ment of Learning [1623], Book VII, Ch. 2) confessed
that “We are much beholden to Machiavelli and other
writers of that class who openly and unfeignedly de
clare or describe what men do, and not what they
ought to do.”
This aspect of Machiavelli's writings could not fail
to impress the great political thinkers of the eighteenth
century. To Hume Machiavelli was a “great genius”;
Montesquieu frequently referred approvingly to
Machiavelli's views. These eighteenth-century thinkers
were repulsed by his amoralism but they suggested that
the stress on the political effectiveness of amoral ac-
tions was the work of later writers. They separated
Machiavelli from Machiavellism and emphasized that
Machiavelli himself had loved liberty. Diderot, who
in the Encyclopédie characterized Machiavellism as an
espèce de politique détestable, qu'on peut rendre en
deux mots par l'art de tyranniser (“odious kind of poli-
tics, which can be described briefly as the art of tyr-
anny”), also said in his article on Machiavelli that the
purpose of the Principe was to depict the terrors of
despotism: Voilà la bête féroce, à laquelle vous vous
abandonnerez (“See here the ferocious beast, to whom
you abandon yourself”). It was the fault of the reader
that he took un satyre pour un éloge (“a satire for
a eulogy”).
By the end of the eighteenth century, therefore, the
image of Machiavelli had become rather complex and
even contradictory. The contrast between the devilish
Machiavelli whom Marlowe had brought on the stage
and the sagacious Machiavelli who appears in Goethe's
Egmont (1788) is instructive. Goethe's Machiavelli
knew that people need to lie and to deceive in politics,
but he knew also that such measures have little effect
if they do not take into account the real feelings of
the people. You cannot force religious convictions on
them or treat them arrogantly from above. Goethe's
Machiavelli implies that Machiavellism is necessary
and appropriate only because—and as long as—rulers
give no rights to their people. A new time in which
the people will have power will make Machiavellian
policy superfluous; Egmont was written in 1787, two
years before the French Revolution.
