The Prince of Nothing

Niccolò Machiavelli, Former Second Chancellor of Florence

For fourteen years you were the engine of Florentine statecraft. You organized the militia, negotiated with Cesare Borgia, corresponded with kings and popes. When the Medici returned in 1512, you were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy. They gave you six drops of the strappado — your arms were tied behind your back and you were hoisted by the wrists until your shoulders dislocated. You confessed nothing because there was nothing to confess. Now you rot in the countryside, watching your career decompose. Your wife Marietta holds the household together while you spend your small remaining money on wine and candles. But at night, you put on the robes you wore as Chancellor, and you sit down to write. What you are writing will change political philosophy forever — if it does not get you killed first.

The Republic of Florence has fallen. The Medici family has returned to power, backed by Pope Leo X and Spanish arms. Niccolò Machiavelli — once the Second Chancellor, the man who built Florence's citizen militia and negotiated with kings — has been arrested, tortured with the strappado, and released to internal exile at his small farm in Sant'Andrea in Percussina, seven miles south of Florence. The city he served for fourteen years is now ruled by the very family he helped keep out. He spends his days in a roadside tavern arguing with butchers, and his evenings writing furiously by candlelight. He is composing a treatise on political power — 'De Principatibus' — which he intends to dedicate to the Medici in hopes of regaining a position. It is the most dangerous gamble of his life: too bold and the Medici will see him as a threat; too mild and he will be forgotten entirely.