the time of Alexander’s death.  Machiavelli, who records these four points with approbation, adds:  ’He therefore, who finds it needful in his new authority to secure himself against foes, to acquire allies, to gain a point by force or fraud, etc., etc., could not discover an ensample more vigorous and blooming than that of Cesare.’  Such is the panegyric which Machiavelli, writing, as it seems to me, in all good faith and innocence, records of a man who, taken altogether, is perhaps the most selfish, perfidious, and murderous of adventurers on record.  The only fault for which he blames him is that he did not prevent the election of Pope Julius II, by concentrating his influence on either the Cardinal d’Amboise or a Spaniard.

It is curious to read the title of the chapter following that which criticises the action of Cesare Borgia:  it runs thus, ’Concerning those who have attained to sovereignty by crimes.’  Cesare was clearly not one of these men in the eyes of Machiavelli, who confines his attention to Agathocles of Syracuse, and to Oliverotto da Fermo, a brigand who acquired the lordship of Fermo by murdering his uncle and benefactor, Giovanni Fogliani, and all the chief men of the city at a banquet to which he had invited them.  This atrocity, according to Machiavelli’s creed, would have been justified, if Oliverotto had combined cruelty and subtlety in proper proportions.  But his savagery was not sufficiently veiled; a prince should never incur odium by crimes of violence, but only use them as the means of inspiring terror.  Besides, Oliverotto was so simple as to fall at last into the snare of Cesare Borgia at Sinigaglia.  Cesare himself supplies Machiavelli with a notable example of the way in which cruelty can be well used.  Having found the cities of Romagna in great disorder, Cesare determined to quell them by the ferocity of a terrible governor.  For this purpose he chose Messer Ramiro d’ Orco, ’a man cruel and quick of action, to whom he gave the fullest power.’  A story is told of Messer Ramiro which illustrates his temper in a very bizarre fashion:  he one day kicked a clumsy page on to the fire, and held him there with a poker till he was burned up.  Acting after this fashion, with plenipotentiary authority, Ramiro soon froze the whole province into comparative tranquillity.  But it did not suit Cesare to incur the odium which the man’s cruelty brought on his administration.  Accordingly he had him decapitated one night and exposed to public view, together with the block and bloody hatchet, in the square at Cesena.  Of the art with which Cesare first reduced Romagna to order by the cruelty of his agent, and then avoided the odium of this cruelty by using the wretched creature as an appalling example of his justice and his power, Machiavelli wholly approves.  His theory is that cruelty should be employed for certain definite purposes, but that the Prince should endeavor to shun as far as possible the hatred it inspires.  In justice both to Machiavelli and to Cesare, it should be said that the administration of Romagna was far better under the Borgia rule than it had ever been before.  The exhibition of savage violence of which Machiavelli approves was perhaps needed to cow so brutalized a population.