So Niccolo’s thoughts were not unpleasant ones as he lolled along the riverbank, fingering the effigy of Saint John the Baptist that he carried in his pocket. Idly, his fingers traced the reassuring outlines of the saint’s image that was stamped into the cool, solid, gold coin. And there were over a hundred more just like it at home. One hundred broad florins! Everything seemed to be going his way. For once, he had even been paid on time.
As Niccolo tripped up the stairs to the Signoria, the hot sun on his face gave way to the luscious shade of the interior of that thick-walled, stone building. The smooth green-and-white marble floors still held enough of the chill of the night air to keep the immense, high-ceilinged rooms cool through the afternoon, even in the dead of summer. Passing into his darkened study and sitting down at his writing table, with nothing more pressing to do, Niccolo could once again turn his full attention and energy to that abiding, if somewhat less than urgent, Florentine problem—the prosecution of the sempiternal war with Pisa.
Three galleys were hired to harass Pisan shipping and cut off the enemy’s supplies from the sea. Pondering the problem, Niccolo realized that Pisa would have to be cut off from her allies on land as well, and, since the city of Lucca insisted on supplying the contumacious Pisans, something would have to be done about that. Penning a letter to the Florentine commissaries at the camp before Pisa, he admonished them to make it understood to the Lucchese in the most vigorous terms possible, that they could no longer offer, “so much as a glass of water” to the Pisans without incurring the wrath of the Florentine mercenary forces. He rewrote the dispatch several times, trying to make up with his threats and the harshness of his language for the sad lack of resolve in the troops and their commanders. Niccolo found himself shaking his head and muttering that this was no way to fight a war, when an excited Gonfaloniere Soderini burst in upon him.
“Niccolo, come quickly,” shouted the big blond, abandoning his characteristic reserve that some confused with detachment and others construed as incompetence. “Pisa is ours!”
Niccolo looked up. “Don’t tell me the illustrious armies have finally made a breakthrough,” he said sardonically.
“No, nothing like that, not yet, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve got a plan! A marvelous plan! A plan that will bring Pisa to her knees!”
Niccolo had learned to be wary of the gonfaloniere’s “plans.” Although Soderini was a more than competent administrator, noted for his honesty, fairness, and attention to detail, he exhibited a marked tendency to get carried away from time to time with big, extravagant “plans,” which he devised and elaborated with the help of “experts” whom he consulted and by whom he was easily swayed. The present situation proved to be a case in point.
The two experts in question were ruminating and nodding gravely over piles of papers and charts when Niccolo entered the room. With a triumphant grin, Soderini introduced them as Signor Bruno and Signor Buffalmacco, military engineers.
Recalling his other recent encounters with “military engineers,” Niccolo asked if they also sculpted, painted, and wrote poetry. Their silent, grave, faces said that they did not.
The enthusiastic Soderini shook his great blond head and fluttered excitedly around them and their diagrams, in as much as a big man can be said to flutter. “This is Niccolo Machiavelli, my trusted secretary, my confidant, my right arm. Tell him about the plan.”
Bruno, or perhaps it was Buffalmacco, unrolled and spread a large sheet of paper before Niccolo for his inspection. In what looked at first like a child’s drawing of a snake, Niccolo gradually discerned the course of the river Arno winding its way through the Tuscan countryside.
A bony finger came down on the site of Pisa near the river’s mouth about ten miles from the sea. “This is the objective,” announced Signor Bruno, or perhaps Buffalmacco, pompously. Niccolo settled in for a long presentation. Bruno and Buffalmacco took turns pedantically describing the strategic problems involved in the siege of Pisa, none of which was news to Niccolo.
“In conclusion,” said one of the engineers, “we cannot effectively surround and cut the city off because of her position on the river. No matter what we do, she manages to slip in and out of our hands down that river.”
Niccolo interrupted, “I’ve said before, with a bigger fleet, we can cut her off. But we need more ships to run an effective blockade, and ships cost money.”
“These gentlemen have a more elegant solution,” said the gonfaloniere, with his eyes shining.
“Precisely,” said Bruno and Buffalmacco, producing another chart and laying it out for inspection. “What you propose, Messer Secretary, is tiresome, simpleminded, and expensive. What we propose is much more direct, more logical.”
“And cheaper!” piped in the exuberant Soderini.
“Alright,” said Niccolo. “What do the gentlemen propose?”
“Your untrained mind, Messer Secretary, unaccustomed to looking at all sides of the problem from an informed and rigorously scientific point of view, naturally seizes upon the most dismal and pedestrian solution to the problem. The two engineers exchanged smirks.
“What you overlook is that the Pisans need not only ships to get to the sea; they need something else as well. The river!” What we propose is denying them access to the river.”
Niccolo objected, “The river runs right through the walls into the heart of the city. How can you keep them from the river?”
“By changing its course!” said the engineer triumphantly, stabbing at the map with his finger. Niccolo looked down in disbelief. The new map, an exercise in fantastic geography, showed a different Arno suddenly swerving south around Pisa and flowing into a large and previously nonexistent lake near Livorno.
“Imagine the consternation of the Pisans when they see their precious river suddenly disappear, suddenly turn into a deep and muddy ditch!” said Soderini. “Imagine!”
Niccolo ignored the effusions of the gonfaloniere and turned his attention on the two demigods of engineering who would alter the course of a river that had flowed undisturbed in her bed since the dawn of creation.
In a flurry of scientific enthusiasm, the engineers produced drawing after drawing of dams, earthworks, counterscarps, trenches, and systems of canals with sluice gates for taming and redirecting the flow of the mighty Arno. Undaunted, they brought out tables of calculations relating to every aspect of the unlikely project—elevations, rate of water flow, time tables, along with budget and manpower projections.
In the face of all this expertise, Niccolo was overwhelmed, but not convinced. His objections were dismissed as they were raised. The engineers finally procured Soderini’s fervent endorsement by declaring that beyond the shadow of a doubt, the entire project could be successfully completed with a maximum of thirty or forty thousand man-hours of work. In other words, two thousand men might accomplish the task in fifteen days!
“Two thousand laborers will do in fifteen days what three thousand men-at-arms could not accomplish in several years!” said Soderini, already savoring the victory of science over nature and brute force. “Fifteen days! A miracle!”
Niccolo grunted. He did not believe in miracles. But belief is no prerequisite for carrying on with one’s job, and so in the days that followed, Niccolo was charged with organizing the details of the mighty endeavor. The engineers, Bruno and Buffalmacco, left immediately for Pisa, eager to get a look at the actual lay of the land, since neither had ever been there before.
The work began on August 20. On September 3, fifteen days after the commencement, Niccolo received a report from Giacomini, the Florentine commissary who was coordinating things at the Pisan end. The miracle had not been accomplished in the allotted time. Giacomini, while declaring his continued readiness to do his duty and carry out the instructions he received from his superiors, expressed grave reservations as to the feasibility of the enormous project. Using no more sophisticated mathematical instruments than multiplication and long division, he showed in a simple series
of calculations that in order to dig the two main canals five feet deep and twenty feet wide, approximately five hundred thousand square feet of soil would need to be excavated and removed. Almost apologetically, he concluded that it would take two thousand men not fifteen but at least two hundred days to get the job done. Bruno and Buffalmacco had miscalculated the length of the canals.
Undaunted, the two engineers redoubled their efforts, calling for more sappers to dig the trenches. In a frantic rush of enthusiasm, they began working around the clock, with shifts of men toiling on the excavations at night by torchlight. But as the days stretched out into weeks, nothing flowed into the trenches and canals but sweat and more money. In mid-September, Giacomini resigned in disgust. In his final letter to the Signoria, commenting on the hopelessness of the project, he said, “You will find that fresh difficulties arise each day.”
The disillusioned Giacomini was quickly replaced by Tommaso Tosinghi, and the Ten of War, the official governmental body charged with the conduct of the works at Pisa, sent their trusted secretary, Niccolo Machiavelli, along with the new commissary to inspect the gigantic project and report back.
Niccolo and Tosinghi rode into the Florentine camp under the ramparts and walls of Pisa and, much to their surprise, found it deserted. There were supposed to be over three thousand armed men here, and the city was supposed to be surrounded and sealed off.
Niccolo accosted a passing belligerent and demanded to know what was going on. Where were the troops? The man stared up at him for a minute, a look of profound incomprehension on his swarthy, unshaven face. When Niccolo repeated his demand, the man let fly at him with a volley of curses—in Spanish.
Determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, Niccolo and Tosinghi pressed on until they located the commander’s tent in the center of the camp. Inside, a card game was being conducted amid rude and blasphemous exchanges and slurred threats.
“Who’s in charge here?” asked the irate secretary.
“Fuck you, Cap’n,” was the insolent reply he received from a pasty-faced lieutenant in a language he could not even begin to fathom. The disheveled men returned to their game and paid him no attention.
“Where’s your commander? Where’s Colonna?” Niccolo demanded.
“Colon est la-bas avec touts les soldats aupres du fleuve.”
At last, here someone who was willing to communicate, even if it was in French. Questioning the man, Niccolo discovered that Marcoantonio Colonna, a Roman and commander in chief of the Florentine troops, had removed almost the entire garrison to the site of the massive earth-moving operations, some ten miles to the north of the city.
“And he’s abandoned the siege?” asked the incredulous Tosinghi, as he and Niccolo hurried off in that direction.
“Not exactly,” said Niccolo. “According to the Frenchman, the Pisans began to mount sporadic attacks on the laborers up there. They were utterly defenseless, and so some of the troops had to be sent to stand guard over them. As the Pisan forays against the construction workers became more frequent, Colonna kept diverting more troops.”
“And the siege?”
“See for yourself,” said Niccolo, pointing to a spot on the far side of the river. Both Florentines watched as a large flat barge anchored there hoisted live sheep, wooden cages packed with squawking chickens, and sacks of grain up over the walls and into the eager arms of the defenders of the hungry city.
A little over an hour later, they rode furiously into the construction site past a half-dozen sleeping sentries. The commander in chief was in bed with a woman when they arrived and did not wish to be disturbed. Barging in on the general’s postprandial pleasure anyway, Niccolo elicited a groggy response to the effect that the engineers had demanded the protection of the soldiers so that the great work could go forward. Colonna said not to worry, because once the dam was complete Pisa would be finished anyway. And it would only take another week.
Niccolo was beside himself. Storming out of Colonna’s tent, he saw the two experts responsible for the debacle. They were waving their arms excitedly and flapping their academic gowns like big, black crows perched on opposite ends of the rising breastworks behind their surveying equipment. Niccolo sent for them immediately and demanded an accounting. He did not even bother to give them good day. “You’ve spent over 14,000 florins already, and what have you got to show for it!”
The two men of learning shook their heads in disbelief at Niccolo’s scientific naiveté. “We’ve run into unanticipated difficulties of a geological and hydrographical nature, or was it a geographical and hydrological nature? Ahem, at any rate, problems arose in the construction of the dam.”
“And?”
“And we were forced to defer to the opinions of a colleague of ours as to the nature of these problems and their most expeditious solution.” As if on cue, another black-clad expert appeared from behind the two principles. “This is Dottor Balonzon, of Bologna.”
“What’s the problem, Balonzon,” said Niccolo irritably.
“Dottor Balonzon,” corrected the pedant, raising his eyebrows in a dramatic gesture. “It seems that the silting behind the dam did not take place as projected . . .” The man prattled on. In spite of his anger, Niccolo had to stifle a laugh, for the grave doctor’s face was all lumpy and swollen with red mosquito bites.
Here is what Niccolo was given to understand: Bruno and Buffalmacco had projected that, as the breastworks extended from the sides of the riverbanks toward a meeting place in the center, the river would begin to deposit large quantities of mud and silt against the rising walls, in effect building the dam herself against the bulwark as it went up. Just the opposite had happened. As the space between the two walls narrowed, the river was forced to flow into an ever-narrowing channel. The resultant increase in the rate of flow and the force of the water carved an even deeper channel. Instead of clogging herself up, the Arno was rapidly digging a canyon for herself and beginning to undermine the work already completed. Niccolo threw up his hands in despair, “What about the trenches and canals?” asked Niccolo. “Are they at least on schedule?”
“Ahem,” said one of the sages through his welts. “The men have been recalcitrant and refuse to work.”
“Why? Aren’t they being paid?”
“Oh, yes, they’re being paid and paid handsomely.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Well, it’s a trifle really. You see they claim to have . . .”
“Have what? Speak up!”
“They claim to have contracted . . . ah, malaria, which is perfectly ridiculous . . .”
Niccolo clenched his fists and rolled his eyes heavenward. “Putta del cielo! What in God’s name is going on here!” As he turned angrily to go and ascertain the condition of the laborers, the worthy Balonzon caught him by the sleeve. “Messer, my colleagues told me that I should take up with you the little matter of my stipend . . .” He never finished the sentence as Niccolo sent him sprawling to the ground in an undignified tangle of skinny limbs and professorial gowns.
As it turned out, malaria was rampant in the low-lying swampy areas where the canals were being carved out, and many of the workers had in fact succumbed. Many of those remaining were thinking of leaving. Niccolo stayed in the camp and, with Tosinghi, the new commissary, moved energetically to whip the workers and troops into some sort of order, but their efforts were too little, too late. By the end of the week, the rains began to fall and brought with them what Niccolo, writing back to the Signoria, could only call “fresh disasters.”
The three ships hired to guard the coast were all lost in a storm. Money began to run short, and there was grumbling on the part of the mercenaries when the deathblow came. The onset of the rainy season produced a flash flood in which the foundation and breastworks of the dam were completely washed away. Niccolo stood under a dripping canopy and watched the scaffolding crack like matchsticks in the rush of the foaming water. The heavy boulders hauled and pushed and rolled into pla
ce with manpower and oxpower and horsepower tumbled over one another like papier-mâché stage props before the boiling fury of the river.
Over two months had elapsed since the beginning of the colossal labors. Extraordinary sums of money had been disbursed, and the republic, no longer able to pay her soldiers and condottieri, was forced to disband the army and lift the siege entirely. In late October, the works were finally abandoned. The trenches so laboriously eked out of the marshy ground at such great expense of both money and lives were gleefully filled in by the triumphant Pisans in a matter of days.
In the wake of the disastrous and costly Pisan experiment, Piero Soderini suffered his first serious loss of prestige, and his reputation as a cautious and prudent administrator was being called into question. Wearily, he set about raising more money to hire more troops to besiege the proud city at the mouth of the Arno. The solution to Florence’s military problems and the successful resolution of the “Pisan affairs,” however, was not to come from Soderini’s fund-raising efforts but from a new and bold plan being formulated by his astute secretary.
Money Bread Men Iron
Niccolo wrote the four words across the top of a blank sheet of paper. That’s what an army was. He understood that men and iron should be able to get money and bread, provided the men were properly trained and motivated. But Florence had taken the opposite approach, trusting that money could get bread, iron, and all the men she needed. It was all but an article of faith that wars were waged by hired captains and paid professional soldiers, by mercenary armies—and that was precisely where the problem lay.
The Florentine encampment before Pisa was a case in point. The men were insubordinate and surly. They were adventurers eager for loot but cautious in risking anything in actual battle. And who could blame them? They drew their pay regardless of whether or not they fought. Why take chances? If no results were achieved, why, their contracts would be renewed!
Machiavelli: The Novel Page 51
