Machiavelli: The Novel

by Joseph Markulin

  Niccolo wiped his brow with a soiled handkerchief and felt a slight breeze of blessed relief stir in his sweaty hair. His wet shirt clung to his back. He was exhausted, having little time to eat and getting by on only four or five hours of sleep a night, but he had to speak to the gonfaloniere, and so he set out, half dragging his feet, for the Signoria.

  Some sort of disturbance was taking place in the piazza, and Niccolo mixed with the curious crowd to have a look. An itinerant vendor was attempting to solicit money from the people gathered around him, but he was having a difficult time making himself understood, since he was speaking German. What ware he was peddling was entirely undetermined at this point.

  Having some acquaintance of the German language as a result of his mission to the emperor, Niccolo worked his way toward the peddler. He was a vile man, dirty, stocky, suspicious looking. In his hand he held a pole about the height of a man. Whatever was on the end of the pole—his capital no doubt—was wrapped up in a thick, coarse greasy piece of cloth. And he kept repeating, “Rattenkönig . . . Rattenkönig . . . Rattenkönig.”

  “Christ,” thought Niccolo. “I don’t believe this. Rattenkönig!”

  “What’s he saying? What’s he got under there?” The crowd pressed. Niccolo translated: “He’s saying ‘Rat King’!”

  Upon being apprised of the nature of the showman’s burden, many of the faint-of-heart drifted away. Niccolo turned to go, but one of the more interested and strong-stomached of the Florentines grabbed him by the sleeve. “Tell him to show it to us! Tell him we want to see it. Tell him we want to see his Rat King.”

  Niccolo repeated the man’s imperative to the little German, who coolly demanded three lire, in advance, before he was willing to unveil his prodigy. The thought of a giant rodent made Niccolo a little sick, but he seemed to be stuck now as translator and negotiator between the depraved crowd and the bizarre showman. The crowd was willing to put up two lire. The German was adamant in his demand for three.

  Finally, several of the more eager spectators ran to fetch other citizens of an inquiring bent like themselves and managed to raise the requisite three lire. The little German began to unwrap his burden, slowly, almost lovingly. When he pulled the dirty cloth completely off, there were ooohhhs and aaaaahhhs. There were gasps and imprecations. Niccolo had already turned away when the inquisitive citizens pulled him back, pressed him into service again and prevailed upon him to translate.

  Not wanting to look, he nevertheless caught a glimpse of the thing out of the corner of his eye. It wasn’t just a single large rat at the end of the pole. It was several. Fourteen! The German was gleefully mouthing the number fourteen.

  Niccolo forced himself to confront the grisly exhibition. The rats were all dead, long dead to judge from the stiffness of their furry little bodies. And they were joined at the tails. When the man spun the pole, which he did to the great delight of the crowd, the rats opened up and fanned out in the shape of a wheel. Applause.

  Niccolo listened, revolted and intrigued, to the German’s explanation. He did not, he said, fasten the rats together this way. He found them like that! And they were still alive. After a flood that inundated the plain where he lived and came up around the very foundations of his house, the German said he heard squeaking under the floorboards. When it didn’t go away, he pried up one of the boards, saw a rat, and killed it. When he tried to pull the slain creature out from under his floor, the dead rat would not come free. After pulling up several more floorboards, he discovered the Rattenkönig! Fourteen of them!

  He explained how the rats must have been forced up there and trapped by the rising waters. In their panic, the slippery creatures crawling all over each other, switching their long terrified tails, managed to tie themselves up tightly like that in a knot. He said he removed his precious find to a field and then just watched. Pulling against each other in every conceivable direction, the rats began to starve to death. They were easy prey to other predators, but the would-be exhibitor, sensing the value of his discovery, beat the outsiders off. And he watched. In the last hours of their desperation, the frenzied rats turned on each other, attacking with bloodied tooth and claw until they were all dead.

  The German was still spinning his pole and eliciting gasps of wonder and disbelief from his enthralled spectators when Niccolo finally managed to break free. He was late, and he hurried off to the Signoria. The grotesque image of the Rattenkönig stuck in his mind. Unable to work together, pulling in a dozen different directions, the rats had assured and even actively brought about their mutual annihilation. “There could be a lesson in that,” thought Niccolo. “The next thing you’ll be thinking is that it was an omen.” “Baaah,” he said aloud. Niccolo dismissed the thought. Only the superstitious think that way. Or poets. And he was neither.

  Soderini was pale when Niccolo entered his chambers. With him was a man dressed in muddy riding clothes, slumped over a table. The noise of Niccolo’s entry brought the man to attention. It was Michelozzi.

  “Tell him what you just told me, Michelozzi,” said the gonfaloniere.

  “Hello, Niccolo,” said his friend. “Give me a minute though. I’ve just ridden all the way from Rome without stopping.”

  “Without stopping! What happened?”

  Michelozzi spoke slowly: “There was a meeting. The Cardinal Soderini was requested to attend, and I went along. The pope was there, a representative of the French king, and Giuliano de’ Medici.”

  “Cardinal de’ Medici’s little brother?”

  “Yes, him. Without wasting any time, Giuliano, speaking on his own behalf and that of his brother, the cardinal, offered the pope twenty thousand ducats for the use of his Spanish infantry encamped near Mantova.”

  “Twenty thousand ducats! To do what?”

  “To return the Medici to Florence. As private citizens, of course. The pope agreed on one condition.”

  “Which was?” Niccolo was extremely agitated.

  “That the first order of business, when the troops enter Florence, be to depose the Gonfaloniere Soderini.”

  “And what did Cardinal Francesco say? Surely he protested!”

  “The pope wouldn’t hear him. Wouldn’t listen to a word he said. As far as he was concerned, Cardinal Soderini no longer had any official status in Florence. He turned to Giuliano de’ Medici and began discussing the future of Florence and the kind of government she should have with him! As though he were the constituted representative of the republic!”

  Niccolo turned to the gonfaloniere, “Well, Piero?”

  Early that evening, the vacca began to toll. The great bronze bell, the largest and the heaviest ever cast in Italy, was referred to as “the cow” because her tones were so deep, they resembled the resonant mooing of that animal. The vacca was only used in times of civil crisis, in case of an emergency to summon the citizens of the republic—all the citizens—into the piazza for consultation.

  Soderini put the case to them in as few words as possible. Florence would presently be under attack from Spanish forces led by the Cardinal de’ Medici and his brother Giuliano. The express purpose of this expedition was to depose the gonfaloniere and set up a new government in Florence. The Florentines could fight if they chose to do so. But Soderini offered them another option, a bloodless one. He offered to step down as gonfaloniere and go into exile. He asked the people of Florence to decide.

  When he finished speaking, isolated shouts of “Popolo e libertá!” filled the air. They grew in volume until there was nothing but one unanimous, deafening roar: Popolo e libertá! Popolo e libertá! Popolo e libertá!

  Stepping down from the podium, the gonfaloniere turned to his secretary, Niccolo Machiavelli. “Prepare to deploy the militia,” was all he said.

  The Swiss were feared for their efficiency and their skill with weapons. The Germans were feared for, if for nothing else, their size. The French, while not exactly feared, were respected enough to be taken seriously on the battlefield. But the Spanish infan
try in the sixteenth century, above all others, struck an abject terror into the hearts of their enemies. They were notorious for their absolute, unflinching cruelty, their delight in bloodshed for its own sake, and a kind of rabid, fanatical ferocity in battle. Their reputation for unbridled fury in the field was exceeded only by their reputation for depravity and ferociousness in the enjoyment of their victories.

  The force that was marching on Florence under Raimondo de Cardona had already been tested in the battle of Ravenna. There were men in this army who, only seven years later with Hernando Cortes, would assist in the ruthless destruction of the Aztec Empire and the near-complete annihilation of its people. There were other conquistadors who, along with Pizarro, would blaze a trail of blood through the jungles of Peru and delight in the indiscriminate slaughter of the Incas. And some of the youngest among the men marching toward Florence would survive long enough to accompany De Soto on his mad, destructive dash through what is today the southern United States. The coming battle, which would decide the fate of the Florentine republic, was only practice for these men. Greater glories and greater horrors awaited them.

  The first lines of the Florentine defense were drawn at Prato, where the forward assault of the Spanish troops was expected. Four thousand infantrymen of the militia were entrusted with her defense. But Prato, with her ancient and crumbling walls, was ill suited to withstand the brunt of the Spanish attack. And she did not withstand it for long.

  Cardona, the Spanish commander, deliberately withheld pay and food from the men, “to sharpen their edge,” he said, “to give them more of a taste for battle, more of a hunger.” The companies of militia inside Prato were hungry too, for supplies, artillery, and ammunition were all inadequate for the hastily mounted defense. The matchlock men had to strip the lead from the roof and gutters of a church to make bullets. And the disarray of the Florentine body politic, some siding with Soderini, some against him, was also reflected in the ranks of the militia. Treason was afoot. There were reports of gunpowder, already in short supply, being deliberately scattered on the ground. As the Spanish army approached, the rats, joined firmly together by the tail, tugged furiously in opposite directions.

  The first attack failed because the Spanish lacked artillery, but the papal legate, most eager for a Spanish victory, supplied the solution. Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici trundled along in the army’s wake, borne on a litter like some fat, decadent Roman emperor because his inordinate bulk and his various anal and abdominal afflictions made going on horseback an extremely distasteful experience. The obese cardinal’s progress was further retarded by the fact that he had brought along with him two cannons purchased at his own expense for the expedition. These he gladly delivered over to his Spanish allies upon reaching Prato.

  Although one of the guns burst when it was fired and the other was by no means a formidable and up-to-date weapon, it was sufficient to open a small breach in the deteriorating walls of the ancient town. When the assault was given, the rabid Spanish army poured fearlessly and furiously into that breach. The inexperienced militiamen were no match for them, and the first line of defenders was hacked to pieces. The appalling brutality of the assault gave the second line of militiamen pause, and that was all the time the Spanish needed to take control of the gates, throw them open, and invite their starving, bloodthirsty cohorts to join the fray.

  The militia gave way. Many threw down their arms. They would have fled, but fleeing from a walled town whose gates are controlled by the enemy is a difficult proposition, and so they chose surrender. Estimates vary, but the death toll from the ensuing slaughter can be placed at approximately five thousand, including four thousand Florentine militiamen in smart red-and-white uniforms, who were exterminated to a man.

  Two days of sacrilege and slaughter followed, as the Spanish furor raged unopposed through the city. Even by the standards of the times, the brutality of the Spanish was judged to be extreme. Women, young and old alike, flung themselves from towers and windows to avoid falling into their hands. Their broken bodies littered the streets. Consecrated places were defiled, churches, monasteries, and convents invaded, and priests and nuns choked, stabbed, decapitated, and dismembered. People were tortured until they revealed the hiding places of their valuables. Ditches and sewers ran red with blood and were clogged with naked bodies and severed limbs.

  Having witnessed, and indeed contributed to, this stupendous triumph, the Cardinal de’ Medici addressed a letter to the pope. Sitting unconcerned at the vortex of this swirling spectacle of horrors, he wrote,

  Today at four o’clock in the afternoon, the town of Prato was taken, not without some bloodshed, but then these things are unavoidable in war. However, the speedy capture of Prato will, I am sure, have the good effect of serving as an example and a deterrent to others who may think to oppose us.

  News of the defeat at Prato reached Niccolo while he was supervising a second line of defenses in the Mugello. After the first shock, reports of the appallingly barbarous conduct of the victorious Spaniards began to pour in, and the secretary hastened back to Florence. He arrived in the city at the same time as the arrogant demands from Cardona—demands for surrender, demands for an extravagant amount of money to be paid to his troops, and, last but not least, demands to welcome the Medici back into Florence.

  The city was in a state of utter chaos. Citizens were fleeing to the country, and rural people were fleeing to the city for protection. As order broke down further, many of those entrusted with its maintenance, sensing opportunity, turned to looting. Doors were locked and barred. Rioting erupted. And for the first time in eighteen years, the cry of Palle!Palle!Palle! was heard openly in the streets.

  Niccolo went immediately to the Signoria, but was barred entrance to the building by armed men. When he insisted on speaking to the gonfaloniere, he was informed that the gonfaloniere was being held incommunicado. He had been taken prisoner in his own chambers.

  He rushed to the houses of several of Soderini’s relatives and his trusted supporters in the Signoria, but at one after another, he was greeted by stony silence or told to go away. This bitter recognition of the depth of their loyalty—to Soderini and to the crumbling republic—finally drove Niccolo back to the refuge of his own home. Numbed by the speed with which everything had taken place, he accepted the ministrations of Giuditta in silence. His thoughts were far away, his plans in total confusion, and his future uncertain. And the wheel of fortune was spinning, spinning, spinning. New faces appeared on the wheel now—the haggard visage of Soderini among them, and, for the first time, Niccolo saw his own face teetering at the very top of the wheel as it spun. And inevitably, ineluctably, inexorably, it kept right on spinning.

  Niccolo was awakened from a fitful and haunted sleep by loud pounding at the door. Peering through the wine window, he saw three diffident men lounging outside his door. They were armed.

  “Machiavelli?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Are you the Machiavelli that’s secretary in the chancery?”

  “I am.”

  “Then get dressed. You’re coming with us.” The man’s voice was gruff, but not threatening. If anything, he was sleepy and desirous only of discharging his nocturnal duties as quickly as possible.

  “Where do you intend to take me?”

  “To the Signoria. There’s a meeting in progress, and your presence has been requested. Now hurry.” He yawned.

  Although Niccolo was wary of these men, they made no attempt to restrain, intimidate, or otherwise harass him en route to the Signoria. Along the way, they encountered bands of looters scurrying to safety with their ill-gotten gains, and small bonfires of destruction burned in the windows and courtyards of some of the more prominent partisans of Soderini and the republic, the usual price of political change.

  This time Niccolo was not stopped at the gates of the Signoria but was allowed to pass with his escort. They led him straight to the gonfaloniere’s apartments. “In there,” said the
weary guard.

  As Niccolo stepped into the familiar chamber, the gonfaloniere rose anxiously to greet him but was pushed rudely down into his chair again by one of the angry young men at his side. The room was full of similar young men, similarly angry. They strutted and preened around the enormous, ornate chamber. They were all red hose and flash, gold and silver brocade, rustling flamboyant silk capes cut impudently above the buttocks. Even their daggers and short swords were pretentiously wrought, lavish, showy. Niccolo recognized several of them—scions of notable and noble families like the Ridolfi and the Salviati. They were cousins of the Medici.

  “In the interests of the city of Florence, the gonfaloniere for life here has decided to step down.” His voice was dripping with sarcasm when he pronounced the title, “gonfaloniere for life.” The one who made this announcement was an Albizzi, and he seemed to be the leader of this arrogant band of interlopers. He was wearing a big, crushed-velvet, purple hat and a yellow-and-purple-checked doublet. He seemed to be inordinately proud of his fine patrician profile and kept cocking his head at different angles and striking manly poses so as to display it to advantage.

  By contrast, the gonfaloniere looked disheveled and unkempt. His clothing had been torn, and there were bruises on his face. He looked defeated. Niccolo took in all these details without saying a word. When he spoke, it was to Soderini and not his arrogant captor. “Gonfaloniere,” he said in a deep and reverential voice, bowing, removing his hat. “How may I be of service?”

  “Ah, Niccolo,” sighed Soderini. “Faithful, selfless Niccolo. My fate is to be decided this evening. And I wanted someone here I could trust.”

  Niccolo eyed the strutting, fatted calves. “Your fate is to be decided, and these peacocks are to serve as judge and jury?” he said, almost amused.

  The objects of his scorn, however, were not amused, and many a soft hand went clutching after a jeweled dagger in a demonstration of fierce, aristocratic outrage.