Machiavelli: The Novel

by Joseph Markulin

  “How deep is the river here?” he asked Capponi.

  “I don’t know. Fifteen feet? Twenty feet?”

  “Find out,” ordered Niccolo. “And send someone to Florence right this minute. Tell them I want an architect. Tell them to send me the best architect they can find.”

  Antonio da Sangallo was perhaps not the best architect in Florence, but neither was he the worst. He had been accused of being timid and old-fashioned in his designs, of lacking imagination, and, indeed, later in life he would be replaced on many an important project for just those defects. But for Niccolo’s present purposes, he was more than adequate.

  The architect himself was intrigued to be sent to the camp at Pisa. Like most of those in his profession, he was aware of the recent attempts to divert the course of the Arno and was a little afraid that he was going to be engaged in a similar effort. He was more than a little afraid that his reputation and his commissions would suffer as a result.

  When the lanky architect walked into his tent, Niccolo came right to the point. “Have you ever built a bridge?”

  Sangallo hesitated, not wanting to commit himself. At the mention of a bridge, he thought he smelled folly. He began to hedge: “I am familiar with the principles underlying the construction of bridges and have, upon occasion, acquired some familiarity with their implementation. But you will have to understand that there are many kinds of bridges. There are, for instance, arched stone bridges, which are suitable for spanning a narrow stretch of water and then, of course, for longer distances there are suspension bridges and wooded bridges built . . .

  “Basta,” said Niccolo.

  “You asked me . . .”

  “I said that’s enough. Have you worked on a bridge project or not?”

  “Yes,” said Sangallo submissively. A picture of a fantastic and impossible bridge rising from the banks of the Arno at its widest point began forming in his mind, and along with it, he envisioned the utter demolition of his career.

  But Niccolo had an entirely different project in mind. “Then you know how to drive piles into a riverbed?”

  “Why of course. Nothing could be simpler. Why?”

  The ambitious architect sagged in relief when Niccolo explained what he had in mind. “And if you begin immediately, how long will it take?”

  “Two weeks?”

  “Go to it then,” said Niccolo confidently. “And make sure you have it finished in two weeks.” When he was alone, Niccolo fell prey to his own doubts. Two weeks. If the work was indeed completed in two weeks, the siege would hold. “Two weeks,” he thought. That was the same amount of time that two military engineers had once said it would take two thousand men to change the course of the river.

  The Pisans could scarcely conceal their delight when they saw the brigades of sawyers and axmen coming to work on the side of the river. The large quantity of timber that was quickly moved into position did even more to bolster their spirits, as they looked forward to another Florentine folly on a gigantic scale. But what Niccolo had in mind was neither foolish nor out of scale, and, true to Sangallo’s assurances, it was finished in two weeks.

  Across the river, between its mouth and the city of Pisa, three rows of sturdy wooden piles capped with iron jutted up out of the water. The stubby black fingers, spaced at intervals of about a foot and a half did nothing to arrest or change, or even slow down, the flow of water, but they made the passage of shipping an utter impossibility. A fast-moving vessel that tried got hung up on the barricade and was taken apart piece by piece by the Florentine gunners. The circle around Pisa had finally closed.

  “Antonio di Filicaia,” the smart young man introduced himself.

  “Alammano Salviati,” his equally smart companion did likewise.

  “We have orders.”

  “Let me see,” said Niccolo resignedly. They carried a letter from the Signoria. They were to be instated as commissioners and assume direction of the campaign. Niccolo swore to himself. “This is my project!” He had directed it all along, and, now that the end was in sight, they wanted to rob him of the victory! He looked up at the two would-be commissioners for a minute. They looked perfectly capable of ruining everything he had worked for. Looking back down at document he held in his hand, he saw that there was a note attached.

  Niccolo,

  The Council finds it very strange that you, a diplomat with no military training, should have assumed the entire burden of running the war. Over my objections, they have appointed Filicaia and Salviati as commissioners to assist you. You’ve done a splendid job so far, and I have every confidence you will continue to do so, but please, it would be in our best interest to humor the new commissioners and to employ them in some capacity or other. I leave it to your discretion.

  The note was signed, “Piero Soderini.”

  Even the arrival of the new commissioners, however, could do little to slow the momentum of events as the Florentine siege reached its climax and the Pisans reached their breaking point. Niccolo shuttled his commissioners, now three in number, counting Capponi, back and forth between the three camps and kept them fully occupied. When the Pisans asked for a meeting in Piombino to discuss terms, it was Niccolo who went to meet them. When it became clear that they were only trying to buy time, he walked out, telling them that an unconditional surrender was the only possible solution acceptable to Florence.

  On the twenty-fourth of May, a delegation of Pisans—five citizens and four representatives of the countryside—rode into the Florentine camp and said they were prepared and empowered to arrange terms of complete capitulation. By sunset, after riding hard all day, they followed Niccolo Machiavelli through the gates of Florence and into the chambers of the Ten of War. The conflict of a generation was over.

  The siege of Pisa had been conducted in a deliberate and methodical way. A strategy had been decided upon and then executed, down to the last detail, until the desired results were achieved. In the process, the Florentines had learned the inestimable value of keeping supply lines open, provisioning the troops adequately, meeting payrolls on time, and maintaining good communications. The order with which the entire operation had been carried out would not have been possible were it not for the disciplined, well-organized companies of militiamen who made up the army.

  The aftermath of the siege was a further demonstration of the discipline and restraint of these most excellent troops. On the day of the surrender, there was no sack of the defeated city. In fact, just the opposite occurred. When three hundred starving Pisans, the last of the valiant defenders, straggled out of the city and into the Florentine camp, they were given bread. Stores of provisions were soon on their way to the suffering city.

  The terms of capitulation, although dictated by Florence, were unusually lenient for the times. All real property that had been confiscated was restored. Damages were paid for the devastations inflicted on the countryside, and interest was even calculated on the loss of revenues. The Pisans were allowed to retain their old administrative magistracies, most of their rights to self-government, and freedom of commerce. In some matters they were subject to Florentine jurisdiction, but they received the same guarantees and rights under the law as the inhabitants of Florence.

  These terms, arranged primarily by Soderini and his secretary, Machiavelli, brought nothing but honor to the gonfaloniere’s government. Niccolo’s prestige was greatly enhanced, although his success piqued old jealousies and instigated new ones against him as well, but such is the nature of all bureaucracies and all administrations.

  In the days that followed the formal surrender, Niccolo was allowed to savor his victory. He passed the smart red-and-white-clad troops in review. He rode in parades with the victorious militiamen and generally enjoyed the happy outcome of his labors come to fruition. But in the heady rush to celebration that followed the long, drawn-out war, Niccolo and the rest of Florence lost sight of one factor, one critical factor. The citizen’s militia had indeed acquitted themselves well and were worth
y of all the praise heaped upon them. They had indeed taken Pisa at last. They had surrounded her, cut her off, and starved her into surrender. They had ravaged the countryside and beaten back or run off convoys of would-be suppliers. They had demonstrated the value of competent administration in a war. They had done all these things in a professional and commendable fashion, but they did not fight. There had been no enemy army to face in the field, no seasoned soldiers on the other side, no pitched battles. Niccolo and everyone else in Florence now placed unbounded faith in their citizen’s militia, an army that had tasted victory, but without the stench in their nostrils of either gunpowder or blood.

  The days and months after the capitulation of Pisa were the happiest in Niccolo’s life. Professionally, he was at the peak of his powers. He traveled frequently on government business, but the trips were not long and the embassies not difficult. A free and independent Florence was secure and at peace. Commerce flourished with the opening of the port at Pisa. And Niccolo was in love—gloriously, unabashedly, shamelessly in love.

  What is more, he had, by dint of almost having lost the object of his affections, become an altogether more dutiful and ardent lover. He and Giuditta did spend long weeks together in the country. He did take time off from his work to be with her.

  For her part, Giuditta was no longer prey to idleness and isolation. Thanks to Niccolo’s intercession, Callimaco had been licensed to practice medicine in Florence and was even looking forward to eventual admission into the physicians’ guild. Although it was unthinkable that Giuditta, as a woman and a Jew, could enjoy the same legal status as Callimaco, she worked closely with him, and in many areas, particularly the concoction of medicines, her knowledge far exceeded his.

  In the afternoons, Niccolo and Giuditta would often take long walks through the city. Giuditta particularly enjoyed strolling through the dyers’ quarter, where yards and yards of brightly colored cloth hanging out to dry gave the whole neighborhood a fantastic and dreamlike character. The cloth was suspended on poles hung from hooks sunken into the fronts of the buildings, and every street was a billowing corridor of royal purples and deep reds and bright yellows—a permanent festival, an uninterrupted celebration of color and life.

  “I’ve never understood those things,” said Giuditta, stopping in front of a chapel and pointing to a bewildering array of different objects hanging from the walls and scattered on the floor in front of the small shrine. Most of “those things” seemed to be crutches.

  “Ex votos,” declared Niccolo. “Someone prays to a saint for a favor or protection, and, if his prayers are answered, he leaves a memento in front of the shrine as a sign of gratitude.”

  “Aren’t those crutches?”

  “The lame pray to walk again, and when they do, the crutches get deposited here.”

  “And the bandages and the bloody dressings, too, I see. It looks so untidy, like a refuse heap. What about those.”

  “Those are watermelons.”

  “I know what they are. What are they doing here?”

  “A farmer probably put them there in thanksgiving for a good harvest.”

  “And does the saint come down at night and eat the watermelons?” asked Giuditta perniciously.

  “Probably not,” said Niccolo. “The beggars will come and collect them later on, so the offering does serve a purpose.”

  “What about that barrel?”

  “Ah, that’s Monna Lapa’s famous keg of wax!”

  “Famous for what?”

  “Monna Lapa had a lover, a monk, according to the story, and every day when he came to her, she offered him a cup of wine. To keep her husband from noticing that the level of wine in the barrel was going down, she would pour wax into it. After many visits, all the wine was gone and the barrel was full of wax. She brought it here to thank the saints for their protection.”

  “Such devotion! And such an odd religion!”

  “You think this is odd? This is nothing!” said Niccolo gaily, and that afternoon he took her on a whirlwind tour of some of Florence’s more egregious religious oddities. There was the little finger of Saint John the Baptist, the patron saint of Florence, and the arm of Santa Reparata, which everybody acknowledged was made of wood and plaster, but it was the idea that counted, and besides, the arm had been around for a long time. It was a disrespectful afternoon full of dismembered corpses and moldy clothes, and it culminated in a little convent, where the body of a holy nun was kept and shown to the public, usually for a small donation.

  “It’s ghastly,” said Giuditta, staring at the mummified corpse. “Her fingernails are almost a foot long and her hair’s down below her waist.”

  “That’s because they’ve kept on growing after her death!”

  “Ugh! You believe that?”

  “You never know,” said Niccolo, smiling an impish smile. “You never know what to believe.”

  Once out in the street again, though, Niccolo was recognized and confronted by an armed band. They were a half dozen little boys in the red and white of the republican militia, waving little wooden swords. “Aren’t you the man who’s in charge of the militia?” demanded their leader.

  “My, you’re becoming quite a celebrity,” observed Giuditta.

  “We want to join,” declared the little soldier resolutely.

  Niccolo squatted, so as to speak to them face-to-face and eye to eye. “Someday you will,” he said seriously. “But for now, you’ve got to learn to march in a regular column like regular soldiers. Are you in charge here?” He addressed the purported leader of the band, and in a few minutes he had them all smartly drawn up in a straight line. “Now, Captain, give the order to march.”

  The intrepid little captain barked out something in a fairly credible imitation of a drill instructor, and the column went marching off proudly across the piazza, garnering the respectful, if exaggerated, salutes of amused adults as they went. Niccolo stared wistfully after them as they receded from view. Giuditta caught the look in his eye.

  “What are you thinking, Niccolo?”

  “About how some day they may be called upon to put on real uniforms and take up real weapons.”

  “You weren’t perhaps, thinking about children?”

  “No,” he replied in a sad voce, “I wasn’t thinking about children. Maybe. Don’t you ever want to have children?”

  And Giuditta sighed. She knew. She knew they weren’t like any other couple. Their love had no legal status, no social recognition. Nor could it ever. There were laws against what they were doing, laws laid down by his odd religion that kept little bits and pieces of its saints and martyrs in glass cases so people could go and stare at them. He was a Christian and she was a Jew. Even an enlightened city like Florence had statutes on the books dealing with the union of Christians and Jews. They were not likely to be enforced in this day and age, in a republic that cherished freedom and the rights of its citizens, but they were there.

  Giuditta tried to think of happier things. And there were many happy things to think about. She had never been happier in her life. If the future was unwritten or written in a code no one could decipher, it should in no way diminish her present happiness. She had to keep reminding herself of that. At least for the time being, they were safe. After all, the saint had not started gurgling or waving her arms in the air. No impending disasters were on the horizon.

  “Picconcina, I have something to tell you.” Niccolo said it in the tentative, apologetic voice he used to convey bad news.

  “Get it over,” she said.

  “I have to go to France.”

  “Will you be gone long?”

  “It’s another one of those missions with no object but to temporize and delay. The longer I’m gone, the more successful I’ll be.”

  Giuditta sighed, but Niccolo started grinning as if he had not told the whole truth. “I want you to come along,” he said.

  “When do we leave?”

  They left two days later, and traveled slowly, not to say l
anguidly, or even voluptuously at times, enjoying themselves very much along the way. They were gone for over four months. And it was during their absence that the trouble started.

  Niccolo’s mission to France proved to be neither as unimportant nor as pointless as he had anticipated. Shortly after his arrival, His Holiness, Pope Julius II, declared war on France, and Florence was caught in the middle. As the traditional ally of France, she was bound to side with King Louis against the pope. As a dutiful daughter of the church, however, and as an Italian state not wishing to incur the wrath of a fellow Italian state—a neighboring Italian state, a powerful Italian state—she might also be inclined to side with the pope against outside French interference. A guarded neutrality seemed to be the only reasonable course of action open to the republic, but neutrality became more and more difficult to maintain as the crisis escalated and both sides prepared for battle.

  Niccolo was instructed to protest friendship for the French crown, but, as usual, not to make any firm commitments. But this time, King Louis wanted actions, not words. He wanted nothing more or less than for Florence to attack Rome.

  After a particularly heated session with the French minister Rubertet and the cardinal de Chaumont, Niccolo returned to his lodgings more exhausted and exasperated than usual. To make matters worse, the innkeeper accosted him and presented him with a handful of bills for food, drink, and lodging that had not been paid for a month and a half. As discreetly as possible, that stout gentleman suggested that he would like to have his money, and on that issue too, Niccolo was forced to make vague promises in order to buy time.

  Giuditta was waiting for him. The holiday in France had not turned out to be what she had expected, either. The weather was atrocious; the French, rude; Niccolo, a nervous wreck; and they were out of money. To top things off, they never even got to Paris as promised but were stuck in the dreary environs of the castle of Blois, awaiting the pleasure of the French court. During her time in Blois, Giuditta had become accustomed to hearing rather long and detailed rehearsals of each day’s proceedings and their attendant difficulties. That she found it all a little tedious, she did not intimate to Niccolo. So as he came in, she resigned herself to yet another session of, “the cardinal insisted and the minister demanded and I absolutely refused . . .”