to the institution of the _Nove dell'
Ordinanza e Milizia_, and to its operations between December 6,
1506, and August 6, 1512, from the pen of Machiavelli, will be
found printed by Signor Canestrini in _Arch. Stor._ vol. xv.
pp. 377 to 453. Machiavelli's treatise _De re militari_, or _I
libri sull' arte della guerra_, was the work of his later life;
it was published in 1521 at Florence.

[3] Though Machiavelli deserves the credit of this military
system, the part of Antonio Giacomini in carrying it into
effect must not be forgotten. Pitti, in his 'Life of Giacomini'
(_Arch. Stor._ vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 241), says: 'Avendo per
dieci anni continovi fatto prova nelle fazioni e nelle
battaglie de' fanti del dominio e delli esterni, aveva troppo
bene conosciuto con quanta piu sicurezza si potesse la
repubblica servire de' suoi propri che delli istranieri.'
Machiavelli had gone as Commissary to the camp of Giacomini
before Pisa in August 1505; there the man of action and the man
of theory came to an agreement: both found in the Gonfalonier
Soderini a chief of the republic capable of entering into their
views.

It must be admitted that the new militia proved ineffectual in the hour
of need. To revive the martial spirit of a nation, enervated by tyranny
and given over to commerce, merely by a stroke of genius, was beyond the
force of even Machiavelli. When Prato had been sacked in 1512, the
Florentines, destitute of troops, divided among themselves and headed
by the excellent but hesitating Piero Soderini, threw their gates open
to the Medici. Giuliano, the brother of Pope Leo, and Lorenzo, his
nephew, whose statues sit throned in the immortality of Michael Angelo's
marble upon their tombs in San Lorenzo, disposed of the republic at
their pleasure. Machiavelli, as War Secretary of the anti-Medicean
government, was of course disgraced and deprived of his appointments. In
1513 he was suspected of complicity in the conjuration of Pietropaolo
Boscoli and Agostino Capponi, was imprisoned in the Bargello, and
tortured to the extent of four turns of the rack. It seems that he was
innocent. Leo X. released him by the act of amnesty passed upon the
event of his assuming the tiara; and Machiavelli immediately retired to
his farm near San Casciano.

Since we are now approaching the most critical passage of Machiavelli's
biography, it may be well to draw from h