name of Liberty, those ancient usages
of Freedom, which no length of years and no benefits can extinguish in
the nation's mind, which cannot be uprooted by any forethought or by any
pains, unless the citizens themselves be broken or dispersed, will
always be a rallying-point for revolution when an opportunity occurs.'
This terrific moral--through which, let it be said in justice to
Machiavelli, the enthusiasm of a patriot transpires--is pointed by the
example of Pisa. Pisa, held for a century beneath the heel of
Florence--her ports shut up, her fields abandoned to marsh fever, her
civic life extinguished, her arts and sciences crushed out--had yet not
been utterly ruined in the true sense of depopulation or dismemberment.
Therefore when Charles VIII. in 1494 entered Pisa, and Orlandi, the
orator, caught him by the royal mantle, and besought him to restore her
liberty, that word, the only word the crowd could catch in his petition,
inflamed a nation: the lions and lilies of Florence were erased from the
public buildings; the Marzocco was dashed from its column on the quay
into the Arno; and in a moment the dead republic awoke to life.
Therefore, argues Machiavelli, so tenacious is the vitality of a free
state that a prudent conqueror will extinguish it entirely or will rule
it in person with a rod of iron. This, be it remembered, is the advice
of Machiavelli, the the Florentine patriot, to Lorenzo de' Medici, the
Florentine tyrant, who has recently resumed his seat upon the neck of
that irrepressible republic.

Hitherto we have been considering how the state acquired by a conqueror
should be incorporated with his previous dominions. The next section of
Machiavelli's discourse is by far the most interesting. It treats of
principalities created by the arms, personal qualities, and good fortune
of adventurers. Italy alone in the sixteenth century furnished examples
of these tyrannies: consequently that portion of the _Principe_ which is
concerned with them has a special interest for students of the
Renaissance. Machiavelli begins with the founders of kingdoms who have
owed but little to fortune and have depended on their own forces. The
list he furnishes, when tested by modern notions of history, is to say
the least a curious one. It contains Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, and Theseus.
Having mentioned Moses first, Machiavelli proceeds to explain that,
though we have to regard him as the mere instrument of God's purpose,
yet the p