The Prince and the Florentine Republic Case Study
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The Prince and the Florentine Republic Case Study
Running head: THE PRINCE 1
PRINCE 7
“The Prince” and the Florentine Republic
Name
Date
“The Prince” and the Florentine Republic
In the book The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli addresses the two types of government that exist concerning leadership. These include the principalities like the hereditary in which the leadership flows through the family tree as the family has been established for long. In this case, it is the leadership through kings(Machiavelli, 2008). The second type of government is with regard to republics, whereby people get to choose the leaders they want. Machiavelli focuses more on hereditary, but he addresses the various aspects of the principalities and republics by addressing the various historical events with regard to leadership. This paper will take a look at the topic of The Florentine Republic and how it relates to The Prince, how the issue gets addressed by Machiavelli, and the contribution of the text in shaping the views of Machiavelli about government.
The Prince and the Florentine Republic
The Prince is a book that entails the various types of leadership, which enables one to understand the different government forms. The government forms that Machiavelli addresses include the two principalities, which are either new that have just been created or the hereditary ones that have been established over time and the republics (Machiavelli, 2008). In addressing the concept of innate leadership and how it works, Machiavelli explains the various factors that make it challenging and almost impossible for countries that have a republic to be conquered. This is relevant to this topic because it addresses the aspects of how Florence, as a kingdom, became a republic and later became a defeated as their princes fled (Clarke, 2018). This is in agreement with Machiavelli’s sentiments in his book that provides that it is much easier for a state that gets ruled under the hereditary principality to be conquered rather than a country that is a republic. The book and the topic relate to each other in the sense that they both address the various forms of government and their specific aspects in terms of their characteristics concerning how they operate and how the people subject to them respond in case of invasion.
How people respond to the country that has invaded them is highly dependent on the current type of government they have. In a republic, people tend to be loyal because they used to live freely, and for this reason, it will be challenging for a country that invaded them to acquire their loyalty as they will remain true to their republic government and they will also devise ways to fight for their republic. On the other hand, it tends to be much easier for a state that has a hereditary government to be conquered by democracy because the people will enjoy a kind of freedom that lets them choose their leaders rather than a hierarchy that is dominated by dictatorial like leadership in the sense that the people have to do what the Prince directs. These topics, therefore, relate as while Machiavelli talks about how the different government function, the topic on the Florentine Republic discusses how the republic of Florence came to become a republic.
How the topic gets addressed by Machiavelli
The primary theme of the topic is Florence as a republic. Machiavelli, therefore, addresses the various aspects as to how the country became a republic and the multiple elements that may have influenced that. Machiavelli addresses the elements regarding the Florentine democracy by providing advice and his views on how the problems Florence faces should have been handled. For instance, he states that the Florence would have stood at the discretion of Giovanni Auto’s discretion if he had decided to conquer Naples for the purpose of proving his fidelity. If the man that had been appointed as captain, Paolo Vitelli by the Florentines and had defeated Pisa, the Florentines would have been right in keeping him, and they would have to obey him if he had become their enemies’ soldier. This is a clear indication that the views from the book get shaped by the actual events that took place in Florence.
Machiavelli views his writings regarding the Florentine Histories, as a theme, as a party division that is remarkable in the city that kept Florence city corrupt and weak (Maher, 2017). He further adds that the most democratic government and also the most short-lived government of the city got formed as a result of the rebellion of the lower classes. The discussion and provisions from the history of Florentine clearly indicate that despite having become a republic, Florentine did not manage to maintain its democracy as it gets conquered later by the barbarians. The weak state of the country made it possible for it to be invaded easily. While working with Florence’s Great council, Machiavelli was of the opinion that it was necessary for Florence to establish a militia for citizens, and get rid of the mercenaries. Machiavelli’s main focus of attention was the condition in which Italy was in, in which it had been taken over by Barbarians. He went further to challenge the various princes like Medici to be more aggressive in fighting for the liberation of Italy. His opinion about the republic of Florence was that it had a weak system with the princes not being able to stand up against the barbarians that had invaded the country is what contributed to the ease of the barbarians to invade them.
Further arguments that Machiavelli presents in his work regarding the Florentine republic was the argument that a prince’s influence, even if he is a virtuous prince could not be able to last long and as such, he was of the opinion that the most superior government form was the one in which all people were born free. He further added that such a good republic would be comprised of a religion that is strong, laws that are good, a citizen army, and punishments that are severe for criminals. Machiavelli was an Italian Patriot whose writing was aimed at sparking Italy’s liberation from occupation by foreigners. In his book, Machiavelli provides advice to the leaders on the specific qualities they are supposed to have, and it becomes evident that his message was directed towards the princes who, instead of defending their people against the enemy, they decide to flee and leave the people alone. This is clearly not the character of a good leader as their fleeing made it easier for the barbarians to take over the country as there was no one to oppose them.
The topic and Machiavelli’s views regarding government
The topic, Florentine republic helps shape the views by Machiavelli about government in several ways, some of which have been touched on in the discussion. First, the topic is a reflection of Machiavelli’s efforts in fighting for the restoration of Italy from the hands of the barbarians. By being a republic, it meant that the citizens could exercise free will, and they would get born free. The liberty of the people would be realized by making Florence a republic; the freedom of people would be restored. The writings by Machiavelli mainly themed with the concepts of a republic state in which power gets given to the people who get to make a decision and choose the kind of leader that they want. A democratic republic, according to Machiavelli, is one in which the people get to live freely and influence the elements of decision making in the republic country.
The Florentine republic topic helped shape the views by Machiavelli regarding government in the sense that it provided a platform through which the people could be able to choose leaders that had the specific virtues that the people desired. The people had the liberty to take a given length of time, observe the leaders that they wanted, and get them into holding the leadership positions in which they got elected by the representatives of the people. This shaped the views by Machiavelli because, in The Prince, he held the opinion that the Prince should be a virtuous man (Menaldo, 2018). He describes this as the message from history that is the most important. His description of such men was that men who are worthy of leadership are those who are able to stand on their own, and place reliance on their armies rather than fortune or mercenaries. Cesare Borgia was the one man Machiavelli saw to have come close to being a virtuous man, and his fight for power became a significant inspiration for Machiavelli in writing his book, The Prince. Therefore, the Florentine republic through Borgia played an essential role in shaping the government views Machiavelli had.
The events that took place in the Florentine republic in terms of being taken over by barbarians shaped the views of Machiavelli in the sense that he was able to address the issue of the Princes who failed to fight for their country and fled wars. This inspired him to write about the aspects of good leadership, and thus, he referred to The Prince as the book of advice to leaders (Goodman, 2017). The book did not dwell on the ideals that were Christian, like most books of that time. His view was based on the idea that a prince needs to learn to be good first for him to be able to hold and take power. The reason for this was that most of the other people are not good, and as such, it was necessary that a true leader be better than the other people. This view was influenced by the need for Machiavelli to provide advice for those princes who had fled the country at the sign of war, leaving their people when they should have been the ones fighting for them.
The relationship between the topic, The Florentine Republic, and the book by Machiavelli, The Prince, is so close in the sense that the various aspects of leadership get discussed in each text. For instance, while the topic addresses the type of leadership that was in Italy from the principalities to the republic and later being conquered by the barbarians, Machiavelli, in his book explains the different kinds of government and writes his book with inspiration from some of the events that took place in Florence. Machiavelli addresses the topic by establishing possible solutions and advice through the book.
References
Clarke, M. T. (2018). Machiavelli’s Florentine Republic. Cambridge University Press.
Goodman, R. (2017). The Advisor: Counsel, Concealment, and Machiavelli’s Voice. Redescriptions: Political Thought, Conceptual History, and Feminist Theory, 20(2), 200-223.
Machiavelli, N. (2008). The prince. Hackett Publishing.
Maher, A. (2017). The power of “wealth, nobility and men:” Inequality and corruption in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories. European Journal of Political Theory, 1474885117730673.
Menaldo, M. A. (2018). Leadership and the virtue of deception in Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince. In Leadership and the Unmasking of Authenticity. Edward Elgar Publishing.
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