Lehal Library

the Romagna with the help of his cruel minister Remirro de Orco, Machiavelli tells us, Borgia decided to deflect people’s hatred away from himself by putting the blame for all atrocities on his minister and then doing away with him: so ‘he had de Orco beheaded and his corpse put on display one morning in the piazza in Cesena with a wooden block and a bloody knife beside. The ferocity of the spec- tacle left people both gratified and shocked.’ It’s hard not to feel, as we read the chapters on Borgia, that this is the point where Machiavelli’s book ceases to be the learned, but fairly tame, On Principalities and is trans- formed into the extraordinary and disturbing work that would eventually be called The Prince. In short, Machiavel- li’s attention has shifted from a methodical analysis of different political systems to a gripping and personally engaged account of the psychology of the leader who has placed himself beyond the constrictions of Christian ethics and lives in a delirium of pure power. For a diplomat like Machiavelli, who had spent his life among the powerful but never really held the knife by the handle, a state employee so scrupulously honest that when investigated for embezzlement he ended up being reimbursed monies that were due to him, it was all too easy to fall into a state of envy and almost longing when contemplating the awe- some Borgia who had no qualms about taking anything that came his way and never dreamed of being honest to anyone. At a deep level, then, the scandal of The Prince is