"Ser Nihilo" & Ser Niccolò in France: Machiavelli, Broke & Un-Listened to at the French Court of Louis XII
The Renaissance city-state of Florence sends a junior diplomat to try to fix the diplomatic consequences of a military disaster. And doesn’t fund him. Nobody listens. Machiavelli in the diplomatic trenches, thirteen years before The Prince. Between unpaid mercenaries, snubbed at audiences, and court contempt, the youngish Niccolò Machiavelli learns the cost of weak states and weaker instructions…
Sent to explain away Florence’s role in the military disaster at Pisa, Machiavelli is sent with no plan, little pay—half the pay of his partner—and instructions both so vague and so micromanaged they bordered on sabotage. The court of French King Louis XII would not take this jumped-up clerk seriously: they offered gave him contempt. But what Machiavelli observed in failure would help shape one of the most original minds in political thought. A glimpse of Renaissance geopolitics and a cold-bath awakening to realpolitik.
Letters Patent:
PRO NICOLAO MACHIAVELLO ET FRANCISCO DELLA CASA, AD CHRISTIANISSIMAM REGIAM MAJESTATEM:
17 July 1500:
In sending at the present time, on account of certain important matters of ours, our respectable and most valued citizens Francesco della Casa and Niccolo Machiavelli to the court of the Most Christian King [Louis XII Valois of France], we beg the friends, confederates, and wellwishers of our republic, and command our subjects, that both in going and returning you will receive them with all their servants, goods, and equipage, and treat them in the most friendly manner everywhere within your dominion, without payment of any tolls or taxes. And in case they should require any guides, escorts, or any other favors for their safe conveyance to where they wish to go, we pray you promptly to comply with their requests. Your doing so will be appreciated by us in the highest degree, and in similar or more important occasions we offer you the same service at your good will and pleasure…
In 1500, the ruling executive—the Signoria—of the city-state Republic of Florence sent one Niccolò Machiavelli and one Francesco della Cas on a Mission to the Court of France, that kingdom being then ruled by Louis XII Valois:
You will proceed with all possible despatch, even to riding post, if your strength permits it, to Lyons, or wherever you learn that his most Christian Majesty is to be found. Upon arrival, you will at once call upon our ambassadors there, Messers Francesco Gualterotti and Lorenzo Lenzi, and communicate to them our present instructions, and confer with them as to whether there is anything to be added or left out; also as to your mode of proceeding in urging one thing more than another.
You will then present yourselves, together with our ambassadors, before his Majesty, the king, and, after the customary formalities of the first audience, you will expose to him in our name the substance of the instructions you will receive from us; although we do not believe that we can give you more clear and positive information than what you already possess touching the events of which you have yourselves been witnesses, and in connection with which you were in great part the agents and executors of all that had to be done on our part…
These do not seem friendly instructions—the undertone seems to me to be thus: Things went wrong with respect to the siege of Pisa, and someone shit the bed. You were there. In fact, you were more than there: you were our “agents and executors” as the bed-shitting took place. Now go explain to the King Louis XII Valois of France the state of the bed, and why he should not blame Florence for it.
And then the real high-status Ambassador, Lorenzo Lenzi appears to have taken a look at the situation and skipped town—ignoring the instructions of the Signoria that he accompany them to their audiences with Louis XII. For we have: