One does not normally think of Niccolo Machiavelli as a military thinker. His name has entered the English language as a synonym for deviousness and intrigue. But military philosophy was the basis of Machiavelli's political philosophy. The end of the Middle Ages brought with it (or was caused by) a dissolution and disintegration of the primary political, social and economic factors that had supported it. The rapid rise of the money economy brought an end to the agricultural basis of society hich further shook the social and political structures of the time. Feudalism fell under the weight of gold. Overlords found themselves able to raise armies by the promise of money and freed themselves from their dependence on their vassals. Firearms and artillery, two major changes in the military technology of the era, accelerated the tempo of the evolution from medieval to Renaissance military institutions. First, they strengthened the position of the overlord in relation to his vassals. The use of artillery, in particular, required a military organization that the average knight or lesser noble could not afford. Hence the whole process of warfare became expensive and supported the development of a money economy. Second, artillery rendered the importance of fortifications moot. Again the ability to obtain and utilize artillery favored the wealthier overlord and his military organization and changed the smaller knights from the primary forces of warfare into anachronisms. The revolutions that shook and finally shattered the military institutions of the Middle Ages left a vacuum. In the last chapter of The Prince, Machiavelli summarized the situation as he saw it: "If the various campaigns and uprising which have taken place in Italy have given the appearance that military ability has become extinct, the true reason is that the old methods of warfare were not good and no one has been able to find new ones. A man newly risen to power cannot acquire greater reputation than by discovering new rules and methods." Machiavelli believed he knew what these institutions were and enunciated them in a slim volume called The Art of War. The book is the only treatise on political or military issues that Machiavelli had printed in his lifetime. Presented in the form of a dialogue among Florentine patricians and the condottiere Fabrizio Colonna, it lays out the new forms of warfare as refined and promoted by Machiavelli. The Art of War was the Sixteenth Century equivalent of a best-seller. By century's end, twenty-one editions had appeared. The book was translated into French, English, German and Latin. Montaigne called Machiavelli a military authority in the same breath with Caesar, Polybius and Commynes. Changing methods of warfare in the Seventeenth Century did little to stop Machiavelli's popularity. Marshal de Saxe leaned heavily on him when he composed his Reveries Upon the Art of War. Like most people concerned with military matters, Thomas Jefferson had The Art of War in his library. And during the War of 1812 a special American edition was published. Readers of the work will be disappointed if they go into it expecting to find something "new." The problem lies in the word "new." To the modern reader "new" implies the opposite of "old" since the future must be better than either the past or the present. But before the idea of progress had taken hold of the Western mind, people in Europe viewed their present mainly as a decline from a high point that lay in their past. The perfect world had existed in classical times. For Machiavelli the model for Florence was Rome -- another city-state-republic, and one that had risen to world domination. Hence, Machiavelli's "new" rules were his reconstruction of the "old" laws of the Roman military order. According to Machiavelli, the Roman legions were a carefully selected militia, whose soldiers came from rural areas. Roman armies were of moderate size and the infantry was their backbone. Cavalry in battle was of very limited value, although it could be useful in reconnoitering and preventing supplies from reaching an enemy. He describes the different units into which the army was divided, the chain of command, how the army was organized into battle order and its operational art, the selection of campsites and the attack and defense of fortified places. Throughout the book Machiavelli clearly delights in enunciating, with precision, how the Romans proceeded. But his intent was to deduce the laws and principles that stood behind the facts of Roman military history and show their applicability to his present. His steady striving for these underlying principals inevitably penetrated to the basic issues of war and military order in the modern world. Machiavelli lays down the new logic of war. States and rulers wish to expand and to conquer, hence warfare is the most essential political activity. In warfare there is no safe course. States and rulers are forced to take risks in an atmosphere of uncertainties and dangers. To minimize risks, wars should be "short and sharp" and brought to a swift conclusion. But quick decisions can only be achieved by battle. Since everything depends on the outcome of the battle, everything should be done to make sure of victory. As battle is the aim of every military campaign, these must be planned and coordinated operations. Hence, command must be in the hands of one man. In monarchies the king should be the commanding general. In republics the military should be entrusted to one commander as the Romans had done. This commander should have unlimited authority over the forces placed at his disposal, without interference from the political leadership. The aim of war must be to face the enemy in the field and defeat him there, this the only way to "bring war to a happy conclusion." How to go about that is not merely through technical excellence. While two-thirds of The Art of War is about weaponry, marching order, lines of command and so on, Machiavelli's influence on military thought is not in the technical-military sphere. His study of Rome opened his eyes to the quintessential nature of war in modern times. He was the first political thinker to grasp the competitive nature of the modern state system, and to conclude that the existence of the state depends on its capacity for war. Whereas in the Middle Ages, the conduct of war had been the particular function of a privileged class and had been shaped by its values and code of honor. The crucial lesson that Machiavelli spelled out was that the defense of the state was the concern of all those who live in the same society. To motivate the people to fight and die for their country, Machiavelli recommends patriotism as the only means to establish a spiritual bond between the people and the ruler. But, as he is quick to point out no one will feel patriotic towards a "bad state." Hence the state's political treatment of its citizenry defines its military strength. This thesis of the close connection and interrelationship between political and military institutions is the most important and also the most revolutionary argument Machiavelli sets forth in The Art of War. He repeats it in his other works on politics. In The Prince he writes: "There must be good laws where there are good arms and where there are good laws there must be good arms." In The Discourses, he gives the notion of the interdependence of military and political organization its most categorical formulation: "Although I have elsewhere maintained that the foundation of states is a good military organization, yet it seems to me not superfluous to report here that without such a military organization there can be neither good laws nor anything else good." Machiavelli's revolutionary declarations that war and politics were interwoven and that a society cannot survive that is not willing to defend itself, form the basis of modern military thought. Back to Cry Havoc #2 Table of Contents Back to Cry Havoc List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1993 by David W. Tschanz. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com