Page:The National Idea in Italian Literature.djvu/27



The independence of the Quattrocento had been extinguished, and Italy was the battle ground of the contending armies of her conquerors (though the contest was still undecided between France and Spain), when Machiavelli, in 1513, wrote the Principe. He is, as it were, crystallizing his observation of the political life of his own time, and his study of ancient history, into the conception of such a prince as he deemed called for by the exceptional conditions of Italy. It closes with that chapter of impassioned eloquence in which the writer appeals to his new prince, backed by a national army, to come forward as the redeemer of Italy from the dominion of the foreigner:—

"If it was necessary, in order to behold the virtue of Moses, that the people of Israel should be slaves in Egypt, and to recognise the greatness of the mind of Cyrus that the Persians should be oppressed by the Medes, and the excellence of Theseus that the Athenians should be scattered; so, at the present time, in order to know the virtue of an Italian spirit, it was necessary that Italy should be reduced to that condition in which she now is, and that she should be more enslaved than the Hebrews, more down-trodden than the Persians, more scattered than the Athenians; without a head, without order, beaten, despoiled, torn, overrun, the victim of every kind of ruin &hellip; Left without life, she waits to see who it is that shall heal her wounds &hellip; We see how she prays God to send her some one to redeem her from these barbarian cruelties and insolence. We see her all 15