The essential writings of Machiavelli (34 page)

A conspiracy might fail for the reasons I have given when it is aimed at a single prince, but it is even more likely to fail when it is aimed at two. In fact, it becomes so difficult that it is almost impossible to succeed, because to mount such an action in two different places simultaneously is almost impossible, since it cannot be done at different times, when one assassination would ruin the other. Consequently, if conspiring against a prince is an uncertain, dangerous, and most imprudent enterprise, then conspiring against two is futile and reckless. If I did not hold the historian Herodian in such high esteem I would never believe possible what he says of Plautianus, that he commissioned the centurion Saturninus to kill both Severus and Antoninus though they lived in different places, because that is so unreasonable that I would refuse to believe it if it came from any other source.
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Some young Athenians conspired against Diocles and Hippias, tyrants of Athens. They killed Diocles, but Hippias remained alive and avenged him. Chion and Leonidas, citizens of Heraclea and disciples of Plato, conspired against the tyrants Clearchus and Satyrus. They killed Clearchus, but Satyrus, who remained alive, avenged him. The Pazzi, whom we have already mentioned a number of times, managed to kill only Giuliano de’ Medici. Consequently, such conspiracies against more than one prince should be avoided, because one does good neither to oneself, one’s state, or anyone else: In fact, the princes who survive become even more insufferable and brutal, as Florence, Athens, and Heraclea can attest.

It is true that Pelopidas’s conspiracy to free Thebes, his native city, evinced all possible difficulties, because Pelopidas conspired not against two tyrants, but ten. And yet his conspiracy was successful. Not only was he not close to the tyrants in any way, he did not even move in their circles. Pelopidas was in fact a rebel. Yet he managed to enter Thebes, kill the tyrants, and liberate his city. However, he accomplished this with the help of a certain Charon, a counselor to the tyrants, who gave him the opportunity to approach the tyrants and carry out his plan. But nobody should follow his example, because it was an impossible undertaking and it was a miracle that it succeeded, and historians have considered it a rare incident that is practically without parallel.
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The completion of a conspiracy can be interrupted by a false conjecture or an unforeseen event at the crucial moment. The morning on which Brutus and the other conspirators intended to kill Caesar, it happened that Caesar stopped and spoke for a long time with Gnaeus Popilius Laenas, one of the conspirators, and when the others saw the long discussion they were suddenly convinced that Popilius Laenas might have revealed the conspiracy to Caesar. They were about to attempt to assassinate Caesar immediately, without waiting for him to go to the Senate, and would have done so had the conversation not ended without Caesar acting strangely in any way
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Such false conjectures must be considered and weighed, particularly in situations when false conjectures are so readily at hand, because he who has a guilty conscience will easily conclude that he is being talked about. A word said about an entirely different matter might perturb him and lead him to believe that it involves his conspiracy. This might prompt him to reveal it by his taking flight, or lead him to bring forward an action intended for later, hence throwing the whole conspiracy into disarray. This happens much more readily when there are many conspirators.

As for unforeseen events, since they are unforeseen one can only present them as warning examples to conspirators. Giulio Bellanti of Siena, whom I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, decided to kill Pandolfo out of hatred, since Pandolfo had taken back his daughter after having given her to Giulio as his wife. Pandolfo was in the habit of going almost every day to visit a sick relative, and on his way would pass Giulio’s house. Giulio was aware of this, and arranged to have his co-conspirators waiting at his house so that they could kill Pandolfo as he passed. He had them wait, armed, inside the entrance and had one man keep watch at a window, who was to give a sign as Pandolfo walked past. It happened, however, that after Pandolfo had appeared and the man at the window alerted the others, Pandolfo ran into a friend who stopped him, while some of Pandolfo’s men went on ahead. They saw and heard the weapons and uncovered the trap, with the result that Pandolfo was saved while Giulio and his fellow conspirators had to flee Siena. The unforeseen event of Pandolfo’s encountering a friend impeded the action and ruined Giulio’s plot. As unforeseen events are rare, they cannot be provided for. It is vital, however, to consider any event that might arise, and to take every precaution.

All that now remains for us to discuss are the dangers incurred after carrying out a conspiracy, these dangers being in fact only one: if someone who will avenge the dead prince is left alive. It could be his brothers, his sons, or other followers who expect to inherit the principality. They might have been left alive either through the conspirators’ negligence or for the reasons I have already mentioned. This happened in the case of Giovanni Andrea da Lampognano, who along with his fellow conspirators murdered the Duke of Milan.
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But as one of the duke’s sons and two of his brothers remained alive, they ultimately avenged the dead man.
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In truth, the conspirators can be excused in such cases, as they could not have acted differently; but when someone is left alive through imprudence or carelessness, the conspirators do not merit excuse. Some conspirators from Forlì killed their lord, Count Girolamo, and captured his wife and small sons.
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The conspirators felt that they would not be safe unless they occupied the castle, and as the castellan refused to hand it over, Madonna Caterina (that was the countess’s name) promised the conspirators that if they let her enter the castle, she would see to it that it was delivered to them: They could keep her sons as hostages. With this promise, the conspirators allowed her to enter the castle. But the instant she was inside she began shouting at them from the walls, abusing them for killing her husband and threatening every kind of revenge. To show them that she did not care about her sons, she revealed her genitals, saying that she still had the means to produce more. Thus the conspirators, not knowing what to do and realizing their mistake too late, paid for their lack of prudence with perpetual exile.
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But of all the dangers that can come to pass after a conspiracy has been carried out, none is more certain or more to be feared than if the populace loves the prince you have killed. Here the conspirators have no remedy, since they will never be able to secure themselves. Caesar is an example: The Roman populace was on his side, and they avenged his death. The conspirators were chased from Rome, and were all killed at different times and places.

Conspiracies against one’s own state are less dangerous for the conspirator than conspiracies against princes, because there are fewer dangers in preparing them, the same amount of danger in carrying them out, and no danger at all afterward. The reason there is not much danger in setting up a conspiracy is that a citizen can prepare to seize power without revealing his purpose or designs to anyone. If his plans are not interrupted, he can successfully carry out his endeavor, and should they be halted by some law, he can bide his time and carry them out by different means. This would be the case in a republic where there is some corruption, because in an uncorrupted republic, where no evil has sprouted, such thoughts cannot arise in any of its citizens. Hence, since he does not run the risk of being crushed, a citizen in a republic can aspire to become a prince by many means and in many ways, because republics are slower to act than a prince, are less suspicious and in consequence less cautious, and also because they have more respect for their powerful citizens, who as a result are more audacious and spirited in their actions against the republic. Everyone has read Sallust’s description of the Catiline conspiracy
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and knows how, once the conspiracy was discovered, Catiline not only remained in Rome but came to the Senate and made insulting speeches against the senators and the consul;
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so much respect did that city have for its citizens. And after Catiline had left Rome and was already with his army
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Lentulus and the others would not have been arrested had they not been carrying letters they had written that incriminated them quite clearly
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Hanno, a great citizen of Carthage, aspiring to become tyrant, intended during the wedding of one of his daughters to poison the entire senate and then assume power. When his conspiracy was revealed, the senate’s only countermeasure was to put limits on expenditure at banquets and weddings—so highly did they esteem his qualities.
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On the other hand, carrying out a conspiracy against one’s own state can also involve difficulties and dangers, because rarely will your forces be sufficient to conspire against so many. And not everyone is commander of an army, as were Caesar, Agathocles, Cleomenes, or others like them, who with their forces swiftly occupied their own state. For such men the road is easy and safe; but others who do not have recourse to armies such as theirs must do things either through deception and guile or with the help of foreign forces. As for deception and guile, when the Athenian Pisistratus defeated the city of Megara and so gained the support of the people, he came out one morning wounded, saying that the nobility, jealous of his standing, had attacked him, and he demanded that he be granted an armed guard. With the power of this guard he easily rose to such greatness that he became tyrant of Athens.
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Pandolfo Petrucci returned with other exiles to Siena
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and was given an armed force and guardianship of the public square, a position everyone else had turned down as insignificant. Nevertheless, with time Petrucci’s armed men gave him enough power and standing to become prince. Many other men used different ways and means of achieving their purpose without danger over time. Men who conspired to take over their own state using their personal army or a foreign one had various results, depending on whether Fortune favored them or not. Catiline, whom I have already mentioned, came to ruin, and Hanno, when his plot to poison the senators failed, armed his thousands of followers, which led to his and their deaths.
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Some of the foremost citizens of Thebes brought in a Spartan army, and with its help set up a tyranny. Consequently, when one examines all the conspiracies that men made against their own state, one finds that few if any were crushed during the period of organization, but that all either succeeded or came to ruin while being carried out. Once they were carried out, the conspirators faced no further dangers except those facing any prince. Once a man has become a tyrant, he encounters the natural and usual dangers a tyranny brings with it, against which he can only turn to the solutions I discussed at the beginning of this chapter.

This is what it occurred to me to write about conspiracies. And if I have explored those carried out with dagger and sword instead of poison, it is because they follow the same pattern. Conspiracies which make use of poison are also more dangerous because less certain: not everyone has an opportunity to administer the poison, so one has to confer with someone who does, and this necessity places one in danger. Furthermore, there are many reasons why a poisonous potion might not be fatal, as happened to the conspirators who killed Emperor Commodus.
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The emperor vomited up the poison they had administered, and they were forced to strangle him.

In short, a prince has no greater enemy than conspiracy, because when he is conspired against he will be either killed or shamed. If the conspiracy succeeds he will die, while if it is uncovered and he kills the conspirators, people will always believe that he fabricated the conspiracy in order to satisfy some covetous motive and exercise his cruelty on the life and possessions of those he has killed. Nonetheless, I want to warn the prince or republic that has been conspired against to exercise caution before taking action to punish a conspiracy when they become aware of it. They must strive to comprehend its quality and measure their power against that of the conspirators. If the prince or republic finds that the conspiracy is extensive and strong, they should not expose it until they have mustered enough forces to crush it. If they do otherwise, they will only bring about their own ruin. For this reason, they must endeavor to act as if they know nothing, because if the conspirators are suddenly exposed, necessity will force them to act immediately. We have the Romans as an example, who, after they had left two legions of soldiers to guard the Campanians from the Samnites, as I have said elsewhere,
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the captains of the legions conspired to subjugate the Campanians. When word of this reached Rome, Rutilus, the new consul, was commissioned to see to the matter. To lull the conspirators into a false sense of security he made it known that the Senate was going to keep the Campanian legions stationed in Capua indefinitely. The conspiring soldiers believed the news and felt that they would have ample time to carry out their design, and so did not hurry their plot. They did nothing until they realized that the consul was separating them from one another. This made them suspicious, and they quickly carried out their plot.
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This is the best example for both sides of the coin, because it demonstrates how slowly men will act when they believe that they have time, and how fast they will act when necessity is at their heels. A prince or republic wishing to defer the uncovering of a conspiracy to its advantage can use no better device than artfully offering the conspirators an opportunity to carry out their plan in the foreseeable future. This way, the conspirators wait for that moment to come, under the impression that they have ample time, while the prince or the republic has every opportunity to punish them. Whoever has acted differently has only hastened his own ruin, as was the case with the Duke of Athens and also with Guglielmo de’ Pazzi. The Duke of Athens had become the tyrant of Florence.
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When he realized that there was a conspiracy against him, he immediately had one of the conspirators seized without first weighing the matter, and the result was that the other conspirators immediately took up arms and seized the state from him. Guglielmo de’ Pazzi was the Florentine commissioner in Valdichiana in 1501, when he heard that there was a conspiracy in Arezzo in favor of the Vitelli to seize Arezzo from the Florentines. He immediately marched on Arezzo without weighing the strength of the conspirators against his own and without first gathering a military force. There, on the advice of his son the bishop, he arrested one of the conspirators, as a result of which the other conspirators immediately took up arms and seized the city from the Florentines, and Guglielmo went from being commissioner to being a prisoner.