The foreign invasions and wars of the sixteenth century

An Italian writer who anticipated the Europe of self-sufficient embryonic nation states – the ‘New Monarchies’ of France, Spain and England – was Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527). His knowledge came from two sources: the ancient Roman world, and his own contemporary Italian world, where secular principalities and republics acquired a sense of identity as independent units recognizing no higher authority, whether it be of pope or emperor. Fifteenth-century Italy was a microcosm of sixteenth-century Europe, where powerful monarchs nationalized their churches, and acquired a form of independence which was total in practice, and which would have been difficult for the medieval mind to conceive.

Machiavelli's most influential work was the short handbook for rulers which he called The Prince. He had held public office under the republic, and when the Medici dismissed him in 1513 he wrote his cynical, yet perceptive, commentary on the necessary skills for securing and retaining power. His argument took the secular spirit of the Renaissance to its most extreme point. In his eyes raison d'état necessitated the ignoring of all moral values; in his eighteenth chapter, he wrote: