# CHAPTER 6 — On Conspiracies *

I did not think I should omit an analysis of conspiracies, since they represent a grave danger both for princes and for private citizens. It is evident that many more princes have lost their lives and their states through conspiracies than through open warfare, because being able to wage open war against a prince is within the reach of very few, while the possibility of conspiring against him is open to everyone. On the other hand, private citizens cannot enter into a more dangerous or more foolhardy enterprise that this one, because it is difficult and extremely dangerous at every one of its stages, which results in the fact that many conspiracies are attempted but very few reach their desired goal. Thus, so that princes may learn to guard themselves from these dangers and private citizens may enter into them more cautiously (or rather, so that private citizens may learn to live content under whatever dominion has been imposed on them by fate), I shall speak of conspiracies in great detail, not omitting any noteworthy case of relevance to either sort of person. Truly golden is that maxim of Tacitus, which declares that men must honour past affairs and endure present ones, and that they should desire good princes, but regardless of what they are like, should tolerate them. * And truly, anyone who does otherwise most often ruins himself and his native land.

In approaching the subject, we must, therefore, consider first the issue of against whom conspiracies are formed, and we shall find that they are formed either against one’s native city or against a prince; I want to begin by discussing these two kinds, because those that are formed to give a city over to the enemies who are besieging it, or those that are formed for some reason similar to this, have already been discussed at sufficient length above. * Hence, we shall treat in this first part conspiracies against a prince, and we shall first examine the reasons for these conspiracies, which are numerous. But one of these reasons is much more important than all the others, and that is being hated by the people, because when a prince has aroused such universal hatred, it is reasonable to assume that there are private individuals who have been harmed by him and who desire to take revenge. Their desire is increased by the universally hostile disposition which they see aroused against him. A prince, therefore, must avoid this public condemnation (and how he must act in order to avoid it is something I do not wish to discuss here, since I have dealt with this matter elsewhere), * for by guarding himself against this, simple individual offences will bring him less hostility. The first reason for this is that he will rarely encounter men who will judge one injury to be so important that they will place themselves in great danger to avenge it; the second is that, even when men have the courage and power to do so, they are held back by the universal goodwill they see the prince inspires.

Injuries must either be against property, lifeblood, or honour. To threaten someone’s lifeblood is more dangerous than to execute him; or rather, making threats is extremely dangerous, while ordering executions involves no danger whatsoever, because a dead man cannot think about a vendetta, while those who remain alive most often leave the thinking to the dead. But anyone who is threatened and forced by necessity either to act or to suffer will become a very dangerous man to the prince, as we shall discuss in detail in the proper place. Besides this kind of necessity, injuries to property and honour are the two things that offend men more than any other kind of attack, and the prince must protect himself against them, because he can never strip a man of so much that he will not have a knife left with which to take his revenge; nor can he ever dishonour a man so much that he does not retain a heart and mind stubbornly intent on revenge. Of the honours that may be taken away from men, those relating to women are most important; after that comes an outrage committed against one’s person. This kind of disgrace armed Pausanias against Philip of Macedonia and has armed many others against many other princes; in our own day, Giulio Bellanti did not set out to conspire against Pandolfo, the tyrant of Siena, for any other reason than that Pandolfo had given Giulio one of his daughters as his wife and then had taken her away, as we shall discuss in the proper place. The chief motive that caused the Pazzi family to conspire against the Medici was the question of the inheritance of Giovanni Bonromei, which was taken from them at the Medici’s orders.

There is another motive, and it is very important, that drives men to conspire against a prince; this is the desire to free one’s native city from the one who seized it. This motive moved Brutus and Cassius against Caesar; it also moved many others against Phalaris, Dionysius, and those who seized their native cities. Nor can any tyrant protect himself against this humour except by abandoning his tyranny, and since there is no one who will do such a thing, there are few tyrants who do not end badly; whence arises that verse from Juvenal: ‘Few are the kings who descend without wounds or murder to Pluto. Few tyrants die a dry death.’ *

The dangers incurred in conspiracies, as I stated above, are great, and they are incurred at every stage, because in such cases, one runs a risk in planning them, in executing them, and even after they have been executed. Those who form conspiracies are either single individuals or they are many. A single individual cannot be said to form a conspiracy but, rather, this represents the firm determination aroused in a single man to kill the prince. Of the three kinds of dangers incurred in conspiracies, this single individual avoids the first, for prior to the execution he runs no risk whatsoever, since others do not share his secret, nor is there any danger that news of his plan will reach the prince’s ear. Resolve of this kind can arise in any man of whatever rank, great, small, noble, ignoble, familiar, or not familiar to the prince, because everyone has the power to give vent to his own feelings. Pausanias, who has been mentioned before, killed Philip of Macedonia while he was going to the temple surrounded by a thousand armed men and standing between his son and his son-in-law. But he was a noble and known to the prince. A poor and abject Spaniard stabbed King Ferdinand of Spain in the neck with a dagger; the blow was not a mortal one, but this shows that the man had the courage and the opportunity to do it. A dervish, a Turkish priest, struck at Bajazet (father of the present Turk) with a scimitar; he did not wound him but he still possessed the courage and the opportunity to do so. * Many men with such dispositions can, I believe, be found who would like to undertake such a thing, because there is no penalty or any danger in wishing to do it, but few people do so, and of those who do, very few or none avoid being killed on the spot, but no one can be found who wants to go to certain death. Hence, let us set aside the discussion of these individual actions and come to conspiracies with a number of people involved.

I must say that all conspiracies are found in the histories to have been organized by great men or by those closest to the prince, because others, unless they are completely mad, cannot conspire, since weak men and those not close to the prince are entirely lacking in all those hopes and all those opportunities required for carrying out a conspiracy. In the first place, weak men cannot find supporters who will keep faith with them, because the latter cannot yield to the will of the weak with any of those hopes that make men expose themselves to great dangers; so that as the number of conspirators is widened to two or three people, they find a traitor among them and come to ruin. But even when they are fortunate enough to avoid such an accuser, they are surrounded by such difficulties in the execution of the conspiracy by lacking easy access to the prince that it is impossible for them not to come to ruin in the process, because if great men and those who have easy access are overwhelmed by the difficulties discussed below, it follows that in weak men these difficulties will endlessly increase. Thus, since men are not completely mad in matters concerning their lives and property, when conspirators see that they are weak they become cautious, and when they grow tired of a ruler they turn to cursing him, and they wait for those who have greater merits than their own to avenge them. And if by chance anyone of this rank were to attempt such a thing, one should praise their intentions but not their prudence.

It is evident, therefore, that those who have organized conspiracies have all been great men or close to the prince, and that many of these organized conspiracies were motivated as much by too many favours as by too many injuries; this was the case with Perennius against Commodus, Plautianus against Severus, and Sejanus against Tiberius. * All these men were accustomed to so much wealth, honour, and rank by their emperors that they felt nothing was lacking in the perfection of their power except the empire itself, and not wishing to lack even that, they set about conspiring against the prince. Their conspiracies all met the end that their ingratitude deserved, even though in more recent times some similar efforts have met with success, such as the conspiracy of Jacopo di Appiano against Messer Piero Gambacorti, ruler of Pisa; Jacopo, raised, nourished, and given prestige by Messer Piero, then took away his state. * The conspiracy of Coppola in our own times against King Ferdinand of Aragon was one of this type: Coppola, who had achieved such greatness that he thought he lacked nothing but a kingdom, lost his life for trying to acquire that as well. * Truly, if any conspiracy organized against princes by great men ought to have succeeded, it should have been this one, which was executed, one might say, by another king, and by a man who had such great opportunity to fulfil his desire. But the lust for power which blinds conspirators blinds them even more in executing their plans, for if they knew how to accomplish such an evil deed with prudence, it would be impossible for them not to succeed. A prince who wishes to protect himself from conspiracies should, therefore, fear those for whom he has done too many favours more than those upon whom he has inflicted too many injuries; because the latter lack opportunities, while the former have them in abundance, and their desires are similar, since the desire for power is just as great or even greater than the desire for revenge. Consequently, princes should give only as much authority to their friends as will leave some distance between their authority and that of the principality, with something to be desired in the middle; otherwise, it would be most unusual if they did not come to the same end as the princes mentioned above. But let us return to our argument.

Let me say that, since those who organize conspiracies must be great men with easy access to the prince, the results of their undertakings remain to be discussed and the reasons for their success or failure remain to be examined. As I said above, there are three dangerous moments in conspiracies: before, during, and after the fact. Few conspiracies can be found with an advantageous outcome, because it is almost impossible to pass through these three moments safely. To begin with a discussion of the preliminary dangers, which are the most important ones, let me say that it is necessary to be very prudent and very lucky to avoid being discovered in carrying out a conspiracy. Conspiracies are discovered either through information or indications. Information arises from encountering a lack of loyalty or prudence among the men with whom you discuss the conspiracy. This lack of loyalty is easily encountered, for you cannot discuss the conspiracy except with your most trusted friends, who will face death out of their love for you, or with men who are discontented with the prince. It is possible to find one or two trusted friends, but when you try to extend this number to many, it is impossible to find them; even then the goodwill they bear you must be great, so that the danger and the fear of punishment will not seem greater. Furthermore, men in most instances deceive themselves in the matter of the love they judge that someone bears for them; nor can you ever be sure of this love unless you test it, and testing it in this type of action is extremely dangerous. Although you may have put it to the test in some other dangerous enterprise, in which these men have proven faithful, you cannot measure this kind of loyalty by that, since this by far surpasses any other kind of danger. If you measure loyalty by the discontentment a man feels for the prince, you can easily deceive yourself in this matter, because as soon as you have revealed your intention to this malcontent, you give him the means to become contented, and his hatred must be great or your own authority must be extremely great to maintain his loyalty.

As a result, many conspiracies are discovered and broken up in their beginning stages, and when one has been kept secret for a long time among many men, it is considered a miraculous achievement, as was the conspiracy of Piso against Nero, and in our own times that of the Pazzi against Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici, which was known to more than fifty men and discovered only at the moment it was to be carried out. * With respect to being discovered through lack of prudence, this comes about when a conspirator speaks carelessly in such a way that a servant or a third party overhears you; which happened to the sons of Brutus, who were overheard by a servant who denounced them as they were planning the affair with the emissaries of Tarquinius, or when you carelessly reveal your plans to a woman or a young boy you love or some similarly careless individual, like Dymnus, one of the conspirators with Philotus against Alexander the Great, who revealed the conspiracy to Nicomachus, a young boy he loved, who immediately reported it to Cebalinus his brother, and Cebalinus to the king. * With respect to being discovered through indications, there is the example of the plot Piso organized against Nero in which Scaevinus, one of the conspirators, the day before he was to assassinate Nero, made out his will, ordered Milichus, his freed-man, to sharpen one of his old, rusty daggers, freed all his slaves and gave them money, and ordered bandages to be made to bind up wounds; when Milichus became aware of the plot through these indications, he denounced Scaevinus to Nero. Scaevinus was seized and with him, another conspirator, Natalis, the two of whom had been seen the day before speaking to each other at length and in secret, and when their accounts of this discussion did not agree, they were forced to confess the truth, so that the conspiracy was discovered, resulting in the ruin of all the conspirators. *

Concerning the causes for the discovery of conspiracies, it is impossible to protect oneself from malice, imprudence, or thoughtlessness so that the plot will not be discovered whenever those aware of it exceed the number of three or four. When more than one of the conspirators is caught, it is impossible to make their stories agree, because two men cannot agree on all the details of their explanations. When only one of the conspirators is taken, if he is a strong man he can, with courage and fortitude, keep silent about the others, but the other conspirators must possess no less courage than he to stand firm and not reveal themselves by taking flight, because if courage is lacking on even one side, either in the man who is arrested or in the one who is free, the conspiracy will be discovered. The example brought forward by Livy from the conspiracy organized against Hieronymus, king of Syracuse, is an unusual one. In this case, when Theodorus, one of the conspirators, was arrested, he concealed with exceptional strength the names of all the conspirators, and he denounced the friends of the king, and for their part, the conspirators trusted so completely in Theodoras’ exceptional courage that none of them left Syracuse or showed any sign of fear. * In the planning of a conspiracy, then, all these dangers must be passed through, even before reaching the point of executing the plan, and in order to avoid these dangers the following remedies exist. The first and the most reliable, or rather, to put it better, the only remedy is not to give the conspirators time to denounce you but to communicate the details of the matter to them when you want to execute it and not before. Those who have done so have clearly avoided the dangers that exist in the preparation of the conspiracy and, in most cases, the other dangers as well; indeed, all such conspiracies have come to a successful conclusion, and any prudent man would take the opportunity to conduct himself in such a manner. I want two examples of this to suffice.

Unable to tolerate the tyranny of Aristotimus, tyrant of Epirus, Nelematus gathered in his home many of his relatives and friends, and after he had urged them to liberate their native city, some of them asked him for time to think about it and to make plans; whereupon, Nelematus had his servants lock up the house, and he declared to those who had made such a request: ‘Either you will swear to go now to put this plan into effect, or I shall deliver you all as prisoners to Aristotimus’. Stirred by these words, they all swore to do so and they went, without any delay, and successfully executed Nelematus’ plan. * After one of the Magi through deception seized the kingdom of the Persians, and Ortanes and one of the noblemen of the kingdom learned of this deceit and exposed it, he conferred with six other princes of that state, declaring that he intended to liberate the kingdom from the tyranny of this Magus, and when one of them requested more time, Darius, one of the six princes summoned by Ortanes, arose and declared: ‘Either we shall all go now to execute this plan or I shall go to accuse you all.’ * Thus, all in agreement, they arose and, without giving anyone time to change his mind, they successfully executed their plans. * Also similar to these two examples is the method the Aetolians used to kill Nabis, the Spartan tyrant; they sent their fellow citizen Alexamenes with thirty cavalrymen and 200 foot-soldiers to Nabis under the pretence of sending him aid, and they communicated the secret only to Alexamenes, while upon the others they imposed the duty of obeying Alexamenes in anything and everything under penalty of exile. Alexamenes went to Sparta, and he never informed anyone of his mission until he wanted to accomplish it, with the result that he succeeded in killing Nabis. * Through these methods, therefore, these men avoided those dangers that are incurred in planning conspiracies, and anyone who imitates them will always avoid such risks.

In order to demonstrate that anyone may do as they did, I want to offer the example of Piso referred to above. Piso was a very distinguished and renowned man, an intimate friend of Nero, who confided in him a great deal. Nero often went to eat with Piso in his gardens; Piso, then, was able to make friends with men of courage and determination whose characters were suited to execute such a plan (which is extremely easy for a great man); and when Nero was in Piso’s gardens, the latter could have communicated the matter to them and, with the appropriate words, encouraged them to do what they would not have time to refuse to do, and what could not fail to succeed. * And so, if we examine all the other conspiracies, we shall discover few of them that could not have been carried out in the same way, but men usually have so little understanding of the ways of the world that they often commit extremely serious errors, and they commit much greater ones in those affairs which are most extraordinary, as are these conspiracies.

A conspiracy should never be revealed, therefore, unless it is necessary, and only at the moment of its execution, and if you wish to inform someone of it anyway, inform only a single person with whom you have had long experience or who is motivated for the same reasons as you are. To find one individual such as this is much easier than to find several of them, and for this reason there is less danger; then, even if you are deceived by a single person, there still remains the remedy of defending yourself, which does not exist when many conspirators are involved; I have heard it said by some prudent man that you can speak of anything with one man, because the ‘yes’ of one man is worth as much as the ‘no’ of another, if you do not allow yourself to write anything out in your own hand; and every man should guard himself against writing as if avoiding a reef, for nothing can more easily convict you than the writing of your own hand. When Plautianus wanted to kill the Emperor Severus and his son Antoninus, he informed the tribune Saturninus; Sat-urninus wished to denounce Plautianus rather than to follow him, but fearing that when he came to make his accusation he would be no more credible than Plautianus, Saturninus asked him for an order written in his own hand to confirm the commission; blinded by ambition, Plautianus did so, which resulted in his being accused by the tribune and convicted; and without that written order and certain other evidence, Plautianus would have emerged the victor, so resolutely did he deny the charges. It is possible, therefore, to find some remedy against the accusation of a single person, when you cannot be convicted by something in writing or some other evidence; against this one must protect oneself. In Piso’s conspiracy a woman named Epicharis, who had been Nero’s mistress in the past, thought it would be useful to have among the conspirators a captain of some of the triremes Nero kept as his guard and informed him about the conspiracy but not the names of the conspirators. As a result, when that captain betrayed her and denounced her to Nero, Epicharis was so resolute in denying the accusation that Nero, who remained confused, did not condemn her. In revealing the conspiracy to a single person, there are, therefore, two dangers: one is that he may denounce you with proof; the other is that he may denounce you once he is convicted and forced to do so by torture, after being arrested on some suspicion or for some sign of guilt he has shown. But for both of these two dangers, there are some remedies, since it is possible to deny the first kind of accusation, citing the hatred that the accuser has for you, as well as to deny the second by citing the force employed in forcing the accuser to tell lies about you. It is prudent, therefore, not to inform anybody about the matter, but to follow the examples cited above, or even, if you must inform someone about it, not to tell more than one person, for in this instance, even if some danger exists, there is much less than when many people are informed about it.

Related to this method is the one used when necessity forces you to do to the prince what you see the prince would like to do to you, an emergency so great that it does not allow you time even to think about protecting yourself. This kind of necessity almost always brings the conspiracy to its desired conclusion, and two examples suffice to demonstrate this. The Emperor Commodus counted Laetus and Eclectus, the leaders of the Praetorian guards, among his best friends and closest companions; Marcia was among the first of his concubines or mistresses; and because he was often reproached by them for the ways in which he disgraced himself and his imperial office, Commodus decided to have them killed, and on a list he wrote the names of Marcia, Laetus, and Eclectus, and some others whom he wanted to have killed on the following evening, and he put this list under the bolster on his bed. And when he had gone to wash himself, a young boy who was one of his favourites, playing around the bedroom and on the bed, came upon the list, and leaving the room with it in his hand, he ran into Marcia, who took it from him, and after she had read it and seen its contents, she immediately sent for Laetus and Eclectus, and recognizing the danger they were in, all three decided to take preventive action, and without delaying, on the following night they killed Commodus. *

Antoninus Caracalla, the emperor, was with his armies in Mesopotamia, and he had as his prefect Macrinus, a man who was more a civilian than a soldier. As it happens that princes who are not good always fear that others work against them in a manner they feel they deserve, Antoninus wrote to his friend Mater-nianus in Rome, asking him to find out from the astrologers if there was anyone who aspired to the imperial power and to inform him of it. As a result, Maternianus wrote him that Macrinus was the man who aspired to such power, and when the letter reached the hands of Macrinus before the emperor, and he recognized the necessity of either killing the emperor before a new letter arrived from Rome, or of dying himself, he commissioned Martial, a trusted centurion, whose brother had been put to death only a few days before by Antoninus, to kill him, a task Martial carried out successfully. * It is evident, therefore, that the kind of emergency that allows no time creates almost the same effect as the method I mentioned above as being employed by Nelematus of Epirus. It is also evident that what I declared almost at the beginning of this discourse is true: that is, that making threats does more damage to princes and is the cause of more effective conspiracies than injuries; a prince should guard against making such threats, because it is necessary to treat men with kindness or to secure oneself against them, and never to reduce them to the condition where they believe they must either die or kill someone else.

With respect to the dangers incurred during the execution of a conspiracy, they arise either from changing the plan; or from a lack of courage on the part of the man who carries it out; or from an error that the executor commits out of a lack of prudence; or from failing to execute the conspiracy perfectly, with part of those who were supposed to be killed remaining alive. I must say, therefore, that nothing disrupts or impedes all human actions as much as being forced in an instant, without having any time, to change a plan and to alter it from what had been planned earlier. If such change causes disorder in anything, it does so in matters of war and in matters similar to those of which we are speaking, because in such actions, there is nothing so necessary for men to do as to summon up their courage to perform the role assigned to them. And if men have focused their minds for many days upon one method and one plan and this suddenly changes, it is impossible for this not to upset everyone and ruin everything, so that it is much better to execute a thing according to the established plan, even if some drawback is discovered in it, than it is to encounter a thousand obstacles by wanting to cancel it. This occurs whenever there is no time to make new plans, for when time is available, a man can manage affairs in his own way.

The conspiracy of the Pazzi against Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici is well known. The established plan was that the Medici would serve the cardinal of San Giorgio * the midday meal and that they were to be killed at that repast; it had been decided who would kill them, who would seize the palace, and who would race through the city and call the people to liberty. It happened that while the Pazzi, the Medici, and the cardinal were hearing a solemn rite in the cathedral of Florence, it became known that Giuliano would not eat with them that morning; this caused the conspirators to gather together, and what they were to have done in the Medicis’ home they now decided to do in the church. This upset the entire plan, because Giovambattista da Montesecco did not wish to take part in the murder, declaring that he did not want to do it in a church, so that they had to entrust every action to new agents, who did not have sufficient time to summon up their courage, and they committed such errors that they were beaten down while carrying out their plan. *

The courage of anyone who executes the plan fails either out of respect for the victim or out of his own cowardice. The majesty and reverence inspired by the presence of a prince is so great that it is a simple matter for this either to weaken or frighten a conspirator. When Marius was captured by the people of Minturnae, a slave was sent to murder him; terrified by the presence of such a man and by the memory of his name, he became afraid and lost the strength to kill him. * If such power resides in a man bound and imprisoned and overcome by bad luck, it is even easier to maintain that this power is so much greater in a prince who is free, with the majestic aspect of his ornaments, his pomp and ceremony, and his royal court! As a result, such pomp may frighten you or soften you, when it is accompanied by some pleasant greeting. A few men were conspiring against Sitalces, king of Thrace; * they had fixed the day the plot would be carried out; they gathered together at the appointed place where the prince was located; none of them made a move to harm him; they eventually left without having attempted anything, without knowing what had stopped them; and they blamed each other. They lapsed into this error several times until the conspiracy was discovered and they suffered the penalty for the crime they could have but would not commit. Two of his brothers conspired against Alfonso, duke of Ferrara, and they employed as their go-between Giannes, a priest and the duke’s cantor, * who at their request brought the duke into their presence on more than one occasion, so that they would have the freedom to murder him. Nevertheless, neither of them ever had the courage to do it, so that when they were discovered, they suffered the penalty for their wickedness and their lack of prudence. This negligence could not have arisen from anything other than the fact that either the duke’s presence must have frightened them or some act of humanity on his part must have humiliated them.

In such plans a drawback or error arises either through a lack of prudence or through a lack of courage, since both of these two things can obsess you and make you say and do something you should not say or do, carried away by the confusion in your mind. The fact that men are obsessed and confused by these things cannot be better demonstrated than in Livy’s description of how Alexamenes the Aetolian wanted to assassinate Nabis the Spartan, of whom we have spoken above, because when the time for executing the plan arrived, and he had revealed to his men what was to be done, Livy says this: ‘He for his part summoned up his courage—for his mind was confused by the contemplation of the great task that faced him.’ * Thus, it is impossible for anyone, even a man who is steady of mind and accustomed to killing men and to using the sword, not to be confused. Still, men of experience in such matters must be selected, and no others should be trusted, even if they are considered to be extremely courageous, because where courage is required in great undertakings, if it has not been tested by experience, there is no one who can promise a certain outcome. This confusion can, therefore, either make you drop the weapon from your hand or make you say things that produce the same effect. Lucilla, the sister of Commodus, ordered Quintianus to kill him. He waited for Commodus at the entrance to the amphitheatre, and drawing near to him with a drawn dagger, he cried: ‘The senate sends you this!’ His words caused him to be seized before he had brought his arm down to strike Commodus. Messer Antonio da Volterra, assigned (as we said above) to kill Lorenzo de’ Medici, shouted ‘Ah, traitor!’ while drawing close to him. His voice was Lorenzo’s salvation and the downfall of that conspiracy.

A conspiracy can fail to be executed perfectly when it is directed against one leader for the reasons already provided, but it can also easily fail to be executed perfectly when the conspiracy is directed against two leaders; in truth, this kind of conspiracy is so difficult that it is almost impossible for it to succeed. To undertake a similar enterprise at the same time in different places is almost impossible, because it cannot be carried out at different times if the first is not to spoil the second. Thus, if a conspiracy against one prince is an uncertain, dangerous, and imprudent affair, conspiring against two rulers is completely vain and foolhardy. If it were not for the respect in which I hold this historian, I would never believe possible what Herodian says of Plautianus, when he commissioned the centurion Saturninus alone to assassinate Severus and Antoninus, who lived in different places, because the plan is so far removed from what is reasonable that no one but this authority could ever make me believe it. * Certain young Athenians organized a conspiracy 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 Satirus; they killed Clearchus but Satirus, who remained alive, avenged him. * The Pazzi conspirators, cited by us numerous times, did not succeed in killing anyone but Giuliano. Hence, everyone should avoid conspiracies such as these aimed at more than one leader, because they do not benefit the conspirators, the city, or anyone else; on the contrary, survivors who remain become even more insufferable and harsher, as Florence, Athens, and Heraclea all know, which I mentioned earlier.

It is true that the conspiracy Pelopidas organized to liberate Thebes, his native city, met with all these difficulties, but it had, nevertheless, a successful conclusion. Pelopidas conspired not only against two tyrants but against ten of them; not only was he not their confidant and without easy access to them, but he was a rebel in exile; he was, none the less, able to enter Thebes, assassinate the tyrants, and liberate his native city. Furthermore, he accomplished this with the assistance of a certain Charon, an advisor to the tyrants, from whom he gained easy access to carry out his plan. Nevertheless, no one should use him as an example, because this was an impossible undertaking that succeeded miraculously, and it was so viewed by historians at the time, who celebrate it as a rare and almost unparalleled event. *

The execution of a plan can be interrupted by a false supposition or by an unforeseen event that occurs on the spot. The morning that Brutus and the other conspirators wanted to kill Caesar, it happened that Caesar spoke at length to Gnaeus Popilius Laenas, one of the conspirators, and seeing this long conversation, the others feared that this Popilius had revealed the conspiracy to Caesar and were about to try to kill him right there without waiting for him to go to the senate; they would have done so if the conversation had not ended, and if, having seen that Caesar made no unusual movement, they had not been reassured. These are the kinds of false assumptions to be considered and kept carefully in mind, especially in so far as it is easy to make them, because anyone with a guilty conscience can easily believe that people are speaking of him; you can hear a word that is spoken for another reason that troubles your mind and makes you believe that it is spoken about your own case; and it can cause you either to flee and to expose the conspiracy by yourself, or to make a muddle of its execution by taking action sooner than you planned. This comes about more easily when many people are aware of the conspiracy.

With respect to accidents, since they are unexpected, they can only be illustrated through examples which will make men cautious. Giulio Bellanti from Siena, whom we have mentioned above, because of the indignation he felt against Pandolfo, who had taken away the daughter he had previously given Bellanti as a wife, decided to kill him and had selected a certain time. Almost every day Pandolfo went to visit one of his sick relatives, and on his way he passed by Giulio’s home. Thus, once Giulio noticed this, he arranged to have his fellow conspirators in the house in order to kill Pandolfo as he walked by, and after he had placed them, armed, inside the entrance he kept one man at the window, so that as Pandolfo passed by the man would make a sign when he was near the entrance. It happened that, as Pandolfo was approaching and after the man had made the sign, Pandolfo ran into a friend who stopped him, while some of those who were with him went on ahead, and once they heard the noise made by the weapons and saw them, they discovered the ambush, so that Pandolfo was saved and Giulio and his companions were forced to flee from Siena. * This accidental meeting prevented any action and brought Giulio’s enterprise to ruin. There is no remedy against such accidents, which are rare. Still, it is necessary to examine all those that may arise and to provide a remedy against them.

Presently there remains only for us to discuss the dangers that are incurred after the execution of a plan, and these involve primarily one, and that is, when someone remains alive to avenge the dead prince. Those who remain, then, to undertake such a vendetta may be his brothers, his sons, or other followers of his who expect to inherit the principality (and they may remain alive either because of your negligence or for the reasons given above): this happened to Giovanni Andrea da Lampognano who, along with his other co-conspirators, murdered the duke of Milan, but since one of his sons and two of his brothers remained alive, they in time avenged the dead man. * And truly, in these cases the conspirators are to be excused because they had no other remedy, but when someone remains alive because of their lack of prudence or negligence, then they do not deserve to be excused. Some conspirators from Forlì killed their lord Count Girolamo and took his wife and small children hostage, and since they felt they could not live in security unless they took possession of the fortress, and since the castellan would not surrender it to them, Madonna Caterina (this was the countess’s name) promised the conspirators that if they were to allow her to enter the fortress, she would turn it over to them, and they could keep her children with them as hostages. With this promise they allowed her to enter the fortress, and once inside, she reproached them from the walls for the death of her husband and threatened them with all kinds of vendettas. To show that she was not concerned for her children, she showed them her genitals, declaring that she still had the means to create more of them. Thus, the conspirators, not knowing what choice to make and only too late realizing their error, suffered perpetual exile as the punishment for their lack of prudence. But of all the dangers that can be incurred after the execution of such a plan, there is none more certain or more to be feared than when the people are the friend of the prince that you have murdered, because conspirators have no remedy against this danger and can never secure themselves against it. As an example, there is Caesar, who had the people on his side and was avenged by them, and for this reason, after the conspirators were chased out of Rome they were all killed at various times and places. *

Conspiracies planned against one’s native city are less dangerous for those who plan them than conspiracies planned against princes, because in organizing them, there are fewer dangers in the former than in the latter; in carrying them out, the dangers are the same; and after they have been executed, there is no danger of any kind. In organizing them there are not many dangers, for a citizen can make preparations to acquire power without revealing his mind or his plan to anyone; if these preparations are not interrupted, he can successfully carry out his undertaking; and if his preparations are interrupted by some law, he can bide his time and employ other measures. It is to be understood that this occurs in a republic where some corruption already exists, because in an uncorrupted republic where no evil principle has taken root, such thoughts cannot occur in the minds of its citizens. Citizens can therefore aspire to take over the principality, in many ways and by many means, without suffering the danger of being crushed, both because republics are slower to act than a prince, less suspicious, and, as a result, less cautious, and also because they pay their most important citizens more respect, with the result that such men are more daring and courageous in acting against them. Everyone has read about the conspiracy of Catiline described by Sallust and knows how, after the conspiracy was discovered, Catiline not only remained in Rome but came to the senate and said insulting things both to the senate and to the consul, so great was the respect that city paid to its citizens. After he left Rome and was already with his armies, Lentulus and those others would not have been arrested if letters had not existed in their own handwriting which clearly implicated them. * Hanno, a very distinguished citizen of Carthage who aspired to tyranny, had made plans during the wedding of one of his daughters to poison the entire senate and then to make himself prince. When it became known, the senate made no other provision against it than a law which placed limits on the expenses of banquets and weddings, * such was the respect they had for this man’s merits.

It is certainly true that in carrying out a conspiracy against one’s native city, there are more difficulties and greater dangers, because your own forces are rarely sufficient in conspiring against so many, and everyone is not the commander of an army as was Caesar or Agathocles or Cleomenes and other men like them, who have, in a single stroke and with their own forces, seized control of their native cities. Men such as these find the path very easy and very safe, but others, who do not have these additional forces, must do things either with deception and guile or with foreign troops. In regard to deception and guile, after Pisistratus the Athenian had defeated the inhabitants of Megara and had, for this reason, gained the favour of the people, he went out one morning, wounded, declaring that the nobility had injured him out of envy, and demanded that he be allowed to have armed men with him for his protection. With this authority, he easily rose to such greatness that he became tyrant of Athens. * Pandolfo Petrucci returned with other exiles to Siena and was given the guardianship of the public square with a command, an office others refused as a menial task; none the less, his armed men with the passage of time earned him such prestige that in a short while he became the ruler of the city. * Many others have employed different schemes and methods and have, in the course of time and without danger, achieved their goal. Those who have conspired to seize power in their native city with their own forces or with foreign armies have achieved different results, according to fortune. Catiline, who was previously cited, was ruined in this fashion. Hanno, who was mentioned above, armed his partisans, many thousands of people, and when poison failed, both he and they were killed. Some of the foremost citizens of Thebes called a Spartan army in to help them set themselves up as tyrants, and they established a tyranny in that city. * Thus, when all the conspiracies people have mounted against their native land have been examined, you will find none, or very few, that have been suppressed in the process of being organized, but all have either succeeded or come to ruin while being carried out. After they are executed, no dangers are incurred other than those inherent in the nature of the principality itself, because when someone has become a tyrant, he faces the natural and ordinary dangers which tyrannicide brings upon him, against which he has no other remedies than those discussed above.

This is as much as I need to write about conspiracies, and if I have analysed those that are accomplished not with poison but with the sword, this arises from the fact that they all have a similar organization. It is certainly true that those carried out with poison are more dangerous by virtue of being more uncertain: not everyone has the opportunity to use it, and it becomes necessary to confer with those who do, and this necessity of conferring with others places you in danger. Then, for a number of reasons a drink of poison may not be fatal, as happened to those who killed Commodus, for after he had thrown up the poison they had administered to him, they were forced to strangle him if they wished for him to die.

Princes, therefore, have no greater enemy than a conspiracy, because if a conspiracy is organized against them, it either kills them or disgraces them; if it succeeds, they die, and if it is discovered and they kill the conspirators, people always believe that the conspiracy was an invention of the prince to give vent to his avarice and cruelty against the lives and property of those whom he has killed. Yet, I do not wish to fail to warn that prince or republic against whom a conspiracy has been planned to be cautious, so that when a conspiracy is revealed to them, before they make an effort to avenge themselves, they will seek to understand very well its characteristics, and they will take careful measure of the conditions of the conspirators as well as their own, and when they find that the conspiracy is widespread and powerful, they will never reveal it until they have prepared themselves with forces sufficient to suppress it; acting otherwise, they would discover only their own ruin. For this reason, they must make every effort to pretend to dissimulate, since once the conspirators find themselves exposed, driven by necessity they will act without scruples. For example, when the Romans left two legions of soldiers behind to guard Capua against the Samnites, as we said elsewhere, * the leaders of these legions conspired together to oppress the Capuans; once this matter came to the attention of those in Rome, they commissioned Rutulus, the new consul, to take care of the matter; and to lull the conspirators to sleep, Rutulus spread the news that the senate had confirmed the assignments of the Capuan legions. Believing this and thinking that they had time to carry out their plan, those soldiers did not try to accelerate it, and they stood firm until they began to see that the consul was separating them one from the other; this action aroused their suspicion, causing them to reveal themselves and to put their plan into operation. * A better example of the two sides of the issue could not be found, because it shows how slowly men act in matters in which they believe they have time, and how swiftly they act when necessity drives them. Nor can a prince or a republic that wishes in an advantageous way to delay exposing a conspiracy adopt a better expedient than cleverly offering the conspirators an opportunity in the near future, so that while they wait for that opportunity or think they have ample time, that prince or republic has time to punish them. Anyone who has acted differently has hastened his own ruin, as the duke of Athens and Guglielmo de’ Pazzi both did. Once the duke had become tyrant of Florence and had learned that there was a conspiracy against him, without examining the problem in more detail, he had one of the conspirators taken; this action immediately caused the others to take up their arms and to take the state away from him. * Guglielmo, [the Florentine] commissioner in the Valdichiana in 1501, learned of a conspiracy in Arezzo in favour of the Vitelli family to seize that city from the Florentines; he immediately went to that city and, without thinking about the strength of the conspirators or his own, and without preparing some kind of military force for himself, he had one of the conspirators arrested upon the advice of the bishop, his son, after which the others immediately took up arms and took the city from the Florentines; and Guglielmo went from being a commissioner to being a prisoner. * But when conspiracies are weak, they should and must be suppressed without fail.

Nor are two methods which are almost the opposite of each other to be imitated in any way: the first one was employed by the previously mentioned duke of Athens, who, in order to demonstrate his belief that he enjoyed the goodwill of the Florentine citizens, put to death a man who revealed a conspiracy to him; the other was employed by Dion of Syracuse who, to test the intentions of a man against whom he harboured suspicion, allowed Callippus, whom he trusted, to pretend to organize a conspiracy against him. And both of these men ended badly: for the former discouraged informers and encouraged those who wished to plot against him, while the latter provided an easy avenue to his own death, or, on the contrary, actually led the conspiracy against himself, because events were to prove that Callippus, who was able to conspire against Dion with impunity, did it so well that he deprived Dion of his state and his life. *