The _Discourses on the First Decade of Livy_ and _The Art of War_ both treat of the same subject; the necessity of a freedom-loving nation to attain and preserve a high standard of military efficiency. The system of hiring venal condottieri had profoundly demoralised the forces of Italy, indeed, it had paved the way for the invasion of France and the dominion of Spain, and its effects were felt even to the middle of the present century, for no other explanation suffices to account for the submission of a nation with such a history as Italy to the oppression of foreign garrisons. So clear-sighted a patriot as Machiavelli could not fail to see the evil and to point out the remedy. His despatches and correspondence are also invaluable for the history of his times. But the work pre-eminently associated with his name is the treatise, entitled _Il Principe,_ a manual for a ruler who desires to keep an unsteady throne and to outwit unscrupulous enemies. He advocates, it is true, a policy regardless of all mercy and morality in the pursuit of its object; but injustice to Machiavelli, we must bear in mind what his object was. He had seen his country desolated for years by cruel and rapacious invaders, and he thought, most justly, that the only chance of Italy against her enemies was the establishment of the dominion of one powerful and politic prince over the whole Peninsula, and it was to establish a standard of conduct for such a prince that he wrote his book. His story, _Belphegor,_ and his plays, among which the _Mandragora_ stands pre-eminent, are witty and lively, but they frequently overstep the limits of decorum. All his works are interspersed with innumerable proofs of the keenness of his observation, and the style is clear and forcible, but somewhat wanting in colour. He wrote a few poems, but they are of no great value or interest.