his habits were pacific, he studied with intense assiduity the
theory of war. He made himself master of all its details. The
Florentine Government entered into his views. A council of war
was appointed. Levies were decreed. The indefatigable minister
flew from place to place in order to superintend the execution of
his design. The times were, in some respects, favourable to the
experiment. The system of military tactics had undergone a great
revolution. The cavalry was no longer considered as forming the
strength of an army. The hours which a citizen could spare from
his ordinary employments, though by no means sufficient to
familiarise him with the exercise of a man-at-arms, might render
him an useful foot-soldier. The dread of a foreign yoke, of
plunder, massacre, and conflagration, might have conquered that
repugnance to military pursuits which both the industry and the
idleness of great towns commonly generate. For a time the scheme
promised well. The new troops acquitted themselves respectably in
the field. Machiavelli looked with parental rapture on the
success of his plan, and began to hope that the arms of Italy
might once more be formidable to the barbarians of the Tagus and
the Rhine. But the tide of misfortune came on before the barriers
which should have withstood it were prepared. For a time, indeed,
Florence might be considered as peculiarly fortunate. Famine and
sword and pestilence had devastated the fertile plains and
stately cities of the Po. All the curses denounced of old against
Tyre seemed to have fallen on Venice. Her merchants already stood
afar off, lamenting for their great city. The time seemed near
when the sea-weed should overgrow her silent Rialto, and the
fisherman wash his nets in her deserted arsenal. Naples had been
four times conquered and reconquered by tyrants equally
indifferent to its welfare and equally greedy for its spoils.