Here is the world's most famous master plan for seizing and holding power.Astonishing in its candor,The Prince even today remains a disturbingly realistic and prophetic work on what it takes to be a prince…a king…a president.When,in 1512,Machiavelli resolved to set down a treatise on leadership that was practical,not idealistic.The prince he envisioned would be unencumbered by ordinary ethical and moral values,his prince would be man and beast,fox and lion.

NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI was born in Florence in 1469. In 1498 he received an appointment to the chancellery of the Florentine Republic, serving as both an administrator and a diplomat. Machiavelli traveled to France and to Germany and knew political leaders throughout Italy, most significantly,Cesare Borgia, presumably the model for The Prince.Machiavelli"s official political life ended fifteen years later with the return to power of the Medici. Following his dismissal and banishment, he was accused of complicity, imprisoned, and tortured. Although exonerated, he was without position and retired to his meager farm near San Casciano. It was in this bucolic setting of near poverty and of days passed in prosaic discourse with the local peasantry that Machiavelli wrote The Prince and The Discourses, determined to prove that banishment had made him neither idle nor ineffective. He addressed The Prince to Lorenzo de"Medici, fervently desiring to induce the prince to emulate his creation--the ruler who would return Florence to its former glory. The city-states of Renaissance Italy had fallen into a morass of inept rulers and foreign domination; it was a time for desperate measures.

Introduction

The Prince

Niccolo Machiavelli to the Magnificent Lorenzo de" Medici

1. The Kinds of Principalities and the Means by Which They Are Acquired

2. Hereditary Principalities

3. Mixed Principalities

4. Why Alexander"s Successors Were Able to Keep Possession of Darius" Kingdom after Alexander"s Death

5. How to Govern Cities and Principalities That, Prior to Being Occupied, Lived Under Their Own Laws

6. Concerning New Principalities Acquired by One"s Own Arms and Ability

7. Concerning New Principalities Acquired with the Arms and Fortunes of Others

8. Concerning Those Who Become Princes by Evil Means

9. Concerning the Civil Principality

10. How the Strength of All Principalities Should Be Measured

11. Concerning Ecclesiastical Principalities

12. Concerning Various Kinds of Troops, and Especially Mercenaries

13. Concerning Auxiliary, Mixed, and Native Forces

14. A Prince"s Concern in Military Matters

15. Concerning Things for which Men, and Princes Especially, Are Praised or Censured

16. Concerning Liberality and Parsimony

17. Concerning Cruelty: Whether It Is Better to Be Loved Than to Be Feared, or the Reverse

18. In What Way Princes Should Keep Their Word

19. How to Avoid Contempt and Hatred

20. Whether Fortresses and Many Other Expedients That Princes Commonly Employ Are Useful or Not

21. What a Prince Must Do to Be Esteemed

22. Concerning the Prince"s Ministers

23. How to Avoid Flatterers

24. Why the Princes of Italy Have Lost Their States

25. Concerning the Influence of Fortune in Human Affairs,and the Manner in Which It Is to Be Resisted

26. An Exhortation to Free Italy from the Hands of the Barbarians

Discourses Upon the First Ten Books of Titus Livy

BOOK ONE

2. Of the Various Kinds of States and of What Kind the Roman Republic Was

3. The Events That Led to the Creation of the Tribunes of the Plebs, by Which the Roman Republic BecameMore Perfect

4. That the Disorders Between the Plebs and the Senate Made the Roman Republic Strong and Free

10. Founders of Republics and Kingdoms Are As Much to Be Praised As Founders of Tyrannies Are to Be Censured

11. On the Religion of the Romans

12. The Importance with Which Religion Must Be Regarded and How Italy, Lacking It, Thanks to the Church of Rome, Has Been Ruined

58. The Multitude Is Wiser and More Constant Than a Prince

BOOK TWO

2. The People the Romans Had to Fight, and How Obstinately They Defended Their Freedom

BOOK THREE

21. How It Happened That Hannibal Gained the Same Results in Italy As Scipio Did in Spain by Contrary Means

41. That One"s Country Ought to Be Defended, Whether with Shame or Glory, by Whatever Means Possible

Chronology

Notes to The Prince

Notes to The Discourses

Selected Bibliography