Machiavelli, Popular Resistance and

the Curious Case of the Ciompi Revolt

John P. McCormick
University of Chicago

Paper prepared for the conference, “Theorising Resistance,”

Reading University, 9-10 June 2017
Organized by Rob Jubb

The Florentine Histories1 is widely understood to mark a basic reorientation of Niccolò

Machiavelli’s political thought.2 An increasing number of scholars argue that in the Histories

Machiavelli became substantially more critical of common peoples and more laudatory of elites

than he was in The Prince and the Discourses.3 Some of the best support for this purported

conservative turn in the Histories would seem to be Machiavelli’s treatment of the Florentine

woolworkers in his account of the so-called Ciompi Revolt. Throughout the Discourses,

Machiavelli famously praises the ancient Roman plebeians for tumultuously resisting domination

by their republic’s nobility; yet, in Book III of the Histories, Machiavelli explicitly denounces

the Florentine plebs for tumultuously protesting elite oppression and attempting to transform

Florence’s constitutional order during their insurrection of 1378. What difference in the

respective behaviors of the Roman and Florentine plebeians accounts for Machiavelli’s

ostensibly disparate assessments of them? Why were the motivations of the Roman plebs in

Machiavelli’s words, “rarely pernicious” to liberty, but those of the Florentine ciompi were

“grave,” “dishonorable” and “evil” for the republic? More importantly for our purposes, what
 2

does Machiavelli’s assessments of both sets of indignant and unruly plebeians tell us about his

conception of justifiable acts of political resistance?

My argument is that Machiavelli is not ultimately any more critical of the Florentine than

the Roman plebs. Indeed, I insist, he is every bit as partial to their motivations or “humors,” just

as sympathetic to their grievances, and precisely as condoning--even validating--of their

behavior as he is of the Roman plebeians in all of these respects. Machiavelli’s apparent

criticisms of the ciompi in the Histories, I contend, serve as part of an elaborate effort to please

his immediate audience of Medici prelates and their aristocratic “amici” through whom the

family rule the city by repressing its middle and lower classes, including the plebs. By the

1520s, the Medici, who commissioned Machiavelli to write the Histories, had come to view the

city’s common citizens as stalwart enemies, and the people had come to view Florence’s rulers

as illegitimate tyrants.

In order to maintain the favor of his patrons, Machiavelli resorts to several rhetorical

strategies that seem to denigrate Florence’s plebs throughout the book: he litters the Histories

with remarks vilifying their motivations and behavior; he seems to affiliate the ciompi cause with

the radically immoral views expressed in the notorious speech of the nameless ciompo (FH

III.13); and he extravagantly praises Michele di Lando for routing the plebs militarily and for

facilitating their permanent disenfranchisement within the republic (FH III.17). However,

evidence provided by Machiavelli within the Histories, combined with fundamental tenets that

he set forth in The Prince and the Discourses (tenets that he never formally renounced in the

Histories) suggest that Machiavelli seriously undermines these overt anti-plebeian exclamations

and intimations. Put bluntly, appearances notwithstanding, I will argue that Machiavelli is

rooting for the ciompi throughout the Histories and despairs over their disastrous civic-military
 3

fate--and concomitantly that of his city—which ensued from their failure to reform the republic

in a more just, inclusive, and, especially, martial way.

Tumultuous Plebs, Ancient and Modern

Machiavelli declares in The Prince: “The aspirations of the people are more decent than

those of the nobles” (P 9). In the Discourses, he writes, “the motivations of free peoples are

rarely pernicious to liberty” (D I.4). Accordingly, one might say that Machiavelli’s two major

books of political philosophy are devoted in no small measure to delineations of the superior

morality and wisdom of the multitude (see P 15; D I.58).4 Machiavelli’s prime example of

virtuous common peoples throughout these works is the ancient Roman plebeians; but he often

includes in such considerations common citizens who participate in other civically and militarily

well-ordered republics of the ancient world, especially, Athens and Syracuse.

While such republics remain uncorrupt, Machiavelli avers, common peoples exercise

good judgment when proposing and passing laws and when indicting and trying prominent

citizens for political crimes (D I.7-8, I.16, I.58). If popular reasoning is imperfect—Machiavelli

cites several instances during the Punic and Peloponnesian Wars when the Roman and Athenian

people exercised poor judgment (D I.53)—it is generally superior to that of aristocrats collected

in senates, such as those of Sparta, Carthage and Venice. The desire not to be dominated

characteristic of common people (P 9; D I.4-5), when channeled by good laws and orders, is

likely to result in outcomes more salutary for the “free” or “civil way of life” than the appetite to

oppress characteristic of the nobles, which is destined to ruin republics of whatever institutional

form, lest they be checked and corrected by virtuous peoples (D I.37).

But what of circumstances in which the free way of life does not fully obtain or where
 4

good orders are not operative? In such cases, Machiavelli is remarkably forgiving of expressions

of popular outrage, including those entailing violence. Depending on how oppressive a city’s

elites behave toward common citizens, Machiavelli condones a wide range of popular protest.

For instance, before the plebeian tribunate was established in Rome, Machiavelli praises the

Roman plebs for seceding from the city in protest against debt bondage and widespread incidents

of aristocratic oppression (D I.3-5). While the plebs on that occasion harmed neither persons nor

property as they exited the city, they did leave it vulnerable to foreign invasion--a form of

leverage that induced the Senate to accede to the plebs’ demand for a tribunician magistracy. In

their second secession from the city, the plebs engaged in greater violence: they protested the

tyranny of Appius Claudius by rioting, destroying property and smashing the symbols of Rome’s

public authority before exiting the city and demanding the reestablishment of the tribunate and

the execution of the oppressive Decemvirs (D I.44). In less dramatic examples, Machiavelli

describes how the Roman people refuse to enlist for military service or resort to tumultuous

demonstrations rather than inflict bodily harm in order to gain political concessions from the

Roman nobles. In a notable instance, the Roman plebs refuse to relinquish war booty that they

believe to be unfairly demanded by the republic’s Senate and magistrates (D I.55).

Put bluntly, in the Discourses and even The Prince, Machiavelli approves of quite a wide

range of demonstrations of popular indignation (P 19): if oppression of the people has been

egregious, as often occurs in cases of tyrannical or aristocratic coups against popular

governments, Machiavelli is hardly outraged to report common peoples express the desire to

burn alive those who had perpetuated a tyranny (D I.44), or to actually murder every member of

the oligarchy, as occurred in Corcyra (D II.2). He also notes that common citizens who have

previously suffered coups will behave in aggressively proactive ways to deter and punish
 5

prominent individuals suspected of aspiring after tyranny—through ostracism, exile or

execution--as did the Athenian demos at various junctures in the history of the democracy (D

I.28).

From Machiavelli’s standpoint, there is nothing immoral about any of this kind of

behavior. In The Prince he famously states, “in republics there is more life, greater hatred and

desire for vengeance” against those who deprive the people of liberty (P 5). In the Discourses,

he declares that the people are more vicious in recovering liberty than in establishing or

maintaining it (D pp. 129, 154). Machiavelli never casts as unjust the ferocity with which, he

states, the people reclaim their liberty, especially the violence that they inflict upon their

erstwhile oppressors. In circumstances where the people do not have access to legal institutions

that deter and punish acts of political oppression--circumstances often characteristic of the

Florentine Histories—Machiavelli often demonstrates that the people will lash out at individual

representatives of corrupt judicial systems. For instance, the Florentine people devour the flesh

of a foreign judge, and his son, who served as instruments of the Duke of Athens’ tyranny (FH

II.36); and likewise the plebs tear to pieces an agent of an oppressive penal order, Ser Nuto (FH

III.16).

If, in Machiavelli’s estimation, the Florentine plebs are to be blamed for resorting to

greater violence in their tumultuous pursuit of liberty than their ancient counterparts, I will

suggest that it is only because the institutions that governed them were inferior, that is, were less

accessible to their participation and less responsive to their needs. In fact, the behavior of the

lower classes in the Histories usually seems to confirm, not contravene Machiavelli’s description

of the plebeians in his earlier writings. Machiavelli states and shows that the common people

may lash out violently in response to circumstances of egregious oppression, but if appropriate
 6

institutional and organizational resources are available to them, Machiavelli demonstrates time

and again that they are much more inclined to behave moderately (P 9; D I.4, I.40). For instance,

in the Discourses, the Roman plebeians claim to want to tear Coriolanus to pieces on the Senate

steps for proposing that they be starved into political submission, but they are satisfied with the

prospect of trying him for his life in a formal assembly (D I.7). The Florentine plebs in the

Histories, I will suggest, merely want comparable civic arrangements through which they can

more ordinarily air their political-economic grievances and gain future concessions without

recourse to the riots, arson and pillaging that they are compelled to commit in the absence of

such institutions.

The Economic-Political Origins of Plebeian “Evil” in the Histories

To support the argument that Machiavelli, in the Histories, altered his previously declared

opinion of the plebeians’ fundamental decency and good judgment, scholars often emphasize

Machiavelli’s deeply derogatory references to the Florentine plebs placed throughout the work,

denunciations that seem to reach a crescendo during his account of the wool workers’ uprising

(FH III.10-14). Such scholars often draw a stark contrast between, on the one hand, the “evil”

intentions that Machiavelli seems to impute to the ciompi in the Histories, and, on the other, the

“decent” or “good” nature that Machiavelli attributed to the common people in The Prince and

the Discourses (P 9; D I.1-5). While analyzing the behavior of the lesser people and the plebs

during the first phase of the Ciompi Revolt in this section, I demonstrate that readers ought to

carefully compare Machiavelli’s ostensible assessments of the people with the evidence that he

adduces concerning their actions. Scholars, here as elsewhere, almost invariably exhibit too little

sensitivity to the contrast between words and deeds in Machiavelli’s presentation. Machiavelli
 7

does indeed remark throughout the Histories that it is the nature of the Florentine plebeians to

“revel in evil” (FH II.34); that they invariably throw in their lot with whomever is most

“disgruntled” in the city (FH III.8); and that they resort to “indecent” (disonestà) behavior during

the riots of July 1378. Moreover, he expresses rather extravagant indignation over the plebeians’

“dishonorable and grievous” demands during the first wave of the woolworkers’ revolt (FH

III.15). But Machiavelli’s descriptions of their actions, I will suggest, belie such ostensibly harsh

criticisms.

Early in Book III of the Histories, before recounting the events of the Ciompi Revolt,

Machiavelli seeks to explain why, for quite some time, “the lesser people had hated the city’s

richest citizens and the princes of the guilds,” and why the vast majority of the city’s workers

overwhelmingly considered themselves insufficiently compensated for their labors (FH III.12).

Machiavelli recounts how, over the past century and a half, members of the Florentine people

enrolled in commercial guilds (the popolani) ordered the republic’s government to conform to

the guilds’ division into seven richer, “more honored” guilds and fourteen less wealthy, and

hence “less honored” ones (FH III.12). Two consequences resulted from these institutional

developments.

Firstly, a new ruling class, comprised of the ancient nobility and the richest guildsmen,

emerged in the republic. The nobility, who may have been excluded from holding the highest

magistracies during various incarnations of the Ordinances of Justice still wielded significant

power in their capacity as captains of the Guelph Party. These “arrogant” nobles, according to

Machiavelli, “were inclined to favor the popolani of the greater guilds, and to persecute those of

the minor guilds, as well as those with whom they were allied” (FH III.12). Among such allies

of the minor guilds were, at various times, prominent citizens identified anachronistically as
 8

“Ghibellines” who were often “admonished” (that is, disenfranchised or exiled) by their

adversaries among the Guelfs, and sometimes the plebs who stood below the guild community in

social status and political-economic power.

Thus, according to Machiavelli, the consolidation of a new ruling class, comprised of

largely Guelph nobles and the members of the richest guilds (which would be completed once

the Ciompi Revolt was definitively suppressed, and once the popular government that emerged

out of the revolt’s ashes was overturned) had actually begun many years before. Furthermore,

not only was the military virtue of the warlike nobles being dissipated by their alliance with the

commercial “princes of the guilds,” as Machiavelli suggests at the start of Book III (FH III.1),

but the latter, who previously had served as champions of the popolo’s liberty in armed struggles

with the great were now, Machiavelli indicates here, being corrupted by the appetite for

oppression characteristic of the nobility.

The second, related consequence resulting from the institutional arrangements of the

guild republic was, in Machiavelli’s account, the comprehensive subjugation of the city’s

working class:

According to the ordering of the guilds, several of the occupations in which the lesser

people [il popolo minuto] and the lowest plebs [la plebe infirma] were employed were

granted no guilds of their own. Instead, they were relegated to the subjection

[sottomissono] of other guilds, corresponding with the nature of their occupations. Thus,

when [the lesser people and plebs] were dissatisfied with the compensation that they

received for their labors, or were oppressed in some other mode by their masters, they

had no place to turn other than the guild magistracy which governed them. As a result, in
 9

their estimation, they never received from the latter the justice that they deserved. (FH

III.12)

Thus, the guild republic confronted circumstances in which its richest citizens were colluding

with the arrogant, disenfranchised, but still quite powerful nobility, to oppress members of the

minor guilds and others; and the majority of the city’s laborers were being exploited by their

socio-economic superiors within the major guilds, with no recourse to an appellate process that

they deemed to be fair. Although Machiavelli suggests that the plebs’ belief that they were

suffering exploitation was largely subjective, he provides no evidence that this oppression was

not, in fact, a very real state of affairs.

It is worth noting that Machiavelli’s account here provides some retrospective context for

why, in his earlier account, Walter, the Duke of Athens, was able to gain “the grace” of the plebs

at the start of his tyranny by executing prominent popolani--one of whom, it so happens was a

Medici (FH II.33). These executions did not, perhaps after all, please the plebs so much because,

as Machiavelli declares at that point, it is their “nature” to “revel in evil” (FH II.34). Instead,

Machiavelli intimates retrospectively that perhaps the plebs had good reason to view these

wealthy guildsmen as their oppressors, and therefore to expect that some measure of justice

would be served as a result of such executions. Moreover, we now understand better why the

duke further endeared himself to the plebs by providing them with arms and banners (FH II.36):

since the plebs were not organized in any guilds of their own, but rather were only subjected to

other guilds, they had no right to carry arms and bear standards in their own guild-organized

militias until the duke bestowed these upon them during the short tenure of his tyranny.

As Machiavelli elaborates upon the conditions that made the woolworkers, in particular,

so dissatisfied, he takes the opportunity to suggest that, despite all the Sturm und Drang of the
 10

impending Ciompi Revolt, in the end, this event--which the Florentine ruling class believed, up

to Machiavelli’s day, to be the worst thing to have ever occurred in the city--changed not a thing

concerning the city’s socio-economic conditions. Note how Machiavelli merges past and present

in the following passage: “Of all the guilds, the one which had, and still has, the largest number

of workers [sottoposti] not enrolled in their own guilds, was, and remains, the wool

manufacturers’ guild. This guild, which was much more powerful and exercised greater

authority than all the others, then employed, and still now employs, most of the plebs and the

lesser people” (FH III.12, emphases added). The Ciompi Revolt, Machiavelli implies, did

nothing to end the oppression of the city’s working class by the popolani of the guild

community—in fact, as we will observe, the defeat of the Revolt by the popular nobles made the

plebs’ conditions, and those of the city as a whole, much worse.

The Anonymous Ciompo’s Speech and the “Indecent” Nature of the Plebs

These then were the long-term circumstances that serve as the backdrop for the Ciompi

Revolt of 1378. They also serve as the context in which readers must interpret the infamous

speech that Machiavelli attributes to the anonymous ciompo in chapter 13. Most scholars

believe that Machiavelli, in a dramatic departure from previous writings, is imputing to the plebs

en masse the indecency and immorality expressed by the nameless ciompo, an indecency and

immorality that he previously attributed to elites. Two important, unprecedented aspects of the

speech, they claim, are: Firstly, the blatant duplicity, cunning and rapaciousness endorsed by the

ciompo; the fact that he enjoins the plebs to intensify and proliferate the arson and robberies that

they have already committed in order to gain greater resources for their own domination of the

city and to make impossible retribution on the part of their adversaries. And, secondly, his
 11

insistence that the people and the nobles are constituted by the same nature; that is, his claim that

underneath the filthy rags and fine robes that respectively clothe them, the plebs and the nobles

are essentially the same in their appetite for oppression.

Machiavelli begins Book III, chapter 12, by addressing the state of mind of Florence’s

lower classes. The nobles and most powerful guildsmen affiliated with the Guelf Party had

incited “the lowest plebs” to burn and pillage during the latest episode of social unrest in the city

(FH III.12). According to Machiavelli, “the most audacious” among the latter feared that, with

peace being restored, they would now be punished for their “offences,” and, “as always occurs,”

they would wind up betrayed and blamed by those who had, in fact, encouraged them to commit

such crimes.

In this context, Machiavelli reports, the “plebeian men” [uomini plebei], both “the

sottoposti” working for the wool manufacturers’ guild, as well as the plebs who were

subordinated under other guilds, were “fully indignant,” and quite anxious as a result of the arson

and robbery they had committed at the instigation of malcontents within the city’s upper class

(FH III.13). At one of the nightly meetings that the plebs were holding to discuss the “common

danger” they all faced during these trying times, “one of the boldest and most experienced of

their number,” whom Machiavelli does not name, addresses his comrades. Again, the

anonymous ciompo serves, for many scholars, as an amoral, politically realist stand-in for

Machiavelli himself in the Histories, a figure, moreover, that supposedly confirms Machiavelli’s

mature belief in the common people’s inclination toward political evil.

The ciompo sets out the following as the ultimate goals that the plebs will achieve

through the outrageous violence, fraud, rapacity and evil he recommends in the speech: “We

shall either become undisputed princes of the city, or, at the very least, gain such control over a
 12

great proportion of it, that not only will our previous offenses be forgiven, but we will also wield

sufficient authority and power to threaten our adversaries with entirely new injuries” (FH III.13).

In this spirit, the ciompo exclaims near the conclusion of his speech: “How many times I have

heard you complain of your masters’ arrogance and your magistrates’ injustice! Now is the time,

not merely to free yourselves from them, but to subject them so entirely to your power that they

will have more cause to complain about and to fear you, than you them” (FH III.13). The

people’s subsequent actions must be judged precisely with these stated goals of complete

authority over the city, or preponderant power within it, in mind.

Machiavelli reports that the nameless ciompo’s speech fanned the already “inflamed evil

spirits” of the plebs, who all agreed to recommence their violence once they increase the number

of their confederates. Moreover, he begins the next chapter by writing that the plebs, in response

to the ciompo’s speech, were setting out “to usurp the republic” (FH III.14). But I will show that

the actions that Machiavelli recounts in this and subsequent chapters will prove that the plebs
5
want neither complete mastery over nor even a lion’s share of power within the city.

There is, therefore, one insurmountable problem with any attempt to use the anonymous

ciompo as a proxy for Machiavelli’s “new” view of the common people: his fellow ciompians

do not ultimately follow his advice. The woolworkers and other plebs, despite the ciompo’s

exhortations, do not use violence to completely overturn the socio-political order of the city,

even though they secure the opportunity and power to do so. Therefore, Machiavelli

demonstrates, without any explicit commentary on the fact, that the plebeians prove ultimately

unwilling to fully engage in the indecency and immorality demanded of them by the ciompo; and

to fully engage in the oppressive behavior that Machiavelli, without reservation throughout the

Histories, continually shows to be characteristic of the nobility.

 13

Indeed, as Machiavelli’s historical account makes plain, when the plebs have the city by

the throat, they propose a constitutional arrangement by which they, the majority of free,

indigenous, adult males in the city, can be outvoted in the Florentine government by their

antagonists in the major and middling guilds (moreover, they also grant their inconstant allies in

the minor guilds more seats than they claim for themselves) (FH III.15). As we will observe,

Machiavelli shows that, on July 21, 1378, the plebs could rule the city alone--fully in keeping

with the anonymous ciompo’s recommendation--if they wish to do so. However, their

institutional demands reveal what they really want: inclusion in, not “usurpation” of, the guild

republic that previously had excluded and oppressed them; and even their willingness to accept a

disproportionately subordinate role within that regime.

Plebeian “Usurpation” in the First Wave of the Ciompi Revolt

The ciompi and other plebs do not enjoy the leisure of waiting until some more opportune

moment to resume their insurrection, as the Signoria immediately learns of their plans, and

extracts its details from one of their number by means of torture (FH III.14). In consultation

with representatives of the guilds, the Signoria decides to summon to the piazza the next morning

all of the sixteen neighborhood Standard Bearers, at the heads of their militias. However, alerted

to these plans by an artisan who overheard them being made in the Palazzo della Signoria,

thousands of plebs gathered at the squares of major churches throughout the city that very

evening, with the intention of marching on the palazzo in the morning. Hearing that such forces

were being amassed, none of the Gonafaloniers show up to defend the Signoria, which winds up

protected by a mere eighty members of the neighborhood companies.

The “multitude,” according to Machiavelli, descends on the Signoria in the morning,

 14

insisting that the priors release their prisoners, a demand which is refused until the plebs set

ablaze the houses of the Gonfalonier of Justice, Luigi Guicciardini, who presently presides over

the Signoria (FH III.14). Once the prisoners are released, the plebs seize the Gonfalonier’s

banner, and under its authority, burn the houses of citizens who had offended them on either

public or private grounds. In the heat of the moment, Machiavelli recounts how certain citizens

of higher social standing manage to turn the crowd against the houses of their own personal

enemies.

But the plebs, by and large, follow their own agenda: unsurprisingly, they burn the

records of the Wool Guild, which presumably contained information concerning past offences

and pending indictments of individual ciompi (FH III.14). They also elevate to the rank of

knights, citizens whom they considered sympathetic to their plight, such as Salvestro de’ Medici,

Antonio Alberti and Tommaso Strozzi—as well as some citizens, such as Luigi Guicciardini,

whose houses they had burned earlier in the day (FH III.14). Machiavelli notes that the Signoria

remained largely undefended by guild leaders and the militia heads, as even the few Standard

Bearers who did finally appear during the day, departed shortly thereafter.

By the end of 21 July, the multitude—the plebs and lower guildsmen--on Machiavelli’s

account now numbering over six thousand, demand that the guilds surrender all of their

standards, and they duly receive them (FH III.14). Under these banners and the Standard of

Justice, Machiavelli reports that they march upon the Podestà’s palace the next morning, seizing

it by force. There, “the heads of the plebs” conduct a meeting with “the syndics of the guilds, as

well as other citizens” to articulate the terms that the plebs would soon present to the Signoria

(FH III.15). Whether the guild representatives and other prominent citizens came to the plebeian

leaders on their own initiative or were summoned by the latter, Machiavelli does not say.
 15

However, he does report that the Signoria’s representatives, the four members of the Colleges

sent to negotiate with the plebs, were surprised to find them there already conferring with the

plebs.

The four representatives of the Signoria, joined by four delegates from the plebs, proceed

to the palace and present terms to the priors (FH III.15). The plebs demanded the following

concessions: that three new guilds be instituted to include workers and lesser people who

previously had not been enrolled in guilds of their own; that these three new guilds together be

represented by two priors in the Signoria; that the number of priors allotted to the minor guilds
6
be restored from two to three; that provisions be made for public space where the new guilds

could conduct their meetings; that use of a foreign judge by the wool guild be banned; that

prisoners presently under indictment or recently condemned be pardoned; and that citizens who

had been admonished by the Guelfs have their honors and rights restored. The plebs also

insisted upon a two-year amnesty for themselves from sentences for petty crimes, and requested

favorable fiscal policies from the city’s authority overseeing the public debt, the Monte.

Machiavelli’s immediate reaction to this proposal is the declaration, “these demands were

dishonorable and grave for the republic” (FH III.15). But just how egregious are they in reality?

In assessing them, readers should keep in mind the following considerations: the previous, highly

inequitable socio-political order of the city laid out by Machiavelli himself; the nameless

ciompo’s declaration of what the plebs’ ultimate, highly immoderate goals should be; and the

plebs’ near absolute control over the city at this very moment.

In Florence’s previous constitutional structure, twenty-one guilds shared eight seats in the

Signoria: Machiavelli’s earlier account (FH II.42) suggests that the seven major guilds held two

seats, and the minor fourteen guilds, split into groupings of middling and lower guilds, enjoyed,
 16

7
respectively, three and two apiece. Machiavelli shows here that the plebs, who had been

completely excluded from these arrangements, ask for the passage of laws that benefit the entire

citizenry, and not just themselves as the prevailing party. In this regard, it is worth emphasizing

what the plebeians actually demand and what they do not demand: they leave the major and

middling guilds their established seats in the Signoria; they restore the seats of the minor guilds

from two to three; they do not call for the abolition of the Guelf Party, hence keeping intact the

source of the ancient nobility’s dignity and authority; and they call for an end to admonishments,

thus attempting to do right by the dubiously identified “Ghibelline” citizens. They ask for an

amnesty regarding their own crimes, of course, and they demand that the Monte be reorganized

in a way that transferred the financial burden of the public debt from rank and file guildsmen to

the wealthiest members of the guilds.

But, most importantly, by demanding for themselves only two seats in the Signoria the

plebs signal that they have no desire to take political preeminence away from the major,

middling and minor guilds, despite the fact that their own membership outnumbers that of these

other three sets of guilds combined. In short, despite enjoying a position to impose their will on

the city, and despite the nameless ciompo’s entreaty that they make the republic entirely their

own (or at least allow themselves to dominate it), they ask for a decidedly subordinate role

within its government. Therefore, notwithstanding his previous extravagant criticisms of the

plebs, Machiavelli shows, through his account of their actions and demands, that the plebs desire

neither “evil” for the whole republic nor its entire “usurpation” by making themselves

undisputed “princes of the city”; rather, they seek a political outcome amenable to all of the

city’s various parts, including themselves and their most stalwart adversaries.
 17

Unruly Behavior Incompatible with Civic Liberty?

Machiavelli records the response of the city government to the plebs’ demands as

follows: “from fear of worse, the Signoria, the Colleges, and the Council of the People each

agreed to them all” (FH III.15). But, for the proposed reforms to pass definitively, approval by

the Council of the Commune was also necessary. According to the city’s statutes, both the

popular and the communal councils could not meet on the same day, so the vote was deferred for

twenty-four hours. The plebs conceivably could have insisted that statutory conventions be

abrogated under these extraordinary circumstances and demanded that the final vote be

commenced immediately, but they do not. Machiavelli concludes his account of the day’s events

by stating, “Since it seemed, for the moment, that both the guilds and the plebs were satisfied,

the latter promised that all tumults would cease once the new laws were passed.” However,

popular indignation and elite cowardice combined on the next day to insure that the present

tranquility would not be sustained.

Machiavelli writes that the next morning, while the Council of the Commune was

deliberating, “the impatient and variable multitude returned to the piazza under the city’s

standards, with such loud and intimidating shouts that they frightened the entire Council and the

Signori” (FH III.15). How much does Machiavelli, whom, it is fair to say, prefers his politics

pretty rough, really disapprove of such loud, intimidating and frightening shouting and such a

public demonstration of popular solidarity? In the Discourses, Machiavelli downplays the extent

to which a republic’s elites ought to be worried by such commotions, citing the behavior of the

Roman plebeians (D I.4). He declares that ruckus and outcry in the street should be

“frightening” exclusively to those who have “only read about them in books” (D I.4). It is not, it

turns out, the Florentine plebs who behave differently than their ancient Roman counterparts at
 18

this juncture of the Histories, but rather, as Machiavelli shows in what follows, it is the

Florentine elites who do so.

Machiavelli writes that, as a result of this commotion and yelling, “one of the priors,

Guerriante Marignolli, motivated more by fear rather than by private interest, ran downstairs on

the pretense of securing the door, and fled to his house. As he snuck outside, he proved unable

to conceal his identity from the crowd” (FH III.15). The supposedly evil plebs, shouting in the

piazza, do him no harm. But the sight of a magistrate exiting the palace for some undiscerned

purpose aroused the suspicion of the plebs, and therefore “prompted the multitude to demand

that unless all the other Signori also evacuated the palace, they would slaughter their children

and raze their houses to the ground.” Here, as later in the revolt, uncertainty over the

motivations of magistrates (later, in particular, those of Michele di Lando) arouses distrust

among the plebs who, as a result, resort to intimidation (but not actual physical harm) to insure

that the concessions which were promised them would actually be granted.

The Council of the Commune passes the new laws (FH III.15). But, in Machiavelli’s

account, while the priors retire to the safety of their chambers, members of the council fear

leaving the confines of the palace. Apparently, among neither group is there a single Menenius,

Valerius, Horatius, or Camillus willing to address the crowd with either conciliatory entreaties or

chastising admonitions. Machiavelli writes that the magistrates were in utter despair for the

safety of the city, “having seen both the multitude behave with such indecency [disonestà], and

those who could have restrained or repressed them behave with such malignity or cowardice”

(FH III.15). In any case, the plebs have not, at least by Roman standards, behaved indecently at

all. They have threatened but not actually committed any harm to the persons of the city’s

leading citizens, despite enjoying more than ample opportunity to do so.

 19

When Tommaso Strozzi and Benedetto Alberti, who were honored by the plebs the

previous day, advise the priors to bow to “the popular impetus” and leave the palace, Machiavelli

reports that two of the priors, deeply insulted by the idea (and highly suspicious of Strozzi’s and

Alberti’s favor with the people), adamantly refuse (FH III.15). However, each of the priors

eventually exits the palace in safety, even those who had initially expressed reluctance; they

proved, according to Machiavelli, “unwilling to risk being considered more bold than wise.”

Thus, the first wave of the Ciompi Revolt concludes with, all things being equal, highly

moderate reforms instituted at the instigation of the plebs and with no physical harm inflicted by

the latter on the leading citizens of the city.

We may conclude, on the basis of the foregoing, that Florence’s plebeians, after all, do

not in fact have “the same nature” as the nobles in Machiavelli’s estimation; they neither desire

to oppress, nor, when given the opportunity to do so, actively engage in oppression. Rather, the

plebeian reform proposal suggests that the ciompi merely want inclusion in the guild order, and

some institutional say to insure that they will not continue to be oppressed, as Machiavelli,

without any contravening evidence, shows that they had been previously by the nobles and by

“the princes of the guilds.” Machiavelli’s descriptions of plebeian behavior seriously undermine

the claim that he actually believes what he says about them, either in his own words or in those

he attributes to the nameless ciompo. In this light, there is more than a little retrospective irony,

I think, in Machiavelli rhetorical denunciations of the “evil” plebeians’ behavior and of their

demands as “indecent,” “grave” and “dishonorable.

 20

Michele di Lando: Prince of the Florentine Plebeians?

The second phase of the Ciompi Revolt is dominated by the figure of Michele di Lando.

The barefoot, rag-clad Michele leads the plebeian mob that seizes the Signoria during the Revolt;

becomes the first Gonfalonier of Justice in the fledgling popular republic; and then militarily

suppresses the woolworkers barely a month after they had acclaimed him as their champion.

Few if any individuals are praised more fulsomely within the pages of the Histories than

Michele, lavish praise that most interpreters take largely at face value.8 However, Machiavelli’s

assessment looks quite different, once one evaluates Machiavelli’s judgment of Michele’s

“virtue,” “spirit,” “prudence,” modest ambition and, especially, “goodness” in light of his

prescriptions for new princes in The Prince and the Discourses. Michele’s initial behavior, to a

significant extent, conforms to the advice that Machiavelli offers founders and reformers in

previous works. Ultimately, however, Machiavelli demonstrates, without editorializing on the

fact, that Michele blatantly violates central tenets of Machiavelli’s most fundamental political

lessons, especially with respect to how one treats armed plebeians in moments of civil discord.

Most importantly, Machiavelli’s subtle but damning criticisms of Michele’s behavior constitute

an implicit but thoroughgoing endorsement of the motivations and actions of the Florentine

plebs, whom Machiavelli superficially seems to condemn for demanding too much in the second

phase of the Revolt.

Once the Priors had abandoned the Palazzo, Michele leads the insurrectionist ciompi into

the building and up the stairs to the threshold of the Signoria’s chamber. Although “shoeless and

barely clothed,” Michele held in his hands the banner of the Gonfalonier of Justice, the emblem

of the republic’s highest magistracy (FH III.16). He turns and addresses his compatriots with the

following words placed in his mouth by Machiavelli: “You see, the palace is yours, and the city
 21

is in your hands. What do you now propose to do?” According to Machiavelli, “the multitude”

answered that Michele should assume authority as “their Gonfalonier and lord,” and should

proceed to govern them and the city “however he saw fit.”

Machiavelli recounts how Michele, in his first act as Gonfalonier, demanded the arrest of

the warden of the Bargello prison (FH III.16). This Ser Nuto presumably had incarcerated

numerous ciompi within the jail after the many burnings and lootings committed during the early

days of the woolworker’s revolt; the plebs, no doubt, would have been deliriously happy to see

him punished. However, Machiavelli takes note that Michele also sends a clear message, by

setting up a gallows in the piazza, that he will tolerate no further license or disobedience--

although he does permit the multitude to tear Ser Nuto to pieces, once they locate him and drag

him to the piazza. Michele is off to a commendable start by standards set by Machiavelli for a

founder: a new prince should found on the common people and purge their vengeful spirits with

a spectacular execution of erstwhile abusers, as did, in different contexts, Lucius Brutus and

Cesare Borgia (P 7, P 9; D III.1). Michele manages to fix the attentions of the formerly

oppressed woolworkers, for the moment, on a single object of vengeance, and, in so doing, he

buys himself time to better secure his rule.

Machiavelli reports that as his first reforms, Michele fired all the heads of the guilds and

appointed new ones, dismissed from the magistracies all the members of the Signoria, the

Colleges, and the Eight of the War, and he burned the existing bags of office (FH III.16).

Michele then created a new Signoria, made up of four Priors from the lower plebs (the plebe

minuta), and two each from the major and the minor guilds (FH III.16). Moreover, he divided

the state into three parts: one to the new plebeian guilds, one to the minor guilds and one to the

major guilds. The new Signoria and new bags of eligible names for office constitute the very
 22

first representation of the ciompi, now finally organized in their own guilds, within Florence’s

government.

Quite notably, this new arrangement doubles the number of seats in the Signoria that the

plebs themselves had demanded during the revolt: recall that Machiavelli previously reported

that the woolworkers wanted only two Priors of their own (FH III.15), which would have left

them, a majority of the newly constituted citizenry, with a minority of seats in the magistracy.

Michele instead grants them four seats, making it much easier for them to achieve a voting

majority within the Signoria. Beyond doubt, Michele has established laws that formally grant

the Florentine plebs immense power. But, by Machiavellian standards, does Michele use

sufficiently “spirited” action to “invigorate” these new laws and give them appropriate

substance, force and longevity?

Indeed, Michele then takes several steps that will immediately compromise his standing

with the ciompi and eventually undermine his own authority vis-à-vis the city’s elite citizens, the

“popular nobles” of the major guilds: Machiavelli reports that Michele granted to Salvestro de’

Medici the exceedingly valuable proceeds from the shops along the Ponte Vecchio; and that he

assigned to himself the rectorship (la podesteria) of a subject city, Empoli (FH III.15).

Moreover, Machiavelli writes, Michele conferred on numerous other prominent citizens “many

other benefits… so that they might defend him in the future against envy.”

By trying to please both the plebs and the popular nobles, Michele is pursuing a middle

way here that violates, both in general and in particular, crucial Machiavellian maxims for

princely success. Machiavelli insists that a successful new prince, whether Cesare Borgia,

Agathocles, Nabis or Cleomenes, must establish his authority on popular and not aristocratic

support: he cannot found on both the people and the nobles due to the opposing humors
 23

motivating these opposing classes; and he certainly cannot found his state mostly with the

support of the nobles, because the latter will inevitably depose such a prince when he invariably

fails to satisfy their unquenchable appetite to oppress (P 9; D 9).

And then there is the issue of “envy,” and how a new prince should deal with it, which

Machiavelli raises in his description of Michele’s interactions with popular nobles like Salvestro

de’ Medici and other prominent citizens. Machiavelli is adamant in The Prince and the

Discourses: a new prince should worry about, first and foremost, the envy of the nobles, the

“sons of Brutus”; an envy that Brutus successfully managed but that Friar Savonarola and Piero

Soderini quite spectacularly did not (P 6; D III.30). Indeed, Michele seems to be following here

almost precisely the course of action for which Machiavelli, in the Discourses, excoriated

Savonarola, but especially, Soderini, Michele’s eventual heir in the office of Gonfalonier of

Justice.

Machiavelli traced Soderini’s failed attempt to eliminate the envy directed toward him by

the “sons of Brutus,” who despised the popular government over which Soderini, much like

Michele here, presided as Gonfalonier. Machiavelli notes how Soderini thought that “patience

and gifts” would overcome such envy, but that “he did not understand that such malignity cannot

be….appeased by gifts of any kind” (D III.3, emphases added). Soderini believed that “patience,

goodness, and the distribution of benefits would eliminate envy” (D III.30, emphases added).

Soderini, Machiavelli observes, failed to appreciate a singularly brutal fact: “To

overcome such envy the only remedy is the death of those consumed by it” (D III.30). In short,

Machiavelli declares unequivocally that the nobles’ envy cannot be placated by goodness, the

quality he most frequently attributes to Michele. And furthermore, he insists, the only “gift” that

ultimately satisfies the sons of Brutus is “death”; certainly not the gift of real estate, however
 24

lucrative, that Michele presents to the likes of Salvestro de’Medici and other already quite rich

popolani. Michele, by implication, is a fool to think otherwise.

Again, Michele intuitively knows some Machiavellian lessons but clearly not all of them:

in the case of Ser Nuto, he successfully scapegoats an individual in order to redirect the people’s

ill spirit; but he himself has not yet spiritedly invigorated the laws and orders through which the

people, including the plebs, have been empowered to rule. Brutus secured the fledgling Roman

Republic by overseeing the trial and execution of his sons and their aristocratic co-conspirators

against the new regime; and Cesare Borgia secured his new principality, and the popularly

beneficial representative institutions undergirding it, by eliminating the corrupt signori who

previously misruled the Romagna (D I.16, III.3; P 7). But Michele has thus far eliminated no

serious threats from the Sons of Brutus to his new laws and orders. Just as crucially, he has not

followed the example of Romulus who founded Rome by arming the entire people under his own

command (P 6, P 20; D I.9-10). Michele has made no effort to integrate the armed plebs, the

majority of able-bodied free-men in the city, into a unified Florentine civic-military order.

One might begin to ponder whether Michele understands how to gain the support of the

people but not how to maintain it. This is borne out by Michele’s pursuit of an ill-advised

middle way: Michele pleases the plebs by giving them unprecedented formal, political authority

in government, a move that no doubt raises the ire of the popular nobles; then, to placate the

latter, Michele grants to them expanded substantive, economic authority within the city, which

naturally compromises his relationship with the plebs. Moreover, by Machiavellian standards,

Michele moves quite half-heartedly regarding the sons of Brutus, that is, rival elites and/or

enemies of the new order: he dismisses some of them from their previous positions of guild and

civic authority but he attempts to win over others with gifts to earn their future support. As we
 25

will see, by leaving the people’s adversaries and his own rivals alive, not only does Michele

permit them to persist in mischief directed against the newly enfranchised plebs, he also puts

them in a position to use their still considerable power to eventually undermine his own

authority.

Finally, besides perhaps foolishly believing that his own inherent goodness and his

outward beneficence will placate dangerous adversaries among Florence’s elites, why does

Michele assign himself such prominent and profitable authority over a foreign city like Empoli?

What message does this send to his supporters among the plebs? They might reasonably ponder:

Does Michele plan to continue selling out the ciompi to the wealthiest guildsmen and then move-

on to enjoy a luxurious retirement in Empoli? Or, more alarmingly, does he intend for this

foreign city to serve as a source of military power with which Michele will tyrannize the plebs?

Machiavelli previously noted how the tyrannical Duke of Athens used foreign French forces, in

combination with the armed plebs, to oppress Florence’s guild community (FH II.36). Does

Michele here intend to use the richest popolani among the guilds, combined with foreign forces

from Empoli, to suppress the plebs?

Michele di Lando: Tool of the “Popular Nobles”?

Unsurprisingly then, Machiavelli records that the plebs immediately start to worry that

Michele’s “excessive partisanship” for the upper guildsmen has jeopardized their own status

within the new republic; they fear that they do not in fact possess a role in government sufficient

“to preserve and protect themselves” (FH III.17). We observed how, before he began his

account of the Ciompi Revolt, Machiavelli elaborated the extent to which oppression and

exploitation of the plebs by the popolani of the major guilds--who had been steadily coopted and
 26

corrupted by the city’s ancient nobility--were the underlying causes of the woolworkers’

insurrection (FH III.12). The plebs, thus, have good cause for anxiety over Michele’s cultivation

of favor with the popular nobles and his grasping for power outside the city. Machiavelli seems

to take Michele’s side here, overtly condemning, as he so often does in the Histories, the plebs’

supposedly immoderate desires and behavior: the ciompi, he writes, “motivated by their usual

audacity,” take up arms, and tumultuously march on the Palazzo, demanding that the Signoria

pass further measures “for their security and well-being” (FH III.17).

Michele, Machiavelli writes, perturbed by the plebs’ “arrogance,” insisted that they lay

down their arms so that the Signoria might address their concerns “with dignity rather than

through compulsion” (FH III.17). In response, the insulted plebs leave the Palace and retire to

Santa Maria Novella, where they establish eight of themselves as heads, with ministerial

trappings and other orders that might lend them “reputation and reverence.”

This episode subtly replays the two secessions of the Roman plebs, praised by

Machiavelli in the Discourses (D I.3-4, I.40, I.44); evacuations that resulted in an institution of

“eminence and reputation,” the plebeian tribunate, which Machiavelli declares made the Roman

constitution “more perfect.” Like their Roman antecedents, the Florentine plebs in this instance

retire from the public seat of power, and set about establishing their own institution with veto

authority over the workings of government: “They decided that eight members elected from

their own guilds should always reside with the priors in the Palace, and that all of the Signoria’s

decisions must meet their approval” (FH III.17). When the Roman plebs complained that

senatorial and consular authority was biased and self-serving, Machiavelli endorses their effort to

create their own magistracy, the plebeian tribunate, with veto power over senators and consuls.

Does Machiavelli really believe that the Florentine people are behaving with excessive arrogance
 27

and audacity by pursuing a similar course of action here? If such institutional innovations were

good enough to make Rome nearly perfect, then why aren’t they good enough for Florence?

The plebs, according to Machiavelli, sought to validate these reforms by sending two

delegates to the Signoria, insisting that the measures be ratified by the Council of the People and

the Council of the Commune, and threatening to use force, if necessary, to insure this outcome

(FH III.17). In apparently derogatory terms, Machiavelli declares that the plebs acted with

“great audacity” by approaching the Priors in such a manner, and “even greater

presumptuousness” by chastising Michele for “the ingratitude and disrespect” he had shown

them in return for “the dignity and honor” that they had conferred upon him. Again, how

audacious and presumptuous, really, is this behavior? After all, the plebs, at this point, have

merely sent emissaries to address the Signoria; they are not assaulting it with military force.

Moreover, regarding Michele, they expected him to serve the ciompi cause and subdue their

adversaries among the popolani; not to make himself rich and the latter even richer. In any case,

recall how Machiavelli declares in the Discourses that such displays of popular indignation ought

to be alarming “only to those who merely read about them in books” (D I.4).

At this moment, Michele could have reaffirmed his commitment to the ciompi. He could

have assuaged the plebs’ fears of the popular nobles’ power and influence by accepting the

plebeian reform proposal and by allowing them tribunician veto authority over the Signoria’s

decisions. Instead, Machiavelli reports that when “their rebukes turned to threats,” Michele

could no longer endure the “arrogance” of the plebeian delegates (FH III.17). Resorting to

physical violence, Michele struck the plebeian delegates with his sword and ordered them

arrested and imprisoned. In the ensuing armed conflict, Michele, mounting his horse ahead of
 28

many armed men, assailed and routed the plebs, driving many from the city, and “compelling the

rest to give up their arms and go searching for places to hide.”

Let us pause to examine Michele’s motivations and actions here. Machiavelli writes that

Michele is concerned with his own glory, with the dignity of his office and with the honor of the

palace (FH III.17); in defense of these, Michele uses favors to garner support from the city’s

nobles and he deploys force to disperse and disarm the plebeians. This course of action defies

the main lessons of The Prince, which insists that a new prince, like Cesare Borgia, Agathocles

or Nabis, in order to guarantee longevity and success, must: firstly, found on the people, whose

motivations for security can be satisfied, rather than on the nobles whose envy and desire for

oppression cannot (P 6, P 9); and, secondly, arm as many citizen-subjects as he can, rather than,

like Roman emperors, French monarchs and later Medici princes, disarm the populace (P 13, P

19-20). Furthermore, in the Discourses, Machiavelli provides the examples of Romulus and

Cleomenes, who, on the one hand, arm the entirety of their peoples; and, on the other, if the

nobles are not yet fully corrupt, collect them in a senate--or if they are, kill them and distribute

their wealth to the common people (D I.9-10).

Recall the numerous admirable qualities that Machiavelli attributes to Michele: virtue,

spirit, prudence, self-less ambition and especially goodness (FH III.17). More specifically,

Machiavelli declares that Michele’s goodness “never permitted a thought to enter his mind that

ran counter to the universal benefit.” We will have to assess whether Michele lives up to this

wildly laudatory litany of qualities. In particular, we have to question whether the “goodness”

that sets the boundaries of Michele’s political imagination conforms to what Machiavelli means

by the term. After all, a consistent political good exalted by Machiavelli in The Prince and the

Discourses is the military empowerment of “the universality” of the people inhabiting a polity,
 29

and not the wholesale disarming of the vast majority of them. Michele violently represses and

disarms the ciompi, resulting in the immediate “demoralization of the plebs” (FH III.17).

And there was more harm to come. Machiavelli then reports that Michele’s military

victory over the plebs “encouraged the upper guildsmen to reflect on the ignominity of the fact

that they, those who subdued the pride of the nobles, should now have to endure the stench of the

plebs in the magistracies” (FH III.17). Michele has, wittingly or not, encouraged the popular

nobles to disarm the plebs not only militarily but civically as well. Soon a large anti-plebeian

mob, presumably organized by the rich popolani, assaults the Signoria, deposes its plebeian

priors and puts in their place popular nobles like Giorgio Scali. The mob then completely

disbands the lesser people’s new guild, and banned from further eligibility for office all of its

plebeian members--except for Michele di Lando and a few others of “superior quality.”

The anti-plebeian mob then demanded that the magistracies be divided into two parts,

such that the Signoria would contain five priors from the minor guilds, and four from the major.

The vast majority of the plebs whom Michele had enfranchised for the first time in the republic’s

history are, once again, and now permanently, excluded from Florence’s government.

Machiavelli fails to tell readers or even speculate whether Michele was complicit in the armed

demonstration that led to the expulsion of the plebs from the Signoria, the disenfranchisement of

the ciompi (with the notable exception of Michele himself), and the elevation of popular nobles

like Giorgio Scali to the Signoria. He certainly does demonstrate that by just previously crushing

the plebs militarily, Michele insured that his new constitutional orders would also be gutted—the

ciompi were now disenfranchised once again, and perhaps worse for the republic, they were now

completely disarmed for the first time since the reign of the Duke of Athens. Florence’s
 30

opportunity to boast a greater number of able-bodied, free men-at-arms—including plebs and

popolani alike--than any other city in Europe was gone for good.

Whether or not Michele was complicit in this counter-revolutionary scaling back of the

popular republic that he himself had founded, Michele clearly did nothing to stop it. Yet even

readers considerably less cynical than the notorious Machiavel might pause to wonder: Perhaps

Giorgio Scali, Salvestro de’Medici and the popular nobles were pulling Michele’s strings all

along--or, at least, for some time. Ultimately, Machiavelli leaves readers to guess the veracity

and extent of what other chroniclers of the Ciompi Revolt explicitly assert: Michele had been

bought.9

When Machiavelli surveys Florence’s political landscape in the aftermath of Michele’s

suppression of the ciompi and their disenfranchisement by the popular nobles, he names the men

who stood as “almost princes of the city” within this new form of government: Messer Giorgio

Scali, Messer Benedetto Alberti, Messer Salvestro de’ Medici, and Messer Tommaso Strozzi

(FH III.18). On this list of quasi-princes--all of them notably “sirs”--Michele di Lando’s name is

nowhere to be found. His term of office as Gonfalonier completed, and his power base among

the plebeians dispersed and disarmed, Michele, Machiavelli suggests, has been consigned to

irrelevance. Whatever his motivations, the elimination of the plebs’ power, Machiavelli shows,

definitively results in the evaporation of Michele’s own. He does not appear again in

Machiavelli’s narrative until the moment of his exile, chapters later, when Machiavelli recounts

the ascension to power of the “harmful and offensive” Albizzi Oligarchy (FH III.20-22)-- which

effectively ends popular government in Florence for generations to come.

The regime of the Guild Republic that emerged after the Ciompi Revolt endured for only

three years, Machiavelli writes, because its leaders among the popular nobles were compelled to
 31

enact “many executions and exiles” as a result of their suspicions of “so many malcontents”

residing both within and outside the city (FH III.18). He recounts the executions of over a half

dozen prominent popular nobles of the conservative party and the exiles of many Guelf Party

members. Moreover, he reports how the republic paid an exorbitant amount of money to the

mercenary captain, John Hawkwood, to, for all intents and purposes, accomplish nothing in

pursuit of the city’s foreign policy agenda (FH III.18-19).

The discerning reader of The Prince and the Discourses might ask at this point in the

Histories: What benefit would Michele di Lando have bestowed on the republic if, like Moses or

Brutus, he had rid the city of its many “malcontents,” namely, many nobles of both the popular

and conservative parties, during his tenure as Gonfalonier and lord? And would the republic

have needed any further recourse to mercenaries like Hawkwood, if Michele had imitated

Romulus and fully integrated the armed plebs into a unified civic-military force instead of

humiliating and disarming them? But Machiavelli does not explicitly raise such questions.

When Machiavelli narrates Michele’s exile, he laments the fact that Michele was treated

with regrettable “ingratitude” despite “all the goods” that he had provided in service to “his

patria” (FH III.22). But, as with Giano della Bella, the empirical facts and historical details

provided by Machiavelli, cross-referenced with the lessons of The Prince and the Discourses,

suggest that Michele provided nary any goods at all. Indeed, he may be accused of having

helped make conditions in the republic demonstrably worse. Under the Albizzi oligarchy and

then the Medici principate, Machiavelli subsequently indicates, Florence’s civic culture would

succumb to unprecedented corruption; and its reliance on mercenary arms, rather than a wide-

scale popular army, would leave it hopelessly vulnerable to a veritable procession of foreign

invaders.10
 32

Conclusion

I have demonstrated that specific details of Machiavelli’s account of the plebs’ behavior

within the Florentine Histories decisively undermine any general, evaluative statements on his

part that overtly criticize them, and that supposedly signal a recently developed sympathy for the

Florentine elite, the so-called “popular nobles.” Proponents of the now dominant “conservative-

turn” thesis err, I suggest, when they consistently ignore the blatant discontinuity between: on the

one hand, Machiavelli’s demonstration of how plebs and elites behave throughout the book, and,

on the other, what he says about the behavior of these respective groups within the work. I have

argued that the former contravene the latter, and that the literary-rhetorical method deployed by

Machiavelli in the Histories—a mode of writing through which, even more so than in The Prince

and the Discourses, deeds trump words--substantively reinforces, rather than in any way

undermines, Machiavelli’s previously expressed preference for plebeian tumults in his later,

seemingly more conservative, political writings.

Machiavelli establishes stark incongruities between his descriptions and his evaluations

of actions and events: he often denounces plebeian behavior as inappropriate, excessive or

indecent, when, in fact, indications in the Histories, and statements from previous works, suggest

that Machiavelli not only tolerates but actually countenances such unruly conduct. For instance,

as we observed, Machiavelli criticizes the Florentine plebs for creating a commotion in the

streets during an important council meeting at the height of the Revolt (FH III.15). But by

Machiavellian standards that explicitly favor tumults as civically salutary events (or minimize

them as harmless occurrences) (FH III.1; D I.4), this unruly behavior ought to be judged as either

perfectly appropriate or morally neutral--especially since the plebs, in this instance, inflict no
 33

bodily harm on their political adversaries among the city’s magistrates.

It is necessary and illuminating, I contend, to read such episodes from the Histories with

the aim of assessing the extent to which Machiavelli’s evaluative judgments of political

resistance prove compatible with the political circumstances he describes: that is, to put it

somewhat crudely, it is worth asking whether Machiavelli’s adjectives match his verbs when he

discusses the tumultuous behavior of the Florentine plebs. My intuition is that most of

Machiavelli’s evaluative judgments of elites and the plebs expressed in the Histories are

consistently belied by his actual descriptions—that is, the effectual truth--of each group’s

behavior. I suggest that, at almost every point when Machiavelli explicitly criticizes the plebs in

the Histories, he places material within the details of the events and actions he describes that

seriously mitigates those criticisms, especially when judged by the standards he set in The Prince

and the Discourses.

According to the evidence presented by Machiavelli in the Histories, the Florentine plebs

seem to want merely comparable civic-military arrangements enjoyed by their ancient, especially

Roman counterparts through which they can more ordinarily air their political-economic

grievances and gain future concessions without recourse to the riots, arson and pillaging that they

perpetrate in the absence of such institutions. Indeed, how differently would the Ciompi Revolt

have unfolded if all of the lesser people--popolo and plebs alike--had enjoyed recourse to a

magistracy like the Roman plebeian tribunate that would formally voice their grievances, and if

the entire Florentine elite had been gathered together, like their Roman forbearers, in a Senate

house? As I have suggested, Machiavelli shows that the humors characteristic of both the

Roman and Florentine plebeians and elites are fundamentally the same; it is primarily the

institutional modes and orders through which they are channeled that differ in any substantive
 34

way.

NOTES
1. Niccolò Machiavelli, Istorie Fiorentine [1523], ed. Franco Gaeta (Feltrinelli 1962);
hereafter “FH” within the text.
2. Although they differ to varying degrees on how conservative they believe Machiavelli
became, the following all agree that his views changed decidedly in that direction: Albert Russell
Ascoli, “‘Vox Populi’: Machiavelli, Opinione, and the Popolo, from the Principe to the Istorie
Fiorentine,” California Italian Studies 4, no. 2 (2013) 1-23;Francesco Bausi, Machiavelli (Rome:
Salerno, 2005); Robert Black, Machiavelli (London: Routledge, 2013); Humfrey Butters,
“Machiavelli and the Medici,” in J.M. Najemy, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli
(Cambridge: Cambridge, 2010) 64-79; Mark Hulliung, Citizen Machiavelli (Princeton:
Princeton, 1984) 75-78, 86; Mark Jurdjevic, A Great and Wretched City: Promise and Failure in
Machiavelli's Florentine Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014);
Mario Martelli, “Machiavelli e Firenze dalla repubblica al principate,” in J-J. Marchand, ed.,
Niccolò Machiavelli: politico storico letterato (Rome: Salerno, 1996) 15–31; David Quint,
“Narrative Design and Historical Irony in Machiavelli’s Istorie Fiorentine,” Rinascimento 43
(2003) 31-48; Giovanni Silvano, “Florentine Republicanism in the Sixteenth Century,” in G.
Bock, Q. Skinner, and M. Viroli, eds. Machiavelli and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge,
1990) 41-70; Mauricio Suchowlansky, Machiavelli’s Republicanisms: Society, Discord and the
Politics of Equilibrium in the Florentine Histories (Political Science Department, University of
Toronto, August 2015); Maurizio Viroli, “Machiavelli and the Republican Idea of Liberty,” in G.
Bock, Q. Skinner, and M. Viroli, eds. Machiavelli and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge,
1990) 143-71; M. Viroli, Machiavelli (Oxford: Oxford, 1998) 126. See also Mario Martelli’s
introduction to his edition of Machiavelli’s Il principe (Roma: Salerno, 2006).
3. Niccolò Machiavelli, Il Principe (De Principatibus), composed circa 1513 and
published in 1532, ed. G. Inglese (Turin 1995), abbreviated as “P” within the text; and
Machiavelli, Discorsi [1513-19], C. Vivanti, ed. (Turin 1997), hereafter “D” within the text.
4. See John P. McCormick, Machiavellian Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge, 2011).
5. For compelling, alternative readings of the nameless ciompo’s speech, see: Cabrini,
Interpretazione e Stile, 85-98; Gabriele Pedullà, “Il divieto di Platone: Machiavelli e il discorso
dell’anonimo plebeo,” in Jean-Jacques Marchand and Jean-Claude Zancarini, eds., Storiografia
repubblicana fiorentina (1494–1570) (Firenze: Cesati, 2003) 209-266; Jeffrey Edward Green,
“Learning How Not to Be Good: A Plebeian Perspective,” The Good Society 20, no. 2 (2011)
184-202; and Yves Winter, “Plebeian Politics: Machiavelli and the Ciompi Uprising,” Political
Theory 40, no. 6 (2012) 736 –766.
6. The city’s elite had used the circumstances of the Black Death in 1348 to reduce their
number of priors by one. See John M. Najemy, A History of Florence, 1200-1575 (Wiley-
Blackwell 2008) 145.
 35

7. This account of the distribution of seats in the Signoria may exaggerate the number
allotted to middling and minor guilds: see Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus, chaps. 5 and 6.
8. See Sverre Bagge, “Actors and Structure in Machiavelli’s Istorie Fiorentine,”
Quaderni d’Italianistica XXVIII, no. 2 (2007) 45-87; Ana Maria Cabrini, “La storia da non
imitare: Il versante negativo dell’esemplarità nelle Istorie Fiorentine,” in Cultura e scrittura di
Machiavelli (Roma: Salerno Editrice, 1997) 197-220; Salvatore di Maria, “Machiavelli’s Ironic
View of History: The Istorie Fiorentine,” Renaissance Quarterly 45, no. 2 (Summer 1992) 248-
270; Felix Gilbert, “Machiavelli‘s Istorie Fiorentine: An Essay in Interpretation,” in Gilbert,
History: Choice and Commitment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977) 135-53;
Martine Leibovici, “From Fight to Debate: Machiavelli and the Revolt of the Ciompi,”
Philosophy and Social Criticism 28, no. 6 (November 2002) 647-660; Timothy Lukes,
“Descending to Particulars: The Palazzo, the Piazza and Machiavelli’s Republican New Modes
and Orders,” Journal of Politics 71, no. 2 (April 2000) 520-32; Marina Marietti, “Une Figure
Emblematique: Michele di Lando vu par Maquiavel,” Chroniques 69/70 (2002) 129-38; Mark
Phillips, “Barefoot Boy Makes Good: A Study of Machiavelli's Historiography,” Speculum 59,
no. 3 (July 1984) 585-605; and Mauricio Suchowlansky, “Rhetoric of violence in Machiavelli’s
Florentine Histories: The exemplar of Michele di Lando,” (December 2011)
(http://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr/index.php?id=549). With considerable qualification, see
also Yves Winter, “Plebeian Politics: Machiavelli and the Ciompi Uprising,” Political Theory 40
no. 6 (December 2012) 736-766.
9. On this and other differences between Machiavelli’s account of Michele’s career and
those of other historians, see Phillips, “Barefoot Boy Makes Good.”
10. See Christopher Lynch, “War and Foreign Affairs in Machiavelli’s Florentine
Histories,” Review of Politics 74 (2012): 1–26.