Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli was a Florentine diplomat, historian, and political theorist. For fourteen years he served the Florentine Republic, observing the Italian city-states and their relations with France and the papacy at first hand. When the Medici returned to power in 1512 he was dismissed, briefly tortured, and exiled to his farm, where he wrote The Prince (1513) and the Discourses on Livy. The Prince — addressed to Lorenzo de' Medici as a job application — treated politics with a clear-eyed realism that scandalised moralists for centuries and gave the world the adjective "Machiavellian."