Cesare Borgia

The rich Italian states of the fifteenth century hired professional captains, the condottieri, to fight their wars rather than arming their own citizens. These commanders brought trained troops and experience, but their loyalty was to their contract and their own fortunes, and a long campaign was often more profitable to them than a decisive victory.

Machiavelli drew a hard lesson from this: a prince who depends on mercenaries is never secure, because they will abandon him when the price is right or turn on him when he is weak. Cesare Borgia's answer was to raise his own troops and appoint his own officers, and it was this self-reliance, more than his cruelty, that Machiavelli singled out for praise.

The Borgias have come down to us as poisoners, liars, and sensualists, a family that turned the papacy into a private enterprise. Much of that reputation was built by their enemies: the Florentine historians, the della Rovere popes who succeeded them, and later writers who preferred a vivid scandal to a dull record.

The documented facts are damning enough — Alexander VI advanced his children openly, Cesare changed sides as it suited him, and the family used force and money without scruple. But the legend exaggerates and simplifies, turning complex political operators into melodramatic villains. The Borgias were extreme examples of a system, not a sudden moral collapse.