COMMISSION
GIVEN TO NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI TO PROCEED TO MANTUA AND ITS VICINITY,

Resolved upon on the 10th November, 1509.

Niccolo, —

You will proceed to Mantua, accompanied by two or three mounted men, bearing the sum of money due on the payment we have to make in that city to the Emperor, or his legitimate representative, for the second term or second payment of the amount which we have engaged ourselves to pay according to the treaty lately made with his Majesty. It is important that all of you, or at least yourself, should travel

so as to arrive there on the 14th, or at latest the 15th, of the present month. To enable you to transact this business the more easily, you will be the bearer of a letter of credence to the most illustrious Marchioness, to whom you will relate all that may have happened to you, after having first thanked her in the most grateful manner for all the good offices and kindness which she has shown to our ambassadors, enlarging upon this as fully as you may think suitable.

Some one will by that time have arrived in Mantua, who is duly empowered to receive the payment in question; and for your fuller information as to the course you will have to pursue, you must know that out of the whole amount one thousand ducats will have to be paid to Lante Bonifazio da Sarego, a gentleman from Verona, as provided by the terms of the treaty. All the rest is to be paid to the person sent by the Emperor to receive it. But as the matter is very generally known, it will be necessary for you to use every care and precaution to know and legitimize the person to whom you have to pay the money. You will have no great difficulty upon this point with regard to Bonifazio; but whoever comes on behalf of his Majesty the Emperor must be provided with proper and sufficient credentials. The individual who came to receive the first payment was thus provided with a royal commission authorizing the payment to be made to him; and the same ought to be the case on the present occasion. We desire you to take an acquittance from the individual himself to whom the money is paid, which must be properly attested; and moreover, we want you to have both payments formally acknowledged as public acts, as was done with regard to the first payment. Giovanni Borromei, at whose house you will probably alight, will be able to procure for you the services of the same notary. After having made the payments, you will send back to us the acquittances and other documents by the same mounted men that accompanied you to Mantua, reporting to us at the same time all that you may be able to learn respecting the Emperor’s affairs, and especially everything relating to his Italian enterprise. After that you will proceed to Verona, or to wherever it may seem most convenient to you to obtain more precise information on the subject, and to communicate the same to us; and you must not leave that region until you receive orders from us, for, being once there on account of the payments, your

presence will be less noted than if we were to send some one else there. During your stay in the different places, and which it would be well to change from day to day, as occasion may require, you will write to us carefully and regularly all that may occur worthy of notice; but so as to avoid all danger that might result therefrom, you will send your letters by the regular courier. We would also recommend to you and the aforementioned mounted men, that you move with great care and circumspection, and with as little display as possible.

You will also be the bearer of a letter of credence to the Right Reverend Monsignore di Gursa in connection with those payments, or any other matter where you may need him. You may present that letter to him either before or after the payments are made, according as you may find necessary. And finally you will take with you a copy of the above-mentioned royal commission, so that you may know the form in which the present one will have to be drawn up and signed.

The person to whom the first payment was made was one of his Majesty’s secretaries by the name of Wolfgang Hemerle, a man of small stature, thirty to thirty-two years old, somewhat stout, with red beard and hair slightly curled. The notary who drew up the documents respecting the first payment was Ser Gabriello, son of Ser Bartolommeo d’ Albo of Mantua; he could draw up the present papers the same as the first, of which we furnish you a copy. The only alteration necessary will be to state that this is for the second payment.