BRIEF INSTRUCTION
TO YOU, NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, AS TO WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO IN YOUR MISSION TO VENICE, BY OUR ORDER.
Resolved upon by us, 19 August, 1525.
Very Dear Niccolo: —We use but few words with you, because we know your prudence and the great experience you have so often shown in affairs of much greater difficulty than the present, and because you have fully understood our object in sending you to Venice. But so as not to fail in the responsibility which rests upon every one who sends another on a mission, we have prepared these few lines relative to what we intend you to do in our name on your mission to Venice. You will proceed then as promptly and as conveniently as you can to Venice, whither may our Lord God guide you safely. The first thing you are to do after your arrival will be to call upon the Bishop of Feltre, Papal Nuncio to that republic, for whom you have letters from Rome; and after having delivered these to him, we wish you to try, with all the skill you can command, to possess yourself of a letter that is enclosed in the letter to him. That letter is one of those which Benedetto Inghirami has written to us from Ancona, and in it he relates at length the whole affair. We had sent the letter to Rome, for the purpose of more fully elucidating the case; and at Rome they have enclosed it in the letter to the Nuncio which you are taking with you. We tell you this because that letter varies in some respects from the deposition of the witnesses, which might give umbrage and perhaps create difficulties rather than serve our cause.
After the Nuncio has read that letter, you must take it from his hands, saying that it is superfluous, as the young men who have written it are here in person, and can state their case better and with greater brevity verbally. Coming then to discuss as to what course to take, you will follow his Lordship’s advice, and then you will go with his Lordship, presuming that he will want to accompany you, or alone, and present yourself before the most illustrious Doge and the Venetian
lords, for whom you have a brief from his Holiness, and a letter from our Magnificent Signori, which you will present to them with the customary ceremonies. When you shall have obtained an audience and permission to speak, you will expose to their Lordships, on our behalf, the extortion and robbery beyond all expectation and what is due to the sincere friendship existing between their republic and ours, in their port and by a Venetian, upon three of our young men, who were coming from Ragusa with money brought from the Levant in the usual way. You will demand the restitution of what has been taken from them, in the strongest and most efficacious terms that you can employ, and which, with your habitual prudence, you will deem most suitable for obtaining the result we so much desire, and to get back what has been violently taken and stolen.You will also take with you the deposition of the witnesses taken at Ancona and elsewhere, which you will use at such time and on such occasion as you may judge most to the purpose. You will also have with you two of those young men from whom the money was taken, so that you may daily make known the precise facts, and avail yourself of them on every occasion, and may boldly face any one who attempts to deny the facts.
This is all that occurs to us to tell you at this moment, and even this may be said to have been superfluous, for we feel persuaded that you fully understand our wishes, and will know better how to carry them into effect than we have told you above. We have every confidence in you and hope, as well from what we have heard, that his most illustrious Lordship the Doge, moved by his extreme sense of justice, and having heard the case, has already had the delinquent incarcerated, as by your efforts, that you will return promptly with the satisfaction which we ask.
The Consuls of the Wool Guild of the
City of Florence.