Machiavelli and the Profession of Arms: Cesare Borgia as a Mercenary Prince

The figure of Cesare Borgia occupies a complex and revealing place in the political thought of Niccolò Machiavelli. This article argues that the historical Cesare complicates Machiavelli’s more schematic presentation of military autonomy in The Prince. Whereas Chapter VII foregrounds Cesare’s dependence on Alexander VI, fortuna, French assistance, and contingent political circumstances, Chapter XIII presents a compressed movement from French auxiliaries and mercenary captains to “own” arms. By reconstructing the composition, financing, and command structures of Cesare’s forces, the article shows that his attempts to reduce dependence remained incomplete. His military power remained structurally dependent on papal finance, French backing, mercenary captains, intermediaries, and temporary forms of local recruitment. Cesare therefore did not consolidate the kind of stable territorial military apparatus that Machiavelli elsewhere identified as essential to durable rule. His rapid collapse after Alexander VI’s death reflects the fragility of a principality built on external, negotiated, and revocable support. The article thus reframes Cesare not as a historical exemplar of achieved Machiavellian military self-sufficiency, but as a figure whose career exposes the tension between Machiavelli’s theoretical use of armi proprie and the composite realities of warfare in Renaissance Italy.