Montesquieu And The Despotic Ideas Of Europe

An Interpretation of The Spirit of the Laws

The University of Chicago Press

Contents

The Greatness of Machiavelli and the Despotic Disease of His Politics — Both Princely and Republican

In the preface of The Spirit of the Laws Montesquieu declares: "When I have seen what so many great men [tant de grands hommes] in France, England, and Germany have written before me, I have been filled with wonder, but I have not lost courage. 'And I too am a painter,' have I said with Correggio" (pr., xlv; OC 2: 231). Giving only their nationalities, Montesquieu does not here name the predecessors who have written the works among which he judges his own can stand. It takes him only two chapters to take pointed issue with a writer from England, but Montesquieu does not call this man — Thomas Hobbes — great (1.2, 6). Although Montesquieu fails in his preface to mention the Italian peninsula as the home of any of his great predecessors, his image of political writers as painters reprises Machiavelli's appeal in the epistle dedicatory of The Prince to the landscape painter who takes to the heights to understand the nature of peoples and to the lowlands to understand that of princes. And, indeed, the first whom Montesquieu deems great in the work is Machiavelli (6.5, 77). This reservation of the appellation for Machiavelli, which certainly appears to be — and is often read as — a compliment, suggests that the Italian is among those whom Montesquieu believes he can stand with, and perhaps even surpass. Machiavelli's legacy is somehow important to the definition of Montesquieu's own.

Of course, in book 29 of The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu also furnishes Machiavelli as one of five examples of thinkers who have legislated through their writings. In thus affirming Machiavelli's monumental status, Montesquieu simultaneously castigates the Florentine for allowing his passions and prejudices to induce him to be too enamored of the ruthless Duke Valentino, a prominent character of The Prince. In addition, in book 21, Montesquieu uses the Florentine's name to identify and stigmatize an approach to politics that is so noxious that he characterizes it as a disease requiring a cure. "One has begun to be cured of Machiavellianism, and one will continue to be cured of it" (21.20, 389). Montesquieu's references to the slaughter of the French wars of religion, as we shall see, illustrate the spread of this particular contagion in his own country. Machiavelli's The Prince has encouraged monarchs to engage in Machiavellianism — that is, to treat their subjects despotically. Montesquieu thus highlights the fact that the ideas of a writer have had a quite real and quite negative impact on the practice of politics and hence on human life.

Montesquieu's engagement with Machiavelli's teachings extends beyond the immorality and ruthlessness of The Prince and its apparent hero, Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI, because Montesquieu also examines Machiavelli's recommendations for a republic in the Discourses on Livy. Montesquieu begins to engage with Machiavelli's republicanism in book 6 of The Spirit of the Laws, which offers his first consideration of "criminal laws, the form of judgments, and the establishment of penalties" (p. 72). Montesquieu's criticism of Machiavelli's republicanism focuses on the extreme and sometimes arbitrary punishments that the Florentine recommends for the governance of republics. This criticism blossoms to much greater significance later in the work, when Montesquieu defines liberty as a feeling of security in the citizen and declares that the correct way to proceed in criminal judgments is the most important knowledge available to human beings. Moreover, both Machiavelli's exhortation to embrace the extremes by avoiding the middle way and Montesquieu's substitution of the middle for the extremes relate particularly to their divergent views of punishments. When articulating his response to Machiavelli on these issues, Montesquieu recalls to his reader's attention his preface to The Spirit of the Laws, where he indicates that one of his intentions in the work is to assist people in curing themselves of their prejudices. In this manner, Montesquieu suggests that one particular intention of his work is to heal the despotic and ugly implications of Machiavelli's political thought — both princely and republican.

Indeed, Montesquieu's treatment of Machiavelli's republicanism mirrors his criticism of Machiavelli's form of principality — that is, it blurs the distinction between despotic and nondespotic regimes. Therefore, it is not merely the cunning advisor to tyrannical majesty of The Prince who elicits Montesquieu's objections, but also the republican citizen of the Discourses. Montesquieu judges that his Italian predecessor fails to make critical distinctions between republics and despotisms; or, in other words, his republicanism is too despotic.

The fact that Montesquieu engages so extensively with Machiavelli's republicanism corroborates some of the conclusions of commentators who have long pointed out that Montesquieu manifests a deep interest in and understanding of Machiavelli's writings. Many of these commentators maintain that the learned Montesquieu is far removed from conventional anti-Machiavellians who offer hackneyed denunciations of the immoral or amoral "devil Machiavel," so prevalent before and after Montesquieu's time in France and elsewhere in Europe. Although he may be much more familiar with the range of Machiavelli's writings and much more sophisticated than many of Machiavelli's unreflective condemners, Montesquieu does, nevertheless, voice his own warnings against the effects of Machiavelli's teachings — even his republican teachings. Contrary to the claims of some of these commentators, Montesquieu manifests his own anti-Machiavellian sentiments, and can even be said to draw on and perpetuate aspects of the anti-Machiavellianism that grew out of the French wars of religion in the sixteenth century.

As awestruck as Montesquieu is before the power and grandeur of Machiavelli's words, therefore, he opposes their meaning and ramifications. Specifically, he may call Machiavelli a "great man," but he simultaneously evaluates those who repudiate Machiavellianism as both "great and generous"— a formulation that he, in fact, appropriates from Machiavelli's Italian, inverting its meaning as he applies it in his French (6.5, 77 and 4.2, 33). The adjective great can convey praiseworthiness but also extensive importance or influence in ways that exclude the first sense. For example, it is necessary to note that in French, as in English, plagues, famines, and fires too can be grands. Montesquieu, as we shall see, takes advantage of both senses of the term. The great man Machiavelli had a great — that is, a large and far-reaching — effect on politics by recommending too great punishments. Montesquieu — as writer — can participate in the cure to Machiavellianism, the disease that his predecessor helped to transmit. Such restorative actions are the ones that Montesquieu proffers as great — in the sense of praiseworthy — and generous.

Montesquieu's renunciation of Machiavelli's republicanism is of particular importance because of the vast influence Machiavelli's depiction of the Roman republic had and continues to have on those who comment on politics. For example, before Montesquieu's birth, those with republican sympathies in England appealed explicitly to the Florentine's depiction of a republic, including its harshest aspects, which Montesquieu would later criticize. During his lifetime, such admiration continued, and again English thinkers, who lived under the Hanoverian monarchy, appealed in particularly laudatory terms to the Florentine's depiction of a republic that took vengeance on those who threaten the public.

The admiration of Machiavelli's republicanism continues to this day; prominent scholars invoke it as a salient example of a particular notion of freedom or liberty that belongs to the republican tradition. They regard this tradition as having important contemporary relevance, as its leading participants, such as Cicero, Machiavelli, and the English commentators during and after the English Civil War, offer a vigorously political notion of liberty that stands as an attractive alternative to modern liberal notions of freedom as noninterference. Moreover, a scholar who does not fully endorse this republican interpretation of Machiavelli still finds cause to regard Machiavelli's presentation of Rome, with its aggressive punishments in particular, as a model for contemporary practice. Therefore, although Machiavelli's depiction of princely government may have gone out of fashion in our time, as Montesquieu notes it has in his, the Florentine's republicanism certainly has not.

By contrast, Montesquieu suggests that Machiavelli's republic is itself despotic. In the Frenchman's view, Machiavelli's form of republican justice is too harsh, too arbitrary, and too immoderate; hence, Machiavelli's republicanism is despotic. Therefore, before today's friends of liberty too eagerly embrace the model of Machiavelli's republic, it is necessary to hear out what this other friend of liberty has to say.

Machiavellian Coups d'État and Princely Rule

Montesquieu uses Machiavelli's name only three times in the entirety of the final version of the body of the work. The last two occurrences, in books 21 and 29, together with what would have been the first mention in book 3 that he excised before publication, constitute Montesquieu's charges that Machiavelli endeavored to teach despotism to monarchs. Machiavelli, he claims, was far too enamored of the brutal tactics of his hero, Cesare Borgia. Those very tactics, highlighted and promulgated by Machiavelli's work, had an important but destructive impact on the French monarchy in the sixteenth century, Montesquieu suggests.

Montesquieu casts a fleeting but significant glance at Machiavelli's influence on European governance in book 21, "On laws in their relation to commerce, considered in the revolutions it has had in the world." The particular chapter in which he refers to that influence is entitled "How commerce in Europe penetrated barbarism" and offers a sweeping view of European history. After treating the disastrous effects that the "speculations of the schoolmen," who denounced the practice of lending at interest, had on both commerce and the businessmen who in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were victims of rapacious kings, Montesquieu offers a consoling reflection: "Since that time princes have had to govern themselves more wisely than they themselves would have thought, for it turned out that great acts of authority [les grands coups d'autorité] were so clumsy that experience itself has made known that only goodness of government brings prosperity" (21.20, 389; OC 2: 641).

Montesquieu's further reflections reveal that such harsh governmental actions, which he so decries, belong not only to the European Middle Ages, however, but also to more recent times. Without benefit of a transition, he observes that after the influence of the speculations of the schoolmen waned with the advent of letters of exchange, a new form of thought arose, and, as different as it was, it produced similar crimes against citizens. Montesquieu notes of this more recent threat to the security of individuals:

One has begun to be cured of Machiavellianism [On a commencé à se guérir du machiavélisme], and one will continue to be cured of it [on s'en guérira tous les jours]. There must be more moderation in councils. What were formally called coups d'état would at present, apart from their horror, be only imprudences. (21.20, 389; OC 2: 641)

His use of the term machiavélisme acknowledges that Machiavelli's thought has had such influence that he gave his name to a particular approach to political action. His statement suggests in addition that he regards that influence as a malady, a malady whose influence has decreased but has not been entirely eradicated.

In so speaking of cures, Montesquieu recalls one of his very purposes in writing the work. He declares in his preface: "I would consider myself the happiest of mortals if I could make it so that men were able to cure themselves of [se guérir de] their prejudices. Here I call prejudices not what makes one unaware of certain things but what makes one unaware of oneself" (pr., xliv; OC 2: 230). It would seem that Montesquieu regards Machiavellianism as a type of prejudice that hides the human character from those infected with it. Moreover, the curing of humanity is one of the central purposes of this text. Although humanity needs to cure itself, Montesquieu, at least in some instances, can serve as a catalyst for this healing. His consideration of Machiavelli's thought and its consequences may very well be one such catalyst.

When Montesquieu asserts that a philosopher can serve as a type of legislator, he also exposes the character of the particular "passions and prejudices" that fundamentally shape the products of each of the thinkers whom he names. As we know, Montesquieu regards Machiavelli as having been "full of his idol, Duke Valentino" (29.19, 618). Montesquieu's reflection here refers to Cesare Borgia, whom Machiavelli features in The Prince. In identifying Borgia as Machiavelli's hero, Montesquieu exposes the character of the disease he terms Machiavellianism. Borgia used both "force" and "fraud," a combination that Machiavelli praises, in attempting to found a state for himself in northern Italy at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Among the crimes that Machiavelli relates approvingly is Borgia's use of Remirro de Orco as an agent to pacify the Romagna. Machiavelli reports that when Borgia perceived both that his man's success had given Borgia himself "the very greatest reputation for himself" and that his harsh measures "might become hateful," he had him killed in spectacular fashion: "And having seized this opportunity, he had him placed one morning in the piazza at Cesena in two pieces, with a piece of wood and a bloody knife beside him." Machiavelli reports that the execution had the desired effect: "The ferocity of this spectacle left the people at once satisfied and stupefied." Machiavelli also reports, with significant resonance for subsequent French history, that Borgia was able to overcome the threat that two noble families, the Orsini and Vitelli, posed to him by duplicitously inviting their leaders to a dinner party at Sinigaglia and then killing them. Machiavelli reports that this method yielded good results because, "when these heads had been eliminated, and their partisans had been turned into his friends, the duke had laid very good foundations for his power." In this way, Machiavelli does hold up Borgia as a historical figure worth studying and emulating, at least to a degree.

Montesquieu responds by castigating Machiavelli for his choice of hero. A cure for Machiavellianism would appear to necessitate that the passions and prejudices that gripped Machiavelli not be transmitted to others but rather be repudiated. But for the disease to be so particularly insidious as to make a political cure necessary, it would have to be the case that actual rulers took Machiavelli's maxims to heart and used them as a guide. Montesquieu fails to name the rulers who manifested the Machiavellianism to which he refers in book 21, chapter 20. Nevertheless, the French rulers who lived after Machiavelli's time, who were believed to be so imbued with Machiavelli's thought that they performed coups d'état that resulted in horror, are well known. All of these elements coalesce in the deeds of Catherine de' Medici, queen of France, and her royal progeny. The association of Catherine with Machiavelli is direct; the Lorenzo to whom Machiavelli dedicated The Prince was Catherine's father, who died soon after her birth and before she was married to the son of François I of France, who would go on to rule as Henri II. Widowed as a young woman, she lived to see three of her sons become kings of France, all of whom ruled during the French wars of religion. She herself ruled as regent when her son Charles IX came to the throne at the age of ten. Even after he came to majority, she still exercised considerable influence on him as an advisor. It was said of Catherine that she herself read Machiavelli, as did her advisors, and that she raised her sons on his treatises. The Protestant literature after the horrors of the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1574 made much of the connection between the French royal family and Machiavelli, vilifying mother and son alike as imbued with the wicked tenets of Machiavelli. Historians have long debated where ultimate responsibility lies for the mass violence that erupted against thousands of Protestants first in Paris and then in various French towns. Nevertheless, responsibility for the assassination of the Protestant nobility in Paris, which served as the precipitating event for the mass violence that followed, rests directly with Charles IX and his advisors, including his mother. Their attack against the nobility clearly constituted a great coup d'état, worthy of Machiavelli. Indeed, this attack on the nobility who had gathered to celebrate a wedding recalls Machiavelli's recounting in The Prince of Borgia's duplicitous action at Sinigaglia. Moreover, Machiavelli warns specifically of the jealousy that the nobles have for one who rules over them, and notes that a vigorous prince "can make and unmake [the great] every day." Of course, Borgia's murderous action, which Machiavelli selects to highlight, illustrates this very ability of a prince.