It requires an intimate familiarity with the Italian military system of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to understand the importance of this reform.

We are so accustomed to the systems of Militia, Conscription, and Landwehr, by means of which military service has been nationalized among the modern races, that we need to tax our imagination before we can place ourselves at the point of view of men to whom Machiavelli's measure was a novelty of genius.[3] [1] Machiavelli never bore the title of Ambassador on these missions.

He went as Secretary.

His pay was miserable.

We find him receiving one ducat a day for maintenance.
[2] Documents relating to the institution of the _Nove dell' Ordinanza e Milizia_, and to its operations between December 6, 1506, and August 6, 1512, from the pen of Machiavelli, will be found printed by Signor Canestrini in _Arch.