Machiavelli, as War Secretary of the anti-Medicean government, was of course disgraced and deprived of his appointments.

In 1513 he was suspected of complicity in the conjuration of Pietropaolo Boscoli and Agostino Capponi, was imprisoned in the Bargello, and tortured to the extent of four turns of the rack.

It seems that he was innocent.

Leo X.released him by the act of amnesty passed upon the event of his assuming the tiara; and Machiavelli immediately retired to his farm near San Casciano.
Since we are now approaching the most critical passage of Machiavelli's biography, it may be well to draw from his private letters a picture of the life to which this statesman of the restless brain was condemned in the solitude of the country.[1] Writing on December 10 to his friend Francesco Vettori, he says, 'I am at my farm; and, since my last misfortunes, have not been in Florence twenty days.

I rise with the sun, and go into a wood of mine that is being cut, where I remain two hours inspecting the work of the previous day and conversing with the woodcutters, who have always some trouble on hand among themselves or with their neighbors.