He wanted employment: he despaired of the republic: he strove to furnish the princes in power with a convincing proof of his capacity for great affairs.

Yet it must not on this account be concluded that the _Principe_ was merely a cheap bid for office.

On the contrary, it contained the most mature and the most splendid of Machiavelli's thoughts, accumulated through his long years of public service; and, strange as it may seem, it embodied the dream of a philosophical patriot for the restitution of liberty to Italy.
Florence, indeed, was lost.

'These Signori Medici' were in power.

But could not even they be employed to purge the sacred soil of Italy from the Barbarians?
If we can pretend to sound the depths of Machiavelli's mind at this distance of time, we may conjecture that he had come to believe the free cities too corrupt for independence.