prince should behave and tells the truth about surviving as a monarch, rather than recommending moral ideals. He describes the virtues commonly assimilated with a prince and concludes that some "virtues" will lead to a prince's destruction, whereas some "vices" will enable him to survive. He describes the advantages of being generous or greedy, merciful or severe, deceitful or honest. Machiavelli concludes that a prince should avoid being hated and must exhibit five virtues in particular: mercy, honesty, humanness, uprightness, and religiousness. Chapter XX states whether a prince should or not guard his dominion with a fortress and he uses the example of the Florentines. He further analyses (Ch. XXI-XXIV) how a monarch should chose his allies, ministers and protect himself from flatterers. In order to insure advisers honesty a ruler has to make them dependent and avoid complete freedom of debate to maintain his authority. To illustrate these points he analyses how Italian monarchs lost their territories. The last aspect Machiavelli focuses on is luck, or fortune, and he believes that we are successful when our ways are suited to time and circumstances, and unsuccessful when they are not (85). Finally, Machiavelli (Ch. XXVI) applies his analysis to Italys current situation and asks himself whether the country would be ready for a new monarch. The most controversial aspects of The Prince reside in Machiavellis intentions in dedicating it to the Medicis. Indeed, they had ruled (on and off) during thirty years in the Florentine Republic, which was assaulted by the French barbarians. The text provides a rather tangible and practical analysis of power, which is not necessarily cynical. The first assumption is that Machiavelli simply wanted to gain the ruling familys favors, which intention then is merely straightforward. However, the irony comes from the fact that in dedicating his treatise to the Medicis he gave them a lesson ...
