[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. Stor._ vol. xv. pp. 377 to 453. Machiavelli's treatise _De re militari_, or _I libri sull' arte della guerra_, was the work of his later life; it was published in 1521 at Florence.
[3] Though Machiavelli deserves the credit of this military system, the part of Antonio Giacomini in carrying it into effect must not be forgotten. Pitti, in his 'Life of Giacomini' (_Arch. Stor._ vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 241), says: 'Avendo per dieci anni continovi fatto prova nelle fazioni e nelle battaglie de' fanti del dominio e delli esterni, aveva troppo bene conosciuto con quanta più sicurezza si potesse la repubblica servire de' suoi propri che delli istranieri.' Machiavelli had gone as Commissary to the camp of Giacomini before Pisa in August 1505; there the man of action and the man of theory came to an agreement: both found in the Gonfalonier Soderini a chief of the republic capable of entering into their views.
It must be admitted that the new militia proved ineffectual in the hour of need. To revive the martial spirit of a nation, enervated by tyranny and given over to commerce, merely by a stroke of genius, was beyond the force of even Machiavelli. When Prato had been sacked in 1512, the Florentines, destitute of troops, divided among themselves and headed by the excellent but hesitating Piero Soderini, threw their gates open to the Medici. Giuliano, the brother of Pope Leo, and Lorenzo, his nephew, whose statues sit throned in the immortality of Michael Angelo's marble upon their tombs in San Lorenzo, disposed of the republic at their pleasure. 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.