always consistent) political ideas, Machiavelli idealized the ‘ancient
institutions’ (ordini antiche) of France to an extraordinary degree. This
kingdom more than any other was governed by laws and ordinances
(leggi ed ordini), which the parlementswere there to defend. The parle-
mentof Paris in particular stood up to the nobility and judged the
actions of the king himself; if it lost its pertinacity in doing so, the realm
would disintegrate. Security as much as freedom was what most people
wanted, and in France they were made to feel secure by the king’s pledge
to apply its numerous laws to himself. He who first ordered the French
state (chi ordino quello stato)—presumably Charlemagne—had in-
tended that its kings should observe its laws, while having a free hand
in the use of arms and of finance.^92
Claude de Seyssel, a Savoyard jurist who became a counsellor of
Charles VIII and Louis XII, a parlementaireof both Toulouse and Paris,
bishop of Marseilles and ultimately archbishop of Turin, writing his
Monarchie de Francefor the new King Francis I at the same time that
Machiavelli was composing his Discorsi, saw French royal authority as
‘not totally absolute nor yet too much restrained, but regulated and
bridled by good laws, ordinances, and customs’. Of the three, religion
was predictably put first, and after it justice, which was of ‘greater
authority in France than in any other country of the world we know of,
especially on account of the parlements’; these were ‘instituted chiefly to
bridle the absolute power that kings might want to use’ and ensured
justice against both king and subjects in civil matters. The third bridle
was polity (police), that is the ordinances made by kings ‘which tend to
the conservation of the realm in general and in detail’, and have been
kept so long that kings themselves could not derogate from them.
Particularly important were the laws concerning royal domain, which
could not be alienated without the approval of the sovereign courts, for
its depletion forced the king to burden his people with extraordinary
taxes. The monarch’s role was to guard the laws, ordinances, and
praiseworthy customs of France concerning la Police, by which the
realm had been brought to such glory and power. To complete the dis-
cussion of this topic, ‘which is the most difficult one to unravel’, Seyssel
defines Policeas the harmony of the Monarchie de France, which exists
when subjects from all the estates are maintained in common accord
292 Monarchical State of the Later Middle Ages
(^92) Niccolò Machiavelli, Il Principe, caps. 1, 19: pp. 51, 143 in Mario Puppo’s edn. of the
Opere Politiche(Florence, n.d.) and pp. 5, 66 in the English translation by Quentin Skinner
and Russell Price (Cambridge UP, 1988); Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, book I,
caps. 16, 19, 55, 58, III, caps. 1, 41: pp. 254, 264, 347, 356, 502–3, 630 in the Opere
Politiche, ed. Puppo, and pp. 255, 264, 333–4, 341–2, 463–4, 573 in the English tr. by Leslie
J. Walker in vol. i of his Discourses of Niccolò Machiavelli, 2 vols. (London, 1950); cf.
Walker, Discourses, ii. 41–2, for Charlemagne as the ‘founder’ of France; J. R. Hale,
Machiavelli and Renaissance Italy(London, 1961), caps, 3, 6, 7, 8; J. H. Whitfield, Discourses
on Machiavelli(Cambridge: Heffer, 1969), caps. 8–9.