Dwarkesh Patel

And right then the French are invading Italy and he's scared and he botches the diplomacy with France and falls into disrepute.

And the city takes the opportunity to kick him out.

The subsequent regimes, which are an independent republic again, are the ones for which Machiavelli works.

He was part of the regime that ruled while they were in exile.

When they returned, they viewed him as an enemy.

He didn't actively organize to resist them, but his name was found on a list of potential people that an anti-Medicean resistance movement had intended to recruit.

He is arrested, tortured, exiled.

And in exile, writes the prince,

but dedicates it to the very family that exiled him because they now control Florence and he will only work for Florence.

He doesn't want his manual of here are the great secrets of statecraft to be in the hands of anybody but his homeland so that it will defend his homeland.

When Florence exiles you, they tell you go to X place and wait.

And if you're good, we'll invite you back.

And Florence has been doing this for ages because Florence actually used this as the core of its diplomatic core, right?

When you have no nobility, you can't have ambassadors in the full-on noble ambassador sense.

There's nobody in the city of sufficient rank to go talk to the kings who are, you know, and have played chess with the sultan and all of these things that you have to do to be a proper ambassador.

So what Florence did instead is that they would exile people and say, OK, we're exiling you.

You go to Bruges.

Be our contact in Bruges.

You go to London.

Be our contact in London.