Machiavelli and the Ideology of the Offensive: Gunpowder Weapons in The Art of War

B. Cassidy

DOI:10.1353/jmh.2003.0106

Corpus ID: 159716602

Machiavelli and the Ideology of the Offensive: Gunpowder Weapons in The Art of War

@article{Cassidy2003MachiavelliAT,
  title={Machiavelli and the Ideology of the Offensive: Gunpowder Weapons in The Art of War},
  author={B. Cassidy},
  journal={The Journal of Military History},
  year={2003},
  volume={67},
  pages={381 - 404}
}

B. Cassidy

Published 2003

History

The Journal of Military History

Historians have often claimed that Niccolò Machiavelli shunned the use of gunpowder weapons, both field artillery and hand-held weapons, because of their absence in the ancient world which the Italian loved so dearly. Machiavelli, however, did not reject the use of gunpowder weapons, but gave them a secondary role in his military scheme. The reason for this was that, in Machiavelli's time, reliance on gunpowder weapons necessitated defensive tactics in battle, while Machiavelli believed that an… CONTINUE READING

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