Calvinist Innocent Gentillet's (1535-88) criticism of Machiavelli's militia army: a response of nobiliary France to Dell'arte della guerra

Abstract

Although being one of Machiavelli's least known and studied works nowadays, the treatise Dell'arte della guerra (1521) found rapid circulation in 16^th century Europe. Published in Paris in 1546 (in translation by Jean Charrier), the work was critically analysed a few decades later in the definitive version of the Discours d'Estat contre Machiavel (Geneva, 1585) by the Calvinist jurist Innocent Gentillet. This article presents the arguments offered by Gentillet against the army of citizen militias proposed by Machiavelli. We show the interrelation of this polemic with the criticisms addressed by Gentillet to other Machiavelli's writings (in particular Il Principe and Discorsi). In Gentillet’s Discours we find the first systematic criticism to Machiavelli's political and social thought. At the same time, the treatise can be consider as the virulent response of nobiliary France to the neo-Roman republicanism defended by Machiavelli.