Abstract

The article investigates the terms which Niccolò Machiavelli uses in order to discuss and illustrate infantry military tactics in his writings, from the Ordinance for a Militia (1506), to the following major works. In particular, Machiavelli's vocabulary in his sketch of the battle of Ravenna (1512) in The Prince, and the discussion of the so called "ordine terzo", which apparently only refers to a technical military aspect, actually demonstrates that his representation of the battle points to a major theoretical problem. This hypothesis is corroborated by an analysis of Machiavelli's uses of unpublished sources, which were probably amongst the first accounts of the events of Ravenna available to him.