This study will compare two books on the nature of political and military leadership and power, Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Einhard and Notker the Stammerer, and The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli. The authors of the two biographies of Charlemagne focus on an historical personage and explore leadership and power as expressions of his specific life. Machiavelli focuses on the theory of leadership and power as he urges it to be practiced by the ideal prince, but he uses historical examples of past effective and ineffective exercises of power to bolster his arguments. Despite this difference in the two books' focus, the study will argue that the authors take the same essential position with respect to the subject: political and military power can be maintained only by a leader who is willing and able to use whatever means are necessary to bring obedience from one's people and to subdue one's enemies.
Machiavelli provides the theoretical blueprint for such a leader, and Einhard and Notker provide the details of the life and achievements of one specific leader who certainly fulfilled many of the requirements of that blueprint. For example, especially significant in both books is the skill and boldness of the leader in military affairs. As Thorpe writes in his Introduction to the biographies, "From . . . 768 until . . . 810, the reign of Charlemagne was one long and never-ending series of warlike enterprises." This is a manifestation of precisely what Machiavelli says should be the primary concern of the effective prince: "A prince . . . should have no other object, no other thought, no other subject of study, than war. . . . This is the only art for a man who commands." Not the welfare of the people, not the "refinements of life," but only war, for the prince who is a master of war will remain a prince, and he who is not will fall. Charlemagne is Machiavelli's theory of ideal leadership come to life, or as close to the ideal as on...