Machiavelli retires to his family estate at Sant'Andrea in Percussina (near San Casciano in Val di Pesa) and begins work on his major writings.

Chief among these is “The Prince,” written this year, in which the author, having observed Cesare Borgia's totalitarian government in Florence, and the confusion that followed its demise, argues that an effective ruler should be pragmatic rather than virtuous in his use of power.

Although Machiavelli partly bases his argument on his reading of classical historians, The Prince is the first work to openly treat the use of force in the state and to claim that the pursuit of stable government condones amoral actions.

Machiavelli is possibly the first writer to use the term “state” (Italian stato), ultimately traceable to the Roman legal idea of status civilis, or "the civil condition.” Concerning himself in The Prince with a principality, a state in which one ruler or a small elite governs a mass of subjects who have no active political life, Machiavelli addresses a monarchical ruler and offers advice designed to keep that ruler in power.

Recommending policies that would discourage mass political activism and channel the subjects' energies into private pursuits, the author’s objective is to persuade the monarch that he could best preserve his power by the judicious employment of violence, by respecting the persons, property, and traditions of his subjects, and by promoting material prosperity.

Interpreting European imperialism as a natural expression of human aggression, Machiavelli also urges new patterns of education.