# Machiavelli’s 10 December 1513 letter to Francesco Vettori records the drafting of a princely treatise

Date: 1513

## The fact

On 10 December 1513 [Machiavelli](/people/niccolo-machiavelli) wrote to Francesco Vettori describing farm days and evening work on a small book of princely rule, the documentary date for The Prince’s composition. The letter is the instrument. Later print is 1532.

## Context

A private letter later published is a knowledge-access and dating source. It is not yet a printed handbook of fear.

Niccolò Machiavelli is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official or archival pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Letters of Machiavelli — Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/lettersofmachiav00machrich; Internet Archive).

## Significance

Composition evidence is an initiating knowledge path. High confidence on the letter’s date in the received correspondence.

Composition evidence is an initiating knowledge path. High confidence on the letter’s date in the received correspondence.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.
Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is edu-[digital-learning-access](/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access). The welfare reading used in this dossier is improving. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Niccolo Machiavelli: https://factrail.ai/people/niccolo-machiavelli

## Drivers

- Digital Learning Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access

## Sources

- https://archive.org/details/lettersofmachiav00machrich
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/machiavelli/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/mc-vettori-letter-1513