The article highlights the problem of the reception in the military regulations of the era of Peter I of the concept of combination of «valor and necessity» by Niccolo Machiavelli in its military-ethical refraction. The basic sources of the study were Machiavelli's treatises «On the State of Affairs in Pisa», «The Art of War» and «The Prince», as well as the text of the military regulations of Peter I. Historiography lacks the experience of comparative consideration of these groups of sources. Having studied the advanced historiography on the personalities of Niccolo Machiavelli and Peter I in its military-ethical aspects, the author concludes about the relationship between military ethics in Machiavelli's concept and in the statutes of Peter I at the level of codification by the second most progressive ideas of the first.