France, of what happened to Coligny when he was at Angoulême in 1568. He
set up a gibbet there, and on his own authority hanged upon it Michel
Grêlet, Guardian of the Cordéliers, and a most zealous preacher against
the heretics. In his dying speech on the scaffold, the latter said,
“Admiral, you put me to death very unjustly. I am going to God now to
give account to Him of my actions; but remember, you and all the people
present here to-day, I predict that in a short time you will yourself be
thrown from an upper window, and your body will be cut to pieces.” The
histories go on to say that an Italian cut off Coligny’s head to send it
to Cardinal de Lorraine at Rome, whilst other men cut off his hands and
other parts of his body; also that at about six in the morning the mob
found his body on a dunghill in a stable, dragged it to the Seine, and
threw it in. It was again fished out, and hung by the foot to the gibbet
of Montfauçon, where it became blackened in the smoke of the fires that
were lighted below it. (Guynaud, “Concord. Nostra.,” p. 113.)
_Sixain 52._ [I. 90.]
La grand’ Cité qui n’a pain à demy
Encor un coup la Sainct Barthelemy
Engravera au profond de son ame:
Nismes, Rochelle, Geneve et Montpellier,
Castres, Lyon, Mars entrant au Belier,
S’entrebattront; le tout pour une Dame.
_Translation._
The great city that has bread at only half rations
Will have the further blow of Saint Bartholomew
Cut deep into its soul:
Nismes, Rochelle, Geneva, and Montpellier,
Castres, Lyons, with Mars entering the Ram,
Will fight one another; and all for the Queen mother.
The great city is, of course, Paris, and _une Dame_ is the Queen,
Catherine de Medici. It has to be borne in mind that these sixains
were not published till thirty-three years after the massacre of St.
Bartholomew’s. Naturally, the prediction loses all special authority
in this case. It raises, however, a singular question: Why, if it was
written after the event, it was not rendered more explicit, if those who
published it had an interest in augmenting the fame of the prophet? It
looks very much as if the testamentary duties were performed in perfect
good faith, mechanically, and without even understanding the purport or
meaning of the words.
Another passage relating to St. Bartholomew’s massacre occurs in the text
of 1605, and its authority is no greater than that of the sixain just
quoted, as it was not published till after the event. It goes, however,
to strengthen the remark I above made. Those who caused the work to be
printed seem to have been perfectly unconscious of the meaning of the
stanzas; they regarded the whole procedure as a mere form of respect to
the memory of a celebrated relative. Their duty was clear to them, and
they performed it; but the writings were to them perfectly unintelligible.
Presage III. (ii. 252) is dated as if written January, 1555, and for
anything that I can see there is nothing whatever to make one doubt but
that it was so. Having made this point as clear as I can, the reader will
take it or reject it as he pleases.
Le gros airain qui les heures ordonne,
Sur le trespas du Tyran cassera:[88]
Pleurs, plaintes et cris, eaux, glace pain ne dône
V. S. C.[89] paix l’arme passera.
_Translation._
The brazen bell that rings the daily hours
Will play full volley at the tyrant’s death:
Tears, cries, and groans; the waters freeze up bread,
With son of Charles the Fifth a peace is made.
The tyrant here is interpreted by Guynaud (p. 107) as Coligny, and he
appends some interesting remarks from Favin’s “Histoire de Navarre,”
touching St. Bartholomew’s Day in Paris. He says they marked the
lodgings of the Huguenots that they might know where to find them in the
hurry, and it was arranged that at the tocsin of the great bell at the
palace, as well as that of the church of St. Germain de l’Auxerrois, they
were to lay violent hands (_main-baisse_) on all the heretics. Two p.m.
was the hour appointed. The Catholics who went into the street were to
distinguish themselves by a white cross upon their hats. The bodies of
the slain were for the most part thrown into the river. Mezerai records
that the queen-mother hastened the signal by a full hour, and that it
was, contrary to arrangement, started by the bell of St. Germain de
l’Auxerrois, although that was immediately followed up by the big bell of
the palace.
Coligny was slain in bed, and flung out of window in his shirt only. His
face, being covered with blood, the Duc de Guise coolly wiped it with his
handkerchief, to assure himself that it actually was Coligny. We shall
shortly see this bloodthirsty villain himself murdered at Blois.
The massacre continued the whole week through, for seven days that is,
but the chief fury had spent itself by Tuesday night. The Janus Gallicus
professes, though how Aimé could have any certainty of it I cannot tell,
that Nostradamus, by _tyran_, alludes to Coligny, and says that the
bell tolled so long that it broke. The quatrain does not necessitate
the supposal of any such thing, and I believe the fact is not elsewhere
recorded. Of course, if it be, it would be so literal a fulfilment that
all the sceptical world would immediately take advantage of what I have
pointed out, that this is a prophecy _après coup_. If so doing should
rejoice anybody, I can only say that he has my consent. My business is
to put the facts, without a shred of disguise, before the reader; he can
weave them into theories for himself. If I at any time manifest what I
think, he will be pleased to accept it merely as a contribution towards
the same end.
In January, 1572, the river Seine was frozen over for a long time, and
the roads became almost impassable. This _may_ perhaps be thought to
interpret _eaux glace pain ne dône_, with such hieroglyphic symbolism
of scarcity as oracular utterance delights in. It is pretty certain
that provisions did not enter Paris that winter with their usual flow.
In allusion to the army mentioned, Guynaud says that the Duc d’Anjou
marched with fifty thousand men to the siege of Rochelle, where, after
firing thirteen thousand shots, they at last effected a breach. What they
battered down, oddly enough, was the Boulevard of the Gospel (_Boulevard
de l’Évangile_), but they could not storm it, and lost twenty thousand
men without taking the place.
In that eulogium on Catherine de Medici which de Brantôme (“Panthéon
Littéraire,” ii. 116) calls her Life, he relates that she died of a
broken heart, from grief at having consented to the massacre on this
ill-starred day, and that without intending it she (p. 133) had invited
the nobles and lords of the land to gather to it. The Cardinal de Bourbon
said to her, “Madam, you have brought us all to the butchery without
intending it.” This touched her to the quick; she took to her bed and
never left it again. One can only say this does not quite accord with
Mezerai and her sounding the tocsin an hour earlier by anticipation.
Further, as the massacre took place in 1572, and the queen-mother did not
die at Blois till 1589, seventeen years after, her heart resisted grief
much as granite does vinegar. The lady must originally have possessed a
very good heart. De Brantôme says poison was talked of; but he considers
the broken heart more likely.
CIVIL WAR UNDER HENRI III. (1559-1589). [I. 93.]
_Century III.—Quatrain 55._
En l’an qu’un œil en France regnera
La Cour sera en un bien fascheux trouble:
Le Grand de Blois son amy tuera;
Le regne mis en mal et doute double.
_Translation._
In the year when a one-eyed man shall reign in France
The Court shall be in very vexatious trouble:
The great one of Blois shall kill his friend;
The Kingdom, plunged into evil and doubt, shall divide in two.
M. le Pelletier’s version here seems to be a little forced. The one-eyed
man he makes to be Henri II., whose eye was destroyed by Montgomery’s
lance. The Court is to be in great embarrassment. Henri III. (_le Grand
de Blois_) will convoke at that place the States-General, and will
there assassinate the Duc de Guise, first taking with him, in Italian
fashion, the Holy Communion, as a sign of entire reconciliation. Then the
desolated kingdom will divide into two camps—the Royalists on one side,
and the Leaguers on the other.
REGENCY OF CATHERINE DE MEDICI (1537-1574). [I. 94.]
_Century VI.—Quatrain 29._
La vefve[90] saincte entendent les nouvelles
De ses rameaux mis en perplex et trouble:
Qui[91] sera duict[92] appaiser[93] les querelles
Par son pourchas[94] des razes[95] fera comble.
_Translation._
The holy widow shall receive news
Of the difficulties that perplex and trouble her children;
He whom she calls home to quiet disturbances
Shall bring them to a crisis by his pursuit of shaven heads.
There is a little difficulty in applying the epithet _saincte_ to the
queen-mother, and Garencières supposes it to signify _Roma la Santa_;
but, if so, the rest will have no meaning. Nostradamus is so entirely
for Henri II., his wife, and the Romish Church, that in spite of his
designating her son _le roi farouche_, he might think the term _saincte_
not inappropriate to her. She sent a private despatch to her son,
Henri III., to hurry back from Poland, as we shall see him doing in
the next quatrain cited, that he may take the direction of the French
Government. He enters into an alliance with Henri IV. and the Huguenots
to counterbalance the Catholic League. Thence follows the murder of the
Cardinal, brother of the Duc de Guise, who was murdered by the King’s
order on December 24, 1588, one day after his brother. This is the
prosecution of the Church (_pourchas des razes_), coupled with the
repression of the League, which culminates the crisis. The only jarring
word in this concordance, when once it is comprehended, lies in the
word _saincte_, to which I have already drawn attention, and which may
be explained by the devotion felt by Nostradamus to the crown of France
and to Rome. It is evident that Brantôme was able to regard her as a
most admirable and lovable lady. The tocsin and the blood spoil our
appreciation.
HENRI III. RENOUNCES POLAND (JUNE 26, 1574). [I. 96.]
_Century VII.—Quatrain 35._
La grande Pesche[96] viendra plaindre,[97] plorer
D’avoir esleu: trompés seront en l’âge:
Guiere[98] avec eux ne voudra demourer:
Deceu[99] sera par ceux de son langage.
_Translation._
The great gambler[100] shall complain and weep
To have elected him: deceived in his age:
The duke had no desire to stay with them:
He will be slain by men of his own tongue.
Poland, then, will deplore having elected the Duc d’Anjou in 1573, for
he stayed only one year with them, and absconded on the 26th of June
at night, at his mother’s summons, to France. The Comte de Fanchin,
the Grand Chamberlain, was sent after him, and overtook him at Piesna,
a frontier town in Austria, but the duke was deaf to all intercession
(Guynaud, p. 119). He never took the Polish throne because he wished it,
but because he was pressed by the Court of France; and now French affairs
called him back. Guynaud thinks that the last line means that his friends
deceived him into taking it; but this is because he did not discover the
Latin meaning in _deceu_. For certainly Nostradamus meant that he would
go home to die by Clement’s hand, as he shows in as many words a little
later on. Guynaud says that Poland had been deceived as to the prince’s
age, and that he was represented to be much older than he really was.
EDICT OF POITIERS (OCTOBER 3, 1577). [I. 97.]
_Century V.—Quatrain 72._
Pour le plaisir d’edict voluptueux,
On mestera le poison dans la foy:
Venus sera en cours si vertueux,[101]
Qu’obfusquera du soleil tout aloy.[102]
_Translation._
To pass an edict of a sugared sort,
They’ll mingle poison with our holy faith:
And Venus darken, in her course robust,
All law and light from out the sacred Sun.
The Sun, in Nostradamus, often stands for the Church or Christianity,
by him believed to be within the palisade of Popery. It might also mean
France, whose King’s name was _Rex Christianissimus_. Louis XIV. assumed
the device of the sun, with the motto _nec pluribus impar_. Venus stands
for sensual pleasure—the world triumphant over the Church. The edict of
Poitiers, October 8, 1577, so far favoured the Protestants that they were
authorized to hold public services on the reformed footing. Calvinist
ministers might marry, and auricular confession was suppressed. Thus
did Henri III. mingle the poison of unchastity, etc., with the Catholic
faith. The licence of morals (_Vénus_) became unbridled and tarnished the
law of Christendom (_Soleil_).
Guynaud interprets with Le Pelletier in this, and considers the poison
to consist particularly in freeing the Huguenots from the Sacrifice of
Penance; in condemning the monastic orders; in encouraging unchastity,
by allowing the Calvinist ministers to marry; in abandoning confession.
_Vénus sera_ is a line showing that many monks will quit the cloisters
to indulge in marriage and _other_ debauchery. The last line may be
understood, that the glory of the King will be tarnished, and make him to
be ill thought of by the Catholics; or that it will obscure faith in the
Church (p. 122).
JOURNÉE DES BARRICADES (MAY 12, 1588). [I. 98.]
_Century III.—Quatrain 50._
La république de la grande cité
A grand rigueur ne voudra consentir:
Roy sortir hors par trompette cité,
L’eschelle au mur la cité repentir.
_Translation._
The Republic of the great city (Paris)
Would not submit itself to the very rigorous treatment;
The King summoned by trumpet to quit the city,
Which is called to repent by the ladder at the wall.
This quatrain and the event it prefigures are alike wonderful.
Garencières is much puzzled over it. What city has a commonwealth? Is it
Venice, Genoa, Geneva, Luca? He cannot tell. However, the “great city”
in Nostradamus almost always stands for Paris. The League, mistress in
Paris, would not submit to the coercive measures of Henri III., and by
a call to arms—perhaps the old tocsin of St. Germain de l’Auxerrois
sounding the while—told him, as _par trompette_, he had better quit the
city with all speed. Trial and sentence in one word, “Take yourself
off,”—for the first time uttered to a king of the race Capetian, in some
eight hundred years of history. Later on, the drumming and trumpeting
crack-brained citizens, with nothing about them to be called sane
but their river, will feel themselves called to repentance when the
escalading ladders are laid by Henri III. to the wall.
* * * * *
Let it be noted now that this _Day of the Barricades_ is very remarkable,
and, as such, is not to be found at all in Bohn’s “Index of Dates.”
It was, however, repeated in the civil war of the Fronde, August 26,
1648; in the three days’ war, July 27, 28, 29, 1830, that set Philippe
Citoyen on his rickety perch; and again in June 23, 1848. But close on
two hundred years after, in 1789, when the philosophic Republic was at
hand and the Bastille was taken; when another Capet was to be handled
by the mob; offering _cul pour tête_ to the admiration of a wise world,
then was to be best discerned the result of this first reaction from St.
Bartholomew’s Day; pretty well that tocsin of treason has rung alarum to
a world on fire. A further curious analogy demands attention here. The
Popes of Rome were the earliest patrons of the principle of regicide, and
Clément the monk, whom we shall soon introduce, was the first to practise
it; here we see the Catholic League to be the first organized body to
repudiate kingship, to set up a republican form, and consecrate a day
to revolt and insurrection, which has become memorable in history for
ever, though forgotten by Bohn, as _la Journée des Barricades_. But what
shall we say of this forecast by Nostradamus, fifty-three years before
the event happened? He is, I think, the first who ever put in type the
word _Republic_, as representative of rebellion and revolt, throughout
the modern world. But here we have it,—the dough of prophecy made out of
the ground wheat-seed of time, and baked by the oven of events into the
bread of history; not Walpole’s lies, nor the principles, mostly false,
that philosopher Hume finds so cleverly for us, but the facts divested of
motive,—like a petrified coral reef of insect humanities concreted into
permanence and solidity by the death of myriads. For those who can see,
it lies all contained in that linear rune, _La république de la grande
cité_.
MURDER OF THE DUC DE GUISE (DECEMBER 23, 1588). [I. 99.]
_Century III.—Quatrain 51._
Paris conjure un grand meutre commetre,
Blois le fera sortir en plein effect:
Ceux d’Orleans voudront leur chef remettre;
Angers, Troye, Langres leur feront un meffait.
_Translation._
Paris conspires to commit a great murder;
Blois will carry it into full effect:
The Orléanois will try to place a Leaguer at their head;
Angers, Troye, Langres will try and undo this.
Henri III. at Paris contrived the murder of the Duc de Guise, who had
incited and led the Parisians on the day of the Barricades, when Henri
was compelled to fly to Chartres. Henri de Lorraine, Duc de Guise,
was murdered the day after the Cardinal, his brother, had been, at
the Convention of the Estates at Blois. The murder took place at the
Château de Blois. The Orléanois, on learning this, rose against Balzac
d’Entragues, the governor of the town, and set Charles de Lorraine,
Chevalier d’Aumale, at their head,—he was one of the chiefs of the
League,—whilst Angers, Troyes, and Langres took the side of Henri III.
It is not very easy, says Le Pelletier, to distinctly prove the exact
position taken up by these three towns, but Nostradamus habitually puts a
part to stand for the whole. In the divided interests various cities took
differing sides. At the time he wrote there was nothing to show that such
internecine separations would take place. He clearly anticipated them,
and, so far, is absolutely right. We cannot, it seems, prove him to be
right in all the details; but equally, there is nothing to show him wrong.
LE DUC DE MAYENNE (1589-1593). [I. 100.]
_Century I.—Quatrain 85._
Par la response de dame Roy troublé,
Ambassadeurs mespriseront leur vie:
Le Grand ses freres contrefera doublé
Par deux mourront ire,[103] haine, et envie.[104]
_Translation._
The King shall be troubled by the Queen-mother,
The deputies at risk of life remonstrate:
The Guise will act for both his brothers dead,
The two whom envy, hatred, malice slew.
Henri III. will be troubled by the response of Catherine de Medici, who
disapproves of the murder of the Guise; the deputies (_ambassadeurs_)
from both Paris and Blois make lively remonstrance at the peril of their
lives. The Duc de Mayenne (_le Grand_), when proclaimed chief of the
League, will take the title of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, and,
as if doubled in authority, will represent his two brothers, Henri de
Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine, whom the envy, hatred, and malice
of Henri III. and his Court had assassinated. We seem to have here a
republic tempered by daggers, in place of what followed, a tyranny
tempered with epigrams. This active forging of daggers, knives, and
sword-cutlery in France, to carve out an idol of a republic, with its
blood-stained heathen Phrygian cap; taken together with its repetition
sixty years later, in the Barricades of the Fronde, August, 1648, was
clearly generating the poison and concentrating its venom for the most
startling act of death known to mankind, but one, in all history,—at
Whitehall, on that wintry 30th of January, 1649,—the venom, that by the
subtle inoculation of a Raleigh could, for a time, strike silly such a
soul as Milton’s—“Psalmist of Paradise,”—who, but for this damned virus
in the world, might have taught men how to realize a paradise on earth.
CRIME OF JACQUES CLÉMENT (AUGUST 1, 1589). [I. 102.]
_Century IX.—Quatrain 36._
Un grand Roy prins[105] entre les mains d’un Joyne[106]
Non loin de Pasque, confusion, coup cultre.[107]
Perpet,[108] captifs temps que foudre en la husne,[109]
Lors que trois freres se blesseront et murtre.[110]
_Translation._
A great King taken by a young man’s hand
Close upon Easter, confusion, and a knife:
There’s powder on the tower for captives then,
Three brothers perish; this death takes the last.
Henri III., in his camp at St. Cloud, will be struck by the hand of a
young monk,—_Joyne_ might easily be a misprint for _Moyne_. Jacques
Clément was twenty-five. He came straight from receiving the Communion
(_non loin de Pasque_). He thought he did God service (_confusion_); he
struck him in the lower bowel with a knife. The crime will be committed
when the Parisians are cut off (_captifs_) by the King beleaguering,
and his vengeance is ready to fall upon their ramparts. This murder
completes the violent deaths of the three sons, the issue of Henri II.
and Catherine de Medici.
There is no occasion to call attention to the remarkable lucidity of this
forecast, when once the linguistic difficulties of its conveyance have
been studiously solved. The demilune towers projecting at intervals from
the wall, as at the Haute Ville, Boulogne, well enough represent the
_husne_, or tower of vantage, in the quatrain, they need but a shield or
belvidere added.
DEATH OF HENRI III. (AUGUST 2, 1589). [I. 103.]
_Présage 58._
Le Roy-Roy n’estre, du Doux la pernicie,[111]
L’an pestilent, les esmues[112] nubileux.
Tien[113] qui tiendra, les grands non letitie,[114]
Et passera terme de cavilleux.[115]
_Translation._
The twice King dies, by Clement hand is slain;
War and revolt make the year pestilent.
Hold who hold can, the great oppose not well,
Live laughter down and teach the cavillers.
This is a most singular prophecy. Henri III., King, first of Poland
then of France is quaintly called _Roy-Roy_. _Le Doux_ is an excellent
synonym for _Clément_, all must admit. The year was harassed by civil
and religious war, and the Leaguers (_les esmues_) begin to grow anxious
about the consequences. Let Henri IV. hold hard his own, the lilied
sceptre: “Let Curzon holde what Curzon helde” be his motto. The time is
passed for the Catholic grandees (_les grands_) to woo Lætitia. The King
can laugh now at the laughers of the Guise; he laughs best who laughs
last.
The murder by Clément of the anti-papal king, Henri III., followed very
close upon the setting up of Jesuit Clubs in Paris under papal sanction
(Elliot’s _Horæ Apoc._, iii. 321). The pulpits also had been filled by
clerical preachers of sedition and bloodshed. Precisely two hundred
years later the Bastille was taken, and in the Jacobin Clubs of that
day were hung, says Alison, the pictures of Clément and Ravaillac, in
the gloomy rooms of the old convent, in which they met like night-birds
of ill-omen, and within little wreaths beneath each picture might be
seen inscribed the words, “He was fortunate; he killed a king.” This
is so sentimental, petty, and petulant, that it would move to laughter
any large good-natured mind, were it not for the slaver of malignity
that accompanies everything that drops from the tongues of that sack of
reptiles gathered out of the Jacobin dunghill, as they crawled forth one
by one poisoning and to poison.
HENRI QUATRE.
THE COMING OF HENRI IV. (AUGUST 2, 1589). [I. 105.]
_Century IX.—Quatrain 50._
Mendosus[116] tost viendra à son haut regne,
Mettant arriere un peu les Norlaris:[117]
Le rouge blesme, la masle à l’interregne,
Le jeune crainte, et frayeur Barbaris.
_Translation._
Mendosus shall soon come to his high dominion,
Setting back those of Lorraine a little.
The old cardinal pale, the male of the interregnum,
The young man timid, and the barbarian alarmed.
Henri IV. the heretic Vendôme, changed his religion thrice. Jeanne
d’Albert, his mother, brought him up a Protestant. To escape St.
Bartholomew’s Day, he professed Catholicism, in 1572. In 1576, he
turned to Protestantism, to head the Calvinist party. He declared
himself Catholic to take the throne of France. Through the Salic law
he ascended, to the exclusion of the Lorraine princes (_Norlaris_). In
this way, he shut out the old Cardinal de Bourbon, pale (_blesme_,) with
age, the Duc de Mayenne, Lieutenant General of the kingdom during the
interregnum, the young Duc de Guise, and the barbarously savage Philip
II. of Spain, who had pretensions to the crown through Elizabeth his
wife, the daughter of Henri II.