allied himself with the Guises, and supported the Catholic League.
THE DEPRESSION OF THE DE GUISE FAMILY (1589-1593). [I. 107.]
_Century X.—Quatrain 18._
Le rang Lorrain fera place à Vendosme,
Le haut mis bas, et le bas mis en haut,
Le fils de Mamon sera esleu[118] en Rome,
Et les deux Grands seront mis en defant.
_Translation._
The house of Lorraine yields to the Vendôme,
The high put low, the low put high instead,
The son of Mamon they elect at Rome,
And the Pretenders both are in default.
The house of Lorraine is now eclipsed by that of Vendôme. Mayenne, the
chief, is put down, and _le petit Béarnais_, Henri IV., rises to respect
and power. This heretic son of mammon is accepted by choice at Rome for
King of France, and neither of the Pretenders will ever be king.
The Cardinal de Bourbon had been actually proclaimed King by the League,
as Charles X., but he was dead in 1590. Isabella, the daughter of Philip
II., was incapable by the Salic law. So that the only two remaining were
the Duc de Mayenne and the young Duc de Guise. They were shut out by
Henri IV. and never reached the throne.
HENRI IV. ABJURES PROTESTANTISM (JULY 21, 1593). [I. 108.]
_Presage 76._
Par le legat du terrestre et marin,
Le Grande Cape[119] à tout s’accommoder;
Estre à l’escoute tacite[120] Norlarin,[121]
Qu’à[122] son advis ne voudra accorder.
_Translation._
Before the legate of the earth and sea,
Henry the Great will yield to all required:
Mayenne to all will listen and not speak a word,
And will grant nothing of his own free will.
Sixtus V. had boldly fulminated an excommunication against Henri Quatre,
the Great Capet, but the latter subscribes to all required by the legate
of him who can bind and loose all on the earth and sea. He abjures
Protestantism at St. Denis, on July 25, 1593, the Archbishop of Bourges
officiating. The Duc de Mayenne (the _Lorraine_), Lieutenant-General of
France and Master of Paris for the League, will look on in silence, and
as far as he can will prevent Paris from receiving the King. The city did
not open its gates to him till March 22, 1594, eight months after the
abjuration.
MARSEILLES TAKEN BY THE SPANIARDS (FEBRUARY 17, 1696). [I. 109.]
_Century III.—Quatrain 88._
De Barselonne par mer si[123] grand’ armée,
Toute Marseille de frayeur tremblera:
Isles saisies, de mer ayde fermée,
Ton traditeur[124] en terre nagera.[125]
_Translation._
From Barcelona a great fleet shall come,
And terror strike into the town Marseilles:
The isles are seized, and help by sea cut off,
But the betrayer is made swim on land.
A Spanish fleet of a dozen galleys, commanded by Charles Doria, was sent
by Philip II. to help the Leaguers. He took possession of the islands
Château d’If and Ratonneau, and thus cut off all help to seaward. Charles
de Casau (_le traditeur_) was consul, and proposed to place the city in
the hands of the Spaniards; Pierre Libertat, however, ran him through
with a sword, and the populace dragged the dead body through the muddy
channels of the streets.
Guynaud refers to the same event as fulfilling this quatrain in the time
of Henri IV., but by a misprint gives 1536 instead of 1596. The islands
he mentions are those of St. Honnorat and of St. Marguerite. Black’s
pretentious _Imperial Gazetteer_ professes to give a plan of the town,
and you see a number of nameless vermicelli streets running all about,
but not a single island off the coast is visible. One may suppose,
however, that the islands are there, and that all the four were occupied
by the Spaniards.
BIRON’S PUNISHMENT (DECEMBER 2, 1602). [I. 110.]
_Sixain 6._
Quand de Robin[126] la traisteruse enterprise,
Mettra Seigneurs et en peine un grand Prince,
Sceu[127] par la Fin[128] chef on lui tranchera.
La plume au vent, amye dans Espagne,[129]
Poste[130] attrappé estant dans la campagne,
Et l’escrivain dans l’eaüe se jettera.
_Translation._
When Biron’s treason and disastrous act,
Shall put King Henry and his Lords in fear,
Lafin betrays him, and the King beheads.
Treason dispatched to Spain in amity,[131]
The carrier caught when he has entered France,[132]
And the scriv’ner will throw himself into the water.
One thing has carefully to be borne in mind in relation to the Sixains,
that they were presented to Henri Quatre, and printed for the first time
in 1605. That is to say, they first appeared three years after this had
happened. To the sceptically disposed they can furnish no authority, but
to ordinary men, who only look for ordinary evidence, it will appear that
there is very little as to style that would not appropriately spring
from the pen of Nostradamus; and further, that if they are forgeries,
the forgers have not taken advantage of their knowledge of the events
to make the prophecies any clearer or more striking. These are quite as
enigmatical as if our author had written them, and I think that common
sense will generally be content to take them for what they are worth, and
will regard them as probably genuine “chips of the old block” and as such
very curious.
Guynaud in his _Concordance_, p. 137, gives a full and interesting
account of Biron; chiefly extracted from Davila, Montluc, De Thou,
Mezeray, Le Père Anselm, and so forth, where the reader can refer for
further details, if interested. I may just note that I have copied the
date of December 2, 1602, from Le Pelletier, but that Moreri gives the
date of Biron’s decapitation as July 31, 1602, in the Court of the
Bastille. The name of the messenger (_poste_) was Picoté, a native of
Orleans, sold, as they say, to the King of Spain (Guynaud, p. 140).
Garencières has (p. 464) a very elaborate annotation upon this stanza,
giving the whole history of Biron and Lafin in twenty-eight folio pages.
Biron appears to have been a vain, a violent, and foolish man, though
of great courage and audacity in war, which made him highly valued by
Henri IV. After Amiens he refused to go to quiet the towns of Picardy,
unless his statue were erected in brass before the Louvre. His sudden
prosperity had turned his head. The treasonous proposals with Spain
were, that he was to have a daughter of the Duke of Savoy in marriage,
500,000 crowns, and sovereign rights in Burgundy. These were negotiated
through Lafin; and Lafin told the King. The whole trial is given, with
Biron’s defence in reply, which is audacious and eloquent, but much
of it is highly contradictory. He was condemned and executed in the
court of the Bastille, on July 31, 1602, which coincides with Moreri.
The superstitious, ignorant, violent, but able soldier comes out most
characteristically. He shows in emergency great rapidity of thought,
decision, and presence of mind; but a deficient judgment, very little
principle, and an overwhelming conceit, that, encouraged by success,
almost merged into madness. A man of this sort is always a compound of
inconsistencies; accordingly he said to the Chancellor, in speaking
of death, “I have not been afraid of it these twenty years.” And that
was true, when in war, a duel, or hot blood; but in the court of the
Bastille he was thought to show great fear of dying. In earlier life he
had wondered at himself for fearing nothing from the thrust of a sword,
though very nervous over the prick of a lancet, when he had occasion to
“be let blood,” as they used to phrase it. The fear of death is most
in apprehension; but the apprehension is most, perhaps it may be said,
of the wicked in cold blood, and of the good in violence, and when the
blood is hot, if but the least pause give time for reflection to enter.
Garencières notes that the greatest courage and stoutness of a man is
nothing in comparison of the weakness of human nature.
Two of Biron’s adventures with astrologers are so characteristic of the
manners of the time, as recounted by Guynaud [p. 137, etc.], that I
think the reader should not be deprived of them. Whatever is strange and
rivets the attention must have something of humanity in it, and repay the
record, though a few superior people may look down upon such trifling.
I shall give them at the risk of running this annotation to too great
length.
When at Court with his father, at the age of eighteen or twenty, he had a
duel, and killed his man. He had to hide for this, till his father could
sue out his pardon, through the Duc d’Espernon, to whom fortunately the
father was known. He took the disguise of a letter-carrier, and in this
garb consulted an astrologer called La Brosse, who lived in a garret
at the top of a house near the Luxembourg. He told the man that it was
his master’s horoscope he had need of. La Brosse told him that one day
he would be a very great man, in fact, might almost be king, but for
a _caput algol_ that stood in the way. What this was the man would not
explain. Biron, however, continuing to press very hard, got him to say
at last that he would be beheaded on a scaffold. Upon this, he burst out
with the want of judgment he showed all through his life (forty years
in all) and beat the old man mercilessly, leaving him nearly dead. He
locked him maliciously into his room, took away the key with him, and
kicked down the little ladder that gave access to the loft. But still he
believed what had been communicated.
On another occasion he consulted César, who was thought at the time to
be the most able astrologer in France. This man also affirmed that he
would have good fortune in almost everything. Except for a blow from a
Burgundian from behind, he might even be king. But he could not get from
him a word more.
When he was confined in the Bastille, a friend called on him, and
Biron asked him to ascertain for him from what part of the country the
executioner of Paris was; and when he came back and told him that he was
a Burgundian, Biron changed colour and said—“There will be no reprieve
then; I am as good as dead.”
Now as to the fulfilment of the last two lines. It will appear that my
rendering is right, and that the scrivener will throw himself into the
water. The scrivener turns out to be a man named Nicholas l’Oste, born
at Orleans, secretary to Lord Villeroy, Chief Secretary of State, who,
finding him a most capable person, confided much in him, and the more
so that Oste’s father had spent the greater part of his life in his
service. When Lord Rochepot was starting as ambassador for Spain, Oste
begged to accompany him as secretary. Villeroy immediately recommended
him, and he was engaged. In a few months’ time he mastered the language
to such perfection, and so thoroughly accommodated himself to Spanish
manners, that he might well pass for a true-born Spaniard. When Rochepot
had got the treaty at Vervins ratified, the King of Spain gave him rich
presents—a chain of jewels, and six gold chains valued at a hundred and
fifty crowns apiece—to distribute amongst his suite, as he thought fit.
Oste was so full of himself that he thought he ought to have one of them,
but his master thought otherwise; on which, says Garencières, “the Devil
crept into his soul,” and, as he wanted money to supply his debaucheries,
he determined to betray the State secrets which passed through his hands.
With this in view, he applied to Don Fanchese, a Secretary of State, and
made his proposals, but the dignified Spaniard, for some reason or other,
received him coolly. “The Catholic King was in good amity with the most
Christian one, and required to know no more than the French Ambassador
should communicate to him.” Nothing discouraged, our traitor hurries
off to Don Ydiaques, another secretary, and there meets with excellent
reception. He was presented to the Duke of Lerma, to whom he betrayed the
Alphabet of Ciphers. He received twelve hundred crowns upon the spot,
and was promised the like amount as a yearly pension. By his means the
Spanish Council knew the contents of all French instructions as soon
as the ambassador himself. When La Rochepot’s mission ended, Oste got
back into Villeroy’s service, and so was able to maintain correspondence
with Spain. Tuxis was ambassador from Spain in Paris, and after him Don
Baltazar de Caniga. With these men he established a close intimacy, so
that finally the Council in Spain got his letters before Des Barreaux at
Madrid could receive those from Henri IV.
Des Barreaux told the King that he was always now forestalled. Oste had
let a certain reprobate Raffis into his secret, and this fellow, who had
been banished, in order to obtain a reprieve of sentence, betrayed Oste
to Des Barreaux. When he got his pardon, he gave up the name of Oste.
Raffis came to Paris to communicate with Villeroy, and orders were given
to detain the two Spanish couriers that had reached the post-office.
They then kept a watch upon Oste, who was “doing his devotions at the
Charter-house of Paris,”—excellent Catholic, plotter as he was. On
reaching the post-office, he soon found he was betrayed; and Descardes,
who was to watch him, did not let him out of his sight until he brought
him to Villeroy’s. When there, he thought his man was safe, and went to
announce his capture to Villeroy. Oste instantly ran down to the stable,
where his horse stood, still saddled, and galloped away. A hue and cry
was soon raised. Oste got a Spanish disguise at De Cuniga’s, and made
off post-haste for Luxembourg. Postmasters were forbidden to let out
horses to any one; but at Meaux the postmaster had received the order
too late, for Oste was already on horseback, but no sooner did he begin
to gallop than his horse fell under him. His look of dismay impressed the
postillion who accompanied him, and he told his master on his return. The
postmaster told the sheriff, who came up with him at the second ferry of
_la Ferte sous Jouare_; but he was already on the boat, and threatening
the ferryman’s life, the man put him ashore, in spite of the sheriff’s
commands, shouted to him from the bank. He rushed into the bushes and
brambles near the Marne, hoping to escape in the darkness of the night,
the sheriff scattered his men everywhere, raised the whole country side,
and caused bonfires to be lighted in all directions. Oste crept from bush
to bush, but, either accidentally or with intention, fell into the river
Marne and was drowned. His hat was found next day, stopped between two
posts, and his body two days later. So befitting a close to the career
of a gifted dastard is a wholesome exemplar of retributive justice, and
should not easily be suffered to fall out of men’s recollection. Horace
thinks that lame-foot Justice always trips the sinner. No doubt, if we
could see both worlds; but, as we cannot, I wish that here the lame
foot were considerably less lame. In England law and the lawyers, her
two crutches, seem to reduce Justice to a gouty incapable. With our new
Palace of Justice the morals of a Court seem to have dawned upon us.
POPULARITY OF HENRI IV. (AFTER HIS DEATH). [I. 112.]
_Century VI.—Quatrain 70._
Au chef du monde le grand Chyren[133] sera,
Plus outre après aymé, craint, redouté;
Son bruit et los[134] les cieux surpassera,
Et du seul titre victeur[135] fort contenté.
_Translation._
Chief of the world _Henri le Grand_ shall be,
More loved in death than life, more honoured he:
His name and praise shall rise above the skies,
And men will call him victor when he dies.
French self-esteem has always appropriated to France a throne of
pre-eminence beyond all other thrones. If it were possible, they would
set theirs above that of Jupiter. They pretend a most manly contempt
for kings. But the throne, you are to remember, is the work of _sans
cullottes_, French cabinet-makers, and therefore the best thing of
its kind in the universe, and so _chef du monde_. If Nostradamus is no
prophet for you, you shall at least admit that he was a Frenchman. The
Frenchman whips the old world, and the American whips creation. The rest
of us may look forward to an eternity of corporal punishment in spite
of the nominal abolition of slavery. Condillac will furnish the logical
distinction, that establishes the honour of the throne, when a manly
contempt has been duly engendered for the sanctity of the king’s majesty.
Honest Democrat! Do you read Condillac?
One of Voltaire’s rhetorical squibs in the _Henriade_, which the French
are so indulgent as to call not only verse, but poetry, runs—
“Il fut de ses sujets le vainqueur et le père.”
“He was the papa and conquestor of his people.”
When our Charles II. was addressed as “the father of his people,” he said
he thought that he might be of a good many of them. But Henri Quatre is
too noble a creature for any good and wise man to wish to dwell long upon
his foibles. What a contrast between him and the Napoleons!
LOUIS XIII.
(1610-1643.)
PUNISHMENT OF THE GREAT MONTMORENCY (OCTOBER 30, 1632.) [I. 113.]
_Century IX.—Quatrain 18._
Le lys Dauffois[136] portera[137] dans Nanci
Jusques en Flandres electeur de l’Empire;
Neufve obturée[138] au grand Montmorency,
Hors lieux prouvés[139] delivré[140] á clere peyne.[141]
_Translation._
The Dauphin shall carry his lily standards into Nancy, just as
in Flanders the Elector of Trèves shall be carried prisoner of
the Spaniards into Brussels. A new prison will be given to the
great Montmorency, who will be delivered for execution into the
hands of Clerepeyne. This man will behead him in a spot not
devoted to executions.
I have given this in prose, as it could only yield ingenious doggerel in
verse.
Louis XIII., of whom it may be remarked that he was the first who bore
the title of Dauphin de France since the publication of Century IX., in
1566, entered Nancy on September 25, 1633, a day after his army. In 1635
he enters Flanders on behalf of the Elector, whom the Spaniards had, on
the 26th of March of that year, carried prisoner to Brussels. Nostradamus
then reverts to October 30, 1632, when the great Montmorency was executed
for rebellion, being first confined in the newly built (_neufve obturée_)
Hotel de Ville at Toulouse. In the courtyard of this building Clerepeyne,
a soldier, shall cut off his head, and not, as ought to have been the
case, at the place appointed for public executions, such as was _La
Grève_ at Paris.
It so happens that Clerepeyne’s name is fully attested by Étienne
Joubert and by the Chevalier de Jant, both contemporary with the event.
Further than this, M. Motret has brought to light, after minute historic
research, that the family, by solicitation of the King, could obtain
only two concessions of mere formality—that the execution should be with
closed doors, and by a soldier in lieu of the common headsman. The _place
publique_ or _marché_ would be the place mentioned in the official order.
If the reader will carefully give his attention to the full drift of
this quatrain, when the mere difficulty of verbal contortion has been
resolved, he must feel that the prognostication has to be reckoned as
one of the most astounding of oracles ever set forth in history. A
French King takes Nancy. The Elector of Trèves is bandied about between
France and Spain, like a shuttlecock of State; and then, by name, comes
the execution of the great Montmorency, detailed with, it is true, the
brevity of Tacitus, but, when understood, with a singular felicity of
detail implied in the pregnant words _neufve obturée_, of the newly built
town hall. Not in the market-place is he executed, but in the central
courtyard. Let _clere peyne_ (_clara pœna_) stand merely for celebrated
attainder, the thing is still prodigious beyond all precedent. But when
you know, in addition, that a part of Nostradamus’s prophetic method
consists in using every possible play of words, including paronomasia
and anagram, and you find that the soldier who acted as headsman—a man
called upon by chance to gratify the almost absurd sensibilities of the
family—was _Clerepeyne_, a name that corresponds to a tittle with the two
words employed by the prophet, then, indeed, the marvel mounts into the
stupendous. It cannot be paralleled out of the works of the individual
we are busy with. It is incredible, and yet you must believe it. It is
not to be understood, but it must be accepted. Joubert, de Jant, the
Curé de Louvicamp, and Motret, have all contributed to its historical
confirmation on independent lines. It was in print, beyond possibility
of gainsaying, more than fifty years before any of the events occurred.
Clerepeyne could not have been even born at the time his name was being
put through the printing press at Lyons. The mind that can realize all
these details, and then be content to fall back upon chance to explain
them, or upon the verbal fact that visions must be visionary—an axiom
quite as philosophic, by-the-bye, as Hume’s “Essay on Miracles” is
built upon—is a mind not at all to be envied. Such incredulity is more
astounding than the prophecy itself. It is easier to believe the prophecy
than the philosopher who says he does not believe it. The Tower is below
London Bridge. Has anybody ever asked “why?” This 18th quatrain of
Century IX. of Nostradamus is just as much a fact as the Tower of London
is, and vastly more impregnable. Intelligent people will be amused by an
explanation; but the substantive fact can stand without any, till the
day of Doom if necessary. It is only some human popinjay, Plato Pry,
the philosopher, who would like to gossip to us the _How_, and so sport
another borrowed feather in his feather-brain,—or hum us with another bee
from his bonnet; that hive of mad insects.
THE CONSPIRACY OF CINQ MARS (MARCH 13, 1642.) [I. 115.]
_Century VIII.—Quatrain 68._
Vieux Cardinal par la jeusne deceu,[142]
Hors de sa charge sa verra desarmé,
Arles ne monstres[143] double[144] soit apperceu;
Et Liqueduct[145] et le Prince embausmé.
_Translation._
The old cardinal is supplanted by a young man, and will see
himself deprived of his charge, and disarmed. [Le Pelletier
renders]: If Arles you do not show, in a manner that shall be
visible, a counterpart of the treaty, then the man who will
cause himself to be conveyed by water will be embalmed, and the
Prince also.
The above is the contortion to which Le Pelletier resorts to force out
of it the sense it undoubtedly contains. My proposed reading reduces the
difficulty.
The old Cardinal Richelieu shall find himself supplanted by the young
Cinq Mars. He was but twenty-two when he achieved this bit of dexterous
Court intrigue against Richelieu,[146] the most _rusé_ fox in Europe, as
rumour ran.
Cinq Mars was his own _protégé_, and no doubt threw him with a trick
learned from his master. A sprightly youngster of the apt breed can learn
such things quickly. But when the cardinal was at Arles he learnt that a
certain treasonable treaty was negotiated with Spain by his rival in the
name of the King’s brother, and this made known brought Richelieu back to
power straight. Now, if we read the line
Arles, le monstre double soit apperceu:
At Arles, let the monster diploma (treacherous treaty) be discovered,—
or Cinq Mars himself might be the double monster,—it would be but a
gentle emendation in a classic line, and it makes the sense run well.
Richelieu returned by water (_Liqueduct_) from Tarascon to Lyons, by the
Rhone, with his bed upon the boat, but sick unto death, carrying Cinq
Mars and De Thou prisoners along with him. In the same style he descended
the Seine from Fontainbleau to Paris, where he died, two months later, on
December 4, 1642. Louis XIII. died on the 14th of the following May. Both
were embalmed, which was the practice then customary. The King when dead
becomes a Prince again, when the breath was out of the body that 4th of
December. Le roi est mort, vive le Roy Louis XIV.
IMPROVEMENT IN FIREARMS (1630-1671.) [I. 116.]
_Century III.—Quatrain 44._
Quand l’animal à l’homme domestique,[147]
Après grands peines et sauts viendra parler,
Le foudre à vierge[148] sera si[149] malefique,
De terre prinse[150] et suspendue en l’air.
_Translation._
When the dog,[151] after many trials, shall begin to leap and
speak, the powder loaded by ram-rod shall spread destruction
round (_sera très malefique_.) Powder taken from the earth and
exploded in the air.