of England. She was not born fifteen years before him. Her birth took
place February 18, 1516, whilst Edward VI. was born October 12, 1537,
over twenty-one years later. The fulfilment of her truthful promise
lay in carrying out her vow to reinstate the Papists, causing even her
sister Elizabeth to be imprisoned in the Tower on a charge of conspiracy.
_Moyennant_ seems to refer to the temporary nature and duration of her
papal restorations; _en la moyenne_, in the midst or interim, between the
Protestantism of her young brother, and that of Elizabeth, who succeeded
her. Mary’s birth was an event actually contemporary with Nostradamus;
a very little inquiry, we may be sure, would have enabled him to have
rendered it conformable to the facts of history. As exemplifying his
method and procedure, it is very important to find that he took no
trouble whatever to do so. It is evident that our prophet acted quite
independently of external aids. He seems to have had methods and ways
of his own, in which he had the most entire and implicit faith. In
whatsoever manner the impressions reached him, he laid himself open to
their reception, a reception to all appearance of pure passivity: he took
the earliest moment of noting them down, more after the manner of an
amanuensis under dictation than as being personally at all responsible
for anything he committed to paper. The explanation of D. D. upon this
passage is very singular, and implies somewhat of the insight of an
adept into magical processes and fatidical language, of which we should
be glad to know more. We must, however, content ourselves with it as
it is; and even this little glimpse will be valued by those who love to
study the human mind in all its byeways, and who are qualified to do so
by thrusting aside from their own mind all private prejudice and vain
prepossession. He says with regard to the discrepancy:
“But, if he has not known it, then has he either overheard it
_in raptu_, whilst his genius dictated unto him one year and
three _Heptades_, or forgot it _post raptum_, and did write one
year and two _Heptades_. The _Lingua Demonum_ uses _Septenarios
in numerando_, as we do _Denarios_.”
Where he gets this intelligence from I have no idea. What he heard _in
raptu_, could not have been one year and three heptades, for that would
have represented twenty-two years, and we have to do with twenty-one
years. What he might have heard, supposing we are right as to the _lingua
demonum_, would be “one, plus two heptades,” meaning _three heptades_;
and he might have supposed it to mean one year plus two heptades, or
fifteen years. If not satisfactory, this at least, has something of
plausibility about it.
The phrase _Règne de Balance_ has much of importance attaching to it.
Garencières translates the last line, “She shall succeed in the Kingdom
of Libra,” and he annotates that the princess, whom he does not recognize
at all, born so long before her brother, shall be married to a King of
France, which is signified by the “Kingdom of _Libra_.” He also says that
Louis XIII. was called _The Just_, because he was born under the sign
_Libra_. I give this for the sake of its being curious, though quite
beside the mark, so far as I am able to see.
The phrase _Règne de Balance_ is one of those pithy pregnant sentences,
ever and anon dropping instinctively from the pen of Nostradamus, on
all topics treated by him or glanced at. The whole bent of England’s
policy, from Henry VII.’s day to the Treaty of Vienna, has been to
maintain a European equipoise, and to provide that no State should grow
so strong as to overwhelm the rest. The wise counsels of the statesmen
of Elizabeth were all directed in the hope of fortifying it; and it was
never seriously infringed until the first partition of Poland in 1772,
which was completed by the third in 1795. Napoleon’s false profession
to restore it in 1806 may count—like all he said, “as false as dicers’
oaths”—for nothing. England’s permission of that crime,—that satanry of
royal crowns, struck her with judicial blindness;—and hired publicists,
the venal reptiles that preceded the journalists, soon sprang up in
abundance, to confuse and smoke-dry the moral sense of Europe. Poland had
established that most unworkable of all governmental schemes, an elective
monarchy; an arrangement that insures periodical anarchy at every
election, and generally a wrong choice at last. The satanry of Split
Eagles gave out, that the Poles could not govern themselves. But the
fourth article in Peter the Great’s will shows that they were not to be
allowed to govern themselves. They were to be kept in continual jealousy,
whilst the other powers were to be corrupted by gold, and a share of the
plunder; till Russia could retake all. The bribers, the bribed, and the
publicists succeeded so well that the very phrase “Balance of power”
became, and still is, a topic of ridicule in common conversation. By
this means its obvious rationality is excluded from any chance of a fair
hearing. The Navigation Laws, Corn Laws, and Protection, have all been
treated in the same way in our own time, and with the same revolutionary
consequences, and loss of English supremacy. The Marquis de Bouillé, in
his “Mémoires,” ed. 1821, p. 8,—one of the few modern men who is entitled
to be called a statesman,—says of England, that it is an empire whose
support all other nations stand in need of, and that its happiness is
intimately bound up with that of the world at large, but that if its
thirst of gold should destroy its patriotism; or that bold demagogues and
orators should get power to meddle with its fundamental laws, it would
soon become chaotic and fall, leaving nothing behind it but another great
ghost of empire perished, to glimmer as an historical beacon through the
night of time. Again he says, at p. 24, that for thirty years (speaking
about 1783) she has been the happy rival of France, and in some sort the
arbitress of Europe. A little later on, when we crushed Napoleon by sea
and land, and yet preserved France, we rose to our highest; but at Vienna
the _Règne de Balance_[197] passed, probably for ever, from the sceptre
of England; just twenty years after the final partition of Poland. Cursed
are those who, with arms in their hands, stand by and allow evil to
be done! We repeated the cowardice when France was under the heel of
Prussia. If no virtue remained, the common policy of equalization should
have weighed, to throw in aid to the weaker side.
QUEEN ELIZABETH (1533-1603).
_Century VI.—Quatrain 74._
La dechassee au regne tournera,
Ses ennemies trouvez des conjurez;
Plusque jamais son temps triomphera,
Trois, et Septante, la mort, trop asseurez.
_Translation._
The rejected one shall at last reach the throne, her enemies
found to have been traitors. More than ever shall her period be
triumphant. At seventy she shall go assuredly to death, in the
third year of the century.
Elizabeth was long withheld from the throne. When she reached it, of
course all enemies were regarded as traitors, and no reign was ever more
triumphant. She proved a thorn in the side of popery; overthrew the
Armada; and crippled the power of Spain, despoiling it of a large tract
of land in America, which has been called after her Virginia; and under
Essex, in 1596, inflicted on it a loss of twenty million ducats or pieces
of eight, in the Bay of Cadiz. The next quatrain that we shall take seems
to refer to the expedition by Essex.
The fourth line is a very singular one. It has no punctuation in the
edition of 1558; so I introduce a comma between _trois_ and _septante_.
_Septante_ is “seventy,” a good old word that has dropped out of French
usage, but which many French scholars think infinitely preferable to
the clumsy circumlocution _Soixante dix_. _Trois_ stands for 1603.
Nostradamus often drops the thousands and hundreds from a date. We shall
shortly come to a case in point, at the Fire of London, 1666. When
Nostradamus describes the doomed city, he writes: “Bruslé par fond, de
vingt-trois les six.” The nought in 1603 cannot be given, so that,
omitting the figures in the tens, hundreds, and thousands, the _trois_
remaining gives the date; so that the line remains “In the third year [of
the seventeenth century] and seventy years old, assured death comes.”
Elizabeth was born September 7, 1533, and she died March 24 (April 3,
N.S.), 1603; fulfilling to a nicety the conditions of the line as thus
set forth.
ATTACK ON CADIZ BAY (1596).
_Century VIII.—Quatrain 94._
Devant le lac ou plus cher fut getté
De sept mois, et son ost desconfit
Seront Hispans par Albanois gastez,
Par delay perte en donnant le conflict.
_Translation._
Before the lake, where much treasure (_plus cher_) was
stranded, after a seven months’ voyage, and the host
discomforted, Spaniards shall be worsted by the English, by
time lost before giving battle.
Garencières here takes _Albanois_ for Albanians, which of course prevents
him from reaching any conceivable meaning. It stands for English, as
Albanies, or Albions. The quatrain may reasonably enough be interpreted
of the attack made by Essex, Howard, and Raleigh, June, 1596, on Cadiz
Bay. They destroyed there thirteen ships of war, and forty huge South
American galleons, part of the great “silver fleet,” or “plate fleet.”
They had got stranded in their own harbour. Had the Spaniards been
alert, they might have unloaded the treasure-ships, and so saved the
cargoes. If they had attacked the English at once, instead of awaiting
the onset, they might have beaten them off, or at least have kept them
out of the harbour. But they were so supine that the Duke de Medina
had at last to fire the ships to prevent their capture. The Spartans
and Spaniards have been noted as being of small despatch: _Mi venga la
muerta di Spagna_—“Let my death come from Spain, for then it will be
sure to be long in coming” (Bacon’s Essay on Despatch). Collins does
not give this in his Spanish proverbs. But not only did Spaniards and
Spartans procrastinate. “Business tomorrow,” said the Theban Polymarch,
in Plutarch, as he laid under his pillow some despatches relating to a
conspiracy, and was killed before he read them. Copyslip wisdom saith
“Delays are dangerous.”
The bay and harbour of Cadiz may very well be called a lake, being twelve
miles one way, and at least six the other, whilst the entrance to it
from Rota to the Castle of St. Sebastian is a good six miles. When Essex
got possession of the Castle of Puntales, he commanded the whole town
and harbour. The idea of _lake_ is actually expressed in the very name
of Cadiz, which is derived from the Punic word _Gaddir_, an _enclosed
place_. The Greeks corrupted this into γάδειρα, or γῆς δειρή, “neck of
land.” The Romans contracted either this or the Punic word into Gades,
and the Spaniards into _Xerez_, by the help of their Arabic guttural.
_Century VI.—Quatrain 22._
Dedans la terre du grand temple celique,
Nepueu à Londre par paix feincte meurtry:
La barque alors deviendra scismatique,
Liberté feincte sera au corn’ et cry.
_Translation._
In the country of the great heavenly temple the nephew is
murdered [by her who comes] to London under a feigned truce.
The ship [of Peter] will then become schismatic, and feigned
liberty become the hue and cry.
I cannot, I confess, altogether make this out. D. D. interprets it of
the murder of Henry Stuart, 1567, and the final establishment of the
Reformation. If it mean this, it will be a proof of the uncertainty, and
almost caprice with which forecasts are concerned. It is strange that
Henry Stuart’s murder should find any representation, when, so far as I
yet know, nothing is recorded of the fate of Mary Stuart herself. The
heavenly temple is, according to D. D., the kingdom of the _Angeli_,
Angels, or Angles, meaning the English. We are by no means forced to
accept this interpretation, for _Celique_ may stand for _luminous_,
according to Le Pelletier’s Glossary, where he derives the word from the
Greek σίλας, though I see no such word. _Celigue_ is generally considered
to stand for _celeste_, _cælitus_, from _cælum_. We might read it as a
misprint for Celtique. Then _la terre du grand temple Celtique_ would be
the island in which is placed the great Druid temple of Stonehenge—the
island of Apollo, _Templum Solis_, as Bath is the fountain of the sun,
_Aqua Solis_. I record these hints, not as possessing much value in
themselves, but as being possible aids towards future elucidation.
_La Barque_, in Nostradamus, is no doubt usually to be interpreted of
the Popedom, the ship of St. Peter; but if, as I think, the general
reference of the quatrain be to England and English affairs, then I
should interpret _La Barque_ as the Ship of State, becoming more and
more schismatical, and in which the Puritans, Independents, and other
Dissenters raise a great hue and cry about liberty, and liberty of
conscience (_au corn’ et cry_, or _à cor et à cri_, which is a variant of
the early edition). The Puritans were becoming most troublesome both in
England and Scotland all through the reigns of Elizabeth and Mary Stuart.
Here D. D. insists upon what it is the business of his book to establish;
that the accession of the House of Hanover to the throne of England is
one distinct topic of the prophecies of Nostradamus. James I. was the
great-grandfather of George I. His daughter Elizabeth married Frederic,
the Elector Palatine, and had issue the Princess Sophia, Electress of
Brunswick-Lunenberg, the mother of George I.
ENGLAND BECOMES GREAT BRITAIN (1603).
_Century III.—Quatrain 70._
La grand Bretaigne comprinse d’Angleterre,
Viendra par eaux si[198] haut à inonder
La Ligue neuve d’Ausonne fera guerre,
Que contre eux ils se viendront bander.
_Translation._
Great Britain comprising England, will come to be inundated
very forcibly by the waters. The new League in Italy will make
war against all such as band together against any one of the
cosignatories.
England was politically called Great Britain when Scotland was united to
her at the accession of James I. in 1603. Still, in an indefinite way,
the term, or kindred terms, had often been employed. To go no further
than the “Faerie Queene” of Spenser (Book III. c. ii. § 7), we find:
Far fro my native soyle, that is by name
The Greater Brytayne, here to seeke for praise and fame.
In this passage, Church says, it means Wales, as distinguished from the
Lesser Brittany in France. The Greater Brytayne would hardly be Wales,
but England and Wales together before the Saxon Heptarchy. This, however,
in no way interferes with the propriety of the distinction drawn by
Nostradamus. His allusion is clearly to the time of James I., who assumed
the title of “King of Great Britain” on October 24, 1604.
The floods spoken of commenced about the end of January, 1607. The
principal damage occurred in Somersetshire, where the sea broke down
the dykes, and overflowed the country for thirty miles in length and
six miles inland, to the destruction of all property and most of the
inhabitants. Bristol suffered. The east coast by Norfolk suffered in like
manner, though not quite to so great an extent. A long account of it,
giving curious details of the calamity, was hunted up by Garencières, and
found in an old, almost-forgotten Latin book, entitled “Rerum in Galliâ,
Belgiâ, Hispaniâ, Angliâ, etc., _gestarum anno_ 1607,” à Nicolao Gotardo
Artus Dantisco, VII., Book 2.
_La Ligue neufve_, D. D. says, was a renewal of the _Liga Sancta_ first
entered into in 1526 between the King of France, the Pope, and the
Venetians. The renewal took place in 1606, and was simply defensive,
precisely as the quatrain puts it. Thus the quatrain stretches over
a space of three years, from October, 1604, establishing the title of
“Great Britain;” the ratification of the _Liga Sancta_ in 1606; and the
inundations in Somerset and Norfolk in 1607. The alliance of 1526 goes
by the name of the Treaty of Cognac (or _Holy League_). It was concluded
on March 22, 1526, between the Pope, Francis I., Venice, Henry VIII.,
the Swiss, and Florence. The second or defensive alliance, according
to D. D., was between three only of the original signatories; France,
the Pope, and the Venetians. I do not find it mentioned, but presume
he is right. Garencières evidently writes in entire ignorance of both
these treaties; but he says that the League will be of Bordeaux, which
is called _Ausone_, from Ausonius, the famous Latin poet, who was born
there. Here it certainly means Italy; but I mention it, as it is quite
likely that Nostradamus might so employ the word, though he does not on
this occasion. _Ausone_ occurs once again, at least, in Quatrain 22 of
Century VII., which I do not know that anybody has yet interpreted.
CHARLES I.
_Century V.—Quatrain 93._
Soubs le terroir du rond globe lunaire,
Lors que sera dominateur Mercure:
L’isle d’Escosse fera un luminaire.
Qui les Anglois mettra à deconfiture.[199]
_Translation._
Under the jurisdiction of the round globe of the moon, when
Mercury shall be lord of the ascendant: the island of Scotland
will produce a luminary (prince) that shall throw the English
into a great discomfiture.
Garencières entirely misses the purpose of this, but remarks that the
prophecy must of necessity relate to the past, for since the Union
nothing of the kind has happened. Charles I. was born at Dunfermline
on November 19, 1600; in astrological language, when Mercury, lord of
the horizon, was combust and following Saturn cosmically with the sun:
the sun leaning to a conjunction with Mars, and the moon, in her worst
location, in quadrature with Mars. He succeeded to the throne in 1625.
D. D. translates the quatrain, oddly enough, as follows:
In regione aëris sublunari,
Mercurius shall govern,
When a light shall be born in Scotland,
Which will put England into great disorder.
We have here the stars in their courses fighting against King Charles,
and, as soon as we had disposed of the historical remarks appended to the
quatrain by D. D., our intention was to have thrown together some of the
fatalistic signs of the time and the ill omens that attended this unhappy
monarch almost throughout life, but unfortunately this intention must be
laid aside for the present.
In 1609 James I. tried to induce the Scotch to conform to some sort of
uniformity in Church ceremony, but he stopped short of endeavouring to
thrust it down their throats. Archbishop Laud was less moderate. With the
zealous persistency of a shard-borne beetle flying against a stone wall,
he, in 1637 advised Charles to introduce the English Liturgy into the
churches of Scotland, _auctoritate regis_. It was flying in the face of
Fate. _Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat._
Next to the folly of establishing it, was the folly of its public
withdrawal in less than twelve months’ time. It was established by
royal mandate, July 23, 1637, and by royal proclamation, June 20, 1638,
withdrawn; a further undertaking being given that no English ceremonies
should be thrust upon the Church of Scotland. Any tyro in statesmanship
would have known that this course was doomed to fail utterly. Having
taken the first inconsiderate step, it should have received no other
impulse from England; private instructions should have been communicated
to the chief clergy that no proceedings would be taken to enforce the
law, and it would have died down of itself. As it was, the concession
came too late, and gave the Scotch time to enter into a covenant never to
permit the establishment of the English ritual; or, as they called it,
the English _Service Book_. The fault was committed that, over and over
again, the English commit as to Irish affairs; the yielding to outside
pressure. Contentious opposition should be crushed by force first, and
then conceded to as of grace. You will never get thanks from any party
for having yielded to their threats. This only cemented disaffection;
and, in 1643, England, puritanically urged, went further still, and
established the _Solemn League_ to like effect. This was a pure piece of
political claptrap intended to secure general disaffection.
In 1641 the discontent had spread into Ireland, and, as usual in such
cases, English reasoning and Scotch logic developed into bloodshed on the
other side of St. George’s Channel. The English often content themselves
with ink and oratory, but an Irish Celt prefers to record his dissent
in a rubric of blood. During the first four months of antagonism, the
rebellion under Phelim O’Neil caused the massacre of 40,000 English
Protestants in Ulster: D. D. says 150,000, massacred by Papists, and they
could be reckoned up by name. But where he got his list I do not know.
His comment on this is: _Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum_. His
quotation is not correct; I hope the same may be said of his statistics.
As we all know, Laud expiated his mistake with his head on Tower Hill,
and the King himself was to follow on five years later at Whitehall,
after being surrendered for money by the Scotch to the English. As
Nostradamus puts it [II. 53], _Du juste sang par pris damné sans crime_.
King Charles was only twenty-five when he ascended the throne, labouring
in that respect under almost the same disadvantage as Louis XVI. Both
of these kings could derive but little wisdom from the Council-table.
Charles’s early acts consequently were rash, and those of the French King
speculative rather than practical. Clarendon, in his History (i. 23, ed.
1731), devotes a paragraph or two of great interest to the impeachment
of the Earl of Middlesex (Lionel Cranfield). Clarendon admits him to
have been “a man of great wit and understanding,” and to have held every
place with great ability. He had been raised by Buckingham from a city
trader to a statesman, and in his success seems to have quite forgotten
the patron to whom he owed it. The rash Buckingham, on his return from
the Spanish Quixotism, influenced the House of Commons to impeach him;
altogether overlooking the consequences of employing such a machinery
to revenge a private pique, and he must needs drag in the young Prince
Charles to help him. The King foresaw the evil. “The wise King,” says
Clarendon, “knew well enough the ill consequence,”[200] and he sent
for these two,—his son and Buckingham—to lecture them if possible into
wisdom. He pointed out that it wounded the Crown and shook his authority,
as Ministers would thus have to look to the House, and not to the King
alone, as heretofore. At last he burst out in choler: “By God, Steenie,
you are a fool, and will shortly repent this folly, and will find that,
in this fit of popularity, you are making a rod with which you will be
scourged yourself!” He then turned to the prince, and told him: “You
will live to have your bellyfull of Parliament impeachments; and, when
I shall be dead, you will have too much cause to remember how much you
have contributed to the weakening of the Crown by the two precedents
you are now so fond of,” _i.e._ engaging the Parliament in the war, and
the prosecution of Cranfield. It was, indeed, to teach the many-headed
(which is equal to no head) beast to taste blood. Here, indeed, a King
turns prophet; foreseeing, from existing facts misdirected, what future
evils will arise. This, of course, is quite different from Nostradamus.
“Flambe exigue sortant de solitude” [I. 1], and all that can be got out
of visions of the night by secret estude or otherwise.
CHARLES II.—CAPITULATION OF EDINBURGH (DECEMBER 12, 1650).
_Century VIII.—Quatrain 40._
Le sang du Juste par[201] Taurer la daurade,
Pour se venger contre les Saturnins
Au nouveau lac plongeront la maynade,
Puis marcheront contre les Albanins.
The above is the reading in the texte-type, 1558. D. D.’s version runs as
below:
Le sang du juste, par Tore et les Torads,
Pour se venger contre les Saturnins:
Au nouveau lac plongeront la Menade,
Puis marcheront contre les Albanins.
He translates thus—
The blood of the righteous, for Torah and Torees’ sakes, cries
for vengeance against the Saturnine rebels, who will plunge
the priestess of Bacchus, _la menade_, into the sea of their
novelties, and march afterwards against the Scotch.
D. D.’s idea of the interpretation of this is that, for the sake of the
law-abiding people (the Torah and Torees), the King’s blood cries for
vengeance against the Saturnian Roundheads. The intoxicated people shall
plunge into a new course of wickedness, and will then march against the
Highlanders. He considers that this was fulfilled in 1650, when, after
the capitulation, as he calls it, with the Scotch at Breda, Charles II.
landed in Scotland on June 23, and joined the royal army, consisting
mainly of Highlanders. About the same moment Cromwell reached London
from Ireland, and General Fairfax retired from the army. Cromwell, at
this critical moment, jumps into his post, and, on June 29, heads the
Parliamentary army against the Scots.
Without at all insisting upon the accuracy of this interpretation,
I think it furnishes sufficient of curiosity to make it worthy of
insertion. What follows, touching the Tories, I give in his own words: