superstition, and to their last breath. These people had the nickname
of _Tories_, cast on them by the Cromwellites; which is as much as to
say some have the law of the Church put upon them, from the Hebrew
_Torah_, which signifies the _law_, or the _law of the Church of God_.
Perhaps did Cromwell himself, or some of his confident advocates and
ministers, designedly invent that cursed name; as it is likely from what
happened in the year 1651, when the Parliament ordered the law-books to
be translated out of _Latin_ into _English_, wherein the lawyers took a
great deal of freedom by using the _verbalia passiva_ very frequently,
and almost on all occasions, according to their own fancy and pleasure.
As, for instance, Apellans and Apellatus, they made an _Apealer_ and
an _Apealee_; the _Arrestans_ and _Arrestatus_, the _Challenger_ and
the _Challengee_, as likewise the _Warranter_ and the _Warrantee_; the
_Voucher_ and the _Vouchee_; the _Leaser_ and the _Leasee_; in which
manner they used likewise the terms of _Torer_ and _Toree_; a _Torer_,
in the first place—that is, a promoter of the Common Prayer and Church
of England service; and an imposer of human traditions, instead of God’s
law; and, in the second place, a _Toree_; that is, one that submits
and suffereth such laws to be imposed upon him. Which _nomina verbalia
passiva_, so much in vogue amongst the English lawyers, are not at
all English but mere French, and the _Participium Passivum_ itself;
and more proper to the neat _French_ than the corrupted _Provincial
Dialect_; which last our Nostradamus very often mixes with his style;
wherein they commonly used to say, _Les confirmads_, _les restads_, _les
escilads_, instead of _les confirmez_, _les restez_, _les exilez_, etc.
And according to this _Dialect_ one must say, LES TORADS, instead of LES
TOREZ, and thus does our Poet.”
If what he says above has any value, the _Toree_ would be the prelates
and clergy; the _Torads_ the laity, who adhere to the Church of England
and its discipline and ritual. This in the context would have a greater
appropriateness than D. D. himself seems to be aware of, for the word
it is contrasted with in the context is _les Saturnins_. This word in
Nostradamus is constantly used for pagans, in contradistinction to
_Albanins_, Christians, robed in white _albus_. In this quatrain also
the men of Albany, if we take them for Scotch, are fighting on the side
of Church and State against the Roundheads. _Saturne_ is often put for
Antichrist by Nostradamus.
The French of this quatrain, as it stands, does not appear to be correct.
The first two lines require a verb understood to connect them: “The
blood of the king [cries] for vengeance,” etc. The third line has an
embarrassed construction: “They will plunge the _Menade_ into a new
lake.” If _Saturnins_, again repeated, be understood, it is difficult to
see what plunging their mad priestess into the lake can effect. If it
could be read as _les Menades_, then the frantic Bacchantes would plunge
into a fresh sea of evil or troubles, and, in their wild intoxication,
march northwards. If we could put any interpretation upon _Taurer_ that
would be applicable to the rendering, the whole quatrain might then apply
to the French Revolution, and not the English. I think that the _sang du
Juste_ furnishes thus much of certainty as to the interpretation. It must
relate to one of two periods; the death of Charles I. or Louis XVI. Then
it would be that the Revolutionists, finding the Royalists to be seeking
revenge, declared against the Church, and plunged madly into a new order
of things. The _Menade_ would be more appropriate to that period than to
the earlier one. Bad as they were in England, there was more of lust,
infidelity, and blood, corruption, vice, and madness, in France.
Menade. The μαινάδες were Bacchantes, the priestesses who celebrated the
festivals of Bacchus. Stephanus says that it is to be explained not only
as Bacchic, but as frantic; and this is unquestionably the meaning here.
The Greek word appears to be connected with the Sanscrit _man_, to think;
and thence the word _manyu_, anger, is said to be derived. They used to
run dishevelled, half-naked, and, brandishing the thyrsus; in their fury
they would kill and behead men whom they encountered by the way, and
carry off their heads, leaping with rage and joy. According to Nonnus,
they were virgins so careful of their chastity that they slept with a
cincture of serpents. Juvenal attributes no great severity of virtue to
them, but their pretensions to such superlative purism renders them all
the fitter emblem of the canting Puritans who won Cromwell’s battles for
him. In Le Pelletier’s Glossary _maynade_ is given as a Romance word for
“a child of four or five years;” but this throws no additional light on
our difficulty.
THE BATTLE OF DUNBAR (SEPTEMBER 3, 1650).
_Century VIII.—Quatrain 56._
La bande foible la terre[202] occupera,
Ceux du haut lieu feront horribles cris:
Le gros trouppeau d’estre coin troublera,
Tombe pres Dinebro descouvers les escrits.
_Translation._
The weak band shall occupy the knoll (or, if preferred, it
can be, occupy the ground or field [after the battle]). The
Highlanders (_Ceux du haut lieu_) shall raise horrible shouts
(before they engage, and also after their defeat). The large
force shall be hampered or cornered (_d’estre en coin_), and
fall close to Edinburgh, their papers even falling into the
victor’s hands.
This is a very important forecast indeed. The little band on the
knoll—for I prefer that reading—is clearly enough Cromwell’s small force,
very much in the condition he describes it to be in, in his letter to
Haslerig at Newcastle, September 2, 1650 (Carlyle’s “Cromwell Letters,”
ii. 201):
“We are upon an engagement very difficult. The enemy hath
blocked up our way at the Pass at Copperspath, through which we
cannot get without almost a miracle.”
Before sunrise Lesley sends down on Monday his horse to cross the small
Brocksburn. Whoso wishes to attack must first cross this little brook, in
its deep _ditch_, as they then called it (the picturesque tourist would
now say _glen_), forty feet deep. Lesley’s army comes out and places
itself in “rather narrow ground,” says Carlyle (p. 202) in 1846; _d’estre
en coin_, says Nostradamus in 1558; or 1546, if you like to have it so,
for it was probably on paper a clean three hundred years before Carlyle
commented; you may even translate him, “takes the trouble to put itself
into a corner.” “Hampered in narrow, sloping ground,” says Carlyle again
(p. 206).
The reader who wishes for it can here leave off to peruse Carlyle’s very
celebrated prose lyric, as they call it, about this “Dunbar Battle,” with
its “moon” that “gleams out, hard and _blue_, riding among hail-clouds;”
whatever “a blue moon” may mean, or not mean. Carlyle makes Nol there, as
the level sun shoots up over St. Abb’s Head and across the sea, quote the
sixty-eighth Psalm, in Rous’s doggerel:
“Let God arise, and scattered
Let all His enemies be;
And let all those that do Him hate
Before His presence flee!”
Observe here that it is the _Saturnins_, in a frenzy of antichrist,
who do this, according to Nostradamus. But you can take which side you
please. “The Lord General made a halt,” says Hodgson, “and sang the
hundred-and-seventeenth Psalm” at the foot of Doon Hill; to the tune of
Bangor or other, says Carlyle, “strong and great against the sky,” this
grand strain arises, in which the metre, like the Lord General himself,
makes a halt too:
“O give ye praise unto the Lord,
All _nations_ that be;
Likewise ye people all, accord
His name to magnify”—
which, to eke out the measure, has to be read, _nay-shy-ons_, and, for
the rhyme’s sake, _magnifee_. This energy is really not dramatic, but it
_is_ stagey; on the border-land of sublimity, it curls the lip of humour
to a smile.
The poor Highlanders taken prisoners were sold, “not,” says Cotton, “to
perpetual servitude, but for six, or seven, or eight years, as we do our
own” (blessed are they who are of the household of faith); “which is
really a mild arrangement,” in the estimation of “the Sage of Chelsea”
(p. 358).
But now back to our exegesis let us go. Cromwell captured, on this
occasion, the whole of the papers of the Scotch War Office, as well
as the Great Seal of Scotland, which he sent forward as a trophy to
London. Cromwell’s letter to Speaker Lenthall excuses his making “no more
frequent address to Parliament,” but “it hath now pleased God to bestow a
mercy upon you worthy of your knowledge;” and so he goes on, for a space
occupying eight closely printed pages 8vo. He says he wishes to treat the
Scotch very kindly, for that “God hath a people here fearing his name,
though deceived;” and he concludes, in the dirty language of the godly of
his century, that he has “offered much love unto such, in the bowels of
Christ.” His bowels, to the Highlanders made prisoner, awarded slavery,
not _perpetual_, but for eight years only. Here are tender mercies and
bowels commiserate for contemplation! sufficient, as we have seen, to
make Nostradamus shudder at their approach.
Son temps s’approche si près que je souspire (viii. 76, p. 177).
All that was done here, however, could not prevent Charles from being
crowned on January 1, 1654, at Scone, in Scotland. In the next summer he
penetrated into England, and was pursued by Cromwell and his Ironsides.
D. D. follows up the Quatrain 56, which we have just treated, with
Century VIII., Quatrain 57, which stands next to it:
De Soldat simple parviendra en Empire. [II. 171.]
D. D. interpreting it of Cromwell, as was most natural at that
time. Garencières does the same, saying, “I never knew nor heard of
anybody to whom this stanza might be better applied than to the late
usurper Cromwell;” but unless it be a type of two handles, of the old
ecclesiastical sort, I think it will apply still better to Napoleon;
and I shall so apply it further on, giving the reasons why it is more
appropriate to him than to the Protector. Further than this, as a general
rule in regard to the succession of the quatrains in Nostradamus, they
have no more affinity to each other than that they lie together, as one
bean touches another in a bushel measure. Still, the next we shall treat
is in sequence with the two preceding.
CHARLES II. AFTER THE BATTLE OF WORCESTER. (SEPTEMBER 3, 1651).
_Century VIII.—Quatrain 58._
Regne en querelle aux frères divisé,
Prendre les armes et le nom Britannique:
Titre Anglican sera tard avisé,
Surprins de nuict mener à l’air Gallique.
_Translation._
When a kingdom in quarrel divided between two brothers takes
up arms, and the name of Great Britain: The King (_Titre
Anglican_) too late advised, surprised at night (is forced) to
seek the air of France.
It is rather harsh, but to make sense of this we shall be forced to
understand the two brothers to be England and Scotland, or simply civil
war. When Charles at last made up his mind to visit Scotland and fight
for his crown, it was already too late. The Parliamentary side had
developed a strength that he was never equal to cope with. The loss of
the battle of Dunbar was a disaster that settled the question. He might
as well have quitted the field to Cromwell at once. Instead of that, on
the 3rd of September—ominous day! being the anniversary of the Dunbar
fight—he engages him again at Worcester. Charles was completely routed
and his cause hopelessly broken. He managed, under the cover of night,
to escape from the city of Worcester, and, flying from place to place
for weeks, as most romantically chronicled in the Boscobel Tracts, he at
last, on the 20th of October, got well shipped for Dieppe, and finally
rejoined his mother safely at St. Germain.
DEATH OF CROMWELL (SEPTEMBER 3, 1658). KING CHARLES II.’S FLIGHT AND
RESTORATION (SEPTEMBER 3, 1651-1660).
_Century X.—Quatrain 4._
Sur la minuict conducteur de l’armée
Se sauvera, subit esvanouy,
Sept ans après la fame non blasmée;
A son retour ne dira onc ouy.[203]
_Translation._
Upon the stroke of midnight, the leader of the army (King
Charles II.) shall save himself (by flight), and suddenly
evanish. For seven years longer that is, to a day, till the
death of Cromwell, his reputation will survive unchallenged; at
his Restoration no one will say anything but yes.
In other words, Nostradamus tells King Charles II. to continue to hope
on, for that though he will have to fly by night from Worcester, his
memory will be preserved without diminution till the death of his victor,
seven years later to a day. Further, that when the day of his Restoration
does come round, he will be received back with universal acclaim. Had it
been given as _neuf ans_, it would have been more complete as regards
Charles II. personally. But, as it is, the date to a day coinciding with
the death of Cromwell, makes one suppose it to have been given to point
to that interesting coincidence. It would have been no more wonderful
than are many others amongst the quatrains, had this been intended; but
whether it shall be so allowed or not rests with the reader,—now that he
knows exactly how it stands,—to accept or to reject.
The French used always to engage in a battle willingly on St. Louis’s
Day, April 11, and the English upon St. George’s Day, April 23. But
September 3, St. Mansuetus’s Day, was ruinous to the Royalists and
prosperous to Cromwell. The Battle of Worcester, so decisive in its
consequences, was commenced at three o’clock in the afternoon on
September 3, 1651; and at three o’clock in the afternoon of September
3, 1658, Cromwell died on what has been called his _Fortunate Day_:
“Nature herself,” says his last chronicler in the ninth edition of
the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ “seeming to prophesy, in the voice of
the great tempest that swept over England, that a great power had
passed away.”[204] It was a tremendous tempest no doubt, and men at
the time said the Devil had run away with Old Noll. Some say he died
broken-hearted, when the last Parliament convened by him in January,
1658, refused to acknowledge his House of Peers. So great a burden “drank
up his spirits,” said Maidston.
CROMWELL DECLARED PROTECTOR (DECEMBER 16, 1653).
_Century X.—Quatrain 22._
Pour ne vouloir consentir au divorce,
Qui puis après sera cogneu indigne,
Le Roy des isles sera chassé par force:
Mis à son lieu qui de Roy n’aura signe.
_Translation._
The King will agree to the divorce of his crown, which would
afterwards have been regarded as an unworthy action, and hence
will by force be expelled from the island. One who will have no
sign of kingship will be put in his place.
Garencières was alive to the true sense of this and its fulfilment. The
Republicans murdered the king, gave the government, if not the crown, to
Cromwell, and drove Charles II. into France.
CROMWELL THE FOX.
_Century VIII.—Quatrain 41._
Esleu sera Renard, ne sonnant mot,
Faisant le saint public, vivant pain d’orge,[205]
Tyrannizer après tant[206] à un cop,[207]
Mettant à pied des plus grands sur la gorge.[208]
_Translation._
A Fox shall be elected, uttering not a word, playing saint in
public and helping himself to other people’s property, in order
to tyrannize after a while by a _coup d’état_, placing his foot
on the throat of the greatest.
Garencières thinks this to apply to some Pope, but D. D. refers it
much more aptly to Cromwell. If my proposed readings are allowed, the
quatrain can fit no one so well, especially as it follows Quatrain 40,
which we already have interpreted of the Commonwealth. D. D. reminds
us that the Protector was a great Chiliast and Fifth Monarchy man, and
certainly _Faisant le saint public_; even so as to gull, in this our
late day, Thomas Carlyle, who allowed the heroism of violence, in this
case, to dazzle him into the belief that the hypocrisy of Saintship was
Godfearing. As to Cromwell, D. D. says truly, that he was moderate in
diet. This he says to strengthen the barley bread, though I feel very
strongly that it is differently intended. It might even mean that he got
his bread by barley, or John Barleycorn, from the Huntingdon brewery. He
was more given to ambition than to pleasure, says D. D., as is the case
with men of his saturnine complexion. This may, by such as choose to use
it so, connect him with Quatrain 40 and _les saturnins_. “His fortunate
star, Mars,” writes D. D., “had brought him the glory of a valiant hero
and general.”
Here D. D. entertains us, somewhat at large, upon his notion of a
“_wig_, or _trimmer_, that is, a wavering man or hypocrite, from the
original words to _wag_ and to _trim_ about.” We, however, know that this
etymology is not worth very much.
Our next is a sequence of three quatrains, all of which seem to refer to
English affairs.
THE FIRE OF LONDON—DUTCH WAR—PLAGUE (1665-1667).
_Century II.—Quatrains 51, 52, 53._
Le sang du juste à Londres fera faute,
Brulez par foudres[209] de vingt trois les six;
La dame[210] antique cherra[211] de place haute,
De mesme secte[212] plusieurs seront occis.
Dans plusieurs nuits la terre tremblera:
Sur le printemps deux effors suite:
Corinthe, Ephèse aux deux mers nagera,
Guerre s’esmeut par deux vaillans de luite.[213]
La grand peste de cité maritime
Ne cessera, que mort ne soit vengée
Du juste sang par pris damné sans crime,
De la grand dame[210] par feincte n’outragée.
_Translation._
The blood of the just shall be required of London, burnt by
fireballs in thrice twenty and six; the old Cathedral shall
fall from its high place, and many (edifices) of the same sort
shall be destroyed.
Through many nights the earth shall tremble; in the spring two
shocks follow each other; Corinth and Ephesus shall swim in the
two seas, war arising between two combatants strong in battle.
The great Plague of the maritime city shall not diminish
till death is sated for the just blood, basely sold (for
£2,000,000), and condemned for no fault. The great Cathedral
outraged by feigning (saints).
The first quatrain deals most remarkably with the great fire of London;
noting the precise year, the burning of St. Paul’s, and other injury to
the Protestant interest.
The second shows that a bloody sea-war shall rage, the earth quaking
under the cannonade from the ships, shaking the cliffs. There was such
a war in 1665, 1666, and 1667, between England and the seven united
provinces of the Netherlands. Cruising within the narrow seas, he
likens to the Ægean waters between Corinth for England, and Ephesus for
Antwerp. He describes them as they really occurred, commencing afresh
with every ensuing spring,—_sur le printemps_. D. D. remarks that they
were so obstinately contested, all these fights, that they would last
for days on a stretch, or, as Nostradamus says, _nights_: _plusieurs
nuits la terre tremblera_, according to the English custom of reckoning
by a _fortnight_, and not fourteen days. Now the French reckon the
fortnight as a _quinzaine_, that is, up to the fifteenth day, which
of course contains only fourteen nights; and you might say _la terre
tremblera_, for the cannon reverberating between the cliffs would move
them perceptibly. D. D. thinks that _la grande dame_ in the last quatrain
is the great city of London, the metropolis, or mother-city; an Eastern
way of speaking. In his learned way, he adds: “The great fire has only
metamorphosed the city—_ex Ligneâ in Lateritiam_,” converting it from
wood to brick.
The distance at which sounds may be heard seems variable. Captain Parry,
in his “Third Voyage,” p. 58, relates, it is said, that at Port Bowen
a conversation could be carried on distinctly at 6696 feet, which is
over a mile. Dr. Clark, in his Travels (iii. 331), whilst sailing from
the Gulf of Glaucus to Alexandria, heard the firing of the English
upon the fortress of Rachmanie, upon the Nile. All on board heard it,
at a distance of 130 miles. The earthquake at Sumbawn, in 1815, was
heard 970 miles away (Elliot’s “Horæ Apoc.,” iv. 218). In Dereham’s
“Physico-Theology” (i. p. 185, ed. 1786), a Dr. Hearn is quoted as
certifying that guns fired at Stockholm in 1685 were heard at a distance
of 180 English miles; and in the above Dutch war, 1672, the guns were
heard above two hundred miles (_vide Philosophical Transactions_, No.
113.) I remember reading, though I have not noted where, that the
guns employed at Waterloo were heard, at Hythe in Kent, on the Sunday
morning, so that it was known Wellington and Napoleon had engaged in
battle somewhere; the fact was confirmed by intelligence shortly after.
The buzz of London traffic in 1820 could be heard by putting the ear to
the ground on the top of Putney Hill, as Sir Richard Phillips relates
in his “Morning’s Walk to Kew” (p. 152). But the whole south of Thames
was then tricked out rurally in Nature’s emerald vest, and, herself at
ease, the earth could transmit vibrations from the troubled town; but
now she shudders with a like palsy of her own, and Putney is as rural
as Clerkenwell Green. Much of the conveyance of sound depends upon the
wind, no doubt. J. P. Malcolm (“Londinium Redivivum,” iii. p. 117) has
some interesting remarks upon St. Paul’s bell. He lived in Somer’s Town,
and with a strong north-east wind he could hear every hour tolled as
clear as if only a quarter of a mile distant, but with the wind east,
south-west, or north, not a sound could be heard. Now Somer’s Town is
north-north-west from St. Paul’s, which, in a straight line, is two miles
and a half away; so that a north-east wind should convey the vibrations
to Lambeth. He found that this wind carried away all the smoke, and
so left the air free for the sound to travel through it. A south wind
overwhelmed him with noise. He could distinctly hear the guard at St.
James’s Park beat the tattoo at eight, nine, ten, and eleven, to each
distinct roll of the drum. One would judge from this that the wind was
blowing nearly due east at Waterloo on that famous Sunday, the 18th of
June. It was an east wind at Baalzephon that ruined Pharaoh. I have dwelt
thus episodically upon sound to show, if possible, that this _tremblement
de terre_ was an effect of sound arising on the waters but vibrating upon
land, and not the convulsion of an earthquake.
Quatrain 80 of Century III. we have already treated of by the help of
Le Pelletier, and interpreted it of Charles I., and we there made the
bastard to stand for Cromwell. D. D. takes the alternative reading of
_l’indigne_, and understands James II. The bastard then is naturally the
Duke of Monmouth, natural son of Charles II.; but he was never _demy
receu_; and had it been intended to portray him, he would not have been
mentioned after, but before, the abdication. Hence we to prefer to leave
it as we placed it at first.
WILLIAM III. AND THE REVOLUTION (1688).
_Century IV.—Quatrain 89._
Trente de Londres secret conjureront,
Contre leur Roy, sur le pont l’entreprise:
Leuy, satalites là mort de gousteront,[214]
Un Roy esleut[215] blonde, natif de Frize.
_Translation._
Thirty of London shall conspire secretly against their King;
upon the bridge the plot shall be devised. These Satellites
shall taste of death. A fair-haired King shall be elected,
native of Friesland.
D. D. reads for _trente_, _trained_. Had the true reading been _trained_
it would have been very wonderful, because the trained bands of London
had not been thought of in Nostradamus’s time. Garencières interprets
the quatrain to refer to Charles I., and says it is well known that
the plotters used to assemble at the _Bear at the Bridge foot_. This
was a celebrated inn on the south side of London Bridge. It was pulled
down 1761, when the houses were removed from London Bridge (_Public
Advertiser_, December 26, 1761), “Hist. Sign.,” p. 154.