on Nostradamus, says of this particular quatrain that it predicts “the
Revolution of 1688 with tolerable clearness,” resting upon the last line,
which it prints in _italics_. As, however, William III. was born at the
Hague, he was not born in what is called Friesland, but South Holland.
I do not know whether it formed a part of Friesland in Nostradamus’s
time. D. D. is puzzled with the word _blonde_, and suggests that perhaps
William had fair hair in his youth, “or it might be an allusion to his
name, Guillaume, because (_sic?_) of _cil_, signifying _eyebrows_.” This
vermicular wriggle must be permitted to our highly excellent cleric,
who is manifestly unable to get the quatrain to say what he wants it
to say. We have had numerous quatrains that, when properly understood,
have appeared to be clear enough, and which are disparaged as “perplexed
verses” by the _Quarterly_. But this which they find expressed with
“tolerable clearness,” I do not find clear at all. I find no plot of
_thirty_, no meeting of conspirators at the Bear at the Bridge foot, or
at any other bridge, nor satellites who are executed, nor of a _blond_
king, nor of a native of Friesland.
MARLBOROUGH AND THE CARDINAL DE BOUILLON.
_Century VI.—Quatrain 53._
Le grand Prélat Celtique à Roy suspect,
De nuict par cours sertira hors de regne:
Par Duc fertile à son grand Roy Bretaine,
Bisance à Cypres et Tunes insuspect.
_Translation._
The great Celtic Prelate suspected by the King,
Shall post with haste by night out of the realm,
Through Bisance, Ypres, and Bethune, undiscovered,
By aid of the duke fertile (in conquest) to the great King of Britain.
This refers to the Cardinal de Bouillon, Great Almoner of France,
who was misrepresented to the French King to such an extent that he
could not appear at Court. After some years he threw up his charge and
determined to quit France. He was related to Prince Eugène, who was with
Marlborough, near Arras. The Cardinal came over to them under cover of
night, precisely as described by Nostradamus, under the protection of
a strong convoy, sent by Marlborough to protect him from the scouts of
Ypres and the other places named. When he reached Antwerp, he simply
sent in his ribbon of the Order to the French Court, accompanied with
his resignation. He is called “Prelat Celtique” as the Duchy of Bouillon
is in Gallia Celtica. D. D. holds that _grand Roy_ is an abbreviation of
_Royaume_. But the sense is better if taken literally as it stands.
I transcribe for the curious reader from D. D. the following passage; it
is too singular to be neglected:
“But the allusion on the Duke of Marlborough is still prettier.
Had his [Nostradamus’s] genius dictated unto him _Marnebourg_,
he might have understood and written down without hesitation,
for the English _Marl_ and the French _Marne_ are one and the
same. The Dæmons speak all sorts of languages, but Nostradamus
did not understand the English, whence it came that at the
hearing of the name Marlborough, he startled, and thought,
‘_Qu’est-ce que Marl?_’ Thereupon it was inspired to him,
‘_C’est une terre fertile et graisse_,’ whereby he is ascribing
to him both _Nomen_ and _Omen_ at once: the Duke, by whose
indefatigable zeal and incomparable valour the Kingdom of Great
Britain should be fertile in conquests.”
_Century II.—Quatrain 68._
This has already been treated by Le Pelletier (i. 125) under Louis XIV.,
as fulfilled in the endeavour to re-establish James II. in Ireland.
But D. D. refers it to March 23, 1708, when the Pretender cast anchor
before Edinburgh, and nobody came out to him. He sailed away, narrowly
escaping the English fleet. On this account an Act of Parliament was
passed, declaring him a rebel, and setting a reward upon his head. D.
D. says that from this time forth Nostradamus always designates him by
the title of Rebel. As this quatrain, which we are upon, does not refer
to the Pretender, the above remark would only show that Nostradamus
always speaks of the Pretender as a rebel. Bouys interprets this, as we
have said before, of Napoleon’s victories at sea; as also that Bouys
was blindly prophesying after the battle of Trafalgar, and in ignorance
that such a decisive engagement had been fought. Garencières interprets
it as fulfilled in Charles II.’s times: so that with four interpreters
we have four interpretations. Sceptics can employ this fact how they
like; I am pleased to furnish them with the opportunity. The total of
the interpretations seems to me so astounding that we can well afford to
submit to deductions such as this. Besides which, I am not endeavouring
to establish any point; I wish the facts to establish themselves. What
they finally show to be tenable, let us adopt.
GEORGE I.’S SUCCESSION (OCTOBER 20, 1714).
_Century VI.—Quatrain 64._
On ne tiendra pache aucune arresté,
Tous recevans iront per tromperie:
De paix et trefue, et terre et mer protesté.
Par Barcelone classe prins d’industrie.
_Translation._
They will keep no treaty fixedly (arrested). All who have
gained by cheating will go (free). Peace and truce are
proclaimed by land and sea. Barcelona captured by the
perseverance of the fleet.
This quatrain is exceedingly obscure, and very difficult even to
translate adequately. D. D., who is writing only a year after the actual
events,—the publishing date of his book being 1715,—makes sense of it
thus: George I. is proclaimed King, October 20, 1714, and Nostradamus
notifies that there shall be a general liberation of all prisoners for
debt. But it is hard to extract that sense out of the first two lines,
especially as not a word occurs about England, a king, or a throne. The
other two lines approach the period well enough. The Peace of Utrecht
was concluded in 1713, and the peace between Germany and France at
Radstadt followed in March, 1714. The war between France and Spain also
was concluded before King George ascended the throne; even Barcelona was
taken, before he was crowned (October 20), by the French fleet for the
King of Spain, September 12, 1714. At the intercession of Great Britain,
honourable terms were conceded to the Catalonians in Barcelona, so that
the mention of that city by Nostradamus comes with much felicity and
appropriateness, if we decide that he refers to George I. at all here.
D. D.’s book must have been written before October 20, 1714, as he says
it is hoped that on the _Coronation Day_ the King will empty most of the
prisons.
GEORGE I. (1714.)
_Century II.—Quatrain 87._
Après viendra des extrèmes contrées,
Prince Germain, dessus le throsne doré;
La servitude et eaux rencontrées,
La dame serve, son temps plus n’adoré.
_Translation._
Afterwards shall come, from a distant land, a German prince
upon the gilded throne. The slavery and waters shall meet. The
lady shall serve, her time no more adored.
D. D. considers this to relate to King George, and he remarks that the
King exercised a stronger control than it was possible for Queen Anne to
do. The German prince ascending the throne of gold certainly seems to
point to George I. But Brunswick is not a very far country. It might be
said that modern constitutional government was established first by the
Georges, so serfdom and _les eaux_, or the people and their so-called
rights, met together, but then you would have to interpret figuratively
the last line: authority (_la dame_) serves, or is to become subordinate
to, the phantom of Freedom, the time of reverence and good feeling having
gone by. This, I say, might be so interpreted, but it does not carry much
more conviction with it than does the meaning found by Garencières. He
will have it to be a prophecy relating to Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden,
called German because of German ancestry. His gilded throne was the
gilded ship he sailed in. He made slavery and waters meet, because
on landing he began to conquer Germania,—that lady who was no more
worshipped afterwards as she had been before.
GEORGE I. AND PEACE (1714-1727).
_Century X.—Quatrain 42._
Le regne humain d’Anglique geniture,
Fera son regne paix union tenir:
Captive guerre demy de sa closture,
Longtemps la paix leur fera maintenir.
_Translation._
The human throne of English geniture will make its rule to
maintain peace and union. War will be captive, or at least
confined to half its usual area. (George will contend only with
Spain. Peace abroad and an endeavour to maintain union at home,
against the Pretender’s efforts.) Thus peace will be secured to
the country for a long stretch of years.
We have already given our interpretation to D. D.’s next quatrain (III.
57, p. 166). He discovers from it that George shall never want for an
heir to the throne up to the Day of Judgment. Myself I see nothing of the
kind to be warranted out of Nostradamus. He seems here to be contrasting
the numerous changes in Britain with the happy stability of France. I
should have made no reference to this, but for the opportunity it affords
of introducing some of D. D.’s curious remarks upon the astrological
portion of the verses.
At the Creation the Gemini stood in the house or sign Aries, near the
equinoctial colure, which has but its own one pole; but they are now in
the fourth house called Cancer, near the solstial colure, which has a
double pole, viz. _Mundi et eclipticæ_. _Basharion_ is an Arabic word,
and denotes _Humanus_. _Bashar_, a substantive _Caro, hominis cutis,
homo_. In the three signs, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, which have successively
formed the Caput Zodiaci, none but Gemini is of human figure; that sign
must be intended by the word _Basharion_ (especially as the word is not
_Basharion_ at all, but _Bastarnan_); so that, till the age of the world
is six or seven thousand years old, _i.e._, till the Day of Judgment,
this will last; and when the great day comes there will be found a direct
descendant of that great king sitting on the English throne.
He has taken no notice of the _Pempotam_ and its duration of three
hundred years, as a sort of measure of the seven changes, and Nostradamus
nowhere says that the seventh change shall endure to the end of time.
Like almost all interpreters, D. D. reads his own imagination into the
prophecy.
The reader who cares about such explanations as these will find a
great deal more of the same sort in Garencières’ annotations upon this
quatrain. He remarks that the sign of Aries doth govern France, and
that by doubling his pole is meant his returning a second time to the
same place, so that the stars do promise France a long continuance
in exaltation. He adds that if he were a great astrologer himself he
should work out exactly the whole calculation, and he thinks Aries
should come to that pole in the year 1845. But Garencières seems to have
had no inkling whatever of the French Revolution of 1789, as forecast
by Nostradamus; nor yet of the second Revolution of 1848, though he
translated all the quatrains into English.
FRENCH REVOLUTION.
THE VULGAR ADVENT. [I. 160.]
_Century VI.—Quatrain 74._
La dechassée[216] au regne tournera,
Ses ennemies trouvés des conjurés:
Plus que jamais son temps triomphera,
Trois et septante à mort trop asseurés.
_Translation._
She who was proscribed will return to the kingdom,
Her enemies will be treated as conspirators;
More than ever her time (or empire) will triumph;
Seventy-three years its deathly domination is assured.
The Revolution (_la dechassée_), repressed in 1816, shall again obtain
the government. Its enemies will be treated as conspirators, and it will
be stronger than ever. Seventy-three years are assured to its death-like
rule. I give this as M. le Pelletier does, but I see no reason whatever
to think that it is correct. Garencières makes it apply to Charles II.
of England, and the seventy-three put to death are those who abetted
the murder of his father. This is very vague. Garencières reads _Le
dechassé_. Here we may remark that Napoleon himself [p. 289] dates his
nobility from the battle of Montenotte, 1797. Seventy-three years added
to this yields us the remarkable date of the fall of his dynasty at
Sedan, 1870.
_Century I.—Quatrain 3. (September 22, 1792.)_ [I. 162.]
Quand la lictiere du tourbillion versée,[217]
Et seront faces de leurs manteaux[218] couvers,
La republique par gens nouveaux vexée,[219]
Lors blancs et rouges jugeront à l’envers.
_Translation._
When the litter is turned topsy-turvey by the typhoon,
Men will mask their faces with the cloak of hypocrisy.
The republic will be troubled by new-risen men;
The white and red will judge by contraries.
This means that the royalists (_les blancs_) and the republicans (_les
rouges_) will judge of everything from utterly opposed points of view.
What was top will become bottom, when the blast blows the litter over;
and, new men rising to power, the rest will cover their faces with
hypocrisy, as men do with their cloaks in a storm. Compare the phrase _à
l’envers_ with p. 175.
_Century II.—Quatrain 30._ [I. 163.]
Un qui les dieux d’Annibal infernaux
Fera renaistre, effrayeur des humains.
Oncq’[220] plus d’horreur ne[221] plus pire journaux
Qu’avint viendra par Babel aux Romains.[222]
_Translation._
There will be one who will revive the infernal gods
Of Hannibal, a terror to mankind.
Never arrived by Babel more horror
Nor worse day’s work than will fall upon Roman Catholics.
The meaning is, Napoleon shall arise, who will reawaken the solemn
curse on Rome uttered by Hannibal, when he called the infernal gods
to witness his hatred to her, to the terror of all mortals. Not Babel
at the dispersion brought on the world more horror, nor days of more
evil-ploughing for the present or seed-sowing for the future than shall
fall upon the Roman world by him. This is much better than to limit it to
an ecclesiastical area merely. We shall see that Charles V. is a sort of
prototype of Napoleon, and Garencières adduces Charles V. as fulfilling
this prophecy. Hannibal is also a prototype of Napoleon in attacking
Italy by crossing the Alps.
_Century I.—Quatrain 14. (1789-1793.)_ [I. 164.]
De gent esclave chansons, chants et requestes
Captifs par[223] Princes et Seigneur aux prisons,
A l’advenir par idiots sans testes
Seront receus par[224] divines oraisons.
_Translation._
Songs, chants, and refrains of the slavish mob,
Whilst the Princes and King are captive in prison,
Shall be received in the future as oracles divine
By headless idiots deprived of judgment.
Songs—such as the Marseillaise while the King and Princes are imprisoned
in the Temple,—songs of the mob (_gent esclave_) are received by
brainless fools for divine utterances, even prayers (_divines oraisons_).
_Vox populi, vox Dei_, is always the fools’ blasphemous formula, when
swine chose Barabbas for Pontifex or Generalissimo. A cruelly entreated
people; whose burdens are aggravated by wickedness in high places
needlessly, above and beyond the grief, which every man is born to
by the act of birth into a world of sickness, sorrow, and injustice;
sighs heavily at this unduly heaped-up burden, and that sigh, that _vox
populi_, runs upward like a lightning conductor to elicit fire from
the clouds, coming back charged with electricity and thunder,—a _vox
Dei_ of terrible divinity. But when scum rises to the direction, as
with the Revolutionists, and is followed by some brutalized _sabreur_
aggrandizing himself as king of chaos and disorder, with shouts of
subservient applause from the smutty mob, saying, “Herod, thou art
a god,” the _vox populi_ that split the welkin once, is _now_ the
_vox infernorum demonum_, the whole upspring and outcome of which is
bestiality and lawlessness enthroned in defiance of the decalogue and
heaven. Thenceforth the appeal of all good men and sane is, “Ye who
worship God, good and alone from eternity, down with them.” The men must
work and serve. This fiat is in the air, is in the sea, is on the earth.
It is the _vox naturæ_, in comparison with which the people’s voice, _vox
populi_, is nothing, beyond a momentary troubling of the silences.
The following quatrain I give for what it may be thought worth. M. le
Pelletier thinks it to relate to the creation of assignats, December 19,
1789. It would be a pity to lose sight of his identification, if even
some should presume it to be incorrect.
_Century I.—Quatrain 53. (December 19, 1789.)_ [I. 165.]
Las! qu’on verra grand peuple tourmenté,
Et la loi saincte en totale ruine;
Par autres loix toute la Chrestienté;
Quand d’or d’argent trouvé nouvelle mine.
_Translation._
Alas! how great a people shall tormented be,
And holy law in utter ruin laid:
By newer laws all Christendom is vexed,
With a new mine of gold and silver found.
We shall see, alas! the French people (_grand peuple_) agitated, the
Catholic religion (_la loy saincte_) totally ruined, all Christendom put
under new laws, when the National Assembly decrees that four hundred
million assignats shall be issued (_nouvelle mine d’or_, etc.), secured
on the property of the clergy, in the interests of the Revolution.
Older commentators applied this to the paper-money schemes of Law
1716; and Garencières finds the fulfilment in the discovery of the
Spanish-American gold and silver mines.
A properly regulated paper-money issue, based on the taxation of a
State, having absolutely no intrinsic value whatever in itself, could
undoubtedly be converted into a circulating medium that would work more
smoothly than any metallic one can, because the market value of the ore,
employed as now in coinage, is perpetually introducing a fluctuation of
values that conflicts with the nominal standard of the coin, so that the
standard is never uniform. The currency required would never amount to a
tenth part of the taxation leviable. Paper could therefore be destroyed
at the Bank of England, or issued exactly according to the needs of trade
and commerce. Fluctuation in the market value of metals would no longer
affect the circulating medium in the least. Thus might one cause of
recurrent panics be removed for ever. But can bank directors or ministers
be trusted with such a responsibility? This hinges on honesty, and there
is none to spare.
_Century VII.—Quatrain 14. (1789-1793.)_ [I. 166.]
Faux exposer viendra topographie,
Seront les cruches[225] des monumens ouvertes.
Pulluler secte, sancte philosophie,
Pour blanches noires, et pour antiques vertes.
_Translation._
Topography will soon be falsified,
The urns and sepulchres stand violate,
Sects swarm, and babbling sentiment
Black put for white, and green fruit for the ripe.
The curse be on them for changing old landmarks. The provinces turned
into departments (by decree of the Assembly, December 22, 1789). The
sepulture of Kings violated at St. Denis. Unholy sects will swarm, and a
sentimental philosophy, of Rousseau and other maddened sophists, usurping
the office of religion, black will stand for white, and green, crude
fruit be substituted for the ripe.
_Century IV.—Quatrain 24._
Ouy soubs Terre Sainte Dame[226] voix feinte,
Humaine flamme pour Divine voit luire:
Fera des sœurs de leur sang terre tainte,
Et les saints temples par les impures destruire.
_Translation._
Hear from the ground a voice of Halidom,
A human flame pretending light divine.
The blood of sisters stains the earth to red,
And holy temples the impure destroy.
This, I think, refers to the sentimental advocacy of the Rights of man,
as substitutionary of religion and faith in the literary movement of
the eighteenth century. It would comprise Rousseau’s gospel of dirt
and sentimentality, Voltaire’s substitution of wit for wisdom, and the
science of the encyclopædists floating disoriented upon the waters of
uncertainty, in lieu of the deep thought of the solitary thinkers that
preceded them. These last were men who, heretofore walking humbly and
without association in conspiracy, interrogated the universe, divinely
sown with riddles in great abundance by a hand invisible, until they fell
asleep into that hand, and awoke to the illuminated answers.
The blood of sisters was the wholesale slaughter of women that
distinguished the Revolution, whilst church altars were desecrated
by naked women, set there to personate the goddess of impure reason,
feigning _la sante dame_.
The quatrain 25 that follows this in the text of Nostradamus I now give;
but this verse 24, so far as I have seen, has never been commented upon
nor has the connection been pointed out. Yet this stanza furnishes the
reasons why the stars became overclouded to a people that were benighted,
_par ces raisons_, as the reader will perceive by the second line that
succeeds this.
_Century IV.—Quatrain 25._ [I. 167.]
Corps sublimes[227] sans fin à l’œil visibles,
Obnubiler[228] viendront par ces raisons.
Corps front comprins,[229] sens[230] chief[231] et invisibles.
Diminuant les sacrées oraisons.
_Translation._
The infinite stars are links that light to doubt,
And drop the pall of night upon the soul:
The eye and front of man,—and soul,—grown cerebral,
God and His host withdraw; and with them prayer!
M. le Pelletier considers that Nostradamus attributes these effects to
the reasonings hostile to the faith that improved optical instruments
will introduce, as they suggest a plurality of worlds. I quite admit that
in many minds this has been the tendency. Almost any discovery, giving
a new hint as to infinitude, launches a number of inferior but vigorous
brains into new lines of reasoning. We then get great multiplication of
secondary volumes, which supply minced Aristotle or chaff to represent
any amount of sausage-meat required by the reading public. Of course the
further you can see by the telescope the further you put heaven away
from the earth-dweller, and he loves it the less; for it is the near
things we love, and not the remote. The heart is not universal, and
cannot be stretched to it. I look upon the telescope, to an ordinary
man, as a drain-pipe, through which he can run off and lose the moisture
of his soul and live the worse for it afterwards; to the multitude of
men, useless; to the scientific man, a means of inflation and puffing
up; and to the really serious and isolated thinker, as the threshold
of infinitude that may, though it has hardly yet done so, answer a few
out of the ten million astral riddles sown in space. The last-named
individual alone may benefit a little by it. But I question if anything
at all of this was present to Nostradamus.
He seems to me, in these two closely interlinked quatrains, to enlarge
much upon the theme of St. Paul (Rom. i. 28) that, as at the French
Revolution, “they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave
them over to a reprobate mind;” or one void of judgment, “to do things
which are not convenient.” So that the earth gave out deceptive voices to
them, and false lights for Divine light, to slay women and desecrate the
temples; and then that the very stars visible to the eye, which should
teach faith to all, will for these reasons veil themselves and leave
nothing to mankind but the darkness of night. Pure materialism follows,
God and His host withdraw, and prayer is no more heard upon the earth.
_Century I.—Quatrain 60._ [I. 168.]
Un empereur naistra près d’Italie,
Qui à l’Empire sera vendu bien cher:
Diront avec quels gens il se ralie,
Qu’on trouvera moins prince que boucher.
_Translation._
An emperor shall be born near Italy,
Bought by the Empire at a bankrupt rate:
You’d say the herd, he gathers to himself.
Denote him butcher rather than a prince.
An emperor shall be born in Corsica—Napoléon Bonaparte.
His advent to the throne of France will prove prodigiously
costly to her. It is enough to make one say, from the tribe
he surrounds himself with, that he is more like a butcher
far, with the steel dangling at his side, and slaughterman
apprentices, than a prince.
It is natural that Bouys, who has hunted Nostradamus for quatrains
that will serve for adulation of Napoleon, has passed this over, _sub
silentio_, entirely. Garencières, speaking of this, says it is a prophecy
for the future, for that until now (1672) no such emperor has been heard
of, born near Italy, that cost so much and proved a butcher.
_Century VI.—Quatrain 23._ [I. 169.]
D’esprit de regne munismes[232] descriés,
Et seront peuples esmeus contre leur Roy:
Paix, sainct nouveau, sainctes loix empirées,
Rapis[233] onc[234] fut en si trèsdur arroy.[235]
_Translation._
The rampart of tradition battered down,
The people rise against their King anoint’:
Peace, a new Saint, and sacred laws made worse,
Paris was never in such disarray.