the sole authority of government, and bringing down upon the whole the
desolation that was witnessed in Europe in 1789. Then the intriguing
Duc d’Orléans was portrayed, and the poor King was seen repenting that
he had not, when insulted by him, publicly punished him by death. The
next picture was that of the remarkable flight to Varennes, in which
the very travelling habits of the King and Queen, to their respective
colours even, were minutely given, and the precise name hinted of the
fallen Capet on the road,—fallen, though elected by the people, _esleu
cap_. At the very last moment we are told their destination was changed
by the King, where changing meant his destiny. He was then depicted as
betrayed. He had run into the jaws of death, and the very names of the
traitors, Narbonne and Saulce, were given; with the further detail, that
he was taken back to Paris and mitred with the Phrygian cap, in the
desecrated Tuileries, at the dictation of five hundred Marseillais. In
another quatrain that journey is called a voyage of death, and in one
line is laid before us all that happened to Louis the Unfortunate. He is
elected, created king, received by his own people, and undone. To this
succeeds that extraordinary picture of the King himself: his best friend
could scarcely have portrayed the man so truly to us. Too prosperous at
the outset, too good-natured a royalty, sudden in temper, yet dilatory in
act, making and unmaking ministries quarterly, and finally done to death
by his own benevolence. We then have a stanza devoted to him. We see him
as a beautiful youth made chief, then deposed, and his head rolling from
the scaffold in the City of the Glave, even to his burial in quicklime
at the Madelaine, a procedure so unheard of in the case of kings. Then
that curious reference to _La Royne Ergaste_ and the little incident
touching her daughter’s marriage to D’Angoulême. Then follows the Queen’s
death, brought about by a jury, a novelty imported from England by the
innovators of that period; crowned by cruelty to the Dauphin. There
follows a more or less curious sixaine, conveying the fate of Madame
Elizabeth, the King’s sister; till we close with a brilliant quatrain
that exhibits, in a symbolical fashion, the Napoleonic interregnum, when
the severed Bourbon race puts out again its last two crowns, above the
Eagle-law or _Alquiloye_,—probably the last appearance it will ever make
upon the stage of history. I think we may agree, that it would not be
easy to parallel such a series of verified forecasts relating to the most
striking historical incidents, that bear upon a single reign, from any
one book existing in the world.
THE NATIONAL CONVENTION.
We now reach a fresh division, and shall treat of the National
Convention,—a period of about three years.
_Century VIII.—Quatrain 17._ [I. 189.]
Les bien aisés subit[265] seront desmis;
Par les trois freres le monde mis en trouble.
Cité marine saisiront ennemies;
Faim, feu, sang, peste, et de tous maux le double.
_Translation._
The well-to-do [members] shall be suddenly dismissed,
On account of three brothers the world shall suffer trouble.
Enemies shall take possession of the marine city;
Hunger, fire, slaughter, plague, of evils all the double.
Privilege is to be abolished suddenly. The three brothers who trouble the
world are the Royal trio, Louis XVI., Louis XVIII., and Charles X. Toulon
is the maritime city. We shall come upon it again, further on, in Century
VII. 13, where it is treated of more fully. M. le Pelletier interprets
_feu_ as being war, and _peste_ as standing for irreligion. As goods were
all doubled to Job, so here all evils are to be doubled. On the night
of August 4, 1789, feudal privilege was abolished suddenly (_subit_).
The clergy and nobility were dispossessed of property and title. Toulon,
taken by the English, is the _Cité marine_. It was retaken, in the
name of Louis XVII., on August 23, 1793, by the French; on the 19th
of December, Marie-Antoinette and Égalité, Duc d’Orléans, being both
executed during the British tenure.
_Century IX.—Quatrain 17._ [I. 191.]
Le tiers[266] premier pis que ne fit Neron,
Vuidez[267] vaillant que[268] sang humain respandre!
Rédifier fera le forneron,[269]
Siecle d’or mort, nouveau Roy, grand esclandre!
_Translation._
The third become first does worse than Nero,
See how much valiant human blood it squanders!
It will rebuild the old tile kilns,
The age of gold is dead, a new dynasty, and great scandal.
This interprets itself. M. le Pelletier explains the rebuilding of the
kilns as setting up the scaffolds to consume the clergy and nobility. I
do not myself see the force or necessity of this. The age of gold yields
to that of iron or the sword; the new dynasty (the Napoleonic) is a vast
scandal, and reintroduces pomp and ceremonial at the Tuileries.
_Century VIII.—Quatrain 19._ [I. 192.]
A[270] soustenir la grand’ cappe[271] troublée,
Pour l’esclaircir les rouges marcheront:
De mort famille sera presque accablée,
Les rouges rouges la rouge assommeront.
_Translation._
They will _not_ sustain the great but troubled Capets,
The reds will take steps to purge their number,
They will almost exterminate the family with death,
The red of reds will overwhelm the red.
This very forcibly announces the Reign of Terror to have set in. The
reds will do what in them lies to crush the Capets, till they have
almost annihilated the family in death; and, then the reddest reds
will guillotine the reds,—the Montagnards the Girondists. Bouys does
not allude to this, though one would have thought it must strike every
reader as far as what is said relating to the conduct of the double-dyed
reds against the moderate reds. Garencières’ mistakes serve to show
how impossible it was to guess at the meaning of a quatrain in the
seventeenth century. He fancies this to refer to some conspiracy of red
Cardinals against a Pope, to be designated the Red one.
_Century VI.—Quatrain 69._ [I. 193.]
La pitié grand’ sera sans loing tarder,
Ceux qui dônoyent seront contraints de prendre:
Nuds, affamés, de froid, soif, soy bander,
Les monts passer commettant grand esclandre.
_Translation._
A sight of pity will not long delay,
The almoners will soon be forced to beg:
Hungered, athirst, naked, proscribed, and cold.
In bands they cross the Alps, a scandal to be seen.
This conveys a forcible picture of the calamitous emigration the
clergy of France would undergo between 1792 and 1801. Once the clue is
supplied, it leads so naturally, that one almost finds insight from it
into the manner in which these representations presented themselves to
Nostradamus. One feels, that he must have seen the events passing before
the field of sight as visions, sometimes accompanied with uttered words;
otherwise how could he get intimation of names? But, if it was thus
that intuition came to him, the quatrains, that he now scattered up and
down throughout the Centuries in utter disorder and disconnection, must
have come to him in a sequence, rendering them comprehensible; more or
less, indeed, in the very order probably into which the chronology of
historical record enables the careful student to replace them now, as
soon as they are understood by him. If this be so, a rather curious fact
presents itself, in a form approaching to something like a certainty,
which is this: disorder must have been the method of the book. We know
that generally his practice was to write down the matter in prose, and
at leisure convert this into separate quatrains rhymed; these he must
afterwards have shaken up in a bag or hat, and when inextricably mixed
have counted them out into hundreds. I think it quite possible that he
found his forecasts became too intelligible when put together in their
natural order, and in the sequence of events. No doubt, with regard to
those events of his own time and to be soon fulfilled, he first began to
perceive the necessity for inverting or displacing the order. Consecutive
and interlinking stanzas would form a kind of commentary, and throw
mutual light one upon the other; so that the adoption of disorder would
follow as a measure of personal security. He thought that his sayings
should be dark, as becometh the words of the wise; and that it would be
quite time enough, should they grow clear when fulfilled to a reader,
who would take sufficient trouble to elucidate them and bring out their
meaning.
_Century I.—Quatrain 44._ [I. 194.]
En bref[272] seront de retour sacrifices,
Contrevenans seront mis à martyre;
Plus ne seront moines, abbés, ne[273] novices,
Le miel sera beaucoup plus cher que cire.
This quatrain exhibits the suppression of the Catholic worship in France,
which took place November 10, 1793. What they called the worship of the
goddess of Reason was set up; and a return to Paganism is what the first
line means.
_Translation._
For a short time there will be a return to [Ethnic] sacrifices,
And those who oppose will suffer martyrdom:
There will be no more monks, clergy, nor novices;
Honey will fetch more than wax.
The last line means that wax will be cheapened, as none will be consumed
in the churches. The rest explains itself. Garencières can see the
meaning of the last two lines; but the first two he considers to have
been fulfilled in the time of Henry V. of France and Henry VIII. of
England.
_Century II.—Quatrain 8._ [I. 195.]
Temples sacrés[274] prime[275] façon Romaine,
Rejetterons les gofres[276] fondements,
Prennant leurs loix premieres et humaines,
Chassant non tous des saincts les cultements.[277]
_Translation._
The temples consecrated in the fashion of early Rome,
They will reject the deep foundations [of Christianity],
Returning to their first and human laws,
They will not entirely abolish all saint-worship.
This M. le Pelletier explains to be a forecast of the _Fête de l’Être
Suprème_, which was appointed by decree of the Convention May 7, 1794,
and celebrated on the 8th of June of the same year with great pomp.
_Century V.—Quatrain 33._ [I. 196.]
Des principaux de cité rebellée.
Qui tiendront[278] fort pour liberté r’avoir,
Detranchés[279] masles, infelice[280] meslée,
Cris, hurlements, à Nantes piteux voir!
_Translation._
The chief citizens of the revolted city,
Who will struggle hard to recover liberty.
The men beheaded, an unhappy mixture,
Cries, howlings, at Nantes piteous to see.
This was realized at Nantes, in Brittany, under the Proconsulate of De
Carrier. The town had, in 1793, become the focus of the Vendean reaction
against the National Convention. The men were beheaded generally, but
many men and women were stripped naked. They were then tied together, a
man to a woman, in couples, or pairs, which their fiendish tormentors
styled “republican marriages.” In this diabolic connection (_infelice
meslée_) they were precipitated helplessly into the Loire, amidst
heartrending cries and howlings. No viler crime was ever committed on
this earth, nor can ever be; the infamy of man and the revengeful filth
of lust can no further go. From that extraordinary coinage and coupling
of words, _infelice meslée_, you know, or seem to know, that Nostradamus
beheld the horrid spectacle in vision—
Estant assis de nuict secret estude (Century I. 1).
Those who believe this to be a recital at haphazard are of a
brain-formation singularly constituted.
_Century VIII.—Quatrain 88._
Dans la Sardeigne un noble Roy viendra,
Qui ne tiendra que trois ans le royaume.
Plusieurs couleurs avec soy conjoindra,[281]
Luy mesme après soin sommeil marrit[282] scome.[283]
_Translation._
In Sardinia a noble King shall come,
Who will only hold the kingdom during three years.
The tricolour will annex him [the King] to itself;
He after much pains will sleep afflicted and ridiculed.
This is Charles Emmanuel IV. The Republic of the tricolour, “le drapeau
tricolor,” will despoil him of his continental estate; and he will
withdraw to his island, ruling for three years, 1798-1802. He then
abdicates to his brother, Victor Emmanuel I., and, _après soin_ much
care, will sleep [as regards governing], and, residing at Rome, sad and
humiliated, will assume the Jesuit robe, and die in 1819.
PIUS VI.
The next four quatrains refer to Rome and Pope Pius VI.
_Century V.—Quatrain 57._ [I. 199.]
Istra[284] de mont Gaulfier[285] et Aventin,
Qui[286] par le trou advertira l’armée.
Entre deux rocs sera prins[287] le butin.
De SEXT[288] mansol[289] faillir la renommée.
_Translation._
When a [French] army shall go from Mont Gaulfier to the Aventine,
There will be a man advising them from under the hole.
The booty shall be seized between the two rocks,
And the glory of the sixth celibate shall wither.
This is a very curious stanza. The name of Montgolfier, the æronaut,
is visible enough in the two separate words, _mont Gaulfier_. M. le
Pelletier calls it the grammatical figure of metaplasm; but it is not
strictly so. Metaplasm is the forming of cases from a non-existent
nominative. This is making two words for things non-existent to
represent a proper name. But there is a still greater singularity in the
employment of it here. For Nostradamus, as I understand him, makes this
fictitious mountain contrast with the real Mount Aventine. He makes it
stand, as I think, for one of the two rocks between which the booty is
secured. The brothers Montgolfier were paper-makers at Annonay Ardèche,
and they gave their own name to their discovery, which dates June 5,
1783. Their balloons opened at the bottom to be filled, so that a man
placed in them was under the hole, _par le trou_. I do not know at what
point the Montgolfier was floated to furnish military information to
the French, but I suppose on the Italian side of the Alps, so that from
that rock or mountain to the Aventine rock would be the points between
which the booty was seized. But the former of these Nostradamus seems
to me to designate by the man’s name, which lends itself to a play upon
the word, rather than by a peak of the Alps. M. le Pelletier says that
the two rocks refer to Peter, _pierre_ being _rock_. One is Avignon, in
France, and the other Rome, in Italy, and the booty was obtained by the
treaty of Tolentino, under date of February 19, 1797. By this the Pope
lost Avignon and Venaissin in France, Bolognia, Ferrara, and the Romagnia
in Italy, and this he calls the two rocks. The balloon was first used
to reconnoitre the position of the Austrians at the battle of Fleurus,
June 16, 1794. Almost immediately after the treaty, the Pontiff was
dragged from Italy to die at Valence: thus was fulfilled the prophecy of
_faillir la renommée_. Interpret how you may, the mention of the name of
Montgolfier so appropriately in this connection, must always stand as
proof of the most solid kind that Nostradamus’s foresight was miraculous.
_Century V.—Quatrain 30._ [I. 201.]
Tout à l’entour de la grande cité
Seront soldats logés par champs et villes:
Donner l’assaut Paris Rome incité,[290]
Sur le pont[291] lors sera faicte grand pille.
_Translation._
Compassing all round the great city
There shall be soldiers camping in the fields and towns:
A Frenchman [Paris will take] Rome excited;
There will then be perpetrated on the Pope a great pillage.
The Executive Directory, in defiance of the Constitution which formally
forbade it, encamped troops around Paris, _la grande cité_, on September
4, 1797. This was to quell, or keep in awe, the counter revolution. A
Frenchman [_Paris_], General Berthier, took Rome by assault, February
10, 1798, the pretext being that General Duphot had lost his life in an
_émeute_ [_dans Rome incité_]. Pope Pius VI. was dispossessed of his
states, arrested in his palace, and subjected to general pillage.
_Century VIII.—Quatrain 46._ [I. 202.]
Pol[292] mensole[293] mourra trois lieües du Rosne;
Fuis[294] les deux prochains[295] tarasc[296] destrois:[297]
Car Mars[298] fera le plus horrible trosne
De Coq, et d’Aigle, de France Freres trois.
_Translation._
The grand Celibate shall die three leagues from the Rhone;
The two dejected brothers shall fly tumult:
For war shall make a most horrible throne
For the three brothers of France by the Cock and Eagle.
The Pope, that is, shall die at Valence, a few leagues from the Rhone.
The two brothers [afterwards Louis XVIII. and Charles X.], alarmed at
the movement of the populace, take flight. War inflicts sad havoc on the
throne of the three brothers [Louis XVI., Louis XVIII., Charles X.] by
the Orleans Cock, and Napoleonic Eagle.
_Century II.—Quatrain 99._ [I. 203.]
Terroir Romain qu’interpretoit Augure[299]
Par gent[300] Gauloise par trop sera vexée:
Mais nation Celtique craindra l’heure,
Boreas[301] classe[302] trop loing l’avoir poussée.[303]
_Translation._
The Roman territory that the Pope governed
The French will cruelly vex:
But that Celtic nation should fear the hour
When it has advanced its army too far to the north.
I render this in the main in accordance with M. le Pelletier; but perhaps
some may think that the Pope cannot be called an augur without great
violence. _Interprétoit_ can hardly stand for spiritual government. It
is also difficult to make _classis_ into army. _Classis_ represented the
orders of the people of Rome; that divided them into bands and companies
for governmental and electoral purposes, not for war. The only _classis_
of war was the _fleet_, and Garencières renders it by _navy_, although
he is entirely abroad in every other respect in his interpretation of
the quatrain. Though he forces a fulfilment upon it in the time of Henry
II. of France, still, evidently Rome is meant, whatever the Augur may
interpret. The Roman territory was twice trampled on by the French: first
by General Berthier against Pius VI, and again by General Miollis, who
in 1809 removed Pope Pius VII. The closing couplet is clearly a forecast
of Napoleon’s defeat in Russia. That will not be affected by the manner
in which we interpret _classe_; but I cannot imagine for a moment that
Nostradamus would employ the Latin _classis_ so erroneously for an
_army_, which no Roman would ever use it for. _Certamen classicum_ is
a sea-fight, but never employed for engagements on land. The result of
this minute verbal inquiry will, I think, end by establishing the more
remarkably the prescience and forecast of this consummate seer. He uses
the word _classe_ in one of its late eighteenth, or early nineteenth
century acceptions, for that body of young men, which is called out
every year in France by lot to serve in the army; or all those called
to the colours, who are drawn for service in the same year. It is an
administrative word, that sprang into use out of the conscription, and
which will die out again when that fraud, passed upon the nations of
Europe, has been detected and abolished; that institution which fosters
war and makes its otherwise intermittent evils permanent and perpetual
upon humanity. To enlarge the area of this view is to doom conscription
to death and sure oblivion. Conscription is an invention of Beelzebub,
when seeking his bath of blood, under the euphonic guise of a patriotic
defence of the mother soil. _Mourir pour la patrie_ is the glozing lie
of Roget de l’Isle, that supplements, or drowns, the true cry of “Blood
for Moloch.” So we will read, for the first time now, the passage thus:
But let the Celtic nation beware the hour when her _conscript columns_
are pushed too far to the Boreal north-east. In brief, beware of Moscow.
If this sixteenth century anticipation of a nineteenth century idiom be
nothing, then let the Alps be called a molehill, and the hollow sea a
cup. Here we close the prefiguration of the Papal torment appropriately
enough; it closes with a terrible hint to its tormentor.
NAPOLEONIC RULE.
_Century III.—Quatrain 35._ [I. 205.]
Du plus profond de l’Occident d’Europe,
De pauvres gens un jeune enfant naistra,
Qui par sa langue seduira grande troupe,
Son bruit au regne d’Orient plus croitra.
_Translation._
In the Southern extremity of Western Europe
A child shall be born of poor parents,
Who by his tongue shall seduce the French army;
His bruit shall extend to the kingdom of the East.
In the island of Corsica was born, of an ancient but impoverished family,
a child, Napoleon Bonaparte, whose proclamations electrified the French
troops. His expedition, by order of the Directory, to Egypt, which was
meant to ruin his career, conferred upon him a world-wide renown. This
man was not eloquent as orators are eloquent; verbosity is their gift.
Even the endowment of Cicero lay much in words; and in their multitude,
which wanteth not folly: Solomon says sin. A plethora of words becomes
the apoplexy of reason. But this man’s phrases are all portable, made for
the knapsack: they fly to the lip as lightning does to metal; poetry,
passion, and energy are in them, but fused to an aerolite, till they fall
like a luminous bolt, only to burn in man’s memory for ever after. They
are not winged, but lightning-shod. Fulminants are matter etherealized
to an interlinking with spirit. But this man’s words are spirit itself,
and burn their niche in Time, to last as long as that will. Take two of
them: “Soldiers, forty centuries look down upon you!” and again, “Behold
the sun of Austerlitz!” When you speak, speak thus to men; such words
are deeds; and come not as from one who beateth the air to the pitchpipe
of the tibicen Ciceronical, but as the bullet to its butt; speak
sword-points, that press between the joints and marrow. But I will stop
here, to escape oratory. That may still fetch its price, and seduce the
zebra troup in the courts of legal falsity, or in the Babel-room down by
the river-Minster.
_Century I.—Quatrain 76._ [I. 206.]
D’un nom farouche tel proferé sera,
Que les trois seurs[304] auront fato[305] le nom;
Puis grand peuple par langue et faict dira,[306]
Plus que nul autre aura bruit et renom.
_Translation._
Of a savage name there shall be such publishing
That the three sisters shall have by Fate the same name:
Then he will lead a great nation by tongue and deed,
And have more glory and fame than any other.
Here M. le Pelletier takes _le proferé_ for a thing placed before, and
understands it as being the prenomen of Bonaparte, viz. Napoleon. But
I cannot see how that is shown to be the meaning of _proferé_. That
word, if from the Latin _proferre_, never was used for _cognomen_ or
_prænomen_. One of the meanings of _proferre_ is _palam facere_, to make
public or publish, and I think it would be safer to render it as I have
done. It will still equally draw attention to the name Napoleon, in
contradistinction to the name of Bonaparte; because, when he mounted the
throne as Emperor, he adopted the new name and abandoned the previous
one. This selection of a new name seems to be a natural instinct of
humanity on entering upon a new phase of life. The popes take a new
name on assuming the pontifical rank; monks and nuns do so on entering
the religious life; commoners leave their name behind when created
peers; women do so when they marry; and here Napoleon does it. But I
do not think it desirable to consider this to be indicated by the word
_proferé_. Nostradamus says that it is such a fatal name that the Parcæ
themselves will adopt it. He then repeats that he will lead,—I think it
should be seduce (_séduira_),—the _grande nation_ by speech and deeds,
and raise a name unrivalled in the universe. This was certainly true, and
the prefiguration of it is, beyond the denial of prejudice, marvellous.
We have now to deal with the word itself, which will furnish to
investigation a few interesting hints. Of course some may think them
intricate and far-fetched. There is no great importance to be attached
to them perhaps, but they must interest the curious; and curiosity that
is innocent has a value of its own. Who could see in Sloane’s strange
Chelsea gallery the shape, dimension, and value of the museum of
Bloomsbury and its affiliations?
_Century IX.—Quatrain 33._ [I. 208.]
Hercules Roy de Rome et D’annemarc,[307]
De Gaule trois Guion[308] surnommé,
Trembler l’Italie et l’unde[309] de Sainct Marc,
Premier sur tous monarque renommé.
_Translation._
Hercules, King of Rome and Denmark,
Surnamed the triple Giant of France,
Shall make Italy tremble and the wave of St. Mark,
First in renown of all monarchs.