langue et faict il conduira_, as we have just seen, so that this
Hercules means the Napoleonic dynasty. As to King of Rome, Napoleon
actually assumed that title, and later on he conferred it upon his son
by Marie Louise. In the “Mémorial de Sainte-Helène,” 1840 [i. 79], by
Las Cases, it is said that during his consulate somebody published a
genealogy connecting his family with the ancient kings of the north. This
Napoleon ridiculed in the public journals, stating that his nobility
dated only from Montenotte or the 18th Brumaire. Things were not yet
ripe for royal pretensions. The Bonaparte family in Italy can trace to
the thirteenth century. One branch was settled at Treviso, the other at
Florence, and both held an honourable position; a third was at Sarzana,
in Genoa. A Charles Bonaparte settled in Corsica in 1612, and lived in
obscurity, says Le Pelletier, till this family of kings was born. Taine
has discovered that the family was of _condottiere_ stock, and De Staël
and Stendal had, before that, both of them found Napoleon’s character
more analogous to that, than to any other type known to them. Taine
finds him to be a Sforza or a Malatesta born belated by three centuries.
He is as unscrupulous, searching, and ambitious as Macchiavelli; and,
curiously enough, the only book[310] he is known to have ever annotated
profusely is Macchiavelli’s “Prince,” which was found in his baggage at
Waterloo, and has since been published; and an intensely interesting
book it is; enormously wicked and shrewd, but diabolically wise in the
Devil’s gay antics. It is a scientific treatise on government without
God in the world. Its moral axiom would seem to be that even murder
should be directed by good sense in the hands of a craft-master. In
this respect I think it is even superior to the clemency of Cæsar. The
“Prince” evidently fascinated him deeply. He treats his author quite
imperially, as Bentley or any other great critic might do, and points
out condescendingly where the priest is but a theorist and errs for want
of knowledge, such as can only be gained from the practical handling
of affairs by a man of the Napoleon calibre. I don’t know that you can
read so deep into the very spirit (for I will not mention heart in the
same breath with Napoleon) of the man of blood and brain, as you may by
the pencil interlineations by him jotted down in this his Italian _vade
mecum_; from time to time as he recurs to the book, enlarging in view
from general to first consul, and from first consul to emperor. You seem
to sit with him, as in a magical cave, with terrible writings that come
and go upon the wall before you, writings which are the words of this
book, and are lit up with a lurid phosphoresence, the light of which
emanates from his own putrescent brain.
It is not historically true to say, as M. le Pelletier does, that
the family lived in obscurity in Corsica. The house at Ajaccio was
the largest in the place, a palace even as compared with the other
residences. The title of King of Rome was precious to Napoleon, as it
enabled him to claim succession to the Empire of Charlemagne. Although
Garencières, in his interpretation, fails of attaching any individual
fulfilment to the words, he is able, from this title, to say that whoever
it belongs to will attain to the Roman Empire.
_Guion_ is equivalent to Terræfilius or Earthborn, and means giant;
in fact, it almost seems a variant of _géants_; but why _three
giants of France_? I do not know that this has ever been explained.
Hercules mythologically was distinguished by three symbols (Martinii,
“Etymologicon,” _s.v._ _Hercules_),—a lion’s skin, key, and three apples.
The three apples were, not to get angry, not to love money, not to
love pleasure. This need only be mentioned for the sake of the double
triplication and as marking so far the propriety of the term Hercules.
Master of Rome, _i.e._ Italy; of Venice, _i.e._ Austria; of Paris, _i.e._
France; as ruled over by Napoleon as General, Consul, Emperor. That he
was “the first of monarchs over all renowned” needs no elucidation.
_Century VIII.—Quatrain 61._ [I. 209.]
Jamais par le descouvrement du jour
Ne parviendra au signe[311] sceptrifere[312]
Que tout ses sieges[313] ne soyent en sejour,[314]
Portant au coq[315] don du TAG[316] armifere.
_Translation._
Never shall he in broad daylight
Reach to the symbol of sceptre-bearing rule.
Of all his positions none will be of a settled permanency,
Conferring on the Gallic cock a gift of the armed Legion.
In other words, the Emperor will never enjoy a settled seat of firmly
established government, and he will confer upon France, either the
ruinous legacy or bequest or gift of the legionary conscription, which
converts Europe into an armed camp,—an evil gift, indeed; or those who
prefer it, may render it as the gift to France of a huge burial-place in
Spain and Portugal, where so many thousands of men, her best blood, fell.
But conscription is of the wider issue, and the more permanent evil, as
it affects Europe to this hour. It makes peace an interlude to war, and
very little less costly than war.
Our next quatrain is a great rarity, for it seems to be in pure
Provençal, and extremely pleasing it is, a great deal more honied, to
the ear in sound than the present French language; which is excellent
for conversation and the _salon_, where society grimaces, but where true
souls are struck dumb and poetry has ceased to be possible; or only
possible to rebellion, such as that of Victor Hugo.
_Century IV.—Quatrain 26._ [I. 211]
Lou grand eyssame se lèvera d’abelhos,
Que non sauran don te siegen venguddos.
De nuech l’embousq. Lou gach dessous les treilhos,
Ciutad trahido per cing langos non nudos.
_Translation._
The great swarm of bees shall rise,
That none can tell from whence they came.
Night’s ambush. The jay[317] beneath the tiles,
City betrayed by five tongues not naked.
The bees stand for the Bonapartist army and the Empire. The second line
is understood, by M. le Pelletier, to refer to the origin of the family,
and it may be so; but I think it refers to the surprising suddenness with
which the rouges, _sans-culottes_, and republicans,—in pretended love
with equality and freedom,—were found to welcome tyranny and Rule of
One, that used to be spoken of as Monarchy. Guillotined in that form,
Frenchmen hailed it as a sword-saviour in the new dictator. It seems to
me to be the sudden conversion of such opposed principles to Bonapartism
on the night of the 18th Brumaire [November 9, 1799],—_De neuch
l’embousq_, an ambuscade of night,—that startles Nostradamus. Certainly
there was no doubt whatever whence the Napoleon family sprang; a family
with a history more or less traceable for five hundred years can scarcely
be described with propriety as one “whose origin is _lost_ in the night
of time.” Yet this is the meaning M. le Pelletier would have us put upon
it.
Next, like the jay in the fable, tricked out in peacock feathers and
spoils of the Capetian kings, Napoleon makes their palace of the
Tuileries [_Treilhos_] his head-quarters. The city is given over to him
by _cinq langos_, five prodigious talkers of the long robe. Far from
naked as to words or clothing were they, but as to principles very nude
and bare, quite unable to cope face to face with the audacity of this
unscrupulous cut-throat, this gunner of Ajaccio.
The men of no principles and no practice were simply ciphers before this
man of practice, _par langue et faict_; this ethnic Hercules of tongue
and sword; this servant, as Daniel has it, of “the God of Forces;” this
fly-pest Beelzebub, man of _Vespres et mouches_, grown to a dynamic King.
Where men have lost their virtue, the poor sceptics are given over to
believe a lie of their own making; tongues have they to lie withal, but
never a hand amongst them to furnish help at need.
_Century VII.—Quatrain 13._ [I. 213.]
De la cité marine et tributaire
La teste rase[318] prendra la satrapie:
Chasser sordide[319] qui puis[320] sera contraire;
Par[321] quatorze ans tiendra la tyrannie.
_Translation._
The short-haired man shall assume authority
In maritime Toulon tributary to the enemy:
He will afterwards dismiss as sordid all who oppose him;
And for fourteen years direct a tyranny.
The English had seized Toulon in the name of Louis XVII., and held it
a few months till Bonaparte retook it. He overturned the Directory
(_sordide_), and suppressed its partisans with the Republic, and enjoyed
the tyranny for fourteen years, from 18th Brumaire, November 9, 1799, to
April 13, 1814. We have already seen (p. 272) that the _cité marine_ is
Toulon. Garencières fancies this to have been fulfilled when Richelieu
made himself governor of _Havre de Grace_, where he kept his treasure and
tyrannized for about fourteen years.
_Century VIII.—Quatrain 57._ [I. 214.]
De soldat simple parviendra en empire,
De robbe courte parviendra à la longue:
Vaillant aux armes, en Eglise, où plus pire,
Vexer[322] les prestres comme l’eau fait l’esponge.
_Translation._
From a simple soldier he will rise to the empire,
From the short robe he will attain the long:
Able in arms, in Church government he shows less skill;
He raises or depresses the priests as water a sponge.
This is a very remarkable quatrain, that Bouys and Le Pelletier, and
I suppose all French commentators, pronounce to belong to Napoleon;
and it certainly fits him very well. But, with almost as little injury
to historical fact, it may be applied to Cromwell, and accordingly
Garencières does so apply it. He writes:
“I never knew nor heard of anybody to whom this stanza might be
applied, than to the late usurper Cromwell; for from a simple
soldier he became to be Lord Protector, and from a student in
the University he became a graduate in Oxford, he was valiant
in arms, and the worst Churchman that could be found; as for
vexing the priests, I mean the prelatical clergy, I believe
none went beyond him.”
The circumstances of the French Revolution and the English Commonwealth
times are so much alike in many respects that it is not surprising that
such a description as this of a soldier who seized power and afflicted
the clergy should fit both the usurpers, Napoleon and Cromwell, almost
equally well.
Napoleon was a plain lieutenant in 1785, Consul for life in 1799, and
Emperor from 1804 to 1814. He changed the short robe for the long,
is understood by M. le Pelletier as being the consular robe for the
imperial. There is no need to interpret thus. The military dress or that
of the civilian is the short robe. Nostradamus takes but little heed, so
far as we have yet seen, of the consular dignity. In the last quatrain
he designates the duration of the tyranny, not as one of ten years,
which would represent the Empire, but of fourteen, which regards the
consulship and empire as one period. If we take Cromwell’s protectorate,
however, from the death of Charles I. to the death of Cromwell, the term
will correspond with Napoleon’s imperial career. But the interregnum in
England was a period of twelve years, and that in France under Napoleon
was of fourteen (_quatorze ans_); hence this quatrain must not be applied
to Cromwell, though it in other respects is as true of him as of Napoleon.
Valiant in arms, but in ecclesiastical matters less successful, still
he thoroughly vexes them, penetrating into every place and corner, as
water does into a sponge. We cannot accept M. le Pelletier’s rendering of
_vexare_ as meaning to raise and cast down. It was used in the sense of
to trouble, _cruciare_; to anger, _commovere_; or to harass with care,
_curarum æstu fluctuare_; but never to alternately swell and depress, as
in filling or squeezing out a sponge.
_Century II.—Quatrain 69._ [I. 215.]
Le Roy Gaulois par la Celtique dextre,[323]
Voyant discorde[324] de la grand Monarchie,
Sur les trois parts fera florir son sceptre,
Contre la Cappe[325] de la grand Hierarchie.
_Translation._
The Gallic King by means of the Celtic sword-hand,
Seeing the discord of the great monarchy,
Shall make his sceptre flourish by restoring the three parts,
As against the Capets, and the Popedom.
Garencières understands as “the Cap of the great Hierarchy,” Spain in the
Netherlands, which was the great upholder of the Popedom. His application
of this to history is of no value. But if we understand Cap as Capet,
and the ancient connection of the French crown with the Papal Hierarchy,
I think we elicit a better sense than that of M. le Pelletier, which
makes the Capet and the Hierarchy one. The three parts restored, M. le
Pelletier makes to consist of clergy, nobility, and tiers état. I feel
that the three parts under Napoleon were Emperor, Senate, and Chamber
of Deputies, which would be head (or Caput instead of Capet), Senate
representing the higher classes, and the Chambers the people. That would
constitute _les trois parts_ of the quatrain.
_Century I.—Quatrain 88._ [I. 216.]
Le divin mal surprendra le grand Prince,
Un peu devant aura femme espousée:[326]
Son appuy et credit à un coup[327] viendra mince,[328]
Conseil mourra pour la teste rasée.
_Translation._
He shall have married a woman just before
The divine wrath falleth on the great Prince;
And his support shall dwindle in a sudden atrophy;
Counsel shall perish from this shaven head.
This divine evil that surprises the Prince a little after his marriage
with Marie-Louise of Austria and his mean-spirited repudiation of
Josephine, is most excellently rendered by Garencières as “_the falling
sickness_, called by the Greeks _Epilepsia_, and by the Latins _Morbus
sacer_.” Garencières was a Fellow of the London College of Physicians,
and a man versed in the medical nomenclature of his day; so that _le
mal divin_ should here be rendered epilepsy. It has never yet been so
rendered, except by Garencières, and he has no application to make of
it whatever, though, as a mere matter of translation, he says, “the
construction of the whole is easie.” It strikes me that this forecast,
thus interpreted, will throw light from Nostradamus on what history has
heretofore overlooked, and will necessitate the re-writing of Napoleon’s
life from the date of his wicked prostitution of the marriage rite.
Napoleon, Cromwell, Mahomet, Cæsar, were all epileptic, and probably
Alexander. But this particular scoundrel first committed, from the purely
sordid motive of self-aggrandisement, a moral crime, and that brought on
the convulsion of the brain, that practically discharged for ever the
mighty Leyden jar or electric battery, with which this potent brain-fiend
had dealt out merciless torpedo-shocks to Europe, and death as from the
hot wind Samyel. Inflated vanity, the epileptic stroke, the reaction of
external forces on the weakened centre, made the cerebral pap, still of
gigantic power, entertain new phantasms huger than ever, with a terribly
diminished power of reason, to bring them to birth by the practical
handling of circumjacent facts and time-tendencies. Now, said the fool
of this western parable, now am I master of events, and may swim against
the sea,—not with it, as I and common mortals heretofore have done, but
against it, and to win. Well, he did carry the big dream into Russia,
and as far as the nightmare of Borodino. He also still found a mighty
utterance of lurid glory, with which to pin that evil minute in letters
of fire and phosphorus upon the curtain of eternity, “Behold the sun of
Austerlitz!” The looming _mot d’ordre_, the old work, the old guards,
and the old drillings, guided once again to a Pyrrhic victory; two such
will damn a kingdom. Reader, read Ségur [Comte de Ségur, “Napoléon et
la Grande Armée,” liv. vii. ch. viii. p. 179], and there perceive the
giant unbrained and drivelling about his bastard boy called “King of
Rome,” and what else belongs to _mon étoile effacée_. “All the supports
dwindle,” says Nostradamus, “and counsel will perish from the shaven
head.” Garencières is right, and the diagnosis true. It is the falling
sickness. It is not Jove fulminant that strikes the reeling Pagod from
without, as with Cæsar ’twas, but an epileptic withdrawal of electricity
from within, backwards. Emperor and empire will soon roll together in the
dust; man’s posthumous analysis, and that of all the evil works wrought
by him, though the good live after.
_Century I.—Quatrain 4._ [I. 127.]
Par[329] l’univers sera faict un monarque
Qu’en[330] paix et vie ne sera longuement:
Lors se perdra la piscature barque,
Sera regie en plus grand detriment.
_Translation._
Throughout the universe a monarch shall arise,
Who will not be long in peace nor life;
The bark of St. Peter will then lose itself,
Being directed to its greatest detriment.
The Emperor Napoleon, reviving pretensions to the old Roman empire or
universe, will neither enjoy peace nor life for very long. In his time
the Holy Seat, _la piscature barque_, shall so guide itself to greatest
detriment as to be cast away and lost (under Pius VII.).
Pope Pius was made a prisoner by General Miollis, July 6, 1809, and
carried to Savone, then to Fontainebleau, and kept under strict guard by
Napoleon till March 10, 1814, when he was set at liberty. Garencières
interprets this as being fulfilled in the time of Henri II. of France,
who was slain by Montgomery in the tilt yard. Through all his reign he
was at war with the Emperor Charles V. This Emperor sacked Rome, and Pope
Clement VII. was made a prisoner (_vide_ Garencières, “Tiber,” p. 77).
_Century V.—Quatrain 60._ [I. 218.]
Par teste rase viendra bien mal eslire,
Plus que sa charge ne porte[331] passera;
Si grande[332] fureur et rage fera dire
Qu’à feu et sang tout sexe tranchera.[333]
_Translation._
In the shorn head France will have made so bad a choice;
It will be heavier than its force will enable it to endure.
So great fury and rage will make men say
That he will exterminate the male sex by fire and sword.
The period of the fulfilment of this event M. le Pelletier gives as
extending from 1813 to 1815. It asks no further interpretation than that
afforded by the translation.
_Century IV.—Quatrain 82._ [I. 219.]
Amas s’approche venant d’Esclavonie,[334]
L’Olestant[335] vieux cité ruynera,
Fort desolée verra sa Romanie,
Puis grande flamme esteindre ne scaura.
_Translation._
A troop approaches, coming through Sclavonia;
The destroyer will ruin an old city;
He will see all Romania desolated,
Nor will he know how to extinguish such a blaze.
A mass of troops is wending from Sclavonia. The destroyer, Napoleon,
will ruin old Moscow altogether, and see Roumania desolated; such a
conflagration he will not know how to extinguish. It was Rostopchin, in
1812, fired Moscow to prevent the French from wintering there, and it
settled the fate of the campaign.
_Century II.—Quatrain 44._ [I. 220.]
L’aigle poussée[336] entour[337] de pavillions,
Par autres oyseaux d’entour[338] sera chassée,
Quand bruit des cymbres[339] tube,[340] et sonnaillons[341]
Rendront le sens de la dame insensée.
_Translation._
The eagle, drifting in her cloud of flags,
By other circling birds is beaten home.
Till war’s hoarse trumpet and the clarion shrill,
Recall her senses to th’ insensate dame.
This is one of the few quatrains that lend themselves freely to a poetic
rendering. The Napoleonic eagle driven back to France with all its
retreating flags about it, or chased by a surrounding of other eagles,
Austrian, Russian, Prussian. The din of cymbals, trumpets, and clarions
restore France to reason, the insensate dame.
Garencières’s annotation here is extremely funny, and should not be
unrecorded. He says: “It is an eagle driven from the tents by other
birds, when a mad lady shall recover her senses by the noise of cymbals,
trumpets, and bells.”
_Century X.—Quatrain 86._ [I. 221.]
Comme un gryphon viendra le Roy d’Europe,
Accompagné de ceux d’Aquilon,[342]
De rouges et blancs conduira grand[343] troupe,
Et iront contre[344] le Roy de Babylon.
_Translation._
Like a griffin the King of Europe will come,
Accompanied with those of the north.
Of red and white there will be a great number,
And they will go against the King of Babylon.
The King of Europe is Louis XVIII.; shall come like a griffin (Griffon,
γρύψ, γρύπος, a fabulous animal, with hooked beak: _v._ Liddell and
Scott; _v._ _Griffe_, Noël; _Griffeau_, Roquefort, Littré, Gwillim,
Brunet, etc.), accompanied with those of the north. He will conduct
grand battalions of red and white uniforms, _i.e._ English and Austrian,
and they will march as one against the King of Babylon, which is Paris.
Louis, as the descendant of Hugh Capet, may be styled the first of
European Kings. The King of Paris is Napoleon, who ruled the Revolution
there, and brought order to confusion or Babel. But we can bring it home
to Paris even more intimately than this, for the old name of Paris was
Lutetia, or mud-place, where the toads, _crapauds_, or Frankish frogs
dwelt, and out of whose mud, or _bourbe_, came the Bourbon family. So
that Paris, their chief city, _en calembour_, yields _Bourbe ville_,
_Babyl_, _Babel_.
Garencières thinks to see Gustavus Adolphus here as the most eminent King
of Europe in his day, and he came from Aquilon, the north, and warred
upon the Emperor, who was King of Babylon, from propping the popedom,
or from the Babel of confusion. He had regiments red, white, blue, and
yellow and green, in the hope of creating emulation amongst them. If he
had only had regiments red and white we might have hesitated, and gone
further to examine where the clue would lead to. But what begins by
proving too much is like other overshooting, and misses the mark entirely.
_Century VI.—Quatrain 89._ [I. 222.]
Entre deux cymbes[345] pieds et mains attachés
De miel face oingt et de laict substanté,
Guespes et mouches, fitine,[346] amour, fachés,
Poccilateur[347] faucer[348] Cyphe[349] tenté.
We have now rather laboriously cleared the way for a
_Translation._
Between two prisons, bound hand and foot,
With his face anointed with honey, and fed with milk,
Exposed to wasps and flies, and tormented with the love of his child,
His cupbearer will false the cup that aims at suicide.
M. le Pelletier renders this: Napoleon, after being consecrated by Pius
VII., and anointed from the sacred ampulla with honey and milk, underwent
a double imprisonment in Elba and St. Helena. The imperial bees—for so
he translates the wasps and flies—are desolated as to their love for the
child, and his surgeon, Yvan (_pocillator_), has falsified the death by
poison, on the night of April 12 to 13, 1814. Now, as it was not his
own soldiers that tormented him, I think we ought to read it _faché_:
he was desolated by wasps, flies, his child, and love. His soldiers are
called _abeilles_ before, never _guêpes_; these are the enemy tormenting,
who will not let him abdicate in favour of his son (φυτόν). We shall
do better here to follow Garencières’s example, drawn from the life of
Artaxerxes, King of Persia. The Persians used to punish poisoners by
laying them between two troughs, here called boats, with their face
uncovered, bedaubed with honey to attract the wasps and flies, and fed
them with milk to prolong the torment, which if they refused, they ran
needles into their eyes most persuasively, and then left them till vermin
ate them up. So that it means: he was tormented between two prisons
bodily and mentally, with the ruin of his family, insomuch that he would
have been glad to have escaped it all by poison. Whenever Napoleon was
thoroughly frustrated in his plans, he evidently tried to fall back upon,
what he had never deserved, human sympathy; which in prosperity he had
never thought of nor desired. He first showed this softening, rather of
the brain than heart, at Borodino, as we have said before.
We will now take the substance of what happened at the abdication, as
given by M. le Pelletier from the _Manuscrit de 1814_, by the Baron Faim.
He abdicated [here may we say, “Woe unto him that buildeth a town with
blood” (Habakkuk, ii. 12)] at Fontainebleau April 4, 1814, reserving the
Regency for the Empress Marie Louise, and his son. He was thrown into
despair when he found the allies to be masters of Paris, and to reject
any such conditions. Baron Faim was his private secretary, and describes
what occurred on the night of the 12th and 13th of April, before the day
of his unconditional abdication. Fontainebleau really became a prison
under the surveillance of strangers. There were no terms left to him to
save even his life. Still he let the day close without yielding.
For some days previously he had seemed altogether preoccupied in
revolving some design. His conversation turned always upon the voluntary
death that the great men of antiquity courted when in situations such as
his. The Empress had reached Orleans on her way to rejoin him, but he had
given orders not to allow her to do so. He dreaded such an interview as
likely to unman him for the resolution he meditated.
It was a terrible night of suspense; the long corridors of the palace
resounded with the footsteps of servants going and coming, the candles
were burning in the private apartments. Doctor Yvan is suddenly called
upon to attend, the Duc de Vincence is sent for, and they hurry to fetch
the Duc de Bassano from the Chancellory; they are all taken to the
bedroom as they drop in one after another. Sobs and sighs escape, but
not a word is yet dropped to satisfy curiosity. On a sudden the doctor
leaves the apartment, descends to the courtyard, finds a horse ready
saddled, and quits the place at a hand-gallop.