Chapter VIII: Appendix: 351 (5)

If the reader will carefully give his attention to the full drift of this quatrain, when the mere difficulty of verbal contortion has been resolved, he must feel that the prognostication has to be reckoned as one of the most astounding of oracles ever set forth in history. A French King takes Nancy. The Elector of Trèves is bandied about between France and Spain, like a shuttlecock of State; and then, by name, comes the execution of the great Montmorency, detailed with, it is true, the brevity of Tacitus, but, when understood, with a singular felicity of detail implied in the pregnant words _neufve obturée_, of the newly built town hall. Not in the market-place is he executed, but in the central courtyard. Let _clere peyne_ (_clara pœna_) stand merely for celebrated attainder, the thing is still prodigious beyond all precedent. But when you know, in addition, that a part of Nostradamus’s prophetic method consists in using every possible play of words, including paronomasia and anagram, and you find that the soldier who acted as headsman—a man called upon by chance to gratify the almost absurd sensibilities of the family—was _Clerepeyne_, a name that corresponds to a tittle with the two words employed by the prophet, then, indeed, the marvel mounts into the stupendous. It cannot be paralleled out of the works of the individual we are busy with. It is incredible, and yet you must believe it. It is not to be understood, but it must be accepted. Joubert, de Jant, the Curé de Louvicamp, and Motret, have all contributed to its historical confirmation on independent lines. It was in print, beyond possibility of gainsaying, more than fifty years before any of the events occurred. Clerepeyne could not have been even born at the time his name was being put through the printing press at Lyons. The mind that can realize all these details, and then be content to fall back upon chance to explain them, or upon the verbal fact that visions must be visionary—an axiom quite as philosophic, by-the-bye, as Hume’s “Essay on Miracles” is built upon—is a mind not at all to be envied. Such incredulity is more astounding than the prophecy itself. It is easier to believe the prophecy than the philosopher who says he does not believe it. The Tower is below London Bridge. Has anybody ever asked “why?” This 18th quatrain of Century IX. of Nostradamus is just as much a fact as the Tower of London is, and vastly more impregnable. Intelligent people will be amused by an explanation; but the substantive fact can stand without any, till the day of Doom if necessary. It is only some human popinjay, Plato Pry, the philosopher, who would like to gossip to us the _How_, and so sport another borrowed feather in his feather-brain,—or hum us with another bee from his bonnet; that hive of mad insects.

THE CONSPIRACY OF CINQ MARS (MARCH 13, 1642.) [I. 115.]

_Century VIII.—Quatrain 68._

Vieux Cardinal par la jeusne deceu,[142]
Hors de sa charge sa verra desarmé,
Arles ne monstres[143] double[144] soit apperceu;
Et Liqueduct[145] et le Prince embausmé.

_Translation._

The old cardinal is supplanted by a young man, and will see
himself deprived of his charge, and disarmed. [Le Pelletier
renders]: If Arles you do not show, in a manner that shall be
visible, a counterpart of the treaty, then the man who will
cause himself to be conveyed by water will be embalmed, and the
Prince also.

The above is the contortion to which Le Pelletier resorts to force out of it the sense it undoubtedly contains. My proposed reading reduces the difficulty.

The old Cardinal Richelieu shall find himself supplanted by the young Cinq Mars. He was but twenty-two when he achieved this bit of dexterous Court intrigue against Richelieu,[146] the most _rusé_ fox in Europe, as rumour ran.

Cinq Mars was his own _protégé_, and no doubt threw him with a trick learned from his master. A sprightly youngster of the apt breed can learn such things quickly. But when the cardinal was at Arles he learnt that a certain treasonable treaty was negotiated with Spain by his rival in the name of the King’s brother, and this made known brought Richelieu back to power straight. Now, if we read the line

Arles, le monstre double soit apperceu:

At Arles, let the monster diploma (treacherous treaty) be discovered,—

or Cinq Mars himself might be the double monster,—it would be but a gentle emendation in a classic line, and it makes the sense run well. Richelieu returned by water (_Liqueduct_) from Tarascon to Lyons, by the Rhone, with his bed upon the boat, but sick unto death, carrying Cinq Mars and De Thou prisoners along with him. In the same style he descended the Seine from Fontainbleau to Paris, where he died, two months later, on December 4, 1642. Louis XIII. died on the 14th of the following May. Both were embalmed, which was the practice then customary. The King when dead becomes a Prince again, when the breath was out of the body that 4th of December. Le roi est mort, vive le Roy Louis XIV.

IMPROVEMENT IN FIREARMS (1630-1671.) [I. 116.]

_Century III.—Quatrain 44._

Quand l’animal à l’homme domestique,[147]
Après grands peines et sauts viendra parler,
Le foudre à vierge[148] sera si[149] malefique,
De terre prinse[150] et suspendue en l’air.

_Translation._

When the dog,[151] after many trials, shall begin to leap and
speak, the powder loaded by ram-rod shall spread destruction
round (_sera très malefique_.) Powder taken from the earth and
exploded in the air.

When the firelock shall have been invented after many trials, and shall speak through the mouth of the gun, with recoil [_sauts_, or kick], after the powder-charge is well driven home with the ram-rod, it will be most murderous by explosion in the air. The invention of the musket dates 1630. Troops, Le Pelletier says, were first armed with it in 1671. Nostradamus, it is to be observed, anticipates by an ingenious amplification and periphrasis the very name _chien_, by which the French designate this portion of the lock. It would not have served its purpose for the name of the same thing in English. This anticipation of the slang term of manufacture, a hundred years before the thing itself was used or named, seems to show an intimacy with what would be called matters of chance, that is inconceivable and beyond all comprehensibility.

I cannot but append here a translation of Guynaud’s remarks upon this quatrain. They are, I think, the funniest that occur in the whole book. He says:

“Nostradamus warns us here that two prodigious things are
to occur at last: one, that the industry and care of man
will arrive at such a point that a domestic animal, such as
dogs are, will be got to speak. For to imagine that this can
be intended of birds is out of the question quite, as they
are excluded from the list of domestic animals created by
God for the service of man, as quadrupeds are. The words of
the two first lines of the prophecy are _Quand après grande
peine l’animal domestique viendra parler à l’homme et qu’il
sautera_,—just as dogs do in approaching their master. A
further thing is to happen that is no less astonishing: a demon
is to mingle himself with powder, and suddenly transport a girl
into the air, when she will remain suspended for possibly a
whole day long, according to these words: ‘_La foudre à vierge
sera si malefique; de terre prinse et suspendue en l’air_.’
The critics may suppose that to mean that the girl will be
hanged; but this is not so, in my opinion, because the word
_malefique_ is derived from the Latin _maleficus_, which in
itself indicates a maleficent spirit delighting to work evil,
as the devil always is.”—GUYNAUD, “Concordances,” p. 271.

LOUIS XIV.

(1643-1715.)

COMMENCEMENT OF HIS PERSONAL REIGN (MARCH 10, 1661). [I. 118.]

_Quatrain added to the Xth Century._[152]

Quand le fourchu sera soustenu de deux paux,[153]
Avec six demy-corps[154] et six sizeaux ouverts,
Le très puissant Seigneur, heritier des crapaux,
Alors subjugera sous soy tout l’univers.

_Translation._

When a fork sustained by two stakes (_i.e._ V, _fourchu_,
sustained by two stakes upright, II. = M, a thousand,) and six
half horns and six scissors open (CCCCCC, XXXXXX). (Half horn
is the _cor de chasse_, or French horn cut in half, like a C,
making altogether 1600).

The very mighty King, inheritor of the toads, shall subjugate
to his power the whole universe.

These two first lines are clumsily employed in giving the date, but still were in print fifty-five years before the date named.

Mazarin died on March 9, 1661. The following day Louis XIV. became full inheritor of the lilies, took the reins of government, and subjected everything to his will.

Upon this Le Pelletier remarks that the toads, as emblematic of France, were standards borne under the early kings of the Merovingian race. The _fleurs-de-lys_ were of later introduction, under Clovis, son of Childeric I., the founder of the Christian monarchy of the Franks.

TREATY OF WESTPHALIA, ETC. (1648-1661). [I. 119.]

_Century X.—Quatrain 7._

Le grand conflit qu’on appreste à Nancy;
L’Æmathien[155] dira, tout je soubmets;
L’isle Britanne par[156] vin sel en soucy;
Hem-mi[157] deux Phi[158] longtemps ne tiendra Metz.

_Translation._

A great conflict will approach Nancy;
The Æmathion will say, I submit all to me;
The isle of Britain will be agitated for lack of force and wisdom;
Metz will not hold out long against the two Philips.

Nancy was taken in 1660 by the French, when they razed the fortifications and united it with France. It appears to me that the first two lines of this quatrain should have formed the last two, but how any such error as that could have crept in is quite inexplicable. The reader will discern that a difference of about twelve years exists between the dates involved in the two distichs, that, as they are given, they are contrary to chronology, and that for such disarrangement no reason is assignable. If this is the way in which visions presented themselves to our seer, there is no reason to suppose, as I do, that he shook up the separate quatrains purposely to destroy a sequence that would have rendered them too easy of interpretation. It might have been a printer’s error.

We have already seen what is the classical meaning to be attributed to Æmathion—that it relates to the sun and to Alexander the Great. In Nostradamus it refers to Louis XIV. (_Louis le Grand_). Of him it is to be remembered that he assumed as his emblem and that of France, the sun, with the motto _Nec pluribus impar_. Now, the sun, in the language of alchemists, stands for gold, and, in the metaphorical language of the Church, for Christianity. Gold is all the Christianity that many Christians possess. _Les Solaires_, in Nostradamus, is used for Christians. It is especially connected with France, inasmuch as her King is held at Rome, that centre of titles and of prelatical humility, to be _Christianissimus_. But this stout Capetian glorious King meant it of sovereignty. It was to signify, as Nostradamus has it, _tout je soubmets_. What is this man’s own choice of a posy, to be cut around his signet? _Nec pluribus impar._ What is the axiom his blind self-pride invents when the death of Mazarin emancipates him from tutelage, and he grips the reins of France in his sole left hand (in 1661)? _L’État, c’est Moi._ Can insolence rise higher? Wait an odd century or so and see a scaffold spring before your Tuilleries windows, see an Æmathion, but twice removed in blood, roll his head, red, gushing, spurting, and bounding on the sawdust-sprinkled planks there; its motto, could it speak, would be your axiom recast fatally, _L’État du Capet!_ (_Caput!_)

We have not quite concluded yet. When the treaty of Westphalia shall be agreed to between France and Philip IV. of Spain in 1648, and before the war of Succession to seat Philip V., grandson of Louis XIV., on the throne, Metz shall be ceded to France, and lose for ever its title of Imperial City, between the two Philips—Philip IV. and Philip V., _protégé_ of France.

England about the same time, in revolution kindled by that imp of malevolence, Richelieu, shall behead its king, 1649, and be in anxiety because of the want of force and wisdom (_vin et sel_). This symbol Le Pelletier interprets thus: Wine is the symbol of force, because of its _heat_; and salt, because of its incorruptibility, is the symbol of _wisdom_. I think it clear that this is not to be the interpretation here. He does not allude to _want_ of force and wisdom; but anxiety (_soucy_) is caused by force and wisdom (_à l’envers_, as he puts again in reference to England, Century IX. 49; vol. i. 141) applied in the wrong direction.

This, though a highly unsatisfactory quatrain, as I have shown above, is, nevertheless, one of the most remarkable of the whole series. The time of the Westphalian treaty synchronises with the revolt in England—a revolt which we have seen to be fostered out of mere pique by the vulpine Richelieu; a Churchman plotting royal murder, taught by Rome’s consent that regicide was God’s service, when a king (Henri III.) stood in her way; and when the Church once corrupted herself, baptizing her St. Bartholomew whose emblem was a knife, in blood, she absolved Paris, [_cité au glaive_, i. 182] who in midsummer madness stained her kennels red. The example of Whitehall—in re-enactment before the Tuilleries (_vin et sel à l’envers_), with force and wisdom converted into violence and democratic sensibility,—next turned Paris _rouge_, and the blood carnation burst into bloom at every street corner.

“When nations are to perish in their sins,
’Tis in the Church the leprosy begins;”

says the wise, mild, thoughtful, but much underrated bard, Cowper, who has done Gilpin inimitably, and Homer better than anybody else, by a long way.

LOSS OF DE LA FERRIÈRE’S SQUADRON (1655). [I. 121.]

_Century III.—Quatrain 87._

Classe[159] Gauloise n’approche de Corsegue,[160]
Moins de Sardaigne, tu t’en repentiras:
Trestous mourrez frustrés de l’aide grogne;
Sang nagera, captif ne me croiras.

_Translation._

Approach not Corsica, thou fleet of France,
Nor yet Sardinia, lest thou rue the chance:
For ye no headland aids, ye all shall die,
The captive drown, for unbelieved am I.

M. le Pelletier tells us of a French squadron, commanded by the Chevalier de la Ferrière in 1655, that foundered in the Gulf of Lyons in coasting Corsica and Sardinia. All hands perished: they did not, he says, pass Cape Pourceau. He points out that _Grogne_ is the synonym of Pourceau, which is a cape with a little port in the Mediterranean. This may have more to support it than appears at first sight, but I think it much simpler to take it for what it says. _Grogne_ is the same as _Groin_, cape, or headland which runs out into the sea. In other words: nothing will put off to you from the headland where you founder; there will you all be drowned; for what the better will your master pilot be for this advertisement of mine? Jean de Rian was this master pilot, and _Le Captif_ was his nickname, as he had been a slave.

Though perfectly useless for interpretation, Garencières makes annotations on this quatrain, that have an interest of their own. He takes the fulfilment to have been in 1555, just about the time when the quatrains were copied out for presentation to Henri II. But he remarks that _Greigne_, which is the word in his reading, signifies _galley_ in the Provençal language, which was that of Nostradamus by his mother’s side; and this makes very good sense: “they shall all founder without a galley putting out to them from the shore.”

Of course Garencières knows nothing about Jean de Rian, or the curious precision with which Nostradamus gives us his nickname _Captif_; but he appends to his “Poor prisoner, thou shalt not believe me” the following comment that is worth recording, as it may furnish a link to some inquiry in the future:

“We find in this work many examples of those who went to
consult with the author concerning the success of their
undertakings, as did the Earl of _Sommerive_, before the
besieging of Bagnole; to whom he answered, that he should leave
the trees loaded with a new kind of fruit, that is to say, the
rebels, whom he caused to be hanged on the trees.”

FORTIFICATIONS OF VAUBAN AND THE CANAL OF LANGUEDOC (1659-1666). [I. 122.]

_Century IX.—Quatrain 93._

Les ennemies du fort bien esloignés,
Par chariots conduict le bastion,
Par sur les murs de Bourges esgrongnés,[161]
Quand Hercules bastira l’Hæmathion. [162]

_Translation._

When the enemy are driven from French soil,
And earthworks or bastions are brought by carts;
When the walls of Bourges have crumbled by time,
Then will Æmathion undertake a work of Hercules.

When the peace of the Pyrenees, concluded with Spain in 1659, had removed the enemy from the French frontiers, and Vauban had invented earthworks: at least so says Le Pelletier; Nostradamus only says he used them. Moreri tells us that the castle of Grosse Tour at Bourges was not repaired by Louis XIV., and was already partly ruined in 1651. This line seems to be a whimsical, but special announcement of the fact. Then Æmathion, or Louis XIV., will undertake the Herculean labour of constructing the Canal of Languedoc, which opened the Mediterranean to the ocean. It was begun by Paul Riquet in 1666, and terminated in 1681. It cost thirty-four million francs. It is said that when Vauban visited it he gave some useful hints that were acted upon with advantage. Vauban, like Turenne, was a glory, not to France, but to mankind. He was truly great, for he despised riches, and loved truth to indiscretion; yet his life shows that in judgment he much excelled those who loved truth less.

PEACE OF THE PYRENEES (NOVEMBER 7, 1659). [I. 123.]

_Century X.—Quatrain 58._

Au temps du dueil que le felin[163] monarque,
Guerroyera le jeune Æmathien:
Gaule bransler, perecliter la barque,[164]
Tenter[165] Phossen,[166] au Ponant[167] entretien.

_Translation._

When the court of France shall be in mourning, the cat-like
monarch shall make war against the young Æmathien. France will
stagger; the bark of St. Peter be in danger. Marseilles will be
taken. Two great personages will meet in the West of France.

More at large this may be read, that at the death of Louis XIII., when the French Court is in mourning, shrewd Philip IV. of Spain will make war on the boy King. France will be greatly shaken (1648-1653) by the civil war of the Fronde, whilst Rome will be endangered by the growth of Jansenism. This is Le Pelletier’s version. Garencières says that Paris is signified, as she carries a ship represented in her arms. The 2nd of March, 1660, Louis XIV. enters Phocea or Marseilles by a breach, after which it submits to him. He then hurries to the west of the Isle of Conference on the Bidassoa, and there concludes the peace of the Pyrenees with Philip IV., and marries his daughter, the infanta Maria Theresa, of Austria.

THE EXPEDITION TO IRELAND IN SUPPORT OF JAMES II. (1689-1691). [I. 125.]

_Century II.—Quatrain 68._

De l’Aquilon les efforts seront grands,
Sur l’Ocean sera la porte ouverte,
Le regne en l’Isle sera reintegrand,
Tremblera Londres par[168] voilles[169] descouverte.

_Translation._

Ireland, on the north of England, shall make great efforts. The
door of the ocean shall be opened to the fleets of France; the
kingdom in the island of Ireland shall be set up again; London
shall tremble at the discovery of sails.

When William III., in 1688, shall have established himself on the throne, when James II. absconded; Ireland will still be a stronghold, and the French fleets, commanded by Château Renaud and Tourville, will convoy the King to Ireland, in spite of the combined fleets of England and Holland, in 1689-1690. They will become masters of the sea, and London will for a moment tremble before the fleets of Louis XIV. This is Le Pelletier’s statement. After the fight off Beachy Head on June 30, 1690, it seems to have been pretty much as he relates; for Smollett’s account (ed. 1822, i. 93) is that;

“Torrington retreated without further interruption into the
mouth of the Thames; and, having taken precautions against any
attempts of the enemy in that quarter, returned to London, the
inhabitants of which were overwhelmed with consternation.”

There is a most remarkable passage in the work of M. Bouys on this quatrain. He professes to apply it to the coming victory that was to confer on Napoleon the coveted command of the seas, saying that you need not always wait until after the event to interpret Nostradamus. His own conduct, however, in this very instance does but enforce the rule. He pretends not to know anything of the fulfilment in 1689-1690. In furtherance of the same view he cites Century VIII., Quatrain 37:

La forteresse auprès de la Thamise
Cherra pour lors le roi dedans serré,
Auprès du pont sera vu en chemise,
Un devant mort, puis dans le fort barré.

The word _cherra_ presents the only difficulty here as to the mere words. It is the future of the verb _choir_, tomber, to fall. Of the prophecy I know of no interpretation. Garencières significantly quotes Dan. iv. 10: “The dream be to them that hate thee, and the interpretation thereof to thine enemies.”

WAR OF THE CAMISARDS (1702-1704). [I. 126.]

_Century IX.—Quatrain 38._

L’entrée de Blaye par Rochelle et l’Anglois,
Passera outre le grand Æmathien:
Non loin d’Agen attendra le Gaulois,
Secours Narbonne deceu par entretien.

_Translation._

The great Æmathion shall pass out of the Garonne at Blaye,
the seaport of Bordeaux, no longer impeded by Rochelle and
the English; the Camisards shall look for aid from their
co-religionists on the side of Agen and Narbonne, but will be
disappointed by an arrangement.

Louis XIV. shall pass out by the _Pâté_ de Blaye, a fort of that name, built by him in 1689 to command the entrance of the Gironde against the English and the Protestants of Rochelle. The Camisards in revolt in the Cévennes (_les Gaulois_) will wait at Agens and Narbonne for promised help, but quite in vain, after the submission of Jean Cavalier (1704) to Marshal Villars, at a Conference held at Nîmes. Louis XIV. was so beset by the enemies of France that he sent the Marshal into Languedoc to pacify the districts he despaired of subduing by force.

In this quatrain, Garencières shows that there is some analogy between _Æmathien_, which we are quite sure is Louis XIV. from the frequency of the application to him, and the country of Macedon, so-called, where Cæsar and Pompey fought their last battle in the field of Pharsalia; and he quotes Lucan’s line—

Bella per Æmathios plus quam civilia campos.

It is very probable that line was in the mind of Nostradamus at the moment.

WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION (1701-1713). [I. 127.]

_Century IV.—Quatrain 2._

Par mort la France prendra voyage à faire,
Classe[170] par mer, marcher monts Pyrenées,
Espaigne en trouble, marcher gent militaire;
Des plus grands Dames en France emmenées.

_Translation._

By reason of a death, France shall undertake a foreign
expedition. The fleet will go by sea, the troops will cross
the Pyrenees. Spain in trouble will march her military forces,
because great ladies have migrated to France.

Philip V., grandson of Louis le Grand, by will of Charles II., will ascend the Spanish throne. But Austria, England, Holland, Prussia, Portugal, and Savoy will coalesce to support the pretensions of the Archduke Charles. The fleets of France will put to sea, her armies will cross the Pyrenees. Spain, in two camps, will be trampled by troops in every direction: all springing out of Bourbon marriages with the two Infantas; one, daughter of Philip III. married to Louis XIII., the other, a daughter of Philip IV., married to Louis XIV. This war lasted twelve years, and was disastrous to France. Philip V. found himself chased from Spain by the Austrians. By the Peace of Utrecht, 1713, the Spanish monarchy was dismembered, and some of his earlier conquests were snatched from Louis XIV.

OVERTHROW OF PHILIP V., _GRANDSON OF LOUIS XIV_. (1706). [I. 129.]

_Century IX.—Quatrain 64._

L’Æmathion passer monts Pyrenées,
En Mars Narbon[171] ne fera resistance,
Par mer terre fera si[172] grand menée,
Cap[173] n’ayant terre seure pour demeurance.

_Translation._

The Æmathion is to pass the Pyrenean Mount;
In Narbo Martius no resistance shows;
By sea and land are greatest efforts made;
The Capet holds no foot of land is safe.

Louis XIV. will leap the Pyrenees, and will treat (as we have before seen) with the Camisards of Narbonne. He will make desperate efforts by sea and land. But the Capetian, his grandson, Philip V., will be driven out of Spain by the Imperial forces, and not retain a foot of soil on which to live.

In all these passages of history, quite detached as they seem to be, we find analogies springing up at all points: Æmathion the Macedonian, and Louis le Grand; the Spanish succession which came up again in Louis Philippe’s time, even to uniting the very two names of Louis XIV. and his grandson Philip V. in his own baptismal one. Louis wished to expel a Charles, and Louis Philippe actually expelled Charles X. Leibnitz made an express journey to Paris to persuade Louis XIV. to undertake a grand expedition against Egypt. Napoleon, the next Æmathion or Apollon leading France to mischief, was thrust into an Egyptian expedition, and entered into a desperate Spanish war to follow, that crippled France again. History repeats itself, they say. It seems at every turn to be perpetually engaged in a process of replaiting its old lines and once-discarded threads.

LOUIS XV.

MINORITY OF LOUIS XV. (SEPTEMBER 1, 1715). [I. 131.]

_Century III.—Quatrain 15._

Coeur, vigueur, gloire, le regne changera.
De tous points contre ayant son adversaire:
Lors France enfance par mort subjuguera;
Un grand Regent sera lors plus contraire.

_Translation._

Heart, vigour, glory, change with change of reign,—
At every point opposed by something cross:
An infant is set up in France by death;
And a great Regent helps the contrary.

With the death of Louis XIV., the splendour of his reign will pass away, and every point show contrary in his successor. By failure of direct inheritors of the throne, Louis XV., a child of five will rule, under Philippe d’Orléans (_un grand Regent_), whose vices will show him more contrary to Louis XIV. than even to Louis XV.

DECADENCE OF MONARCHY (1715-1774). [I. 132.]

_Century V.—Quatrain 38._

Ce grand monarque qu’au mort succedera,[174]
Donnera vie illicite lubrique,
Par nonchalance à tous concedera,
Qu’à la parfin faudra[175] la loy Salique.

_Translation._

He who succeeds to the great monarch dead, will lead an evil
and illicit life. By his neglectful habit he will entrust
business to the management of others, so that at last (_à la
parfin, per finem_) the Salic law will fail.

In other words, this is a plain announcement that the reign of Louis XV. will serve as a simple prelude or introduction to the establishment of a Republic; the annihilation of the Salic law; and of the French throne.

ENGLAND.

CHANGES OF GOVERNMENT IN ENGLAND (1501-1791). [I. 135.]

_Century VI.—Quatrain 57._

Sept fois changer verrez gent[176] Britannique.
Teints en sang en deux cens nonante an;
Franche[177] non point, par[178] appuy Germanique;
Aries[179] doubte son pole Bastarnan.[180]

_Translation._

You will see the British nation change seven times, stained
with blood, in two hundred and ninety years; but not so France,
thanks to the strength of its Germanic Kings [of the Capetian
race]. The sign of the Ram will not know (_doubte_) the
northern district (_son pole Bastarnan_), so changed will it be.

England will change its government seven times in a period of 290 years, inundated with blood, says Le Pelletier,—making this long run of years commence at what he calls the Renaissance (1501-1791). Not so in France; thanks to the firmness of the Germanic kings, she will hold out till 1792. I take this to be, in effect, a French endeavour to chalk out a grand epoch in French annals. Poland (_la Bastarnie_) will be dismembered. The first partition took place in 1772. There will arise in the north of Europe,—Peter the Great ascending the Russian throne, 1682, and Lutheranism triumphing in Germany, 1517,—so that Aries cannot identify the regions adjacent to its northern pole (_son pole Bastarnan_).

M. le Pelletier gives an elaborate statement of what he conceives to be the seven Revolutions in England (1501-1791). But starting from the Renaissance, at the fancy date 1501, he vitiates the whole of the interpretation as it relates to England; but for the last half of the quatrain he is excellent. His interpretation of the fourth line is masterly. Garencières gives a lengthy annotation, to me in the main unintelligible, but he makes the period to run out about the year 1845; in which year I can see nothing to chronicle but the Maynooth Grant of £26,000 per annum. He says the two first lines refer to England, and he leaves the English nation to interpret them. We shall shortly try to do so.

(1) The Revolution Le Pelletier dates 1532, when Henry VIII. is proclaimed by Parliament the head of the Church; 1534 this should be. (2) Re-establishment of Popery under Queen Mary. (3) Elizabeth comes back to Protestantism. (4) Commonwealth follows upon death of Charles I. (5) Restoration under Charles II. (6) William III. takes the throne of James II. (7) The House of Hanover succeeds.

This is exceedingly faulty. It omits as one Revolution the most important of all, if consequences are to be regarded, that is, the lapse of the Tudor race in Elizabeth and the succession of the Stuarts. Another very weak point is the commencing of the 290 years prior to the first issue of the quatrains. According to this, two of the Revolutions were already elapsed. A man does not prophesy of what is past. Nostradamus was writing in the reign of Queen Mary, so that the first Revolution would naturally count from 1558, when Elizabeth re-introduced Protestantism.

Now that we have contrived a firmer basis, let us see what this leads to.

No. 1. Elizabeth comes to the throne, November 17, 1558.

No. 2. James I. (Stuart succession), March 24, 1603. Queen Elizabeth dies exactly one hundred years after her namesake, Queen of Henry VII.

No. 3. Commonwealth on death of Charles I., January 30, 1649; Protectorate, Cromwell, December 16, 1653.

No. 4. Restoration, Charles II., May 29, 1660 (on his 30th birthday).

No. 5. William III. and Mary, November 5, 1668; Revolution (Gunpowder Day).

No. 6. Hanoverian succession, George I., May 21, 1714.

No. 7. Reform Bill, June 17, 1832. (Dulling the lustre of the Crown, as we shall see the French King _mitré_.)

Those who wish to prophesy pleasant things can do away with the disagreeable date of the Reform Bill, in part, because the No. 3 Revolution can fairly be interpreted as two Revolutions. Cromwell’s usurpation belied the pretended principles of his whole life and conduct prior to that assumption, and can be called a new order of things. This arrangement will obviate the necessity of classifying the Reform Bill as the 7th Revolution. But the 290 years must end where they do, though you can regard the matter in what light you please. But I look upon Cromwell’s treason, not to the King, but to himself as a man, as being practically part and parcel of the Commonwealth, or a horn growing out of the head of that rhinoceros or unicorn: nothing more. Given a popular revolt, a self-seeking horn always grows out of the forehead of the beast, till, with a ring in its nostril, it is driven whither its sublime liberties shall dictate.

Take it either way, it seems to me quite beyond the reach of the ordinary human mind, simply left to its own resources, to strike out four lines so pregnant as these, and await silently, for three hundred years, an interpretation, so little forced or driven as this is. I may say that to even pack into the space of four lines a mass of assertions so pregnant with hints, is a feat in condensation that no poet has ever equalled. Tacitus, the tersest of historians, has never approached it. No précis writer of the most accomplished skill has ever reduced the facts furnished to him in a well-drawn manuscript to such a compass. He could not, and remain intelligible. To those who will merely look at it in this light it may afford endless matter of reflection and curious study. As a forecast, its appearance to me is purely miraculous. Let any one explain it otherwise who thinks he can; we shall all be ready to learn.

STUART DYNASTY (1603-1649). [I. 138.]

_Century X.—Quatrain 40._

La jeunne[181] nay au regne Britannique,
Qu’aura le pere mourant recommandé
Iceluy mort, Lonole[182] donra[183] topique,[184]
Et à son fils le regne, demandé.

_Translation._

The young Prince of the Kingdom of Britain,
Whose dying father will have recommended him;
This one being dead, Lonole will perorate,
And snatch the kingdom from his very son.

James I. of England and VI. of Scotland was born June 19, 1566: the son of Mary Stuart and Henry Lord Darnley; who, before his assassination by Bothwell, had commended the young prince to the fidelity of the Scotch lords. He ascended the throne of England in 1603, and under him England and Scotland were first denominated Great Britain (_au regne Britannique_).[185] When King James I. dies (_Iceluy mort_), _Lonole_ will seduce England with artificial rhetoric, and demand the kingdom and the life of his son Charles I.

Lonole is the right reading, according to the _Texte-type_; others read _Doudlé_, and Garencières reads _Londre_. He also fancies that the prophecy concerns Charles II., because Charles I. commended him to the people of England. It is rather curious that _Lonole_ should give the anagram of Olleon, or Ὀλλύων, as Napoleon does that of Ναπολλύων and Apollyon. Cromwell and he have many analogies and points of contact, whether in history, character, or prophecy. But a further anagram, still more wonderful, springs here into view, which, I believe, has hitherto escaped all the commentators. _Ole Nol_, or _Old Noll_, has always been the Protector’s nickname, and in the first form is letter for letter _Lonole_. It may stand for Apollyon also, and as such for “Old Nick” too.

I ought not to pass away from this mass and congeries of singular hints and disclosures without pointing out the remarkable fact or link connecting James I. with Nostradamus, and the particular quatrain we are now dealing with. James I. was born June 19, 1566, and thirteen days after, July 2, 1566, Nostradamus breathed his last. This quatrain, once understood, is one of the clearest and most extraordinary of the forecasts of Nostradamus. The commencing event, the birth of James I., just touches his own death; and the last event, the death of Charles I., 1649, stretches to nearly a hundred years later.

Anagram seems to have been once a passion with the people. We find the white cloth of Lincoln in the thirteenth century alluded to as “Drap blanc de _Nicole_,” that standing for _Lincoln_. [Le Roux de Lincy “Livre des Prov. Franc.” i. 195.]

FALL OF CHARLES I. (MARCH 31, 1646). [I. 139.]

_Century III.—Quatrain 80._

Du regne Anglais le digne dechassé,[186]
Le conseiller par[187] ire[188] mis à feu,
Ses adherans iront si bas tracer,[189]
Que le bastard sera demy receu.

_Translation._

He who had the right to reign in England, shall be driven from
the throne, his counsellor abandoned (_mis a feu_) to the fury
of the populace (_par ire_). His adherents will follow so low a
track that the usurper (_le bastard_) will come to be Protector
(_demy receu_, or half King).

Garencières fancies this to relate to Charles II., and, that it is very clear. But evidently _le digne dechassé_ is Charles I. Strafford was surrendered weakly to the unreasoning rage of the people (_par ire_). The Scotch, his countrymen (_ses adherents_), will sell him for £400,000 (Hume, vii. 76) to the Independents with unexampled baseness (_si bas tracer_). After this Cromwell (_le bastard_) will become Protector, or half king (_sera demy receu_).

This could scarcely be made more remarkable than it is, had it been written historically after the event, as history, than it is now before it, as prophecy. Look, again, at the overwhelming insight and terseness: the King defeated, Strafford sacrificed, the Covenanters’ money bargain, and the Protectorate chalked out in decisive outline nearly a century before the realization: and each event is contained in one metrical phrase.

EXECUTION OF CHARLES I. (JANUARY 30, 1649). [I. 141.]

_Century IX.—Quatrain 49._

Gand et Bruceles marcheront contre[190] Anvers,
Senat de Londres mettront à mort leur Roy:
Le sel et vin luy seront à l’envers,
Pour eux avoir le regne en desarroy.

_Translation._

Gand and Brussels will march past Antwerp,
The Senate at London will put their King to death;
Salt and wine will be applied contrariwise,
So that they will set the whole kingdom in disarray.

Philip IV. in the Netherlands, being at war, will move Gand and Brussels towards Antwerp against Holland in revolt. Holland had, in 1579, detached itself from the Low Countries. Thus Antwerp became the border town of the Spanish possessions. Philip claimed rights over her till the treaty of Westphalia, or Munster, of which we have Terburg’s curious portraiture in the National Gallery, concluded on October 14, 1648; three months only before the death of Charles I., so that the conjunction of the two events is extraordinarily definite and remarkable.

The second line is as definite and marvellous as anything that occurs in Nostradamus. By the treaty of Munster it fixes the date to within three months. Garencières says: “It is the most remarkable of all those [prophecies] that ever Nostradamus was author of.” He notifies also, what I think nobody else has, that the number of this quatrain, 49, gives the very year of the occurrence in the seventeenth century. For though we in England then called it 1648-49, Nostradamus, by the Gregorian Calendar used in France, would reckon it as 1649. We need lay no stress whatever upon this, for the quatrain wants nothing to strengthen it. Yet, be it the offspring of chance or intention, it is most singular. I have before said how much value lies in mere curiosities, and it is part of my business to point one out whenever I am able.

We have already handled the phrase _vin sel_ at p. 151 and 153 [I. 119], but from a French, and not English point of view; yet even there the line is

L’Isle Britanne par vin sel en souci.

—showing the consistency with which the visions must have shaped themselves in the mind of Nostradamus. The one we are treating of now appears in the ninth century of the prophet’s quatrains, but the above line occurs in a quatrain of the tenth century. Still, what is said in the one is consistent with what is said in the other. If we call this chance, we shall have to admit an axiom far from self-evident; namely, that method is discernible in chance as well as in madness. Here, as at disgraceful Old Pancras graveyard, there is clearly a slight derangement of epitaphs.

Bouys and nearly all the commentators treat the figure of _le vin et sel_, as representing force and wisdom, which were wanting to the King of England. I think we are not at all necessitated to adopt this interpretation. Supposing _salt_ and _wine_ in a good sense to symbolize wisdom and power, before we settle that to be their application here, we shall have to understand what _à l’envers_ means. In the first place, it is not the preposition _envers_, meaning _for_, or _in regard to_. It is a noun substantive, masculine, and stands for the wrong side of a fabric, as contrasted with, or opposed to, the right side, called _l’endroit_. It means that wisdom and power will present their wrong aspect at this juncture, and become intrigue and violence, and will so stand to him (_lui seront à l’envers_), as that they will convert into their opposites, intrigue and violence. It has the old sense of _inversus_, as in the _Roman de la Rose_. A person is there told that on going to bed no sleep will come, but tossing from one side to the other:

Une heure _envers_ et l’autre adens
Come cil qui a mal aus dens.

Here it reads one hour on the _back_, another on the teeth. Molière says of a character (_l’Et._ ii. 14):

Vous serez toujours....
Un envers du bon sens, un jugement à gauche.

Nothing can better describe the mockery in Westminster Hall of the trial of the King than _un jugement à gauche_. The third line of the quatrain is the precise equivalent. _Vin_ so nearly resembles vis that it is sure to mean force, the two extremes of which are power and violence, law and lawlessness. We see this very distinctly in the old French word _vimaire_, force majeure (_vis major_) and the word further signified storm, tempest, famine, and pestilence (_vide_ Roquefort, _s.v._). That wine does not at all definitely stand for power well directed, is plain enough from “the wine of fornication” (Rev. xvii. 2); and that salt is not to be taken as wisdom personified with fixity may be gathered, if from nothing else, from the sanctification of the sacramental elements in the Church of Rome; where before salt is used, it is first exorcised, to purify it from the stain of original sin, that passed upon all creation at the fall (Auber’s “Symbolisme,” iii. 394). Whatever wisdom Godwin, Carlyle, and other modern revolutionists may suppose themselves to have discovered in the character of Cromwell, Nostradamus certainly had formed no such notion of him, as we shall immediately feel assured by the next quatrain. Nostradamus’s opinion of Cromwell may determine nothing at all as to the final estimate of that man. I adduce it only to help to settle what he meant by the words we are studying, _le sel et vin_. The next line is plain enough. The Independents set the whole kingdom by the ears.

I think we have reached a point at which every line of this quatrain has become tolerably clear. A wiseacre, writing about it in the _Quarterly Review_ (vol. xxvi. p. 189) says: “Œdipus himself could not give the sense of the whole verse.” This is the way in which people treat a difficult, abstruse, and intricate subject. It is so easy to say we have made up our mind about a man; that he is unintelligible, a charlatan, an impostor; that his forecasts are oracular nonsense, meaning nothing, or that if at times they do light on something, chance has more to do with it than seership or vision. You would certainly think that a sane man, finding in a book,—that indubitably was in print,—in 1558 a line prophesying the death of the King of England nearly a hundred years after, “Senat de Londres mettront à mort leur Roy,” would be struck with astonishment at the clearness of that, rather than with the difficulty of making sense of the other three lines. But this is what prejudice can do with us all.

CROMWELL’S PROTECTORATE (1653-1658). [I. 142.]

_Century VIII.—Quatrain 76._

Plus Macelin[191] que Roy en Angleterre,
Lieu obscur nay[192] par force aura l’empire,
Lasche sans foy sans loy saignera terre:
Son temps approche si près que je souspire.

_Translation._

A Butcher more than king rules England. A man of no birth will
seize the government by violence. Of loose morals, without
faith or law he will bleed the earth. The hour approaches me so
near that I breathe with difficulty.

Here we have a most remarkable forecast. It puts in a clear light what view Nostradamus had formed of Cromwell. There appears to have been visually present to him the butcher-like face of Cromwell, with its fleshly conch and hideous warts. This seems to have struck him with such a sense of vividness and horror, that he is willing to imagine that the time is very near at hand. A full century had, however, to elapse; but he sighs as with a present shudder, and the blood creeps:

Son temps s’approche si près que je souspire.

One of the most remarkable features throughout the work of Nostradamus, is the general absence of any sense of time, apart from the mere enumeration of years as an algebraic or arithmetical formula; further than this, he so regulates and controls his feelings as to appear almost impassible; but this announcement is of such unparalleled and terrific import that he departs from his usual practice and stands horror-stricken as in the presence of a fearful vision.

It was intended to treat here of the portraiture of Cromwell. To complete, however, my observations, I had to go to Chequers Court, the Print Room, and the National Portrait Gallery. These and other necessary steps occupied so much time that the printers had to commence paging; then, as the enlarged matter could not find room here, there was no alternative but an Appendix, which will be found at p. 351. My remarks, which make so little show now that they are done, cost me far more trouble than ten times the mere amount of writing would. The final settlement depends on the cast at Florence, if still in existence. I have cleared the road for a decisive conclusion; which, though it is not much, is yet something.

Bouys specially comments (p. 109) upon the word _Lasche_ in this quatrain, and takes it to mean cowardly, the same as _lâche_ does in modern French. Both forms of the word are alike deduced from the Latin, _laxare_, _laxatus_, and then it might well mean of _loose morals_, as I have rendered it. That the Latin may mean this Bailey’s “Facciolati” shows, _s.v._ _Laxitas_: “Liber membris cum mollibus fingitur, et liquoris feminei dissolutissimus laxitate”; and Cromwell’s dissolute life in early youth has been insisted on by many, though, of course, contradicted by others. Frederic Harrison is the last of these, and passes over the charge of vice with a very light hand, saying that “Such testimony as theirs we cannot trust; but we cannot now refute it.” Suffice it to say, I do not think cowardice was what Nostradamus meant to impute to Cromwell.

The obscure birth requires a moment’s consideration, as none of the French commentators allude in any way to it. The household of Robert Cromwell, Oliver’s father, in Huntingdon, was of the industrious, jog-trot, somewhat over-professingly pious, middle-class order, common enough then in the Eastern counties. What is most remarkable, perhaps, is that the homestead, in which he was born, had been built upon the ruins of a convent of Augustine Friars, and that the two estates which came to him, one from his father and the other from his mother’s brother, consisted of old church-lands. Oliver’s branch of the family had rather fallen away from the county position which such inheritance infers. But it was always the more prominent families that stole, or possessed themselves of, the church-lands at the spoliation, and thus the Cromwells were married in and in with gentry. This scion of the robbers of the Church was soon to develop, on his own account, into a robber of the State; a man of violence and passion quite after the heart of Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle’s notion of a hero, is a strong devil in a tantrum, mollifying, now and again, to the drone of a Psalm tune. Cromwell’s branch seems to have drifted from the more courtly side to Calvinistic burghers and narrow-souled Independents; whilst Milton, who was born a London citizen, far away from gentry, was floated by his tastes and nature to the Court side of things, to the Bridgewaters, Ludlow Castle (see his deathless Masque of Comus), until a lofty idea of principle,—taken up by an unripe judgment, and dazzled by that false illusion, Liberty,—dashed him headlong into polemics, and irretrievably damaged the greatest poet ever born to England. They were exact opposites—these two. Milton sacrificed himself to his principles, Cromwell his principles to his person. Still, an old brewing concern at Huntingdon may well be designated by Nostradamus _lieu obscur_, as contrasted with Whitehall, and a burial, if you please, in Westminster Abbey, so wastefully extravagant as that it might well break a nation’s treasury to meet it. Such prodigious pageantry belies the professions of the life, and can in no way be harmonized with “Take that bauble hence.” Such empty, worthless show has less, for me, of the saint and hero in it, than of the froth of beer, and of the littleness and vanity of man. If this is to be great, prythee, tell us, what is it to be little?

BRITISH ASCENDANCY OF THE SEA (OVER THREE CENTURIES). [I. 143.]

_Century X.—Quatrain 100._

Le grand empire sera par Angleterre.
Le pempotam[193] des ans plus de trois cens:
Grandes copies[194] passer par mer et terre.
Les Lusitains[195] n’en seront pas contens.

_Translation._

England the Pempotam (πᾶν _potens_) will rule the great empire
(of the waters) for more than three hundred years. Great armies
will pass by sea and land; the Portuguese will not be satisfied.

The French render this as meaning the destruction of England by large forces coming to overwhelm her by sea and land, but the reader will see that it does not at all necessarily show this. If we altered the colon, and put it at the end of the third line, it would simply mean that, whilst she was “all powerful” at sea, she moved large bodies of troops by both elements. I do not think it is very clear what the last line intends. But the three hundred years’ dominion of the sea is a very palpable and most important object. That it is now drawing to a close is a somewhat melancholy subject for the contemplation of Englishmen, when we consider the searching revolution introduced by steam. If it really forebodes evil to England, it would involve dissatisfaction to the Lusitanians, as, if England fell, Portugal would be overwhelmed simultaneously by Spain.

The Invincible Armada of Philip II. was destroyed in 1588 by storms first, and the residue by Drake in Cadiz Bay. From that epoch we naturally date the maritime supremacy of our country, which, according to Nostradamus, is to last for more than three centuries, but not four. Nelson’s death at Trafalgar in 1805 was the culminating event of our naval history. Its salt-sea tale still stirs young hearts in far-off sea-board cottages on stormy nights in winter with a flush of heroism, and that yet more sacred thing, a solemn sense of duty. But the old sobriety and obedient spirit of reverence, that was common in English homes last century is greatly decadent under the rotten knowledge dropping widely from the Upas Board Schools,—with reverence banished and obedience lost. The bare three hundred years ended in 1888. What the _plus_ may count for, with Revolt thus bred at every hearth, a wise Englishman might ask with some emotion now.

It is said, in James’s “Naval History,” that from 1793 to 1815—I have not referred to verify—two hundred ships of the line, and three to four hundred frigates were taken or destroyed of the fleets opposed to England; and of the sea as at the pouring out of the second vial, ἐγένετο αἷμα ὡς νεκροῦ, it became as the blood of a dead man (Rev. xvi. 3). This completely crushed out all chance of Napoleon’s descent upon England; but, with the lying spirit that distinguished his administration at all times, he managed to disguise the fact from Frenchmen at the time; so that we find Bouys, at p. 92, promising him—out of two misinterpreted quatrains—in 1806, when his fleet was annihilated, the empire of the sea and a conquest of England as complete as that of William the Conqueror. It only proves once more how far from truth is the wish that is father to the thought. Let him stand aloof who would read the future by the light of the lantern of his prejudices.

We are now at the end of the guidance of Le Pelletier. Nevertheless, I will adduce several other quatrains to bring the English sequence down to the succession of the House of Hanover. They will perhaps not be devoid of instruction, though they will not be so remarkable as those already adduced. Several quatrains, more or less intelligibly wrought out, are enumerated in a pamphlet of the year 1715 by D. D.[196] The first relates to Queen Mary.

QUEEN MARY.

_Century IV.—Quatrain 96._

La Sœur aisnee de L’Isle Britannique,
Quinze ans devant le frère aura naissance,
Par son promis, moyennant verrifique,
Succedera au Règne de Balance.

_Translation._

The elder sister of the British Isle shall be born fifteen
years before her brother; true to her intervening promise, she
will succeed to the Kingdom of the Balance.