Chapter D: D. considers this to relate to King George, and he remarks that the (2)

The edition 1558 gives the reading as above, but the line does not scan; it wants two syllables. Bouys, without comment, reads _Prince sera_; Le Pelletier understands _menée_ as a synonym for _intrigues_. But I should read it rather as a misprint for _mené_. The city of the sword is a graphic name for Paris, where the guillotine was first erected on September 25, 1792, having been perfected by Guillotin, the doctor, whose name was given to it. Roquefort gives the word _adusté_ as _brûlé_; but Nostradamus uses it as a verb, _aduster_, in the third person of the present indicative. Paris burnt the king’s head with a powder-torch, or burning powder, that is to say with quicklime; and, as having done him wrong, the people hate him, and wish to obliterate the traces of the murder perpetrated.

The body and head of the King were placed in a basket of wicker-work, and carried, according to De Montgaillard (“Histoire de France,” iii. p. 415. Janvier, 1793[259]) to the cemetery of the Madeleine, and thrown into a trench twelve feet deep, which had been spread with quicklime; more was thrown in upon the top of the body, so that decomposition would follow instantly. When the grave was reopened some twenty-four years after, to bestow a more decent burial on the relics, nothing remained but a few fragments of calcined bone.

Garencières reads _Princesse de beauté tant venuste_, which will not scan any better than the line of the edition of 1558; but he translates _au chef menée_, I find, as “shall be brought to the general,” and the feminine termination is then right. This helps to confirm my rendering above. His annotation says that the only difficulty about the quatrain is as to what city is meant. As, however, he suggests no historical allusion whatever, he leaves every difficulty unsolved.

I think that most readers will be inclined to allow that this is a very extraordinary forecast, and that _La cité au glaive_ as a name for Paris, and what has been perpetrated there, is both poetic and terrific in a very high degree—a sobriquet that, once heard, is likely to cling in the memory for ever. To devise epithets of this simplicity and force constitutes an author at once master of utterance; no matter what may be the shortcomings of the adjacent text. But, when you find these startling felicities perpetually recurring to illustrate facts historical,—facts that will not come into mortal ken for centuries after the death of the writer,—stiff, indeed, must be the reader’s neck if he cannot bow it a little, as to a man of God passing by; or, if he would rather have it so, to the occasional divinity shining through man’s nature, that will not, cannot wholly die when death has done its worst. From Hecla to the tropics all rational creatures should rejoice at such a fact. What is the new world of Columbus to this? Why, nothing but a new hemisphere of dirt. A spirit, that can read time future, must be a spirit whose habitation is Eternity. It is this hope kindles as we decipher, in the stillness of night, rune upon strange rune of the oracular sage of Salon.

_Century X.—Quatrain 17._ [I. 184.]

La Royne Ergaste[260] voyant sa fille blesme
Par un regret dans l’estomach enclos:
Cris lamentables seront lors d’Angolesme,
Et au germain mariage forclos.

_Translation._

The stranger Queen, seeing her daughter fading
By reason of the deep regret she endured inwardly:
The cries of Angoulême will be lamentable,
And the marriage with her cousin-germain foreclosed.

The Princess did marry the Duc d’Angoulême in 1799, but there was no issue,—_mariage forclos_. The Queen wished to marry her daughter to a German Prince: hence all the grief. The Abbé Torné-Chavigny (“L’Histoire prédite et jugée par Nostradamus,” ii. 28) had the merit, M. le Pelletier says, of this learned interpretation. I cannot quite see this, as M. Bouys gave the same interpretation as far back as 1806, though with a particularity a little less minute. The prophecy thus unravelled is the more wonderful, as the event seems so little worth recording. There is the same exactitude and precision shown as where a kingdom is at stake.

_Century IX.—Quatrain 77._ [I. 185.]

Le regne prins[261] le Roy convicra,
La dame prinse à mort jurés à sort,
La vie a Royne fils on desniera,
Et la pellix[262] au fort de la consort.

Pierre Rigaud’s edition reads _conjurera_ for _convicra_, and that, at least, makes the line scan, which _convicra_ does not. Bouys says that some ancient editions read _conviera, commitari per viam_, and then it would mean to arrange the funeral cortège of the King. I think _conjurera_ the best reading, for that might be taken to mean that they condemned the King by jurors, or jury, as the Queen was in the next line.

_Translation._

The assembly will condemn the King taken,
[And] the Queen taken to death by jurors sworn by lot;
They will deny life to the Dauphin (_à Royne fils_),
And the prostitute at the fort will partake of the same fate.

Upon the word _jurés_, in the second line, M. le Pelletier remarks that the Convention, erecting itself into a supreme court of justice, proceeded to condemn the King to death. But the judgment upon Marie-Antoinette was passed by the _Tribunal révolutionnaire_, newly set up, which proceeded by jurors chosen by lot, _jurés à sort_. He further says that this _jury_ is an institution borrowed from England, and he erroneously fancies that it had been first introduced into England at the Revolution, and had no existence there, even by name, during the lifetime of Nostradamus. This shows how little a Frenchman, when even well read, cares about English institutions. Pettingal almost proves that the Roman _judices_, and Greek δικασταί, were jurors. There has been great and profitless dispute, as to whether the Anglo-Saxons had juries, or whether they came in at the Conquest. If they did it would be strange, for they died out in Normandy. If the practice be Roman, it would have prevailed in England as in Normandy, both having been under Roman law forms. Coke, Blackstone, and many others, confidently maintain its existence here prior to the Conquest. If Anglo-Saxon it would still be Roman. Were it Scandinavian in origin, or were it Teutonic, it would equally have prevailed here before the Conquest. So that the whole discussion has an interest merely archæological; and leaves the _trial by jury_, no matter what its origin, a thing of immemorial usage in these islands. You might as well try, by chemical analysis, to ascertain when oxygen first entered as a component part into the air men breathe. If you could settle the question it would be no use; whilst the time lost in discussing it might otherwise be well employed. But the forensic usage was not so in France itself, as modern Frenchmen think, for in old Glossaries, like Roquefort’s, you find _jurie_, not _jurée_: “Assise où l’on prononce sur le rapport des jurés.”

They delivered the poor Dauphin to the _cordonnier_ Simon, with orders to let him die slowly. The inhuman villains seem to have felt they could not condemn a child to public execution; so they give orders to a murderer to make away with him by ill usage and starvation, a process that would have rendered the guillotine welcome and a boon.

The last line admits of three interpretations. M. le Pelletier takes the _pellix_ to stand for the National Convention itself, saying that it had prostituted justice in condemning an innocent prince over whom it had no jurisdiction. But clearly it had no jurisdiction over the King or Queen. He then takes the fort to be the _Conciergerie_, to which it consigned its own members, _consorts_, as an introduction to the scaffold. This is very striking, but the quatrain does not appear to me to threaten members of the Assembly at all. The unity of conception is best maintained by limiting its meaning to the fate of Royalty; and Bouys places an excellent and forcible interpretation upon it without breaking the unity of purpose. He says that it relates to the Dubarri, the King’s courtesan, and that the fort is her palace of Luciennes, which had anciently been a strong place or fort. This is good, if the Château de Luciennes bears it out; but the _fort_ may so easily be _sort_ with the old _s_ type, which is scarcely distinguishable from an _f_, that I think we might very well substitute it. We should then construe the last line

“And [consign] the prostitute to the fate of the Queen consort.”

This interpretation requires less force to be employed upon the line, and less explanation than any of the others. The forms of the _s_ and _f_ are nearly identical. The reading that brings simplicity with it, and removes stumblingblocks out of the way, usually proves the safest and the best. Here we remove the complication introduced by the word _fort_, which otherwise requires explanation, and it runs: _The courtesan shares a like fate with the Queen_. It is now for the reader to select the best.

_Sixaine 55._ [I. 186.]

Un peu devant ou après très-grand’ dame,
Son ame au ciel, et son corps soubs la lame,
De plusieurs gens regrettée sera,
Tous ses parens seront en grand’ tristesse,
Pleurs et souspirs d’une dame en jeunesse,
Et à deux Grands la deuil delaissera.

_Translation._

A little before or after a very great lady,
The soul [of Madame Elizabeth shall rise] to heaven, her body under
the blade,
She will be grieved for by many persons;
All her family connections will be cast into deep sorrow,
One lady very young [Duchesse d’Angoulême will shed] tears and sighs,
And two great ones will be depressed with mourning.

This can be mistaken for no one but Madame Elizabeth, the sister of Louis XVI., her niece, the Duchess d’Angoulême, and the two brothers of Madame Elizabeth, the Count of Provence and the Count of Artois. This is not one of the very striking stanzas, but the forecast is still notable, and occupies its position very well as one in a considerable series.

_Century I.—Quatrain 58._ [I. 187.]

Tranché le ventre naistra avec deux testes
Et quatre bras: quelques ans entiers vivra,
Jour qui[263] Alquiloye[264] celebrera ses festes,
Fossen, Turin, chef Ferrare suivra.

_Translation._

The belly cut shall spring again with two heads
And four arms: _Aquiloye_ shall live several years,
In great force (_entiers_) what (_jour qui_) time he holds.
Fossen, Turin, Ferrara shall fall under his domination (_suivra
chef_).

This is a very crabbed, but very wonderful quatrain.

The elder branch of the Bourbons was cut short in the person of Marie-Antoinette (_le ventre tranchée_); shall spring up again in two heads, Louis XVIII. and Charles X. The two heads being crowned, the four lesser princes are called arms and uncrowned. They are counted thus: The Duc de Normandy, who died in the Temple, June 8, 1795; the Duc de Berri, assassinated January 13, 1820; the Duc d’Angoulême; and the Duc de Bordeaux, exiled August 16, 1830, who, though he had so many close chances, died without the crown,—an arm only, not a head, a hand tenaciously to the last holding to its white handkerchief as a flag. Zurich and Fossano stand, by synecdoche, for Piedmont, and Ferrara for the Papal States.

This brings us to the end of the Louis Seize series. Let us, before passing on to a fresh series, just give a glance at the ground we have traversed; and endeavour to estimate the value of the historical facts prefigured for us by Nostradamus in his book more than two hundred years before the earliest of them began to take effect upon the stage of actuality.

First, we beheld a section of the nation, the third estate, usurping 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.

There was a Celtic Hercules fabled to draw men by their ears: _Par 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.).