Chapter VII: Appendix: 351 (4)

Prince Louis of Condé, the Humpback, shall be elected general-in-chief by the council of notables of the Calvinists. Such a monster of wickedness was never seen on earth. Montesquiou killed him with a pistol-shot in the eye, who had twice escaped from his treasonous practices against the King. Here Nostradamus’ forecast is miraculously clear, although it has baffled Guynaud to find its concordance with events. He here also exhibits his religious partisanship. A hunchback is always considered to be morally as well as physically deformed; and, as Louis de Bourbon took the side of the Calvinists, he became at once to our prophet _le plus hideux monstre en terre_. Evidently, however, he was a grand fighting fellow, and spent his life in camps, if we go no further than Moreri for his history. He was condemned for a conspirator in 1560 to lose his head. But the sentence was never carried out, as King François II. died at the moment, and none was bold enough to see to it. When Charles IX. set him at liberty, the _Cour des Pairs_ found out that he was innocent, and declared him so. He perished at the battle of Jarnac. He had his leg broken by the kick of a horse, and was seated at the foot of a bush when Montesquiou, captain of the Duke of Anjou’s guards, saw him, and, for some old pique, coolly, but like the veriest coward, shot the wounded Condé in the eye with his pistol. The body was conveyed for burial to St. George of Vendôme, either by chance or insult, on the back of a she ass, at Jarnac; which led to one of those impromptu epitaphial epigrams that the French turn so prettily:

L’an mil cinq cens soixante neuf,
Entre Jarnac et Chateauneuf,
Fut porté mort sur une ânesse
Le grand ennemi de la Messe.

(_v._ MORERI, _s.v._ _Louis de Bourbon_.)

ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S DAY (AUGUST 24, 1572). [I. 89.]

_Century IV.—Quatrain 47._

Le Noir[84] farouche, quand aura essayé
Sa main sanguine par feu, fer, arcs tendus,[85]
Trestous le peuple sera tant[86] effrayé
Voir les plus grans par col et pieds pendus.

_Translation._

The savage king, when he shall have tried
His blood-stained hand with fire, sword, and bows,
All the people shall be terrified
To see the great hung by the neck and feet.

When Charles IX. shall exercise his sanguinary hand with fire, the sword, and the arquebus, the people will be horrified to see the great Calvinist lords strung up by the neck and feet. One of the savage amusements of Charles, in hunting, was to cut off at a single blow the heads of any asses or pigs he came across on the way. During the very massacre he placed himself at a window of the Louvre and took several shots with a long arquebus at the Huguenots who fled from the other side of the Seine in the Faubourg St. Germain. The body of Coligny was dragged by the populace, at the end of a rope, through all the mud of the kennels, and then hung up by one foot to the gibbet at Montfauçon. This 24th of August fell on a Sunday. The King himself died two years after, with some suspicion of poisoning. He is said to have been a man of high courage and of a lively, quick wit, possessing a good share of eloquence; was given much to dissimulation; and full of oaths, unreasonably violent, and without self-control. He turned a verse well, and loved hunting. His poems still remain, but I do not know they can ever command a single reader. In speaking of poets, he used to say they ought to be well fed, like good horses, but not satisfied, or they become lazy. The world in general prefers to starve them if they are first-rate, and enrich them if they are second-rate. We cannot expect people to reward what they cannot understand: though inevitable, we cannot but deplore the arrangement. With good abilities, Charles had so little judgment that his actions would always have been mischievous; the best thing that could have happened was his death at twenty-four. He is said to have remarked, when dying, that he was glad to die young and have no children, for he had sadly learnt, in his own case, how miserable is the conduct of a prince who mounts the throne a child, and so governs through the ministry of others. This only shows a little recovery to sober reason, but none of the remorse that is attributed to him on his death-bed, as being the ostensible author of the blackest act that has ever disfigured Christianity or stained Europe. In perfidy and crime it cannot be surpassed, nor as the outcome of religious perversion. The crimes of an atheistic democracy, perpetrated two hundred years later on the same theatre precisely, have only been able to surpass it, in the carnal lusts exhibited, in the inhuman degradation of the body of man, and in the ubiquity of iniquity, when the whole people are thirsting to satiate their debased passions in sin. Nostradamus has elsewhere called Paris the City of the Sword. It is the wine-press of the earth, fat with the blood of man: Lutetia of mud and blood. Haussmann rebuilt it, but nothing can cleanse it. Their very guillotine is an instrument contrived to publicly gratify the populace in its tiger-taste for the reek of blood in the streets of the City of Blood. If you wish to see the disgrace of religion, read Sully’s description of the endeavour of the ferocious priests on that day to have _his_ blood. Look also on the medal of Gregory XIII.,[87] struck rejoicingly to commemorate that awful crime. Bonanni shows it; and, as a work of medallic art, the head of the Pope is of the very highest order of beauty and Italian grace. But, then, it commemorates the blood of sixty thousand victims, he says. Ranke (ii. 69) puts it at fifty thousand. Take this number, if you like; it is enough to satisfy the successor to St. Peter, to whom the special mandate was addressed, “Feed my sheep,”—as other shepherds do for the butcher, is the Gregorian gloss. Tradesmen, however, have the decency to shut the shambles on the Sunday morning; but the _servus servorum_ is at home in _his_ ministrations on the Dominical day. That Sunday in August is indeed a Saints’ rubric! For that day there is no need of a calendar. Time, till the world ruptures, can never forget it,—nor forgive.

_Le noir farouche_ of this quatrain is, by Guynaud, p. 113, said to stand for Admiral Coligny, who is designated, according to him, very variously in the quatrains. The _noir farouche_ alludes to his rough and forbidding exterior. _Le grand Pillot_ (VI. 75) is another epithet; _le tiran_ (Présage III.) another. The conclusion of the quatrain is admitted, both by Le Pelletier and Guynaud, to stand for Coligny. In the earlier portion, most will, I think, prefer to take _noir_ as the anagram of _Roi_.

Guynaud gives a surprising account from the historians of Provence and France, of what happened to Coligny when he was at Angoulême in 1568. He set up a gibbet there, and on his own authority hanged upon it Michel Grêlet, Guardian of the Cordéliers, and a most zealous preacher against the heretics. In his dying speech on the scaffold, the latter said, “Admiral, you put me to death very unjustly. I am going to God now to give account to Him of my actions; but remember, you and all the people present here to-day, I predict that in a short time you will yourself be thrown from an upper window, and your body will be cut to pieces.” The histories go on to say that an Italian cut off Coligny’s head to send it to Cardinal de Lorraine at Rome, whilst other men cut off his hands and other parts of his body; also that at about six in the morning the mob found his body on a dunghill in a stable, dragged it to the Seine, and threw it in. It was again fished out, and hung by the foot to the gibbet of Montfauçon, where it became blackened in the smoke of the fires that were lighted below it. (Guynaud, “Concord. Nostra.,” p. 113.)

_Sixain 52._ [I. 90.]

La grand’ Cité qui n’a pain à demy
Encor un coup la Sainct Barthelemy
Engravera au profond de son ame:
Nismes, Rochelle, Geneve et Montpellier,
Castres, Lyon, Mars entrant au Belier,
S’entrebattront; le tout pour une Dame.

_Translation._

The great city that has bread at only half rations
Will have the further blow of Saint Bartholomew
Cut deep into its soul:
Nismes, Rochelle, Geneva, and Montpellier,
Castres, Lyons, with Mars entering the Ram,
Will fight one another; and all for the Queen mother.

The great city is, of course, Paris, and _une Dame_ is the Queen, Catherine de Medici. It has to be borne in mind that these sixains were not published till thirty-three years after the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s. Naturally, the prediction loses all special authority in this case. It raises, however, a singular question: Why, if it was written after the event, it was not rendered more explicit, if those who published it had an interest in augmenting the fame of the prophet? It looks very much as if the testamentary duties were performed in perfect good faith, mechanically, and without even understanding the purport or meaning of the words.

Another passage relating to St. Bartholomew’s massacre occurs in the text of 1605, and its authority is no greater than that of the sixain just quoted, as it was not published till after the event. It goes, however, to strengthen the remark I above made. Those who caused the work to be printed seem to have been perfectly unconscious of the meaning of the stanzas; they regarded the whole procedure as a mere form of respect to the memory of a celebrated relative. Their duty was clear to them, and they performed it; but the writings were to them perfectly unintelligible.

Presage III. (ii. 252) is dated as if written January, 1555, and for anything that I can see there is nothing whatever to make one doubt but that it was so. Having made this point as clear as I can, the reader will take it or reject it as he pleases.

Le gros airain qui les heures ordonne,
Sur le trespas du Tyran cassera:[88]
Pleurs, plaintes et cris, eaux, glace pain ne dône
V. S. C.[89] paix l’arme passera.

_Translation._

The brazen bell that rings the daily hours
Will play full volley at the tyrant’s death:
Tears, cries, and groans; the waters freeze up bread,
With son of Charles the Fifth a peace is made.

The tyrant here is interpreted by Guynaud (p. 107) as Coligny, and he appends some interesting remarks from Favin’s “Histoire de Navarre,” touching St. Bartholomew’s Day in Paris. He says they marked the lodgings of the Huguenots that they might know where to find them in the hurry, and it was arranged that at the tocsin of the great bell at the palace, as well as that of the church of St. Germain de l’Auxerrois, they were to lay violent hands (_main-baisse_) on all the heretics. Two p.m. was the hour appointed. The Catholics who went into the street were to distinguish themselves by a white cross upon their hats. The bodies of the slain were for the most part thrown into the river. Mezerai records that the queen-mother hastened the signal by a full hour, and that it was, contrary to arrangement, started by the bell of St. Germain de l’Auxerrois, although that was immediately followed up by the big bell of the palace.

Coligny was slain in bed, and flung out of window in his shirt only. His face, being covered with blood, the Duc de Guise coolly wiped it with his handkerchief, to assure himself that it actually was Coligny. We shall shortly see this bloodthirsty villain himself murdered at Blois.

The massacre continued the whole week through, for seven days that is, but the chief fury had spent itself by Tuesday night. The Janus Gallicus professes, though how Aimé could have any certainty of it I cannot tell, that Nostradamus, by _tyran_, alludes to Coligny, and says that the bell tolled so long that it broke. The quatrain does not necessitate the supposal of any such thing, and I believe the fact is not elsewhere recorded. Of course, if it be, it would be so literal a fulfilment that all the sceptical world would immediately take advantage of what I have pointed out, that this is a prophecy _après coup_. If so doing should rejoice anybody, I can only say that he has my consent. My business is to put the facts, without a shred of disguise, before the reader; he can weave them into theories for himself. If I at any time manifest what I think, he will be pleased to accept it merely as a contribution towards the same end.

In January, 1572, the river Seine was frozen over for a long time, and the roads became almost impassable. This _may_ perhaps be thought to interpret _eaux glace pain ne dône_, with such hieroglyphic symbolism of scarcity as oracular utterance delights in. It is pretty certain that provisions did not enter Paris that winter with their usual flow. In allusion to the army mentioned, Guynaud says that the Duc d’Anjou marched with fifty thousand men to the siege of Rochelle, where, after firing thirteen thousand shots, they at last effected a breach. What they battered down, oddly enough, was the Boulevard of the Gospel (_Boulevard de l’Évangile_), but they could not storm it, and lost twenty thousand men without taking the place.

In that eulogium on Catherine de Medici which de Brantôme (“Panthéon Littéraire,” ii. 116) calls her Life, he relates that she died of a broken heart, from grief at having consented to the massacre on this ill-starred day, and that without intending it she (p. 133) had invited the nobles and lords of the land to gather to it. The Cardinal de Bourbon said to her, “Madam, you have brought us all to the butchery without intending it.” This touched her to the quick; she took to her bed and never left it again. One can only say this does not quite accord with Mezerai and her sounding the tocsin an hour earlier by anticipation. Further, as the massacre took place in 1572, and the queen-mother did not die at Blois till 1589, seventeen years after, her heart resisted grief much as granite does vinegar. The lady must originally have possessed a very good heart. De Brantôme says poison was talked of; but he considers the broken heart more likely.

CIVIL WAR UNDER HENRI III. (1559-1589). [I. 93.]

_Century III.—Quatrain 55._

En l’an qu’un œil en France regnera
La Cour sera en un bien fascheux trouble:
Le Grand de Blois son amy tuera;
Le regne mis en mal et doute double.

_Translation._

In the year when a one-eyed man shall reign in France
The Court shall be in very vexatious trouble:
The great one of Blois shall kill his friend;
The Kingdom, plunged into evil and doubt, shall divide in two.

M. le Pelletier’s version here seems to be a little forced. The one-eyed man he makes to be Henri II., whose eye was destroyed by Montgomery’s lance. The Court is to be in great embarrassment. Henri III. (_le Grand de Blois_) will convoke at that place the States-General, and will there assassinate the Duc de Guise, first taking with him, in Italian fashion, the Holy Communion, as a sign of entire reconciliation. Then the desolated kingdom will divide into two camps—the Royalists on one side, and the Leaguers on the other.

REGENCY OF CATHERINE DE MEDICI (1537-1574). [I. 94.]

_Century VI.—Quatrain 29._

La vefve[90] saincte entendent les nouvelles
De ses rameaux mis en perplex et trouble:
Qui[91] sera duict[92] appaiser[93] les querelles
Par son pourchas[94] des razes[95] fera comble.

_Translation._

The holy widow shall receive news
Of the difficulties that perplex and trouble her children;
He whom she calls home to quiet disturbances
Shall bring them to a crisis by his pursuit of shaven heads.

There is a little difficulty in applying the epithet _saincte_ to the queen-mother, and Garencières supposes it to signify _Roma la Santa_; but, if so, the rest will have no meaning. Nostradamus is so entirely for Henri II., his wife, and the Romish Church, that in spite of his designating her son _le roi farouche_, he might think the term _saincte_ not inappropriate to her. She sent a private despatch to her son, Henri III., to hurry back from Poland, as we shall see him doing in the next quatrain cited, that he may take the direction of the French Government. He enters into an alliance with Henri IV. and the Huguenots to counterbalance the Catholic League. Thence follows the murder of the Cardinal, brother of the Duc de Guise, who was murdered by the King’s order on December 24, 1588, one day after his brother. This is the prosecution of the Church (_pourchas des razes_), coupled with the repression of the League, which culminates the crisis. The only jarring word in this concordance, when once it is comprehended, lies in the word _saincte_, to which I have already drawn attention, and which may be explained by the devotion felt by Nostradamus to the crown of France and to Rome. It is evident that Brantôme was able to regard her as a most admirable and lovable lady. The tocsin and the blood spoil our appreciation.

HENRI III. RENOUNCES POLAND (JUNE 26, 1574). [I. 96.]

_Century VII.—Quatrain 35._

La grande Pesche[96] viendra plaindre,[97] plorer
D’avoir esleu: trompés seront en l’âge:
Guiere[98] avec eux ne voudra demourer:
Deceu[99] sera par ceux de son langage.

_Translation._

The great gambler[100] shall complain and weep
To have elected him: deceived in his age:
The duke had no desire to stay with them:
He will be slain by men of his own tongue.

Poland, then, will deplore having elected the Duc d’Anjou in 1573, for he stayed only one year with them, and absconded on the 26th of June at night, at his mother’s summons, to France. The Comte de Fanchin, the Grand Chamberlain, was sent after him, and overtook him at Piesna, a frontier town in Austria, but the duke was deaf to all intercession (Guynaud, p. 119). He never took the Polish throne because he wished it, but because he was pressed by the Court of France; and now French affairs called him back. Guynaud thinks that the last line means that his friends deceived him into taking it; but this is because he did not discover the Latin meaning in _deceu_. For certainly Nostradamus meant that he would go home to die by Clement’s hand, as he shows in as many words a little later on. Guynaud says that Poland had been deceived as to the prince’s age, and that he was represented to be much older than he really was.

EDICT OF POITIERS (OCTOBER 3, 1577). [I. 97.]

_Century V.—Quatrain 72._

Pour le plaisir d’edict voluptueux,
On mestera le poison dans la foy:
Venus sera en cours si vertueux,[101]
Qu’obfusquera du soleil tout aloy.[102]

_Translation._

To pass an edict of a sugared sort,
They’ll mingle poison with our holy faith:
And Venus darken, in her course robust,
All law and light from out the sacred Sun.

The Sun, in Nostradamus, often stands for the Church or Christianity, by him believed to be within the palisade of Popery. It might also mean France, whose King’s name was _Rex Christianissimus_. Louis XIV. assumed the device of the sun, with the motto _nec pluribus impar_. Venus stands for sensual pleasure—the world triumphant over the Church. The edict of Poitiers, October 8, 1577, so far favoured the Protestants that they were authorized to hold public services on the reformed footing. Calvinist ministers might marry, and auricular confession was suppressed. Thus did Henri III. mingle the poison of unchastity, etc., with the Catholic faith. The licence of morals (_Vénus_) became unbridled and tarnished the law of Christendom (_Soleil_).

Guynaud interprets with Le Pelletier in this, and considers the poison to consist particularly in freeing the Huguenots from the Sacrifice of Penance; in condemning the monastic orders; in encouraging unchastity, by allowing the Calvinist ministers to marry; in abandoning confession. _Vénus sera_ is a line showing that many monks will quit the cloisters to indulge in marriage and _other_ debauchery. The last line may be understood, that the glory of the King will be tarnished, and make him to be ill thought of by the Catholics; or that it will obscure faith in the Church (p. 122).

JOURNÉE DES BARRICADES (MAY 12, 1588). [I. 98.]

_Century III.—Quatrain 50._

La république de la grande cité
A grand rigueur ne voudra consentir:
Roy sortir hors par trompette cité,
L’eschelle au mur la cité repentir.

_Translation._

The Republic of the great city (Paris)
Would not submit itself to the very rigorous treatment;
The King summoned by trumpet to quit the city,
Which is called to repent by the ladder at the wall.

This quatrain and the event it prefigures are alike wonderful. Garencières is much puzzled over it. What city has a commonwealth? Is it Venice, Genoa, Geneva, Luca? He cannot tell. However, the “great city” in Nostradamus almost always stands for Paris. The League, mistress in Paris, would not submit to the coercive measures of Henri III., and by a call to arms—perhaps the old tocsin of St. Germain de l’Auxerrois sounding the while—told him, as _par trompette_, he had better quit the city with all speed. Trial and sentence in one word, “Take yourself off,”—for the first time uttered to a king of the race Capetian, in some eight hundred years of history. Later on, the drumming and trumpeting crack-brained citizens, with nothing about them to be called sane but their river, will feel themselves called to repentance when the escalading ladders are laid by Henri III. to the wall.

* * * * *

Let it be noted now that this _Day of the Barricades_ is very remarkable, and, as such, is not to be found at all in Bohn’s “Index of Dates.” It was, however, repeated in the civil war of the Fronde, August 26, 1648; in the three days’ war, July 27, 28, 29, 1830, that set Philippe Citoyen on his rickety perch; and again in June 23, 1848. But close on two hundred years after, in 1789, when the philosophic Republic was at hand and the Bastille was taken; when another Capet was to be handled by the mob; offering _cul pour tête_ to the admiration of a wise world, then was to be best discerned the result of this first reaction from St. Bartholomew’s Day; pretty well that tocsin of treason has rung alarum to a world on fire. A further curious analogy demands attention here. The Popes of Rome were the earliest patrons of the principle of regicide, and Clément the monk, whom we shall soon introduce, was the first to practise it; here we see the Catholic League to be the first organized body to repudiate kingship, to set up a republican form, and consecrate a day to revolt and insurrection, which has become memorable in history for ever, though forgotten by Bohn, as _la Journée des Barricades_. But what shall we say of this forecast by Nostradamus, fifty-three years before the event happened? He is, I think, the first who ever put in type the word _Republic_, as representative of rebellion and revolt, throughout the modern world. But here we have it,—the dough of prophecy made out of the ground wheat-seed of time, and baked by the oven of events into the bread of history; not Walpole’s lies, nor the principles, mostly false, that philosopher Hume finds so cleverly for us, but the facts divested of motive,—like a petrified coral reef of insect humanities concreted into permanence and solidity by the death of myriads. For those who can see, it lies all contained in that linear rune, _La république de la grande cité_.

MURDER OF THE DUC DE GUISE (DECEMBER 23, 1588). [I. 99.]

_Century III.—Quatrain 51._

Paris conjure un grand meutre commetre,
Blois le fera sortir en plein effect:
Ceux d’Orleans voudront leur chef remettre;
Angers, Troye, Langres leur feront un meffait.

_Translation._

Paris conspires to commit a great murder;
Blois will carry it into full effect:
The Orléanois will try to place a Leaguer at their head;
Angers, Troye, Langres will try and undo this.

Henri III. at Paris contrived the murder of the Duc de Guise, who had incited and led the Parisians on the day of the Barricades, when Henri was compelled to fly to Chartres. Henri de Lorraine, Duc de Guise, was murdered the day after the Cardinal, his brother, had been, at the Convention of the Estates at Blois. The murder took place at the Château de Blois. The Orléanois, on learning this, rose against Balzac d’Entragues, the governor of the town, and set Charles de Lorraine, Chevalier d’Aumale, at their head,—he was one of the chiefs of the League,—whilst Angers, Troyes, and Langres took the side of Henri III. It is not very easy, says Le Pelletier, to distinctly prove the exact position taken up by these three towns, but Nostradamus habitually puts a part to stand for the whole. In the divided interests various cities took differing sides. At the time he wrote there was nothing to show that such internecine separations would take place. He clearly anticipated them, and, so far, is absolutely right. We cannot, it seems, prove him to be right in all the details; but equally, there is nothing to show him wrong.

LE DUC DE MAYENNE (1589-1593). [I. 100.]

_Century I.—Quatrain 85._

Par la response de dame Roy troublé,
Ambassadeurs mespriseront leur vie:
Le Grand ses freres contrefera doublé
Par deux mourront ire,[103] haine, et envie.[104]

_Translation._

The King shall be troubled by the Queen-mother,
The deputies at risk of life remonstrate:
The Guise will act for both his brothers dead,
The two whom envy, hatred, malice slew.

Henri III. will be troubled by the response of Catherine de Medici, who disapproves of the murder of the Guise; the deputies (_ambassadeurs_) from both Paris and Blois make lively remonstrance at the peril of their lives. The Duc de Mayenne (_le Grand_), when proclaimed chief of the League, will take the title of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, and, as if doubled in authority, will represent his two brothers, Henri de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine, whom the envy, hatred, and malice of Henri III. and his Court had assassinated. We seem to have here a republic tempered by daggers, in place of what followed, a tyranny tempered with epigrams. This active forging of daggers, knives, and sword-cutlery in France, to carve out an idol of a republic, with its blood-stained heathen Phrygian cap; taken together with its repetition sixty years later, in the Barricades of the Fronde, August, 1648, was clearly generating the poison and concentrating its venom for the most startling act of death known to mankind, but one, in all history,—at Whitehall, on that wintry 30th of January, 1649,—the venom, that by the subtle inoculation of a Raleigh could, for a time, strike silly such a soul as Milton’s—“Psalmist of Paradise,”—who, but for this damned virus in the world, might have taught men how to realize a paradise on earth.

CRIME OF JACQUES CLÉMENT (AUGUST 1, 1589). [I. 102.]

_Century IX.—Quatrain 36._

Un grand Roy prins[105] entre les mains d’un Joyne[106]
Non loin de Pasque, confusion, coup cultre.[107]
Perpet,[108] captifs temps que foudre en la husne,[109]
Lors que trois freres se blesseront et murtre.[110]

_Translation._

A great King taken by a young man’s hand
Close upon Easter, confusion, and a knife:
There’s powder on the tower for captives then,
Three brothers perish; this death takes the last.

Henri III., in his camp at St. Cloud, will be struck by the hand of a young monk,—_Joyne_ might easily be a misprint for _Moyne_. Jacques Clément was twenty-five. He came straight from receiving the Communion (_non loin de Pasque_). He thought he did God service (_confusion_); he struck him in the lower bowel with a knife. The crime will be committed when the Parisians are cut off (_captifs_) by the King beleaguering, and his vengeance is ready to fall upon their ramparts. This murder completes the violent deaths of the three sons, the issue of Henri II. and Catherine de Medici.

There is no occasion to call attention to the remarkable lucidity of this forecast, when once the linguistic difficulties of its conveyance have been studiously solved. The demilune towers projecting at intervals from the wall, as at the Haute Ville, Boulogne, well enough represent the _husne_, or tower of vantage, in the quatrain, they need but a shield or belvidere added.

DEATH OF HENRI III. (AUGUST 2, 1589). [I. 103.]

_Présage 58._

Le Roy-Roy n’estre, du Doux la pernicie,[111]
L’an pestilent, les esmues[112] nubileux.
Tien[113] qui tiendra, les grands non letitie,[114]
Et passera terme de cavilleux.[115]

_Translation._

The twice King dies, by Clement hand is slain;
War and revolt make the year pestilent.
Hold who hold can, the great oppose not well,
Live laughter down and teach the cavillers.

This is a most singular prophecy. Henri III., King, first of Poland then of France is quaintly called _Roy-Roy_. _Le Doux_ is an excellent synonym for _Clément_, all must admit. The year was harassed by civil and religious war, and the Leaguers (_les esmues_) begin to grow anxious about the consequences. Let Henri IV. hold hard his own, the lilied sceptre: “Let Curzon holde what Curzon helde” be his motto. The time is passed for the Catholic grandees (_les grands_) to woo Lætitia. The King can laugh now at the laughers of the Guise; he laughs best who laughs last.

The murder by Clément of the anti-papal king, Henri III., followed very close upon the setting up of Jesuit Clubs in Paris under papal sanction (Elliot’s _Horæ Apoc._, iii. 321). The pulpits also had been filled by clerical preachers of sedition and bloodshed. Precisely two hundred years later the Bastille was taken, and in the Jacobin Clubs of that day were hung, says Alison, the pictures of Clément and Ravaillac, in the gloomy rooms of the old convent, in which they met like night-birds of ill-omen, and within little wreaths beneath each picture might be seen inscribed the words, “He was fortunate; he killed a king.” This is so sentimental, petty, and petulant, that it would move to laughter any large good-natured mind, were it not for the slaver of malignity that accompanies everything that drops from the tongues of that sack of reptiles gathered out of the Jacobin dunghill, as they crawled forth one by one poisoning and to poison.

HENRI QUATRE.

THE COMING OF HENRI IV. (AUGUST 2, 1589). [I. 105.]

_Century IX.—Quatrain 50._

Mendosus[116] tost viendra à son haut regne,
Mettant arriere un peu les Norlaris:[117]
Le rouge blesme, la masle à l’interregne,
Le jeune crainte, et frayeur Barbaris.

_Translation._

Mendosus shall soon come to his high dominion,
Setting back those of Lorraine a little.
The old cardinal pale, the male of the interregnum,
The young man timid, and the barbarian alarmed.

Henri IV. the heretic Vendôme, changed his religion thrice. Jeanne d’Albert, his mother, brought him up a Protestant. To escape St. Bartholomew’s Day, he professed Catholicism, in 1572. In 1576, he turned to Protestantism, to head the Calvinist party. He declared himself Catholic to take the throne of France. Through the Salic law he ascended, to the exclusion of the Lorraine princes (_Norlaris_). In this way, he shut out the old Cardinal de Bourbon, pale (_blesme_,) with age, the Duc de Mayenne, Lieutenant General of the kingdom during the interregnum, the young Duc de Guise, and the barbarously savage Philip II. of Spain, who had pretensions to the crown through Elizabeth his wife, the daughter of Henri II.

The Cardinal is _rouge_ because of the dress of all cardinals. Philip allied himself with the Guises, and supported the Catholic League.

THE DEPRESSION OF THE DE GUISE FAMILY (1589-1593). [I. 107.]

_Century X.—Quatrain 18._

Le rang Lorrain fera place à Vendosme,
Le haut mis bas, et le bas mis en haut,
Le fils de Mamon sera esleu[118] en Rome,
Et les deux Grands seront mis en defant.

_Translation._

The house of Lorraine yields to the Vendôme,
The high put low, the low put high instead,
The son of Mamon they elect at Rome,
And the Pretenders both are in default.

The house of Lorraine is now eclipsed by that of Vendôme. Mayenne, the chief, is put down, and _le petit Béarnais_, Henri IV., rises to respect and power. This heretic son of mammon is accepted by choice at Rome for King of France, and neither of the Pretenders will ever be king.

The Cardinal de Bourbon had been actually proclaimed King by the League, as Charles X., but he was dead in 1590. Isabella, the daughter of Philip II., was incapable by the Salic law. So that the only two remaining were the Duc de Mayenne and the young Duc de Guise. They were shut out by Henri IV. and never reached the throne.

HENRI IV. ABJURES PROTESTANTISM (JULY 21, 1593). [I. 108.]

_Presage 76._

Par le legat du terrestre et marin,
Le Grande Cape[119] à tout s’accommoder;
Estre à l’escoute tacite[120] Norlarin,[121]
Qu’à[122] son advis ne voudra accorder.

_Translation._

Before the legate of the earth and sea,
Henry the Great will yield to all required:
Mayenne to all will listen and not speak a word,
And will grant nothing of his own free will.

Sixtus V. had boldly fulminated an excommunication against Henri Quatre, the Great Capet, but the latter subscribes to all required by the legate of him who can bind and loose all on the earth and sea. He abjures Protestantism at St. Denis, on July 25, 1593, the Archbishop of Bourges officiating. The Duc de Mayenne (the _Lorraine_), Lieutenant-General of France and Master of Paris for the League, will look on in silence, and as far as he can will prevent Paris from receiving the King. The city did not open its gates to him till March 22, 1594, eight months after the abjuration.

MARSEILLES TAKEN BY THE SPANIARDS (FEBRUARY 17, 1696). [I. 109.]

_Century III.—Quatrain 88._

De Barselonne par mer si[123] grand’ armée,
Toute Marseille de frayeur tremblera:
Isles saisies, de mer ayde fermée,
Ton traditeur[124] en terre nagera.[125]

_Translation._

From Barcelona a great fleet shall come,
And terror strike into the town Marseilles:
The isles are seized, and help by sea cut off,
But the betrayer is made swim on land.

A Spanish fleet of a dozen galleys, commanded by Charles Doria, was sent by Philip II. to help the Leaguers. He took possession of the islands Château d’If and Ratonneau, and thus cut off all help to seaward. Charles de Casau (_le traditeur_) was consul, and proposed to place the city in the hands of the Spaniards; Pierre Libertat, however, ran him through with a sword, and the populace dragged the dead body through the muddy channels of the streets.

Guynaud refers to the same event as fulfilling this quatrain in the time of Henri IV., but by a misprint gives 1536 instead of 1596. The islands he mentions are those of St. Honnorat and of St. Marguerite. Black’s pretentious _Imperial Gazetteer_ professes to give a plan of the town, and you see a number of nameless vermicelli streets running all about, but not a single island off the coast is visible. One may suppose, however, that the islands are there, and that all the four were occupied by the Spaniards.

BIRON’S PUNISHMENT (DECEMBER 2, 1602). [I. 110.]

_Sixain 6._

Quand de Robin[126] la traisteruse enterprise,
Mettra Seigneurs et en peine un grand Prince,
Sceu[127] par la Fin[128] chef on lui tranchera.
La plume au vent, amye dans Espagne,[129]
Poste[130] attrappé estant dans la campagne,
Et l’escrivain dans l’eaüe se jettera.

_Translation._

When Biron’s treason and disastrous act,
Shall put King Henry and his Lords in fear,
Lafin betrays him, and the King beheads.
Treason dispatched to Spain in amity,[131]
The carrier caught when he has entered France,[132]
And the scriv’ner will throw himself into the water.

One thing has carefully to be borne in mind in relation to the Sixains, that they were presented to Henri Quatre, and printed for the first time in 1605. That is to say, they first appeared three years after this had happened. To the sceptically disposed they can furnish no authority, but to ordinary men, who only look for ordinary evidence, it will appear that there is very little as to style that would not appropriately spring from the pen of Nostradamus; and further, that if they are forgeries, the forgers have not taken advantage of their knowledge of the events to make the prophecies any clearer or more striking. These are quite as enigmatical as if our author had written them, and I think that common sense will generally be content to take them for what they are worth, and will regard them as probably genuine “chips of the old block” and as such very curious.

Guynaud in his _Concordance_, p. 137, gives a full and interesting account of Biron; chiefly extracted from Davila, Montluc, De Thou, Mezeray, Le Père Anselm, and so forth, where the reader can refer for further details, if interested. I may just note that I have copied the date of December 2, 1602, from Le Pelletier, but that Moreri gives the date of Biron’s decapitation as July 31, 1602, in the Court of the Bastille. The name of the messenger (_poste_) was Picoté, a native of Orleans, sold, as they say, to the King of Spain (Guynaud, p. 140).

Garencières has (p. 464) a very elaborate annotation upon this stanza, giving the whole history of Biron and Lafin in twenty-eight folio pages. Biron appears to have been a vain, a violent, and foolish man, though of great courage and audacity in war, which made him highly valued by Henri IV. After Amiens he refused to go to quiet the towns of Picardy, unless his statue were erected in brass before the Louvre. His sudden prosperity had turned his head. The treasonous proposals with Spain were, that he was to have a daughter of the Duke of Savoy in marriage, 500,000 crowns, and sovereign rights in Burgundy. These were negotiated through Lafin; and Lafin told the King. The whole trial is given, with Biron’s defence in reply, which is audacious and eloquent, but much of it is highly contradictory. He was condemned and executed in the court of the Bastille, on July 31, 1602, which coincides with Moreri. The superstitious, ignorant, violent, but able soldier comes out most characteristically. He shows in emergency great rapidity of thought, decision, and presence of mind; but a deficient judgment, very little principle, and an overwhelming conceit, that, encouraged by success, almost merged into madness. A man of this sort is always a compound of inconsistencies; accordingly he said to the Chancellor, in speaking of death, “I have not been afraid of it these twenty years.” And that was true, when in war, a duel, or hot blood; but in the court of the Bastille he was thought to show great fear of dying. In earlier life he had wondered at himself for fearing nothing from the thrust of a sword, though very nervous over the prick of a lancet, when he had occasion to “be let blood,” as they used to phrase it. The fear of death is most in apprehension; but the apprehension is most, perhaps it may be said, of the wicked in cold blood, and of the good in violence, and when the blood is hot, if but the least pause give time for reflection to enter. Garencières notes that the greatest courage and stoutness of a man is nothing in comparison of the weakness of human nature.

Two of Biron’s adventures with astrologers are so characteristic of the manners of the time, as recounted by Guynaud [p. 137, etc.], that I think the reader should not be deprived of them. Whatever is strange and rivets the attention must have something of humanity in it, and repay the record, though a few superior people may look down upon such trifling. I shall give them at the risk of running this annotation to too great length.

When at Court with his father, at the age of eighteen or twenty, he had a duel, and killed his man. He had to hide for this, till his father could sue out his pardon, through the Duc d’Espernon, to whom fortunately the father was known. He took the disguise of a letter-carrier, and in this garb consulted an astrologer called La Brosse, who lived in a garret at the top of a house near the Luxembourg. He told the man that it was his master’s horoscope he had need of. La Brosse told him that one day he would be a very great man, in fact, might almost be king, but for a _caput algol_ that stood in the way. What this was the man would not explain. Biron, however, continuing to press very hard, got him to say at last that he would be beheaded on a scaffold. Upon this, he burst out with the want of judgment he showed all through his life (forty years in all) and beat the old man mercilessly, leaving him nearly dead. He locked him maliciously into his room, took away the key with him, and kicked down the little ladder that gave access to the loft. But still he believed what had been communicated.

On another occasion he consulted César, who was thought at the time to be the most able astrologer in France. This man also affirmed that he would have good fortune in almost everything. Except for a blow from a Burgundian from behind, he might even be king. But he could not get from him a word more.

When he was confined in the Bastille, a friend called on him, and Biron asked him to ascertain for him from what part of the country the executioner of Paris was; and when he came back and told him that he was a Burgundian, Biron changed colour and said—“There will be no reprieve then; I am as good as dead.”

Now as to the fulfilment of the last two lines. It will appear that my rendering is right, and that the scrivener will throw himself into the water. The scrivener turns out to be a man named Nicholas l’Oste, born at Orleans, secretary to Lord Villeroy, Chief Secretary of State, who, finding him a most capable person, confided much in him, and the more so that Oste’s father had spent the greater part of his life in his service. When Lord Rochepot was starting as ambassador for Spain, Oste begged to accompany him as secretary. Villeroy immediately recommended him, and he was engaged. In a few months’ time he mastered the language to such perfection, and so thoroughly accommodated himself to Spanish manners, that he might well pass for a true-born Spaniard. When Rochepot had got the treaty at Vervins ratified, the King of Spain gave him rich presents—a chain of jewels, and six gold chains valued at a hundred and fifty crowns apiece—to distribute amongst his suite, as he thought fit. Oste was so full of himself that he thought he ought to have one of them, but his master thought otherwise; on which, says Garencières, “the Devil crept into his soul,” and, as he wanted money to supply his debaucheries, he determined to betray the State secrets which passed through his hands.

With this in view, he applied to Don Fanchese, a Secretary of State, and made his proposals, but the dignified Spaniard, for some reason or other, received him coolly. “The Catholic King was in good amity with the most Christian one, and required to know no more than the French Ambassador should communicate to him.” Nothing discouraged, our traitor hurries off to Don Ydiaques, another secretary, and there meets with excellent reception. He was presented to the Duke of Lerma, to whom he betrayed the Alphabet of Ciphers. He received twelve hundred crowns upon the spot, and was promised the like amount as a yearly pension. By his means the Spanish Council knew the contents of all French instructions as soon as the ambassador himself. When La Rochepot’s mission ended, Oste got back into Villeroy’s service, and so was able to maintain correspondence with Spain. Tuxis was ambassador from Spain in Paris, and after him Don Baltazar de Caniga. With these men he established a close intimacy, so that finally the Council in Spain got his letters before Des Barreaux at Madrid could receive those from Henri IV.

Des Barreaux told the King that he was always now forestalled. Oste had let a certain reprobate Raffis into his secret, and this fellow, who had been banished, in order to obtain a reprieve of sentence, betrayed Oste to Des Barreaux. When he got his pardon, he gave up the name of Oste. Raffis came to Paris to communicate with Villeroy, and orders were given to detain the two Spanish couriers that had reached the post-office. They then kept a watch upon Oste, who was “doing his devotions at the Charter-house of Paris,”—excellent Catholic, plotter as he was. On reaching the post-office, he soon found he was betrayed; and Descardes, who was to watch him, did not let him out of his sight until he brought him to Villeroy’s. When there, he thought his man was safe, and went to announce his capture to Villeroy. Oste instantly ran down to the stable, where his horse stood, still saddled, and galloped away. A hue and cry was soon raised. Oste got a Spanish disguise at De Cuniga’s, and made off post-haste for Luxembourg. Postmasters were forbidden to let out horses to any one; but at Meaux the postmaster had received the order too late, for Oste was already on horseback, but no sooner did he begin to gallop than his horse fell under him. His look of dismay impressed the postillion who accompanied him, and he told his master on his return. The postmaster told the sheriff, who came up with him at the second ferry of _la Ferte sous Jouare_; but he was already on the boat, and threatening the ferryman’s life, the man put him ashore, in spite of the sheriff’s commands, shouted to him from the bank. He rushed into the bushes and brambles near the Marne, hoping to escape in the darkness of the night, the sheriff scattered his men everywhere, raised the whole country side, and caused bonfires to be lighted in all directions. Oste crept from bush to bush, but, either accidentally or with intention, fell into the river Marne and was drowned. His hat was found next day, stopped between two posts, and his body two days later. So befitting a close to the career of a gifted dastard is a wholesome exemplar of retributive justice, and should not easily be suffered to fall out of men’s recollection. Horace thinks that lame-foot Justice always trips the sinner. No doubt, if we could see both worlds; but, as we cannot, I wish that here the lame foot were considerably less lame. In England law and the lawyers, her two crutches, seem to reduce Justice to a gouty incapable. With our new Palace of Justice the morals of a Court seem to have dawned upon us.

POPULARITY OF HENRI IV. (AFTER HIS DEATH). [I. 112.]

_Century VI.—Quatrain 70._

Au chef du monde le grand Chyren[133] sera,
Plus outre après aymé, craint, redouté;
Son bruit et los[134] les cieux surpassera,
Et du seul titre victeur[135] fort contenté.

_Translation._

Chief of the world _Henri le Grand_ shall be,
More loved in death than life, more honoured he:
His name and praise shall rise above the skies,
And men will call him victor when he dies.

French self-esteem has always appropriated to France a throne of pre-eminence beyond all other thrones. If it were possible, they would set theirs above that of Jupiter. They pretend a most manly contempt for kings. But the throne, you are to remember, is the work of _sans cullottes_, French cabinet-makers, and therefore the best thing of its kind in the universe, and so _chef du monde_. If Nostradamus is no prophet for you, you shall at least admit that he was a Frenchman. The Frenchman whips the old world, and the American whips creation. The rest of us may look forward to an eternity of corporal punishment in spite of the nominal abolition of slavery. Condillac will furnish the logical distinction, that establishes the honour of the throne, when a manly contempt has been duly engendered for the sanctity of the king’s majesty. Honest Democrat! Do you read Condillac?

One of Voltaire’s rhetorical squibs in the _Henriade_, which the French are so indulgent as to call not only verse, but poetry, runs—

“Il fut de ses sujets le vainqueur et le père.”

“He was the papa and conquestor of his people.”

When our Charles II. was addressed as “the father of his people,” he said he thought that he might be of a good many of them. But Henri Quatre is too noble a creature for any good and wise man to wish to dwell long upon his foibles. What a contrast between him and the Napoleons!

LOUIS XIII.

(1610-1643.)

PUNISHMENT OF THE GREAT MONTMORENCY (OCTOBER 30, 1632.) [I. 113.]

_Century IX.—Quatrain 18._

Le lys Dauffois[136] portera[137] dans Nanci
Jusques en Flandres electeur de l’Empire;
Neufve obturée[138] au grand Montmorency,
Hors lieux prouvés[139] delivré[140] á clere peyne.[141]

_Translation._

The Dauphin shall carry his lily standards into Nancy, just as
in Flanders the Elector of Trèves shall be carried prisoner of
the Spaniards into Brussels. A new prison will be given to the
great Montmorency, who will be delivered for execution into the
hands of Clerepeyne. This man will behead him in a spot not
devoted to executions.

I have given this in prose, as it could only yield ingenious doggerel in verse.

Louis XIII., of whom it may be remarked that he was the first who bore the title of Dauphin de France since the publication of Century IX., in 1566, entered Nancy on September 25, 1633, a day after his army. In 1635 he enters Flanders on behalf of the Elector, whom the Spaniards had, on the 26th of March of that year, carried prisoner to Brussels. Nostradamus then reverts to October 30, 1632, when the great Montmorency was executed for rebellion, being first confined in the newly built (_neufve obturée_) Hotel de Ville at Toulouse. In the courtyard of this building Clerepeyne, a soldier, shall cut off his head, and not, as ought to have been the case, at the place appointed for public executions, such as was _La Grève_ at Paris.

It so happens that Clerepeyne’s name is fully attested by Étienne Joubert and by the Chevalier de Jant, both contemporary with the event. Further than this, M. Motret has brought to light, after minute historic research, that the family, by solicitation of the King, could obtain only two concessions of mere formality—that the execution should be with closed doors, and by a soldier in lieu of the common headsman. The _place publique_ or _marché_ would be the place mentioned in the official order.