Chapter IX: Appendix: 351 (6)

This means that Mary, elder sister of Edward VI., shall ascend the throne of England. She was not born fifteen years before him. Her birth took place February 18, 1516, whilst Edward VI. was born October 12, 1537, over twenty-one years later. The fulfilment of her truthful promise lay in carrying out her vow to reinstate the Papists, causing even her sister Elizabeth to be imprisoned in the Tower on a charge of conspiracy. _Moyennant_ seems to refer to the temporary nature and duration of her papal restorations; _en la moyenne_, in the midst or interim, between the Protestantism of her young brother, and that of Elizabeth, who succeeded her. Mary’s birth was an event actually contemporary with Nostradamus; a very little inquiry, we may be sure, would have enabled him to have rendered it conformable to the facts of history. As exemplifying his method and procedure, it is very important to find that he took no trouble whatever to do so. It is evident that our prophet acted quite independently of external aids. He seems to have had methods and ways of his own, in which he had the most entire and implicit faith. In whatsoever manner the impressions reached him, he laid himself open to their reception, a reception to all appearance of pure passivity: he took the earliest moment of noting them down, more after the manner of an amanuensis under dictation than as being personally at all responsible for anything he committed to paper. The explanation of D. D. upon this passage is very singular, and implies somewhat of the insight of an adept into magical processes and fatidical language, of which we should be glad to know more. We must, however, content ourselves with it as it is; and even this little glimpse will be valued by those who love to study the human mind in all its byeways, and who are qualified to do so by thrusting aside from their own mind all private prejudice and vain prepossession. He says with regard to the discrepancy:

“But, if he has not known it, then has he either overheard it
_in raptu_, whilst his genius dictated unto him one year and
three _Heptades_, or forgot it _post raptum_, and did write one
year and two _Heptades_. The _Lingua Demonum_ uses _Septenarios
in numerando_, as we do _Denarios_.”

Where he gets this intelligence from I have no idea. What he heard _in raptu_, could not have been one year and three heptades, for that would have represented twenty-two years, and we have to do with twenty-one years. What he might have heard, supposing we are right as to the _lingua demonum_, would be “one, plus two heptades,” meaning _three heptades_; and he might have supposed it to mean one year plus two heptades, or fifteen years. If not satisfactory, this at least, has something of plausibility about it.

The phrase _Règne de Balance_ has much of importance attaching to it. Garencières translates the last line, “She shall succeed in the Kingdom of Libra,” and he annotates that the princess, whom he does not recognize at all, born so long before her brother, shall be married to a King of France, which is signified by the “Kingdom of _Libra_.” He also says that Louis XIII. was called _The Just_, because he was born under the sign _Libra_. I give this for the sake of its being curious, though quite beside the mark, so far as I am able to see.

The phrase _Règne de Balance_ is one of those pithy pregnant sentences, ever and anon dropping instinctively from the pen of Nostradamus, on all topics treated by him or glanced at. The whole bent of England’s policy, from Henry VII.’s day to the Treaty of Vienna, has been to maintain a European equipoise, and to provide that no State should grow so strong as to overwhelm the rest. The wise counsels of the statesmen of Elizabeth were all directed in the hope of fortifying it; and it was never seriously infringed until the first partition of Poland in 1772, which was completed by the third in 1795. Napoleon’s false profession to restore it in 1806 may count—like all he said, “as false as dicers’ oaths”—for nothing. England’s permission of that crime,—that satanry of royal crowns, struck her with judicial blindness;—and hired publicists, the venal reptiles that preceded the journalists, soon sprang up in abundance, to confuse and smoke-dry the moral sense of Europe. Poland had established that most unworkable of all governmental schemes, an elective monarchy; an arrangement that insures periodical anarchy at every election, and generally a wrong choice at last. The satanry of Split Eagles gave out, that the Poles could not govern themselves. But the fourth article in Peter the Great’s will shows that they were not to be allowed to govern themselves. They were to be kept in continual jealousy, whilst the other powers were to be corrupted by gold, and a share of the plunder; till Russia could retake all. The bribers, the bribed, and the publicists succeeded so well that the very phrase “Balance of power” became, and still is, a topic of ridicule in common conversation. By this means its obvious rationality is excluded from any chance of a fair hearing. The Navigation Laws, Corn Laws, and Protection, have all been treated in the same way in our own time, and with the same revolutionary consequences, and loss of English supremacy. The Marquis de Bouillé, in his “Mémoires,” ed. 1821, p. 8,—one of the few modern men who is entitled to be called a statesman,—says of England, that it is an empire whose support all other nations stand in need of, and that its happiness is intimately bound up with that of the world at large, but that if its thirst of gold should destroy its patriotism; or that bold demagogues and orators should get power to meddle with its fundamental laws, it would soon become chaotic and fall, leaving nothing behind it but another great ghost of empire perished, to glimmer as an historical beacon through the night of time. Again he says, at p. 24, that for thirty years (speaking about 1783) she has been the happy rival of France, and in some sort the arbitress of Europe. A little later on, when we crushed Napoleon by sea and land, and yet preserved France, we rose to our highest; but at Vienna the _Règne de Balance_[197] passed, probably for ever, from the sceptre of England; just twenty years after the final partition of Poland. Cursed are those who, with arms in their hands, stand by and allow evil to be done! We repeated the cowardice when France was under the heel of Prussia. If no virtue remained, the common policy of equalization should have weighed, to throw in aid to the weaker side.

QUEEN ELIZABETH (1533-1603).

_Century VI.—Quatrain 74._

La dechassee au regne tournera,
Ses ennemies trouvez des conjurez;
Plusque jamais son temps triomphera,
Trois, et Septante, la mort, trop asseurez.

_Translation._

The rejected one shall at last reach the throne, her enemies
found to have been traitors. More than ever shall her period be
triumphant. At seventy she shall go assuredly to death, in the
third year of the century.

Elizabeth was long withheld from the throne. When she reached it, of course all enemies were regarded as traitors, and no reign was ever more triumphant. She proved a thorn in the side of popery; overthrew the Armada; and crippled the power of Spain, despoiling it of a large tract of land in America, which has been called after her Virginia; and under Essex, in 1596, inflicted on it a loss of twenty million ducats or pieces of eight, in the Bay of Cadiz. The next quatrain that we shall take seems to refer to the expedition by Essex.

The fourth line is a very singular one. It has no punctuation in the edition of 1558; so I introduce a comma between _trois_ and _septante_. _Septante_ is “seventy,” a good old word that has dropped out of French usage, but which many French scholars think infinitely preferable to the clumsy circumlocution _Soixante dix_. _Trois_ stands for 1603. Nostradamus often drops the thousands and hundreds from a date. We shall shortly come to a case in point, at the Fire of London, 1666. When Nostradamus describes the doomed city, he writes: “Bruslé par fond, de vingt-trois les six.” The nought in 1603 cannot be given, so that, omitting the figures in the tens, hundreds, and thousands, the _trois_ remaining gives the date; so that the line remains “In the third year [of the seventeenth century] and seventy years old, assured death comes.” Elizabeth was born September 7, 1533, and she died March 24 (April 3, N.S.), 1603; fulfilling to a nicety the conditions of the line as thus set forth.

ATTACK ON CADIZ BAY (1596).

_Century VIII.—Quatrain 94._

Devant le lac ou plus cher fut getté
De sept mois, et son ost desconfit
Seront Hispans par Albanois gastez,
Par delay perte en donnant le conflict.

_Translation._

Before the lake, where much treasure (_plus cher_) was
stranded, after a seven months’ voyage, and the host
discomforted, Spaniards shall be worsted by the English, by
time lost before giving battle.

Garencières here takes _Albanois_ for Albanians, which of course prevents him from reaching any conceivable meaning. It stands for English, as Albanies, or Albions. The quatrain may reasonably enough be interpreted of the attack made by Essex, Howard, and Raleigh, June, 1596, on Cadiz Bay. They destroyed there thirteen ships of war, and forty huge South American galleons, part of the great “silver fleet,” or “plate fleet.” They had got stranded in their own harbour. Had the Spaniards been alert, they might have unloaded the treasure-ships, and so saved the cargoes. If they had attacked the English at once, instead of awaiting the onset, they might have beaten them off, or at least have kept them out of the harbour. But they were so supine that the Duke de Medina had at last to fire the ships to prevent their capture. The Spartans and Spaniards have been noted as being of small despatch: _Mi venga la muerta di Spagna_—“Let my death come from Spain, for then it will be sure to be long in coming” (Bacon’s Essay on Despatch). Collins does not give this in his Spanish proverbs. But not only did Spaniards and Spartans procrastinate. “Business tomorrow,” said the Theban Polymarch, in Plutarch, as he laid under his pillow some despatches relating to a conspiracy, and was killed before he read them. Copyslip wisdom saith “Delays are dangerous.”

The bay and harbour of Cadiz may very well be called a lake, being twelve miles one way, and at least six the other, whilst the entrance to it from Rota to the Castle of St. Sebastian is a good six miles. When Essex got possession of the Castle of Puntales, he commanded the whole town and harbour. The idea of _lake_ is actually expressed in the very name of Cadiz, which is derived from the Punic word _Gaddir_, an _enclosed place_. The Greeks corrupted this into γάδειρα, or γῆς δειρή, “neck of land.” The Romans contracted either this or the Punic word into Gades, and the Spaniards into _Xerez_, by the help of their Arabic guttural.

_Century VI.—Quatrain 22._

Dedans la terre du grand temple celique,
Nepueu à Londre par paix feincte meurtry:
La barque alors deviendra scismatique,
Liberté feincte sera au corn’ et cry.

_Translation._

In the country of the great heavenly temple the nephew is
murdered [by her who comes] to London under a feigned truce.
The ship [of Peter] will then become schismatic, and feigned
liberty become the hue and cry.

I cannot, I confess, altogether make this out. D. D. interprets it of the murder of Henry Stuart, 1567, and the final establishment of the Reformation. If it mean this, it will be a proof of the uncertainty, and almost caprice with which forecasts are concerned. It is strange that Henry Stuart’s murder should find any representation, when, so far as I yet know, nothing is recorded of the fate of Mary Stuart herself. The heavenly temple is, according to D. D., the kingdom of the _Angeli_, Angels, or Angles, meaning the English. We are by no means forced to accept this interpretation, for _Celique_ may stand for _luminous_, according to Le Pelletier’s Glossary, where he derives the word from the Greek σίλας, though I see no such word. _Celigue_ is generally considered to stand for _celeste_, _cælitus_, from _cælum_. We might read it as a misprint for Celtique. Then _la terre du grand temple Celtique_ would be the island in which is placed the great Druid temple of Stonehenge—the island of Apollo, _Templum Solis_, as Bath is the fountain of the sun, _Aqua Solis_. I record these hints, not as possessing much value in themselves, but as being possible aids towards future elucidation.

_La Barque_, in Nostradamus, is no doubt usually to be interpreted of the Popedom, the ship of St. Peter; but if, as I think, the general reference of the quatrain be to England and English affairs, then I should interpret _La Barque_ as the Ship of State, becoming more and more schismatical, and in which the Puritans, Independents, and other Dissenters raise a great hue and cry about liberty, and liberty of conscience (_au corn’ et cry_, or _à cor et à cri_, which is a variant of the early edition). The Puritans were becoming most troublesome both in England and Scotland all through the reigns of Elizabeth and Mary Stuart. Here D. D. insists upon what it is the business of his book to establish; that the accession of the House of Hanover to the throne of England is one distinct topic of the prophecies of Nostradamus. James I. was the great-grandfather of George I. His daughter Elizabeth married Frederic, the Elector Palatine, and had issue the Princess Sophia, Electress of Brunswick-Lunenberg, the mother of George I.

ENGLAND BECOMES GREAT BRITAIN (1603).

_Century III.—Quatrain 70._

La grand Bretaigne comprinse d’Angleterre,
Viendra par eaux si[198] haut à inonder
La Ligue neuve d’Ausonne fera guerre,
Que contre eux ils se viendront bander.

_Translation._

Great Britain comprising England, will come to be inundated
very forcibly by the waters. The new League in Italy will make
war against all such as band together against any one of the
cosignatories.

England was politically called Great Britain when Scotland was united to her at the accession of James I. in 1603. Still, in an indefinite way, the term, or kindred terms, had often been employed. To go no further than the “Faerie Queene” of Spenser (Book III. c. ii. § 7), we find:

Far fro my native soyle, that is by name
The Greater Brytayne, here to seeke for praise and fame.

In this passage, Church says, it means Wales, as distinguished from the Lesser Brittany in France. The Greater Brytayne would hardly be Wales, but England and Wales together before the Saxon Heptarchy. This, however, in no way interferes with the propriety of the distinction drawn by Nostradamus. His allusion is clearly to the time of James I., who assumed the title of “King of Great Britain” on October 24, 1604.

The floods spoken of commenced about the end of January, 1607. The principal damage occurred in Somersetshire, where the sea broke down the dykes, and overflowed the country for thirty miles in length and six miles inland, to the destruction of all property and most of the inhabitants. Bristol suffered. The east coast by Norfolk suffered in like manner, though not quite to so great an extent. A long account of it, giving curious details of the calamity, was hunted up by Garencières, and found in an old, almost-forgotten Latin book, entitled “Rerum in Galliâ, Belgiâ, Hispaniâ, Angliâ, etc., _gestarum anno_ 1607,” à Nicolao Gotardo Artus Dantisco, VII., Book 2.

_La Ligue neufve_, D. D. says, was a renewal of the _Liga Sancta_ first entered into in 1526 between the King of France, the Pope, and the Venetians. The renewal took place in 1606, and was simply defensive, precisely as the quatrain puts it. Thus the quatrain stretches over a space of three years, from October, 1604, establishing the title of “Great Britain;” the ratification of the _Liga Sancta_ in 1606; and the inundations in Somerset and Norfolk in 1607. The alliance of 1526 goes by the name of the Treaty of Cognac (or _Holy League_). It was concluded on March 22, 1526, between the Pope, Francis I., Venice, Henry VIII., the Swiss, and Florence. The second or defensive alliance, according to D. D., was between three only of the original signatories; France, the Pope, and the Venetians. I do not find it mentioned, but presume he is right. Garencières evidently writes in entire ignorance of both these treaties; but he says that the League will be of Bordeaux, which is called _Ausone_, from Ausonius, the famous Latin poet, who was born there. Here it certainly means Italy; but I mention it, as it is quite likely that Nostradamus might so employ the word, though he does not on this occasion. _Ausone_ occurs once again, at least, in Quatrain 22 of Century VII., which I do not know that anybody has yet interpreted.

CHARLES I.

_Century V.—Quatrain 93._

Soubs le terroir du rond globe lunaire,
Lors que sera dominateur Mercure:
L’isle d’Escosse fera un luminaire.
Qui les Anglois mettra à deconfiture.[199]

_Translation._

Under the jurisdiction of the round globe of the moon, when
Mercury shall be lord of the ascendant: the island of Scotland
will produce a luminary (prince) that shall throw the English
into a great discomfiture.

Garencières entirely misses the purpose of this, but remarks that the prophecy must of necessity relate to the past, for since the Union nothing of the kind has happened. Charles I. was born at Dunfermline on November 19, 1600; in astrological language, when Mercury, lord of the horizon, was combust and following Saturn cosmically with the sun: the sun leaning to a conjunction with Mars, and the moon, in her worst location, in quadrature with Mars. He succeeded to the throne in 1625.