by Nostradamus
The government of that mighty town,
La republique de la grande cité,
Too stubborn to withdraw beyond the gates
A grand rigueur ne voudra consentir :
As so summoned by the king’s trumpet call :
Roy sortir hors par trompette cité,
The town shall regret this, ladder at wall.
L’eschelle au mur, la cité repentir.
Paris would free the king (Roy sortir) and repent for its sacrilegious behavior (la cité repentir). Partisans and enemies of the Revolution alike drew solace or legitimacy from the Prophecies.
Both sides were likewise struck by this line in the Prophecies’ Epistle to Henri II :
Beginning with that [unidentified] year the Christian Church shall be persecuted more fiercely than it ever was in Africa, & this shall last until the year seventeen ninety-two, which shall be considered the beginning of a new age. Commençant icelle annee sera faite plus grande persecution à l’eglise Chretienne que n’a eté faite en Afrique, & durera cette icy jusques l’an mil sept cens nonante deux que l’on cuydera etre une renovation de siecle.
This seemed to confirm the French Revolution’s adversarial relationship with the Church, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (which allowed the state to name clerics and required priests to swear allegiance to the Revolution), and the advent of a republic in 1792. Some revolutionaries saw this prediction as an endorsement of recent changes and a promise that France was freeing itself from religious superstition. Others understood it differently. According to Nostradamus, they said, the persecution of Catholics would come to an end during this “new age.” Pamphlets and newspapers parsed the passage. A revolutionary club posted it outside its door for a week, so that citizens could make up their own minds. In Great Britain, too, people paid attention.
During the nineteenth century, Nostradamus hence became the prophet who had predicted the French Revolution. Journalists and others linked dozens of quatrains to the National Assembly, the decapitation of Louis XVI, and other revolutionary milestones. Again and again, they returned to quatrain 9.20, which had ostensibly predicted the royal family’s botched attempt to flee Paris, disguised as commoners, on June 21, 1791:
He shall come by night through the woods of Reines,
De nuict viendra par la forest de Reines,
Two via Pierre Blanche, Herne, & Vaultorte,
Deux pars vaultorte Herne la pierre blanche,
The black monk all in gray within Varennes,
Le moyne noir en gris dedans Varennes
Elected cap. causes storm, fire, blood, sword.
Esleu cap. cause tempeste feu, sang tranche.
Commentators proposed that the royal party had traveled east along a roundabout route (vaultorte) and crossed the forest of Rennes-en-Grenouilles (spelled “Raines” in earlier times). “Herne” might even be an anagram of reine (queen), with the h standing in for an i. MarieAntoinette wore white clothes, and, according to some reports, her hair turned that same color following her arrest. The third verse introduced the king, wearing an iron gray coat and a round slouch hat that made him resemble a Franciscan monk. It was in the village of Varennes that the royal party was detained after being recognized. As a constitutional monarch, Louis XVI was indeed an “elected Capet,” a member of the dynasty that had acceded to the French throne in the tenth century. “Blood, sword” required little comment.
Nor did the widely circulated quatrains that pertained to Napoléon Bonaparte, the Corsican who had risen through the ranks in the 1790s, achieved resounding victories, become consul, and then ruled France and swathes of Europe as emperor until 1815. A new generation turned to Nostradamus for evidence of the emperor’s mythic nature, confirmation of his rise or fall, and insight into what lay ahead for the ruler and his country. Supporters of Napoléon were partial to quatrain 8.57:
From simple soldier he shall race to power,
De souldat simple parviendra en empire,
From short tunic to long robe he shall lunge :
De robe courte parviendra à la longue
Most valiant in arms, though at his worst hour
Vaillant aux armes en eglise ou plus pyre,
Shall pursue priests as water does a sponge.
Vexer les prestres comme l’eau fait l’esponge.
The quatrain recapped the rise of a lowly born but valiant leader who had ruled supreme and purified the French church. Further evidence of his achievements was detected in quatrain 2.29:
Man from the East shall sally from his seat,
L’Oriental sortira de son siege,
Crossing all the Apennines to see Gaul :
Passer les monts Apennins voir la Gaule :
He shall pass through showers of rain & sleet,
Transpercera du ciel les eaux & neige,
And with his rod he shall strike one & all.
En un chascun frappera de sa gaule.
The “man from the East” was the Corsican general who, depending on the interpretation, had either vanquished the elements and traversed the Alps (rain and sleet) or else left Egypt to seize power in Paris. A final quatrain (1.60) contained a much-quoted verse about the emperor’s birth and three others that could be marshaled against him :
Near Italy an Emperor shall be born
Un Empereur naistra près d’Italie,
Who shall cost the Empire a pretty pence :
Qui à l’Empire sera vendu bien cher :
They shall ask to what people he is sworn,
Diront avec quelz gens il se ralie,
Finding him more a butcher than a prince.
Qu’on trouvera moins prince que boucher.
The association with Napoléon buoyed the Nostradamus phenomenon throughout the nineteenth century. There were new and cheaper editions of the Prophecies for a broader readership, interpretations and translations, and all kinds of articles in magazines and daily newspapers. Europeans from all social classes now read about Nostradamus in columns, editorials, dispatches from foreign correspondents, historical features, wire copy, and the innumerable short items that filled up newspaper columns. As in the past, some quatrains resonated in a single country alone while others traveled across borders. Nostradamus could promise favorable resolutions and at the same time feed a mood of despair.
In 1854, London’s New Monthly Magazine played with the idea that 8.59 promised victory in the Crimean War :
Twice shall it rise, & twice be brought low,
Par deux fois hault, par deux fois mis à bas
The East like the West ever growing weak :
L’orient aussi l’occident foyblira
After full many battles shall its foe,
Son adversaire apres plusieurs combats,
Pursued by sea, founder in time of need.
Par mer chassé au besoing faillira.
During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the Hamburger Nachrichten (seen as the mouthpiece of Prussian leader Otto von Bismarck) was delighted with quatrain 10.30:
Blood nephew of the newly proclaimed saint,
Nepveu & sang du sainct nouveau venu,
His surname shall support arches & beams :
Par le surnom soustient arcs & couvert
They’ll be expelled, killed, chased away naked :
Seront chassez mis a mort chassez nu,
Into red & black they’ll convert their green.
En rouge & noir convertiront leur vert.
Napoléon I was the saint mentioned in the first verse, and French emperor Napoléon III was his nephew. The former had gone down in defeat, and the latter would follow soon enough. The last verse was more mysterious, but the interpreter offered a symbolic reading of the green, the red, and the black: “their hope will be turned into blood and mourning.”
It certainly seemed that way in France, where Prussian troops were fast advancing toward Paris. Citizens grew alarmed by quatrain 3.84:
The great city shall be quite desolate,
&nb
sp; La grand cité sera bien desolée,
No single inhabitant shall remain :
Des habitans un seul n’y demourra :
Its walls & women, churches & nuns raped,
Mur, sexe, temple, & vierge violée,
All dying by sword, fire, cannon, plague.
Par fer, feu, peste, canon peuple mourra.
In this apocalyptic climate, one Frenchwoman told the New York Times that she had memorized long passages of the Prophecies and could no longer fall asleep at night without dreading a catastrophe. Others read the book and found intimations of a reckoning for a nation that had abandoned tradition and monarchy in favor of illegitimate rulers and modern commerce. The anti-Semitic demagogue Edouard Drumont thus began with the destruction of Paris in 3.84—a necessary step toward purification and regeneration. He then moved to 1.32, which confirmed the demise of Napoléon III and announced the arrival of a savior monarch. This mythic royal figure, which had resurfaced repeatedly since the Renaissance, would now draw France out of its morass and restore the country’s moral purity and majesty :
The empire shall soon find itself retired
Le grand empire sera tost translaté,
Into a small place which shall fast expand :
En lieu petit, qui bien tost viendra croistre :
A tiny space within a narrow shire
Lieu bien infime d’exiguë comté,
In midst of which his scepter he shall plant.
Où au milieu viendra poser son sceptre.
Turn-of-the-century anxieties about vertiginous progress, national decline, or political corruption also led people toward gloomy quatrains. While French journalists found confirmation of the 1910 Paris flood (in 4.80), British readers insisted that quatrain 3.16 announced a social revolution in the British Isles, the destruction of London, and the martyrdom of the Prince of Wales, who would die while fighting Socialists and foreign foes :
The English prince, Mars at mid-sky his sign,
Le prince Anglois Mars à son cœur de ciel,
Shall seek out the fortune he has in store :
Voudra poursuivre sa fortune prospere :
One duelist shall pierce the other’s spleen,
De deux duelles l’un percera le fiel,
Hated by him, but by his mother adored.
Hay de luy, bien-aymé de sa mere.
Unimaginable destruction came in 1914, of course, and commentators continued to uncover pertinent verses in the Prophecies. In France, some reinterpreted quatrain 3.84, which still lingered in collective memory, to announce the country’s final days. Others detected a merrier future in quatrain 10.89:
In marble shall the walls of brick now rise,
De brique en marbre seront les murs reduits
Seven & fifty years of lasting peace,
Sept & cinquante annees pacifiques,
Aqueducts restored, joy to all mankind,
Joie aux humains renové Laqueduict,
Health, abundant fruit, blissful honeyed times.
Santé, grandz fruict joye & temps melifique.
Peace would resurface from the ruins (murs reduits); people would once again learn to enjoy life; and the next fifty-seven years would prove as sweet as honey. In Germany, meanwhile, newspapers returned to quatrain 2.68, of eighteenth-century fame, and anticipated a naval victory over England (“London tremble when the sails are espied”).
This did not pan out, but Nostradamus was not discredited for long. By the late 1930s, a wave of Nostramania hit the West. As astrologers and palm readers grew increasingly popular, ever more books and articles linked quatrains to ongoing turbulence. Quatrain 9.16, for instance, seemed to foretell Franco’s victory in the Spanish civil war :
From Castelfranco troops shall make forays,
De castel Franco sortira l’assemblee,
The irksome envoy shall go his separate way :
L’ambassadeur non plaisant fera scisme :
Those of the coast shall leap into the fray,
Ceux de Ribiere seront en la meslée,
And deny entry to the mighty bay.
Et au grand goulphre desnier ont l’entrée.
Most Europeans inquired about the looming war. Hitler’s annexations and invasions, his march into Poland, and the British and French declarations of war in September 1939 darkened the mood. In France, some proposed that quatrain 2.9 had foretold the rise and fall of the barbaric German chancellor (the “thin one”):
The thin one shall rule for nine years in peace,
Neuf ans le regne le maigre en paix tiendra,
Then fall into an immense thirst for blood :
Puis il cherra en soif si sanguinaire :
For this lawless one a great people dies,
Pour luy grand peuple sans foy & loy mourra,
To be slain by a rival far more good.
Tué par un beaucoup plus debonnaire.
The most quoted quatrain about Hitler, however, was 2.24:
Beasts wild with hunger shall swim the rivers :
Bestes farouches de faim fleuves tranner :
Most of the host shall move against Ister :
Plus part du camp encontre Hister sera :
He’ll have the great one dragged in iron cage,
En caige fer le grand fera treisner,
When the child the German Rhine surveys.
Quand Rin enfant Germain observera.
“Ister” (“Hister” in the old French, formerly spelled “Hifter”) most probably referred to the Danube River. In the nineteenth century, French commentators had presented it as an anagram of “Thiers,” the name of a leading politician. In the late 1930s it became Hitler, whose wild beasts were poised to attack. Some concluded from the last two verses that the dictator would end up in a cage. What an appealing prospect, mused one Parisian journal in October 1939: Hitler’s cage would be rolled down the Champs-Elysées and placed before the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, under the Arc de Triomphe. There, the French, English, and Polish leaders would make the dictator kneel and beg for forgiveness. Such interpretations gained traction in the United States, where countless books and articles now drew attention to the quatrains. Nostradamus had surfaced there in earlier decades, but only during World War II did he become a household name. American newspapers reported that Hitler was terrorized by quatrain 2.24 and the prospect of ending up in a cage.
German commentators did not link “Hister” to Hitler, but some Nazi leaders paid attention to Nostradamus. A 1921 book by Carl Loog, a postal official who claimed to have discovered the numerological key to the Prophecies, went through several editions in the 1930s. Hitler himself owned a copy. Among the quatrains Loog highlighted was the famous 3.57, with its seven changes afflicting the British people. The Bastarnians in the fourth verse, he explained, designated Germanic tribes who had once occupied the lands granted to Poland after World War I. Loog added that the 290-year countdown had begun in 1649 and would thus end in 1939: “Nostradamus evidently wants to explain that 1939 will go hand in hand with the last and greatest English crisis and a crisis for the reconstituted country of Poland.”
By 1939, another quatrain came to the attention of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. It was 5.94:
He shall shift toward greater Germania
Translatera en la grand Germanie,
Brabant & Flanders, Ghent, Bruges, Boulogne :
Brabant & Flandres, Gand, Bruges, & Bolongne :
Feigning truce, the grand Duke of Armenia
La traifve faincte, le grand duc d’Armenie,
Shall fall upon Vienna & Cologne.
Asaillira Vienne & la Cologne.
The “grand Duke” was the chief of the German tribe of the Cherusci—in other words, the Führer of Gross Deutschland who had sent armed warriors into the Rhineland (including Cologne) and then Vienna. Brabant and Flanders were next for Greater Germania. Goebbels ordered agents to spread the rumor that 5.94 predicted the temporary occupation of France and a thousand-year Nazi empir
e. In the spring of 1940, German planes prepared the invasion of Belgium, Holland, and France by dropping thousands of leaflets about this and other quatrains. The goal was to sow panic and weaken the resolve of civilian populations.
In the United States, interest in Nostradamus intensified after the German invasion of the Soviet Union and Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess’s flight to Scotland in 1941. Wire services linked this bizarre event to quatrain 9.90, which told of a German officer pretending to submit himself :
A captain of greater Germania
Un capitaine de la grand Germanie
Shall pretend to deliver to the King
Se viendra rendre par simulé secours
Of Kings the support of Pannonia,
Un Roy des roys ayde de Pannonie,
His revolt achieving massive bleeding.
Que sa revolte fera de sang grand cours.
U.S. propaganda, too, gravitated toward the quatrains, especially in the short features (standard fare in movie theaters) that MGM devoted to Nostradamus. By 1944, the studio was focusing on quatrain 3.96:
The lord of Fossano’s throat shall be cut
Chef de Fossan aura gorge coupée,
By the master of the hunt, the deed be
Par le ducteur du limier & levrier :