SOURCE: "The Ten Quatrains," in The Mask of Nostradamus, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1990, pp. 163-218.

[Known as "The Amazing Randi" and described by Time magazine as a "conjurer, showman, crusader, and America's most implacable foe of flummery," Randi is the author of several lively works concerned with exposing metaphysical charlatanism. He has written on Harry Houdini, Uri Geller, and Nostradamus. In the following excerpt, he critically examines several of Nostradamus's best-known quatrains, debunking the claims of "the Nostradamians" throughout.]

Nostradamus first commanded my attention because of his perennial popularity. As I looked into his life, I became impressed with his ingenuity and his fling at immortality. I recognized his worth as a physician and as a poet, his perseverance and courage. He was a person of considerable ability who would have succeeded in any age.

In this chapter we will examine [several] Nostradamus quatrains suggested by leading Nostradamians, those most often thrown up by the Believers as positive, irrefutable evidence of prophetic powers….

As a physician, the primary professional skill for which he was trained, the man who was to become known as the single best-known astrologer and prognosticator of all time first published his recipes and a few medical writings of only moderate worth and then in 1550 made his debut as a mystic with the first of his annual astrological almanacs. Copies of his almanacs still survive, the earliest dated 1557.

A physician such as Nostradamus performed a variety of functions. He not only prescribed medicines, but he was his own pharmacist as well. He was expected to know how to compound his own remedies from plant sources—all gathered at the correct phase of the moon—and from varied animal parts as well; the witches of Macbeth called for "eye of newt and toe of frog" with some authority. Even today, powdered pearls and cockroaches, black rhinoceros horn and tiger penis form an active part of the traditional pharmacopeia of China.

Nostradamus also advised on cosmetics, beauty aids and deodorants for Renaissance ladies, who as a rule bathed only twice a year and wore the same underclothes for months on end. It may be easily believed that this was a brisk trade.

Those same heavily scented ladies came to him for culinary advice, too. Physicians applied their herbal knowledge to matters of the palate and put together aromatic spices for their clients.

In all likelihood the great popular success that was accorded Nostradamus' prophetic pamphlets encouraged him to begin production of the Centuries, the work that was to so impressively survive him. Though he continued his medical practice, eventually becoming, by appointment, physician-in-ordinary to Henry II, Francis II and Charles IX of France, his career as a soothsayer effectively took most of his attention and earned most of his money from that time on.

No book on the seer would be in any way complete without examining the evidence upon which his fame is based. I have selected ten of the prophecies that, in the opinion of the True Believers, present the best evidence for Nostradamus' abilities.

Edgar Leoni quotes an interesting observation that was made by English Jesuit Father Herbert Thurston in 1915. Father Thurston was concerned with the impact that he believed Nostradamus' writings were having on the conduct of World War I, and to minimize the effect on the war effort, he tried to explain just how people were self-deceived when interpreting the quatrains:

Undoubtedly the unrivalled success of Nostradamus' oracles is due to the fact that, avoiding all orderly arrangement, either chronological or topographical, and refraining almost entirely from categorical statements, it is impossible ever to say that a particular prognostic has missed the mark…. Nostradamus provided an ingenious system of divination in which the misses can never be recorded and only the hits come to the surface. For the reputation of the would-be prophet, such conditions are naturally ideal.

While appreciating his opinion, I must beg to differ somewhat with Father Thurston. Many very glaring misses of Nostradamus have been recorded, and prognostications that he made clearly and that were in some cases actually dated are seen to be very wrong.

Mr. Bleiler has pointed out the interesting fact that the form of the Nostradamus quatrains—known as vers commun—often reveals discrepancies because of the poor "fit" managed by spurious or altered verses. Both Bleiler and Leoni attribute prodigious wit, poetic quality and sophistication to Nostradamus that I am unable to find. In doing so, they just may be surrendering to the same tendency shown by the interpreters to find meaning where none was intended.

There are a great number of very specialized "rules" applied to handling interpretations of the Nostradamus writings, rules developed by the Nostradamians to allow great latitude in assigning—and creating—correlations between historical fact and prophecy. Probably some of these usages and devices were actually used, but others seem unlikely in the extreme. It is particularly important to note that these gimmicks are invoked when needed, but ignored when not called for. For example, when Nostradamus names the city of Narbonne, a center well known to him and mentioned twelve times in his writings, the interpreters have accepted that he is actually referring to the city in some instances, but they assign another function to the name (proper personal name or rank) when necessary to wring meaning from the verse in which it appears. The French word "noir," meaning "black" in English, is most often presumed to be an almost-anagram (see the rule for creating anagrams up ahead) for the French word "roi" (in English, "king"); in some instances it is simply accepted as "black" because it fits better. The Provençal spelling would have been "roy."

Once they establish—to their satisfaction—that a certain usage or rule makes the prophecy work, the Nostradamians invoke it again and again for any subsequent situation that even remotely resembles the one in which the artifice was established. De Fontbrune clearly expressed the way he did his own research:

The reader will discover, through the translation of each quatrain, how I have proceeded in order to squeeze the text to the maximum, considering that the only 'key' possible is philological.

The aim is to discover some supposed clever, obscure clue or hint that Nostradamus placed in his verses for future generations of scholars to discover. The fact that the quatrains may have expressed notions about quite ordinary matters in a quite ordinary fashion seems repugnant to these learned folks.

They use the theory they are trying to prove, to prove the theory they are trying to prove. They accept modern usage and spellings ("Nostradamus could see the future, couldn't he?") when those serve the need, but fall back on Latin, Old French, Provençal and Greek when they are needed. I cannot accept that Nostradamus knew modern English or French.

Nostradamian Stewart Robb came upon a quatrain which he believes predicts a specific event. The verse says, "Near Saint Memire," but the event he wishes to connect with it didn't happen there. Robb is so convinced his hero has prophetic powers that he actually states

The rebellion that overthrew him was centered around the Cloister of St. Meri, so Nostradamus either heard the name imperfectly or was anagrammatizing it.

Here are a few of the arbitrary but very useful rules we must be aware of:

(1) Anagrams may be used. An anagram, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is "A transposition of the letters of a word, name or phrase, whereby a new word or phrase is formed." The Nostradamians, however, allow one, two or more letters to be added, changed, or dropped. Thus, Hadrie can become Henrie, Henry, Harry or a number of other words or names.

(2) Punctuation, we are told, may be inserted where absent, or changed when present, since Nostradamus often failed to use it or to use it correctly.

(3) Symbolic references, using animals, mythical creatures or other words to represent the "intended" thing are said to be quite common in Nostradamus' work….

(4) Quatrains may be used as self-contained units, in sets of two lines, as single lines, in pairs, or any way needed. Parts of quatrains may also be combined.

(5) Names of persons or places, we are told, can be "hidden" in common words. As an example, the French word "Pasteur" ("pastor," in English) can actually mean Louis Pasteur.

(6) Foreign derivations—from any language—are embraced. We can easily accept Latin sources, since Nostradamus and other writers of his day used the language. They also delighted in demonstrating their erudition by dropping in classical names and allegorical references as well as obscure foreign words.

(7) Validations for "discoveries" are obtained through other "discoveries." This is, quite simply, circular reasoning.

There are five usages of which we may approve:

(1) Synecdoche (Hogue calls it "synedoche"), the use of a part to represent the whole, is applied. An example would be using "Washington" to represent "the United States of America," or "bread" for "food."

(2) The use of ancient, classical names for cities and countries, rather than the then-current names.

(3) The use of "u" for "v," "y" for "i," "i" for "j," etc. These are quite legitimate.

(4) The frequent absence of written accents, because orthography was not well established. In early French the verb "être" was written "estre," the letter "s"—rather than an accent—indicating a vowel inflection.

(5) Ellipsis is allowable, in which obvious words understood to belong in the text are left out.

I will use a classification method of my own for the quatrains. It was admittedly inspired by another similar system in a book on another very doubtful subject. There are six kinds of verses found in Nostradamus:

Quatrains of the First Kind (Q1K) are those that were made for the safely far future. Since they have all of recorded time in which to be fulfilled, they will very probably come true, or have already come true, within certain limits.

Quatrains of the Second Kind (Q2K) are those that were apt to be fulfilled very soon after they were written. The events were very likely to occur because of historical circumstances then known to Nostradamus.

Quatrains of the Third Kind (Q3K) are those that were absolutely sure to be successful prophecies because they were written after the event, sometimes immediately after. They are what Leoni calls "retroactive prophecies."

Quatrains of the Fourth Kind (Q4K) are those that are not handled here at all. Because they are such garbled, mystical nonsense, semantically and logically, they cannot be properly examined.

Quatrains of the Fifth Kind (Q5K) are those that describe quite ordinary events and circumstances in Nostradamus' time, with a bit of a likely story dropped in. They involve matters with which he was familiar, and which would be recognized by his contemporaries. In many cases they are not even attempts at prophecy, being rather editorial commentaries or folk tales.

Quatrains of the Wrong Kind (QWK) are those that were and are simply wrong. Events proved them untrue, either during Nostradamus' lifetime or subsequently.

[Nine] Excellent Examples

I will list the … quatrains. They are:

1-35 The Gilded Cage—The Death of Henry II

2-51 The Great Fire of London

9-20 The Flight and Capture of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette at Varennes

9-34 The Flight and Capture of Louis XVI and the Queen at Varennes and the Attack of the 500 on the Tuileries

9-49 The Execution of Charles I of England

8-1 Napoleon Bonaparte and the Imprisonment of the Popes

2-24 Adolf Hitler I

4-68 Adolf Hitler II

6-74 Life and Death of Elizabeth I

Here, then, are examinations of [several] pieces of the evidence most used to prove that Nostradamus had prophetic ability. These quatrains are constantly dragged out before us as indisputable proof of his powers, so we will explore them in some detail.

THE GILDED CAGE— THE DEATH OF HENRY II

     1-35
Le lyon jeune le vieux surmontera,
En champ bellique par singulier duelle:
Dans caige d'or les yeux luy creuera,
Deux classes vne, puis mourir, mort cruelle.

The young lion will overcome the old one,
On the field of battle in single combat:
He will burst his eyes in a cage of gold,
Two fleets one, then to die, a cruel death.

(I must add this note: The subject of the third line is the "young lion" who will burst the eyes of the "old lion." The usual translation of the strange word "classes" is "wounds," taken from the Greek word "klasis." That derivation is convenient but unlikely, a much better one being the Latin "classis," meaning "fleet" or "army.")

This is, by all standards, the single most famous of the Nostradamus quatrains, one that in his day officially put him at the forefront of all the seers, and continues in that

role even today. Let us examine the historical circumstances of the event that it is said to represent.

In the summer of 1559, the royal court of France held a huge celebration in the streets of Paris to honor a double marriage, one of Henry II's daughter Elizabeth to Philip II of Spain and the other of Henry's sister Marguerite to the Duke of Savoy. In the Rue St. Antoine, a traditional full-scale tournament was staged, with jousting by honored nobles and by the king himself. All was festive until sunset of the last day, the first of July.

Henry had distinguished himself in the jousting, and ir these last hours of the celebration, he rode against Gabrie de Lorges, Comte de Montgomery. Having failed to unseat him in the approved manner, the king insisted upon another try. Bound to honor the request, the count gave Henry another chance, but due to his miscalculation Mongomery's lance shattered as the two met in the course and a splinter entered the helmet of his royal opponent pierced the skull above his right eye and penetrated his brain. Henry fell, mortally wounded.

For ten days he lingered on in delirium, suffering the best that his physicians could offer him, and at last he died. The kingdom immediately began examining prophecies to discover whether this momentous event had been foreseen by any of the seers….

That Nostradamus … expected Henry II to go on living for a long time cannot be doubted. In his introduction to the second section of the Centuries that comprises books eight to ten, Nostradamus provided a lengthy Epistle to Henry II (dated March 14, 1557), that can induce advanced caries merely from a quick reading. Try this opening on your teeth:

Ever since my long-clouded face first presented itself before the infinite deity of your majesty, O most Christian and most victorious king, I have remained perpetually dazzled by that sight, not ceasing to honor and worship appropriately that date when I presented myself…. I was seized with this singular desire to be transported suddenly from my long-beclouded obscurity to the illuminating presence of the first Monarch of the Universe….

Ad nauseam….

In the Epistle, the prophet predicts great things for Henry who in actuality was to die immediately after the first probable appearance and circulation of this Epistle in manuscript form, and well before it appeared in print This obvious and glaring example of a major failure for Nostradamus has been an embarrassment for the Nostradamians ever since, though they have—of necessity—come up with many ingenious excuses to get around it.

The opening words of the Epistle are:

A Vinvictissime, tres-pvissant, et tres-chrestien Henry Roy de France second; Michel Nostradamus son tres humble, tres-obeissant serviteur & subject, victoire & felicité.

To the most invincible, most powerful, and most Christian Henry King of France the second; Michel Nostradamus his most humble, most obedient servant and subject, [wishes] victory and happiness.

Note that the monarch died little more than two years later, a fact that does not speak well for invincibility.

EVIDENCE FROM THE QUATRAIN

The Nostradamians celebrate hugely over the coincidences between Quatrain 1-35 and history, but closer examination of the quatrain itself throws a dark cloud over their bacchanal. Consider the first line:

The young lion will overcome the old one.

Though Montgomery was younger than Henry, the difference was not at all significant, only a few years. Certainly the difference is not one of "young" versus "old." The French kings used the fleur-de-lis in their heraldic devices, and the fighting cock was their animal symbol, not the lion. It would have been very strange to refer to a French king, or any other member of the court, as a "lion." The French, as a matter of record, have never used a lion as a symbol of the monarchy, that use being almost entirely reserved to Britain, Spain, Belgium, Holland and Sri Lanka, along with a few German provinces, though there are no lions in any of these countries, nor have there ever been.

Line two reads:

On the field of battle in single combat.

It is important to note that the event at which Henry was killed was not a duel nor was he "on the field of battle" at all. It was a formal jousting contest in which serious injury was not expected to take place. It was, in fact, a serious faux pas to draw blood at these events.

The third line is full of good symbols:

[The young lion] will burst [the old lion's] eyes in a cage of gold.

James Laver and others assert that Henry's visor was gilded. Still others, to make this line work, claim that it was made of gold. There exists no evidence whatsoever that either statement is true, and in fact it is very unlikely to be true. Just take a walk through the remarkable collection of body armor in the Tower of London and you will see that wherever gold appears on the armor, it is in ornamental lines and heraldic devices. No actual piece of armor would ever be made of gold, since that metal is soft and of little protective value.

Nowhere is there any indication that Henry II's eyes were "burst." The wound occurred above the right eye (remember that Gaurico warned Henry about his left eye).

Finally, line four says:

Two fleets one, then to die, a cruel death.

What the reference to "fleets" is, I do not know, since we know of no union of fleets that satisfies the circumstances. Were I a Nostradamian, I would search around for something like the Greek word previously found, and choose it to make the line work better with the word "wounds." Even then I would be out of luck, since there was but one wound which carried off Henry. I cannot afford that indulgence.

Henry II's end was, indeed, "a cruel death." But these are the only few words that connect his demise with this quatrain, and there is an abundance of evidence that denies any connection whatsoever.

Let me leave this suggestion with the reader. It originated from author Louis Schlosser: Move across the English Channel to Britain. Consider the fact that Henry VIII of England, whose symbol was very definitely the lion, at age forty-four, locked up Sir Thomas More (aged fifty-eight) in a very special royal prison (a golden cage?) the Tower of London. This was the result of a protracted battle of wills between the two for control of the religious leadership of England. There were two "classes" in battle here, the Holy Roman Church and the royal insurgency of Henry. Henry won the day, and after a farce of a trial, More was put to a cruel death, decapitation. The event was an affront to Catholic and Protestant alike, and it occurred twenty years before Nostradamus penned 1-35. Just a suggestion, nothing more!

A gentleman named F. Buget, in his Etude sur Nostradamus et ses Commentateurs of 1863, concluded about Quatrain 1-35,

There is not, then, as far as I can see, a single word in this quatrain which is applicable to the unhappy end of this prince [Henry II]….

THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON

2-51

From Rigaud:

Le sang du iuste à Londres fera faulte,
Bruslés par fouldres de vint trois les six:
La dame antique cherra de place haute,
De mesme secte plusieurs seront occis.

The blood of the just shall be wanting in London,
Burnt by thunderbolts of twenty three the Six(es),
The ancient dame shall fall from [her] high place,
Of the same sect many shall be killed.

Death, foreign intrigue, wonders of Nature, a mystery woman and suspicious religious overtones are all here in this quatrain, with its vivid imagery which has titillated generations of Nostradamians. It does tell of an historic event, but the verse itself is a Q3K.

In the spurious edition of Centuries that Garencières used, the word "Feu" in place of "fouldres" in the second line is wrong. It has been used almost universally by the Nostradamians because it suits their Great Fire of London interpretation better; the original, correct word as shown above, means "thunderbolts." Also, the Rigaud edition of the quatrains says, "de vint [vingt] trois les six," not "vingt & trois," as many other editions do, thus showing an appreciable variation introduced into the text.

Here, the Nostradamians would ask us to believe that their hero was writing about an event that was 111 years in his future: In 1666, London was devastated by a fire that destroyed four-fifths of that city. Garencières, for whom the Great Fire was a very recent event (it occurred only six years before his book was published) was an ardent Monarchist. Ever intent upon adding his own charming mysteries to the muddy brew, he postulated that this fiery disaster was a divinely administered expiation for the 1649 execution of Charles I; the unexplained seventeen years of delay in the retribution seems of no importance to his analysis. He also explained that the last half of line two means, "the number of Houses and Buildings that were burnt," rather than the more popular interpretation by almost everyone else that it means 66, therefore somehow giving them 1666. How that date was obtained by him—or by others, for that matter—is difficult to see. Nonetheless, several of the Nostradamians go on to explain that "La dame antique" refers to St. Paul's Cathedral, which was consumed in the fire, along with many other churches, thus the claimed validation of the line, "Of the same sect many shall be killed."

Problems with History

I consulted many references here and in England, and so far as I have been able to determine, St. Paul's Cathedral was never called "The Old Lady," as many Nostradamians claim. The word "antique" in Old French meant "old" or "eccentric." The latter derivation is similar to that of the English word "antic." Usually, in French, "old lady" would be expressed by, "vieille dame." Though the old pre-fire St. Paul's Cathedral was the highest church then known, there is no "high place" from which it could have fallen. Some fans, recognizing this discrepancy, claim that a statue of the Virgin Mary stood atop St. Paul's, and that it was that figure that Nostradamus was referring to as the Old Lady. Not so. My early edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica provides a clear, detailed line illustration of the old pre-fire cathedral that shows it was severe Gothic in style, with a squared roof area and no external statues at all. Another contrived notion falls from its high place. We are left with only the reference to London to tie this quatrain to the Great Fire in that city.

This quatrain is a Q3K. It refers to an actual event which was taking place as Nostradamus was penning his opus, but a very different event, and certainly not the Great Fire of London. Here are the historical facts:

(1) In 1554, the ferociously Catholic queen Bloody Mary (I) of England announced a wholesale cleansing of her kingdom, and in January of 1555, she began executing Protestant heretics in London. Their only crime was the variety of their Christianity and their stubborn refusal to abjure it. Many were prominent churchmen, intellectuals and statesmen.

(2) They were burned at the stake with the "merciful" addition of having bags of gunpowder tied between their legs or around their necks to quicken their passage. When they eventually expired, it was with a spectacular explosion. The trial, sentencing and burning of these unfortunates began January 22, 1555, in neat groups of six.

(3) Queen Mary, haggard, totally obsessed with religion, disappointed in love, ill with dropsy and other assorted diseases repeatedly imagined that she was pregnant by her Spanish husband Philip. The consort was seldom at home and in 1555 left England and Mary for good. She wandered about her palace half-naked while these atrocities were being committed in her name. She died three years later, incoherent and considered quite insane. It was strongly suspected that her exit was hastened.

(4) Over 300 Protestants died this way at that time.

Consider these facts, and compare them line-for-line with Quatrain 2-51 as seen in this much better translation:

(1) The blood of the innocent will be an error at London,
(2) Burned by thunderbolts, of twenty-three, the six(es),
(3) The senile lady will lose her high position,
(4) Many more of the same sect will be slain.

I think my point is plain. Will and Ariel Durant's Story of Civilization, from which some of this information was drawn, adds this comment:

… nowhere in contemporary Christendom—not even Spain—were so many men and women burned for their opinions as during [Mary I's reign].

And Nostradamus? The first edition of the Centuries, in which this quatrain is printed, is dated May 4, 1555—more than three months after the first set of heretics mounted the faggots in London. I believe that the seer was writing of an event which certainly would have made news in France, and—in view of what we now know about his true religious beliefs—about which he was thus expressing his righteous horror.

Some authorities date the 1555 edition of the Centuries as March 1, though it is imprinted at the end:

Ce present livre a esté achevéd'imprimer le IIII. iour de may M.DLV.

(This book was finished printing the fourth day of May 1555.)

The shorter time span—a month or more—would be barely long enough for the news to have reached Nostradamus, even with his informers working out of Paris, but the sentences of the inevitable executions would have been passed some time before the events, since in that day the condemned often spent many months in prison while their wealth was located and acquired by the crown; carefully applied and controlled torture effectively extracted information about concealed assets from the condemned. Thus, either publication date is adequate for the described scenario.

It appears that Nostradamus, in common with other scholars of the day, probably maintained an active "grapevine" with his colleagues. There was a very brisk traffic of couriers hastening along the sea routes and the highways of the continent and Britain, carrying everything from mathematical discoveries to astronomical measurements and observations between interested scholars. This was not a casual, opportunistic process; there were those who made their living as couriers transmitting such information, so much so that a postal system was coming into existence as a result of the demand for this service. Along with that valuable scientific knowledge went current news events, as well, of perhaps equal value. Also, having the approval and support of Catherine, Nostradamus was likely to have her eyes and ears as well, and might hear from Paris much sooner than others not so favored. He would have been in an excellent position to know of quite recent events from faraway places.

THE FLIGHT AND CAPTURE OF LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE AT VARENNES

     9-20
De nuit viendra par la forest de Reines,
Deux pars vaultorte Herne la pierre blanche,
Le moine noir en gris dedans Varennes
Esleu cap. cause tempeste feu, sang tranche.

By night will come by the forest of Reines,
Two couples, detour, Herne the white stone,
The black monk in gray inside Varennes
Elected cap. causes tempest fire, blood slice.

Le Pelletier and others have decided that this quatrain predicted the same important event of 1791 described ahead in Quatrain 9-34, though the actual historical details of this well-documented incident, which I will now present, are somewhat different from his version.

A Differing Version

A discussion of this quatrain obtained from the Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology gives these rather remarkable interpretations and rationalizations for the words employed by Nostradamus. The Encyclopedia tells us that the word "forest" (forêt, in modern French) stands instead for the Latin "fores," meaning "door." The word "pars" means "part" (in Old French, husband or wife), "vaultorte" is a composite of "vaulx" (valley) and "de torte" (tortuous), "Herne" is an anagram for "reine" (Queen), "moine"—they use "moyne"—is Greek for the French "seul" ("alone"), "noir," rather than being the French word for "black," is an anagram for the French word "roi(n)" ("king"), "cap." equals "Capet" (formal name of the king), and "tranche" ("slice") means "knife."

The total meaning they obtain is: Two married people, the king alone, dressed in gray, and the queen, the white precious stone, will leave one night through the door of the queen, take a tortuous road, and enter into Varennes. The election of Capet will cause storm, fire, bloodshed and decapitation.

Most supporting evidence has been taken from the account of one Mme. Campan, lady-in-waiting to the queen, who gave her story in Les Mémoires de Marie-Antoinette. She says that during the royal flight, King Louis XVI wore, a gray suit, and the queen was dressed in white. She also says that upon their return to Paris at the hands of revolutionaries, the queen's hair had turned white from the ordeal. According to her, the attempted furtive escape of the royal couple was effected from the palace through the special exit door of the queen, a means generally unknown to the public. The route of flight was for some unknown reason altered at the last moment by Louis XVI, to lead from Verdun into Varennes.

Despite the fact that it has been a popular belief for centuries, it is a myth that hair can turn white "overnight," as reported by Mme. Campan, the major source of all this information. In fact, Marie Antoinette's hair was ash-blond, not far from white in the first place. The authenticity of Mme. Campan's account must come under further suspicion when we realize that though she was privy to much information on these matters, she did not accompany the king and queen on this aborted journey, as claimed by several of the Nostradamians. In her own personal account, she relates that she was in Paris during that episode, and:

Therefore I won't be able to give any details of the flight of their majesties other than those I heard from the queen and from the other persons who witnessed her return.

Also, it is not at all probable—in fact, it is highly unlikely—that the queen was dressed in white. The rigors of coach travel in those days, especially over back roads at high speed, would most certainly destroy any appearance of a white costume. Travelers in those days wore dark clothing for such purposes, especially if they were attempting to pass by unnoticed, as this pair certainly should have been. They were fleeing for their lives, against specific injunctions not to do so.

(The above paragraph was written at an early stage of the preparation of this manuscript. Since that time I have conducted a diligent search of historical sources to determine the garb worn by Marie Antoinette. All documents produced from evidence of statements of persons who, unlike Mme. Campan, were eyewitnesses to the flight and/or capture at Varennes state that Marie Antoinette wore a gray dress with a black cape. She did not wear white.)

Le Pelletier says that because he had been abandoned by his people, the "monk" in gray caught in Varennes is Louis. Marie Antoinette, the white stone (dressed in white, with white hair) left the Tuileries by a secret door in her chambers by night. The party made a detour through Varennes through the forest of Reines, at the whim of Louis. Louis as an elected monarch will cause fire, blood and the slice of the guillotine.

Let's examine this interpretation. First, the royal party was not one pair or couple, it was three, or just one if we wish to use the designation of a married couple, husband and wife. The numbers just do not agree. The quatrain calls for two couples.

True, Louis was dressed in gray. There was no white stone to be found, certainly not Marie Antoinette, who just does not match the description in any way. The door by which the royal party left—all of them, not just the queen—was all the way at the very opposite end of the palace from the queen's chambers.

True, they left by night. There was no detour made by the royal party, in spite of arguments made by the Nostradamians that Varennes was not on a direct route to Montmédy. That is not true. Leoni even says that, "it is substantially true that the party took a poor route to Montmédy." Nonsense. Reference to any detailed map of the region shows that the most direct route possibly by coach, without having to pass through the major city of Verdun and risk discovery, is passing through the minor towns named above, exactly as planned for the royal family in great detail, well in advance, by their would-be rescuer, the Swedish count Axel Fersen, who worshiped Marie Antoinette.

Concerning line four: Louis, following his capture, was designated by the National Assembly as a constitutional monarch of France, rather than the absolute monarch he had formerly been. But "cap." as used here might well be the Old French word, "captal," which meant "chief" or "leader." It suits the Nostradamians to have it mean "Capet," the formal name of the king, because that is necessary to give the meaning they seek. Such a use would not have been unknown to Nostradamus, since all French kings, from the year A.D. 987, were known as descendants of Hugh Capet, the first somewhat formal monarch of an area that was roughly France as we now know it.

But Louis XVI was not "elected," as the word "esleu" ("elu") would indicate. He was placed in that lower position by the revolutionaries to incapacitate him without having to do away with him, since he still had the respect of many citizens, and the time had not quite arrived when it could be acceptable for his head to fall to the guillotine.

There was no forest called the Forêt de Reines (which in any case would have been "des Reines,") nor was it the Forêt de la Reine that the royal entourage passed through: it was the famous forest of Argonne. The Forêt de la Reine is more than fifty miles southeast of this particular town of Varennes. And I cannot see why "noir" has to be seen as an anagram for "roi" when it fits so well and so logically into the one line of the four that makes any sense at all.

No, the flight of four royal personages through the Argonne forest is not at all well described by the Nostradamus Quatrain 9-20. A man dressed in gray, a town named Varennes (there are twenty-six of them in France!) and a journey by night—the only correspondences that can be agreed upon—are not enough to invoke this important event in the history of France.

We will deal further with this event in the next quatrain we examine.

THE FLIGHT AND CAPTURE OF LOUIS XVI & THE QUEEN AT VARENNES AND THE ATTACK OF THE 500 ON THE TUILERIES

     9-34
Le part soluz mary sera mittré,
Retour conflict passera sur la thuille:
Par cinq cens un trahyr sera tiltré,
Narbon & Saulce par coutaux avons d'huille.

The single part afflicted will be mitred,
Return conflict will pass over the tile:
By five hundred, treason will be titled,
Narbon and Saulce by knives we have oil.

The premise that Nostradamus was a prophet almost requires that he would be concerned with French history-to-come. In order to support that requirement, believers have searched diligently for anything that seems to indicate events of the French Revolution. Here again, we have the Nostradamians connecting a quatrain with the flight of Louis XVI from Paris.

The above rendition into English is far from satisfactory. The usual translation of, "Par cinq cens" is "By the five hundred." This cannot be, Everett Bleiler points out, because of the required division (caesura) at the end of the fourth syllable, unless Nostradamus was such a bad poet that he could not see the discrepancy in his work. Connecting the "un" and "trahyr" would be impossible by the rules of caesura. It would be equivalent to singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" like this (try it!):

Say can you see by the,
Dawn's early light what so,
Proudly we hail'd at the,
Twilight's last gleaming whose broad.

Bleiler suggests that the correct reading is "By five-less-one." It's a cute way of saying "four." That may be the case, but I must respectfully reject this conclusion, however, since the literal meaning of "cinq sans un" would be "five without one." "Less" would be "moins."

On one point, I will give you some idea of how careful a researcher must be about accepting statements from others. Stewart Robb, one of the leading Nostradamians, tells his readers that in using the word "thuille," which he says refers to the famous palace of Tuileries, Nostradamus shows his powers, since he could not have known of the palace except by prophetic means. Robb says:

'Le thuille' means 'the place of the tiles.' When Nostradamus wrote this prophecy, the site of the Tuileries was only an old tile kiln. The palace was not begun till after the prophet's death.

Let us examine that claim, as I had to do before accepting it. Basic history books provide the answers.

A Frenzy of Inspired and Expensive Expansion

In 1528 King Francis I of France, father of Henry II, had begun making extensive alterations to existing buildings in Paris and was creating new architectural wonders….

With the assistance and inspiration of Catherine de Médicis, what is now the modern city of Paris began to take shape. At her order, plans for an extravagant new palace were drawn up by Philibert de l'Orme, the pre-eminent architect of the day. This was to be an extraordinary project of great scope to be built on the site of what was until then only a group of abandoned tile-factories, and it exists today as a monument to the architect's skill and Catherine's good taste. It became known by the name of the site: Tuileries.

Construction was well under way by 1564, and everyone in France was very much aware of it. With his royal patrons so much on his mind, and with his informers, the Seer of Salon could hardly have failed to know of the great project being planned in Paris, and it is no surprise that he worked it into one of his quatrains. Charles IX and the queen mother, Catherine, visited Nostradamus in 1565—when the palace had already been under construction for a year, and a year before his death. The first authenticated edition of the Centuries that contained this quatrain did not appear until 1568, four years after the building was begun.

It is not impossible that Nostradamus may have been referring to the Tuileries in this quatrain, though I think it is not likely. Though admittedly the detail is not of prime importance in evaluating the verse as prophecy, my point is that Mr. Robb's declaration that Nostradamus could not have known about the palace except through a prophetic vision or his analysis of a particular configuration of the stars and planets is not well derived. He may have simply chosen to accept Charles Ward's declaration that

the Tuileries … [was] not in existence when Nostradamus wrote this in 1555.

The quatrain, as Ward certainly knew, was not even in the 1555 edition. As stated above, it was not in print until 1568.

But that is a small matter, to which I may well have devoted too much time and space. This quatrain has in it a number of seemingly evidential references. The historical facts are that a full year after the royal family had been stopped at Varennes and returned to Paris, a mob broke down the gates to the Tuileries palace and entered to confront Louis XVI and his queen. In a farcical and cruel gesture, he was forced to don the red Phrygian bonnet (a sort of stocking cap) that was a symbol of the Revolution. Marie Antoinette, too, put on an identical cap. It would be comical to suggest that "mitred" refers to that event. The line must indicate that someone will be elevated to the position of bishop, since that is what the verb (miter or mitre) means. To equate it with the tragicomic spectacle of King Louis XVI wearing a silly hat is equally silly. Besides, attempts to explain the "single part afflicted" have failed, since Louis was still very much married, not single nor solitary, though he was certainly "afflicted."

Concerning the translation of line three, Le Pelletier says it means that

The Marseillais Federates, five hundred of them, will direct the attack of the people, on August 10 of the same year [1792], against the Tuileries Palace.

This is an attempt to incorporate the "cinq cens" ("five hundred") of the quatrain with the storming of the Tuileries, by mentioning that the Marseillais Federates led that attack. The attempt fails miserably, for there were other groups of organized, armed men there as well, numbering in the thousands. Along with them was a huge mob of citizens bradishing every sort of weapon from knives to stones. Those who recorded the event estimated the mob at 20,000.

Unfortunately for the Nostradamians who wish to establish the Five Hundred, there exist in the Archives of France many highly dependable firsthand accounts of every event of the Revolution. Those were times when anyone's future could change within hours, and major historical turns in the destiny of France took place with great suddenness.

Those days of turmoil within the Tuileries when the royal family was defending its position under siege were written down in minute detail by the Abbé Gallois, the Royal Sacristan and a close friend of the family. He kept a diary in which actual conversations were recorded. He wrote that when the mob approached the Tuileries in the 1791 assault on that regal residence, and Pierre Louis Roederer, the Prefect of Paris, was begging the royal family to leave the palace and take refuge with the National Assembly, Marie Antoinette objected, "But Monsieur, we have troops." She was referring to the Swiss Guard, who were to be overcome in short order by the enormous mob outside. Replied Roederer, "Madame, all of Paris is marching." The citizens of Paris looted the Tuileries.

A Matter of Names

The name "Narbon" in this quatrain, to the interpreters, seems to fit the Revolutionary picture quite well. Says Le Pelletier:

Amongst the traitors who contribute powerfully to the ruin of Louis XVI, there will stand out, in the ranks of the nobility, the Count of Narbonne, his Minister of War….

True, Narbonne was a "traitor," among thousands of them. I must point out that his name appears nowhere in the many history books I have consulted, and I must congratulate the Nostradamians for persevering until they found something—anything—to match "Narbon." Anything, that is, except the city of Narbonne, to which Nostradamus often referred. However, that reference does not suit them. And to follow Le Pelletier further in his interpretation, he says:

… amongst the people, a son and grandson of chandler-grocers, named Sauce, procureursyndic of the commune of Varennes, who will cause him [Louis XVI] to be arrested in this town.

Again, true. And "Sauce" is not far from "Saulce."

I believe it would be difficult for the Nostradamians to explain why, if this quatrain describes the donning of the red bonnet by Louis and the flight via Varennes, Nostradamus chose to place the two events, a year apart, in reverse order.

But there is something else which has escaped (perhaps conveniently) the notice of the Nostradamians. Our hero had a strange tendency to group two, three or four towns together in quatrains, usually in very close proximity to one another. This close association of towns is done several places in the Centuries, as in 8-22, where "Gorsan" (Coursan), Narbonne, Tucham (Tuchan), and Parpignam (Perpignan) are named, all within a sixty-kilometer pattern. It will occur again when we discuss the famous "Napoleon" Quatrain, 8-1, and in 9-49, the "Charles I" prophecy. Nostradamus' cabalistic/Pythagorean tendencies are showing.

Since we are able to easily find the major city of Narbonne (formerly Narbo), as just mentioned, in the extreme south of France near the present Spanish border, we might look around a bit. Lo! Just forty kilometers south of Narbonne on the main costal road is the town of Salces, also spelled "Salses."

Well, if Nostradamus was not describing Louis's flight, what was he writing about? Historian Louis Schlosser gives a detailed account of the siege of Metz, which occurred in 1553, two years before Nostradamus published. Here are the lines of 9-34, one by one, with historical facts of the Metz siege:

(1) Le part soluz mary sera mittré (The single part afflicted will be mitred). Embattled French ambassador Charles de Maryllac, Bishop of Vannes (thus he was already mitred and would soon again be mitred as Bishop of Vienna), was defeated in negotiations with his enemy at Metz.

(2) Retour conflict passera sur la thuille (Return conflict will pass over the tile). The defensive walls around Metz were made of tile, an uncommon material for this purpose. Henry II of France (Nostradamus' king) and Emperor Charles V were the two in conflict at Metz.

(3) Par cinq cens un trahyr sera tiltré (By five hundred, treason will be titled). The day following the failed negotiations with the traitor Marquis de Brandebourg, at Metz, it was recorded that the mayor despatched 500 soldiers to join the mercenaries there.

(4) Narbon & Saulce par coutaux avons d'huille (Narbon and Saulce by knives we have oil). At the siege of Metz, two officers, D'Albon and Saulx, were in charge of the commissary. A list of their supplies shows: tiles, casks of oil and pitch, rope and knives. The "X" as used in Saulx was often put in place of "s" in Provencal usage. The word "Narbon" is pretty close to "D'Albon," and Nostradamus had used such a gimmick in both quatrains 6-56 and 8-22, wherein both Narbon and Perpignan are mentioned. D'Albon was the besieger of Perpignan, and at the time that Nostradamus wrote this quatrain, he was one of the three commanders of the Catholic army.

Which correspondence seems better?

Everett Bleiler suggests that, as often happens, a correlation with this quatrain might be found in another event of Nostradamus' own day. This is his idea, based upon the possible use of "five-less-one" which he has suggested, and with which I close this examination:

A stronger explanation is to be found [for quatrain 9-34] in the life of Catherine de Médicis. 'Five less one' is 'quatre,' which is not far [in pronuciation] from [Catherine]. Catherine was involved in a case of simony concerning the Bishopric of Narbonne. A courtier named Saulce befriended Catherine by offering to take his knife and cut off the nose of Diane [de Poitiers], the King's mistress.

An interesting possibility indeed. I refer to the possible correlation, not the drastic rhinoplasty….

THE EXECUTION OF CHARLES I OF ENGLAND

     9-49
Gand & Bruceles marcheront contre Anuers.
Senat de Londres mettront à mort leur roy
Le sel & vin luy seront à l'enuers,
Pour eux auoir le regne en desarroy.

Ghent and Brussels will march against Antwerp,
The senate of London will put to death their king
The salt and wine will be against him,
To have them, the realm in disarray.

The Rigaud copy of the Centuries from which I have been taking most of this material, has "Envers," rather than "Anuers," in the first line. I believe this is a typographical error, and I go along with other editions, which show "Anvers." A "u" is often used for a "v." Anvers is the old name for Antwerp.

Nostradamian Charles Ward offers to handle all four lines of this quatrain together. He marvels over the fact that the Treaty of Westphalia in October of 1648 occurred just three months before Charles I of England knelt at the executioner's block in London. He says

… that the conjunction of the two events is extraordinarily definite and remarkable.

The Treaty, says Ward, ended Spain's attempts to establish rights to the Netherlands, and is well described by the words "Ghent and Brussels will march against Antwerp." This is total nonsense. No such action took place.

However, a quick perusal of history books reveals that ninety years previously, when Nostradamus wrote the Centuries, there was much activity going on in the area of Ghent, Brussels and Antwerp. In 1555, Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire (which Voltaire said was none of those three designations) was attempting to consolidate a number of communities that included what is now Belgium, Luxembourg and Holland, and to control a peasantry who were very unhappy with the heavy taxes they paid to Spain, who claimed the area. Charles transferred his power to his son Philip, whose main interest was enforcing the Inquisition.

Nostradamus did well to predict strange events in that area, since it was a confusing time and likely to see armies marching about from city to city. We must recall that our hero was in the habit of naming three French towns or cities in close proximity to one another. Could he have done this here, too? Here we find him naming three cities located close together in an almost perfect equilateral triangle, for whatever reason.

James Laver, pointing out the apparently remarkable prediction when line two of this quatrain is taken alone, reminds us that in 1649 King Charles I was executed at the order of the English parliament. He declares that the prophet would have had to write a million quatrains to come up with that prediction just by chance. Not so. Given all of recorded time for this to occur, with the seer understandably believing that monarchies would continue throughout history, we cannot be surprised if occasionally he got lucky. The thousands of times that he was unlucky must also be counted.

As early as 1625, observer Gabriel Naudé wrote:

… The Centuries are so ambiguous, and so diverse, obscure and enigmatic, that it is not something to marvel at, if amongst a thousand quatrains, each of which speaks always of five or six different things … one finds sometimes a [line] which mentions [an event] as if all these things were extraordinary, and as though, if they didn't occur at one period, they couldn't occur at another.

But we must also look to events that had already taken place before Nostradamus' time, to see if perhaps the prophet was merely restating history for us, as he sometimes did. Everett Bleiler suggests that this quatrain might be just such an entity. He says,

Fifteenth century English history, however, can account for the verse fairly well. At about the time that Henry VI died in the Tower, without objection from Parliament, the English were driven out of Guienne, the region from which wine and salt were imported. There was much turmoil in England at the loss of the French territories.

Is this an explanation for Quatrain 9-49? Perhaps. But, given all the colorful metaphors used by Nostradamus, along with the obscurity of his writing, we may be falling into the same trap that the Nostradamians have entered so enthusiastically: We may be looking for a correspondence that is simply not there, in a verse with one line that came true.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE & THE IMPRISONMENT OF THE POPES

     8-1
PAV, NAY, LORON plus feu qu'à sang sera.
Laude nager, fuir grand aux surrez.
Les agassas entree refusera.
Pampon, Durance les tiendra enserrez.

PAU, NAY, OLORON will be more in fire than in blood.
Swimming the Aude, the great one fleeing to the mountains.
He refuses the magpies entrance.
Pamplona, the Durance River holds them enclosed.

Lest it be thought that I have gone off into Wonderland with this translation, I should explain some aspects of my version.

(a) Some editions of Nostradamus show "L'Aude" in place of "Laude." The Aude River runs just north of Narbonne near the southeastern edge of the French-Spanish border.

(b) West of that, near the southwestern border, are the three towns Pau, Nay and Oloron. Pau is now a large and prosperous city; Nay and Oloron are minor towns.

(c) The word "surrez" does not show up in French, of whatever vintage, but all through various dictionaries are derivatives suggesting that "surrez" could be "serrez," which denotes a range of jagged or "serrated" mountains. The Spanish word "sierra" refers to a range of mountains. "Serres" shows up in old French as a modifier meaning "hills," and in Nostradamus' time, an accepted practice was to use "z" in place of a final "s."

(d) "Durance" is clearly the Durance River, a prominent tributary which runs just north of Nostradamus' birthplace. It bore that name when he lived there, and it still does.

(e) "Pampon" is most likely a version of the modern name Pamplona, which appears in geographical texts and maps in a great variety of spellings such as: Pamplon, Pampelona, Pampelune and Pampeluna. This city, famous for its annual festival in which overly macho men are pursued in the streets by largely disinterested bulls, was within the kingdom of Navarre in the 16th century.

[It is worth noting, on a map,] the relationship of the four named towns and the Pyrenees range, which marks the border between modern France and Spain.

Here in Quatrain 8-1 we again have the strange device in which Nostradamus names towns or cities located close to one another, and often located in an almost perfect equilateral triangle. Perhaps he consulted maps of his day and merely used this gimmick for his own amusement, or he might have been titilated by the possible prophetic or magical significance of this geometric relationship. I like to imagine that it was one of his little jokes on the readers….

I believe that this quatrain simply expresses Nostradamus' prophecies of: (1) heavy problems in the area of the city of Pau, (2) some prominent person escaping across the Aude River into the mountains, (3) something involving magpies or chattering persons, or possibly pilgrims, (4) something about the city of Pamplona in Spain, and the Durance River offering an impediment to someone. I believe these were intended to be four separate predictions, since they are marked off by periods at the end of each line.

Before leaving this matter of Napoleon-in-Nostradamus, I will give you another example of a place where the Nostradamians have found Bonaparte. Quatrain 8-57 reads:

De souldat simple paruiendra en empire,
De robe courte paruiendra à la longue
Vaillant aux armes en eglise ou plus pyre.
Vexer les prestres comme l'eau fait l'esponge.

From a simple soldier he will attain to empire,
From a short robe he will attain to the long
Valiant in arms, in the church he is the worst,
Vexing the priests like water does the sponge.

Who is Nostradamus speaking of here? Most of the Nostradamians dearly want it to be Napoleon. Garencières, resident in Britain at the time he wrote and always a royalist, says that he

never knew nor heard of any body to whom this Stanza might be better applied, than to the late Usurper Cromwell….

Garencières then gives a number of excellent supporting details for his decision. But the quatrain can apply to Mussolini, Hitler and others just as well. I leave it to my reader to find historical facts on these two that will satisfy the quatrain. They are certainly there to be found.

Wishful thinking aside, Nostradamus did not know Napoleon, nor the other corporal we will next bring up for examination.

ADOLF HITLER I

     2-24
Bestes farouches de faim fleuues tranner,
Plus part du champ encontre Hister sera.
En caige de fer le grand fera treisner,
Quand rien enfant de Germain obseruera.

Beasts mad with hunger will swim across rivers,
Most of the army will be against the Lower Danube.
The great one shall be dragged in an iron cage
When the child brother will observe nothing.

In prophecy, it seems that the Antichrist is always imminent. There are different demons for different ages, with Napoleon being replaced by Hitler who in turn is squeezed out by Khomeni, a Khadafy, and so on. To discover a currently prominent devil in Nostradamus is the dearest wish of each devotee of the prophet.

On Roman maps of the area, the lower portion of the Danube River is known as either "Ister" or "Hister." Nostradamus, as we have seen, often used Latin words and names. (In the next quatrain we will discuss, "Hister" is joined with the Rhine River, strengthening our right to believe it to refer, certainly in that verse and very likely in this one, too, to the Lower Danube.)

The Nostradamians sorely need to find an important figure like Adolf Hitler in the prophecies; he just could not have been missed by their hero. Though Nostradamian Stewart Robb recognizes the real meaning of "Hister," he admits the fact then rationalizes it by saying:

Hister is an old, old name for the Danube, old even when Nostradamus resuscitated it for some good reason of his own. But the passage of the centuries has brought it up to date. It was the obvious word for the prophet to use. It meant the Danube: it also served as an anagram for Hitler…. The change of one letter was permissible in anagram writing (see Dictionnaire de Trevoux). What other word could serve better than Hister to specify both the name, and the place of origin of [Hitler]?

I have searched diligently to discover the source of this "change of one letter" rule, and cannot locate the "Dictionnaire de Trevoux," either. All of the definitions and discussions of the word "anagram" that I have found omit any mention of this practice. I leave it to my readers to answer Mr. Robb's question as posed above.

The most astonishing fact about Mr. Robb's discussion on what he calls the "Three Hister Quatrains" is that he admits "Hister" refers to the Lower Danube, but claims it is used here to represent Adolf Hitler, then he proceeds to point out the relationship of the Lower Danube to the Hitler story. He is using "Hister" both ways!

As for "de Germain," it is easy to interpret that as meaning "of Germany." Such a usage is reasonable enough, given the strong influence on modern France of English vocabulary, and it can be found in modern French dictionaries. But from the 12th to the 16th century, "de germain" meant "brother" or "near relative" and nothing else. The word "German" came to be used in France only after World War II, to mean an inhabitant of Germany.

Everett Bleiler, as Liberté E. LeVert, suggests that though the Nostradamians have chosen to associate Hitler with this quatrain, it was evident to those of the 1550s that something else was being hinted at. His printing of line four uses "Rin" in place of "rien," thus giving the meaning "child of the Rhine." I believe a better translation of his printing would be "When the child brother will observe the Rhine." However, Mr. Bleiler says:

For Nostradamus's contemporaries … [the verse] embodied clear references to recent advances by the Turks, in which much of the Hungarian plain was lost and Austria was gravely threatened.

Mr. Bleiler goes on to say that

The 'child of the Rhine' was Charles V, in Flanders, and his brother was Ferdinand, titular King of Hungary.

His analysis is based upon what I believe (because of the Rigaud version which I have consulted) to be a faulted printing of line four, which he translates as, "When a child of the Rhine shall keep watch over his brother."

Bleiler's idea of the Turkish action is quite interesting, though, since in 1529 the Turks had encamped along the Lower Danube and threatened the city of Vienna. Emperor Charles V, the largely absentee ruler of Germany, stopped the Turks at that point. Later, seeing that Henry II, Nostradamus' monarch, had invaded Germany from the west, he tried to regain that territory and failed. His brother, Ferdinand, arranged the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, the year that the Centuries (containing this quatrain) was published.

Mr. Bleiler's suggestion, that Quatrain 2-24 is a Q3K, may quite possibly be valid. But where is the Man in the Iron Cage?

ADOLF HITLER II

     4-68
En l'an bien proche non esloigné de Venus,
Les deux plus grans de l'Asie & d'Affrique
De Ryn & Hister qu 'on dira sont venus,
Crys, pleurs à Malte & costé ligustique.

In the year very near, not far from Venus,
The two greatest of Asia & Africa
From the Rhine & Lower Danube, which will be said to have come,

Cries, tears at Malta & the Ligurian coast.

James Laver sees in this quatrain that

If Mussolini might be called the greatest one in Africa and Japan the greatest one in Asia, then the second line refers to the Tripartite Pact. Both, says the third line, will make themselves Hitler's accomplice, and the fourth may be taken to refer to the bombing of Malta and the bombardment of Genoa.

The Tripartite Pact created the Axis powers (Germany, Italy and Japan) in December of 1941. To author Laver, that event was less than a year old when he wrote his analysis. Genoa is the central port city of the Ligurian coast, and was bombarded along with most of the rest of that coast. Hardly any further comment is needed on the lengths to which Laver has reached for this analysis.

I cannot resist the feeling that Nostradamus could not resist the temptation in this quatrain to rhyme "Venus" (the planet or goddess) and "venus," (in French, the plural past participle of the verb "to come"). The "Venus" in line one probably refers to Venice, which is located on the eastern coast of Italy, mirrored by the "Ligurian coast" on the western side. "Hister," as we have seen in the previously discussed quatrain, does not refer to Adolf Hitler, but to the Lower Danube, particularly in view of its association here with the Rhine.

LIFE & DEATH OF ELIZABETH I

     6-74
La deschassee au regne tournera,
Ses ennemis trouués des coniurés:
Plus que iamais son temps triomphera,
Trois & septante à mort trop asseurés.

Minimally corrected for modem usage, this becomes:

La dechassée au regne tournera,
Ses ennemis trouvés de conjurés:
Plus que jamais son temps triomphera,
Trois Ü septante … mort trop assurés.

She who was chased out shall return to the kingdom,
Her enemies found to be conspirators:
More than ever her time will triumph,
Three and seventy to death much assured.

We must bear in mind that Nostradamus' sovereign was Henry II, archenemy of Elizabeth. Nostradamus was not unaware of the service he could perform for his sovereign by creating discontent in England, which he certainly managed to do with some of his annual almanacs. As taken from Nostradamian Charles Ward's book, line four of Quatrain 6-74 reads:

Trois, et Septante, la mort, trop asseurez.

It appears that Ward made slight alterations from the original here in order to make it not only a reference to Elizabeth, but an accurate prophecy of her future death. He has broken up the last line but explains

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…. Trois stands for 1603. Nostradamus often drops the thousands and hundreds from a date…. 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.'

This quatrain may well have actually been a direct reference to Elizabeth by Nostradamus, since it seems to describe the conditions of her ascent to the throne. This can be classified as an assured hit by Nostradamus since that event occurred the same year that the quatrain was first published. It is quite clearly a "Q3K."

Obviously, it is the last line that has delighted the Nostradamians. Elizabeth died in 1603, at the age of seventy. But that line clearly says "three and seventy." In the original Old French, the word "septante"—seventy—is used. (It would be represented by "soixante-dix" in modern French.) "Seventy-three" would thus be "septante-trois," which would not fit the meter of the verse, so it appears that "trois et septante" was used. But "seventy-three" does not fulfill what the Nostradamians require for a working prophecy. Thus, a comma is inventively inserted into the line. Such manipulation to serve the cause is quite common among the Believers.

To perpetuate their needs, in 1715 the Nostradamus fans liberally retranslated and expanded the quatrain thus:

(1) The Rejected shall for all that come to the Crown;

(2) Her Enemies will be found to have been a band of Traitors forsworn against Her.

(3) The Time of her Reign will be more Happy and Glorious than any of her Predecessors

(4) In th 3rd Year of the Century, at the Age of Seventy She dies, of which I am but too much assured.

I find it astonishing how French expands so dramatically to reveal its hidden meanings when merely translated into English!

I must mention the very important fact that this same quatrain has been interpreted in radically different ways by other prominent Nostradamians. Consider how many novel ways have been found to make this Nostradamus quatrain work according to expectations:

(1) Garencières, ever the Royalist, says it predicts that Charles II will return to the English throne.

(2) De Fontbrune discovers here the advent of communism in France, which he says will last just three years and seventy days.

(3) Henry C. Roberts tells us he gets a clear picture of liberal Nazis [!?] returning to Germany following World War II.

(4) Vlaicu Ionescu is convinced that it portends that for seventy-three years communism will rule in Russia after being chased there out of France by Napoleon.

(5) Le Pelletier finds here an allegorical reference to events in the French Revolution.

Once more, various interpreters—six of the major figures in the field—believe they have each solved one of the Nostradamus puzzles, and they all have quite different answers. At best, only one can possibly be right, and all appear to be wrong, but their pronouncements have been taken seriously by the Believers.