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A l’ennemy l’ennemy foy promise
Ne se tiendra, les captifs retenus :
Prins preme mort & le reste en chemile,
Damné le reste pour estre soustenus.
The nation involved is Czechoslovakia. The enemy is Hitler’s Germany. The enemy of the enemy is France. France made an agreement with Czechoslovakia, and the Czech nation was constantly siding with France in the League of Nations. But when the crisis came, France sold out Czechoslovakia to Hitler’s Germany. They did not keep the faith.
The captives were the peoples of the Czech nation. The one, captured near death, was the Czech government. The ones who kept their shirts were the Czech people, they were allowed to live, though they lived in virtual slavery.
The last line refers to the Slovak people. They broke away from the Czech people, creating their own nation. However, they were supported in their aspirations by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. That support, and the support they gave the Nazis, damned them.
Voille gallere voil de nef cachera,
La grand classe viendra sortir la moindre
Dix naves proches le torneront poulser,
Grand vaincue unies à soy joindre.
The key is in lines 1 & 3. Line 3 is obvious: the ten navies near. Ten nations, all bordering the northwest Mediterranean, gathered ships to the common cause. Line 1 is a curiously misinterpreted line. Normally it is translated as the galleys hides the ships. But a nave is the central part of a church. In this case, it can only refer to the central part of all Catholicism, the Vatican and the Papacy, which was the main spiritual force behind the battle. The only question I have is, did the fleet hide the power of the church, or did the power of the church hide the fleet?
Regardless, the big fleet was the Turkish fleet which came out to destroy the upstart Christian forces. They had fought combined forces before, winning every time, so the true strength was hidden to the Turks. None of the Christian navies (the least) were as large as the Turkish. But the Turks, the big loser, closed in and joined battle with the combined forces of the Christian creed. The Christian forces attacked hard in an all out assault. The result was one of the most lopsided and important decisions ever.
En apres cinq troupeau ne mettra hors un
Fuytif pour Penelon l’aschera,
Faulx murmurer secours venir par lors
Le chef le siege hors habandonnera.
Penelon is an actual name. As I know of no famous Penelons that this quatrain could have been about, I must claim that this quatrain has probably not been fulfilled.
Sus la minuict conducteur de l’armee
Se sauivera, subit esuanouy,
Sept ans apres la fame non blasmee,
A son retour ne dira oncq ouy.
In 1940, De Gaulle was the virtual captain general of the French Forces. Though not officially in charge, he had led the sole armored counterattack that had actually hindered the German assault. He understood the blitzkrieg very well, having been one of the proponents of it; unfortunately he had to deal with Pétain who preferred the Maginot Line. In spirit, he was the “Constable de France” the one who truly thought about the welfare and defense of the French nation.
On the 17th of June, 1940, De Gaulle boarded a British airplane with British General Edward Speers and took off for exile. He would form and lead the Free French movement in Britain.
Seven years later, he was back in France. He had returned to his old office of Undersecretary of State in on the 25th of August, 1944. He became the head of the Provisional Government, which lasted until a new government, the Fourth French Republic, was formed in 1946.
He left the government in 1946, refusing to have anything to do with it. He rejected the parliamentary type of government that the French had embraced. He wanted a stronger, Presidential type of government. To this type of government, he never once said yes. So, in 1947, exactly seven years after Germany attacked France, he formed a political party, the Rassemblement du Peuple Français (Rally of the French People), or RPF, in order to bring about his dream of a strong Presidential style government. It was his strongest condemnation of the Parliamentary system that France had.
Albi & Castres seront nouvelle ligue,
Neuf Arriens Lisbon & Portuguese,
Carcas Tholosse confirmeront leur brigue,
Quand chief neuf monstre de Lauragues.
Note: Most commentators translate Neuf in line 4 as nine. While it is the preferred translation, I suspect it is not nine but new.
The key to the quatrain is Lauragues. It seems to be a place. I found a transcript, one I cannot translate though think is in Latin, titled De Sancto Germerio de Lauragues. Of course, it could also be Lauraguel, modified to rhyme with Portuguese on line 2. Lauraguel is a very tiny French commune not far from the Spanish border. It could also be Lauragais, standing for one of the many French communes that end with the name Lauragais, all in the same general region. More on this I cannot say.
Sardon Nemans si hault desborderont,
Qu’on cuidera Deucalion renaistre,
Dans le collosse la plus part fuyront,
Vesta sepulchre feu estaint approistre.
The Neman is a river that flows from Belarus through Lithuania and discharges into the Baltic Sea. Sardon is a village in France, however I suspect it refers to a village along the Neman river.
Deucalion is interesting. He was the Greek version of Noah. In the Greek story, Zeus, angered by the sacrifice by Lycaon the king of Arcadia who had sacrificed his own son, resolved to destroy the Bronze Age through a deluge. Deucalion, king of Pythia, was told to build a box by his father, Prometheus. The flooding only lasted 9 days in the Greek version of the flood, not the 40 days, and when it was over, Deucalion and his wife were the only humans left alive.
The first part of the last line is particularly descriptive. Vesta is the ancient Roman goddess of the household and hearth; she represented family prosperity and family health. Her tomb is, of course, metaphorical, representing the destruction of the household in the region. The part of the extinguished fire appearing, however, is confusing to me.
Le grand conflit qu’on appreste à Nancy,
L’æmathien dira tout ie soubmetz,
L’isle Britanne par vin, sel en solcy,
Hem mi deux Phi long temps ne tiendra Metz.
The key to understanding the quatrain lies in the second line. The French kings claimed to have a real, if shadowy, connection to Aeneas, the hero of the Aeneid and a son of Priam of Troy. Nostradamus used this belief to call Louis XIV the Æmathien.
This quatrain describes events at the beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession. Before he died, Charles II of Spain willed his entire kingdom, which consisted of Spain, the Spanish Colonies, the Spanish Netherlands, Naples/Sicily and Tuscany, to the second son of the Dauphin, Henri duc d’Anjou. Louis, after much thought and consultation, decided to accept the inheritance for his grandson in full. This the British would have accepted, albeit reluctantly, but Louis also moved to isolate Britain and the United Provinces from all trade (wine, salt in anxiety) throughout the French and Spanish territories in order to increase French prestige and dominion. As a final insult, he recognized the descendent of James II as the rightful heir of England. With these two acts, he sought to expand French hegemony throughout all of Europe (I subjugate all). This England would not endure. William of England quickly found common cause with the United Provinces and with Austria. The resulting war was especially troublesome to Louis, whose country was constantly being attacked. Nancy and Metz are both cities in France, here they refer to France.
Index & poulse par fondera le front,
De Senegalia le Conte à son filz propte :
La Myrnarmee par plusieurs de prin front,
Trois dans sept jours blesses mors.
The only possible translation of Senegalia is Senegal, an African country on the west coast of Africa. (Unless, of course, you think Nostradamus was talking about a genus of flowering plants. While I would not put it past him to understand this, I have grave doubts that he was talking about the plant.) The Count of Senegal is obviously a leadership position, probably the President. The last line seems to refer to a lot of pain that people in the nation, or a part of it, will experience. 3 in 7 is a high number.
I must admit, I do not understand what this would mean to France when it happens, but rest assured there will be some connection.
De Castillon figuieres jour de brune,
De feme infame naistra souverain prince,
Surnom de chauffes perhume luy posthume,
Onc Roy ne feut si pire en sa province.
This is a curious quatrain, curious because it is one of the few quatrains where the words do not rhyme. In fact, it seems that Nostradamus deliberately made an effort to avoid rhyming, something he almost never does. In other quatrains, he would modify words just to make them rhyme, but here he avoids it. The reason may be in the interpretation. Traditional interpretation reads the last word of the first line as brume, or fog. This is an attempt to place the quatrain in France and being fulfilled by Napoléon. But both the Rigaud and Sève editions are in agreement, the word is brune, which translates as brunette or dark haired woman.
Castillon places this quatrain. There are many Castillon’s in France, and only in France. However, I can find no king with the nickname of The Breaches (or The Pants). It could refer to a president, but I am uncertain.
Tasche de murdre enormes adulteres,
Grand enemy de tout le genre humain,
Que sera pire qu’ayeulx, oncles ne peres
En fer, feu, eau, sanguin & inhumain.
After Hitler was dead, people attributed this to him. I am certain that after Napoléon was dead, this was attributed to him. In both cases, they were wrong.
The key point that prevents either Napoléon or Hitler from fulfilling this quatrain is the second line: Great enemy of the entire human race. No matter what happens, it is known that Hitler had a soft spot for the German people; his insanity and his hatreds drove him to all but destroy the people and nation he loved but he still had it. And Napoléon has the greatness of being the one who was the force behind the creation of the Code Civil, known as the Code Napoléon, the basic law of France and the main influence of so much of Continental law today; Napoléon was opposed to the monarchies that opposed him but he did strive to support the common person. So both actually have their good sides, hardas it is for some people to accept (especially in the case of Herr Hitler). Besides, Nostradamus labeled them in his great Epistle to Henri – Napoléon was the lawgiver, Hitler the rabid one.
There is actually a third and a fourth person who some would consider to have fulfilled this quatrain. Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Dong. But again, it falls apart. Mao to his credit was very interested in the Chinese nation and Chinese people; his actions, though ultimately futile, did express his support for the people as a whole. Stalin does come closest to fulfilling this quatrain, but an analysis of his government shows that he was just the first among equals in the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he was often forced to do things he did not want to do.
Lastly there is the first line. Napoléon was considered a murderer only because he was a brilliant warlord. True, he committed adultery likely multiple times, the best known time was when he divorced his wife Josephine for Marie Theresa, but he was certainly not the great enemy of the human race. Only the monarchies and nobilities considered him to have committed political adulteries.
Hitler was, admittedly worse, the promises he made once he was in power he constantly broke, the most notorious being that of Munich, and his murders in the extermination camps are nothing but horrific facts that have taken on the trappings of legend, but on the sexual side he was remarkably consistent. Both Stalin and Mao were politically part of the party apparatus and sexually loyal, the murders attributed to them should be, on the whole, attributed to the entire party apparatus. So Hitler was the closest. But it still falls short.
The future war leader who will all but destroy the world for his own aggrandizement, the future Anti-Christ will make Hitler look like a saint.