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Les armes battre au ceil longue saison,
L’arbe au milieu de la cité tombé :
Vermine, rongne, glaive enface tyson,
Lors le monarqhe d’Hadrie succombé.
The first line seems to place this quatrain into the future. There is only one problem: the succumbing of the monarchy of Henri.
Since this quatrain was first published in 1555 there have been 3 Henries on the throne of France: Henri II and Henri III de Valois and Henri IV de Bourbon; all three were killed. Because of the long time without a monarchy in France, while I am tempted to claim this for the future, I must explore the probability that this has already been fulfilled.
Lee McCann in his work Nostradamus, The Man Who Saw Through Time, came up with an interesting answer, one that is incorrect in details but may be what Nostradamus meant. According to this solution, Henri IV was on the way to a second coronation when his carriage was halted by the congestion in the narrow Rue Ferroniere. He stepped out of the carriage for a bit, facing an alleyway known as the les tisoniers. Henri was opposite this (tyson) when he was cut down by François Ravaillac, who killed Henri because he was preparing to go to war with the Papacy (battle in the heavens a long season). McCann also claims that before Henri left for the cathedral, a tree in the courtyard fell over (second line).
True? Not completely. Evidence indicates that Henri was in his carriage when François stabbed him. Also, it is evident that Henri was preparing to go to war with Spain, not the Papacy whom he had already supported against Spain. Finally, he was not on his way to a second coronation. So McCann was wrong, but it looks as if he was not completely wrong, he may have put his finger on the right interpretation even though he got the details wrong. It is true that Henri was on the Rue Ferroniere and he may have been at an ally known as les tisomiers. Ravaillac may have believed that Henri was getting ready to wage war against the Papacy and the church. The first line could be a poetic reference to the ancient feud between the Hapsburgs and Capets. Finally, I must point out that tyson is obviously altered to rhyme with saison on line 1, so it could be tisomiers.
The key is the understanding of the correct interpretation of the word tyson and whether Henri was by the alley les tisomiers when he was cut down.
Par la tumeur de Heb, Po, Tag, Timbre & Rosne,
Et par l’estang Leman & Aretin :
Les deux grans chefs & cities de Garonne,
Prins, morts, noyez, Partir humain butin.
I cannot find the river that Heb stands for, most commentators make it the Ebro river which is possible, but I consider it unlikely. The other rivers are obvious: The Tagus is in Spain, the Po and Tiber are in Italy and the Rhone is in France, with the exception of the Po all the rivers empty into the Mediterranean Sea. Aretin of the second line is modified to rhyme with butin on the forth line, there is no city or river called Aretin. Though Aretin is a Germanic family name, I think that it refers to the commune of Arette, located not far from the Spanish border. This does fit with the third line, the Garonne river does flow near Arette (though this is based on my American perspective, Frenchmen may differ).
This is likely a time that is coming up. The swelling of rivers is more and more likely all the time due to global warming. Other than that, I must leave this to the reader to decipher.
Par fouldre l’arche or & argent fondu,
Des deux captifz l’un l’autre manger:
De la cité le plus grand estendu,
Quand submergée la classe nagera.
Line 4 can be translated two ways: Either the drowned fleet swims or the immersed fleet swims. Either way, it is a direct reference to submarines. Though built in experimental forms in the 19th century, submarines came into their own only in the first world war of the 20th century.
As for the rest of the quatrain, it is curious. Line three has an alternate translation: Of the two captives, the one feeds the other.
I personally feel this was fulfilled during the First World War of 1914-1918. That said, I must leave it to the reader to figure out.
Par le rameau du vaillant personage,
De France insime, par le pere infelice :
Honneurs, richesses, travail en son vieil aage,
Pour avoir creu le conseil d’homme nice.
This sounds like a person born of an aristocratic line yet born insignificantly, due to some bad decision of the father’s part. He will be honored and wealthy during his life, yet endure travails in his old age. And he will do this because he listened to the advice of a simple man.
For the most part, this applies to Charles De Gaulle. He was descendant of an illustrious line of aristocratic Frenchman through his father, Henri De Gaulle. The father was a professor of philosophy and literature, who wanted to do better for himself. But the father of the quatrain was Philippe Petain, who was the military father of De Gaulle. De Gaulle would himself admit that Petain taught him how to command. I do not know who the commoner was who would have advised him, but it is definite that after the war, he was laden with honors and wealth. After he established the Fifth French Republic, he was also laden with travails. Finally, he died poor mainly because he refused to accept any pension larger than that of a colonel; this was another travail upon him, albeit an honorable one.
Coeur, vigueur, gloire le regne changera,
De tous points contre ayant son adversaire,
Lors France enfance par mort subjuguera,
Un grand regent sera lors plus contraire.
Louis XIV was almost everything a king should be. He was bold, creative, imaginative, had a flair for discovering trouble and dealing with it, had a remarkable interest in governing his country for its betterment and was quite capable of finding ministers who were extremely capable. There were only two flaws in Louis character, one was his reliance on a simple principle that cost France many of its Huguenot supporters, the other was his love of the ancient game of kings, war, which cost Louis and France so much towards the end of his reign.
Louis XV was the grandson of Louis XIV. He has several brothers while he was young. However, the deaths of his father and of his brother and cousin, the elder Louis Duc de Bretagne and his five year old son, left him as the heir apparent, the Dauphin of France when he was only two years old. When he ascended the throne, he was only five years old. Louis XIV had provided a regency would be guided by a council, headed by Philippe II, Duc de Orleans. But Philippe got the Paris Parliament to overturn this. As a result, Philippe was sole regent during the minority of Louis XV.
Philippe’s regency was a very capable regency. Though he started out returning towards the old way of ruling via the nobility, he quickly cast it aside and returned to the very excellent way of ruling with capable ministers regardless of their birth. Unfortunately for France, this ended when Louis XV was thirteen. Unlike his excellent predecessor, Louis XIV, the newly crowned king had an avid dislike for government. He did leave Philippe in charge while he was alive, then he made a bad decision by having the Duc de Bourbon assume the first ministry in 1723. By 1726, the government was in such condition that Louis dismissed Bourbon from the ministry and replaced him with Cardinal Fleury, his old tutor. This was the one good appointment Louis made. Till 1743, Fleury ruled France as well as he could, generally keeping France out of conflict. But when he died, Louis showed his character. He did attempt some reforms, all of which failed miserably. Unfortunately, Louis had not the strength of will or the character of his famous forebear, he eventually gave himself over to a life of pleasure, supposedly uttering the famous words: “After me, the deluge.” The reign had certainly changed.
But the last line of the quatrain was about the regent. Philippe acted contrary to the way Louis XIV had acted. A confirmed atheist, Philippe favored Jansenism, which Louis had opposed. He also had to fight King Felipe V of Spain to prevent the regency passing to that monarch. The struggle took two forms, conspiracies and war. Two conspiracies were launched by Felipe of Spain, the Cellamare conspiracy which Philippe caught and ended in 1718, and the Pontcallac Conspiracy of 1720. Philippe was also forced to launch the War of the Quadruple Alliance with Britain, Austria and the Dutch Republic in 1718. With the defeat of the Pontcallac Conspiracy and the inability of the Spanish army to achieve any real successes, Felipe V made peace with his enemies.
Le prince Anglois Mars à son coeur de ciel,
Vouldra poursuire sa fortune prospere :
Des deux duelles l’un percera le fiel,
Hay de luy, bien aymé de sa mere.
There is no other person whom this could apply. James Scott was the acknowledged first illegitimate son of Charles II of England. His mother was Lucy Walter, a Welch noblewoman who led a dissolute life, yet it is known she loved her son. James was appointed First Duke of Monmouth by his reputed father Charles. He would take the name Scott from his wife, Anne Scott, First Duchess of Buccleuch.
The first duel was the Rye Hose Plot, where a group of 100 sought to ambush and kill both King Charles and his brother the future King James. They had wanted to put James Scott on the throne. With the discovery of the plot, James Scott was forced to retire to the Netherlands. There, his uncle William of Orange, the future King William of England, gave him the wise advice of taking a commission with the Turkish Sultan. James rejected this advice and looked towards returning to England.
The second duel was the Monmouth Rebellion. Charles had died and his brother James was newly crowned King James II. James Scott landed in England, declared himself the true King, declared James to have forfeited the throne due to his Catholicism, and gathered a sizeable if untrained army. Fortune seemed to support him for a bit, but then luck turned against him, permanently. Down to his last strength, he staked all on a night attack. He lost.
James II, who hated him because he was both a protestant and the illegitimate son of his brother Charles II, had him executed.
Mont Aventine brusler nuict sera veu,
Le ciel obscur tout à un coup en Flandres :
Quand le monarque chassera son nepveu,
Leurs gés d’Eglise commettront les escládres.
The Aventine hill is one of the seven hills of ancient Rome. We are therefore talking about a part, if not all, of Rome burning at night. Flanders is the low countries of Europe, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Because Rome has not burned since Nostradamus was alive and this quatrain has obviously not been fulfilled, we must wait for the future.
Apres la pluie laict assés longuete,
En plusieurs lieux de Reims le ciel touché :
O quel conflict de sang pres d’eux s’appreste,
Peres & fils Roys n’oseront approcher.
Reims was not far from the front lines in the First World War. It often got so smoky and hazy from the fierce fighting that it seemed that one could almost literally reach out and touch the sky. The rain of milk was the time of peace before 1914. And the fighting was so terrible, so bloody, so bitter, that no leader dared approach the front lines. True to what the prophet foresaw, the movement of troops that were implemented at the war’s start was planned for, years in advance.
En Luques sang & laict viendra plouvoir,
Un peu devant changement de preteur :
Grand peste & guerre, faim & soil fera voyr
Loing ou mourra leur prince recteur.
Lucca (ancient name Luca) is a city in Tuscany, Italy. There is also a Luca in Malta. The rain of blood is obviously death, but milk would normally be a reference to peace and prosperity, which makes this quatrain confusing to me. A rector is an administrative official, usually it refers to a religious one though this is not always true. A Prince Rector is therefore an important post. Whatever the exact title, he will, or already did, die far from home.
Par les contrées du grand fleuve Bethique,
Loing d’Ibere, au royaume de Grenade :
Croix repoulsees par gens Mahometiques,
Un de Cordube trahira la contrade.
The feel of this quatrain is decidedly Spanish. Most translators translate the fleuve Bethique to be the river Guadalquivir, a major Spanish river that flows towards the south. I can offer nothing better so I am using this translation.
This almost has to refer to the time when Felipe III had to deal with a potential uprising in Southern Spain. The people of Grenada in southern Spain were not the most loyal people to the Spanish crown. They chaffed under Hapsburg rule and while nominally Catholic wanted to return to their Islamic ways. Henry IV of France had tried to use them to ferment an uprising. Many Grenadans participated willingly. The plot was discovered and Felipe reacted harshly.