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Celuy qu’aura gouvert de la grand cappe,
Sera induict à quelque cas patrer :
Les douze rouges viendront soiller la nappe,
Soubz meurtre, meurtre se viendra perpetrer.
Line 1 is the key. Cappe is one of Nostradamus’ names for the house of Capet. Several times have there been governments under this house, at least after the time of Nostradamus. Under Louis XIII there was the government of Cardinal Richelieu. Under Louis XIV, during his minority, the government was of Cardinal Mazarin. There were a few governments under Louis XV and several under Louis XVIII, Charles X and Louis Philippe. But it was under Louis XVI, one of the most inept kings of all times, that the fulfillment of this quatrain occurs.
The French Revolution was still is in its beginnings when the government was effectively transferred from Louis XVI to the National Constituent Assembly. It would become the National Convention then the Legislative Assembly but it held the true power. For a while the new legislature, which Louis was forced to accede to, tried to improve the situation in France. But with foreign pressure on it, with the king and queen opposed to the changes and with old Foreign Minister and General of the Army Charles François Dumouriez’s sudden defection to the hated Austrians, the new government was forced to act.
The Legislative Assembly created the Committee of Public Safety on April 6th, 1793. Originally a nine member organization run by Georges Jacques Danton, it became a twelve member organization on July 10th, 1793 with Maximilien Robespierre actively participating. After Robespierre became the head of the Committee, the King, the Queen, and many others whom Robespierre deemed traitors were executed at the Place de la Révolution.
Le camp plus grand de route mis en fuite,
Guaires plus oultre ne sera pourchasse :
Ost recampé, & legion reduicte,
Puis hors de Gaules du tout sera chassé.
Gaul refers to France and Northern Italy. This occurred during the closing days of the Second World War. The great army is the German army. After the Normandy landings the German army fought in a completely disorganized way – because of the combined air power of the British and American air forces, the Germans could fight no other way. Towards the end of 1944, with the German army hiding behind the Rhine river, pursuit ended while the armies of the United Nations paused to regroup. The German army regrouped first and in the west fought the Battle of the Bulge, resulting in a massive loss of German troops and equipment. Then, in 1945, offensives in the western front pushed past the Rhine, expelling the Germans from ancient Gaul in that area. Simultaneously, offensives in Italy pushed the Germans out of the Po River Valley, which was the Italian portion of ancient Gaul.
De plus grand perte nouvelle raportées,
Le raport fait le camp s’estonera :
Bandes unies encontre revoltées,
Double phalange grand abandonnera.
Note on Translation: The last two lines can be translated differently. Troops united (against, create) revolts and Double Phalanx great will be the abandonment.
In ancient Greece and Macedonia, a Phalanx was a group of armed foot soldiers, armed with long pikes or sarissa’s, numbering between 500 and 2000 men. In modern times, developing during the life of Nostradamus, a phalanx is used to define an entire army, though it can also refer to any group of standing armed forces, like a phalanx of infantry or a phalanx of police. This could place it anywhere, but the use of the term phalanx does indicate a Greek flavor to the quatrain.
The first two lines of the quatrain are self-explanatory. Some reports come in of a great loss, the reports astonish the army. The last two lines seem to depend on how it is translated and exactly what was meant by phalanx.
Looking to Greece first, there are several times when the Greek Army abandoned a great one. The army abandoned King Otto in 1843, King Constantine I in 1922, Premier Panagis Tsaldaris in 1932 and King Constantine II in 1973. Of these four, only the downfall of Constantine I seems to fit the quatrain.
After the First World War, the Greeks had been given part of the land of Ionia on Asia Minor and most of Eastern Thrace, lands that Greece had long wanted. However, under Mustafa Kemel, known later as Atatürk, the Turks attacked the Greeks throughout Ionia and Thrace. The fighting was fierce, but one sided, with the Turks winning not only against the Greeks but also against the British and French. The attack on Smyrna was particularly devastating, with the Turks burning the Greek and Armenian quarter of the city. Bitter over the losses, desiring to end the war and simply go home, the army revolted and Constantine was forced into exile.
I do not know if the Greek Army was astonished over the loss of the war, but it does seem likely that the army would have been astonished by the loss of Smyrna. In any case, the rest of the quatrain seems to describe this event quite satisfactorily.
La mort subite du premier personnaige
Aura changé & mis un autre regne :
Tost, tard venu à si haut & pas aage,
Que terre & mer faudra que lon le craigne.
This can apply only to Napoléon, who achieved the First Consulship at the age of 30. The great personage was Louis XIV who was great only because he was the king of France - it was his position, not his nature that made him great. Napoléon achieved the rulership of the nation by having himself proclaimed First Consul, his eventually being named emperor was merely a change of form instead of substance. He was an aggressive military genius, naturally he was necessarily feared. Even the British feared him, they showed how much they feared him when they gathered their forces to defend an attempted invasion across the English Channel – one that never came off.
D’ou pensera faire venir famine,
De la viendra le ressasiement :
L’oeil de la mer par auare canine
Pour de l’un l’autre donra huyle, froment.
Canine greed describes the German attempt to starve the British into surrender during the Second World War. It comes from the wolf packs that the german u-boats would form as they hunted and sank merchant ships. It is also a reference to Hitler's first name - Adolf means Noble Wolf.
It was definitely a scary situation according to the British leadership, for the British depended upon the sea for survival. The Germans, through their submarines, sought to starve the British into surrendering, but the British were able to keep the supplies coming in, bringing in “the fullness” instead of “the famine.” The one to the other refers the flow of goods from the United States to Great Britain. Nostradamus was quite correct when he used the plural "oils" instead of the singular "oil" for oils refers to the various types of oil the British needed, including cooking oil and the type that fueled its armies - petrolium. Wheat is, of course, the basic stable of human life.
La cité franche de liberté fait ferue,
Des profligés & resueurs faict asyle,
Le roy changé à eulx non si proterve :
De cent seront devens plus de mille.
Though Nostradamus was a monarchist, which was natural for his day, he was not blind to the faults of the king. Taken with the clue in line 1 it means a time when a king assumes power in France, taking away many of the principles of liberty the French had enjoyed up to that time.
Louis XVIII was crowned in 1814 with the bayonets of the allied forces backing him up. Under the influence of the Napoléonic elites, headed by Talleyrand, he granted the Charter of 1814. However, he tried to nullify the charter, reverse the results of the Revolution, restore the old autocratic way of the ancien regime and allowed the return of émigrés who hated the revolution. In doing all this, he made himself unpopular.
In 1815 the king had an awakening. Taking advantage of the king’s unpopularity, Napoléon dared to escape from the Isle of Elba and staged a comeback. Louis fled and Napoléon began his 100 days. It proved ultimately futile and Louis was again forcibly restored to the throne at the point of foreign bayonets.
Shaken to the core, Louis realized that in order to keep his throne he would have to accept the new reality, though he never embraced it like La Fayette did. Reluctantly, and in fulfillment of the third line, he mandated certain changes that he had to accede to in order to keep his throne. As a result, from Napoléon’s 100 days, Louis enjoyed a reign of well over a thousand days. In fact, his over nine years was well over three thousand days.
Changer à Beaune, Nuy, Chalons & Dijon,
Le duc voulant amander la Barrée
Marchant pres fleuve, poisson, bec de plongeon,
Verra la queue: porte sera serrée.
Many of the quatrains were meaningless until the modern events caused their fulfillment. For instance, all the quatrains concerning the wolf were ambiguous until Adolf (Noble Wolf) Hitler fulfilled them. I strongly suspect that this quatrain, dealing with a loon, is of a similar type.
Des plus letrés dessius le faits celestes
Seront par princes ignorants reprouvés :
Punis d’Edict, comme scelestes,
Et mis à mort la ou seront trouvés.
Nicolaus Copernicus was a contemporary of Nostradamus. If they did meet, Nostradamus would have most likely treated him for some ailment towards the end of his life and the two would have talked about Copernicus’ views of the celestial universe.
In any case, it is factual that in this, Nostradamus was quite correct. Multiple churches and many of the princes, rejected the Copernican system because it violated the Ptolemaic system. Even many Catholics rejected the Copernican view, even thought the church never officially rejected it. The number of victims who embraced copernicanism is quite large. As a single example, Giordano Bruno, a noted Copernican, was burned at the stake after he had claimed that the stars, being so far away, had to be suns in themselves, each with its own earth that required a messiah to die for the sins of the people there. (Though to be fair, he was executed more because he rejected the doctrines of the Virgin Mary, the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus, doctrines the Catholic Church holds sacrosant.)
Even today, at the beginning of the 21st century, there are still those who reject the Copernican system because it seems to goes against what the Bible says.
Devant Rouan d’Insubres mis le siege,
Par terre & mer enfermés les passages :
D’Haynault, & Flandres, de Gind & ceulx de Liege,
Par dons lænees raviront les rivaiges.
While I am uncertain and my researches do not lead me any direction, this has almost certainly been fulfilled. Rouen is the traditional capital of the ancient province of Normandy. The cities of line 3 are all in modern day Belgium. It would have to have been fulfilled during the time that Spain controlled the Belgic lands; in those days Belgium would have been known as Spanish Flanders.
The most likely time was during the early years of the reign of Henri IV. His enemy was Charles de Loraine, the Duc de Mayenne, who headed the Catholic League. The league was aided and supported by Spanish troops lead by Alessandro Farnese, duca di Parma. Yet I do not know of any attempt by the Spanish to lay siege to Rouen.
Paix uberté long temps lieu louera:
Par tout son regne desert la fleur de lis :
Corps morts d’eau terre la lon aportera,
Sperants vain heur d’estre la enseuelis.
The key is in the second line. Only two times has France deserted the Fleur-de-lys of the House of Bourbon. And only during the second time was there no violence involved; Louis Philippe simply abandoned it for the Tri-Color. Therefore, it has to refer to his monarchy.
Line 1 is an obvious pun. Louis Philippe was known as the bourgeois king and the citizen king. He literally rented the throne from the bourgeois who were in control. However, his reign was not a good one. He became increasingly monarchial in his approach. Prosperity declined. Unemployment rose. In 1847, an economic crisis brought everything to a head, resulting in the Revolution of 1848 which deposed him and forced him into exile. As the fourth line indicates, he was never buried in France, like he wanted.