| I.33. Original 1555 Edition | Supplement |
English
Verse Translation |
| Prés
d’un grand pont de plaine spatieuse, |
Near a great
bridge upon a spacious plain, |
|
| Le
grand lyon par force Cesarées |
The noble
Lion with imperial power |
|
| Fera
abbatre hors cité rigoreuse, |
Shall harshly
break down the city to gain, |
|
| Par
effroy portes luy seront reserées. |
ouvertes
[Lat. resero] |
For fear the
gates they’ll open, and shall cower. |
| Source: Presumably the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, describing the siege and capture of the port city of Acre by Richard the Lionheart in 1191. When Richard arrived at Acre in June, the city was already under siege by Christian forces led by Leopold V of Austria. He then took over the leadership of the crusading armies, much to the vexation of Leopold, and with the French King, Phillip, intensified the bombardment of the city by slowly breaking down the city's outer walls and weakening its defenses while simultaneously starving the occupiers into submission. Finally, on July 12, the Crusaders agreed to Acre’s surrender terms in exchange for sparing the lives of the Muslims defenders. The geography of the first line refers to the fact that the city of Acre (Acco) is not far from the Plain of Sharon and the famous aqueduct, built by Herod in the first century BCE, which conveyed fresh water from the springs of Mount Carmel to the city of Caesarea. After capturing the city of Acre, Richard and the crusading armies followed this coastal plain on their march toward the city of Jaffa, where an attack on Jerusalem could be launched. |
| II.24. Original 1555 Edition | Supplement |
English
Verse Translation |
| Bestes farouches de faim fluves tranner: | [lat. tranare] | Like wild beasts famished the rivers they'll ford, |
| Plus part du camp encontre Hister sera | le Danube | Towards the Danube looms the greater fight: |
| En caige de fer le grand fera treisner, | In an iron cage will be dragged their lord, | |
| Quand Rin enfant Germain observera | le jeune Rhin | While the German, the young Rhine has in sight. |
| Source: The De Varietate Fortunae of around 1430 by the leading Renaissance humanist, researcher of ancient texts and Apostolic secretary Gianfrancesco (or Giovanni Francesco) Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459), better known as Poggius, starkly contrasting the fates of two prominent warring rulers. After utterly defeating an anti-Ottoman Christian crusade under King Sigismund of Hungary at the battle of Nicopolis on the banks of the Danube in 1396, and thereby striking terror into western Europe, the Sultan Bayezid I (also known as Bajazet) was defeated in turn by Tamerlane the Great (also known as Timur) near Ankara in 1402 when he over-confidently encroached on the latter's domains in Anatolia. In Poggio’s words, Tamerlane ‘took the ruler alive and lugged him all over Asia Minor enclosed in a cage like a wild beast as a public spectacle and to show what Fortune can do.’ He died shortly afterwards. Sigismund, meanwhile, who had only just escaped his defeat at Nicopolis by the skin of his teeth, went on to become King of Germany in 1411, and in 1414 called for and personally attended a major church Council (of which Poggio himself was official secretary) at Constance, at the very source of the Rhine, designed to heal the Great Western Church Schism. |
| II.77. Original 1555 Edition | Supplement |
English
Verse Translation |
| Par arcs feuz poix & par feuz repoussés: | Repulsed by burning pitch, by fire and bow, | |
| Cris, hurlemens sur la minuit ouys. | Of shouts and screams is heard the midnight sound. | |
| Dedans sont mis par les ramparts cassés | Through broken walls within they’ll seek to go, | |
| Par cunicules les traditeurs fuis. | The traitors flee through tunnels underground. |
| Source: A slightly misconstrued reading of the account in the 13th-century Historia Albigensis by Pierre des Vaux-de-Cernay of the contemporary siege by Count Simon de Montfort of Termes in the year 1210. The ‘Crusaders’ attacking the ‘heretics’ in the town were repeatedly driven back and their siege engines set on fire, until they raised a great shout when they discovered that the defenders were escaping by night. Vaux-de-Cernay’s account has evidently given Nostradamus the impression that they were doing so via the crusaders’ own saps, or tunnels: ‘One day, on the feast of St Cecilia, the Count had a trench carefully excavated and covered with hurdles to allow sappers to approach the wall and undermine it. The Count spent the whole day preparing the trench without breaking off to eat, and as night approached – it was the eve of the feast of St Clement – he returned to his tent. The enemy in Termes, with the intervention of Divine clemency and the help of the Blessed Clement, were seized with fear to the point of utter desperation. They at once ran out in an effort to escape. The men of our army saw what was happening, raised a great shout, and began to run hither and thither in order to capture the fugitives.’ |
| III.22. Original 1555 Edition | Supplement | English Verse Translation |
| Six jours l’assaut devant cité donné: | sonné | Six days before the town they’ll sound th’ assault, |
| Livrée sera forte & aspre bataille: | Then battle shall be joined both strong and grim. | |
| Trois la rendront & à eux pardonné: | Three who it yield shall pardoned be sans fault, | |
| Le reste a feu & sang tranche traille. | The rest ’midst blood and fire cut limb from limb. |
| Source:
Possibly the
Gesta francorum
et aliorum Hierosolymytanorum of around 1101, describing the siege of
Jerusalem in 1099 during the First Crusade. The attack proper, which
began six days after the army had ritually processed around the city
barefoot to the sound of trumpets somewhat after the manner of the
biblical siege of Jericho, lasted just over a day, and was ferocious in
the extreme. The inhabitants were impartially slaughtered, the Jews
burnt to death in their main synagogue. Apart from those commandeered
as slaves, only the city's Arab governor, Iftikhar ad-Daula, and his
bodyguard were spared after they had shut themselves in the Tower of
David and from there negotiated with Raymond de St Gilles, Count of
Toulouse, to surrender the city. |
| III.35. Original 1555 Edition | Supplement |
English
Verse Translation |
| Du
plus profond de l’Occident d’Europe, |
In occidental
Europe’s deepest part, |
|
| De
pauvres gens un jeune enfant naistra, |
To poorest
folk a little child is sent |
|
| Qui
par sa langue seduira grande troupe: |
Who’ll seduce
a great troop by speaker’s art |
|
| Son
bruit au regne d’Orient plus croistra. |
His fame
shall spread unto the orient. |
| Source:
A so far unidentified account of the famous Children's Crusade of 1212,
which is said to have first began in the Rhineland and Lower Lorraine.
Apparently a ten year old peasant boy called Nicholas, from the
Rhineland, preached the Children's Crusade at Cologne and is said to
have recruited more than 20,000 children to his cause. When the
pilgrims reached Genoa, many of the girls were taken into brothels and
others were taken as servants. Those boys who reached the orient were
all sold as slaves to the Mohammedans; some were carried to Alexandria;
some to Bujeiah; some to Baghdad; in Baghdad eighteen of them were put
to death because they would not abjure the Christian faith. |
| III.61. Original 1555 Edition | Supplement | English Verse Translation |
| La grande bande & secte crucigere | A mighty Christian sect, a major band, | |
| Se dressera en Mesopotamie: | Within Mesopotamia shall stand: | |
| Du proche fleuve compaignie legiere, | A lighter force beyond the flood nearby | |
| Que telle loy tiendra pour ennemie. | Such tenets shall as hostile ones decry. |
| Source: Possibly William of Tyre’s Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, later translated as the 12th-13th century Chronique d’outremer, or Livre d’Erades or Lime du conquest, describing the foundation of the four Middle Eastern Crusader States (Edessa, Tripoli, Jerusalem and Antioch) after the success of the First Crusade and capture of Jerusalem in July 1099. Of the four, Edessa – by far the largest – had been extended southeastwards into Mesopotamia by 1118. In 1128 Zengi, the Atabeg of Mosul, took the town of Aleppo, on the other side of the Euphrates, and established it as a major centre for Islamic resistance that was to become a major threat to the Crusader states in the region. |
| III.84. Original 1555 Edition | Supplement | English Verse Translation |
| La grand cité sera bien desolée | The noble city shall be desolated, | |
| Des habitans un seul ny demeurra: | Of its inhabitants not one remain. | |
| Mur, sexe, temple, & vierge violée, | Age, sex and creed, and virgins violated, | |
| Par fer, feu, peste, canon peuple mourra. | By sword, fire, plague, decree, the people slain. |
| Source: The graphic description of the infamous siege of Béziers on 22 July, 1209 during the course of the Albigensian Crusade – Perhaps referenced from Guillaume de Puylaurens: Chronique 1145-1275/Chronica Magistri Guillelmi de Podio Laurentii. Uniquely, of those who remained in the city, neither their age, nor sex was spared, regardless of their creed. The chilling words of papal legate Arnaud have remained associated with the event ever since -- 'Tuez les tous, Dieu reconnaîtra les siens' ('Kill them all! God will know His own!'). In the course of the massacre, the crusaders hammered down the doors of the city's churches, killing everyone inside. In the church of St Mary Magdalene alone, 7000 women, children and elderly were slaughtered. Finally, the whole city was put to the torch. Meanwhile it is worth noting in this case the unconventional meanings of 'peste' and 'canon' in the last line: 'peste' was often used at the time of the Albigensian crusade, to refer to the heresy of the Cathars, and while a 'canon' can, of course, be a weapon of war (in English, 'cannon'), it is most likely referring to the Papal Decree of 1208, which declared the crusade against the people of Languedoc, by offering the lands of the heretics to any who would fight. |