The French Revolution
Public DomainLiberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix.
The French Revolution was a major turning point in the country’s history. Increasingly frustrated with France’s royalty, the people of France rose up agains the monarchy in 1789 and executed their last king, Louis XVI, and their last queen, Marie Antionette.
That July, Parisians stormed the Bastille prison, freeing political prisoners from the symbol of Ancien Régime power. Then, in October, angered by the exorbitant price of bread, they marched 12 miles from Paris to Versailles. There, they stood outside the royals’ home with their guards’ heads on pikes, waiting to take the king and queen with them back to Paris.
It would be another few years before Louis was sentenced to death for conspiring against the state. About 20,000 people gathered around to watch the executioner remove his head in January 1793. Nine months later, his queen met the same fate.
Once the deed was done, her executioner, Charles-Henri Sanson, held up her head to the crowd, who cheered back, “Vive la Republique!”
But more than two centuries before the French Revolution took place, Nostradamus wrote:
“Songs, chants, and demands will come from the enslaved
Held captive by the nobility in their prisons
At a later date, brainless idiots
Will take these as divine utterances.”
There are several interpretations of this quatrain, but it is not difficult to see how it could be linked to the French Revolution. While the people of France were not technically “enslaved,” there is no doubt that they suffered and blamed the royalty for it. Moreover, some of them were actually “held captive by the nobility in their prisons” — specifically, the Bastille.
It also may not be entirely fair to call King Louis XVI or Marie Antoinette “brainless idiots” — but you could argue that, by being beheaded, they were quite literally rendered brainless.
