Nostradamus and the Prophecy of 1999

I have not touched this blog in a while, as I have been working on a book on Nostradamus. I thought I would provide a sample of the book by discussing one of the most famous prophecies of Nostradamus, which concerns the year 1999:


10:72
L'an mil neuf cens nonante neuf sept mois
Du ciel viendra un grand Roy d’effrayeur
Resusciter le grand Roy d'Angolmois.
Avant apres Mars regner par bon heur.

The year 1999 and seven months
From the sky will come a great King of Terror
To revive the great King of Angoulême.
Before and after Mars to reign by good luck.

This is one of the few quatrains that contains an actual date. Angoulême is the principal city in Angoumois, a region and former province in Aquitaine in south-west France. After the Visigoths had sacked Rome in 410 under King Alaric I, the Visigoths wandered west and settled in the province of Aquitaine. They consolidated the region and formed the Kingdom of Toulouse. In 507 King Clovis of the Franks defeated King Alaric II of the Visigoths, and took the both Toulouse and Angoulême. From the ninth century Angouleme was ruled by counts, and the title eventually passed to King John of England due to his marriage with Isabella of Angoulême. King John of England began his reign in the year 1199 which is a similar number to the year 1999. For a time Angoulême was annexed by England from 1360 to 1373. Later one of the counts of Angoulême, Francis I, became King of France in 1515. It should be noted that the word Angolmois is perhaps an anagram for Anglois, which means “English.”
Unfortunately the word for Angoulême was mistranslated as Mongols (O.F. Mongolois) by the commentator Edgar Leoni, and since then many have falsely assumed that this quatrain concerned the rise of another leader like Ghenghis Khan from Mongolia. The quatrain concerns the rise of a leader similar to the leader of the Visigoths, and perhaps King John of England. A historical parallel can be drawn between King Alaric I of the Visigoths and the events in 1998 – 1999. In 395 the Visigoths under King Alaric I had devastated the Roman provinces of Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly (Greece) and Illyria. In 396 the Roman Emperor made Alaric I governor of Illyria, and in 397 Alaric was driven out of Greece by the Roman general Stilicho. Illyria is the ancient name for the Balkan peninsula, the eastern shore of the Adriatic formerly known as Yugoslavia. In modern times, Serbia began a war of devastation and genocide against Bosnia and Croatia. Western powers failed to intervene in time, but when Serbia invaded Kosovo – a region just north of Greece – America began its bombing campaign against Serbia in 1999. Just as King Alaric of the Visigoths had devastated the Balkan peninsula but was driven out of Greece, so the Serbs laid waste to Bosnia and were driven out of Kosovo. As the quatrain predicts that “from the sky will come a great King of Terror” who will “revive the great King of Angoulême (the King of England),” this great leader is none other than the military power of the United States. When preparing the interpretation of this quatrain for the CBS movie Mysteries of the Ancient World which aired in 1994, I predicted that there would be another outbreak of a war in Yugoslavia. However as the war in Bosnia was winding to an end at the time, it was deemed that this quatrain was too politically sensitive so it was removed from the movie script. As it is now well known the war in Kosovo broke out in 1998, and America became involved in a major war campaign conducted completely from the air.
In the Julian calendar in use by Nostradamus, the year 1999 and seven months comes to 11 August 1999 on our Gregorian calendar, the exact date of a solar eclipse that was visible from Europe all the way to Iran. The central longitude of the path of the solar eclipse happens to pass directly over Romania, north of Serbia, Bulgaria and Kosovo the region of Kosovo as seen in the diagram below:

There are at least two other instances where a solar eclipse was used to not only date a future event, but also the eclipse was used to determine the geographic locality. Quatrain 5:93 made use of an eclipse where the central longitude of the path of the eclipse passed near Scotland in the year 1600, and quatrain 3:77 made use of another solar eclipse whose central longitude was close to the location of the capital of Persia. As with this quatrain, quatrain 3:77 also mentioned the year of the eclipse, which was the year 1727.
Serbia had invaded Kosovo to combat terrorists, and America led a massive aerial assault against Serbia. America is thus the “great King of terror” that descends from the sky. The quatrain states in the last line “Before and after, Mars to reign by good luck” which means that there will be war before and after the year 1999. This was fulfilled by the former war in Bosnia and Croatia, and the subsequent “War on Terror” on Afghanistan and Iraq that began after September 11, 2001. America here is the great King of terror that descends from the sky as it took advantage of acts of terrorism to help further its goals in Iraq, which had nothing to do with the attack of September 11. Between the Gulf War of 1990 and the Second Gulf War of 2003, America, England and France had enforced no fly zones over northern and southern Iraq. A portion of Iraq falls under the path of the eclipse of 1999. The quatrain states that this “King of Terror” will “revive the great King of Angoulême.” In addition to this being a reference to Alaric I of the Visigoths, this could also be a reference to King John of England. In the year 1215 King John was forced by the Barons to accept and sign the Magna Carta, which limited the power of the king and guaranteed the rights of free men under the law. The Magna Carta is recognized in history as an important step towards rule by constitutional law. In opposition to this and in reaction to the attack of September 11, in 2002 the U.S. government enacted the U.S. Patriot Act, which has been criticized by civil libertarians for infringing on the privacy rights of individuals and allowing for the arbritrary arrest and indefinite detainment of non-citizens suspected of terrorism.