SOURCE: "Nostradamus and Napoleon I," in Nostradamus; or, The Future Foretold, revised edition, George Mann, 1973, pp. 165-89.

In the following chapter from a reprint of the 1973 edition of his Nostradamus; or, The Future Foretold, Laver interprets sections of the Centuries which have been cited by other commentators as concerning the rise, progress, and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte.

The French Revolution looms very large in the Centuries. It is not perhaps surprising that the career of Napoleon occupies an even larger place. Napoleon was just the kind of fatidic figure to appeal to the Prophet, and indeed a prophet would hardly be worth the name who, concerning himself with French history, should fail to foresee the rise of Bonaparte. But there is foreseeing and foreseeing, and the reader who has followed the argument thus far will feel that he has a right to expect not only a general outline...