LV.
French.
L’Horrible guerre qu’en Occident s’appreste,
L’An ensuivant viendra la Pestilence,
Si fort terrible, que jeune, viel, ne beste,
Sang, feu, Mercu. Mars, Jupiter en France.
English.
An horrid War is a preparing in the West,
The next year shall come the Plague,
So strangly terrible, that neither young nor old, nor beast shall escape
Blood, fire, Mercu. Mars, Jupiter in France.
ANNOT.
That word a preparing in the first Verse, signifieth that he speaketh of a time, wherein War was a making ready, when he was a writing.
The West, of which our Author speaketh, is not formerly the West which is Spain, but is the West respectively to his Countrey of Provence, which is Picardy, Lorrain, and the Countrey of Mets, in all these Places that are Westerly from Provence, there was great Wars in the year 1557 in Picardy in the year 1558. at Calais and Thionville, and at last from the middle of that year to the end of it, were seen two great Armies of both Kings, which threatned a horrid slaughter, had not God Almighty provided against it by the treaty of Peace of the 3d. of April 1559 the year following, which was 1559. there did happen what he foretelleth, viz., the Plague so strangely terrible to Young, Old, and Beasts &c.
And in those quarters there was nothing but Fire and Blood; that is, Massacres and ruines of all sorts, then did Rule in France, the three Planets of Jupiter, Mars and Mercury, Jupiter and Mercury, for the peace that was then concluded, and Mars for the War that was then on foot.
The History of Provence mentioneth, that that Pestilence was called by the Physitians, Febris erratica, by which within the space of five or six Months, died almost an infinite number of people.