Bible—"Nicanor lay dead in his harness."—Maccabees xvii:12.
Macbeth—"We'll die with harness on our backs."
The Prophecies of Bonaparte.
Remarkable Manuscript Found in the Exiled Emperor's Desk on the
Island of Elba before Waterloo.
That the first Napoleon was exceedingly superstitious is well known. He was a devout believer in dream warnings, and he was a patron of palmists, clairvoyants, and astrologers. Like many another great man, the famous emperor sometimes was prone to indulge in prophetic utterances himself.
One of the most interesting of the compositions of Napoleon is a remarkable prophecy which, in the emperor's own handwriting, was found in his desk on the island of Elba. The document was discovered by Captain Campbell, in 1815. It is as follows:
The foundation of our political society is so defective and tottering that it threatens ruin; the fall will be terrible, and all the nations on the continent will be involved in it; no human force can arrest the course of events.
All civilized Europe will find itself in the position in which a part of Italy once was under the Cæsars.
The storm of the Revolution, some clouds of which will extend over France, will soon cover all that portion of the globe which we inhabit with a frightful darkness.