Nostradamus and the Lost Bourbon Treasure

It is the spring of 1791 and among the brave citizens of Paris there are rumours circulating about thousands of nobles who are ready to abduct the royal family from the French capital. People are talking of a widespread conspiracy that can put an end to this wicked Revolution.

King Louis XVI is a prisoner in his own country now. His wife, Marie Antoinette, secretly writes letters to her brother, the Austrian Emperor. She begs him to help them. Couriers smuggle the letters abroad, but the cold dark walls of the Tuileries Palace have eyes and ears and the brave men are killed; their messages are intercepted by republican agents and the codes are broken. Louis XVI understands that if he wants to start a counter-revolution with a chance to succeed, he has to secure his communications. In other words, he has to use a code that can not be broken...

The royalist general de Bouillé has a considerable army at his disposition in the district Metz, in the northeast of France. His headquarters, in the fortress town of Montmédy, can be a 'safe place' for the royal family. The border with the Austrian Netherlands is close, and in the case of an emergency, the royal family can retreat to the nearby Abbey of Orval, just across the border.

General de Bouillé thoroughly prepares the flight of the royal family from the revolutionary Paris. Beyond Châlons-en-Champagne, he can secure the route with carefully selected soldiers. A few centuries earlier, the famous prophet Nostradamus seems to have foreseen these events in one of his dark verses - quatrain 20 of the ninth centurie:

The night falls, trough the forest of Reims they come

In two parts to Orval, Herne, the white stone.

Now that the monk is in Varennes, in black and grey,

will the choice of Capet be the cause of storm, fire, blood, axe...

When general de Bouillé reads these lines, he realizes how helpful it might be if he only had to talk about 'Q20, C9' and would be fully understood by his fellow conspirators. They only need to know that the key to the code can be found in the quatrains of Nostradamus; if someone says '20,9', it will be immediately obvious to everyone what the real message is. Such a code can not be broken by someone who does not know the keyword is: 'Nostradamus'.

The king and the queen have to take the route through the Forêt de la Montagne de Reims, to Montmédy and Orval. 'Vaultorte' is an anagram of 'Orvaulte', the old French word for 'Orval'... and what do we find in the realm of the Abbey of Orval? A white menhir - a white stone! - called 'Le Blanc'! If the royal family is not even safe in Orval, they will find a refuge deeper into the Austrian Netherlands, in the village of Herne (county of Hainaut). Agathe de Rambaud, the nurse of the Crown Prince, has a cottage there.

'The monk, black and gray' is the king - a man of chaste habits who is disguised in grey. And 'Varennes' is on the route between Paris and Montmédy, where Louis XVI, a distant descendant of Hugh Capet, together with general de Bouillé would unleash a storm of fire and blood upon the revolutionary forces. What general de Bouillé can't possibly imagine at that moment, is that the royal family will be arrested in Varennes, and that their flight to Orval eventually will lead the king and his wife to the bloody axe of the guillotine...

The fortune of the Bourbons and the jewels of the queen are entrusted to the royal hairdresser, Leonard. He has to bring them in safety in the Abbey of Orval, where they will be part of the general's war chest that has to finance the counter-revolutionary forces...

Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and their children never reached Orval. But Leonard did. And together with the royal hairdresser disappeared the Bourbon Treasure somewhere in or around the abbey...