I was thinking today about a something I read a long time ago, a prediction by an English prophet that in the future England would be invaded through a tunnel by soldiers wearing blue helmets. It was suggested that at the time the prophecy didn’t make much sense* but today with the advent of the Channel Tunnel and the UN soldiers wearing blue helmets it could come to pass.
I thought it was by Mother Shipton but my google-fu is failing me.
On a more local note there was an apparent prophecy by the Black Nun at Ballycastle that in the future the north of Ireland would be invaded by soldiers from a fleet of black ships and they would kill one-third of the population of Ulster. Cheerful things these prophecies, though I can’t find that one online either.
*yes I know prophecies aren’t real, so we can skip that part, but someone making a prophecy is actually a thing and I was wondering its providence.
Never heard of it and I’d be shocked if there was an actual prophecy that said this exactly as you have stated. Most of Nostradamus predictions were so vague (plus in old French) that you could twist them to say just about anything, but they were never this specific.
As to the UN, that’s a joke, right? First off, the UN has no regular forces, only the forces that member nations give them…some of which are from the UK. Even if the UN could actually get support for some sort of invasion of the UK from France :dubious:, the last place you’d want to invade from is the Channel Tunnel. If it ever happened I’d say that the UK could defend itself from such an invasion with a couple of grannies armed with umbrellas, though they would have the much more challenging issue of those grannies opening the umbrellas in the tunnel…they would most likely refuse, en masse.
Futurists and novelists were predicting a tunnel under the English Channel before railways, as far back as Napoleonic times. Combined with the fact that the French Army was in blue uniforms with blue helmets from the 19th Century into the WWI era (pictures), I think it more likely this was a late-19th-Century British anti-French thing than a UN thing, and less a prophecy than a jingoistic cautionary tale of the invasion literature genre.
Edit to my first post: the French didn’t have blue helmets until WWI itself. :smack: So call it an early-20th-Century British anti-French thing, or some enterprising author “predicted” uniform-matching helmets along with a Channel tunnel.
As a wildly practical matter, UN use of force takes authorization by a security council resolution. The UK, as a permanent member, has veto authority over security council resolutions. Voting no is a pretty low effort defense against the UN.
I don’t think she has immense popularity. I thought she was barely holding on to her office. maybe she invites the forces in to support her against the cabinet.
Let’s see : predictable, linear axis of attack without cover, escape routes or flanking possibilities, easily blockable with obstacles or even collapsible should the midden hit the windmill. No artillery or air cover possible for the invading force.
And here you thought the guys repulsing frontal assaults across No Man’s Land at the Somme had it easy
The ‘prophecies’ of Robert Nixon were invented in about 1700. The original versions were probably written to support the Jacobites, but they were almost immediately reworked so that other versions had an anti-Jacobite message. The texts were unstable from the start. Given those origins, it was not surprising that they had much about foreign invasions, deposed kings and civil wars. The entry on Nixon in the Oxford Dictionary of National Dictionary (subscription required) does a good job of debunking any suggestion that the prophecies were ever genuine.
The most important thing that illustrates is that pinning down what Nixon is alleged to have said isn’t necessarily easy. Lots of different versions of his prophecies were published during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This nineteenth century edition does mention invading soldiers wearing helmets, but says only that ‘Foreign nations shall invade England with snow on their helmets’ (p. 10). No mention of any tunnel.
Tracing the origins of a version involving a tunnel would require trawling through all the various collections of the prophecies. A claim online without precise references is next to worthless. In fact, without firm evidence to the contrary, I wouldn’t even assume that such a version predated the construction of the Channel Tunnel! The whole point about popular prophecy traditions of the Mother Shipton type is that the wordings get reworked over time to incorporate new developments.
If it ever happened I’d say that the UK could defend itself from such an invasion with a couple of grannies armed with umbrellas, though they would have the much more challenging issue of those grannies opening the umbrellas in the tunnel…they would most likely refuse, en masse.
