I saw the show on the History Channel about this, and I was not impressed-they guy wrote some very obscure stuff, which can be interpreted in any one of a dozen ways. His “hit” rate is pretty low, too. So, I really doubt that his “Centuires” were intended to be any kind of prophecy-even in his own time, they were almost impossible to apply to any contemporary events. So what were they? Some kind of political satire or dissent (whose meaning for us is probably impossible to decode)? 
They were about selling copies of his books.
cha-CHING!
The Master speaks:
Was Nostradamus really able to predict the future?
With a follow-up from SDStaff Dave:
Did Nostradamus predict the day his tomb would be discovered?
or, more concisely, what Bosda said.
Did HE think he was some kind of seer? Was he just a few centuries ahead of Dionne Warwick?
While he was high on whatever he was smoking, sure.
This sounds like a GQ not a GD, as it’s a matter for a historian who knows more about the man and what he thought he was writing about.
So what were they?
They were meant to make Nostredame money. He began publishing a yearly almanac -under the “occulty” sounding name Nostradamus- and then with their monetary success, he published a book with the same format. Some fraction of the rich elites bought into him and believed him to be a prophet of somekind and he was off to the races
And, there are researchers that point that he was not a prophet for far future events at all, but for the near future of those elites, the idea of applying his centuries to far future events is even more silly (even his “successes” in the past leave a lot to be desired).
Once you apply enough time (In a place were it was not supposed to be applied) many events can be found that are similar to the quatrains (This is being generous, AFAICR every modern hit is based on mistranslations and quatrains that are nowhere to be found in the originals), however coincidence is not a good system to then base a belief.