This speculative map of Europe was published in January 1884 by Félix Deperlas.

Deperlas had been publishing pamphlets containing interpretations of Nostradamus for over a decade. In them, he claimed to have deciphered the fate of the Count of Paris (1876) and predicted future earthquakes in Paris for 1885, 1886 and 1887.

On this map, Deperlas depicts another of the prophecies he has deciphered: the Europe that would emerge from the peoples’ first alliance with the French Republic. The author states that he divides Europe according to seven criteria: ethnographic, linguistic, geographical, administrative, commercial, political and moral. As a result, the following political entities emerge:

• France rebuilt in 1885, with Metz and Strasbourg recaptured and the northern front reaching Brussels.
• Germany was divided into a northern republic (1886) and a southern republic (1887).
• The Austro-Hungarian Empire ceases to exist, and in its place emerge Bohemia and a Hungarian republic that includes Vienna.
• Italy became a republic (1885).
• Spain becomes a republic (1886).
• He predicts a major disaster for England in 1885.
• Greece sees its hopes fulfilled The Big Idea of his irredentism, and *Asia Menor* (1887) is published.

The mottos in the margins, «To do good is to live the life of God» and «Universal brotherhood, the religion of France», bring together the ideas of the republicanism of the Third French Republic and the form of religiosity without the Church advocated by Deperlas.

As a point of interest, the dates can be seen as small labels stuck onto the lithograph. As the deadlines passed without anything being done, the publisher stuck new dates over the old ones.

Sources

• The United States of the Great Continent