I noticed many ciphertexts from Emperor Charles V's time were recently uploaded in the DECODE database. I added a section for them in "Scholarly Studies on Ciphers in the Reign of Emperor Charles V". While most turned out to be the same as ones studied by scholars and/or by me, three were new to me:
- A simple cipher between Cardinal Cisneros and Diego Lopez de Ayala, his envoy (1516);
- A syllabic cipher between the Marquis of Mantua and Antonio Leyva (1529). Interestingly, on the same day the Marquis used this in a letter to Antonio de Leyva, he used another syllabic cipher from 1527 in a letter to the Emperor.
- Juan Manrique's letter to the Emperor (1555) is marked "Decrypted" in DECODE, but I have not been able to identify the matching plaintext. If anyone has some success, please let me know!
16/05/2026
A French Diplomatic Code from 1748
It was only two months ago that I presented a French code based on materials from Alexandre Pillon. Now he provided me with a copy of a French foreign minister's letter (1748) he has along with his analysis. It is described in the new artice, "A French Diplomatic Code (1748)".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)