Transcoding of Message in Code by Napoleon's General (1812)

I read of a partially enciphered letter addressed to Napoleon's general during the Peninsular Campaign (Cipherbrain). It is a dispatch of Clarke, Minister of War in Paris, to General Caffarelli in Spain dated 19 October 1812. Karsten Hansky acquired it at an auction site and described it in "A dispatch from the French Minister of War Clarke to General Caffarelli, the commander of the Northern Army in Spain, from the year 1812" (17.06.2021) (pdf).
The passages in code are short, but the plaintext is attached. The code in use is what wac called "Great Paris Cipher" by the British (see also my article "Great Ciphers of Napoleon's Grande Armée"). It is code table #24 in the archives of the SHD (Service Historique de la Défense) in Vincenne (SHD box 1M-2352).
What is interesting to me is the marginal note including the coded message (apparently) transcoded into another code (#29). From the range of numbers, the code #29 appears to have about the same size as #24, but the number of codegroups is different (that is, there is no one-to-one correspondence between the code groups.)

More Cipher Letters of Le Tellier

I added references to more letters from Le Tellier's correspondence in "Ciphers Early in the Reign of Louis XIV". They are found in BnF fr.6884, fr.6889, and fr.6891.
I have already reported that the correspondence between Le Tellier and Colbert appears to have switched to two-part code (Le Tellier-Colbert Cipher 2 (DE=13/59~)) between November and December 1650 (though the arrangement is not completely random), and Mazarin also used it in 1650. This time, it was found DE=13/59~ was used by Mazarin as late as December 1652, while Le Tellier-Colber correspondence used a different two-part code (Le Tellier-Colbert Cipher 3 (DE=18^)) in January 1652.

Codebreaking through Comparison of Two Independently Enciphered Texts

I uploaded a new article "Codebreaking through Comparison of Two Independently Enciphered Texts", which presents my solution of a cipher used in a letter from Abel Servien to Melchior de Sabran (1632). It was quite simple a job, because some words in the clear gave a clue. More interesting would be the very comparison of the two independently enciphered ciphertexts.
I also added references to unsolved ciphers in Sabran's letters in "French Ciphers during the Reign of Louis XIII" and "Unsolved Historical Ciphers."

 

 

Colbert de Croissy Switched to Numerical Cipher in Italy, but Reverted to Figures with Diacritics in London

I made several additions, mainly related to Colbert, to "Ciphers Early in the Reign of Louis XIV" and "French Ciphers during the Reign of Louis XIII" from the Baluze collection in BnF. In this update, the most interesting is the changes of ciphers used by Colbert de Croissy. He used cipher consisting of figures with diacritics, typical in French ciphers at the time, in 1659 (DE=28) and 1660 (DE=42~) when he was Intendant of Alsace. But he switched to a purely numerical cipher (1660-1661) during his mission to Rome (DE=91). He used another numerical cipher in Cleves in 1666 (DE=151), but reverted to figures with diacritics (1668-1674) in his London embassy (DE=68). Somehow, specimens of purely numerical ciphers in France are often related to Italy.

A Cipher between Cardinal Mazarin and Anne d'Autriche

I added a section "Mazarin-Anne d'Autriche Cipher (1651)" in "Cardinal Mazarin and Ciphers". Although the nomenclature of the cipher is printed in Ravenel (1836), the substitution alphabet is not included therein. I reconstructed the substitution cipher by comparing the manuscript letters and the version printed in Ravenel (1836). (Though Ravenel suggests the manuscript key is extant, I could not find it online.)

Cardinal Mazarin Used Partially Two-Part Code

When I posted "Cardinal Mazarin and Ciphers", I thought Mazarin's letters in cipher would not be available online (this is why the article is not titled "Cardinal Mazarin's Ciphers") and thought his cipher might be little more than a short nomenclature, judging from a specimen printed in Ravenel (1836).
Contrary to my expectations, I found a specimen that shows Mazarin('s secretary) used two-part code in June 1651 during his exile in Germany (though the arrangement is not completely random). It is the same cipher as the one used between Le Tellier and Colbert in December 1650. At present, I think the Le Tellier-Colbert cipher was given to Mazarin, who went to exile in Germany, rather than Le Tellier and Colbert were using the cipher given by Mazarin. More specimens are necessary to make a call.
I now added a section "Mazarin's Cipher" to describe these findings.

Note (16 October 2021): The original title of this post was "Cardinal Mazarin Used Two-Part Code." Although I included a reservation "the arrangement is not completely random" in the body, I thought I should add "Partially" in the headline, too (see today's post).

Charles I's Letters from the Isle of Wight Broken after Centuries

Some years ago, I presented three letters in cipher from Charles I to Prince Charles and another to Mr. Worsley in "King Charles II's Ciphers during Exile" and also included them in the list in "Unsolved Historical Ciphers". When Klaus Schmeh and Elonka Dunin chose them as one of the topics in their webinar, they found additional materials in the archives, which allowed Norbert Biermann and Matthew Brown to solve the cipher used in two of the four letters in my list. I presented their achievement in "What It Takes to Break Charles I's Cipher Used in the Isle of Wight".

Ciphers in Colbert's Correspondence

I reconstructed about dozen ciphers from Melanges de Colbert 101-176, and put them in a new section in "Ciphers Early in the Reign of Louis XIV". It is noted that Colbert did not use two-part code in the correspondence in this series (1659-1674), though he once used Le Tellier's two-part code in 1650 as I reported the other day.
There are three undeciphered ciphertexts (relatively short), which I put in a new section "Colbert Correspondence (1665, 1673, 1674)" in "Unsolved Historical Ciphers".

Misplaced? English Cipher Letter in French Archives

The cipher of a wholly enciphered letter in BnF fr.2988, f.1, was broken by Torbjörn Andersson in 2017. Unexpectedly, the plaintext turned out to be English. The recipient is called "your ...", and an obvious candidate is "your Majesty" (Henry VIII). Such an identification is supported by references to "your realm" in the text. But the text also refers to "your son". Although Henry VIII famously lacked a son until 1537, I noticed that he had a bastard son known as Henry FitzRoy.
I posted my decipherment in a new article "Misplaced? English Cipher Letter in French Archives" to help historians to identify the nature of this letter.

Another reason of this post is its possible relation to another undeciphered ciphertext signed Hieronimo Ranzo on the following folio (see "Venetian Ciphers with Superscripts"). Since f.1 and f.2 are treated as one item in catalog information, I wondered whether one is an enclosure of the other. But at least the decipherment of f.1 does not appear to refer to an enclosure.

A Cipher Delivered to Charles I by Mazarin's Ambassador

When Charles I of England was under close watch of the parliamentarians in Holdemby in 1647, some communication with the outside was conducted clandestinely. When searching for Cardinal Mazarin's cipher, I came to know that Mazarin bade Bellievre to obtain a peace between the King and the parliament, and the latter even managed to deliver a cipher to the King.
I added this episode to "King Charles I's Ciphers".

More Undeciphered Texts (Italian, Spanish) in BnF

I recently added more undeciphered materials in "Unsolved Historical Ciphers".
Many letters (Italian?) in BnF fr.2988, f.21 ff., seem to be written in the same cipher, probably simple homophonic substitution.
More specimens of the Venetian? cipher with superscript are found in BnF fr.2988, fr.3019, fr.3022.
Undeciphered letters to Emperor Charles V are found in BnF fr.3022.

Cardinal Mazarin and Ciphers

I uploaded a new article, "Cardinal Mazarin and Ciphers", which I wrote in January. Though I planned to expand it a bit more, I may not have time for it for some time, so I decided to post it as it is.
Since many of Mazarin's papers in the Archives des Affaires étrangères are not found online, this article consists of references to ciphers in Mazarin's correspondence. They may be nothing new, but, as with the case in Catherine de Medici, they may allow a glimpse of practice in use of ciphers.

An Early French Cipher (Gramont) Solved from Other Materials

I mentioned three unsolved cipher letters of Gabriel de Gramont (1529 from BnF Clair.330, 1530 from BnF fr.2980) in "French Ciphers during the Reign of Francis I". Now, I found another specimen with interlined decipherment in BnF fr.3019, and the reconstruced cipher can solve the letters in BnF fr.2980. The cipher used in BnF Clair.330 seems different.
It often happens that an unidentified cipher used in one volume can be reconstructed from deciphered materials found in other volumes. Some such examples, found through systematic search of BnF Clair.312-452, are already mentioned in my article. I'm now doing a systematic search for another part of the BnF collection. Maybe I should do the same for volumes around BnF fr.2900-3020.

Secret Letters Left Unbroken by John Wallis Solved After 400 Years

In 2020, letters in cipher from Louvois, Louis XIV's Secretary of War, to Count Lauzun (1690) were deciphered by Norbert Biermann by finding the key in the archives.
It is one thing to decipher a ciphertext, but it is quite another to understand what is written. Norbert provides a background account at Cipherbrain (in German). Since the letters relate to one of my favourite historical characters, William III (the Prince of Orange), I wrote my own version of background article: "Secret Letters Left Unbroken by John Wallis Solved After 400 Years"

A New Book on Shorthand, Ciphers, and Universal Language by D.P.J.A. Scheers

I got a pdf version of a new book Zealous with Language and Ciphers: Shorthand, ciphers and universal language around the 17th century (independently published on 9 March 2021; 261 pp.) by D.P.J.A. Scheers (Google).

When studying ciphers, one often encounters references to universal language or shorthand.
I once mentioned Athanasius Kircher's Polygraphia nova (1663). This work is more about universal language ("lingua universalis") than cryptography, and was to allow people to exchange letters without speaking each other's language (Wikipedia). John Wilkins, the author of Mercury, the first book in English about cryptography, also proposed a universal language in a 1668 work (Wikipedia). Leibniz, who corresponded with John Wallis, also had an interest in universal language. Similarity between code and universal language can be seen in, e.g., a dictionary for Kircher's universal language shown below.

Regarding shorthand, it is well-known that Samuel Pepys' diary is written in shorthand, which looks like a cipher and is sometimes called as such.

Text in shorthand looks like a ciphertext to untrained eyes (examples may be found in Cipherbrain), and may be used to conceal the content.

Zealous with Language and Ciphers has chapters I - Abbreviations and Numerals, II - Shorthand, III - The Development of Universal Language, IV - Universal languages, V - Characteristics and decipherments, VI - Other Language Developments, plus many appendices.
 

I have to say I know little of shorthand and universal language. So, of these topics, I can only say that the chapters include many names (including all I mentioned above and more) and many illustrations. The short Chapter VI deals with sign language and international maritime flag signals. The latter is, of course, related to code. I'm interested in whether "universal language" is possible with sign language.
 

Some of the appendices are directed to ciphers:
Pages 194-220 deal with "Urquhart's ciphers" presented in Cipherbrain.
Pages 220-227 deal with ciphers described by Porta.
Pages 228-231 deal with "Lodwick's "The Lords Prayer"".
Pages 232-234 deal with "Jane Seager's text from The Divine Prophecies of the Ten Sibills."
Pages 242-244 deal with "the secret numbers of Thoth".
Page 245 deals with "Unsolved cipher 1681 Dr. Wallis". Actually, this was (re-)solved by Malcolm V. Hay (1934) (see my article).
Etc.
 

What interested me is the author's map of the route of development of Italian ciphers (Mantua, Modena, Florence, Siena, Genoa) created from Aloys Meister's book by examining "the dating of the published letters, the 'cipher intelligence', the type of symbols, properties, length, usage of nulls and other relevant aspects." I wish there were more discussions to support his map. I look forward to "a future publication" the author seems to plan (p.41, n.89).

Four Hundred Years of Habsburg Cryptography

I added a section "Four Hundred Years of Habsburg Cryptography" in "Habsburg Codes and Ciphers". It is based on Benedek Láng (2020), "Was it a Sudden Shift in Professionalization? Austrian Cryptology and a Description of the Staatskanzlei Key Collection in the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv of Vienna", which outlines a collection of nearly 500 manuscript ciphers preserved in the Austrian archives.
I learned of this paper in Nils Kopal & Michelle Waldispühl (2021), "Deciphering three diplomatic letters sent by Maximillian II in 1575". These authors succeeded in cryptanalysis of three letters of Maximilian II (and thereafter found that the key is among the above collection). I also added this cipher in the above article.

One of the Oldest French Ciphers Solved (1525/1526?)

The oldest French ciphertexts known date from 1525 or 1526, some of which still remain unsolved.
One of them is now solved by Norbert Biermann. It is written in the margin at the bottom of a letter dated 25 September [1525 or 1526?] from Jean de Calvimont to Antoine Duprat. See "French Ciphers during the Reign of Francis I".
Norbert solved Louvois-Lauzun Code (the one that the famous codebreaker John Wallis could not solve) last year by finding the key in the archives (see "French Ciphers during the Reign of Louis XIV" (5)). I hope he will solve more unsolved ciphers in my list.

Louvois' Ciphers in the Archives (1688-1713)

About dozen ciphers from Louis XIV's time gathered from various sources have been listed in "French Ciphers during the Reign of Louis XIV". I added another dozen to the list from BnF fr. 6204, of which I was made aware of by Norbert Biermann's paper (2020). They appear to be Louvois' ciphers (at least some are annotated as such), characterized in that not only syllables and words/names but also letters of the alphabet are mixed in random arrangement.
Now that the list has more than twenty ciphers, I introduced designation of ciphers such as "DE=34/42/97." (The cipher of this example enciphers "de" into 34 or 42 or 97.) This nomenclature will facilitate identifying a new cipher with those already on the list. I have employed similar schemes for American ciphers (e.g., here). (I think I've seen other people use this scheme, but I do not remember specific instances now.)

Two-Part Code between Le Tellier and Colbert (1650)

I added two ciphers used between Le Tellier and Colbert in "Ciphers Early in the Reign of Louis XIV". This is something more than a routine addition, because this shows that the same corresondents used one-part code in November 1650 and two-part code in December 1650. Is this the first two-part code in mainstream French ciphers? Apart from sporadic examples (Duke of Nevers, Edward Stafford), the first two-part code known to me has been Louvois' code (1676). Considering that Louvois was son of Le Tellier, it is probable that he learned of two-part code from his father. It is often said that two-part code was invented by the codebreaker Rossignol. It is wondered whether Le Tellier learned of it from Rossignol or he devised it himself or learned of it from any other source.

Religious Grandmother's Abbreviation Cipher Deciphered on the Web

Back in 2014, a certain JannaK posted what looks like an enciphered message wirtten on an index card by Grandmother (1927-1996), who lived in Minnesota. It begins with:
PDGNHBOBVPNSNHANAOENCNANHPNCPND,NUOCP
NNPNAPNMSMDKBMLPOWP,NAP,]NEENTGBTMLS
HHSSSTMALHFFTMOFPANSTP,NIOOIPNTPNROA
NTRSANTOTTAPOD,PLUADONNOANPBOOLL,PKUA
SASIMAB,PAGA,]PMOMTAVMAJAMMSSSLLAB
....

Thirteen minutes later, harperpitt pointed out that the last AAA on the front side may be "Amen, Amen, Amen." Then, TYAGF appearing earlier may be "Thank you Almighty God for..."
The back side begins with OFWAIHHB, which jessamyn pointed out is used as user names by many people and should be something well-known. Then, harperpitt came up with an idea that OFWAIHHBTN is "Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name." This led to revealing the meaning of many phrases. The very frequent PST turned out to be "Please see that ...."
This is not a cipher in the usual sense, but initialism. I didn't know such a system is used for a text of some length until I read Chapter 13 of Elonka Dunin and Klauss Schmeh's book Codebreaking (see another post), where the system is called "abbreviation cipher".

References:
Decoding cancer-addled ramblings
"おばあちゃんが最期に残し20年間も未解決だった謎の暗号がネットの集合知によって爆速で解明へ"