Stuttgart / Brussels / Vienna, 28 October 1634, 16 November 1635 and 22 February 1640
Substantial readings · 1634 has unresolved passages
A French Rhine expedition, winter quarters at Trier, and recruitment in Westphalia with a request for 100,000 florins. The separate 1634 cipher has six unresolved spans and three conjectural readings; its literal output and editorial changes remain explicit. A known Latin draft supplies the 1635 alphabet; a separate syllable supplement extends the reading through both 1640 pages. Uncertain glyphs and copying errors remain explicit.
Three letters, their readings and evidence
Readings, key evidence, transcriptions and decoder.
Ottobon to Mocenigo, 27 April 1589 · BNE Mss/994, ff. 34–38
Substantially deciphered
A Venetian dispatch to the ambassador in France, with the enclosed reply to Henri III's envoy Gondi, who had come to ask for aid and a league. The Republic's surviving key, Ziffra prima, reads all seven cipher pages. Intercepted in Savoy in 1589 and broken then by Philip II's cipher secretary, whose working was lost.
Page-by-page reading
Manuscript images, Italian and English side by side. Write-up, transcription, key excerpt and decoder.
Sir Richard Forster, 13 May 1644 · AD Val-d'Oise, 68 H 8
Deciphered
A ciphered passage in a letter by the treasurer of Henrietta Maria's household: counsel that preserving one's life is no failing before God. Mixed letter-and-number homophonic substitution, 207 symbols, three repairs. George Lasry and Norbert Biermann had read it earlier, and Robert Pitt published a key on 14 September 2026.
Ciphertext, French and English
With the 37 cipher words and the key. Write-up, solver and verification.
Vande Perre to de Bruyne, London, August–November 1653 · Birch, Thurloe State Papers i
Deciphered · two fragments open
Paulus van de Perre’s twenty ciphered runs, left as numbers in the intercepted English translations: a reasonable disposition to negotiate, the government awaiting orders with impatience, Harrison and the Anabaptists losing influence, the new Council of State “reckoned to our advantage”, ten ships run, want of masts. A 22-letter alphabetical substitution recovered from the printed digits; Birch’s English glosses agree, and they supply five code meanings. In the earliest letter: “a character to open a lockt chest, ick segghe een cijffer”, I mean a cipher.
Digits, Dutch and English
Write-up, transcription, key, verification.
Moray to John Wood, Edinburgh, 13 July 1568 · BL Add MS 32091 f. 213v
Substantially deciphered
Four ciphered lines at the foot of a letter to the Regent's agent at Elizabeth's court, on the day Mary was moved out of Carlisle: her being allowed to stay there, and the sending home of Lord Fleming, "hes done greit evil"; the warning about her return remains partly unread. The conjectural ending “as our friends know” requires an unexplained sign to be omitted. A simple substitution with homophones and word-signs, read from the page image; two person-signs and the last word open.
Cipher, Scots and English
Write-up, transcription, key, verification.
Starhemberg, Paris, 23 May 1758 · Manuscript collation
Substantially deciphered
A complete proposed reading of a substantially deciphered letter about bringing Spain into the Seven Years’ War. The 1752 key identifies Farinelli’s statement to the recipient alongside Wall’s statement to the French ambassador. Photographs support 1,726 manuscript digits; eleven conjectural repair sites and several uncertain words remain explicit.
Cipher rows, German and English
With graded source output, a separate repair ledger and reproducible checks. Write-up, keys, scripts and audit.