In 1547, the Holy Roman Emperor wrote a letter in which he declared that he had been targeted by an Italian mercenary.
It took researchers nearly 500 years to declassify a letter from the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, addressed to Ambassador Jean de Saint-Maurice. The part is written in the leader’s secret code. This was reported by ArsTechnica.
It is noted that Charles V’s three-page letter to his ambassador was written against the backdrop of a bitter struggle with the emerging Protestant religion. Hearing of the letter’s existence, a cryptographer from Loria’s laboratory, Cecile Piero, was able to track it down two years later. It hangs in the basement of the historic library in Nance. Piero immediately tries to decipher the encoded parts of the letter, sorting the different characters and looking for clues.
The task became quite difficult, because about 120 encrypted characters do not have a simple representation in the form of letters, that is, the cipher does not consist in the fact that this or that letter is simply replaced by an unknown pictogram.
Most of them represent letters or combinations of letters, but some represent whole words – like the needle for the English King Henry VIII.
Vowels that come after consonants are replaced by diacritics, except for the letter “e” (the most commonly used letter), which the code creators avoided whenever possible. At the same time, many characters don’t seem to perform any function.
However, the letter was declassified. It is known to have been written after the death of Henry VIII a few weeks before the revolt in Germany by a Protestant group called the Schmalkaldic League.
According to Pierrot, Charles V expressed a desire to keep the peace in France in order to focus his resources on fighting the league, hoping to prevent the French and English from helping the latter.
Charles V also mentioned the rumor that he had been assassinated by an Italian mercenary named Pier Strozzi, instructing his ambassador to find out as much as possible the truth of this rumor.
In addition, the emperor devised a strategic response to the news that his nephew Ferdinand of Tyrol had been forced to flee from the uprising in Prague. He ordered Saint Maurice to spread the word that Ferdinand had left Prague of his own accord.
It was previously reported that John Lennon’s last letter was sold under the hammer from the auction house for $64,000.
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Source: korrespondent
I am Ben Stock, a passionate and experienced digital journalist working in the news industry. At the Buna Times, I write articles covering technology developments and related topics. I strive to provide reliable information that my readers can trust. My research skills are top-notch, as well as my ability to craft engaging stories on timely topics with clarity and accuracy.