01 The letter and the key
The key, R2235, has two sheets. The Schrijf Tafel (writing table) gives, for each of D, G, L, N, R, the cipher letter for each of the 25 plain letters a–z without j. The Translateur Tafel is the same five rows as inverses. The rows are built in pairs: D and R undo each other, G and N undo each other, and L is its own inverse, so the second sheet is the first with its labels swapped.
The letter uses the key in a way the tables do not state. The first line of the first section decrypts under D (“gasoez ma 12” = “depuis le 12”), but the second line does not. Trying all five alphabets on lines 2 to 5 showed that they decrypt under G, L, N and R, in that order. Each line starts with a dash, and a new capital in the margin (D, G, L, N, R, D, G) restarts the cycle at that alphabet. Word division, figures and punctuation stay in clear. DECODE’s “homophonic” label is wrong. The cipher is polyalphabetic, with five alphabets that change line by line.
02 The decrypted text
The corrected French, one line of the letter to a line; the alphabet of each line is in brackets. […] marks words spoilt by my transcription.
[D] Depuis le 12 juillet je n’ai pas reçu de vos nouvelles; quel silence! J’attends
[G] sans faute une lettre pour le 4 septembre, […] ou à
[L] renoncer ou à reprendre ma maison pour 3 mois, mon bail finissant le 4 octobre.
[N] Il me faut aussi vers ce temps-là une nouvelle lettre de change de 50 louis, et cela de 3 en 3
[R] mois, pour subvenir à l’horrible cherté de ce séjour; et j’en suis aux derniers […]
[G] […]. Un officier d’état-major venu à Bâle dit qu’il est
[L] d’un régiment de hussards que le prince de Salm lève pour le roi de Prusse
[N] sous condition de rentrer au service du prince d’Orange quand il retournera en
[R] Hollande; c’est une imprudence d’en [parler] ici. Mandez-moi ce qui en est; je me recommanderais
[L] pour y en faire autant. Par contre on assure que le prince aura Hambourg(?), le pays […]
[N] de […] Osnabruck. Cela est-il vrai? J’ai peur que les ministres prussiens ne se laissent
[R] endormir comme à l’ordinaire par les belles paroles des Français, qui n’ont pas le [dessein de] voir
[N] autre chose que bien s’ancrer sur les 2 rives du Rhin. […] et Barthélemy
[R] ne m’invite plus, depuis que l’on m’a mis, je ne sais pourquoi, dans la gazette de Hambourg du 5
[R] juillet, ou depuis 2 malles prises. Son secrétaire me disait hier que dans un mois on
[D] s’attendait à la jonction de l’armée d’Italie à celle du Rhin par le Tyrol; cela ne ressemble
[G] pas à la paix. Degelmann n’y croit pas et ne sait rien.
[L] Il est venu hier un courrier français d’Italie; rien n’a transpiré: donc
[N] mauvaise nouvelle pour eux. Ce qu’on écrit de Bâle de passages de courriers […]
[R] d’envoyer des mensonges. Mais s’il y avait un congrès, je ne pourrais y rien faire sans
[G] être aperçu.[in clear] Salut et fraternité [signature]
In English, in brief. No letter since 12 July; he needs an answer by 4 September on whether to keep his house for three more months, the lease ending on 4 October, and a bill for 50 louis every quarter, Basle being ruinously dear. A staff officer at Basle says he belongs to a hussar regiment the Prince of Salm is raising for the King of Prussia, on condition that it pass into the Prince of Orange’s service when he returns to Holland. It is said that the prince will have Hamburg(?) and the country about Osnabrück. He fears the Prussian ministers will again be lulled by the French, who want only to hold both banks of the Rhine. Barthélemy, the French envoy, no longer invites him since he was named in the Hamburg gazette of 5 July; Barthélemy’s secretary expects the Army of Italy to join the Army of the Rhine through the Tyrol within a month, which does not look like peace; Degelmann, the Imperial envoy, does not believe it. A French courier from Italy has come and nothing has leaked, so the news is bad for the French.
03 Method
The single DECODE image and the two key sheets were downloaded with the project’s DECODE session. I transcribed the key rows from full-resolution crops and the letter from rotated bands (1,321 cipher letters). A short decoder applies the inverse of each Schrijf row. Only the line cycle had to be found, and it came from four trial decryptions. The raw machine output keeps my transcription slips (n/r/u/v, c/e, i/y); the text above corrects them by sense, and no key value was changed.
04 What remains uncertain
- End of line 5 and start of line 6 (“aux derniers …”): transcription too corrupt to settle.
- Line 10–11: the prince’s share, “Hambourg” (M) and the word before Osnabrück (not settled).
- Line 13: two words before “et Barthélemy” (not settled); “Barthélemy” itself is H (w for b is a slip).
- Line 19: the verb after “passages de courriers” (not settled); line 20 “aperçu” is C.
- The signature, in clear, is not made out. The writer is unidentified; the pencil “Tollius” (Herman Tollius, the princes’ former tutor, named in the DECODE note) is an attribution, not tested.
05 Sources
- DECODE R2234: the letter, one image (login).
- DECODE R2235: the key, Schrijf Tafel and Translateur Tafel, two images.
- Koninklijk Huisarchief, The Hague, archive of Prince William V, inv. 339.
- Related: R1892, another cipher letter from the same inventory number.
Transcription, key, decoder and notes: r2234/ in the repository.