Bernardo de Salinas and Pedro Ronquillo to Baltasar de Fuenmayor, 1676

Summary. Fuenmayor’s papers in Brussels hold ciphered letters from four Spanish envoys. The key for Balbases was rebuilt in this project from his margins, and it then decrypted Hernán Núñez’s Stockholm letters unchanged. It was then applied to the other ciphered letters in the volume: eight letters from Bernardo de Salinas in London (August 1676 – March 1677) and twelve from Pedro Ronquillo at the Nijmegen congress (December 1676 – March 1678). It fits all twenty and gives values for 88.4% of the 23,463 groups in DECODE’s transcriptions; the residue is transcription noise. Sixteen letters have a contemporary decipherment in the margin, which the key output confirms. Four have none: Salinas of 15 September 1676 and 2 March 1677, and Ronquillo of 26 February and 19 March 1678. DECODE lists the last two as “non-decrypted”, that is, with no decipherment attached. No decipherment of these four was found on DECODE or in the margins; they are decrypted here in gist. Most of the work was on DECODE’s transcriptions: six are typed with no group boundaries at all, and had to be divided into groups against the key’s vocabulary. Carpio in Rome used a different cipher; the other northern envoys shared this one. Extent: partial. 88% of groups have a value, below the 95% this project requires for a complete decipherment, and the four unmargined letters (R970 77%, R973 86%, R982 71%, R984 86%) are decrypted only for gist; correcting their transcriptions from the images is still to do.

The first cipher block of Ronquillo's letter of 26 February 1678, with no marginal decipherment — Ronquillo to Fuenmayor, Nijmegen, 26 February 1678 (R984, p. 1): the first cipher block, with no decipherment beside it. The key gives *he visto con atención lo que V.S. me participa en sus referidas cartas en lo tocante a las [conferencia]s que se han tratado en essa asamblea de los aliados del Norte*. Image: Archives générales du Royaume, Brussels, SEG 2559, p. 1, via DECODE R984.

01 The letters

DECODE	Writer, date	Groups	Key reads	Margin
R966	Salinas, 21 Aug 1676	628	88%	yes
R969	Salinas, 8 Sept 1676	532	87%	yes
R970	Salinas, 15 Sept 1676	663	77%	none
R967, R968	Salinas, 8 Dec 1676	755, 538	87%, 83%	yes
R971	Salinas, 1 Jan 1677	1,856	94%	yes
R972	Salinas, 26 Jan 1677	1,733	89%	yes
R973	Salinas, 2 Mar 1677	199	86%	none
R974	Ronquillo, 21 Dec 1676	898	93%	yes
R975	Ronquillo, 28 Dec 1676	1,871	89%	yes
R979	Ronquillo, 9 Jan 1677	1,848	92%	yes
R980, R981	Ronquillo, 27 Jan 1677	1,697, 2,089	89%, 89%	yes
R1001	Ronquillo, 6 Feb 1677	1,155	93%	yes
R978	Ronquillo, 20 Feb 1677	1,691	93%	yes
R976	Ronquillo, 10 Apr 1677	572	70%	yes
R977	Ronquillo, 17 Apr 1677	636	88%	yes
R983	Ronquillo, 22 May 1677	2,145	89%	yes
R984	Ronquillo, 26 Feb 1678	1,144	86%	none (DECODE: non-decrypted)
R982	Ronquillo, 19 Mar 1678	813	71%	none (DECODE: non-decrypted)

Dates are from DECODE’s catalogue names. R1000, in the same volume, is French and already decrypted on DECODE.

02 The four letters without a margin

Ronquillo, Nijmegen, 26 February 1678 (R984)

Ronquillo replies to Fuenmayor’s reports on the assembly of the northern allies. Everything depends on the resolutions of the English parliament, and on whether Charles II will really break with France. Ronquillo, who knows that court, doubts it: no me atreveré a hacer juicio fijo ni de la paz ni de la guerra mientras no tuviremos apariencias más ciertas y seguras de las deliberaciones de la [corona] británica. The Danes complain about subsidy remittances and say they can do nothing. The Elector of Brandenburg is in Pomerania. At the end, the Duke of Hanover’s intrigue, "esta trama", runs through his kinship with Madame.

Ronquillo, Nijmegen, 19 March 1678 (R982)

This comes ten days after the fall of Ghent. The transcription is poor (full of "?"), and only the gist can be decrypted: the congress, Flanders taken by surprise, the two months that are lacking, the Brunswick princes, estamos muy mal, and Ronquillo’s own melancólicas reflexiones.

Salinas, London, 15 September 1676 (R970)

Ya se habrá [sabido] el fatal suceso… Salinas fears the blow closes esta puerta to Spain. The discourses at the English court turn towards a peace, and the "progresos" on Fuenmayor’s side weigh on them. The minister has taken the news calmly. There is mention of the Danish fleet.

Salinas, London, 2 March 1677 (R973)

The English princes no siendo tan malos when it comes to withdrawing their troops from French service, en que me prometo persistirán. The preparations of recent months show that everything is in earnest. Talk treats the peace as good as made.

03 Method

The Balbases key was used, with the four values added for Hernán Núñez (167 Suecia, 161 resolución, os para, 6+ o). It was applied without changes to DECODE’s transcriptions of all twenty records.
Six records (R971, R974, R978, R979, R983, R1001) are typed character by character with no group boundaries, and at first gave 0%. Each line was rejoined and divided into groups by dynamic programming over the key’s vocabulary: fewest groups, with one-character groups penalised. They then decrypted at 90–94%.
R970 and R973 write one sign as "Infinity" (∞), which is c before a vowel. R970’s transcriber also writes 5 where the key has a and b for que. These conventions account for most of its groups without a value.
The sixteen margins were compared with the key output. They agree.

04 What remains uncertain

11.6% of groups have no value. Nearly all are transcription noise ("?", "*", split or merged groups); the key itself has few gaps.
The four new decryptions are gist (grade C). R982 is the weakest (M), because its transcription is poor. A fresh transcription from the images would lift it.
The images of R970 and R973 were not searched for a faint margin that DECODE’s transcriber missed.
The sixteen margined letters are summarised by their margins and not edited here. The per-letter key output is in the repository.

05 Sources

DECODE records R966–R984 and R1001 (images and transcriptions, login), e.g. R984, R982.
Archives générales du Royaume, Brussels, Secrétairerie d’État et de Guerre, inv. nr. 2559.
The key: Balbases 1677–78 and Hernán Núñez 1674, this project.

Notes, the group-division script, decoder and the twenty decryptions: ronquillo1676/ in the repository.

Bernardo de Salinas and Pedro Ronquillo to Baltasar de Fuenmayor, 1676–78