this very hard nut must at last be cracked. Corrections in the hand show it is Wesselényi’s draft or file copy. Of 244 cipher tokens, 241 decrypt to sense (98.8%); open are code 60 (the general) and code 64 (the place), for which no key survives.
01 The record
E 199 is the Wesselényi family archive in the Hungarian National Archives; the leaf also carries an older number, “E 199 IV/3.t.–1”, and the archive’s stamp. DECODE photographed it together with the next item in the folder, R675 (8. pallium 1. 02), a Hungarian letter headed “NB Rottal” in a different number cipher. The images are not in the public domain, so none is reproduced here.
The page is written in one hand. The cipher words sit inside Latin sentences, each number followed by a point. Three corrections show a draft being written: the writer put 14 twice in millia and struck one; he wrote “tandem aliquando necessario” after nux, struck it, and wrote it again a line lower after durissima; and he struck a word after accommodari. A letter as sent would not look like this, so the page is Wesselényi’s own copy, which is why it is in his family’s papers. The heading at the top of the page (“S…zzi”?) is not legible.
02 The cipher
The alphabet is numbered backwards from 24, on a 24-letter alphabet that has w and no j or v:
24 a · 23 b · 22 c · 21 d · 20 e · 19 f · 18 g · 17 h · 16 i · 15 k · 14 l · 13 m · 12 n · 11 o · 10 p · (9 q) · 8 r · 7 s · 6 t · 5 u · (4 w) · 3 x · (2 y · 1 z)
and four more numbers double the vowels: 25 a · 26 e · 28 o · 29 u (27, presumably i, does not occur). Numbers in brackets are not used on this page. The two numbers above 29, 60 and 64, stand for a person and a place.
DECODE key R672 (MNL OL P 1238, Teleki Mihály collection, cipher keys no. 12, dated 1660–1690) has exactly this alphabet, from 24 = a to 1 = z. After it come syllables in fives, 25–29 Ba Be Bi Bo Bu up to 115–119 Za…Zu, and names from 120 (Rex Pol., Turca, Imperator, Cassovia…). This letter does not use that syllable table: here 25–29 are bare vowels, and R672’s 60 = Ka and 64 = Ku give no sense in “Dominus Generalis [60]” or “ad [64] in castris”. The two are related keys, built on the same alphabet, not the same key.
The writer made one slip. Spork is written 7 9 11 8 15, and 9 is q; p is 10 everywhere else on the page (praesidium, sponte, acceptare, temporis, peditum).
03 The decipherment
Cipher words are in bold. Spelling as written (presidium, Snaidau); cleartext transcribed from the image, with (?) where a clear word is doubtful.
Castrorum(?) mutationes etiam necessariae essent, quo facto, si Dominus Generalis [60] regimenta Dominorum Haster, Snaidau et Spork coniungeret, possent ad minimum tria millia hominum constituere, quibus si adiungerentur adhuc duo millia peditum, ut cum illis nos ad [64] in castris collocaremus, quam necessitatem videns [64] forte promptius presidium Maiestatis Vestre reciperent. Quod si vero illud sponte et benevole acceptare nollent, extunc de ulterioribus faciendis actionibus temporis occasioni nos accommodari debebimus, quia hoc est certum(?), quod ista nux durissima tandem aliquando necessario frangi debet. Alioquin non esset bonum, si hoc modo ab indusio quoque nostro timere et formidare deberemus.
Translation. Changes of camp would also be necessary. That done, if the Lord General [60] were to join the regiments of Messrs Heister, Schneidau and Sporck, they could make up at least three thousand men; and if two thousand foot were added to them, so that with them we might take up camp at [64], then [64], seeing the necessity, might more readily receive Your Majesty’s garrison. But if they would not accept it of their own free will, then for the further actions to be taken we shall have to fit ourselves to the occasion of the time, for this is certain: this very hard nut must at last, of necessity, be cracked. Otherwise it would not be good if in this way we had to fear and dread even our own shirt.
Haster and Snaidau are the imperial colonels Heister and Schneidau, spelled by ear; Spork is Johann von Sporck. All three commanded regiments in Hungary in the Turkish war of 1663–64, which ended with the peace of Vasvár in August 1664; the draft belongs to that war rather than to the later years of DECODE’s span. Indusium is an undershirt: to be afraid of one’s own shirt.
04 Method
The starting point was DECODE’s transcription of 2020, in which the transcriber wrote some figures as letters (b for 6, g for 9, i for 1, o for 0). Checked against the photograph, it needed one correction: the run after prius opens with 10, not 20. That gives 244 cipher tokens of 27 kinds.
Three solver runs were tried with the project’s shared 4-gram models. With no limit on homophones, the Latin model filled every slot with i, because the model rates runs of i highly. A strict one-to-one key could not fit Latin at all (25 numbers, a 21-letter Latin model), and on Hungarian it gave text that only looked like Hungarian. With at most two numbers per letter, all eight Latin runs returned the same readable text with a few slips (teneralis, castorsnaidae). Those were fixed by hand from the clear context: si Dominus … generalis gives g e n e r a l i s, and tria millia hominum sets 17 = h. The names, nux (3 = x) and ab indusio were decrypted last.
To check the key and look for 60 and 64, the neighbouring DECODE records were fetched: R675, the Teleki collection keys R665–R673, and the keys of the Vienna conspiracy file (HHStA Fasc. 327 Konv. D, R676–R690). Each was scored against the recovered values. Only R672 agrees, on 19 values. None of them gives the two codes a sense.
05 What remains open
- Code 60, once: “Dominus Generalis [60]”. A person, the general in command in the sector. Wesselényi’s drafts of 1664 press de Souches’s army, which makes Souches the likeliest name, but nothing on the page proves it. Grade I at best; left open.
- Code 64, twice: “nos ad [64] in castris collocaremus”, “videns [64] … reciperent”. A place whose people might take an imperial garrison, and the “hard nut” of the next sentence. No key found.
- Doubtful values, grade M: 26 = e occurs only once, in Haster (it is R672’s “Be” slot, and only e gives a name); the slip 9 for p in Spork. All other letters are grade H.
- In the clear text, the first word (Castrorum?), certum(?) and the heading are uncertain readings of the hand. They do not affect the cipher.
06 Sources
- DECODE R674, MNL OL E 199, 8. pallium 1. 01 (image IMG_R674_I4003; transcription DOC_R674_D1892, EK, 2020). Login required; the images are not in the public domain.
- DECODE R672, MNL OL P 1238 Teleki Mihály collection, cipher keys 12: the same reversed alphabet.
- DECODE R675 (E 199 8.1.02), R665–R673 (Teleki keys), R676–R690 (HHStA Ung. Akt. Spec. Fasc. 327 Konv. D, Chiffres 1664–1668): opened and compared.
- No printed edition of the draft was found; József Jankovics’s studies of Wesselényi’s E 199 drafts give the context of 1664.
Transcription, key, decoder and solver runs are in the repository folder wesselenyi1664/.