Emperor king's top secret assassination letter finally decrypted after 500 years
By Harry Baker published about 12 hours ago
Researchers in France have finally cracked a complex code of mysterious symbols and "nonsense" decoys written by Charles V, the former Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain.
Researchers have finally cracked a complex code used in a top secret letter from 1547 that the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, Charles V, wrote when he was fearing for his life. In the encrypted letter, which was sent to one of his ambassadors in France, Charles V writes about tensions with the French king Francis I, who he thought might be plotting to assassinate him.
Charles V, the King of Spain between 1516 and 1556, also ruled the Holy Roman Empire from 1519 to 1556. During his rule, Charles V presided over one of the largest empires in European history, which covered modern day Spain, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands and parts of Italy, and he also oversaw the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
In 1547, Charles V wrote a letter to his French ambassador Jean de Saint-Mauris. The document, which is dated Feb. 22, contains several paragraphs in normal handwriting interspersed by large sections of unrecognizable symbols — a secret code intended to hide sensitive information. The letter is now part of the archives at the Stanislas Library in Nancy, a city in eastern France, where it has remained untouched for centuries.
The letter, rediscovered by library staff in 2019, later came to the attention of a team of cryptographers and computer scientists who took it upon themselves to uncover the coded section of the document. Now, after more than six months of "painstaking" research, the code has been cracked, the team announced Nov. 23 at a press conference at the Stanislas Library(opens in new tab).
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https://www.livescience.com/charles-v-code-cracked