On Feb. 8, an international team of cryptographers announced they had discovered a 16th-century letter from Queen Mary. of Scotland which has been lost for many years as well as being able to decipher the meaning of the encrypted text in the letter as well
The team found the letter, which was originally only a rumor. It is in the French digital library, stored in the wrong category. The letter is regarded as the most important piece of evidence in a hundred years about this illustrious Queen of Scots.
Queen Mary Stuart wrote several letters between the years 1578-1584, during which she was imprisoned in England. Because of this Catholic Queen Seen as a threat to the stability of Elizabeth I’s throne, she was a Protestant queen and her cousin.
The Queen of Scotland was sentenced to death by beheading. by the accusation secretly planning to assassinate the Queen of England It was the end of his colorful life. Which became the inspiration for many literature and movies in the later period.
Three members of the DECRYPT international cryptographer team discovered more than 50 of his letters, filled with about 50,000 words they had never seen before.
They went through the digitization of documents in France’s National Library. Until he came across several encrypted documents that were stored in the category identified as documents from Italy. In the first half of the 16th century
George Larcy, computer scientist and message decoders who led the team in this case study, said Decrypting a message is the same as decrypting it. “Peel off the onion skin layer by layer.”
Larcy and his team were German music professor Norbert Biermann and Japanese physicist Satoshi Tomokiyo. Examining the text of a letter found in the archives, it was not in Italian. but in french It is also used in a manner that indicates that the author is a woman. There is a phrase mentioned “My Freedom” and “My Son”, suggesting that the author is a mother and is in prison.
Then they came across the key word, which was “Walsingham,” the family name of Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth I’s chief secretary and office. “Head Spy”
Some historians believe that it was Walsingham who plotted Mary “trapped” in 1586 by luring the Queen of Scotland. Support for the assassination of the Queen of England
The team had previously found eight of the 57 letters in a British archive because Walsingham himself had spies lurking at the French embassy in the mid-2040s.
Most of Mary’s letters are addressed to Michel de Castelno Movissiere, the French ambassador to England. and was an important supporter of the Queen of Scotland at that time.
Larcy said Mary was “too smart” to mention Elizabeth’s assassination plot in the newly discovered letter. These letters consisted of diplomacy, his grievances and appeals, gossip, complaints about his illness, his perceived villainy of the British crown. and expressed his sorrow when talking about King James VI of Scotland. His son who was taken away
Historians have hailed the decryption of the secret letter as a major breakthrough. Can provide new information about Queen Mary. of Scotland in the past 100 years. It also helps to decipher and understand previously discovered encrypted letters more accurately.
However, many of Mary’s letters are believed to have been lost, with the survey team targeting the next undigitized archives of the National Library of France.
Photo credit : AFP/LASRY/BIERMANN/TOMOKIYO, Pixabay / Bill Kasman