Unsigned report to a Majesty on Gabriel Bethlen, 1624

01 The leaf

Halm’s catalogue of 1874 (p. 123) lists the piece as “Schreiben an den Kaiser s. d. zum Theil in Chiffern”, between letters of Gabriel Bethlen to the Emperor (Kassa, 29 May 1624). The text, however, addresses “E. M.” and speaks of the Emperor as a third party (“von dem Kayser erlangt”), so it is written to another king. The Palatine papers of the collection make Frederick V, King of Bohemia, the likely recipient, but the writer is not named either.

02 The key

The letters are two-digit homophones (a 6, 9, 15; c 8; d 12, 36, 60; e 13, 19; f 14, 20; n 42, 45, 51; r 49; s 50, 56, 59; t 63, 69 …); 27, 32 and 65 occur once each and have no value. Every value comes from a word glossed over the cipher at the time, so the key is taken from the page, not tested against it. No part of the cipher was held out: it is one page, most of it glossed, and no other piece of Clm 10403 uses the same code. The key is therefore not validated.

03 The unglossed runs

Six runs carry no gloss. Three are certain (deciphered from their context): -olgen (the end of verfolgen, split across the line), -liche in der löbliche Herr (c = 8 rests on this context alone) and kü- (the start of künftigen). One is probable, an s (auffs). Two stay unresolved, 13.32 and 27.13.65, because 27, 32 and 65 each occur once. Of the 18 letters of the unglossed runs, 15 are deciphered, 83%, below the 95% bar. The run 62.61.42.36.19.45 decodes wünden (or sünden if 62 is s), probable but of unclear meaning. The normalised German and an English summary are under Full texts.

04 What remains uncertain

• Two unglossed runs are unresolved, and 8, 36 and 45 rest on one occurrence each.
• The key is not measured: no held-out part exists, and no other piece shares the code.
• Several glosses are hard to read on the microfilm (412.01, 412.07, 412.08, 1492, 2999).
• The four-digit code groups and the clear German text were glossed at the time and are not transcribed here.
• One reader (an agent) on a microfilm scan; no human palaeographic check.
• The writer and the addressee are not identified. No printed text was found (Halm 1874 and Szilágyi 1879 checked; Tadra, Briefe und Akten and the other editions are not available as full text).

Full texts

The transcription and the decryption of every document on this page, so that the reading can be used and checked. Short files are shown here; all are in the repository.

n. 65 (scan 412): letter runs with their contemporary glosses not prose

An unnamed writer assures 'E. M.' that a 'worthy lord' has allowed him to write and that, if something comes about, this lord means next January, with help, to pursue the enemy to the utmost; the report deals with Gabriel Bethlen, the peace with the Emperor, money for 24,000 men and the Margrave's army.

# majesty1624 transcription: the runs of two-digit numbers on BSB Clm 10403 n. 65, MDZ bsb00116451 scan 412 (microfilm,
# Public Domain Mark 1.0; no image included). 19 runs, each with the gloss written over it at the time ("?" = no gloss).
# English version of the working file T2181_scan412.tsv (SHA-256 66bd138bcdcc335fa67b491feaa0cf24f38fdd3d7357848405f88999ce6f60e0).
# The 4-digit code groups, the doubled-letter signs and the clear German text are not transcribed here (see key.tsv for the
# code groups whose glosses were read).
# id	scan	line	gloss	numbers	status	note
412.01	412	1	dz d' böse	31	doubtful	first group read 31 or 71; followed by LL 1847; gloss spread over 3 groups, alignment uncertain
412.02	412	2	?	31 26 8 25 13	unglossed	before 1410 (Herr)
412.03	412	2	?	13 32	unglossed	between 1492 and 2999
412.04	412	3	zu	11	ok	isolated sign/word (11 = zu, twice)
412.05	412	3	?	24 19	doubtful	after 11; the gloss "zugelassen" sits over 11.24.19 (and 1779?)
412.06	412	3	?	27 13 65	unglossed	line end, after Gg 11
412.07	412	4	zu zeitigen ?	62 61 42 36 19 45	doubtful	gloss hard to read, written over 42-45
412.08	412	4	wolte ?	62 43 31 63 19	doubtful	gloss read "erweck" or "wolte", hard to read
412.09	412	4	?	30 61	unglossed	line end, after f6
412.10	412	5	künfftigen	42 14 60 26 24 13 51	doubtful	7 numbers for the gloss; continues 412.09 (kü|nfdigen)
412.11	412	5	er	13 49	doubtful	gloss not seen; inferred
412.12	412	6	des	12 13 50	doubtful	gloss "d'" or "des"
412.13	412	6	Dantzgen ?	60 6 42 63 77 19 51	doubtful	gloss read "Danzgen"; 7 numbers
412.14	412	6	als	9 31 50	ok
412.15	412	7	dan	12 15 42	ok	gloss "Dann"
412.16	412	7	?	50	unglossed	after Cc (auffs)
412.17	412	7	eusserst	13 61 50 56 19 49 59 69	ok	gloss "eüsserst"
412.18	412	7-8	verfolgen	70 13 49 14 43 31 24 19 51	ok	gloss at the end of line 7; the run 43.31.24.19.51 (start of line 8) is its end
412.19	412	8	helffen	25 13 31 14 20 19 51	ok	gloss "helffen" under line 7

# majesty1624 decryption: each run of transcription.txt decoded with key.tsv, beside the gloss of the time.
# u/ü = 61 written u; ? = unknown number (27, 32, 65). Read by sense, not validated.
# id	numbers	decode	gloss	reading
412.01	31	l (or 71 = word dz)	dz d' böse	glossed (first group read 71 = dz)
412.02	31 26 8 25 13	liche	?	-liche ([löb]liche Herr): sure
412.03	13 32	e?	?	e? : unresolved
412.04	11	zu (word sign)	zu	glossed
412.05	24 19	ge	?	glossed with 11 and 1779: zu-ge-lassen
412.06	27 13 65	?e?	?	?e? (ver-?): unresolved
412.07	62 61 42 36 19 45	wunden	zu zeitigen ?	wünden (or sünden if 62 = s): probable
412.08	62 43 31 63 19	wolte	wolte ?	glossed
412.09	30 61	ku	?	kü- (kü|nfdigen): sure
412.10	42 14 60 26 24 13 51	nfdigen	künfftigen	glossed
412.11	13 49	er	er	gloss not seen; e and r from other glosses
412.12	12 13 50	des	des	glossed
412.13	60 6 42 63 77 19 51	dantzen	Dantzgen ?	glossed
412.14	9 31 50	als	als	glossed
412.15	12 15 42	dan	dan	glossed
412.16	50	s	?	-s (auffs): probable
412.17	13 61 50 56 19 49 59 69	eusserst	eusserst	glossed
412.18	70 13 49 14 43 31 24 19 51	verfolgen	verfolgen	verfol|gen; 43.31.24.19.51 = -olgen: sure
412.19	25 13 31 14 20 19 51	helffen	helffen	glossed

Key: key.tsv

05 Sources

• Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 10403 (Collectio Camerariana 53), n. 65, MDZ bsb00116451, scans 411–413 (Public Domain Mark).
• K. Halm, Verzeichniss der handschriftlichen Sammlung der Camerarii (1874), p. 123.
• Key, run list and reading: targets/majesty1624, contributed by Brice Dudout, with Claude Opus 5.5 agents. Related keys: casimir1629, pawel1624 (a different cipher, with its own page).

The key, the run list with the glosses, the decryption and the notes are in targets/majesty1624.