Carl Pawel to Frederick V (1624)

At a glanceKey from adjacent plaintext · complete

The letter: Carl Pawel to Frederick V, King of Bohemia and Elector Palatine in exile, “den 25 Novemb. 1624”, signed “741 / Carl Pawel”: a report on Colonel Fuchs’s recruiting in Württemberg.
Where: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, Clm 10382 (Collectio Camerariana 32), n. 46, digitised microfilm MDZ bsb00112117, scans 181–182. Halm (1874) dates it 15 November. Not on DECODE.
The cipher: Three systems mixed: a code of three- and four-digit numbers (2737 Ob. Fuchs, 3515 Stuttgart, 1732 Mansfelt, 2389 Liga), a few signs (a3 = zu, mm = so, rr = und), and runs of two-digit numbers that spell words, three numbers per letter.
How the key was found: The letter runs use the alphabet of the Johann Casimir–Camerarius letters with every number lowered by three. The shift was fitted on the glosses of scan 181 (0.921 of the letters, next best 0.737), frozen, and measured once on scan 182: 13 of 13 letters against 0.154 for the best shuffled key.
What it says: Fuchs came to Stuttgart and stayed there, accompanied; the letter speaks of the “pars victrix”, of someone who rode back, of Mansfeld and the League. The content is the period decipherment’s, not new.
Still open: The code groups and the clear German text are not transcribed; the held-out part is only 13 letters.
Credit: Brice Dudout (Europe chiffrée) transcribed the runs, identified and tested the key, working with Claude Opus 5.5 agents. The decipherment is the clerk’s of 1624.

01 The letter

In the autumn of 1624 Frederick V, driven from Bohemia and the Palatinate, lived in exile at The Hague, and his agents reported on the armies being raised in the Empire. Carl Pawel’s report concerns Colonel Fuchs’s recruiting in Württemberg. It is part of the Camerarius collection in Munich, the papers of Ludwig Camerarius, Frederick’s councillor.

The letter mixes clear German, a numerical code for names and common words, a few signs, and runs of two-digit numbers separated by commas that spell words letter by letter. A decipherment written above the lines at the time covers the code and the runs.

02 The key and its test

The runs use the same letters, in the same order and with three homophones per letter in blocks of consecutive numbers, as the Johann Casimir–Camerarius cipher of the same volume; only the origin differs. Starting from the casimir1629 key as it was frozen for that target, one parameter was fitted on the glossed runs of scan 181: the shift that best renders the glosses. A shift of 3 renders 0.921 of the letters; the next best, 4, renders 0.737, and the 22 others 0.42 or less. The shifted key was frozen before scan 182 was looked at.

Scan 182 has only two letter runs, degen and brauchen: 13 letters, all rendered by the frozen key, against 0.154 for the best of 200 permuted keys. The held-out part is small, so the stronger evidence is the whole letter: over all 17 runs (102 letters), the only differences from the glosses are the clerk’s spellings (vorharret, gunnen, scaf, uf), a gloss written victix for victrix, and an added h in a gloss (rückh). One unglossed run reads geritten.

03 What remains uncertain

The held-out test rests on 13 letters.
Numbers 1–10, 53–55 and 83 and up were not seen; by the casimir1629 key, 83 and up would be nulls.
Two runs (181.14, 181.15) were re-read at high magnification after the measurement and now agree with their glosses; the frozen key and the measurement are unchanged.
The code groups and the clear German text are not transcribed, so the runs are given as a word list with their glosses, not as a letter.
One reader (an agent) transcribed from a 1,334-pixel microfilm; no human has checked the numbers against the images.

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. 46 (scans 181-182): letter runs with their contemporary glosses not prose

Carl Pawel reports to Frederick V on Colonel Fuchs's recruiting in Württemberg: Fuchs came to Stuttgart and stayed until Tuesday the 23rd, accompanied; the letter speaks of the 'pars victrix', of someone who 'rode back', of Mansfeld and the League, and of men who could be used.

Transcription

transcription.txt

# pawel1624: BSB Clm 10382 (Collectio Camerariana 32), n. 46, Carl Pawel to Frederick V, King of Bohemia, 25 Nov 1624.
# MDZ bsb00112117, scans 181-182. Microfilm, 1334 px wide. Transcribed by eye from the images (Claude Opus 5.5 agent for Brice Dudout),
# 5 Nov 2026. Scan 181 = training part; scan 182 = held-out part, looked at only after the key was frozen (see validation.txt).
# Only the runs of two-digit numbers (letters, written with commas) are listed. The 3-4 digit code groups (2737 Ob. Fuchs, 3515 Stuttgart,
# 2224 kommen, 1732 Mansfelt, 2389 Liga ...), the signs (a3 = zu, mm = so, rr = und) and the clear German text are not transcribed here.
# Columns: id <TAB> line <TAB> numbers <TAB> contemporary interlinear gloss as written <TAB> status
# status: ok = read without major doubt; doubt = gloss or a number uncertain, or gloss of another length; no gloss = none on the leaf.
# 181.14 and 181.15 were re-read at high magnification after the measurement: 20 (not 26) and 38 (not 33); see validation.txt.

## scan 181 (training)
181.01	2	32 29 65 26 11 66 67 59 20	verharret	ok
181.02	3	25 60 14 62 61 38 21 59 21	begleitet	ok
181.03	7	33 39 60 62	viel (the word "so" before it is the sign mm)	ok
181.04	11	41 13 65 77	pars	ok
181.05	11-12	34 39 35 22 66 40 56	Victix (sic; the decode gives victrix)	doubt
181.06	12	32 74 24 15 61 27 59 18	vmbge[hen] (gloss left unfinished; 24 overwritten)	doubt
181.07	14	16 32 19 17 60 18	gönnen	ok
181.08	14	45 29 63 22 59 18	wolten	ok
181.09	21	67 33 37 50	rückh (gloss "zu rückh kommen" over a3 + this group + the next)	doubt
181.10	21	16 59 66 38 20 22 60 17	- (a stroke, no gloss)	no gloss
181.11	22	63 61 75 25 64 59	Lemble ? (reading of the gloss uncertain)	doubt
181.12	26	77 37 11 71	Schaffe(n) ? zu	doubt
181.13	26	32 72 47 59 17	vff den	doubt
181.14	28	78 30 63 20 61	solte	ok
181.15	28	64 59 38 25	leib	ok

## scan 182 (held out)
182.01	4	49 60 15 61 19	degen	ok
182.02	8	23 65 12 33 36 28 59 17	brauchen	ok

Decryption

decryption.txt

# Decryption of transcription.txt with key.tsv. Columns: id <TAB> numbers <TAB> decoded <TAB> contemporary gloss (normalised) <TAB> agrees
# agrees: yes = letter for letter (u/v, i/j/y, umlauts folded); no = differs (see note); n/a = no gloss on the leaf.

## scan 181 (training)
181.01	32 29 65 26 11 66 67 59 20	uorharret	uerharret	no	cipher spells vorharret
181.02	25 60 14 62 61 38 21 59 21	begleitet	begleitet	yes
181.03	33 39 60 62	uiel	uiel	yes
181.04	41 13 65 77	pars	pars	yes
181.05	34 39 35 22 66 40 56	uictrix	uictix	no	gloss written victix
181.06	32 74 24 15 61 27 59 18	umbgehen	umbgehen	yes
181.07	16 32 19 17 60 18	gunnen	gonnen	no	cipher spells gunnen (gönnen)
181.08	45 29 63 22 59 18	wolten	wolten	yes
181.09	67 33 37 50	ruck	ruckh	no	gloss adds h
181.10	16 59 66 38 20 22 60 17	geritten	-	n/a	unglossed: the glossator wrote "zu rückh kommen"; the cipher says "zu ruck geritten"
181.11	63 61 75 25 64 59	lemble	lemble	yes
181.12	77 37 11 71	scaf	schaffe	no	cipher spells scaf (schaff)
181.13	32 72 47 59 17	ufden	uffden	no	gloss vff, cipher uf
181.14	78 30 63 20 61	solte	solte	yes
181.15	64 59 38 25	leib	leib	yes

## scan 182 (held out)
182.01	49 60 15 61 19	degen	degen	yes
182.02	23 65 12 33 36 28 59 17	brauchen	brauchen	yes

Key: key.tsv

04 Sources

Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 10382 (Collectio Camerariana 32), n. 46, MDZ bsb00112117, scans 181–182 (Public Domain Mark).
K. Halm, Verzeichniss der handschriftlichen Sammlung der Camerarii (1874), p. 59.
Key, run list and validation: targets/pawel1624, contributed by Brice Dudout, with Claude Opus 5.5 agents. The sibling key: Johann Casimir to Camerarius, 1629.

The key, the run list with the glosses, the decryption and the validation are in targets/pawel1624.

Cite this page

Daniel Bourdeau and Brice Dudout, “Carl Pawel to Frederick V, 25 November 1624: the key of the letter cipher”, Cyphersolver, posted 6 November 2026, https://cyphersolver.com/pawel1624.html.