In a remarkable breakthrough, a letter from the Napoleonic era has been deciphered, shedding light on military strategies during a pivotal moment in history. The letter, dated March 16, 1809, was sent by Napoleon to his stepson, Eugène de Beauharnais, the Viceroy of Italy, as France geared up for conflict with Austria. It contained an encrypted report intended for General Auguste de Marmont, detailing the positions of French and allied forces.
For 217 years, this letter remained unread due to the loss of the complete decryption key, until engineer Carter Church stumbled upon it. Despite having no prior experience in breaking ciphers, Church decided to leverage artificial intelligence for the task. He worked with a low-resolution scan from a 1969 French military journal, which presented him with a challenging 24 lines of handwritten numbers, letters, and symbols.
Using the AI model Astra, Church processed the image, dissecting it into individual lines and recognizing various symbols. Astra identified 155 unique characters among the different handwriting styles and developed a program to reconstruct the key needed for deciphering the message, which comprised a total of 1,300 elements.
Fortunately, Church wasn't starting entirely from scratch. Cryptography expert Daniel Tant had previously decoded 33 symbols, which allowed for the translation of about one-third of the letter. Astra's capabilities facilitated the recovery of the remaining two-thirds, leading to the full text being revealed.
The letter addressed to General Marmont included crucial military intelligence, detailing the positions of various troops. It stated that the Duke of Danzig was commanding 40,000 Bavarian soldiers in Munich and Passau, while Prince Poniatowski led 30,000 Poles near the Vistula river, poised to threaten Kraków. Additionally, the Prince of Pontecorvo was in charge of the Saxon army outside Dresden, and the Duke of Auerstädt was stationed in Bayreuth with 80,000 French troops. Notably, 60,000 men were quartered in Ulm and Donauwörth under the Duke of Rivoli, and General Oudinot was commanding an elite corps of 40,000 in Augsburg and along the Lech.
The letter also indicated that Russian forces were advancing toward Austria, with an army in Friuli totaling 80,000 men. It warned that Austria would soon face simultaneous attacks from multiple directions, signaling its imminent downfall. Church's report emphasized to Marmont that he should not be discouraged by the presence of small enemy formations.
Anticipation for news from Marmont was palpable, as the letter outlined the Austrian positions in Ljubljana, Klagenfurt, Villach, and Salzburg, hinting at a potential threat to Tyrol through Lienz. However, it also suggested that the Austrians might attempt to deploy forces into Galicia to counter the Russians, indicating that their campaign plans were already facing disruption before war was officially declared.
Despite the urgency, the report noted that the militia had been mobilized but had yet to demonstrate that these reinforcements would significantly bolster the army.
Interestingly, one part of the report claimed that "the Russians are marching against Austria," yet other correspondence from Napoleon indicated he lacked concrete evidence for this assertion. It appeared that the emperor had ordered the dissemination of such information without being fully aware of the Russian troop locations.
Church dedicated several evenings to this project, while Astra's processing time totaled around six hours. He remarked that a specialist in cryptography could have cracked the cipher as early as 1970, though it would have taken weeks to do so.
Informational material. 18+.
