Codebreakers Find, Decipher Lost Letters of Mary, Queen of Scots

The deciphered letter of Mary, Queen of Scots, which codebreakers found mislabeled in the digital archive of a French library. Handout / LASRY/BIERMANN/TOMOKIYO/AFP
The deciphered letter of Mary, Queen of Scots, which codebreakers found mislabeled in the digital archive of a French library. Handout / LASRY/BIERMANN/TOMOKIYO/AFP
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Codebreakers Find, Decipher Lost Letters of Mary, Queen of Scots

The deciphered letter of Mary, Queen of Scots, which codebreakers found mislabeled in the digital archive of a French library. Handout / LASRY/BIERMANN/TOMOKIYO/AFP
The deciphered letter of Mary, Queen of Scots, which codebreakers found mislabeled in the digital archive of a French library. Handout / LASRY/BIERMANN/TOMOKIYO/AFP

An international team of codebreakers said Wednesday they have found and deciphered the long lost secret letters of 16th-century monarch Mary, Queen of Scots, one of the most argued-over figures in British history.

The long-rumored missing letters, which were found mislabeled in the digital archive of a French library, were hailed by excited historians as the most significant discovery about the Scottish queen in a century, AFP said.

Mary Stuart, a Catholic, wrote the coded letters from 1578 to 1584 while she was imprisoned in England due to the perceived threat she posed to her Protestant cousin Queen Elizabeth I.

Mary was beheaded in 1587 after being found guilty of plotting to assassinate Elizabeth I, marking the end of a dramatic life since portrayed in numerous movies and books.

But Mary was far from the minds of the three codebreakers who discovered more than 50 of her letters containing around 50,000 never-before-seen words.

They are members of the DECRYPT project, an international, cross-disciplinary team scouring the world's archives to find coded historical documents to decipher.

The trio were trawling through the digitized archive of France's national library, known as the BnF, when they stumbled onto enciphered documents labelled as being from Italy in the first half of the 16th century.

"If someone wanted to look for Mary Stuart material in the BnF, that's the last place they would go," said French computer scientist and cryptographer George Lasry, the lead author of a new study in the journal Cryptologia.

Lasry told AFP that deciphering the code "was like peeling an onion," for the trio, which also includes German music professor Norbert Biermann and Japanese physicist Satoshi Tomokiyo.

- The telltale 'spymaster' -
First, the codebreakers realized the text was not in Italian, but French.

It also used feminine forms, indicating a woman. Phrases like "my liberty" and "my son" suggested it was an imprisoned mother.

Then came the breakthrough word: "Walsingham".

Francis Walsingham was Elizabeth I's principal secretary and "spymaster".

Some historians believe it was Walsingham who later "entrapped" Mary in 1586 into supporting the foiled Babington Plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I, Lasry said.

Eight of the 57 letters found by the codebreakers were already in Britain's archives because Walsingham had a spy in the French embassy from mid-1583, Lasry said.

Most of Mary's letters are addressed to Michel de Castelnau Mauvissiere, the French ambassador to England and a supporter of Mary.

Mary was "too smart" to mention any assassination plot in the newly unearthed letters, Lasry said.

Instead the letters show her diplomatically pleading her case, gossiping, complaining of illnesses and perceived antagonists, and expressing distress when her son, King James VI of Scotland, was abducted.

Lasry said he could not help but feel empathy for the queen "because it's a tragedy -- you know she's going to be executed".

- 'Historical sensation' -
Historians praised both the code breaking and historical research of the trio, expressing keenness to get stuck into the letters.

"This discovery is a literary and historical sensation," said John Guy, a British historian who wrote a Mary Stuart biography on which a 2018 film starring Saoirse Ronan was based.

"Fabulous! This is the most important new find on Mary, Queen of Scots for 100 years," Guy said in a statement.

Steven Reid, a Scottish history expert at Glasgow University, said it was "the largest discovery of new Marian evidence in the modern era".

He told AFP it would likely alter existing biographies of Mary's life, adding that the cipher could help produce more accurate versions of her other coded letters.

Nadine Akkerman, a professor of early modern literature at Leiden University in the Netherlands, said that for historians it was "like uncovering buried treasure".

Some of Mary's letters are still believed to be missing, with the researchers saying a physical inspection of the BnF's undigitised stock of original documents could be next.



Outdoor Work in Southern Europe’s Tourist Hot Spots Is Becoming Hellish 

Tourists leave the Acropolis Hill monument site during a heatwave in Athens on July 23, 2025. (AFP)
Tourists leave the Acropolis Hill monument site during a heatwave in Athens on July 23, 2025. (AFP)
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Outdoor Work in Southern Europe’s Tourist Hot Spots Is Becoming Hellish 

Tourists leave the Acropolis Hill monument site during a heatwave in Athens on July 23, 2025. (AFP)
Tourists leave the Acropolis Hill monument site during a heatwave in Athens on July 23, 2025. (AFP)

Cruel heat is baking southern Europe as the continent slips deeper into summer.

In homes and offices, air conditioning is sweet relief. But under the scorching sun, outdoor labor can be grueling, brutal, occasionally even deadly.

A street sweeper died in Barcelona during a heatwave last month and, according to a labor union, 12 other city cleaners have suffered heatstroke since. Some of Europe's powerful unions are pushing for tougher regulations to protect the aging workforce from climate change on the world's fastest-warming continent.

Cleaning the hot streets

Hundreds of street cleaners and concerned citizens marched through downtown Barcelona last week to protest the death of Montse Aguilar, a 51-year-old street cleaner who worked even as the city's temperatures hit a June record.

Fellow street sweeper Antonia Rodríguez said at the protest that blistering summers have made her work “unbearable.”

“I have been doing this job for 23 years and each year the heat is worse,” said Rodríguez, 56. “Something has to be done.”

Extreme heat has fueled more than 1,000 excess deaths in Spain so far in June and July, according to the Carlos III Health Institute.

“Climate change is, above all, playing a role in extreme weather events like the heatwaves we are experiencing, and is having a big impact in our country,” said Diana Gómez, who heads the institute’s daily mortality observatory.

Even before the march, Barcelona’s City Hall issued new rules requiring the four companies contracted to clean its streets to give workers uniforms made of breathable material, a hat and sun cream. When temperatures reach 34 C (93 F), street cleaners now must have hourly water breaks and routes that allow time in the shade. Cleaning work will be suspended when temperatures hit 40 C (104 F).

Protesters said none of the clothing changes have been put into effect and workers are punished for allegedly slacking in the heat. They said supervisors would sanction workers when they took breaks or slowed down.

Workers marched behind a banner reading “Extreme Heat Is Also Workplace Violence!" and demanded better summer clothing and more breaks during the sweltering summers. They complained that they have to buy their own water.

FCC Medio Ambiente, the company that employed the deceased worker, declined to comment on the protesters' complaints. In a previous statement, it offered its condolences to Aguilar's family and said that it trains its staff to work in hot weather.

Emergency measures and a Greek cook

In Greece, regulations for outdoor labor such as construction work and food delivery includes mandatory breaks. Employers are also advised, but not mandated, to adjust shifts to keep workers out of the midday sun.

Greece requires heat-safety inspections during hotter months but the country's largest labor union, the GSEE, is calling for year-round monitoring.

European labor unions and the United Nations’ International Labor Organization are also pushing for a more coordinated international approach to handling the impact of rising temperatures on workers.

"Heat stress is an invisible killer,” the ILO said in a report last year on how heat hurts workers.

It called for countries to increase worker heat protections, saying Europe and Central Asia have experienced the largest spike in excessive worker heat exposure this century.

In Athens, grill cook Thomas Siamandas shaves meat from a spit in the threshold of the famed Bairaktaris Restaurant. He is out of the sun, but the 38 C (100.4 F) temperature recorded on July 16 was even tougher to endure while standing in front of souvlaki burners.

Grill cooks step into air-conditioned rooms when possible and always keep water within reach. Working with a fan pointed at his feet, the 32-year-old said staying cool means knowing when to take a break, before the heat overwhelms you.

“It’s tough, but we take precautions: We sit down when we can, take frequent breaks and stay hydrated. We drink plenty of water — really a lot,” said Siamandas, who has worked at the restaurant for eight years. “You have to find a way to adjust to the conditions.”

The blazing sun in Rome

Massimo De Filippis spends hours in the blazing sun each day sharing the history of vestal virgins, dueling gladiators and powerful emperors as tourists shuffle through Rome’s Colosseum and Forum.

“Honestly, it is tough. I am not going to lie,” the 45-year-old De Filippis said as he wiped sweat from his face. “Many times it is actually dangerous to go into the Roman Forum between noon and 3:30 p.m.”

At midday on July 22, he led his group down the Forum’s Via Sacra, the central road in ancient Rome. They paused at a fountain to rinse their faces and fill their bottles.

Dehydrated tourists often pass out here in the summer heat, said Francesca Duimich, who represents 300 Roman tour guides in Italy’s national federation, Federagit.

“The Forum is a pit; There is no shade, there is no wind,” Duimich said. “Being there at 1 p.m. or 2 p.m. in the summer heat means you will feel unwell.”

This year, guides have bombarded her with complaints about the heat. In recent weeks, Federagit requested that the state’s Colosseum Archaeological Park, which oversees the Forum, open an hour earlier so tours can get a jump-start before the heat becomes punishing. The request has been to no avail, so far.

The park’s press office said that administrators are working to move the opening up by 30 minutes and will soon schedule visits after sunset.