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
TT
20

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members of the DECRYPT project, an international, cross-disciplinary team scouring the world's archives to find coded historical documents to decipher.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



SpaceX Starship Explodes During Routine Test

Flames rise as a SpaceX rocket explodes in Brownsville, Texas, US, June 18, 2025, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video. TheRocketFuture via X/via REUTERS
Flames rise as a SpaceX rocket explodes in Brownsville, Texas, US, June 18, 2025, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video. TheRocketFuture via X/via REUTERS
TT
20

SpaceX Starship Explodes During Routine Test

Flames rise as a SpaceX rocket explodes in Brownsville, Texas, US, June 18, 2025, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video. TheRocketFuture via X/via REUTERS
Flames rise as a SpaceX rocket explodes in Brownsville, Texas, US, June 18, 2025, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video. TheRocketFuture via X/via REUTERS

One of Elon Musk's SpaceX Starships exploded during a routine test late Wednesday in Texas, law enforcement said, in the latest setback to the billionaire's dream of turning humanity into an interplanetary species.

The Starship 36 suffered "catastrophic failure and exploded" at the Starbase launch facility shortly after 11:00 pm (0400 GMT Thursday), a Facebook post by the Cameron County authorities said, according to AFP.

A video shared with the post showed the megarocket attached to the launch arm, and then a flash and a towering, fiery explosion.

Musk's Space X said the rocket was preparing for the tenth flight test when it "experienced a major anomaly while on a test stand at Starbase," without elaborating on the nature of the complication.

"A safety clear area around the site was maintained throughout the operation and all personnel are safe and accounted for," Space X added on social media.

"There are no hazards to residents in surrounding communities, and we ask that individuals do not attempt to approach the area while safing operations continue."

The Starship was not scheduled for launch on Wednesday evening when the explosion occurred during a "routine static fire test," according to the Cameron County authorities.

During a static fire, part of the procedures preceding a launch, the Starship's Super Heavy booster would be anchored to the ground to prevent it from lifting off during the test-firing.

Starbase on the south Texas coast, near the border with Mexico, is the headquarters for Musk's space project.

Standing 403 feet (123 meters) tall, Starship is the world's largest and most powerful rocket and central to Musk's long-term vision of colonizing Mars.

The Starship is billed as a fully reusable rocket with a payload capacity of up to 150 metric tons.

The latest setback follows an explosion of a prototype Starship over the Indian Ocean in late May.

The biggest and most powerful launch vehicle ever built had lifted off on May 27 from the Starbase facility, but the first-stage Super Heavy booster blew up instead of executing its planned splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

The previous two outings also ended poorly, with the upper stage disintegrating over the Caribbean.

But the failures will likely do little to dent Musk's spacefaring ambitions.

SpaceX has been betting that its "fail fast, learn fast" ethos, which has helped it dominate commercial spaceflight, will eventually pay off.

The company has caught the Super Heavy booster in the launch tower's giant robotic arms three times -- a daring engineering feat it sees as key to rapid reusability and slashing costs.

NASA is also increasingly reliant on SpaceX, whose Dragon spacecraft is vital for ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in early May approved an increase in annual Starship rocket launches from five to 25, stating that the increased frequency would not adversely impact the environment.

The decision overruled objections from conservation groups who had warned the expansion could endanger sea turtles and shorebirds.