The University of Edinburgh’s Laing Collection holds letters from the eighteenth-century France around the time of the Revolution written in a numbered code, which includes the decoded message written above the numbers.

 

The letter is written by the comte de Montmorin de Saint Herem, Armand Marc (1745-1792). Marc served under Louis XVI, beginning as a gentleman-in-waiting to the king whilst he was dauphin, and eventually becoming ambassador to Madrid in 1777, recalled to become governor of Brittany, and serving the ministry of foreign affairs in 1787. He was friend and ally to Mirabeau and strove to find a compromise between royalists and revolutionaries. This friendship and position eventually led to his death in the September Massacres. The letter is written in French and is from Marc’s ministry years. In the bottom left corner of the first and third page, the name O’Kelly appears, indicating that this might be the addressee and decoder of the letter. Transcription: “À Marseille le 15 Juin 1788. J’ai reçu la lettre que vous m’avez fait l’honneur de m’écrire le 23 du mois dernier, elle exprime le désir que vous auriez d’obtenir un congé de trois mois pour vaquer à vos affaires personnelles. Le roi, à qui j’en ai rendu compte, s’en rapporte à votre propre sagesse sur la nécessité ou l’utilité de votre séjour à Mayence et S.M. trouve bon que vous vous déterminiez d’après…”

 

The letters are licensed under CC BY and available from University of Edinburgh Collections.

 

Header: Comte de Montmorin, Armand Marc, Coded letter, 1788, University of Edinburgh, CC BY 3.0.