A French team has decoded a letter from Charles V, revealing rumours of an assassination plot.
A coded letter signed in 1547 by the most powerful ruler in Europe has been cracked by French scientists, revealing that he lived in fear of an assassination attempt by an Italian mercenary.
Setting herself a challenge to decode the document within a few days, she was disconcerted to find the task rather harder than she had thought. They also found that while most symbols represented letters or combinations of letters, others represented whole words - like a needle for English King Henry VIII. And there were symbols that had apparently no function at all.
February 1547 was a time of rare relative peace between the rival powers of France and the Holy Roman Empire. Emperor Charles V - ruler of vast areas including Spain, the Netherlands, Austro-Hungary and southern Italy - was no longer actually at war with King Francois I. But mistrust still prevailed.
Charles V then speaks of a rumour which is circulating - that he, the emperor, is to be the target of an assassination attempt by the Italian condottiere Pierre Strozzi. Saint-Mauris is to find out as much as he can about this story. Is it just gossip, or a genuine threat?
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