THE EMPEROR’S NEW CODES

Napoleon’s Secret Code Is Cracked After 200 Years

The emperor’s war directives have been picked apart.

AI has cracked a secret code from Napoleon Bonaparte. His stepson, Eugene, the Viceroy of Italy, sent a letter to General Auguste de Marmont in 1809 with an initial line in French followed by 24 lines of numbers, made-up symbols, and occasional letters. It likely originally came with a key and was sent after the former Emperor of France asked Eugene to send a letter to de Marmont in March that year. “I used GPT–6 Astra to break an unsolved cipher to one of Napoleon’s generals that had gone unread for 217 years. What makes this impressive isn’t actually the codebreaking, but that Astra completed the entire multi-modal workflow in six hours from a single image and goal,” said SentinelOne cybersecurity engineer Carter Church, who used the program to crack the code. De Marmont’s troops were in Dalmatia, largely modern-day Croatia, on the other side of Austria, which was at war with France from April 1809. This meant his forces were cut off from the rest of the French Army. “The Russians are marching against Austria, and the army [of] Friuli today numbers eighty thousand men,” it said. “Add the Dalmatian corps, without counting the reserves being organized everywhere in the rear, and you see that Austria will be attacked at once on every side. She is consequently hastening toward her ruin. When you receive the order to march, you must not allow yourself to be intimidated by a few troops or a gathering of rabble.”