An engineer at SentinelOne has successfully used an AI model to decipher a 217-year-old coded message. The letter, written by Eugene de Beauharnais in 1809, reveals critical military intelligence regarding Napoleon's Austrian campaign.
The six-hour workflow of GPT-6 Astra
Carter Church, an engineer at the cybersecurity firm SentinelOne, utilized OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra to solve a cipher that had remained unreadable for over two centuries. As reported by the source, the AI processed a large image of the 1809 letter in just six hours. The model managed a complex multi-modal workflow, identifying 175 distinct hand-drawn symbols across a 1,202 by 1,836 plate.
Church noted that while the cipher itself was not exceptionally difficult, the speed at which the AI handled the visual recognition and the subsequent translation represents a significant leap over human capability. The system was able to decide which of the many marks were identical before even beginning the process of breaking the code.
Mapping 80,000 troops across the 1809 campaign
The decoded text provides a granular view of the Napoleonic military landscape during the 1809 Austrian campaign.. According to the report, the letter details the positions of several massive forces that were essential to Napoleon's strategy. These include 40,000 Bavarians occupying Munich and Passau, and 30,000 Poles camped on the Vistula to threaten Cracow.
The intelligence also tracks the Duke of Auerstaedt, who commanded 80,000 French troops in Bayreuth, and the Duke of Rivoli, who led 60,000 men near Ulm and Donauworth. This level of detail, once lost to time, allows historians to reconstruct the exact scale of the French and allied mobilization during this pivotal conflict.
Marmont’s precarious position in Dalmatia
The letter offers strategic insight into the precarious position of General Auguste de Marmont. Positioned in Dalmatia on the far side of the Adriatic, Marmont was effectively isolated from the rest of the French army by Austrian territory.. The message from Eugene de Beauharnais, Napoleon's stepson, warns Marmont not to be intimidated by "a few troops or a gathering of rabble" when the order to march eventually arrives.
The correspondence notes that the Russians were already marching against Austria, creating a multi-front crisis that suggested the Austrian campaign plan was already failing. The letter suggests that the Austrian forces were being attacked on every side, hastening their eventual ruin.
The mystery of the lost 1809 encryption key
Despite this success, several questions remain regarding the full scope of the historical record. While the AI successfully translated the 24 lines of numbers and symbols, the original key used by Eugene de Beauharnais remains lost to history. It is currently unknown if other undeciphered correspondence from this specific campaign exists that could benefit from similar AI-driven analysis.
Furthermore, the source primarily presents the perspective of Carter Church and his findings with GPT-6 Astra. It remains to be seen whether independent cryptographers or historians will provide a secondary verification of the translation to ensure no nuances were lost during the AI's multi-modal processing.
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