KERLEREC (Louis Billouart).
Encrypted message using number code.
A very rare encrypted despatch sent from French New Orleans by Louis Billouart de Kerlerec, Governor of Louisiana, to the Secretaire d’Etat a la Marine et aux Colonies.
Kerlerec became governor of Louisiana in 1753, replacing Vaudril. “Despite total French neglect of the colony during the Seven Years’ War, Kerlerec manages to maintain aggressive defence of the Mississippi Valley, by funnelling Louisiana’s meagre military resources into the Fort Duquesne area and by first luring the Cherokee out of the English camp and then mobilizing them against their former allies” (Louisiana Personalities ).
“This message appears to be encrypted in the nomenclator, the standard cryptosystem of the time. The nomenclator had developed by the 1700s into a list of about 1000 names and common words with their equivalents, usually three or four digits, and was chiefly used by governments. If a cryptoanalyst had enough long messages to provide statistics and other clues, such as partial encipherments, he could solve them. When ambassadors or high ranking military officers were given nomenclators to use on assignment, copies often survive in archives. When individuals make them up for personal use, they are rarely found and consequently anyone seeking to read the messages encrypted using them has to reconstruct them. Since this usually requires a fair volume of ciphertext, individual cryptograms are rarely solved” (Kahn).
