TheCodeBreakers
The League, headed by the Duke of
Mayenne, held Paris and all the other large cities of France, and was
receiving large transfusions of men and money from Philip of Spain.
Henry was tightly hemmed in, and it was at this juncture that some
correspondence between Philip and two of his liaison officers,
Commander Juan de Moreo and Ambassador Manosse, fell into Henry's
hands.
It was in cipher, but he had in his government at the time one
Francois Viete, the seigneur de la Bigotiere, a 49-year-old lawyer from
Poitou who had risen to become counselor of the parlement, or court of
justice, of Tours and a privy counselor to Henry. Viete had for years
amused himself with mathematics as a hobby—"Never was a man more
born for mathematics," said Tallement des Reaux. As the man who first
used letters for quantities in algebra, giving that study its characteristic
look, Viete is today remembered as the Father of Algebra. A year before,
annaabi.ee 
