TheCodeBreakers
Perhaps the most elaborate organization was
Venice's. It fell under the immediate control of the Council of Ten, the
powerful and mysterious body that ruled the republic largely through its
efficient secret police. Venice owed her preeminence largely to Giovanni
Soro, who was perhaps the West's first great cryptanalyst. Soro,
appointed cipher secretary in 1506, enjoyed remarkable success in
solving the ciphers of numerous principalities. His solution of a dispatch
of Mark Anthony Coloana, chief of the army of the Holy Roman Emperor
Maximilian I, requesting 20,000 ducats or the presence of the emperor
with the army, gave an insight into Colonna's problems. So great was
Soro's fame that other courts sharpened their ciphers, and as early as
1510 the papal curia was sending him ciphers that no one in Rome could
solve. But Venice had no monopoly.
In 1589, Henry of Navarre, who was destined to become the most
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