"Secret Bureau" and the British
In 1796, Napoleon Bonaparte created one of the most powerful intelligence agencies in France - the "Secret Bureau", placing at the head of the talented commander of the cavalry regiment Jean Landre. One of the conditions for the successful work of this department was generous funding - some agents could receive several thousand francs for information. Chef Landre created a dense espionage network throughout Europe, from which the intelligence from which flocked to Paris on a daily basis. At the same time, some of the reports were so unexpected for Bonaparte that he often threatened to fire the management of the office for unverified data. However, over and over again, the "Secret Bureau" did not force to doubt itself, which generated a lot of confidence on the part of the ruling court. But after a while, as is often the case in the state, Napoleon stopped trusting his chief of the secret police and even in a fit of anger put him in solitary confinement for 15 days. Lander did not stay until the end of the term - he was released by the cold Napoleon, but soon resigned. Until the end of the days of the emperor's reign, he was forced to live under supervision and a ban on holding any government posts. I must say that the former chief of the "Secret Bureau" still got off lightly - we know a lot of examples from history when too many knowledgeable and obstinate heads of state security agencies ended up badly. Back in 1799, Napoleon, as a wise politician, decided not to concentrate all the powers of the "Secret Bureau" in one hand and entrusted some of the similar functions to the Ministry of Police and its chief, Joseph Fouche. Separately, it should be said that this very Fouche behaved extremely unscrupulously - he supported Napoleon, while negotiating with the royalists, and when the monarchy was restored, he willingly agreed to head the French police for the fourth time. Probably, only the notorious chief of Napoleon's "black offices" Talleyrand, who at one time managed to serve faithfully and faithfully to his native France, Russia and Austria at the same time, was probably very cynical.
In the French army at the very beginning of the "noughties" of the XIX century, in addition to military intelligence, a special intelligence bureau was created, which was engaged in preparing the landing in England. They planned this (never carried out) operation in 1804 and even played a whole show on the coast. First, the emperor personally ordered the newspapers not to write anything about the movement of the French troops "hidden" in the camp of Boulogne. And secondly, Napoleon sat out for some time in Boulogne, and before the operation itself, with noise and fanfare, he left for Paris, where he threw several feasts. How effective it was, remained unknown, but the French were forced to behave in this way by the extremely high concentration of British agents on their own territory. British intelligence spawned agents not only in France, but in all the occupied lands. Used as royalists opposed to Napoleon, and banal traitors who worked for francs and gold. The researcher of the history of cryptography, associate professor of the MIREA department, Dmitry Larin, writes in one of his works that British spies also worked in neutral countries - in particular, the chief of the Bavarian post was bribed, which allowed England's agents to read all French mail passing through Munich.
A serious disadvantage of the work of Napoleon's special services was some negligence in encrypting information. At the same time, it cannot be said that cryptography was somehow underestimated. The French Encyclopedia, published in the early years of Bonaparte's reign, has become a real reference book for cryptographers from all over Europe. But in France itself, for all the time of the Napoleonic wars, they did not create new encryption algorithms (but only complicated the old ones), which could not be allowed in any case. It was enough once to "hack" the military code of the French, such as the "Big Cipher" or "Small Cipher", as the whole conspiracy went to pieces. And so did the British officer George Skovell, the chief of the cipher service of the army under the Duke of Wellington. His skill was especially evident in Spain and Portugal, occupied by French troops. Scovell managed to create an extensive rebel network on the territory of these states, engaged in the interception of French communications. And he and his colleagues could only decipher the sloppy and simple codes of the Napoleonic cryptographers. They were called petit chiffres and until 1811 did not present any difficulties for the people of Scovell at all. The code was only 50 values and was deciphered literally on the knee on the front line. If we add to the simplicity also the negligence of the French, it turns out that the orders and reports in the troops were actually in plain text. Later, in 1811, a more protected Portuguese army code, consisting of 150 values, appeared in Napoleon's troops. And everything would have worked out well for the French, but Skovell hacked it in two days. The unconditional findings of the British cryptographer include a new algorithm for using the British cipher, which was a variation of the book code. In order to crack this code, it was required to know which book to decipher the information.
Legendary crackers
Despite the fact that the initiative in cryptanalysis at the beginning of the 19th century was far from the French, there were still several "bright" moments in their history. So, in 1811, a new cipher was developed on the basis of the diplomatic code of the 18th century, in which there were already 1400 coding values. Moreover, the ciphers were ordered to deliberately litter the text with meaningless numbers so that life would not seem sweet to Scovelle. Indeed, for a year the British cryptanalyst could not do anything with this cipher, but only passively collected statistics. But the French would not be French if they did not allow a condescending attitude towards the enemy - they encrypted only the most important and secret parts of messages in a new way, the rest went almost in clear text. Eventually, the volume of information reached a threshold level and the cryptographers of England began to understand certain parts of the encrypted correspondence of the Napoleonic army. The turning point happened in 1812, when it was possible to intercept a letter from Joseph, brother of Napoleon and the king of Spain, which contained important information about the impending operation at Vittoria. The British partially read the letter, drew conclusions, won the battle and took possession of a copy of the cipher, which completely discredited him. Previously, the information obtained by Skovell's specialists made it possible to defeat the French at Oporto and Salamanca.
If the British were strong in operational cryptographic work, then the Austrians went down in history as the most capable perlustrators in Europe. Vienna's "black offices" could become the standard of this not the purest craft due to the high professionalism of the staff and the excellent organization of work. The working day of the black percussionists in Vienna began at 7 am, when sacks filled with correspondence destined for the embassies in Austria were brought to the office. Then the sealing wax was melted, the letters were taken out, the most important ones were copied, decrypted if necessary and carefully returned to the original envelopes. On average, all daily correspondence was processed in this way in just 2.5 hours and by 9.30 was sent to unsuspecting addressees. Not only French, but also British ambassadors in Austria suffered from such professionalism. For example, David Kahn in his book "Code Breakers" describes a curious case when a high-ranking English diplomat, as it were, casually complained to the chancellor that he was receiving rewritten copies of letters instead of the originals. To which the Austrian, who had lost his temper for a moment, said: "How awkward these people are!" What kind of people they were and what they were doing, the chancellor decided prudently not to elaborate.
From the above, it can be seen that France during Napoleon's time was somewhat weaker than its opponents in the art of cryptography and perlustration, which, of course, negatively affected the outcome of many confrontations. Russia was no exception, in which, before the invasion of the French, an effective service for encryption, cryptanalysis and interception of important enemy dispatches was created. The liberating character of the war for the Russian people was also of decisive importance. Thus, the French occupiers were extremely unsuccessful in recruiting local residents from prisoners in the vain hope of collecting valuable strategic information. An example is the story of the Moscow merchant Pyotr Zhdanov, who, together with his family, got into trouble in the city captured by the French. He was captured and, threatening to shoot his wife and children, as well as promising a stone house with a lot of money, he was sent on a special mission to the rear of the Russian army to scout the deployment and number of troops. The merchant, of course, agreed, but on the way he found his family, hid it from the French, crossed the front line and went to the headquarters of General Miloradovich. Then he betrayed everything he knew, met Kutuzov, received a gold medal from the emperor and made an invaluable contribution to the defeat of the French army. And this was just one page of the failures of the French on the fields of information warfare and the superiority of the enemy in this area.
