CHAP. IX.
Ways to write privately to ones Friends.
THose who have been besieged have contrived several ways of conveying intel∣ligence to their friends; not daring to trust their affairs to the tongue of a mes∣senger, they write in cyphers many times, and conceal them several ways. The cyphers are made according to every mans fancy, and the ways of concealing them are divers: some have writ on the in-side of a scabard of a Sword; others have put their Letters up in Paste, baked it, and then given it for sustenance to the messenger that is to carry it: some have hid them in their privities; some in the collar of the messenger's dog.
There is another very useful and ingenious way, and that is by writing an ordinary Letter about your private affairs, and afterwards betwixt every two lines to write your intrigues with a certain kind of water that will never be discovered but by dipping it in∣to other water, or by holding it to the fire; and by so doing the Letters will be visible. And this trick has been very subtilly practised in our times, in which a certain person having a desire to signifie a secret to some of his friends, and not daring to trust it to a messenger, he sent out Letters of Excommunication written very formerly, but interlined as above∣said, and caused them to be fixed to the doors of the Churches, which being known to his friends by some private marks, they understood the whole business: and this is a very good way, for he who carries it may be deceived, and he that writes it is in no great danger.
There are a thousand other ways invented according to every mans fancy and wit. But it is much easier to write to those who are block'd up in a Town, than for those who are besieged to write to their friends abroad, because these Letters cannot be conveyed but by somebody who must pretend to run away out of the Town, which is a hard and a dan∣gerous thing, if the enemy be any thing careful. But 'tis otherwise with Letters to be sent into a Town, for a man has a thousand occasions to come into a Leaguer, where he may watch his opportunity, and slip into the Town.