In fact, Britain had captured thousands of Enigma machines, and distributed them among its former colonies, who believed that the cipher was as secure as it had seemed to the Germans. The British did nothing to disabuse them of this belief, and routinely deciphered their secret communications in the years that followed.

Questions of this sort were particularly pertinent for the traditional clients of news in medieval society: Europe's rulers and merchants. They might study pamphlets to take the temperature of public debate, but they needed their own sources of news for more precise intelligence. For those in positions of power, the confidential despatch remained t