A large number of undeciphered, encrypted handwritten documents exist in historical archives, particularly from the late middle ages to the early 1800s. Many of these documents relate to political or diplomatic affairs. As of this writing few have been deciphered as previously only slow and laborious manual methods were available.
As modern methods and technology are just beginning to allow automated decipherment of these documents, there exists the possibility of finding new information that may revise our understanding of historical, and maybe historic, events.