These consisted of a piece of wood, hollowed out so that they could hold a small bottle in which aletter was placed, along with instructions for the finder topost it and a penny for a stamp.
There was a secret deciphering office in London, a successor to the Post Office's foreign letter office, and another code-breaking unit in the Admiralty, both of which cracked Napoleon's codes, as did the bureau noir attached to every European government (though the Austrians reckoned their best intelligence came from the emperor's pillow talk).
The commissioner is inviting MPs and other local leaders to strike up a dialogue with him either in person or in writing and pledges topost responses to his open letter on his website.