Partial answer You should arrest
everyone except Benoit, probably going after Michelle first for your own safety and then Judith because of the severity of what she is planning to do. ("The female of the species is deadlier than the male.") You might also want to congratulate Benoit on his forthcoming marriage and promotion.
(I have decrypted all the messages. Some further reasoning is required to figure out who's who. I'm in Let's begin with the middle of something else right now and will return to this laterdecryption.)
SoOK, so farlet's now see what inferences we knowcan draw. First of all,
Ettore EI'm going to take it that Benoit B = Misha, the recipient of message 2, is -- known Mazzini linksnot any sort of revolutionary despite his use of at least one false name, thoughsince apparently he is considering taking up a position at the Russian court. I'm not sure how justifiable this is, but I don'tthink we need it in order to get a solution. I think we also need to assume that no one is lying, no one is a double agent, there aren't any plots afoot other than the ones we know about, and words like "father" and "daughter" and "wedding" mean what they say rather than being code for other things. Maybe we can also assume that "Benoit"'s innocent communications with Russia are a complete explanation of the suspicious communications with that guarantees he'snation, so the other four nations mentioned are the ones we need to worry about.
Now
the "Marxist man" our Mazzinist(4) is not Benoit; neither is he Ettore, who is a known Mazzinist; so he must be Hans.
Michelle M --(The other two suspects are not plotting to assassinatemen.) And now Pantagruel, a "proud father" (4) and hence also a man, must be Ettore, the EmpressMazzinist. Likely
There is
a Blanquist plot funded from Sardinia. This can't involve Benoit (deemed innocent) or Michelle (whose associates are in Bavaria) or Ettore (German kingdomwho is a Mazzinist) or Hans (who is a Marxist).
Benoit B So this one is Judith.
At this point we know that
Ettore is a Mazzinist, Benoit is innocent, Hans is a Marxist and Judith is a Blanquist. Therefore Michelle is the Bakuninite anarchist.
Now, Michelle
is not plotting assassination -(message 1), pamphlet- Russiansmuggling (message 3), or extracting fugitives (message 3). So she is the one with the bomb plot.
And K89,
with the pamphlets and the Belgian connections, apparently actually called Mishais not Ettore (= Mikhailwho is Pantagruel) or Benoit (who is innocent) or Michelle (whose connections are Bavarian) or Judith (whose connections are Sardinian). So this one is Hans, no obvious plotting in messagethe Marxist.
K89 Now we've assigned countries to everyone other than Ettore, who must be the one with British connections.
This means,
by message 3, that Ettore is the one helping fugitives escape, and now we've assigned plots (or absence-of- possibly Marxistplots) to everyone but Judith, backingwhose Sardinian-funded Blanquist plot is apparently the assassination.
At this point the only thing we haven't figured out is a couple of the codenames:
Michelle and Judith are Norbert and Brumaire. But from Belgiummessage 3 we know that Brumaire isn't the anarchist, not Bakuninistand we have found that Michelle is the anarchist.
Brumaire So Judith is Brumaire, and Michelle is Norbert. -- not Bakuninist(Should it be surprising that Norbert turns out to be female?)
And now we know everything:
Ettore, also known as Pantagruel, is a Mazzinist running a British plot to smuggle fugitives out of France.
Bomb plot -- backingBenoit is not involved in the plots; he is a Russian nobleman travelling incognito, which explains the suspicious communications to and from BritainRussia.
Pantagruel -- male (so not Judith J)Michelle, not Blanquistalso known as Norbert, notis a Bakuninite anarchist funded from Italian stateby Bavarians, notplotting to blow up the town hall.
Hans, also known as K89, is a Marxist with Belgian connections plotting to smuggle subversive literature.
TheJudith, also known as Brumaire, is a Blanquist -- funded from Sardiniafor unknown reasons by some Sardinians in a plot to assassinate the Empress, an Italian statea plot that even the anarchists regard as unwise.
Some stereotypes are confirmed here:
the anarchists are running a bomb plot, Brumaire belongs to a specifically French revolutionary group, and the Marxists are the ones calling one another "comrade".