Hotel – Royal Champagne Hotel & Spa, Champillon

Much is made of the fact that the Royal Champagne was once an old Relais de Poste (coaching inn), but what does that mean?

The Romans had a state run courier service (Cursus publicis) and a variety of official postal services were established in European countries in the 15th C and 16th C. In France in the Middle Ages some families were accorded land (a fief) in return for being runners or foot messengers. In 1477 the king of France employed 230 mounted couriers, rich nobles might have 20 working for them, and lesser nobles might just have two or three.

The mercantile corporations of Italy had provided the most extensive and regular postal system of this period. Of particular importance were the links maintained from the mid-13th C between the great Italian commercial centres, such as Florence, Genoa, and Siena, and six important annual fairs held in the Champagne region. Two fixed dispatches were made to each of these fairs, the first to carry orders and commissions and the second to effect settlements. The service was carefully regulated. Conditions of acceptance, scales of payment, and timetables were laid down. The routes were fixed, and hostels were maintained along the routes. Since the Champagne fairs were attended by merchants from all over Europe, this postal system provided a valuable international network.

Over time in France the domestic messenger services change from being hereditary functions to being paid services. In 1380 foot messengers were paid between 5 and 10 francs a day to cover 30 km, but in times of war or with the risk of robbery they could be paid as much as 30 francs per day. Riders were paid a flat rate of 18 francs per day for a trip of about 50-60 km, and the horse was provided by their master. Short trips inside Paris could cost less than 1 franc, but long trips with an important and secret message could cost over 1,000 francs. Still in 1620 carrying letters was expensive, e.g. Paris-Rouen would cost 40-70 francs and Paris-Angers could cost 180 francs. During this period messengers could also work under contract, e.g. a fixed price of 38 francs per year for letters inside Paris.

In France Louis XI (1423-1483) set up a Royal Postal Service in 1464, and in England in 1516 Henry VIII (1491- 1547) appointed a Master of the Post to maintain regular postal services. These services were regular but not comprehensive or available to the public. The role of the courier in France was sufficiently important that they were only to use their horses to carry the messages of the king, upon pain of death. Inevitably the security provided along certain routes resulted in unofficial message services being set up in parallel. In 1635 Charles I (1600-1649) made the English Royal Mail service available to the public, and in 1654 Cromwell (1599-1658) granted a monopoly to an ‘Office of Postage’. In France the carrying of private mail was legalised in 1600, although the basis of a public service (e.g. fees and timetables) between the larger cities did not emerge until 1627.

By 1500 official letters were constantly moving between the capitals. In some places sworn messengers were used, in North Germany Knights of the Teutonic Order were made commander postmasters, and in South Germany butchers provided a ‘butcher post’ (Metzger Post). There was plenty of scope for innovation, and London was the first city to benefit from an urban delivery service, when William Dockwra (1635-1716) set up the Penny Post in 1680. He was so successful that he was prosecuted, and his service closed down and then reopened as part of the state postal system. A similar service was opened in Paris in 1759, but it was also quickly absorbed into the state postal system.

Alongside this, in the early 1600’s, French local councils, etc. started to certify people of good character as carriers of messages and dispatches. Some towns and cities paid a ‘master of messages’ to organise regular trips between local towns, etc. In some cities messengers organised themselves into corporations. At times the ‘Royal’ messengers were in competition with these private messengers, but generally until Louis XIII (1601-1543) there was little overlap between the different types of postal services. So anyone who wanted to transmit private correspondence just had to organise it themselves.

In France it was Pierre d’Alméras in 1615 who bought for 2.5 million francs the role of ‘général des posts‘. As an owner of stables he was able to provide fresh horses and go into competition with messengers using their own horses and travelling more slowly. By 1623 he had organised fixed delivery times between Paris and Bordeaux, Lyon and Toulouse, and he had installed a director of post in each city. He established mail for ordinary letters, leaving and arriving on fixed days, and the service rapidly became a noun with the phrase ‘la prochain ordinaire‘. In 1624 he had ‘maîtres des courriers‘ in each region and was paying his messengers (so they were no longer controlled by local councils). In 1627 he introduced a general set of postal tariffs, with taxes applied to letters and parcels moving between Paris and Bordeaux, Lyon, Toulouse and Dijon (taxes were proportional to weight and distance). As you can imagine the taxes were not well accepted by the public, since in the past they had the habit of bargaining with the messenger to get the best tariff.

In 1629 the French King replaced the role of ‘général des posts‘ with three ‘surintendants généraux des postes‘ and a network of ‘relais de France‘. We are not looking to create a complete history of the French postal service, so we can jump forward to when Louis XIV (1638-1715) granted a monopoly over postal services in Paris to Louis-Léon Pagot and Antoine Louis Rouillé. In fact, two different postal systems had slowly evolved. One was the foreign post which included a number of French ‘départements‘ and all the territories occupied by the French armies. The rest was leased to a ‘fermier général‘, the first being Pajot & Rouillé. By 1689 they were established in the ‘Hôtel de Villeroy‘ and through to 1738 they were operating 800 ‘relais postaux‘ all over France, and including Venice and Rome. They also exchanged mail with the postal service of the Thurn and Taxis family. Pajot & Rouillé were very secretive. They only used family members as post masters, and they systematically destroyed their records and accounts, etc. every two weeks.

We have to remember that the post was not a frequently used service. In 1693 only 40,000 letters a year moved between France and England, and at about the same time only 40 letters a day were being sent back and forth between Paris and Rome (deliveries twice per month). There was virtually no services between non-neighbouring countries, and many letters were posted through intermediaries, to be then sent on to the final destination. In 1653 Paris had only four mailboxes, including the ‘Hôtel des Postes’ (in 1716 there were 8 postboxes). Interestingly, tariffs were set by law, but it would appear that everyone was charging more than the official rate. One rate could be written on the letter, and then crossed out and replaced by a higher price to be paid by the recipient. Pre-franking was tried several times, but the clerks would just pocket the money and burn the letters. The ‘petite poste‘ inside Paris was established in 1760 for same-day delivery, and an additional 20 post offices were placed around the capital, with deliveries three time per day.

Interestingly, for the year 1829 more than 1.1 million letters were not delivered in France. About half of them were refused by the addressee, some had unknown addresses, some people had moved without a forwarding address, and 2,000 people had died leaving no next of kin.

In the 18th C the public had a choice between the post and stagecoaches. The cost of the stagecoach prohibited the shipping of small items, and the transfer of money was so expensive that all movements were made by banks (who charged 2% for transfers abroad). We mentioned above that the public mail was leased to a ‘fermier général‘ (the first being Pajot & Rouillé). In fact under the so-called Ancien Régime (ending 1789) post offices were on farms, and sometimes even held by people who would lease a farm so as to obtain the very lucrative post office rents. After the French Revolution there was an attempt to render the post more accessible and democratic, but in the period 1791 to 1801 the number of kilometres made by postal agents on foot, horseback or on carts, had only doubled. Certainly through to the 1830’s most smaller towns in France did not have a post office or daily distribution, and rural communities had to be satisfied with weekly deliveries.

So we can see that the ‘Maître de Poste‘ would have a monopoly and with his ‘postillons‘ he would rent out his horses according to an official tariff. There were obligations to always have a night light, and someone in attendance night and day so as not to slow down the mail. The early ‘relais de poste’ were situated on well defined itineraries. Distances were measured by a ‘poste‘ (about 9 km), a ‘demi-poste‘ and a ‘quart de poste‘. In 1798 (so after the French Revolution) there were 16 postal routes, including Paris to Mézières via Reims, and Paris to Strasbourg via Châlons-en-Champagne and Metz. Slowly the number of postal routes would rise to 41 before progressively being replaced by the train. However even in 1856 there were still 1,804 ‘relais de service’.