"Why don't you just keep riding on your own, then?"
"I'm not sure that I can. It will be one thing if they let the private messenger system die out naturally. It will be a lot different if the reformed CPE post offices attack the private couriers, physically, by force, the way they attacked the municipal messengers who worked for the city of Cologne, back when the Thurn and Taxis post office was set up there."
"Yes," Crispin agreed. "If the new CPE post office system turns out to be anything like the way the Thurn and Taxis run the imperial post, it won't appreciate competition. A monopoly is a monopoly, after all."
"If I have to work for the postmaster, being nothing but one little cog on a huge set of gears grinding away to move the mail all over the CPE, what kind of a job is that? What would be the joy in that?" Martin lamented to Crispin. "Riding back and forth, at top speed, over the same stretch of road, day in and day out? Never seeing anything but the inside of the postal station. If that happens, I might as well have stayed in Frankfurt and made belts for Uncle Reichard."
"You don't have to ride a short route. Frankfurt is certainly one of the largest officia in the Germanies, if it isn't the biggest of all by now. It's not just a station for changing horses; it receives the mail, re-sorts it, distributes it out to a half-dozen different routes. If you could get on here, in central . . . ?"
"I don't want to, Crispin. I just don't. I want to be on the road. A man might as well be stuck in Frankfurt making belts as stuck in Frankfurt sorting mail."
That evening Martin sat on his bed. No use wasting the candle; he blew it out.
Thinking. Reminding himself of all the reasons why he didn't want to do what Crispin so clearly thought was the sensible thing.
For a century, already, the imperial postal system had emphasized speed and efficiency. "Public, regular, reliable, and rapid" as the advertisements read. Most post routes ran once a week—a few of the busier ones twice. The ideal span from one post stop to the next—from the perspective of a horse, at least—was from eight to ten miles (a mile being, of course, a quite variable concept from place to place). In the real world, where budgets were a factor, the routes of the imperial post, governed by the terms of a 1597 imperial proclamation, had post houses every fifteen miles or so where the rider handed the bags over to a new messenger and fresh horse. The rider stayed there overnight, picked up a set of bags that came in from somewhere else, and went back where he came from.
This distance was so set that people referred to it as "una posta." The main route from Rome to Brussels had ninety-six post stations; the one from Antwerp to Nürnberg not quite so many. Customers could buy printed schedules and maps of the routes, as well as fee schedules, at any post office. They were posted on placards in the offices, as well.
The point was that the businessmen in any town could rely on the regular arrival of the postal courier, blowing his horn to announce that he was there. It was scheduled. "Mail day" structured the life of the towns that had post offices. Learned men, merchants, bureaucrats, clergy, and ordinary people had all become accustomed to being able to send out their correspondence on time, carried by someone whose actual job was to get it where it was supposed to go.
The imperial post and the Swedish field post were built on the assumption that horses and riders could maintain the desired speed for only a limited distance without damaging their future usefulness. Wearing out a horse was fine for emergencies, when speed was of the essence. The military field post that van den Birghden ran out of Frankfurt for the Swedes now could get a message from Frankfurt to Hamburg in five days. Reliably. On the Imperial Road as far as Eisenach. Five days for two hundred fifty miles; twenty post stops where the letter was passed off from one horse and rider pair to the next. And a lot of tenacious negotiation between the postmaster and the rulers of all the various territories along the way to get the routes established and the stations set up, but now the mail left each city regularly, twice a week, in addition to the special letters that were carried by Swedish dragoons. Der Postschwede, people called those men. The "mail Swede."
That was an amazing achievement. Martin could see why a Swedish general might want to get a message from Frankfurt to Hamburg fast. Once it got to Hamburg, after all, it could go out to Stockholm by boat. Although now, with the famous up-timer radio, maybe they could transmit the essence of the matter that way and let the post riders proceed at a more reasonable pace. But a lot of urgent things still had to be on paper—documents with signatures and seals, bank drafts, commissions for military officers.