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The Post Spy, Part 2

This is the second part of the story of the sly post controller Christian Christoffer Erlund (1673-1754) who began his carreer as exiled killer, rose to be postmaster-genreal only to be dismissed without pension five years later.


At 9 o’clock on 8th March 1723 Povel Juel (1975-1723) was led to the scaffold on Nytorv. The executioner first chopped off his right hand and his head, then held up the head in front of the massive crowd and shouted, "This is the head of a traitor". The body was quartered and the pieces thrown into a cart and driven outside the western gate where the head was placed on a pole as a deterrent.

Two years earlier the ambitious and quarrelsome civil servant and poet, Povel Juel, had sent a letter to the king presenting his fabulous idea of colonizing Greenland, but to his great indignation this had been ignored as so many of his other letters to the king. As a consequence, he started to associate with Swedish and Gottorp contacts concerning possible Swedish participation in the project, but these contacts attracted attention in Copenhagen and in all discretion one of the King’s most trusted men, post controller Christian Erlund, was put on the case.

Erlund on the Case
This turned out to be a wise thing to do. Erlund was an expert on intercepting, opening, and copying sealed letters without the receiver smelling the rat. Soon he intercepted a letter proving that the Greenland project had developed into a plot against the Danish state. Juel had written to the Russian tsar suggesting him not only Greenland, but also Iceland and the Faroe Islands. In the enclosed project (most likely elaborated by Juel’s fellow conspirator from Gottorp) the tsar’s son-in-law, Karl Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp, was offered Norway. And that was high treason!

Without hesitation Erlund carried out a search of Juel’s residence. Juel tried desperately to throw all his draft letters into the stove, but Erlund found one and showed it to Juel. Juel snatched it and tried to swallow the part of the letter which carried his name, but Erlund grasped his scarf and tightened it so that Juel was suffocating and thus forced him to spit it out. On 6th March 1723 after interrogation and a trial, at which Juel’s defence was completely ignored by a commission of which Erlund was a member, Juel was sentenced to "lose his honour, life, and property" and subsequently tortured brutally – again in the presence of Erlund.

On Trial
To Erlund, on the other hand, the case came more than convenient. During the past years serious accusations threatening his position had been made against him. From 1717 accusations of embezzlement against the post controller started to come in and a commission was appointed to investigate his circumstances.

According to the accusations Erlund should e.g. have sent hundreds of items by the post free of charge and in 1717-18 have tried to make his subordinates lower the rates to reduce the revenues. Because at this time it was being considered to lease the Post Service to Erlund and the lower revenues would, of course, result in a lower leasing amount for him to pay.

In addition he was accused of opening letters, but on 20th March the king announced to the commission that they should dig no further into that case. For obvious reasons since Erlund’s opening of letters was the very core of his secret intelligence work for the king. It became worse when his own employee, post clerk Bendix Jorgensen, accused him for having opened the king’s letters as well. Jorgensen, who turned out to be behind most of the accusations, claimed that he had once surprised Erlund fiddling with a letter from the King and later seen Erlund copying the letter.

Master of Intrigues
On another occasion Erlund had asked Jorgensen to finish a copy of one of the king’s letters which Erlund himself had been working on. The sly post clerk had apparently learned from his master. In order to keep the letter in Erlund’s handwriting as later evidence, he had finished it, written a new one and finally overturned the ink pot on the table. When Erlund came back, the clerk apologized for having ruined Erlund’s copy and had therefore made him a new one.

The post controller was now in serious trouble. He offered to the commission to take an oath on his innocence, but the commission refused due to the weight of the circumstantial evidence. Within the commission there was disagreement. Two members wanted him convicted whereas one wanted him acquitted. The case was presented to the king, but suddenly the case was given an unexpected twist: Bendix Jorgensen withdrew all his accusations against Erlund.

The reason was that Erlund had a hold on his firmer employee. Jorgensen had also opened letters and among other things kept a bill from Norway for 117 pound sterling. The theft sent Jorgensen to prison. Here Erlund succeeded in intercepting part of his opponent’s evidence by bribing his fellow prisoners and the guard as well as tricking a number of letters out of his father.

But above all, Erlund managed to lead Jorgensen to believe that he would have him pardoned if only Jorgensen would withdraw the accusations against Erlund. Jorgensen kept his part of the deal, withdrew the accusations, and on 21st April 1721 he was sentenced "as a well-deserved punishment to himself and as an example of disgust to those similarly disposed to lose his life in the gallows".

Postmaster-General for a Short Time
The commission was now left with a number of accusations and a strange impression. But Frederick IV stuck to his man and on 17th April 1722 he issued an ordinance proclaiming that "in view of the determination and the faithful services that Erlund has shown us during the last time of war, the process against him on the occasion of Bendix Jorgensen’s accusations shall be revoked". Erlund was cleared and the case against Povel Juel the year after elevated him to his former power. During the subsequent years more royal ordinances were issued clearing the post spy against accusations of letter espionage from the outset. In 1725 he was appointed postmaster-general, (the leasing plans for the Post Service had been scrubbed), and in 1727 Erlund established the head office of the Post Service in Kobmagergade obliquely opposite the present post yard. The year after Erlund’s post yard burned down and a lot of the accounts which might otherwise have incriminated him were lost.

Erlund got away with so much because the king trusted him – or feared him? At the accession of the new King in 1730 the postmaster-general was immediately dismissed without a pension and all his documents seized. He died in Sonderborg in 1752, however, after having been granted some rehabilitation in the form of a pension and from 1744 the title of titular Councillor of State.



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