Help Qualify This French (I Think) 1809 Letter.

I have this letter dated 1809 that I am trying to qualify as real. Think it is French as the town of bourges is stamped with a 17 that is assumed to be some rate if real. I read in my searches that private letters were not allowed until 1850 so I'm skeptical. It is one large piece of paper with the writing on one half then folded many time to end up about the size of a small envelope that has the address. Any help in qualifying & maybe a blurb about what the letter is about will be appreciated. Since there is no stamp I am assuming this is still the correct forum.

This is a quite normal French letter from 1809. 17 Bourges is the place it sent from. France was divided into numbered districts and 17 is the number of the district. ( You can see a list of these numbers at( https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste...7ais_de_1790 ).There is an about 2 inches high figure written over the address and that is is normally an indication of the amount due and this is probably a "2" indicating the amount due in decimes. 1 decime was equal to 10 centimes, so I there was a due of 20 centimes on this cover. Covers like this one are quite common so I think there is no risk that it is faked.

What on earth makes you think that private letters weren't allowed until 1850? The French postal system goes back hundreds of years.

As mon ami says, stampless covers are common, both before and after the introduction of postage stamps. Most of the ones you see are legal or commercial correspondence.

Thank you. It is surprising, to me anyway, that letters from that long ago are common. The writing itself is very pleasing to the eye also.

I suspect that lots of them were kept for ages in lawyer's offices, then came onto the market when they were finally cleared out.

Geoffa

This was on a web page I was reading while researching about the early postal system.

"Private Letters:
Private letters were only authorized in 1850"