THE HOUSE OF ROTHSCHILD the creation of that Rothschild fortune, amounting in a The chief contributions to that vast capital, made by Two years later Wellington's decisive victory over Napoleon gave Rothschild the opportunity of surpassing all his earlier financial strokes. The facts concerning this are so closely interwoven with fable that I was cautioned many years ago by the first Lord Rothschild against adopting in detail any of the current versions, but was told there might be substantial truth in the account given me, through A. W. Kinglake's good offices, by Adolphe Thiers, of the manner in which the financier first heard of the English success. ing at Ghent in a house whose grounds adjoined those Rothschild was then stayof the villa belonging to the royal exile, Louis XVIII. Here the founder of New Court stationed himself so that through the window opening on the gravel walk he could see what passed in the king's Vol. 231.-No. 459. 2 F room. At last he saw the entrance of the messenger who brought tidings from the battlefield. Further, he perceived that the man knelt down at the royal feet, as one doing homage to a sovereign who had come by his own again. That was enough. All reports to the contrary notwithstanding, Napoleon had fallen; and Nathan Rothschild, with this priceless knowledge, returned to London with all the speed that courage and capital could secure. There he took his usual corner in the Royal Exchange (the building with which Jerman had replaced Gresham's structure and which was itself destroyed in 1838). Alarming war news had produced a depression that gradually became a panic; nothing of reassurance or hope was to be gathered from the appearance of Nathan Mayer Rothschild, who alone in the city of London knew the facts. As a consequence every one began to sell Consols, the only Government stock then dealt in, except the lotteries with their tickets. As fast as the public sold, Rothschild, through his agents, bought. Gradually the truth began to leak out; the price of the securities rebounded; and Rothschild readily found good customers for the stock bought by him on the falling market. In the course of some hours he thus realised sums the exact total of which has never been published and was perhaps never certainly known. The whole Napoleonic period stimulated Nathan Rothschild to that succession of far-reaching schemes that first won for him the description the Napoleon of Finance.' 'Rothschild and I,' the Duke of Wellington is reported, perhaps fabled, to have said, 'both owe something of our success to the gift of knowing what is in progress on the other side of a wall.' Not only England but our chief ally, Prussia, must need-Rothschild foresaw-large supplies before their decisive triumph could follow the escape from Elba in March 1815. In London, Vansittart, still Chancellor of the Exchequer, was in daily communication with New Court. Berlin had decided that the only thing to do was to send the Finance Minister, Bülow, loan-hunting in London. In this way began the earliest direct relations between the Prussian capital and New Court. A transaction so momentous called for the united action of all the brothers. During the first quarter of the 19th century the official records, digested in Mr Balla's book, give eighteen million as the amount of Rothschild advances to continental States in the war with France. Reviewing these operations in 1827, Herries, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, estimated at half a million the saving effected by the Rothschilds for England by preventing a fall in the value of public securities; the brothers,' said Herries, 'deserve the highest praise for their efforts in the public service. Their consequent profit was secured honestly and openly gained. 6 The conclusion of a European peace found Prussia drained by the war and at her wit's end for replenishing her exchequer. By this time Nathan Rothschild was spoken of in the City as almost dictating the rate of exchange. He needed little, if any, family assistance for a further loan of five millions to Prussia in 1818. He had not only stored an annually increasing number of millions for almost indefinite and automatic multiplication by his posterity; he had practically defined as well as illustrated the family methods of the future, and had set in order the personal agencies by which he proved that, if knowledge is power, it can also be made an instrument of wealth. For a sufficient supply of European intelligence when, as yet, newspapers had little to convey, he depended not only on well-trained flocks of carrier pigeons, but on interviews with the captains of ships from foreign parts, newly berthed in the London docks. Whatever information, from the old world or the new, there might be reached him first. His informants spared themselves any attempt to mislead him, not only because they found in him the best of paymasters but because they knew his penetration would defy any attempt at fraud. From the close of the 18th century, through the first decade and a half of the 19th, Nathan Rothschild's most instructive and confidential agent was Friedrich von Gentz, who, born at Breslau in 1764, began life in the Prussian Civil Service, then attached himself to Austrian diplomacy in general, to Metternich in particular, and became secretary not only at the preliminary conferences but, in 1814, at the Congress of Vienna itself. Still earlier, William Pitt had found in him a discreet friend and Napoleon an incorruptible foe. His life was passed in the most brilliant and powerful society of Europe, as well as i other coulisses than those of diplomacy; for he was free of the green-room at the Comédie Française, and there were personal reasons for his delight when in 1830 he watched Fanny Elssler's triumph at Berlin. Never having believed in the Bonapartist Star, he was abused by Napoleon for a mercenary scribe.' Without private fortune or popularity of pen, he was compelled to find the best market he could for his writings and for his extraordinary knowledge of affairs. Alderman Beckford used to complain that he had lost by speculating on the strength of the information he received from Lord Chatham. Rothschild at least, as regards his relations with Gentz, was conscious of no such grievance. That,' was the capitalist's lament over Gentz's grave, was a friend indeed. It would not be believed what large sums he cost me; for he had only to write upon a bill what he wished to have, and he had it instantly. Now I see for the first time what we have lost; and I would give three times as much to call him back to life.' The words, 'He had only to write and had it instantly,' were not lost upon Thackeray, who dipped into Varnhagen Von Ense's voluminous memoirs, and found in them hints for a satire on the Croesuses of New Court, against whom he nourished a prejudice. Thus in Codlingsby,' the burlesque on Disraeli's first masterpiece, Mendoza's twenty-fourth cashier, Aminadab, has a house in Grosvenor Square, because, as his employer approvingly says, 'he is fond of display, and all my people may have what money they want.' Reviewing these ancient pleasantries now, one can scarcely avoid a feeling of surprise at the resentment they originally aroused or at the lifelong bitterness felt by Disraeli towards Thackeray. Some of Thackeray's jests were fair and commonplace enough. I trade in pennies and in millions,' is a description of the Rothschild methods closely resembling that given by Gentz, whose account of Nathan's rise includes the smaller miscellaneous transactions that had first engaged him when hovering between the Lancashire cotton capital and the metropolis of the Empire. Before his death on the eve of the Victorian Era, Nathan Rothschild had laid the foundations of the family fame and power with other materials than wealth alone. Fidelity to the paternal tradition of family union in all great enterprises, caution and foresight, a readiness to give financial advice to smaller States even when they had no occasion to be borrowers, and an avoidance of merely sensational strokes whatever the potential profit-such is Gentz's epitome of the secret of New Court success. The family caution showed itself in a general refusal to deal with States considered financially unsound, like Spain and the South American Republics, though it did not prevent Nathan's extensive transactions with the Brazilian Government in 1824. In that year Brazil had applied for a loan to another banking house, but the interest asked was so high as abruptly to end the negotiations. Rothschild then came to the rescue with 2,200,000l. at once; and five years later another 800,000l. were forthcoming, on the condition that part of it should be reserved for the unpaid interest on the earlier loan. By this time the Rothschild name had become a synonym for wealth on both sides of the Atlantic. Thus, when the news of Sir Walter Scott's crash was given by his friend Morritt of Rokeby at the Brighton Pavilion in 1826, Scott ruined!' exclaimed Lord Dudley. Then let every man to whom he has given months of delight send his sixpence and he will rise to-morrow morning richer than Rothschild.' 6 To the social observer the closing scenes in the first act of the Rothschild drama conveyed a deepening sense alike of splendour and power. His son's marriage to his first cousin was the cause of Nathan's last journey to Frankfort, which in his later years he frequently visited, always taking Paris on his way home. Like his brother Solomon of Vienna, he had there a magnificent residence, forming for years a social centre of international statesmanship and finance. Here it was that Talleyrand made a remark prophetically appropriate to 20th-century costume. Two young ladies were much observed for their dress, which left their necks and ankles conspicuously exposed. The sayer of good things murmured in Nathan's ear, 'Les robes de ces demoiselles ressemblent à un mauvais jour d'hiver, qui commence trop tard et finit trop tôt.' This was said at Nathan's ball in his French palace, whose beauties elicited from a guest a compliment to the hostess. 'If,' replied the lady, 'you |