CHAPTER V — SUPREMACY (1836-49)

 

In January 1838 Benjamin Disraeli, a newly elected member of Parliament, attended a concert in London crowded with important people including the Duke of Wellington. ‘But’, he wrote to his future bride, Mrs Wyndham Lewis, ‘the most picturesque group was the Rothschilds, the widow [Lionel’s mother] still in mourning, two sons, some sisters and, above all, the young bride or rather wife from Frankfurt, universally admired, tall, graceful, dark and dear, a robe of yellow silk, a hat and feathers, with a sort of Sevigné beneath magnificent pearls; quite a Murillo.’[53]

The widowed Mrs Nathan had just moved into Gunnersbury Park, the elegant country house buried deep in the countryside of Acton, yet only eight miles from Hyde Park Comer, which her husband had bought a few months before his death for £20,000. The residence had once belonged to George n’s daughter, Princess Amelia, a sister of William of Hesse’s much neglected wife. As it was much too large, Mrs Nathan asked Lionel and his wife to share it with her, and to take over the running of the place.

Lionel was very different from his pugnacious outspoken father, who had lived for work and prided himself on his disdain for Society. A quiet person with a puckish sense of humour, he was a conformist not a rebel, a retiring man with occasional flashes of wit and a strong streak of snobbishness. In 1836 he applied to the British sovereign for permission for his brothers and himself to style themselves ‘Baron’, the honour bestowed upon them by the Austrian Emperor in 1822, which Nathan had so grandly ignored. A few months later Queen Victoria mounted the throne, and as her relations — George iv and his brothers — had borrowed large sums of money from the Elector of Hesse, through the services of Nathan Rothschild, she undoubtedly was well acquainted with the family name and pleased to grant the request. She gave her consent in 1838.

Lionel’s desire to use the barony was understandable. But twelve years later, when his mother died, he did something quite unexpected. He laid her to rest in a grave beside her husband: and at one fell swoop embellished both parents with the titles that they had disdained to use when alive. On his mother’s tomb he placed the following inscription: Baroness Hannah de Rothschild

Relict of the late Baron Nathan Mayer de Rothschild

It is not strange that the Rothschilds, richer than any family before them, said to be worth an aggregate of £200,000,000, should have had magic for young Mr Disraeli who had no sense about money and was always running into debt. He struck up a friendship with Lionel which became one of the deep attachments of his life. Always present at Rothschild weddings, funerals and receptions, he frequently alluded to the family in the flowery language so natural to him. ‘A delightful fete at Gunnersbury — Madame de Rothschild mère … A beautiful park and a villa worthy of an Italian Prince … military bands, and beautiful grounds, temples and illuminated walks … all the world of grandeur present … I got well waited on by our friend Amy, who brought me some capital turtle, which otherwise I should have missed …’[54]

Lionel lavished a great deal of time and money on Gunnersbury and as the years progressed the lakes and follies were linked by exquisite paths, and flowerbeds in the form of baskets rimmed with heliotropes. In one comer was a spectacular Japanese garden complete with stone bridges, rivulets, bamboo seats, palms and temples. ‘Marvellous,’ said the Mikado’s ambassador on his first visit to England. ‘We have nothing like it in Japan.’

Mrs Nathan’s delight in Lionel’s innovations was interrupted when her twenty-two-year-old daughter, Hannah, walked into her bedroom and told her that she wanted to marry Mr Henry Fitzroy. The young man was tall, attractive, a brother of the Earl of Southampton, a Deputy Lieutenant for the County of Northampton and a prospective member of Parliament. But he was not a Jew. Therefore the idea was preposterous. Terrible scenes ensued, but Mrs Nathan held the trump cards. Nathan Rothschild had been so angry when the Prince de Clary had asked for Hannah’s hand that he had added a clause to his will that his daughters would be disinherited if they married without the consent of their mother or brothers.

Nevertheless Hannah was so deeply in love that Mrs Nathan finally compromised. Fitzroy must go abroad for six months; if, at the end of the time, Hannah was still determined to marry him, the family would reconsider the matter.

Hannah not only remained doggedly fixed in purpose but according to her brother, Nathaniel, began to pine away. At last Mrs Nathan relented and the marriage took place at St George’s, Hanover Square, on 29 April 1839. However, the only member of the family to attend the ceremony was Nathaniel, who thought it a sorry affair to see Hannah in a simple morning dress instead of traditional satin. Even worse, instead of wedding presents, she received from her cousins letters of withering contempt.

The morning of the wedding Lionel left the house for New Court bidding his sister a cold ‘good day’. Mrs Nathan also left the house but came back, tears streaming down her face. Calling Hannah to her, she said that she had decided to accompany her to the church. It would not do to ride in a splendid Rothschild coach, so a common ‘four-wheeler’ was hailed in the street. The carriage clattered along Piccadilly, through Berkeley Square, across Bond Street, finally arriving at the side entrance of St George’s. Fitzroy was on the pavement waiting for her. He opened the carriage door and helped her out, while Mrs Nathan slightly rose in her seat and made a friendly gesture. Then she turned away. A few minutes later Hannah was standing between her brother, Nathaniel, and Henry Fitzroy, while the sound of the four-wheeler carrying Mrs Nathan home faded into the grey morning air. Hannah’s marriage was happy but the family never forgave her for abandoning the faith of her forefathers. Indeed, years later, when her poor little son, Arthur, fell from his pony and after months of paralysis died tragically, the cousins interpreted it as ‘the punishment of God’.

*

The Rothschild daughters, however, were a secondary consideration in Nathan’s last will and testament. Echoing the same theme as his father before him, he exhorted his sons to eschew all quarrels, remarking that it was a matter of complete indifference to him whether one had £50,000 more than another. And, most important of all, as the five Rothschild banks were to remain a single unit, the sons were always to defer to the superior wisdom of their four uncles, and never to embark on business ventures without their approval.

The four ‘uncles’ had all moved into palaces where they entertained the grandest people of the day, a natural consequence of the power each had acquired through Nathan’s direction. Amschel was secretary of the German Confederation of Frankfurt and financier of Prussia; Carl was overlord of the Italian peninsula; Salomon the mainstay of the Habsburg Empire and the Holy Alliance.

Yet James was Nathan’s rightful successor. The mantle dropped naturally upon his shoulders and no one questioned the inheritance. He not only outshone all his brothers in brains, energy and splendour, but Paris provided the perfect setting for the haute finance of the new, engine-driven era. Although London was the world’s chief money market, and although England was far more advanced industrially than any other nation, Louis-Philippe, the Citizen King of France, turned Paris into a banker’s paradise.

Marx and Tocqueville, the two most intelligent sociological observers of the day, hit upon the same phrase to describe the July Monarchy. It was a ‘joint stock company’, an ‘industrial combine, run for the profit of the shareholders’. The shareholders, of course, were a few hundred thousand people ‘with a paw in the trough of power’. No one had ever envisaged such an era of speculation and corruption; and James de Rothschild moved complacently at the centre. The French socialist, Alexandre Weill, wrote bitterly: There is but one power in Europe and that is Rothschild. His satellites are a dozen other banking firms; his soldiers, his squires, all respectable men of business and merchants; and his sword is speculation. Rothschild is a consequence that was bound to appear; and if it had not been a Rothschild, it would have been someone else. He is, however, by no means an accidental consequence, but a primary consequence, called into existence by the principles which have guided the European States since 1813. Rothschild had need of the States to become a Rothschild, while the States on their side required Rothschild. Now, however, he no longer needs the State, but the State still has want of him.[55]

There was no doubt that King Louis-Philippe relied on the Baron. He was genuinely grateful for James’s stupendous and successful efforts in quieting Metternich, but he was also eager that James should invest — and increase — his private fortune. He gave him a monopoly of Government loans, and a cascade of contracts and concessions. Then he invited him to handle his private investments with the tacit understanding that the funds would multiply with remarkable rapidity. Even Prince Metternich, who had done Salomon plenty of favours in return for services rendered, appeared to be dismayed by the flamboyant alliance between monarch and plutocrat.

The House of Rothschild [he said] plays a much bigger role in France than any foreign government, with the possible exception of England. There are, of course, reasons for it, which to me naturally appear neither good nor morally gratifying. Money is the great motive force in France, and corruption which is in practice the most important factor in our modem system of representative Government — it is quite openly reckoned with.[56]

Heinrich Heine, the German poet, whose ancestors once upon a time had lived in the Frankfurt ghetto with the Rothschilds, watched with fascination.

A few hundred years ago [he wrote] a King would quite simply have pulled M. Rothschild’s teeth out by way of inducing him to consent to a loan. Ah! well, the native ethic of the Middle Ages has happily been carried downstream by the Revolution and now Rothschild the Baron and Knight of the Order of Isabella can calmly go for a walk in the Tuileries whenever he is so disposed without fearing that the hard-pressed monarch will touch a single one of his teeth.[57]

Heine was a frequent guest at James’s house, and when the latter moved a few doors away into a new house on the Rue Laffitte he wrote that ‘the palace … unites everything which the spirit of the 16th century could conceive and the money of the 19th century could pay for … It is the Versailles of a financial potentate …’ Benjamin Disraeli, who also attended a ball, marvelled at the ‘unrivalled palace with a great retinue of servants, and liveries more gorgeous than the Tuileries, and pineapples plentiful as blackberries …’[58] The beautiful Baroness Betty was such an accomplished hostess that invitations to Rothschild parties were as eagerly sought as royal summonses. The guests were carefully chosen, the men for their names and positions, the women for their elegance and beauty.

James was a good-natured, ebullient character, described by Disraeli as ‘a happy mixture of the French dandy and the orange boy’. Although he liked to see the aristocracy gliding through his house he was even more proud of his friendship with artists and writers such as Rossini, Georges Sand, Honoré de Balzac. These people could tease James with impunity. When Eugène Delacroix, the painter, went into ecstasies over his face and asked him if he would pose as a beggar as he had ‘exactly the right, hungry expression’, James roared with laughter and assented. The following morning, dressed in rags, the Baron rang the bell of Delacroix’s studio. A young artist who was serving as the painter’s assistant was so moved by the visitor’s pitiful appearance that he slipped him a franc. The next day a liveried servant brought the kind young man a letter: ‘Dear Sir, You will find enclosed the capital which you gave me at the door to M. Delacroix’s studio, with the interest and compound interest on it — a sum of ten thousand francs. You can cash the cheque at any bank whenever you like. James de Rothschild.’

James’s fortune was now estimated at something between £40,000,000 and £50,000,000, a fact which so overawed people that they fawned over him. It afforded Heine infinite amusement.

I like best to visit the Baron in his office [he wrote] where, as a philosopher, I can observe how people bow and scrape before him. It is a contortion of the spine which the finest acrobat would find difficult to imitate. I saw men double up as if they had touched a Voltaic battery when they approached the Baron. Many are overcome with awe at the door of his office, as Moses once was on Mount Horeb, when he discovered that he was on holy ground. Moses took off his shoes and I am quite certain that a lot of these financial agents would do the same if they did not fear that the smell of their feet would be unpleasant to him.

On another occasion Heine was even more caustic.

I went to see M. de Rothschild, and saw a gold-laced lackey bringing the baronial chamber pot along the corridor. Some speculator from the Bourse, who was passing reverently lifted his hat to the impressive vessel … I have committed the name of the man to memory. I am quite sure that he will become a millionaire in the course of time.[59]

Yet it was not easy to be a Croesus. No matter how generously James and Betty gave to charity — and their donations were extensive — no matter how warm their hospitality, there were always those who delighted in recounting anecdotes to show how mean they were. For instance, when James refused to commission Horace Vernet to paint his portrait on the ground that the artist was asking too much money, Vernet sent him a message saying that he was painting him gratis. In his famous picture On the Way to Smala Vemet depicts a Jew, tom between fear and avarice, making way with a box of gold under his arm: and the features are those of the Baron.

Honoré de Balzac borrowed money from James almost as soon as he met him but was one of the few people who repaid the debt without slandering the lender. Instead, he dedicated a charming story to him entitled Roueries d’un créancier. Georges Sand, on the other hand, delighted in telling how she accosted the Baron at a charity bazaar and asked him to buy a bottle of scent for five thousand francs. ‘What would I do with scent?’ chaffed the banker. ‘But if you give me your autograph, I’ll sell it and we’ll split the proceeds.’ Georges Sand complied. On a piece of paper she wrote: ‘Receipt for two thousand francs for the poor oppressed Poles. Georges Sand.’ Baron James paid up. Heine, who was standing near him, put his arm around the Baron’s shoulder. ‘For a great sorrow it is always difficult to find words.’[60]

*

James never allowed his glamorous social life to interfere with business. Together with Salomon he plunged his money into railways; and by the 1840s the two brothers were recognized as the railway tycoons of the continent. Nathan had been the first to advise the family to invest in the new form of transport. He himself had missed the chance to make a fortune in England, for despite the fact that the locomotive had sprung into being under his very nose, he had misjudged its marvellous future. Its precursor was Robert Fulton’s steamboat, the Clermont, which chugged down the Hudson in 1807. In England a coal miner by the name of George Stephenson began to dream of an engine that would drive a land machine, not a boat; something that would run on iron rails and haul coal from his mine. He was allowed to experiment and in the 1820s a track was opened from Stockton to Darlington to carry coal from the Durham mines.

At first many people, including Nathan, derided the notion that anything so constricted as a locomotive could replace the flexibility of nature’s horse. No doubt the scepticism stemmed from a psychological foreboding that an age of movement would destroy the security of the few. ‘Railways will only encourage the lower classes to move about needlessly,’ remarked the Duke of Wellington. Nicholas Wood, on the other hand, who was regarded as a ‘railway expert’, felt that Wellington was much too optimistic about the locomotive. ‘I should not dream of telling everyone that the ridiculous expectation, or rather prophecies, of the enthusiastic speculators could possibly be realized, and that we shall see steamcoaches travelling at a speed of 12, 16,18 or 20 miles an hour. Nobody could do more harm … than by spreading abroad this kind of nonsense.’[61]

For some time the speed of trains was paralysed by the fact that a law required a postillion to ride in front of the locomotive to warn people of the approaching monster. But in 1830, when the Liverpool-Manchester railway was opened, all doubts about the future of the locomotive came to an end. In 1837 Charles Greville had his first ride on a train.

The first sensation is a slight degree of nervousness and a feeling of being run away with, but a sense of security soon supervenes, and the velocity is delightful. Town after town, one park and chateau after another, are left behind with the rapid variety of a moving panorama … it certainly renders all other travelling … tedious by comparison.[62]

However, Flaubert, the great French novelist, refused to be impressed and complained of the ennui of speed. ‘After five minutes I bay with boredom. They think it’s a lost dog shut in the carriage. It isn’t though, it’s M. Flaubert groaning.’

By the 1830s dozens of private companies had sprung into being, and Nathan Rothschild sadly realized that he had listened to the wrong voices. As it was too late for him to acquire a worthwhile holding in England he wrote to his brothers in Austria, Germany and France pointing out that the Continent was virgin soil, and that in his opinion railways were bound to reap vast profits.

Salomon in Vienna was particularly receptive as he already had been approached by Professor Riepel of the Viennese Polytechnic Institute, who had worked many years in the Vitkowitz iron-works is Silesia. Riepel wanted to build a railway to transport minerals from the mines of Galicia to Vienna, a distance of 60 miles. After receiving Nathan’s letter Salomon sent the Professor to England to write a report for him.

Nothing much happened for five years, but in 1835 Salomon applied to the Emperor Ferdinand of Austria for a concession to build a railway that would carry Galician salt and Silesian coal to Vienna. The newspapers got wind of the request and a storm of protest followed. Dozens of experts wrote articles claiming that the human respiratory system would not stand a speed of fifteen miles an hour; that travellers would have to be accompanied by doctors to prevent them from spurting blood from nose, mouth and ears; that they would be suffocated passing through tunnels more than sixty metres long; and if they survived these hazards they would undoubtedly be driven mad by the noise of passing trains. A few medical journals were even more horrific: men might commit suicide, women lapse into sexual orgies.

Fortunately Prince Metternich was in favour of granting Baron von Rothschild the concession; and the Emperor Ferdinand obediently signed the necessary document. ‘Hail to the Monarch’, Salomon wrote, ‘who has most graciously deigned to take this decision in the interests of the welfare of his people!’

Salomon did not have a clear run. The banking house, Sina, soon received a licence to build a southern track from the Adriatic Sea to Vienna. Salomon countered by sending the Emperor a progress report of the Rothschild track — known as the Vienna-Bochnia line — which ended: The most obedient and loyal servant of Your Majesty feels that he may venture in all humility most respectfully to request Your Majesty that you may be graciously pleased to permit that the Vienna Bochnia railway shall be allowed to bear the auspicious name of ‘Kaiser Ferdinand Nordbahn’.[63]

Not only the Emperor, but Prince Metternich, allowed his name to be associated with the railway; and the twelve thousand shares, two-thirds of which were held by Salomon himself, rocketed. Sina struck back angrily by accusing the Rothschild engineers of technical faults; and Salomon countered by instructing Professor Riepel to answer ‘this insult with the contempt it deserves’.

On 7 July 1839, when the continent’s first major railway was opened, the shares tripled. Salomon had greatly increased his fortune, and now was eager to ensure himself a tiny piece of immortality. In the waiting room of the resplendent Vienna station he placed a life-sized statue of himself in Carrara marble, as a gift from the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway Company to its founder Salomon Rothschild.

*

Salomon, of course, was not the only Rothschild to promote railways. Amschel in Frankfurt financed hundreds of miles of track in Prussia, while Carl loaned thousands to the Pope who believed that if he could knit the Papal states together with a steam engine, he might stave off revolution. James built his own railways, opening a line between Paris and Saint-Germain in 1837, and another between Paris and Versailles in 1839.

The following year he petitioned for a gigantic concession to be known as the Chemin de Fer du Nord which would connect the capital with the industrial north. He won the contract by giving free shares to everyone of importance from ministers to journalists. This prompted an attack from Ludvig Borne, a German Jew whose family had shared the vicissitudes of the ghetto with the Rothschilds. He asked: Would it not be a great blessing for the world if all the kings were dismissed and the Rothschilds put on the throne? Think of the advantages. The new dynasty would never contract a loan, as it would know better than anybody how dear such things are, and on this account alone the burden of their subjects would be alleviated by several millions a year. The bribing, both active and passive, of ministers would have to cease; why should they be bribed any longer, or what would there be to bribe them with? All that sort of thing would be ancient history, and morality would be greatly promoted [64]

Three weeks after the opening of the first section of the Rothschild track in 1846, an engine rounded a bend too quickly and carriages careered down a bank, killing thirty-seven people. The general outcry gave birth to an anti-Semitic pamphlet, The History of Rothschild J, King of the Jews, which was stuffed into thousands of letter boxes. However, an anonymous friend came to James’s support by issuing a counter-pamphlet entitled Reply by Rothschild I, King of the Jews, to Satan the Last, King of the Slanderers.

James de Rothschild was not the only person to win a railway contract. The French Government gave its concessions to half a dozen combines in order to create healthy competition. Although it was not easy to raise the vast sums of money deemed necessary, everyone believed that a railway licence was a licence to print money. ‘The Departments that have got railways’, James wrote to Count Apponyi, ‘want to keep them in order to make as much profit as possible. Those that have not got them hope and wish to have them in the near future.’

With such competition, it is not surprising that the public began to speculate wildly in railway shares. Baron James refused to look upon gambling as harmful. ‘As long as they are preoccupied with making money’, he remarked drily, ‘their minds will be kept away from plots against the Government.’ In November 1845 Charles Greville wrote in his dairy that ‘speculation has reached its height … Half the fine ladies have been dabbling in stocks, and the most unlikely have not been able to refrain from gambling in shares, even I myself (though in a very small degree), for the warning voice of the Governor of the Bank has never been out of my ears.’[65] Despite prophecies of a fearful retribution the market remained buoyant.

*

Meanwhile James’s preoccupations were not only financial. Throughout 1840 it looked as though France might declare war on Austria, and once again he felt obliged to flit from side to side with olive branches. In those days it was not the fashion to condemn capitalists as war-mongers; indeed, banker James and his brothers were derided by many nationalists as ‘peace-mongers’. People spoke contemptuously of them as valuing profit more than honour. ‘It is in the nature of things,’ observed a rising young Prussian politician, Otto von Bismarck, ‘that the house of Rothschild should do everything to prevent war …’

Bismarck’s point was proved when Prince Metternich persuaded Russia and England to join with him in sending an ultimatum to France’s protégé, Mehemet Ali Pasha of Egypt, demanding his withdrawal from northern Syria. Louis-Philippe’s chief minister, M. Thiers, was outraged that France had not been consulted and pressed the Cabinet to avenge the nation’s honour by declaring war.

All branches of the Rothschild family in all five countries went into action to prevent hostilities. They soothed ministers, cajoled editors, talked pacifism at every social gathering. So much so that Baron James was attacked by the French press for his outrageous lack of bellicosity. ‘With what right,’ thundered Thiers’s newspaper, Le Constitutionnel, ‘and under what pretext, does this King of Finance intermeddle with our affairs? What concern of his are the decisions which France will take? Is he the author of our honour? Are his money interests to be allowed to outweigh our national interests?’ ‘If I desire peace,’ James snapped back, ‘I desire it honourably, not only for France but for the whole of Europe …’[66]

Each Rothschild gathered intelligence which he passed on to the other by the famous courier service. On 22 August Lionel thanked James for a letter:

as we were distinctly uneasy. Consols opened at 89³/8, it is said that the owners of carrier pigeons were buying; they closed at 89¹/8 … Everyone is of the opinion that Mehemet Ali, if he does not completely give way, will at any rate, make fresh proposals. Bülow and all the others are dining with us tomorrow, and we mean to go to Windsor and try to see King Leopold. [Leopold of Belgium was in a key position; Louis-Philippe of France was his father-in-law, Victoria of England his niece.] If there is anything of interest to report we shall send you a courier tomorrow night …[67]

In October the situation had worsened and Charles Greville wrote in his diary: ‘Everything looking black these last two days, funds falling and general alarm …’ But James Rothschild’s influence with the king was paramount; and at the crucial moment Louis-Philippe exploited a difference in the cabinet and overruled Thiers.

*

James was not the only brother to work feverishly for peace. In Vienna Salomon kept a close watch on Metternich for fear that the Prince might grow impatient and make a move. He did everything to soothe him, even inventing charming remarks supposedly made by the French King about Metternich’s sagacity and wit which he inserted into letters that he knew would be intercepted. And when peace finally was assured he went to Paris and had a little celebration with James.

One of Salomon’s most important allies in Vienna was the vivacious Countess Melanie Zichy-Ferraris, who once upon a time had borrowed money from Salomon, and who now became Prince Metternich’s third wife. Salomon paid her so much attention and loaded her with such wonderful gifts that she fell into the habit of referring to him in front of the Emperor as ‘our Salomon’. The brothers joined the assault, Carl von Rothschild sending Melanie scarves from Naples, James de Rothschild frocks from Paris, and Lionel de Rothschild plant cuttings from London.

Salomon’s motives were not only prompted by a wish to preserve peace. He was determined to circumvent the ridiculous Habsburg regulation that forbade Jews from buying property. Although he had taken over the whole of the Hotel Römischer Kaiser, he remained a hotel guest while his brothers were landed proprietors.

The desire to own land became such an obsession that he embarked on a long siege, content to force his way step by step. He gave immense sums to charities, erected and equipped a hospital and subsidized the municipal water supply. This won him full citizenship, which meant that he could buy the hotel in which he lived, if he so wished. But Salomon had higher aims. After years of leasing he finally was allowed to purchase the huge iron and steel works of Vitkowitz, in Silesia. Then he set about improving the lot of the workers. Soon the Governor of Silesia was reporting that Salomon’s philanthropies were ‘a blessing and a model for the whole country’.

Melanie’s influence with her husband, and Metternich’s influence with the Emperor, finally proved decisive. In 1843 the ban against Jews was removed and Salomon became the largest landed proprietor in the Empire with vast estates in Moravia and Silesia and finally in far-away Prussia, all of them complete with castles, moats, waterfalls, and the inevitable swans and peacocks. As Salomon’s first two initials ‘S.M.’ happened to be the same as the abbreviation for Sein Majestät, people began to bracket ‘King Salomon’ with the Emperor. The title suited Salomon for by this time he really was a king, the Railway King of Central Europe.

No matter to what heights the brothers rose, nor how grandly they lived, old Gutle, ninety years old in 1843, refused to abandon the House of the Green Shield in the Frankfurt ghetto, for fear that it might bring ill-luck to the family. By the 1840s she had almost become an ancient monument, part of the Grand Tour undertaken by fashionable young men of the day. She received distinguished guests from all over Europe in her tiny parlour, and still pointed proudly to the bridal wreath under glass. When the aristocratic diarist, Charles Greville, visited Frankfurt he drove to Jew Street.

We had the good luck [he wrote] to see the old mother of the Rothschilds, and a curious contrast she presented. The house she inhabits appears not a bit better than any of the others; it is the same dark and decayed mansion. In this narrow gloomy street, and before this wretched tenement, a smart caleche was standing, fitted up with blue silk, and a footman in blue livery was at the door. Presently the door opened, and the old woman was seen descending a dark, narrow staircase, supported by her granddaughter, the Baroness Charles [Carl] Rothschild [formerly Adelaide Herz] whose carriage was also in waiting at the end of the street.

Two footmen and some maids were in attendance to help the old lady into the carriage, and a number of the inhabitants collected opposite to see her get in. A more curious and striking contrast I never saw than the dress of the ladies, both the old and young one, and their equipages and liveries, with the dilapidated locality in which the old woman persists in remaining. The family allow her £4,000 a year, and they say she never in her life has been out of Frankfurt, and never inhabited any other house than this, in which she resolved to die.[68]

Gutle was weary of life and when a doctor, thinking to please her, told her that undoubtedly she would reach a hundred she remarked acidly: ‘Why should God take me at a hundred when he can have me at eighty-seven?’ Then she added gently: ‘You must understand I don’t want pills to make me younger, but to make me older.’

*

Everything — even railway flotations and stock-exchange speculation — gave way to the revolution of 1848. Ever since the end of the Napoleonic wars Prince Metternich had managed to maintain the status quo in a Europe which still smouldered with the ‘liberty and equality’ of the French Revolution. By juggling first with one country, then another, by dividing, coercing, and threatening, he had reinforced monarchies, strengthened governments, and prevented violent change. Although in moments of depression he referred to his system as a ‘mouldering structure’, the revolution that broke out in Sicily in 1848 caught him by surprise. The Vienna Bourse sensed trouble and reacted violently. Salomon von Rothschild visited Metternich on 23 January and the Prince upbraided him for not controlling the money market. ‘Politically,’ he said to Salomon, ‘things are going well but the Bourse is in a bad way; I am doing my duty but you are not doing yours. If the devil fetches me, he will fetch you too; I am looking hell in the face; you are sleeping instead of fighting; your fate is therefore sealed.’ Salomon apologized passionately and agreed to buy heavily, on the morrow. ‘… You may count on me!’ ‘I judge by actions,’ snapped Prince Metternich. ‘You may buy tomorrow, but I shall not know why you did not buy yesterday. If it was in order to buy more cheaply I have no occasion to be grateful to you.’[69]

The revolution in Sicily spread to Naples. Carl von Rothschild, however, was clever enough to persuade the liberal Government to make immediate concessions and the danger receded. The Grand Duke of Tuscany and the King of Piedmont were also threatened but they followed the example of Naples, and managed to restore peace. But by February the fire had spread to inflammable France and overnight a gigantic conflagration had begun.

Everywhere people were inveighing against arbitrary rule by kings, demanding parliamentary government, elections, a franchise reaching the masses. In Paris once again barricades were erected in all the main streets. And when the seventy-four-year-old Louis-Philippe learned, in the best tradition of French kings, that the National Guard had gone over to the enemy, he fled, and the rebels declared a republic.

For safety, James sent his wife and daughter to his nephew Lionel’s house in England. While the ladies were crossing the Channel one way, Lionel was travelling in the opposite direction as he felt it his duty to stand by his uncle during the dangerous days ahead.

James had been ordered to appear before the Prefect of Police, M. Caussidière, who accused him of smuggling bullion out of the country in dung carts. ‘Sir,’ replied James, ‘I am believed to be buried in gold, whereas, in point of fact, I have nothing but paper. My wealth and capital consist of securities which at this moment are of no value. I have no intention of going bankrupt, and if I must die I shall resign myself, but I would regard flight as cowardly. I have written to my family to send me cash as I must meet my obligations. Tomorrow I shall introduce my nephew to you, who has just come from London for this purpose.’[70]

Although the mob had destroyed the royal residence at Neuilly, and now was plundering the Tuileries and the Palais-Royal, throwing furniture into the streets and burning it, the Prefect of Police assured James that he had nothing to fear from the people of Paris. The following day Baron James did as he had promised and brought his nephew Lionel to the Prefecture. They delighted M. Caussidière by donating fifty thousand francs for policemen ‘wounded in the course of duty’. The Prefecture responded by stationing an armed guard in front of James’s house. Unfortunately it was too late to protect the Baron’s beautiful villa in the Bois de Boulogne, which had already been partially burned and looted.

Messieurs de Rothschild Frères were facing hard times. Just as in 1830 the House of Rothschild was saddled with an immense number of undertakings which could result in staggering losses. For instance, James had put up 82,000,000 francs as the first instalment of a government loan of 250,000,000 and it was not certain that the money would be recovered. Furthermore the bank’s enormous holding of railway shares had dropped to an all-time low. And now, to add insult to injury, the new Minister of the Interior, M. Ledru-Rollin, was demanding 250,000 francs from James, telling him flatly that unless he complied his offices on the Rue Laffitte would be razed to the ground. James paid, but the blackmail continued. A few days later the minister demanded another 500,000 francs. Again James paid.

Meanwhile the revolution had spread to Central Europe and both Salomon in Vienna and Amschel in Frankfurt were living through frightening days. Early in March street fighting broke out in Vienna, the Emperor Ferdinand panicked and asked Metternich for his resignation. The latter borrowed money from his friend, Salomon von Rothschild, then left the capital dressed as an old woman. Rumours spread that he had taken refuge in Frankfurt at the house of the Austrian general, Count Nobil. Thousands of people collected outside the latter’s house shouting: ‘Pereat Metternich!’ The general came to the window, announced that the Prince was not staying with him, then emerged from the house, climbed into his carriage and drove to the house of Amschel von Rothschild, who was holding a reception. A few days later another mob demanded ‘equal citizenship’ and smashed the window of Prussia’s consul-general, who happened to be Amschel von Rothschild.

Things went from bad to worse. King Frederick William IV finally did the fashionable thing and abandoned his capital. Crowds prowled the streets of Baden and Frankfurt, while insurrectionists gained control of Budapest and announced the secession of Hungary. Salomon von Rothschild hoped to weather the storm despite Metternich’s prediction that ‘if the devil fetches me, he will fetch you too’. But when the mob got out of hand in October, and murdered the War Minister, Count Latour, hanging him naked to a lamp post, Salomon felt quite sick and decided to leave. That same night crowds ransacked the Windischgraetz Palace and occupied Salomon’s house in the Renngasse. They climbed on to the roof and shot at the Grenadiers stationed inside an arsenal. The whole of Vienna became caught up in a frenzy of panic and excitement.

The Emperor Ferdinand and his court fled to Olmutz, and Salomon hid in a friend’s house in the suburbs. Meanwhile the Baron’s secretary, Herr Goldschmidt, who had taken his own family to the safety of Krems, returned to the capital to try to help his master. As he could not get back into the city without disguising himself, he dressed as a milkman. Surprisingly he found the Rothschild office intact. He packed up his books and papers and transferred them to the National Bank. This was on 10 October 1848. By this time Baron Salomon had left for Frankfurt where he joined his brother Amschel. He never again set foot in Vienna.

*

Despite the mounting dangers James sat tight in Paris. The new French government was unable to maintain order and street fighting flared up every few days. James was fortunate enough, however, to attach himself to the right man. He made friends with Eugène Cavaignac, the energetic War Minister, who soon became the virtual dictator of France. Cavaignac found James’s advice useful, and for a short while the latter enjoyed the same position of confidence that he had held under Bourbons and Orleans.

This drew from the Left a genuine paean of praise. ‘You are a wonder, sir,’ wrote the editor of the ultra-radical Tocsin des Travailleurs: In spite of legal majority Louis Philippe has fallen, Guizot has disappeared, the constitutional monarchy and parliamentary methods have gone by the board: you, however, are unmoved! …

Although your House felt the first violence of the shock in Paris, although the effects of revolution pursue you from Naples to Vienna and Berlin, you remain unmoved in the face of a movement that has affected the whole of Europe. Wealth fades away, glory is humbled, and dominion is broken, but the Jew, the monarch of our time, has held his throne, but that is not all. You might have fled from this country where, in the language of your Bible, the mountains skip about like rams. You remain, announcing that your power is independent of the ancient dynasties, and you courageously extend your hand to the young republic. Undismayed, you adhere to France.

… You are more than a statesman, you are the symbol of credit. Is it not time that the bank, that powerful instrument of the middle classes, should assist in the fulfilment of the peoples’ destinies? … Does that not appeal to you? Confess that it would be a worthy occasion if one day the French Republic should offer you a place in the Pantheon![71]

Yet, as far as James was concerned, the sky was far from blue. Louis Napoleon, the nephew of the great Bonaparte, had hurried from London to Paris to ‘place himself under the flag of the great Republic’. Gradually more and more adherents were backing his cause. As all Rothschilds had been bitter enemies of Napoleon Bonaparte they did not favour a new Napoleonic era. Yet by November 1848 there was a widespread belief that another big revolution was in the offing. ‘Fear and unrest’, reported the German chargé d’affaires to Berlin ‘are general: business and economic interests are suffering acutely. The slump in securities has assumed alarming proportions, and yesterday there was actually a rumour to the effect that the House of Rothschild was going into liquidation.’[72]

Things were not as bad as people said: but Baron James was dismayed on 10 December to learn that Louis Napoleon, and not his friend General Cavaignac, had been elected President of the French Republic.

The only two great monarchies in Europe which emerged unscathed from the events of 1848 were the British and the Russian. London became the refuge for thousands of emigres including the brilliant Prince Metternich, while St Petersburg made itself the new centre of reaction. The handsome, tight-lipped, authoritarian Emperor, Nicholas I, sent troops to Hungary and finally restored the Habsburg Empire to its Habsburg owner. He encouraged his uncle, Frederick William iv of Prussia, to return to Berlin; and when the question arose of uniting the scattered German states, eager for liberal constitutions, under the Prussian sceptre, Russia’s scowl prevented poor Frederick William from accepting the offer. Instead, he remarked that he was not ready ‘to pick up a crown from the gutter’.

*

By 1849 Europe was quiet once more; and the ninety-six-year-old Gutle in Frankfurt had the satisfaction of knowing that the House of Rothschild, whose foundation stone had been laid by her husband, had been built so solidly that it had weathered another storm.

The old lady died peacefully before the year was over. Her frail body was taken from the House of the Green Shield and carried to the great Frankfurt synagogue where Rothschilds from many lands gathered to pay their respects. But the new decade that was approaching would bring dangers for the House that was barely half a century old.