the world of private banking

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THE WORLD OF PRIVAtE BANKING
the question when and how a so-called Protestant private-banking network came
to be set up in Europe.
Towards a Protestant Financial Solidarity and Banking System in the
Sixteenth Century
After the Reformation, one observes a political, demographic and financial change
in Europe creating confessional antagonism and separate solidarities. The so called
Religious Wars for territorial or dynastic domination ended in Switzerland in 1531
and in Germany in 1555, but began in France in 1562 and in the Netherlands in
1567. Support for the Protestant party in France became reinforced in Calvinist
Switzerland and Germany through the arrival of French refugees mainly at Geneva
and Frankfurt.
From the reign of Francis I (1515–47), the Kings of France got loans to finance
their wars mainly from their principal financial centre, which until the end of the
Grand Parti was Lyons. But they also used to issue loans at Basel, which was
the main Swiss financial centre in the sixteenth century. From 1553 to 1558, an
important confessionally mixed group of Swiss merchants and mercenary officers
was still committing sizeable amounts to some of the last loans issued by Henry II
(1547–9) at Lyons before the insolvency of the French Kingdom. Like his father
Francis I, King Henry II used these to bring about a kind of backflow of all the
money he regularly paid to Switzerland by way of pensions and subsidies. In
addition, through these loans the Swiss mercenary officers were at least in part
financing the French war against Spain in Picardy and Flanders and hoped in this
way to save the jobs for their military troops.
But from the beginning of the Religious Wars until 1570, the French Kings got
further loans only from the Swiss Roman Catholic Republics, while the Protestant
Republics preferred to financially support first the Republic of Geneva, as they had
done since 1530, and second the Calvinist Bourbon King Henry of Navarre. Minor
loans were given to the Count Palatine for his military interventions, notably in
support of the Protestant party in France. Most of these financial activities were
carried out on the one hand by the Public Bank of Basel through loan issues
with prefabricated individual obligations, and on the other by private bankers or
merchant bankers at Geneva and Basel. And in order to partially pay his debts
toward the Swiss troops after the Peace of St. Germain in 1570, even King Charles
IX (1560–74) was allowed to issue loans among the Protestant Cantons for more
For this paragraph and the following developments concerning the sixteenth and the
beginning of the seventh centuries see M. Körner, Solidarités financières suisses au XVIe
siècle: Contribution à l’histoire monétaire, bancaire et financière des Cantons suisses et
des Etats voisins (Lausanne, 1980).
Concerning the French Religious Wars, see G. Livet, ‘Les guerres de réligion’, Que
sais-je?, 1016 (Paris, 1962).