the world of private banking

THE RISE OF tHE ROtHScHILDS 25
made it clear to James’s rival Laffitte that this was because of the Rothschilds’
‘Jewish’ business methods, which he refused to adopt: 95
Baring told him: ‘These gentlemen are working like Jews. How could we
cooperate? Their principles are different. They are working on 20 transactions at
the same time . . . with the only aim to do business. It is like stock-jobbing. . . He
added that we are right in what we did because we succeeded and made money.
However, he does not want – so he said – to do business in this manner. Now
we try – so he said – to bring down the English stocks, after having sold ours, in
order to buy them back. 96
It was not their religion per se, in other words, so much as their business methods
which Baring found objectionable, though he instinctively thought of these as
‘Jewish’ in character.
Equally important was the careful cultivation of ‘friends in high places’. Of all
Mayer Amschel’s pieces of business advice, this was the one most frequently cited
by his sons. ‘You know, dear Nathan’, wrote Salomon in October 1815, ‘what
father used to say about sticking to a man in government.’ 97 And again: ‘[Y]ou
remember father’s principle that you have to be ready to try everything to get in
with such a great government figure’. 98 Nor had Mayer Amschel left them in doubt
as to how such politicians could best be wooed: ‘Our late father taught us that if a
high-placed person enters into a [financial] partnership with a Jew, he belongs to
the Jew (gehört er dem Juden)’. 99 Among the most important Rothschild ‘clients’ in
this period were Karl Buderus, the Elector of Hesse-Cassel’s senior finance official;
Karl Theodor Anton von Dalberg, Prince-Primate of the Rheinish Confederation
from 1806 to 1814; Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, consort to Princess Charlotte, only
child of George IV, and later (1830) King Leopold I of the Belgians; John Charles
Herries, British Commissary-in-Chief in October 1811, later (briefly) Chancellor
of the Exchequer and President of the Board of Trade; Charles William Stewart,
third marquis of Londonderry, Lord Castlereagh’s half-brother, British delegate at
the Congresses of Vienna, Troppau, Laybach and Verona; the duc d’Orléans, later
Louis Philippe, King of France; the Austrian Chancellor Prince Metternich; and
Prince Esterházy, the imperial ambassador in London.
If the Rothschilds were generous to those whose political influence they valued,
they treated their banking rivals very differently. In the early years, a pattern of
fierce hostility to all competitors was established. The brothers habitually talked
of ‘putting spokes in wheels’ of rival ‘scoundrels’ and ‘sharpshooters’, or dealing
95
J. Laffitte, Mémoires de Laffitte (Paris, 1932), pp. 114f.
96
RAL, T64/179/2, XI/109/9, James, Paris, to his brothers, 14 Feb. 1818.
97
RAL, XI/109/2/2/149, Salomon, Paris, to Nathan, London, 21 Oct. 1815.
98
RAL, XI/109/2/2/153, Salomon and James, Paris, to Nathan, London, 25 Oct. 1815.
99
RAL, T63 138/2, Salomon and James, Paris, to Nathan, London, 22 Oct. 1817.