the world of private banking

30
THE WORLD OF PRIVAtE BANKING
their advice’. 123 The English diarist Thomas Raikes noted at around the same time:
‘The Rothschilds have become the metallic sovereigns of Europe. From their
different establishments in Paris, London, Vienna, Frankfurt and Naples, they
have obtained a control over the European exchange which no party ever before
could accomplish, and they now seem to hold the strings of the public purse.
No sovereign without their assistance now could raise a loan’. 124 An anonymous
German cartoonist made essentially the same point (though more vividly) when he
portrayed a grotesquely caricatured Jew – clearly a composite Rothschild – as ‘Die
Generalpumpe’ (a play on the double meaning of the German pumpen, to pump or
to lend). Rothschild, the cartoon suggests, is a monstrous engine, pumping money
around the world. 125 By the end of this period, many observers had begun to see the
Rothschilds as more than merely allies of the European States: they now appeared
to have acquired a unique power of their own which was independent of the great
powers and near universal. In his essay ‘Rothschild and the European States’
(1841), Alexandre Weill made the point succinctly: while ‘Rothschild had need of
the States to become Rothschild’, he now ‘no longer needs the State, but the State
still has want of him’. 126 A year later, the liberal historian Jules Michelet noted
in his journal: ‘M. Rothschild knows Europe prince by prince, and the bourse
courtier by courtier. He has all their accounts in his head, that of the courtiers and
that of the kings; he talks to them without even consulting his books. To one such
he says: “Your account will go into the red if you appoint such a minister”’. 127
The economic historian is often tempted to juxtapose myth and reality.
However, although some qualification is clearly needed, such views were, though
exaggerated and often gratuitously hostile, not very far wide of the mark. In the
way it expanded and dominated the international capital market, the Rothschild
bank was in many ways ‘the World Pump’ of the Vormärz era. The remarkable
thing is that, despite its enormous wealth and its multinational character, the firm
remained at heart a family concern, albeit with a very distinctive ethos and set
of business methods. These, rather than any mystical aid, constituted the real
Rothschild talisman.
123
Quoted in R. Glanz, ‘The Rothschild Legend in America’, in Jewish Social Studies
(1957), p. 20.
124
Kynaston, City, vol. I, p. 90f.
125
V. Cowles, The Rothschilds: A Family of Fortune (London, 1973), p. 71.
126
Reeves, Rothschilds, p. 101.
127
Gille, Maison Rothschild, vol. I, p. 487.