"[T]here is no error so vulgar," wrote Benjamin Disraeli in 1844, "as to believe that revolutions are occasioned by economical causes. They come in, doubtless, very often to precipitate a catastrophe; very rarely do they occasion one." The succeeding four years were to prove him badly wrong.
Unheralded by economic crisis, the 1830 revolution had seemed to the Rothschilds like a bolt from the blue. By contrast, the 1848 revolution came after such a protracted period of economic depression that they almost grew weary of waiting for the storm to break-and perhaps even began to imagine that it never would. If they did ultimately fail to prepare themselves adequately for what was the greatest of all nineteenth-century Europe"s political crises, the reason perhaps lies in the timing of the revolution. The economic nadir of the 1840s in fact came in 1847; by the spring of 1848 the worst was over. With hindsight, historians can infer that it was precisely at this point that political instability was most likely to occur, as popular expectations rose; but to contemporary bankers that was far from apparent.
Another difference between 1830 and 1848 was the Rothschilds" own position as targets of revolutionary action. In 1830 James had been sufficiently distanced from the regime of Charles X to allow a relatively easy switch to the Orleanist side. Eighteen years later he and his brothers had become much more closely identified with the established regimes not only in France, but throughout Europe. As bankers not only to the Austrian imperial government itself but also to numerous smaller states in Germany and Italy, they appeared-especially to the nationalist elements within the revolutionary movements-as the paymasters, if not the masters, of the Metternichian system. Eduard Kretschmer"s 1848 cartoon, Apotheosis and Adoration of the Idol of our Time Apotheosis and Adoration of the Idol of our Time, portrays "Rothschild" seated upon a throne of money, surrounded by kneeling potentates (see ill.u.s.tration 16.i)-a popular image of the period. At the same time, the Rothschilds" financial commitments to these various states made it difficult for them to welcome the radical redrawing of Europe"s boundaries implied by the first principle of political nationalism-that political and ethnic or linguistic structures should be congruent. Writing in 1846, the poet Karl Beck lamented "Rothschild"s" refusal to use his financial power on the side of the "peoples"-and particularly the German people-instead of their detested princes.
16.i: Eduard Kretschmer (after Andreas Achenbach), Apotheose und Anbetung des Gotzen unserer Zeit Apotheose und Anbetung des Gotzen unserer Zeit (1848). (1848).
Nor was it as easy for the Rothschilds to contemplate defecting to the side of the revolution when that now implied a republic rather than merely a dynastic change. And not only a republic: for the 1848 revolution was, unlike its predecessor, as much concerned with social as with const.i.tutional issues. For the first time, socialist (as well as ultra-conservative) arguments against economic liberalism were voiced alongside-and sometimes in contradiction to-the older arguments for political liberalism and democracy. Not only were the revolutionaries concerned with rights (to free speech, free a.s.sembly and a free press) and with representation in const.i.tutionally secured legislatures; some among them were also concerned to combat the widening material inequality of the early industrial era. In many ways the Rothschilds had come to personify that inequality. Nothing demonstrated that better than the explosion of anti-Rothschild sentiment in the wake of the accident on the Nord railway: while third-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers perished, the critics suggested, "Rothschild I" callously counted his state-subsidised profits. Another cartoon of 1848 which depicted Rothschild as the object of royal (and papal) veneration also featured, kneeling in the foreground, a ragged, starving family; and in the background a group of students marching under the banner of liberty (see ill.u.s.tration 16.ii). When the Russian revolutionary Alexander Herzen wished to define the bourgeoisie in 1847, he called it "a solid estate, the limits of which are the electoral property qualification below and Baron Rothschild above." For Herzen liberalism was propagating a "malicious irony" when it claimed that "the dest.i.tute man enjoys the same civil rights as Rothschild," or that "the sated is . . . the comrade of the hungry." (as well as ultra-conservative) arguments against economic liberalism were voiced alongside-and sometimes in contradiction to-the older arguments for political liberalism and democracy. Not only were the revolutionaries concerned with rights (to free speech, free a.s.sembly and a free press) and with representation in const.i.tutionally secured legislatures; some among them were also concerned to combat the widening material inequality of the early industrial era. In many ways the Rothschilds had come to personify that inequality. Nothing demonstrated that better than the explosion of anti-Rothschild sentiment in the wake of the accident on the Nord railway: while third-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers perished, the critics suggested, "Rothschild I" callously counted his state-subsidised profits. Another cartoon of 1848 which depicted Rothschild as the object of royal (and papal) veneration also featured, kneeling in the foreground, a ragged, starving family; and in the background a group of students marching under the banner of liberty (see ill.u.s.tration 16.ii). When the Russian revolutionary Alexander Herzen wished to define the bourgeoisie in 1847, he called it "a solid estate, the limits of which are the electoral property qualification below and Baron Rothschild above." For Herzen liberalism was propagating a "malicious irony" when it claimed that "the dest.i.tute man enjoys the same civil rights as Rothschild," or that "the sated is . . . the comrade of the hungry."
As in the 1820s and 1830s, those who inveighed against the Rothschilds as capitalists could rarely resist making a connection with their Judaism. Typically, Karl Beck too could not resist alluding to "Rothschild"s . . . interest-calculating brethren," "filling the insatiable money-bag for themselves and their kin alone!" Nor is it surprising that minor figures like Beck were doing this when the man who would ulti-mately prove the most influential of all the period"s revolutionaries had done exactly the same in February 1844 in an essay "On the Jewish Question" (though at the time, of course, there was little to distinguish Karl Marx from the numerous other radical hacks churning out anti-Rothschild abuse): What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical Practical need, need, self-interest self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering Huckstering. What is his worldly G.o.d? Money Money . . . We recognise in Judaism, therefore, a general . . . We recognise in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social anti-social element of the element of the present time present time . . . In the final a.n.a.lysis, the . . . In the final a.n.a.lysis, the emanc.i.p.ation of the Jews emanc.i.p.ation of the Jews is the emanc.i.p.ation of mankind from is the emanc.i.p.ation of mankind from Judaism Judaism.
16.ii: Anon., Anbetung der Konige Anbetung der Konige (1848). (1848).
Marx was not one to name names, of course, when he could couch his argument in Hegelian abstractions. But that he had the Rothschilds in mind is evident from the pa.s.sage he quoted from the pamphlet by Bruno Bauer he was (ostensibly) reviewing: "The Jew, who in Vienna, for example, is only tolerated, determines the fate of the whole Empire by his financial power. The Jew, who may have no rights in the smallest German states, decides the fate of Europe." This is no isolated fact [continued Marx]. The Jew has emanc.i.p.ated himself in a Jewish manner, not only because he has acquired financial power, but also because . . . money money has become a world power and the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of the Christian nations. The Jews have emanc.i.p.ated themselves insofar as the Christians have become Jews. has become a world power and the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of the Christian nations. The Jews have emanc.i.p.ated themselves insofar as the Christians have become Jews.
Only when society had "succeeded in abolishing the empirical empirical essence of Judaism-huckstering and its preconditions" would "the Jew . . . become essence of Judaism-huckstering and its preconditions" would "the Jew . . . become impossible impossible." In fact, the socialist argument could stand unsupported by racial prejudice, as Marx came to appreciate (after all, he himself had been born a Jew, as had Karl Beck); it would be other revolutionaries of 1848 like Richard Wagner who would later develop and refine this line of argument. Either way, the Rothschilds were extremely vulnerable to radical calls for redistribution of wealth and greater regulation of the capitalists/Jews who possessed it. This made the 1848 revolution much more dangerous to them than that of 1830.
Though politically close to Marx at the time of the 1848 revolution, Heine subsequently made fun of the early socialists" motivations. In his last jottings, he wrote: The main army of Rothschild"s enemies is made up of have-nots; they all think: "What we don"t have, Rothschild has." They are joined by the main force of those who have lost their fortune; instead of ascribing their loss to their own stupidity, they blame the wiles of those who managed to hold on to what they had. As soon as a man runs out of money, he becomes Rothschild"s enemy.
And he adapted a traditional Jewish story in order to provide James with a possible reply to the socialist threat: "The communist . . . wants Rothschild to share out his fortune of 300 million francs. Rothschild sends him his share, which comes to exactly 9 sous: "Now leave me alone!" " In practice, however, it did not prove quite so easy to see off the threat of expropriation. In his first surviving letter (dated 1843), a young radical named Wilhelm Marr had made exactly the argument satirised by Heine. "The time is ripe," he told his father, "to share Rothschild"s property among 3,333,333.3 [sic] poor weavers, which will feed them during a whole year." The roots of Marr"s later Anti-Semitic League lie in the 1840s.
A few voices, as we have seen, were raised to defend the Rothschilds. One ingenious writer in the Paris Globe Globe pointed out in 1846 that "no one today better represents the triumph of equality and work in the nineteenth century than M. le Baron de Rothschild": pointed out in 1846 that "no one today better represents the triumph of equality and work in the nineteenth century than M. le Baron de Rothschild": What is he, in fact? Was he born a Baron? No, he wasn"t even born a citizen; he was born a pariah. At the time of his birth, civil liberty, and even less political liberty, did not exist for Jews. To be a Jew was to be less than a lackey; it was to be less than a man; it was to be a dog that children chased in the street, hurling insults and stones. Thanks to the holy principle of equality, the Jew has become a man, the Jew has become a citizen; and once his intelligence [and] his activity . . . allowed, he could rise within the social hierarchy. What better or more incontrovertible evidence could there be that the principle of equality has prevailed? Yet it is democrats who close their minds and eyes to this spectacle! Nominal democrats, no doubt. Sincere democrats would have applauded this Jew who, beginning at the bottom of the social ladder, has arrived by virtue of equality at the highest rung. Was this Jew born a millionaire? No, he was born poor, and if only you knew what genius, patience, and hard work were required to construct that European edifice called the House of Rothschild, you would admire rather than insult it . . . You tactlessly cite Figaro, without understanding that Figaro was one of the privileged by comparison with M. de Rothschild, since Figaro had only to be born in order to see before him the vast and open battlefield of labour. At his birth, M. de Rothschild found this battlefield closed to him and yet he has, aided by freedom, climbed higher than you. To abuse M. de Rothschild is to blaspheme against equality.
Yet such reminders of the Rothschilds" origins in the Judenga.s.se were rare in the 1840s. Only in England, where the issue of the parliamentary representation of the Jews was to play such an important role throughout the revolutionary period, did it really seem relevant. The continental revolutionaries did not think of the Rothschilds languishing in the Judenga.s.se, but imagined them luxuriating in chateaus like Suresnes and Gruneburg. In Joseph Eichendorff "s allegorical comedy Liberty and her Liberators Liberty and her Liberators, for example, Amschel is once again satirised in the character of Pinkus, a self-made "cosmopolitan" (misheard by a page as Grohofpolyp Grohofpolyp) who acquires the t.i.tle of baron and with it a castle and garden. Pinkus cannot abide Nature, preferring to impose strict uniformity (complete with steam engine) on the garden; whereas Libertas wishes to set the plants, birds and animals free. When she tries to do so, Pinkus has her arrested by his "armed forces"; but the spirits of the primeval forest come to her rescue, throwing Pinkus"s repressively ordered garden into chaos.
The Rothschilds were far from oblivious to the animosity they were incurring. Indeed, it might be said that they took positive steps to counteract it by making generous-and ostentatious-charitable gestures. In the very dry summer of 1835, Salomon offered 25,000 gulden towards the construction of an aqueduct from the Danube to the Vienna suburbs. When Pesth and Ofen were badly flooded three years later, he hastened to offer financial a.s.sistance for the victims. He donated 40,000 gulden to found an inst.i.tute for scientific research in Brunn. And when Hamburg was ravaged by fire in 1842 he and James made substantial donations to the fund which was set up to a.s.sist the victims. Before the 1830s the Rothschild brothers" charity had been largely confined within the Jewish communities of Frankfurt, London and Paris. Now Salomon made a point of contributing to causes which were regarded as good by the Habsburg elite. Baron Kubeck recorded in his diary how the elite responded. At a dinner for Count Kolowrat in 1838, Salomon declared expansively that his guest"s presence had: "given me as much pleasure today as if I had been given a thousand gulden, or had given them to a poor man." Thereupon Count Kolowrat replied, "Very well, give me the thousand gulden for a poor man who needs help, and has applied to me." Rothschild promised to do so and after dinner Count Kolowrat was given the thousand gulden.
So frequently did Salomon act in this way that it was possible for a sentimental novella of the 1850s to portray him as a kind of Viennese Santa Claus, benignly siding with a carpenter"s daughter who wants to marry her rich father"s gifted but poor apprentice. The high point of this mawkish work is a description of the throng of Schnorrer Schnorrer in the antechamber of Salomon"s Rennga.s.se residence: the man who claims to be G.o.d"s brother-in-law (he is sent packing); the man who wants Salomon to be the G.o.dfather to his child (he gets 50 gulden); and the woman whose five-year-old daughter can recite seventy-two poems from memory (whose reward is not recorded). That they are all drawn to the house of Rothschild is explained not just by his wealth, but by his universally acknowledged wisdom and generosity. At one point, genial old Rothschild even delivers a homily to a young Frankfurt banker on the need for those who are rich to be generous. in the antechamber of Salomon"s Rennga.s.se residence: the man who claims to be G.o.d"s brother-in-law (he is sent packing); the man who wants Salomon to be the G.o.dfather to his child (he gets 50 gulden); and the woman whose five-year-old daughter can recite seventy-two poems from memory (whose reward is not recorded). That they are all drawn to the house of Rothschild is explained not just by his wealth, but by his universally acknowledged wisdom and generosity. At one point, genial old Rothschild even delivers a homily to a young Frankfurt banker on the need for those who are rich to be generous.
It may well be that this was the way Salomon wished to be regarded. But not everyone who came into contact with him would have endorsed this characterisation. Moritz Goldschmidt"s son Hermann-a boy in the 1840s-remembered him as an impetuous, impatient, despot: "a brutal egoist, a man without wisdom or education, who despised those around him and took the opportunity to treat them ruthlessly [just] because he was rich." He ate and drank to excess. He was habitually rude to everyone from his barber to the Russian amba.s.sador and surrounded himself with sycophants. He had a lecherous pa.s.sion for "very young girls," his "adventures" with whom had to be hushed up by the police. Above all, Salomon was extravagant. He habitually dressed in a blue suit with gold b.u.t.tons and nankeen or white stockings and, when he needed a new suit or hat, bought twelve at a time for good measure. He drove around Vienna in a luxurious carriage with a liveried servant. In 1847-in the depths of the economic slump-he spent immense sums building a new residence and office in the Rennga.s.se. To be sure, Goldschmidt was looking back in anger when he wrote; but his hostility towards Salomon was probably not so different from that felt by many of his more politically radical contemporaries.
The Frankfurt Rothschilds too sought to allay popular hostility by acts of public benevolence. In May 1847 Amschel distributed bread ration cards to the poor of Frankfurt at a time of acute food shortages in the town. But, although he received "a unanimous vote of thanks" from the Frankfurt Senate, this does not seem to have done much to enhance his popularity. As his nephew Anselm observed when his uncle raised the possibility of buying British grain for the German market, "We must be very careful in Germany about corn; there were a great many riots all & everywhere against corn dealers, & if the public would know that we are indirectly interested in corn transactions there might be a burst out [sic] against us."
Perhaps the most successful gesture of public-spiritedness at this time was made by the English Rothschilds in response to the catastrophic potato blight and famine in Ireland-the worst of all the calamities of the 1840s, which cost the lives of around 775,000 people and drove a further two million to emigrate. Ireland was not a land with which the Rothschilds had many dealings; yet as early as 1821, hearing rumours of an impending famine there, Nathan had alerted Lord Liverpool to the possibility of buying "American and East India Rice before speculators come into the market, the price of which is at present low and the Stock large and which in case of a deficiency of the Potato Crop would supply the numerous Poor of that Country with a wholesome food during the Winter." When Peel used the Irish famine twenty-five years later to justify repealing the Corn Laws (thus freeing the import of grain into the British Isles, but also bringing down his own government) the Rothschilds were ambivalent. While Alphonse viewed Peel"s conversion to free trade "without admiration" as an "utter revolution," his father "very much regretted" Peel"s fall-though probably more for the diplomatic implications of Palmerston"s return to office.
Lionel, by contrast, was a thorough-going Free Trader; but he understood that free trade alone would not alleviate the famine in Ireland, because of the general European cereal deficit. In the absence of a more than half-hearted official relief effort, he therefore took the lead in setting up at New Court the British a.s.sociation for the Relief of the Extreme Distress in the Remote Parishes of Ireland and Scotland, which raised some 470,000 in the course of its existence-even soliciting a contribution from that ardent Hibernophobe and Protectionist Disraeli! The Rothschilds themselves contributed 1,000 to the fund, the second biggest donation after the Queen"s 2,000 and on a par with the Duke of Devonshire"s. In this instance, contemporaries were sincerely impressed by the Rothschild effort. As he declared to a friend, it did the heart of the future Liberal Irish Secretary W. E. Forster "good" to see "Rothschild, Kinnaird, and some dozen other millionaire city princes meeting every day, and working hard. A far greater sacrifice to them than mere gifts of money." Lionel personally involved himself in "regulat[ing] the purchase and shipment of provisions to Ireland and the formation of depots around the coast and in the interior of the country." Though it is possible that this activity was partly designed to win Catholic votes at the 1847 election (in which he was a Liberal candidate), his mother"s letters on the subject testify to the sincerity of the family"s response to the Irish disaster.
The contrast with the Paris house"s role is striking. The French food crisis was, of course, far from being as disastrous as the Irish: as Nat wrote in 1847, "They talk terribly of the misery of the poor devils in the provinces but I don"t believe it approaches that of Ireland-it cannot be compared to it." Nevertheless, the 1846 wheat harvest was an exceptionally bad one: 15 per cent lower than the average of the previous ten years, it was the worst since 1831. James first began purchasing grain as early as January 1846 in antic.i.p.ation of a bad harvest throughout Europe. A year later he was urging the French government to make purchases of Russian grain, and in the spring of 1847 he offered "to buy abroad 5 millions of francs worth of corn and flour for the consumption of Paris at our risks & peril and in the event of any loss accruing we s[houl]d bear it & the profit to be distributed in bread tickets to the poor." Besides being philanthropic, James genuinely feared the social and political consequences of food shortages: as he told his nephews in November 1846, "[T]he situation with our grain, which really isn"t good, does scare me a lot." For this reason, there is no doubt that he wished to be seen to be alleviating distress-Salomon wrote explicitly of "making our name popular" with "the ma.s.ses" by providing cheap bread and salt.
Yet James had meant the grain purchases only to be non-profit-making; he had not intended to lose money outright. His a.s.sumption in early 1847, for example, was that prices would remain high; and when the improved harvest that year partly confounded that expectation he and Nat could not conceal their annoyance. "There never was anything so stupidly managed as this corn operation," grumbled Nat: "to buy up all the corn in the world & to get it just as the harvest is coming on, we shall lose a great deal of money & in future we shall be more careful." This may partly explain why James received little if any credit from ordinary consumers in Paris. As Nat had predicted, "I fancy the philanthropic feelings of our good Uncle will cost a little money. If people don"t attribute a wrong motive it will be all very well & charitable, but in Paris where n.o.body can imagine anything done disinterestedly I should not be surprised if it were said we do it for the sake of getting rid of what we have got at very high prices." Violence of the sort which broke out in the faubourg Saint-Antoine in May 1847 was partly directed against grain merchants; James was widely perceived to have acted as little more. Indeed, it was rumoured that Rothschild bread was laced with ground gla.s.s and a.r.s.enic. Here perhaps was the origin of Heine"s imagined Rothschild nightmare: "He dreams he gives 100,000 francs to the poor and becomes ill as a result."
What made the agrarian crisis doubly worrying for the Rothschilds was its impact on the European banking system. All countries which found themselves obliged to import grain from relatively remote markets like Russia and America experienced a drain of gold and silver which had a direct impact on their monetary systems. The most dramatic case was that of Britain. The effect of the shift to free trade was to increase immensely the import of corn to Britain, from 251,000 tonnes in 1843 to 1,749,000 tonnes in 1847. The success of Peel"s policy was thus not in reducing the price of bread, but in averting what would have been a very substantial price increase if the Corn Laws had remained in force. But the policy had an unexpected side-effect on one of Peel"s other great legislative achievements, for it forced the suspension of the Bank Charter Act of 1844. It did this because the act had reinforced the link between the Bank of England"s gold reserve and the British money supply. As corn imports flooded in and gold flooded out, so the reserve dwindled: from 15.8 million in 1844 to 9.8 million four years later. The Bank was obliged to increase its interest rates in steps from 2.5 per cent (March 1845) to a peak of 10 per cent (October 1847), thus causing a drastic monetary squeeze and finally forcing suspension. No other European economy permitted such a large outflow of specie; but Britain"s financial dominance of the continent at this period ensured that the contraction was felt everywhere. Only the grain exporters were spared, which partly accounts for the very different Russian experience in this period.
First to suffer was Frankfurt. As early as April 1846 Anselm reported: "The volume of business in Frankfurt is more and more shrinking, without a downpour of gold from heaven, I do not know how this place can recover"-a verdict echoed by James when he visited in July. Soon came the inevitable casualties, this time uncomfortably close to home. In 1847 the house of Haber collapsed, threatening to take with it the Beyfus brothers" bank. As two of Mayer Amschel"s daughters (Babette and Julie) had been married to the Beyfuses, it was felt necessary to bail them out-to the tune of 1.5 million gulden-though this was done with extremely bad grace. The younger generation in London and Paris had little time for "old Mad Beyfus." "If we are to pay because they chose to swindle," complained Nat, "the Lord knows to what interest they may draw upon our cash box . . . the only regret I experience is that our worthy relatives have thought it fit to come to their a.s.sistance." In fact, it seems to have been James who insisted on rescuing "so near a relation," despite the grumblings of Amschel, Salomon and Carl-a good ill.u.s.tration of his ultimate leadership on familial matters at this time. Yet the fall of the Habers-to whom the Beyfuses were also related by marriage-attracted much more attention than the survival of the Beyfuses. Once again, there were articles in the press "attributing to us the ruin of . . . German industry." "These attacks were so violent," wrote Anselm, "that we found ourselves compelled to answer these libels by a declaration signed by us and inserted in the princ.i.p.al papers of Germany." In the Bade nese parliament, a liberal deputy denounced the Rothschilds in terms which, Anselm reported, "aimed at nothing less than mobilising the ma.s.ses in a religious crusade against our House, representing it as a vile monetary power . . . sitting [on] . . . all the kings, all the peoples." It was even alleged that Lionel had agreed to bankrupt South German industry in return for a promise from Palmerston of a seat in the House of Commons.
Banking crises have a domino effect: the problems of Haber served to exacerbate the difficulties of one of the major Vienna banks, Arnstein & Eskeles. Trouble had been brewing in the Vienna market since early 1847, prompting Metternich to request Salomon to return urgently from Paris "to contrive some plan which would ward off the crisis of the market." By the end of September it seemed that he had succeeded in "averting" an "immeasurable calamity." However, the failure of Haber proved to have potentially disastrous implications for Eskeles, whom he owed 1 million gulden. It may be that Salomon was already heavily committed to Eskeles, with whom he had acted in close partnership for many years in issuing Austrian government bonds. Alternatively, he felt morally bound to intercede on his behalf. At any event, he informed the Frankfurt house on December 23 that Eskeles had visited me a few hours ago and most frankly informed me that at present he does not need anything, however as soon as he does, he is in a position to transmit mortgages as a security to the full amount. I have in my portfolio 1,520,000 gulden drafts upon Eskeles of which 1,185,000 gulden are of Haber, the remaining with good endors.e.m.e.nts.
In effect, he and Sina had agreed to bail Eskeles out, just as Salomon had wanted to rescue Geymuller six years previously. This time, however, Salomon had acted without consulting his brothers (remembering perhaps their refusal to agree to the Geymuller rescue). Naturally, he hastened to rea.s.sure them that there was no risk involved and that Sina was "caution itself." He urged Anselm to remain "calm": "With G.o.d"s help we shall remain the Rothschilds." If his brothers-and son-suspected that a grave mistake had been made, Salomon had no inkling. The full gravity of his error would become apparent within the month.
In Paris, the Banque de France faced a "crisis in the supply of money" (James) from as early as October 1846. On previous occasions (in 1825 and 1836-9), it had been the Banque which had come to the a.s.sistance of the Bank of England; now the Bank repaid the debt by selling its counterpart silver worth 25 million francs. As in the 1830s, Rothschild attempts to play a part in this transaction were abortive: although James made a personal visit to London in December, the business was finally arranged by Hottinguer, and James"s subsequent offer of an additional 5 million francs was rejected by the Banque Governor d"Argout. The bad blood between New Court and Threadneedle Street since Nathan"s death had yet to be purged.
Nor was Lionel successful in his attempts to mediate between St Petersburg-rich in bullion from Russian grain exports-and the Banque de France. Benjamin Davidson was packed off via Riga to the Russian capital with several carriages filled with gold, apparently with the intention of establishing a new agency. But his expedition was a failure. Having endured a gruelling journey on snow-covered Russian roads, Davidson found himself effectively unable to do business as a foreign Jew. When the Russian government came to the Banque de France"s rescue by buying 50 million francs of rentes from its securities reserve, the Rothschilds were mere onlookers. In fact, the 1846-8 crisis proved a remarkably good opportunity for the Banque to enhance its power over the French monetary system: it was not sorry to see the collapse of Laffitte"s ambitious Caisse Generale, nor that of the various regional banks of issue Laffitte had encouraged in his time as Banque Governor. Nat summed up Rothschild feelings towards the Banque at this time succinctly: "They are a set of s.h.i.ts & behave to us as badly as possible, but it is not [in] our interest to quarrel with them."
The position was not very different in London. As James put it in April 1847, with Bank rate climbing inexorably upwards, "Your Bank is the Master and driver of the situation. It is in a position to press its will on the world and so gold will have to be sent back." Yet the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Charles Wood, was less confident that the Bank would be able to master the crisis without breaching its legal gold reserve requirement. He and the Prime Minister were singularly unimpressed when they sought Lionel"s views on the matter. As Wood told his confidant, Samuel Jones Lloyd, "I saw at Lord John [Russell]"s, Lionel Rothschild & [Joshua] Bates [of Barings] this morning & (low be it spoken) I am utterly confounded at the ignorance they displayed, of facts & circ.u.mstances which I should have thought every merchant in the City must have known. They really had little or nothing to say for themselves, & admitted that things were proceeding rapidly." If Nat"s views give any indication of what Lionel said, the Rothschild position perhaps struck Wood as politically naive. The Bank"s policy, he wrote, was "illiberal-I must say I can not understand their policy, they do all in their power to stop trade & the country will pay very dear indeed for their gold." Wood knew that; what he wanted to know was how to suspend the 1844 rules without acquiring the reputation of a Vansittart. When he turned for advice (and whitewash) to the architect of the Bank Charter Act himself, Peel agreed that Lionel was not among "those who really understood the question of currency, whose prepossessions were in favour of the principles on which the Bank act was founded-and in favour of the Bank act itself." It was, Peel told him, not "Rothschild, Masterman, Glyn and the leading men of the City-but . . . those with whom he had conferred in private [who] were the very persons . . . deserving of his confidence in the matter, Jones Lloyd, W. Cotton, Norman and the Governor of the Bank." This bipartisan depreciation of Lionel"s expertise testifies to the Rothschilds" loss of influence over monetary policy since Nathan"s death.
Deflationary monetary policies had direct effects on European industry. For the Rothschilds, it was their impact on the French railway companies which was most troublesome. It was not that railway investment and construction ceased: to the extent that these were pre-programmed by political and commercial decisions taken before the crisis, the problem was more that they were difficult to stop.1 The strain was therefore taken by the railway companies" bankers and investors: as work proceeded, the banks found themselves being asked for loans to finance the inevitable cost overruns, while investors could only watch gloomily as the monetary squeeze drove down railway share prices. In truth, James had been over-optimistic, just as his English nephews had feared. On the very eve of the crisis, he and his son had confidently a.s.sured their relatives that, in addition to their economic benefits, the railways tended to make people politically "conservative and pro-government" too. "Every thing is calm in France," Alphonse told Mayer Carl in January 1846, "there is a strong majority for the administration. Industrialism and the railroads absorb all thoughts and divert from politics. Please G.o.d that we may enjoy for many years to come the blissful peace." Within a matter of months they were singing a different tune. "Well," James confided in Anselm that August, "I must admit that when I think about the many commitments that the world has taken upon itself for the payments to be made everywhere for the railways, money which will not so quickly return into the hands of the business people, then I find myself trembling." By October, he was having to reschedule payments due to the government for the Nord concession and to intervene to prop up the share price. The strain was therefore taken by the railway companies" bankers and investors: as work proceeded, the banks found themselves being asked for loans to finance the inevitable cost overruns, while investors could only watch gloomily as the monetary squeeze drove down railway share prices. In truth, James had been over-optimistic, just as his English nephews had feared. On the very eve of the crisis, he and his son had confidently a.s.sured their relatives that, in addition to their economic benefits, the railways tended to make people politically "conservative and pro-government" too. "Every thing is calm in France," Alphonse told Mayer Carl in January 1846, "there is a strong majority for the administration. Industrialism and the railroads absorb all thoughts and divert from politics. Please G.o.d that we may enjoy for many years to come the blissful peace." Within a matter of months they were singing a different tune. "Well," James confided in Anselm that August, "I must admit that when I think about the many commitments that the world has taken upon itself for the payments to be made everywhere for the railways, money which will not so quickly return into the hands of the business people, then I find myself trembling." By October, he was having to reschedule payments due to the government for the Nord concession and to intervene to prop up the share price.
While Nat savoured his own vindication, James"s response to the crisis was to concentrate Rothschild attention on the Nord and extricate himself from the other lines in which he had a smaller interest. "If," he told his nephews, "we can"t a.s.sume that when the railways draw monies from us we will then be able to get it back again, then I view the situation as being potentially very dangerous." Accordingly, when "that blackguard fellow Talabot" requested additional funds for work on the Avi gnon-Ma.r.s.eille line, he was roundly rebuffed. Shares in other companies were also sold off. Nor did James commit more money of his own to the Nord: when the company required new funds for construction, he appealed directly to shareholders. Like so many malcontents in 1847, the Rothschilds themselves blamed the government for their problems. "The gov. must change their manners of doing business," complained Anthony, "they have completely ruined their credit by the manner that they have behaved to the Railroad Companies. You can have no idea how every person cries out about losing their money & they all attribute it to the gov. & certainly they are very much to blame." Of such grievances, multiplied a thousand-fold, are revolutions made.
The paradox was that even as they grew more and more disgruntled with the European governments" economic policies, the Rothschilds continued-as if reflexively-to act as their lender of first resort. The transmission mechanism which linked the economic crisis of 1847 to the political crisis the following year was fiscal. All over Europe, the combination of rising expenditures (first on railways, then on social palliatives, finally on counter-revolutionary measures) and falling revenues (as earnings and consumption slumped) led inevitably to government deficits. Between 1842 and 1847, for example, the Austrian budget rose by 30 per cent. So deeply ingrained was his habit of lending to the government that, when he was approached for a new loan of 80 million gulden in February 1847, Salomon "thanked G.o.d" for "an extremely good business." It was to prove anything but that. Along with Sina and the ailing Eskeles, he had taken on 2.5 and 5 per cent bonds worth 80 million gulden (nominal), in return for which the bankers had to pay the government 84 million in cash in instalments spread over five years. This would have been a good business only if five years of peace and prosperity had been at least probable.
Ostensibly, this loan was needed to finance new railways: that was what Salomon told Ga.s.ser when he tried to sell "a considerable sum" of the new bonds to the cash-rich Tsar. By November 1847, however, Austria was arming in preparation for intervention in Lombardy and Venetia, where insurrection seemed imminent. Salomon knew this because Metternich had told him, yet instead of being alarmed, he went so far as to offer more financial a.s.sistance. Incredibly, he agreed to lend a further 3.7 million gulden in return for 4 per cent bonds, which he furthermore pledged not to sell on the already stretched market: they would, he promised Kubeck, remain "in his own safe," in return for interest of 4.6 per cent. With short-term rates in London at this time standing at 5.85 per cent and the price of 5 per cent metalliques already ten points lower than they had been three years before, this was an extraordinary (not to say suicidal) decision. Even as Salomon"s proposal was being discussed, Kubeck was warning that intervention in Italy would lead to "the complete breakdown of our finances." "We are on the verge of an abyss," he told Metternich presciently, "and the increasing demands on the Treasury arising out of the measures necessary to combat foreign revolutionary elements have led to increased disturbances within the country, as is indicated by the att.i.tude of the provincial Estates, and by the literary outbursts in the Press of our neighbours." Metternich was undaunted. When Salomon began to get cold feet in January, he angrily told him: "Politically, things are all right; the exchange is not. I do my duty but you do not do yours."
As with his advance to Eskeles, Salomon"s undertakings to the government were made without reference to the other Rothschild houses. "We have very curious letters from Vienna," Nat wrote to New Court at around the same time. "Our good Uncle is full of Austrian Metallics 2[.5]% & 5% & how he will get out on such markets the Lord knows-Prince Metternich takes our good Uncle in so that he may continue his financial operations, I fancy the F"furt house will find a little difference in their balance the next time they make it up." This was to prove a serious understatement. When the first efforts were made to compute Salomon"s commitments in February 1848, the total approached 4.35 million gulden (around 610,000). That was more than double the capital of the Vienna house in 1844. Notionally, as Nat suggested, the Frankfurt house remained responsible for its Vienna branch; but it too had been acc.u.mulating the bonds of other German governments in the course of the 1840s, notably those of Wurttemberg and Hanover, and there was talk of a new loan to Prussia as late as March 1848! When Anselm finally arrived from Frankfurt to set the Vienna house in order, he was in no mood for filial generosity. His relationship with his father was to be one of the first Rothschild casualties of 1848.
French spending had also been rising steadily. By 1847 the budget was 55 per cent higher than it had been twelve years before, not least because of the various state subsidies to the railway companies. As early as the autumn of 1846 there was talk of a loan to fund the government"s deficit; by the summer of the following year the difficulty of placing treasury bills on the struggling money market made such a new issue of rentes imperative. Needless to say, the Rothschilds had no intention of leaving the business to others, despite the periodic anxieties of James"s nephews about French financial stability. As in Vienna, so in Paris: government loans had become a matter of course, regardless of economic conditions. True, James drove what seemed to be a hard bargain. The terms he secured looked generous: of the 350 million francs nominal to be raised, the Rothschilds took 250 million in the form of 3 per cent rentes priced at just 75.25, some two points below the market price. Indeed, his rivals could with justice have complained of double-dealing. It seems likely that the auction of the new rentes was rigged by the Finance Minister so that James"s bid was exactly equal to the Minister"s supposedly secret minimum. As Nat candidly told his brothers beforehand, Dumon had "let the cat out of the bag": "[He] said he could not commmunicate his minimum as it was necessary for him to be able to state in the Chamber that his sealed letter had remained a secret for every body, but on pourrait se mettre a peu pres d"accord on pourrait se mettre a peu pres d"accord."
Yet Nat was fundamentally right to regard the loan as "a most dangerous & disagreeable concern." James was less rash than Salomon, but he did not follow his bearish nephews" chorus of advice to "get out of our loan famously." Some of it was sold to investors ranging from the Tsar to Heinrich Heine. But not all of it. According to a number of accounts, he decided to sell only a third at once to the market, holding on to the remaining 170 million francs in the expectation that the price of 3 per cents would rise above 77. Meanwhile, of course, James had bound himself to pay the Treasury 250 million francs in instalments spread over two years. It was to prove another expensive miscalculation.
In England too there was an ill-judged loan on the eve of the storm. The 8 million so-called Irish Famine Loan of March 1847 was raised ostensibly to finance the cost of aid to Ireland, though it may reasonably be a.s.sumed that there were other reasons for the government"s deficit in this period. The combination of Britain"s unique credit-rating and the good cause supposedly being funded boded well, and Rothschilds and Barings-who shared the underwriting equally-had no difficulty in finding buyers. Indeed, James himself complained about being given only 250,000. Yet the price quickly fell from the issue price of 89.5 to 85, much to the consternation of the investing public and the embarra.s.sment of the underwriters.
Even in Italy, where the revolution may be said to have begun, the Rothschilds toyed with the possibility of state loans in 1846-7. In Naples, Carl appears to have been keen to agree a loan to the government, and was saved from doing so only by the Bourbon regime"s own chronic indecisiveness. In Rome too there was talk of a loan. After the advances which had been made on the basis of Rothschild loans in the 1830s, the finances of the Papacy were once again in disarray: the deficit for 1847 was double that of the previous year and Roman 5 per cents dropped below par for the first time since 1834. Yet James had been intrigued by the election of Pius IX in 1846-"supposedly a liberal," as he rather acutely put it-and he ordered a halt to sales of Roman bonds in the expectation of "some really positive changes." This probably referred to the position of the Jewish community in Rome, whose case for better treatment Salomon once again took up. Only a stark warning from their new Italian agent Hecht "who represents the state of the Papal domains in the blackest colours & thinks that a revolution is at the eve to break out [sic]" deterred the Rothschilds from taking up Torlonia"s proposal of a new loan. When Adolph visited the Holy City in January 1848, he was unnerved by the combination of political debate and military preparation he encountered. For the same reason, the London house"s amazingly ill-timed suggestion of a loan to Piedmont-in January 1848!-was thrown out by Alphonse, who pointed out gently that this was "a country which can be considered as . . . already in full revolution." The only other country whose request for a loan was turned down at this time was Belgium-ironically, one of the countries least affected by the revolutionary upheavals which were about to begin.
"The Worst Revolution That Ever Happened"
To say that the 1848 revolutions began in Italy is perhaps not strictly true: civil wars in Galicia and in Switzerland were harbingers of the cataclysm, as were the abortive United Diet (Landtag) summoned-in conformity with the 1819 State Debt Decree-by Frederick William IV in Berlin in 1847, and the stirrings of liberal enthusiasm in South Germany. But, though they followed these events carefully, the Rothschilds were not worried by them. Indeed, the annexation of Cracow by Austria looked like just another Polish part.i.tion: as on previous occasions, "the poor Poles" were "very much to be pitied." "I suppose lots of them will be shot," remarked Nat dispa.s.sionately; his uncle Salomon"s sole concern was that foreign governments should not challenge the Austrian move. It was the outbreak of an artisans" revolt in Sicily in January 1848 and the granting of a liberal const.i.tution by Ferdinand II which made the Rothschilds for the first time afraid. It was, commented Nat, "stinking news" (which the Rothschilds were, as usual, the first to hear).
Yet he and the rest of the family continued to think primarily in diplomatic terms, wondering whether the Neapolitan crisis would harden the Austrian resolve to intervene (something Salomon anxiously denied). In his letters to Lionel and Alphonse, Anselm joked about Adolph"s hand shaking as he wrote his letters, suggesting that he shared his father"s nervous, not to say pusillanimous temper. But this was just banter. Carl"s initial reaction in fact suggests sang-froid: as early as February 19 he was once again discussing the possibility of a loan to the Bourbon regime. When Anselm commented on liberal attacks on Ludwig I"s government in Munich, he little realised how soon his diagnosis would apply to all Europe: "That is the way it is, alas: in the highest politics just as in the most lowly social relations, the people imposes its will and dictates the law to the higher power." He could still hope that "the unrest there" would "soon pa.s.s"-and with it the slump in the price of the Rothschilds" "low loans."
As in 1830, it was the outbreak of revolution in France which turned disquiet into panic. Of course, the Rothschilds had never had unqualified confidence in the July Monarchy. The death of Louis Philippe"s eldest son in 1842 had reinforced their pessimism about the future: the King himself confided "that after his death . . . the Revolution of 1830 would begin again." "I a.s.sure you it has given me the stomach ache," commented Anthony uneasily. "I do not think that there is any danger as long as the present King lives-but what will take place after his death G.o.d knows & I hope to G.o.d that the good old gentleman will live for a mighty time and that everything will go on well-nevertheless we must be prudent." This explains the Rothschilds" fear of a successful a.s.sa.s.sination attempt against the King. When James himself received a death threat in 1846, he pa.s.sed the letter on to the government, remarking: "The man who wants to shoot at me could just as well shoot at the King, or vice versa." When Louis Philippe survived yet another attempt on his life the following April, Nat p.r.o.nounced him "one of the most admirable men that ever existed."
The growing extra-parliamentary pressure for electoral reform in the course of 1847, however, raised the possibility that 1830 might repeat itself even with Louis Philippe still living. Nat"s reports from Paris in January and February 1848 show that he saw the crisis coming: "[G]ood folks speak exactly as they did just before the revolution of 1830," he remarked on February 20, two days before the fateful Reform banquet was scheduled to take place, in defiance of a government ban.
I think a change of ministry wd. remedy the evil but in the mean time it is impossible to say what will occur-no one can tell how a french mob will behave & when the [president?] of the chamber of deputies a.s.sociates with the common people it is a hazardous thing to say how far they will go and when they will remain quiet-We must hope for the best, in the mean time my dear Brothers, I really recommend you most strongly to sell stocks & public securities of all sorts and descriptions.
Yet the very next day he was more optimistic: The nasty banquet continues exciting the public . . . It is really very much the same sort of thing as in 1830 & nevertheless I can not help thinking it will all blow over and leave us [far?] behind.-This country is so well off and in general people are so greatly interested in the maintenance of things that I believe a revolutionary movement [to be] out of the question . . . The end will be a change of ministry & Guizot will in all probability go out on the Parliamentary reform question.-I shall be very glad when that takes place, it wd. make our rentes get up and set matters right again.
"I have however no doubt that as soon as the affair of the banquet is over we shall see a great improvement," he added in another letter. "All our friends a.s.sure us there is no need of anxiety on acct. of any revolutionary demonstration on the part of the dep[utie]s of the Gauche-in my opinion their banquet will be a complete failure." "People have much too great an interest at stake in the maintenance of order to kick up rows," he concluded in his final despatch before the date set for the banquet, "& I don"t think that emeutes will be again a l"ordre du jour at least p[ou]r le moment-" The temperamental pessimist had picked the worst possible moment to look on the bright side.
Even in his letter of February 23, with barricades in the street and signs of mutiny in the National Guard, Nat still underestimated the gravity of the situation, hoping nervously that a change of ministry would suffice to dampen unrest: The ministry has changed, Guizot has just declared in the chamber of Depts. that he had sent in his resignation to the king and his majesty was at the present moment closeted with Mole-We must hope that between them they will cook up a good government but it is a dangerous experiment to yield to the wishes of a factious minority and of a turbulent set of national guards-The great fault was in not sending off Guizot sooner, the people had got up the reform cry and it is impossible to resist public opinion any where nowadays.-The emeute in itself was not of a very serious nature, very little real fighting and few if any killed-but what really made the king anxious was the manifestation of the national guard in favour of reform and against Guizot . . . The emeute by all accounts is over, now they have got reform I do not see what they have got to fight for & I suppose we shall hear of illuminations and the Lord knows what else. I know one thing and that is your humble servant will not hold much French stock in future . . . [I]t"s a dangerous job to give way to a mob incited by the National [Guard].
This must have been written just hours before the fateful confrontation in the rue des Capucins, in which fifty demonstrators were shot dead by soldiers guarding the Foreign Ministry. The next day, in the face of what he called "a moral uprising," Louis Philippe abdicated in favour of his grandson and fled to England, leaving the various opposition parties to form a provisional government, including the lawyer Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, the poet Alphonse de Lamartine, the socialist Louis Blanc and a token worker named Albert. The following day a commission was set up in response to unemployed building workers" a.s.sertion of their "right to work." Nat"s next despatch was short and to the point: "We are in the midst of the worst revolution that ever happened-You may perhaps see us shortly after this reaches [you]." Already he and James had sent their wives and children to Le Havre to take the next ship to England.
Events in France were shaped as much by the memory of past revolutions as by anything else. Those who recalled how little had been achieved in 1830 were determined to establish a republic on a more authentically democratic basis; those still frightened by memories of the 1790s were determined not to let power into the hands of neo-Jacobins. The issue was undecided until, at the earliest, the end of June. Although the elections to the Const.i.tutional a.s.sembly revealed the limited support for radical republicanism outside Paris, the possibility of a "red" coup within Paris could not be ruled out. In May this was attempted unsuccessfully by the socialists Raspail, Blanqui and Barbes. In June the closure of the national work-shops led to clashes between disillusioned workers and National Guardsmen. As late as June 1849, the so-called Montagne party took to the streets in a last vain bid to rekindle the Jacobin spirit.
The pattern was roughly similar almost everywhere the revolution broke out. Although relatively few monarchs were definitively deposed by the revolution, a number were prompted to flee their capitals and most were forced to make const.i.tutional concessions by the outbreak of violence in the streets, which exposed the inadequacy (or unreliability) of their civilian police forces. This collective scuttle meant that a variety of const.i.tutional innovations were possible, ranging from French republicanism (also tried in Rome and Venice) to parliamentarism (in many German states). In the Netherlands, a centre of revolution in 1830, the Dutch and Belgian monarchs hastily gave ground to liberal pressure and allowed const.i.tutional reforms to be implemented; the same was true in Denmark. In Germany, the revolution began in Baden, where the Grand Duke was forced to concede a liberal const.i.tution almost immediately after the Paris events, an example followed in short order by Hesse-Ka.s.sel, Hesse-Darmstadt and Wurttemberg. In Bavaria, King Ludwig was forced to abdicate, his reputation irreparably damaged by his liaison with Lola Montez. Such changes within the monarchical system did not satisfy more radical republicans, who attempted a coup in Baden in April. The tremors were felt even in the Rothschilds" home town: contrary to Anselm"s expectations, 1848 posed a threat to ancient republics like Frankfurt too if their definitions of citizenship were over-narrow and their governmental structures antiquated. The first violence in the town centre occurred in early March.
Everywhere there seemed to be two (possibly successive) revolutions: one of which aimed at const.i.tutional reform, the other of which had fundamentally economic objectives. Though they overlapped in complex ways, there was a marked social difference between the two. While educated academics, lawyers and professionals made speeches and drafted const.i.tutions, it was artisans, apprentices and workers who manned barricades and got themselves shot.
Perhaps the biggest difference between 1848 and 1830 was that now the revolutionary epidemic spread to Austria. Metternich received the news of the Paris revolution from a Rothschild courier. "Eh bien, mon cher, tout est fini," he is said to have commented, though his subsequent remarks to Salomon were more bullish. It was indeed all finished. On March 13 crowds of demonstrators clashed with troops outside the hall where the Lower Austrian Estates were meeting. The next day Metternich resigned, fleeing by a circuitous route across Europe in disguise and with barely enough money-a credit-note from his faithful banker Salomon-to pay his family"s pa.s.sage to England. The Emperor Ferdinand replaced him with his arch-rival Kolowrat and promised a const.i.tution. As elsewhere, when the new government opted for an English-style bicameral parliament with a property franchise for the lower house, radical democrats-mainly students like Hermann Goldschmidt"s maverick cousin Bernhard Bauer-took to the streets (May 15), prompting the Emperor himself to flee to Innsbruck. When the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly proved quite conservative (the peasant deputies were satisfied with the abolition of serfdom) and the revolutionary government tried to reduce the money spent on public works, there was further unrest: workers went on strike in July, and students attempted a last-ditch coup in October.
The collapse of Habsburg authority at the centre set off a chain reaction throughout Central Europe. In Prussia, unrest had already begun in the Rhineland, but it was the news from Vienna which transformed the mood in Berlin. On March 17, after days of public demonstrations, Frederick William IV appeared to capitulate by agreeing to a const.i.tution, but simultaneously deployed troops to restore order. As in Paris, it was shots fired by nervy soldiers at demonstrators in the city centre which turned reform into revolution. For more than twenty-four hours fighting raged; then the King gave in, issuing a series of proclamations to Berliners, Prussians and-significantly-"the German nation." As in Baden, Wurttemberg and Hanover, liberals became ministers, though all those who accepted office soon came to realise the difficulty of reconciling their aspirations for economic and political liberty with the more radical aims of the artisans, students and workers. For a time, the best hope of unity appeared to be nationalism. Thus, from an early stage, the German revolution was more than merely a matter of const.i.tutional reform within states: it promised a parallel transformation of the German Confederation itself.
The ramifications of the Habsburg collapse were not confined to Germany. In Prague, moderate liberals like Frantisek Palacky pressed for a modern parliament based on a property franchise in place of the antiquated Bohemian Diet. In Hungary, Croatia and Transylvania there were similar separatist tendencies with varying degrees of liberalism. It was the same in Italy, though the timing was slightly different. As we have seen, the revolution in the Two Sicilies had begun early: on March 6 Ferdinand II granted a separate parliament in Sicily and was shortly afterwards deposed there; two months later he allowed a parliament to a.s.semble in Naples itself. In Piedmont and the Papal states, Charles Albert and Pius IX made similar concessions, both granting const.i.tutions in March. In Venice and Milan, revolution took the form of revolt against Austrian rule. As in Germany (though on a smaller scale), some revolutionaries saw the opportunity to make Italy more than merely a geographical expression.
Why did 1848 seem "the worst revolution that ever happened" to the Rothschilds? It is important to notice that their reaction was not determined by a uniformly ideological aversion to liberal or republican forms of government. Att.i.tudes towards the revolution varied widely from one member of the family to another. At one extreme, Salomon seemed almost incapable of comprehending the calamity which had befallen him other than in religious terms. When not trying to justify his own financial mistakes in rambling letters to his brothers and nephews, Salomon interpreted the revolution variously as an avoidable political mishap attributable to the incompetence of Louis-Philippe, the vanity of Princess Metternich and the irresponsibility of Palmerston, and a world-historical upheaval on a par not just with 1789 but with the Peasants" Wars, the Crusades and a biblical plague of locusts. Whichever it was, he regarded it as a divine test of religious faith.
His nephew Nat lacked this consolation. Already more politically conservative and personally cautious than his brothers in London, he was deeply traumatised by the revolution-to the point of suffering something like a physical or nervous collapse. A worse "political cholera never yet infected the world," he lamented, before repairing to take the waters at Ems, "& I am afraid the Doctor does not exist to cure it, a great deal of blood must be shed first." Virtually every letter he wrote to his brothers during the revolutionary months concluded with a warning to sell all their stocks and shares.
No one else in the family took the revolution quite as badly. Neither Amschel nor Carl seems to have reflected deeply on the subject: for them, the revolution was like a natural disaster-inexplicable, but with G.o.d"s blessing survivable. The ideas of the revolution were beyond their ken-Carl dismissed talk of Italian nationality as "the stupid projects of a few deranged minds"-and as far as possible he and Amschel sought to keep their distance from political debate. Similarly, the pageantry of nationalism-the tricolours, the patriotic songs-left the older Rothschilds stone cold. A contemporary cartoon depicts a puzzled Amschel asking Arnold Duckwitz, the "Reich Trade Minister" appointed by the Frankfurt parliament in the summer of 1848 (on the optimistic a.s.sumption that a new Reich was in the making): "Nothing to trade yet, Mister Minister?" (see ill.u.s.tration 16.iii). It was probably right to imply that he was baffled by the protracted and inconclusive debates in the parliament. James, by contrast, had a good idea what the revolutionaries were after. Increasingly of the opinion that all regimes were at once unreliable and financially biddable, he was inclined to salute whichever flag was run up the mast after the storm. His refusal to let Alphonse serve in the National Guard, for example, was more an a.s.sertion of the primacy of family interests over all politics than an explicitly anti-republican gesture. James shed no tears for Louis Philippe.
This pragmatism was to some extent shared by the four eldest sons, Anselm, Lionel, Mayer Carl and Alphonse, who already tended to take a similar, sober view of political developments. Unlike James, however, they all occasionally expressed sympathy with liberal reforms, though they distinguished these from the ideas of radical democrats, socialists and communists. Anselm"s commentaries on German developments suggest little sympathy with the various kings, princes and archdukes obliged to bow to "the will of the people," as well as considerable impatience with the "old wig-heads" of the Frankfurt Senate. He was interested enough to attend the first debates of the German "pre-parliament" in Frankfurt before leavi