recorded by Rothschild biographers concerns the smuggling of a large shipment of gold to finance the Duke of Wellington who was attempting to feed and equip an army in Portugal and in the Pyrenees mountains between Spain and France.
It was not at all certain that Wellington would be able to defeat Napoleon in the coming battle, and the Duke was hard pressed to convince bankers and merchants in Portugal and Spain to accept his written promises-to-pay, even though they were officially guaranteed by the British government. These notes were deeply discounted, and Wellington was desperate for gold coin. It was at this point that Nathan Rothschild offered the services of himself and his brothers. With an efficient smuggling apparatus already functioning throughout Europe, he was able to offer Wellington much better terms while still making a magnificent profit. But, to accomplish this, the gold had to pass right under Napoleon's nose.
Frederic Morton describes the scene:
There was only one way to route the cash: through the very France E n g l a n d ' s a r m y w a s f i g h t i n g . O f c o u r s e , the R o t h s c h i l d blockade-running machine already had superb cogs whirring all over Germany, Scandinavia and England, even in Spain and Southern France. But a very foxy new wheel was needed in Napoleon's capital itself. Enter Jacob—henceforth called James—the youngest of Mayer's sons.2
1. R. McNair Wilson, p. 83.
2. Morton, p. 46.
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James was only nineteen years old but was well trained by his father in the art of deception. He arrived in Paris with a dual mission. First, he was to provide the French authorities with a false report about the British gold movement, with just enough truth in it to sound convincing. He presented the government with falsified letters indicating that the English were desperate to
Second, James was to serve as a vital link in a financial chain stretching between London and the Pyrenees. He was to coordinate the receipt of the gold into France, the conversion of that gold into Spanish banknotes, and the movement of those notes out of the country on their way to Wellington. All of this he did with amazing dexterity, especially considering his youth. Morton concludes: In the space of a few hundred hours Mayer's youngest had not only gotten the English gold rolling through France, but conjured a fiscal mirage that took in Napoleon himself. A teen-age Rothschild tricked the imperial government into sanctioning the very process that helped to ruin it....
The family machine began to hum. Nathan sent big shipments ofBritish guineas, Portuguese gold ounces, French napoleons d'or (oftenfreshly minted in London) across the Channel. From the coast Jamessaw them to Paris and secretly transmuted the metal into bills oncertain Spanish bankers. South of the capital, Kalmann [another ofMayer's sons] materialized, took over the bills, blurred into athousand shadowed canyons along the Pyrenees—and reappeared,with Wellington's receipts in hand. Salomon [another son] waseverywhere, trouble-shooting, making sure the transit points werediffuse and obscure enough not to disturb either the French delusionor the British guinea rate. Amschel stayed in Frankfurt and helpedfather Mayer to staff headquarters.
