Napoleon locked in his victories by elevating his family: his brothers became kings – Joseph of Naples, Louis of the Netherlands, Jérôme of Westphalia; his stepson Eugène became viceroy of Italy.* Napoleon bullied and lectured his royal brothers, telling his favourite Joseph, ‘You must be a king and talk like a king,’ something Joseph never quite managed, and reprimanding Jérôme for being funny: ‘Your letter was too witty. You don’t need wit in war.’
King Louis, married to Josephine’s daughter Hortense, went native, announcing, ‘From the moment I set foot on Dutch soil, I became Dutch.’ This outraged the emperor, who said, ‘If you continue to govern by whingeing, if you allow yourself to be bullied’, he would be of no use. Napoleon went on, ‘You tire me needlessly … Only women cry and complain; men act; you’ll make me regret your weakness. More energy, more energy!’ The brothers in turn were jealous and resentful; no one had Napoleon’s energy, certainly not Louis, whom the emperor soon sacked as Netherlands king – but he was more useful dynastically. Hortense gave birth to a boy, Louis-Napoleon, but then flaunted her affair with Talleyrand’s natural son with whom she had an illegitimate son, Charles de Morny. Long afterwards, Louis-Napoleon would sit on the French throne – and Morny would put him there.
As Napoleon reordered the smaller states of Germany, he unknowingly launched the career of the Jewish banker who became known as the Napoleon of Finance.
THE KINGS OF CAPITAL: THE ROTHSCHILDS
Nathan Mayer Rothschild was the son of Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the court agent of Wilhelm IX, prince-elector of Hesse-Kassel, who had made a fortune renting out Hessian mercenaries (usually to Britain, for which they fought in America) and now had made the mistake of backing Prussia. Napoleon punished Wilhelm by giving Hesse to his brother King Jérôme. Wilhelm entrusted his money to Rothschild to conceal it from the French emperor. Rothschild had already dispatched Nathan to Britain, where he used the Hessian capital to set up a family who would personify the new era of international capitalism and become the richest in the world.
‘A rather big man who wore a round unpowdered wig and small goatee beard’, Mayer Rothschild had been born in the Judengasse – Jews’ Lane – of the Frankfurt Ghetto, created by Frederick the Fat in 1458 to protect and squeeze Jews. Given that Jews were banned from owning land, prohibited from entering parks, bars and promenades and forced to wear yellow rings and step off the pavement and doff their hat if any non-Jew said to them, ‘Jew, do your duty,’ they had little choice but to concentrate on their faith and work in commerce. Rothschild, originally a dealer in coins and textiles, became
Now that Napoleon had cancelled Hesse-Kassel, Rothschild smuggled four chests of coin to Britain, where, first in Manchester, then in London, Mayer’s third son Nathaniel invested Wilhelm’s money, giving the family a powerful foundation as they transformed themselves from court Jews and textile traders into bankers. Mayer’s wife Gutle, who had survived ten pregnancies, was tough enough to withstand a French raid and interrogation in pursuit of the Hessian treasure. But women were excluded from the family business: when Mayer died at sixty-eight, he left a moderate fortune and a will specifying that property must pass through the male line only, which encouraged marriage among family members. Nathaniel, aggressive and ingenious, emerged as the leader of the five brothers, honouring their father’s insistence on the family’s ‘unbreakable unity’ by placing his brothers in different European capitals. ‘My brother in London is the commanding general,’ said Salomon Rothschild, who covered the Habsburgs in Vienna, ‘I’m his field marshal,’ adding, ‘No disapproval shall be expressed by either of us at the conduct of the other since we act always for the joint interest.’
The move to London placed them perfectly: the Rothschilds would be beneficiaries of three world-changing movements. First was industrial expansion, based on British textiles and steel and powered by coal and steam, soon spreading to Germany and France. Next was the opening up of society to talent and the start of mass politics fostered by Napoleon, who by removing restrictions on Jews allowed them to take part in western communities for the first time. Finally, Napoleon’s war obliged nations to deploy armies so large that they had to be financed by a growing capital market that this family would shape – and dominate – for a century.
