This became painfully obvious when the parliamentary session began. James saw at once “that the King will have to choose between the Chambers and the Ministry.” But, he reasoned, “I don’t want to do anything, because as long as I remain firm, the people will not have the courage to set about depressing the rentes and I will thus ride out the storm.” By 221 votes to 181, the deputies passed an address to the King stating that “concord between the political views of your government and the wishes of your people . . . does not exist today,” whereupon (as James had been warned to expect) the King dissolved the Chamber and called for new elections. Far from selling rentes, however, James found himself having to buy them to shore up the market—and his friend the “devil”:
Well, Polignac promised me that he will not instigate a coup d’état, that is, he will not make any move that is illegal and that he will remain faithful with his Ministers, so I went ahead and bought 100,000 francs of rentes [3.3 million nominal] because I had told him, “If you remain within the law then I promise you that there will be a rise,” and I kept my word for the [3 per cent] rentes now stand at 82.40 when they had opened at 81.40 . . . Well, while we don’t have any Chambers the Ministry may well get some new Ministers and matters will then be sorted out. If we manage to gain three months then everything will be resolved.
James was right to think that a financial collapse could be averted for a time, though not for three months: in fact, the price of 3 per cents rallied and remained above 84 until May 3. However, he was not in a position simultaneously to support the market and to sell worthwhile amounts of rentes (though he did try to sell some “without anyone getting wind of what I am doing”). This meant that, when the market began to slide even before the new Chamber convened, the brothers still held not only 25 million francs of 4 per cents but also some 1.5 million francs of 5 per cents and 4.5 million of 3 per cents. The prices paid for the 5 and 4.5 per cents had been, respectively, 106.25 and 83.70. From May onwards, the losses on these accounts began to mount. Yet neither James nor Nathan could bear to write them off by selling. James continued to clutch at straws, refusing to face the possibility that the political situation might go on deteriorating. At the same time, the government put its faith in him: “If you do not succeed in preventing the fall in values,” a minister told him, “everyone will believe that a coup d’état will occur such as you so rightly fear.” And indeed, prices did rally slightly between June 10 and July 12. But the truth was that the limits of Rothschild power over the market had been reached. Ouvrard and others were now beginning an unstoppable bear run.
The news that the government’s Algerian expedition had been successful—which reached Paris in the first week of July—was completely swamped by the results of the elections, which were a resounding victory for the Opposition. Now the only hope—expressed by Salomon, who rushed to Paris to lend his assistance—was that the King might compromise with the Chamber and abandon Polignac. As James realised, however, this was unlikely:
Vitrolles [one of Polignac’s ministers] has just arrived and says that during the coming month the King will take very firm measures as a result of which the life of the Chamber will be prolonged . . . but there are one hundred Deputies more on the side of the opposition than there are supporting the Ministry. Well, what can the Chamber do in such a situation? Is it not the case that in England, if a Ministry does not have the support of a majority, they then have to resign? But here the King declares: “I will hold on to my Ministry.” So what can one do? Believe me, my dear Nathan, I am . . . losing my courage.
Twelve days later his courage had gone completely: “The whole world is selling rentes . . . and all the Ministers, including the Finance Minister and the Minister for Internal Affairs tell me, ‘Rothschild, be careful.’ . . . My dear Nathan, you are an old warrior. Tell me truthfully, do you not also fear what might happen in the end?”
Before Nathan could even reply, the end arrived. On July 26 Charles X invoked his exceptional powers under article 14 of the 1814 Charter and published three ordinances which ended freedom of the press, dissolved the Chamber and introduced yet another change to the electoral system, the aim of which was to produce a more pliant set of deputies. It was in fact the first of these which triggered the revolution: few deputies had yet arrived in Paris, but liberal journalists like Adolphe Thiers of the National lost no time in denouncing the government’s coup. When attempts were made to close down the three leading opposition newspapers, crowds took to the streets. Nathan’s eldest son Lionel arrived just in time to witness the ensuing confusion, and his letter perfectly captures the uncertainty of the moment:
One moment one thinks oneself on the eve of seeing a revolution, the next, that every thing in a short time will be again in order . . . [T]oday all the newspapers appeared as usual which has created a little noise, before all the newspaper offices there are soldiers & the gens d’armes who have seized all the papers & taken the Editors before the police, this alone is enough to make a disturbance in any free country: all the shops in those streets are of course closed: in the Palais Royal there was a man selling some of these papers. He was immediately seized, some of the Boys, & of the common people took his part, but in a few minutes everything was quiet again, the gates in the Palais Royal & the shops are all closed, this cirumstance in itself is trifling, but when it comes to London they make a great story of it; Before all the Ministers’ Houses there are also gens d’armes. All these things make people speak, but in the end I do not think it will come to any thing very bad . . . [T]o day there is to be a meeting of all the members of the late parliament what they will do, it is not possible to say, but the report is, that they will declare themselves the only & true representatives of the people & without their sanction nothing is legal, that is done by the ministers & that after the 1st Jan[uar]y. no taxes need to be paid . . . this is the opinion of the opposition who think that we shall see very dreadful times again, but the other party, the ministerial, who have completely the command of the army, think that with force they shall be able to carry everything, the only thing papa is that the King before long will see the Danger.
By the time he did see the danger, however, it was too late. In two days of intense fighting which cost the lives of 800 protesters and 200 soldiers, the troops loyal to Charles X were driven out of Paris. Talk of mediation by moderate liberals like the bankers Jacques Laffitte and Casimir Périer was suddenly redundant, as was the King’s belated offer to withdraw the ordinances. With the capital on the verge of anarchy, new institutions redolent of the 1790s were hastily improvised: a municipal committee and a national guard led by that old republican warhorse Lafayette. As Salomon uneasily reported to Metternich on July 30, “the tricolour flag is flying on all public buildings.” Lionel described a euphorically insurgent Paris:
The streets are crowded with persons, all laughing and as gay as if they had come from some Dance, in the squares & open places all the Garde Nationale & Royal Troops who had delivered up their arms, marching & being cheered by the people, in every corner the three coloured flags & every person with a red, blue & white cockade, in the Boulevard & streets every hundred yards the fine large trees cut down and the pavement taken up & piled up against them & broken doors &c so that nothing can pass . . . these barricades, as they call them, are not only in the principal streets, but in all the small ones, so that it was impossible for the soldiers & artillery to pass anywhere.
Small wonder James was beetle-browed when the historian Jules Michelet glimpsed him in his carriage. Small wonder he took the precaution of burying his bonds in the grounds of Salomon’s house at Suresnes.
Yet James survived. The traditional explanation for this is that he was a skilful turncoat, but the reality is more complex. It is undeniable that he switched sides in July 1830 with alacrity and relief. Apart from the offer of a rural hiding place to Vitrolles, he did nothing of substance to assist the outgoing regime, rejecting all requests from the ousted monarch for money until it
was clear that he was leaving the country. Indeed, his nephew exulted in Charles’s overthrow: “Never was there a more glorious week for France, this people have [sic] behaved in a way that will be admired by every person, and will make them be reckoned now amongst the first of nations . . . It will be a good lesson for other governm[en]ts.” When Polignac was put on trial later in the year, James shed no tears: “I assure you that, as far as I am concerned, for all the good that Polignac has done for us, he might as well be damned.” James was also quick to broadcast his support for the new regime, ostentatiously donating 15,000 francs for the care of those wounded in the street-fighting. Not only did Anselm do his bit in the national guard (a bourgeois defence force of which the family strongly approved); James even dressed up his three-year-old son Alphonse in a miniature guard’s uniform. It is also true that the liberals’ decision to offer first the office of lieutenant general and then the crown to the duc d’Orléans was a stroke of good luck for James; as we have seen, he had already made the new King a “good friend” in the 1820s. From the Rothschild point of view, a constitutional monarchy was preferable to an absolute regime, and far better than a republic: as Salomon characteristically put it after watching Louis Philippe take the coronation oath to uphold the slightly revised charter: “Thank God that we have come so far that the matter has ended so well, for otherwise the Rentes would not have stood at 79 but would have fallen to 39 God forbid.” James’s relations with some of the key figures in the new government—notably the two bankers Laffitte and Périer—were also relatively good, though the extent of genuine amity among such business rivals should not be exaggerated. Talleyrand, who was the linchpin of Louis Philippe’s diplomacy in London, was persuaded to bank with Nathan. Sebastiani, the Foreign Minister from late 1830, was “on the most friendly terms” with James, who called on him “every morning”; relations with his successor de Broglie were also close.
Heine was ultimately right, then, when he said that James “appreciated the political capacities of Louis Philippe from the first, and . . . always stayed on an intimate footing with that grand master of politics.” Indeed, even the later anti-Semitic writer Drumont was not far wrong when he later spoke of an “affinity” between James and Louis Philippe based on their common “adoration of money”: we know that James gave Louis Philippe a personal loan of over 2 million francs in April 1840 and Heine attributed the “great attentions paid to [Rothschild] at court” to the King’s “financial plight.” Although Stendhal’s witty and well-connected “Monsieur Leuwen” can hardly have been modelled on James, as has sometimes been claimed—he is not Jewish, for example, and his French is much too elegant—his political influence as portrayed by Stendhal closely corresponds to that wielded by James at the time the novel was written (1836).5 “The newspapers write so much about the ministers speculating with us,” reported Lionel in 1834, “that they don’t like to receive us every day.” The Rothschilds’ private correspondence reveals the truth of such press reports, and suggests that it was only a slight exaggeration to claim, as one Austrian source did, that “in all Ministries and in all the Departments [Rothschild] has his creatures of all ranks to bring him every kind of information.” At the same time, the social barriers which had still existed under the Restoration all but disappeared in the reign of the “Citizen King”: members of the royal family as well as ministers and ambassadors were happy to accept James’s invitations to dinners, balls and hunting parties.
Nevertheless, the cosiness of the relationship which developed between James and Louis Philippe’s regime in the course of the 1830s should not blind us to the fact that, at least until 1833, the Rothschilds were far from convinced that the regime would endure. And with good reason. The example of Spain suggested the possibility of a protracted civil war between rival claimants to the throne. More important, recent French history gave little encouragement to proponents of a constitutional monarchy. Every time crowds took to the streets of Paris—calling for the execution of Polignac in October 1830, for example—the fear recurred that the monarchy would be swept aside by the supporters of a republic. In December “precautions” had to be taken when James received warnings “that they [republicans] intend attacking the house tonight & taking everything.” Lionel’s assessment was not unrealistic: “This party although not so very large makes itself appear considerably more so, by their active conduct, they make use of all the nonsense of the first revolution & wish to make this one resemble it in every respect: this frightens many persons.”
More pessimistic observers like the Prussian ambassador Werther warned James that Louis Philippe would “go the same way as Louis XVI.” “The old revolution started in a similar manner,” James’s dinner guests told him, “and the situation now is beginning to look ominously alike. We can’t see how anyone here can feel secure and we are surprised that you, who are so wealthy, are prepared to remain in such a country, when, at any one time, one has no idea what the next day might bring.” Nor was a new republic all that James had to fear. There was also the more recent memory of imperial glory, which a smaller number of Bonapartists sought to rekindle. Finally, there was the newer phenomenon of working class unrest, which flared up periodically not only in Paris but in Lyon and other industrial centres about which the Rothschilds at this stage knew little.
Contemporaries were impressed by the way James quickly resumed the lavish entertaining for which he was already famous, throwing a “crowded and brilliant” ball as early as January 15, 1831. But this was only the day after a violent anti-clerical riot, and, as the Austrian ambassador described it, the city was still echoing to the Marseillaise as the Rothschilds’ guests danced. Louis Philippe’s son the duc d’Orléans relayed his apologies through an aide-de-camp, who explained that he was at the head of his regiment and that the republic was being proclaimed in the streets:
Mme de Rothschild was dying of fear, imagining the pillage of her house; despite that, we kept on dancing. When I engaged Mlle de Laborde for a galop, her mother told me that a glow that could be seen in the sky was none other than the bishop’s house at Conflans, which the rioters had set on fire.
“It’s terrifying, yes, it’s frightful,” said the young lady. “But let’s dance while we can today. If it is true that we are going to have the republic tomorrow, that will mean the end of feasts and balls for ages.” . . . The ball lasted until four in the morning and there was no trouble. M. de Rothschild, despite his great desire to appear gay, is sad in his soul, for his money is melting in his vaults like an icicle in the heat.
The combination of outward bravado and inner caution continued as long as there was such violence in the streets of Paris. But the mood at these events was always tense. In January 1832 the duc d’Orléans was affronted when he heard himself referred to by his nickname (“le grand poulot”) by a Legitimist guest at one of James’s parties—though it is not the case that he subsequently refused invitations to the rue Laffitte.
Even in periods of relative political tranquillity, French politics seemed volatile (especially to Rothschilds raised in London), with more frequent changes of ministry than in England, and more friction between crown and parliament. All these intricate political shifts had to be followed closely, for, as James put it, “a lot depends on what sort of Ministry we get.” In February 1831, for example, an anxious James sought reassurance from Louis Philippe that the crumbling Laffitte ministry would not be replaced by a more liberally inclined administration. He and Lionel were “consoled” to hear that the most likely successor would be another banker, Périer, and that Périer intended to reduce the King’s direct influence over policy. As we shall see, this was one of the most important changes of government of the period—and one which James claimed to have personally brought about. However, Périer’s hold on power was always tenuous. July 1831—when elections unfortunately coincided with the anniversary of revolution—was a time of renewed political unsteadiness, with Laffitte failing by only a handful of votes to secure electi
on as president of the Chamber. When Périer nevertheless resigned, James was appalled. Rothschild relief when he returned to office after a matter of days was considerable. Throughout 1831, the Paris letters monitored the health of his ministry—particularly its difficulties over reform of the House of Peers—with the obsessive anxiety of relatives around a loved one’s bedside. The cartoonist Delaporte vividly caught the volatile mood of French politics in June 1831 when he depicted it as a funfair. To the left James and Ouvrard vie for control of a see-saw; in the centre Périer struggles to register on the “Dynamometer or Test of Strength for the use and instruction of ministers”; to the right Louis Philippe slumps unconscious (see illustration 8.i).
The metaphor of an ailing government, unfortunately, became a reality in the spring of 1832—just when Lionel began to sense a real stabilisation of the domestic political situation. As Salomon fretted, it was “unpleasant to admit” that stability depended “entirely upon a single individual.” The full significance of this dependence suddenly became clear when Paris was struck by the cholera epidemic which swept westwards from Russia in 1831-2, claiming the lives of 18,000 people. Not only did the epidemic cause new riots in the city and “complete paralysis” on the bourse; it also afflicted Périer himself. Once again James was obliged to put on a public show of confidence, staying in Paris while thousands of wealthy Parisians fled to the countryside. But the combination of the premier’s death (on May 16) and the landing of the Bourbon duchesse de Berry in the south of the country was yet another blow to political stability. It was not until November that the threat of a “Carlist” civil war was entirely dispelled by the duchesse’s arrest. Meanwhile Paris continued to be subjected to republican demonstrations and riots, such as those occasioned by the funeral of General Lamarque, another cholera victim.
The House of Rothschild, Volume 1 Page 38
