To the Rothschilds, all this was at first just another of many threats to European peace. Salomon hastened to warn James on Metternich’s behalf that France should not retaliate by backing Mehemet Ali, whose Napoleonic public image in Paris was further enhanced by his apparently progressive economic policy of state monopo lies. The financial implications of the crisis were, however, less clearcut because the French guarantee for the Greek loan had yet to be ratified, while the indemnity payment to Turkey was now due to be paid. Under the strained diplomatic circumstances, it was predictable that these transactions were plagued by (ostensibly) technical difficulties. The Greeks delayed sending the necessary bonds to London, for example, while the Turks refused to admit a Greek delegation to Constantinople if they arrived in a warship. Nat had set off for Constantinople fantasising about the exotic decorations he would receive from the Sultan in return for facilitating the indemnity payment. By the time he left, however, he was “sick & tired of the Turks and their shameful double dealing & regret exceedingly that I ever came here to do business . . . [in] this detestable place.”
There were further difficulties in 1836-7, when the Greek government threatened to default on the interest payments due on its loan, a crisis which put the international guarantee to a test it only just managed to pass. In an operation similar to that which the Rothschilds had to carry out for Portugal at around the same time, new bonds were issued to raise the cash for the dividends on the existing bonds; but the financial markets quickly learned to value the various Greek bonds differently, preferring those guaranteed by Britain to those guaranteed by France and Russia. The problem persisted into the 1840s, with the guarantor powers seeking to pay only the interest due, without the Rothschilds’ commission.
It was at this moment that French and British policy on the Eastern Question began to diverge. The period 1836-7 saw the resumption of French colonisation of another formerly Ottoman fiefdom, Algeria—a project initiated in the dying days of the Bourbon regime and now brought to a successful military conclusion. Palmerston, on the other hand, was now steering British policy in a more pro-Turkish direction, in the hope of undermining the dominant Russian position in Constantinople. When war broke out again between the Sultan and Mehemet Ali in April 1839, the French government gradually found itself isolated in its support for the latter. In the course of tortuous diplomatic manoeuvring, an Anglo-Russian deal was struck whereby the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi would be replaced by an international agreement on access to the Black Sea, while Mehemet Ali would be forced to quit Syria but allowed to keep the fortress of Acre. In October 1839 the Soult government rejected this proposal, but there was very little it could do. It was, as the Paris house reported to New Court, “in a rather embarrassing position. In effect . . . the French government either will be obliged to accept [Lord Palmerston’s proposals] too or may well find itself completely isolated in its view of Eastern affairs.” Coming so soon after the government’s inert response to the Belgian crisis, this diplomatic reverse seemed a compelling argument for giving Thiers’ more aggressive approach to foreign policy a chance.
Up until this point, the Rothschilds had done little more than monitor diplomatic developments. Then, on February 5, 1840, something happened in Egyptian-occupied Damascus which dramatically altered the complexion of the crisis. Under circumstances which remain obscure, a Sardinian Capuchin friar named Father Tommaso and his servant Ibrahim went missing without trace. As they had last been seen in the city’s Jewish quarter, allegations soon began to circulate that they had been murdered there. Egged on by the French consul, the comte de Ratti-Menton, who wished to assert France’s responsibility for Catholics in Damascus, the Egyptian Governor arrested a number of Jews and subjected them to torture. One Jew who alleged that he had seen Tommaso in the Muslim market was arrested and tortured to death, as was his servant. After 500 lashes, a Jewish barber alleged that he had seen Tomasso with two rabbis and seven leading members of the Jewish community, including one David Arari. They were all arrested, along with a third rabbi. When they protested their innocence, the unfortunate barber was whipped again, whereupon—in return for immunity—he claimed that the suspects had offered him money to murder the monk so that his blood could be used to make unleavened bread for Passover. Although he had refused, the barber claimed to have witnessed Tomasso’s “ritual murder” at Arari’s house.
After torture and a promise of immunity, Arari’s servant confessed to the murder, and what were supposed to be Tommaso’s remains were duly “found” in a sewer, whereupon the seven suspects were tortured until they “confessed” their guilt. One of them—who converted to Islam to save himself and his family—confirmed the ritual murder story: Tommaso’s servant had, he said, been murdered in the same way. As with early modern witch-hunts, the more bizarre the story grew, the greater the number of people who were implicated. Altogether some seventy people were arrested, and almost as many children were taken hostage to force those “suspects” who had fled Damascus to give themselves up. Throughout, the French consul played the role of witchfinder-general, exploiting not only the anti-Semitism of the Catholic community but the social divisions within the Jewish community.
It was the arrest of Isaac de Picciotto, a Jewish merchant who also happened to be an Austrian subject, which transformed the witch-hunt into a major international incident. Determined to prevent his suffering the same fate as Ratti-Menton’s other victims, the Austrian consul, Caspar Giovanne Merlatto, protested to the Damascus authorities and asked his superior in Egypt, the consul-general Anton Laurin, to do the same in Alexandria. On March 31 Laurin—who regarded the whole notion of ritual murder as spurious—not only complained to Mehemet Ali, but also sought to get his French counterpart in Alexandria to restrain Ratti-Menton. For good measure, Laurin simultaneously took the somewhat unusual step of sending copies of his own reports and some of those he had received from Merlatto directly to the Austrian consul-general in Paris. The latter should, Laurin suggested, press the French government to “issue a strong order . . . seriously rebuking the consul in Damascus” and “hold[ing] the government there responsible . . . [lest] the animosity of the non-Jewish population develop into a real persecution of the Jews.”
The Austrian consul-general in Paris and the author of the letter quoted above was, of course, James de Rothschild, and Laurin’s was only one of a number sent to him and to other members of the Rothschild family seeking support for the Damascus Jews, as well as those of Rhodes who were experiencing similar persecution. On March 15 letters on the subject had reached the Dutch Jewish leader Hirsch Lehren from a Beirut Jew who urged that they be passed on to the Rothschilds so that they might “speak to the kings and to their ministers.” Two days later another letter from an English businessman based in the Middle East prompted Lehren to write to James, arguing that only “the renowned Rothschild family . . . has the power to save the brethren suffering persecution.” On March 27 the Constantinople community had sent letters from Damascus and Rhodes to Salomon, Carl and Lionel, appealing to “the tie which so strongly binds together the whole Jewish community.”
James did as Laurin suggested. However, the French Foreign Ministry merely ordered that their vice-consul in Alexandria should investigate Ratti-Menton’s conduct, which, as James divined, was “only a temporising measure, since the vice-consul is under the consul, so that he has no authority to call the latter to account for his actions.” “In such circumstances,” he informed Salomon on April 7,
the only means we have left is the all-powerful method here of calling in the newspapers to our assistance, and we have accordingly today had a detailed account, based on the reports of the Austrian consul [in Damascus], sent in to the [Journal des] Débats and other papers, and have also arranged that this account shall appear in similar detail in the Allgemeine Zeitung of Augsburg.
This decision to involve the press was partly a response to the widespread support for the ritual-murder theory in French newspapers like
the Quotidienne and the Univers. Determined that this should be countered as effectively as possible, James turned to Adolphe Crémieux, vice-president of the Consistory of French Jews since 1834, whose forensic skills were as celebrated as his journalistic. Crémieux’s long letter on the subject appeared in the Gazette des Tribunaux and the Journal des Débats the next day. In the course of the subsequent press debate, James also authorised Crémieux to publish documents Laurin had sent him—much to the irritation of Metternich who, while sympathising, abhorred the involvement of the (by Austrian standards) uninhibited press.
This was only the beginning of the Rothschilds’ involvement in the campaign to secure the release of the Damascus prisoners. In London, Lionel was present when the Board of Deputies met to discuss the affair on April 21 (as was Crémieux), and he was also a member of the delegation which Palmerston received nine days later. Six weeks later it was Nat who suggested that Crémieux write an official letter addressed to Lionel and the British Board of Deputies, “& that will afford you an opportunity of addressing Lord Palmerston on the subject”; and it was Nat who suggested that Lionel “get up a good subscription to pay the expenses of sending Crémieux there [to the Middle East] fast.” This led directly to the idea of the highly publicised expedition to Alexandria by Crémieux and Sir Moses Montefiore, the purpose of which was to clear the prisoners’ names and secure their release. The Rothschilds contributed a substantial sum—at least £2,500—towards the costs of this venture, as well as acting as treasurers for the Damascus Jews’ fund. In Vienna, Salomon meanwhile persuaded Metternich to press the Vatican about rumours that Tommaso was in fact alive and hiding in a monastery (he was not). In Naples, Carl loaded Montefiore’s ship with provisions, gave him some negotiating tips and later helped him in his fruitless attempts to persuade the Catholic church to expunge the allegation of murder on Father Tommaso’s supposed gravestone. In Paris, Anselm received regular communications from Laurin, detailing the progress of Montefiore’s negotiations in Alexandria.
It has usually been assumed that, in taking up the cause of the Damascus Jews, the Rothschilds were motivated by sincere outrage at the way their fellow Jews were being treated. Heine—one of the journalists James tipped off—contrasted James’s altruism with the indifference of other French Jews, and in particular his rival in the sphere of railway finance, Benoît Fould. James, Heine observed, had “shown a nobler spirit in his sympathies for the House of Israel than his learned antagonist.” There is no question that all the Rothschilds sincerely sympathised with their co-religionists. It was, said Nat, “an unpleasant business, but one must exert oneself to prevent such calumnies being spread against our religion & such horrid tortures being practised on our unfortunate brethren in the East.” The aim, he added a few days later, was “to show people generally that the day is gone by when any religious sect may be neglected with impunity.” The French government’s attempts to defend the conduct of Ratti-Menton enraged Nat: “[W]hen the Prime Minister of France declared in the Chamber that he thought the Jews committed murder for the sake of Christian blood to be used in a Hebrew religious ceremony . . . it strikes me that such a calumny upon all those who have any Jewish blood in their veins ought not only to be contradicted but proved to be false.” He and the rest of the family shared the widespread Jewish jubilation at the success of Montefiore’s mission in securing not only a solemn firman from Mehemet Ali himself denying the existence of ritual murder as a Jewish practice (August 28), but also the “honourable discharge” of the prisoners a week later. All this gave the lie to the charges which had been levelled at the Rothschilds in the 1830s of indifference to the fate of their fellow Jews. “Who can come forward,” the editor of the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums Ludwig Philippson had demanded to know in 1839, “to say that these people have done anything substantial for Judaism, for its external or inner emancipation, for its civil or spiritual elevation?” Like the American writer who had claimed that James did not “care [about] the barren seacoast of Palestine,” Philippson had to eat his words after the Damascus affair—or, alternatively, conclude that they had been heeded.
On the other hand, the extent of the Rothschilds’ ambitions for the Jewish communities of the Middle East should not be exaggerated. Even before 1840 it was an idea frequently canvassed in the press and elsewhere that the Rothschilds had some sort of design to reclaim the Holy Land for the Jewish people. As early as 1830, an American journal (Niles Weekly Register) suggested that “the pecuniary distress of the sultan” might lead him to sell Jerusalem to the Rothschilds:
They are wealthy beyond desire, perhaps even avarice; and so situated, it is quite reasonable to suppose that they may seek something else to gratify their ambition . . . If secured in the possession, which may be brought about by money, they might instantly, as it were, gather a large nation together, soon to become capable of defending itself, and having a wonderful influence over the commerce and condition of the east—rendering Judah again the place of deposit of a large portion of the wealth of the “ancient world.” To the sultan the country is of no great value; but, in the hands of the Jews, directed by such men as the Rothschilds, what might it not become, and in a short period of time?
At around the same time, a correspondent asked Nathan directly: “How is it that your people with so extensive an influence have made no efforts to re-acquire Palestine, the land of your forefathers, from the Porte, the Ruler of Egypt and the Powers of Europe?” As we have seen, this question was answered in mystical terms in the pamphlet The Hebrew Talisman in 1836; and one “proto-Zionist” Jewish writer formally proposed that Amschel purchase land in Palestine that same year. The early French socialist Charles Fourier was another who thought that “The restoration of the Hebrews would be a splendid coronation for the gentlemen of the House of Rothschild: like Esra and Serubabel, they can lead the Hebrews back to Jerusalem and erect once again the throne of David and Solomon, in order to call into being a Rothschild dynasty.” Almost exactly the same image was conjured up at the other end of the political spectrum by the Univers in October 1840.1 British Evangeli cals were also attracted to this idea. As Lady Palmerston commented in the wake of the Damascus affair, “the fanatical and religious elements . . . in this country . . . are absolutely determined that Jerusalem and the whole of Palestine shall be reserved for the Jews to return to; this is their only longing (to restore the Jews).” Though Stanley was surprised when Disraeli raised the subject eleven years later,2 it was scarcely an original thought. Indeed, it is possible to see such remarks as expressions of Christian millenarian hopes, with the Rothschilds supposedly hastening the Second Coming.3 But there is no evidence that the Rothschilds harboured any such intentions; the involvement of individual members of the family in what became known as Zionism was a much later development.
What is more, a number of members of the family had reservations even about the way the campaign for the release of the Damascus prisoners was conducted. It appears from Nat’s letters that Lionel was uneasy about the “rumpus” being made by Crémieux and some of the more vociferous British Jews. They had, he felt, shown “rather too much warmth of feeling.” Indeed, one reason for suggesting that Montefiore accompany Crémieux to Alexandria was “to moderate [the latter’s] zeal.” Nor, it seems, did Nat or Anselm expect the expedition to achieve its objectives. When it did succeed, Anselm was “decidedly against any public demonstration” and deplored the hero’s welcome which Crémieux was accorded in Frankfurt and elsewhere. The Damascus agitation galvanised Jews throughout Western Europe, and led to a variety of schemes for improving the condition of the Jews in the Holy Land, notably the plan for a Jewish hospital in Jerusalem devised by Philippson. At first the French Rothschilds seemed willing to follow the lead of Montefiore, who supported the scheme; but they made their contribution conditional on the founding of a secular school alongside the hospital. When the Jewish community in Palestine vetoed this, the Rothschilds withdrew, and it was not until 1853-4 that the
hospital scheme was revived.4 The Rothschilds continued to try to use their influence to improve the condition of Jewish communities elsewhere (in Russian-controlled Poland for example), as they had in the past; but their efforts were always regarded with suspicion by more radical Jews who aimed at something more than economic amelioration.
For the Rothschilds, the real significance of the Damascus affair can be understood only when it is set in its diplomatic context. Sympathetic though they undoubtedly were to the Damascus prisoners, James and Salomon in particular attached more importance to the diplomatic ramifications of their plight. For the Damascus affair presented James with an ideal opportunity to undermine the position of Thiers, who had become premier a matter of weeks after the supposed “murder” of Father Tommaso. In essence, the affair tended to accentuate the problem of French diplomatic isolation which had helped bring Thiers to power. The British government had its own reasons for backing the campaign for the release of the Jews. Having decided to break the power of Mehemet Ali and isolate France, Palmerston was only too delighted to portray the Egyptian regime in Syria as barbaric. Similarly, Metternich welcomed the chance to challenge the French claim to defend the interests of Catholics in the Holy Land. Thiers, on the other hand, could hardly be seen to criticise Mehemet Ali’s regime in Syria, much less disown his own consul. Instead, he went on the offensive. In early May he told James “that the case is based on truth; and we had better let the matter rest . . . [as] the Jews in the East still maintain such superstitions . . .” He said much the same to Crémieux. On June 2, in response to a speech by Fould in the Chamber of Deputies, Thiers sarcastically called into question the patriotism of the French Jews:
The House of Rothschild, Volume 1 Page 67
