Men of Wealth (1944) - Ludwig von Mises Institute

THE ROTHSCHILDS 111
Then came Napoleon's defeat and the entry of the allies into
Paris. The Count of Provence, soon to be crowned Louis XVIII
of France, was living in Buckinghamshire. He was broke and applied
to the English government for funds to assure his march to
the throne in the style becoming a king. Nathan accepted the English
government's draft for five million francs in England, and
when Louis arrived in France, James handed him the money.
While all else had been done by Nathan in the darkest secrecy,
this act he wished to be known. What more natural? The scion of
a score of monarchs and a thousand years went to his throne with
the francs of the poor and crusty bill merchant of Frankfort's Jew
street jingling in his pockets.
With this event the Rothschilds could boast that they were
bankers in the service of England, France, Germany, Austria, to
say nothing of Russia and the smaller states. The great, gleaming,
golden road was opened before them.
In the midst of all this Meyer Anselm, the father, had died in
Frankfort. Long before his death the business had been literally
swept out of his hands by his energetic sons. He had been ill for
several years. He had drifted more and more to the comforts of
his Talmud. He was a quiet man, amiable, wholly lacking in that
fierce energy which drove his sons. He was stricken in the temple
and three days later—September 19, 1812—died at the house of
the green shield in the Judengasse, where he had lived over his
small shop for so many years.
Two hoary fictions cling about that bedside. One is that his five
sons, with their daughters and mother, gathered about while the
dying man delivered to the boys the moral testament by which
they lived and which is epitomized in their coat of arms—Concordia,
Integritas, Industria. The other is that there he bequeathed
to them, like an expiring emperor, the five great financial provinces