Nathan Rothschild (1777-1836)

"Money is the god of our time, and Rothschild is his prophet," wrote the German philosopher Heinrich Heine. Rothschild was the son of Mayer Rothschild (1744-1812), who rose from the ghetto of Frankfurt to become banker to Prince William of Prussia and brought his son into the business. When Napoleon invaded Prussia, the prince sought to get his money out of the country. So he entrusted it to young Nathan Rothschild, then working in London as a banker. Rothschild invested the money in the Napoleonic Wars, smuggling it to Wellington in Spain. Meanwhile, he developed an impressive messenger service of riders, ships and carrier pigeons, and in 1815, he was the first banker to hear the news from Waterloo. Rothschild immediately sold large blocks of stock, convincing other investors -- falsely -- that the British had lost. As prices fell, his agents bought up the stock at rock-bottom prices. From the end of the Napoleonic Wars until his death, the corpulent Rothschild worked in a corner of the London Stock Exchange. Meanwhile, his four brothers established banks in Vienna, Naples and Paris, making the Rothschilds the most powerful financial family in Europe.

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