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men of his day. His older sister Charlotte married Nathaniel of the English House. His brother
Gustave also had an affair with the Comtesse de Castiglione.
His youngest brother, Edmond #1 was a
genius and a main figure in the creation of a Jewish homeland in Israel. He helped divide the world’s
oil between Shell and the Rockefeller’s
Standard Oil. His other brother Salomon James married a
Frankfurt Rothschild and is the subject of a weird circumstance
described by biographer Virginia
Cowles. "In 1864 Baron James’ third son, the brilliantly clever Salomon [James], dropped dead. The
boy had become a compulsive gambler which had caused his father great anxiety, as anyone with the
Rothschild name was given unlimited financial credit. Apparently Salomon died of a heart attack
which fascinated the Goncourt brothers. ,,Cabarrus, Rothschild’s
doctor,’ one of them wrote, ,,told
Saint-Victor that the young Rothschild who died the other, day really died of the excitement of
gamblIng on the Stock Exchange. Imagine it; a Rothschild dead of a paroxysm over money.’
"However, If the Goncourt brothers had known the details of a previous heart attack suffered by
Salomon they would have been even more enthralled. Three years earlier Salomon had ‘dropped
dead’. He had been placed in a comn and, according to Jewish custom, carried into every room in the
house. One of the pall bearers had stumbled, the coffin had crashed Into a door and -Salomon had
woken up! Not for another three years was he well and truly buried." This story could lead to all sorts
of speculation.
De Rothschild Freres, the French House bank, was very powerful. It got its hands Into
electrical Industries, the development
of the Mediterranean Railway and North African business. It
also controlled, with the British House, the Baku oil fields in Russia, which made the Rothschilds
the
main competitors
of the Rockefeller trust. The oil business was principly run by Edmond #1.
When Alphonse died in 1905, the new generation of the French House came under the charge of
Baron Edouard, a quiet and very rich man. Edouard was a director of the Bank of France. Baron
Edouard also ran the de Rothschild Freres with his cousin, Robert (who married a Beer), son of
Gustave (Robert’s sister, Alice Caroline married Sir Edward A. Sassoon). These two carried de
Rothschild Freres through the tumult of the first world war. Their policies were passive, as they
extremely protective of the family wealth. Baron Edouard and Robert had close business dealings
with J.P. Morgan. One of the operations of the Morgan-French
Rothschild combine
involved
economic manipulation
that allowed the Vienna House to almost fully regain the losses that the
Austrian Rothschilds had incurred during WWI. The son of Edmond #1, James Armand de
Rothschild, carried on the Israel work of his father after Edmond #1’s death in 1934. James Armand’s
brother
Maurice was the black sheep of the Rothschild’s new French generation. Maurice was a banker and a
Senator in the French Parliament. Maurice was a very scandalous figure in the aristocratic scene. He
was known as Don Juan de Rothschild. Said one biographer:
"Some peopie went as far as to claim
that ... one had to be seduced or at least pinched by Baron Maurice if one was a woman, or affronted
by Baron Maurice, if a man. No other personage surpassed him in enriching the delicious scandal of
his times." Thus a new french generation began the 20th century, the undynamic Baron Edouard
leading the way.
BRITISH HOUSE, LATE 19TH AND EARLY 20TH
Uonel de Rothschild, of the "New Trinity", brought the British House into the late 19th century.
Uonel was a very powerful man. He ran New Court shrewdly, and financed many promInent
ventures, such as Cecil Rhodes’ gold and diamond mines, and the purchase of the Suez Canal. He was
also the first Jewish member of Parliament.
His sister, Charlotte married another member of the "New
Trinity", Anselm of Vienna. Another sister married into the soon-to-be extinct Italian House.
Lionel’s brother Anthony - who described the Rothschilds
as "complete slaves to business - married a
Montefiore, and was knighted by the Queen - thus Sir Anthony de Rothschild. Lionel’s next brother,
Nathaniel, was the father of the Mouten Rothschilds.
Nathaniel, though of the British House, loved
France and moved to Paris in 1851. In 1853 he bought vineyards that became known as Mouton
Rothschild, and he lived at these vineyards several months of the year. His descendants, the Mouton
Rothschilds,
are citizens of France but are of the British House (except that their mother was a French
Rothschild,
but the male lineage is the most important in the Rothschild family). Another of Lionel’s
