On May 17, the investment bank Rothschild & Co will be headed by the representative of the seventh generation of the famous Rothschild dynasty - 37-year-old Alexander de Rothschild. For two hundred years, the family has strictly observed the precepts of the patriarch and the founder of the family, who ordered the descendants to always act as a unit, entrust the management of the family business only to male relatives and keep secrecy in business. The famous banking house has been involved in transactions of historic proportions for centuries. The image of all-powerful behind-the-scenes puppeteers was formed under the impression of their activities. Conspiracy theorists are sure that the famous family, whose branches are widely spread in Europe and the USA, controls world finances with the help of. The origins and change of generations in the famous banking clan - in the material.

Bench under a red sign

The end of the eighteenth century is an era of gigantic change for Western Europe: the revolution and overthrow of the monarchy in France, the birth of industrial production, a series of large-scale wars, the gradual loss of political influence by aristocratic landowners and the emancipation of oppressed groups. It was at this time that the foundation of the financial power of the Rothschilds was laid. Mayer Amschel, the son of Amschel Moses, a modest money changer from the Jewish quarter in Frankfurt am Main, is considered the ancestor of the dynasty.

The father wanted the bright boy to become a rabbi, but Mayer showed a penchant for worldly affairs. For a time he practiced at the Oppenheimer banking house in Hannover. Then he worked in his father's changing shop under a red sign (in German it sounds like Rot Schild, later this phrase became a surname). “Catching the trends”, Mayer Amschel started buying old coins and medals. The German nobility of that time was fond of collecting various antiquities, so the courteous and neat young man quickly made useful contacts with the powers that be, and the changing shop was transformed into a bank.

The career rise of the son of a money changer from the ghetto occurred after meeting the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel Wilhelm. Traditionally, Jewish bankers handled various financial transactions for the German princes. For example, the court bankers of the Habsburgs in Vienna were representatives of the House of Oppenheimer, the King of Prussia, Frederick II the Great, used the services of the Berlin company Ephraim and Sons. Bypassing competitors with the help of patronage and gifts to patrons, Mayer Amschel became the main court financier of Wilhelm.

All in the house

The well-being of the family went uphill sharply, the growing children were actively involved in the family business. Like fairy-tale characters throwing arrows in search of happiness, Mayer's sons went to the largest cities in Europe: Solomon - to Vienna, Nathan - to Manchester (later he moved to London), Kalman - to Naples, Jacob - to Paris. The eldest son remained in Frankfurt am Main. In memory of this, five arrows and the motto in Latin are depicted on the Rothschild coat of arms: Concordia, Integritas, Industria - Consent, Honesty, Diligence.

Thus, an international financial network was founded, covering the most developed European countries. Formally competing, the brothers supported each other in every possible way and exchanged news using correspondence coded in Yiddish. Subsequently, the most viable branches of the family tree turned out to be English (from Nathan) and French (from Jacob) - they still flourish.

The court financier approached the marriages of children very seriously: the sons brought daughters-in-law with a solid dowry into the family, the spouses of the daughters were also members of the clan, but worked in lower positions. In any case, the sons-in-law did not shine at the helm of the family business. The wealth of the clan could only be controlled by a descendant of Mayer Amschel in the male line. The money acquired had to remain in the family, so Mayer's descendants married first cousins ​​and second cousins.

However, so did the entire elite. For example, by the end of the 19th century, the Austrian imperial family turned out to be so branched out that marriages between relatives belonging to different branches of the Habsburg family became more and more frequent, write Andrei Shary and Yaroslav Shimov in their book "Austria-Hungary: the fate of the empire." Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, who became heir to the throne in 1895, was indignant about this: “If someone from our family falls in love on the side, there will certainly be some nonsense in the pedigree that prevents such a marriage. So it turns out that we have a husband and wife, all twenty-fold relatives. As a result, half of the children are fools or complete idiots.

The Rothschilds entered into marriages exclusively with adherents of Judaism and won the glory of the "Jewish royal family." The rules established by Mayer Amschel remained unchanged for 200 years, only in the 1970s, David Rene, a representative of the French branch of the Rothschilds, married a Catholic, Italian aristocrat Olimpia Aldobrandini. They raised their daughters in the Catholic faith, but their only son Alexander - the future heir to the family business - in Judaism. Also in 2010, the Rothschilds for the first time appointed a non-native Briton, Nigel Higgins, as the chief executive of investment bank NM Rothschild. True, Higgins was not a complete stranger - by this time he had worked for the family for a quarter of a century.

To whom war

The Rothschilds could have remained at the level of the small-town rich, if not for the war. In 1806, French Emperor Napoleon I invaded Germany. Landgrave Wilhelm fled the country, leaving his affairs in the care of his court banker. It was then that Mayer came in handy with his arrow, shot in the direction of Foggy Albion. Son Nathan instantly quit trading in textiles in Manchester and retrained as a stock exchange tycoon in London.

The French confiscated part of Wilhelm's gold, but Rothschild Sr., thanks to Nathan's securities transactions, managed to transfer the main capital of his boss to England. To celebrate, the landgrave signed off to the court bankers for a symbolic commission all the rights to manage his papers, and Nathan started buying and selling British government bonds. So the Rothschilds became the first European millionaires and financed the wars of Great Britain against Napoleon. One of their most notable operations is ferrying gold for Wellington's army in Spain.

On September 19, 1812, the Russian army, exhausted by battles, under the command of Field Marshal Prince Golenishchev-Kutuzov, retreated to Podolsk. On the same day, the founder of the Rothschild house, Mayer Amschel, died in the house on the Jewish Street of Frankfurt am Main at the age of seventieth, but his business lived and grew - the wealth and influence of the Rothschild brothers increased along with the amounts of loans they provided.

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There is a legend that Nathan learned about the victory over Napoleon at Waterloo a day earlier than anyone in London, but he came to the stock exchange with a sad face and began to sell government bonds. Seeing this, the stockbrokers decided that the British and their allies were defeated, and rushed to get rid of the papers for next to nothing. Having waited for the collapse, the agents of the cunning Nathan bought up cheaper government bonds. As a result, the London Rothschild earned £40 million from this operation. However, some researchers refuse this story to be true - Nathan bought up securities against the backdrop of defeatist sentiments before the Battle of Waterloo, they say.

The peace established in Europe after the Napoleonic Wars also contributed to the growth of the family's well-being - the countries devastated by the war needed loans to restore. The grateful victorious monarchs bestowed the nobility on the banker brothers, and the Austrian emperor Franz II granted the Rothschilds a baronial title. Napoleon tried to conquer Europe with guns and cannons, but lost. The Old World submitted to the bills and loans of the banking family.

World behind the scenes

The nineteenth century was the golden age of the Rothschilds. Europe, and with it the whole world, was changing rapidly, the Rothschild banking network financed the construction of industrial enterprises, railways, the purchase of the Suez Canal by Great Britain, and the development of oil fields in the Russian Empire (on the territory of present-day Azerbaijan).

The Rothschilds partnered with De Beers in their search for diamonds and gold in South Africa. They are accused of helping to unleash military conflicts, for example, the devastating war of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay with Paraguay. Numerous descendants of Mayer Amschel were fond of luxury and art, the construction of palaces and charity. But by the end of the century, the glory of the family began to fade. Perhaps they themselves wanted this, because money, as you know, loves silence, and left and right publicists blamed bankers for all the troubles of mankind.

In the twentieth century, Rothschild structures began to specialize in large-scale mergers and acquisitions. Conspiracy theorists consider the Rothschilds to be the ideological inspirers of the First Bank of the United States - the prototype of the Federal Reserve System (FRS). The dynasty is considered to be among the real masters of the system. Officially, the Fed owns 12 federal reserve banks, approved but organized as private companies.

The Rothschild pedigree extends back 150 years.

In the Rothschild family, marriages are concluded only with representatives of the Catholic faith. Exceptions are made for women, but men are required to marry only Catholic women.

The Rothschild family tree is very confusing: all generations retained the names of their ancestors.

At every family celebration, chocolate soufflé was presented to all guests, this became a tradition over time, as the Rothschilds always had a weakness for sweets.

The history of the Rothschild family begins with the city of Frankfurt, although now it says almost nothing about this family. Once, in a small Jewish ghetto, here he married Gutele Schnapper, got a small shop, and then started five sons (out of 12 children, 10 survived). It was they who achieved incredible success, fortune and fame in the field of business. Now in Frankfurt there is a Rothschild park, several documents from the city archives, the rest of the evidence was taken away by the Second World War.

It was Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812) who once said: "Let me manage the money of the country, and I don't care who makes the laws there."

Where Does The Last Name Rothschild Come From?

Part of the name "Rothschild" comes from the German "mouth" - "red". Mayer Rothschild's parents once lived in a house with a red roof. The peculiarity of their house served as a nickname for their family, since in those days Jews could not have surnames.

collecting coins

Mayer Amschel's ascent began with the study and collection of ancient coins. At first, this occupation seemed completely hopeless, and given the total poverty, it was also stupid. By the way, Mayer Amschel made one fateful choice, refusing a fairly “warm” place in the exchange office (Hannover) after studying in favor of a hopeless Jewish ghetto with the humiliation of its people and the inability to earn money. After 20 years of studying and practicing in the office, Mayer Rothschild returns to practically "nowhere" and as a result makes a fortune! Another proof that prospects are not always obvious.

Currency exchange

In the 18th century, Germany was like a patchwork country, where everyone spoke their own dialect and had their own currency. Mayer Rothschild could not stop selling old coins, because it was a rare and unstable income, although he managed to carry out some transactions even with monarchs. During the fairs, coins of various origins flocked from all over Germany - ducats, florins, etc. It occurred to Meyer to organize an exchange office for such fairs, and he made good money on the difference from the exchange.

Founding of a dynasty

The head of the Rothschild family dreamed of a strong dynasty and did not lose by teaching his sons the skill of banking. After a while, 5 sons achieved no less success than their father. They had energy, a thirst for profit, the ability to see the prospect of income, not being greedy here and now. In 1800, a father makes his children partners. From now on, until now, key positions in banks and firms have been occupied only by family members. This was an important and fundamental law of the dynasty.

The business was only passed down through the male line and no one could gain access to it. Even the daughters' husbands remained abroad and kept in the dark. It remains so to this day.

Betty Rothschild: daughter of one of the older brothers - Solomon. She became the wife of her own uncle, younger brother James.

The head of the family always taught his children that the family is the most important thing. The bonds of brotherhood were so strong that gradually the Rothschilds introduced a new tradition into their family - to keep not only money, but also the name within the family, as the Habsburg royal family did. And the first to do so was James, the youngest son of Mayer Rothschild. On July 11, 1824, he married Betty, the daughter of his older brother Solomon, that is, his niece. History records 58 marriages that were entered into by the descendants of the elder Rothschild, and half of them were with cousins.

This policy was driven by 3 main factors:

• keep the name, preventing others from profiting from it;
• save capital, and not split it into small parts;
• a dowry for family members of such a level as that of the Rothschilds could only be provided by the Rothschilds themselves.

Eldest son Amschel Rothschild

The eldest son, , remained to live in Frankfurt, in the house of his father, in the same poor ghetto. He never had children, but he attached great importance to the fate of his nephews and nieces, keeping the dynasty intact through family ties in marriages. It was he who introduced the tradition of holding wedding ceremonies for all family members in Frankfurt, in that same ghetto.

Dowager Gutele, the wife of the founder of the Rothschild dynasty, remained in her house until the end of her life and died at the age of 96. It was to her that the newlyweds came to ask for blessings. It was Gutele who made the final decision about choosing a partner in a new marriage.

One day, Gutele's neighbor in the ghetto ran to her house, worried that her son might be taken to a new war. She wanted to know if there would be a war. To which the Empress Dowager of Rothschild replied: "Nonsense, my boys won't let them."

Gradually, among the "privileged Jews" of Germany, its leader emerged - Mayer Amschel Rothschild. The head of the family took such a surname for himself and passed it on to his five sons, since his relatives lived in a house with a red roof (“Roten Schield” - “red shield”), which developed as a characterizing feature of the whole family.

Under the new name, the Rothschilds would make their first major international deal in 1804, when the Danish treasury would be completely empty. Solomon Rothschild was the Privy Commercial Councilor of this country, and he will hold the same high position in Prussia as the founder of S M von Rothschild in Austria. Nathan in England, Kalman's bank "C M de Rothschild & Figli" in Italy, and Jacob and his "De Rothschild Frères" in France, and Amschel son will become the Minister of Finance of the German Confederation, an Austrian baron, the Royal Consul of Bavaria, the Prussian Privy Councilor and court banker and privy councilor to the Grand Duke of Hesse.

The main business of the Elector of Hesse, whose “privileged Jews” were both sons of Amschel the father, was, as they would say now, private military companies, which brought him a very, very substantial income. Great Britain paid $40 million for the use of 16,800 Hessian soldiers during the American Revolution.

By the way, this is how the ancestor of the Rockefellers came to the USA, as the Hessian mercenary Roggenfelder, which in German means “rye field”. The Duke of Brunswick, the Landgraves of Waldeck, Hanau, Anspach and other petty German monarchs were engaged in a similar business. The English East India Company bought a large number of German soldiers, using them in the conquest of India, so the Rothschilds were pragmatic about making money in wars as a very profitable business.

Once, horrified by the number of military casualties, Nathan Rothschild remarked to Major Martins: "If they had not all died, Major, you would still go to lieutenants." The Rothschilds themselves would have remained the bank clerks of the Oppenheimers, because it was the wars that emptied the royal coffers and filled the bank reserves of the "court factors". The family became treasurers of one of the main creditors of Europe, and started with a loan to Prussia, and by the mid-1830s, one American had already described their position as follows: “The Rothschilds rule Christendom ... Not a single cabinet of ministers can move without their advice. .. Baron Rothschild holds in his hands the keys to peace and war.”

Prince Metternich remarked that "the house of Rothschild plays a much greater role in the life of France than any foreign government." The fortune of James Rothschild was 150 million francs higher than the fortunes of all other financiers of France combined, he and his brother Louis XVIII, "was the right hand of the regime, controlling all financial transactions" of Charles X. His debtor of 25 million francs was the king of Portugal, he managed the finances of the King of Belgium. Similar success was achieved by the Privy Commercial Councilor of the Kingdom of Sicily and the Duchy of Palma and Sardinia "Italian Rothschild"

Using the war only as a means of speculation, the "factors" in ethnic conflicts or civil conflicts did not sympathize with any particular side and were not interested in any political ideas.

It is a remarkable fact that the Paris Commune destroyed all archives containing details of the early Rothschild deals.

The key moment in the history of their formation was the decision on the fate of the war debt of France in the amount of 270 million francs, as well as 1.5 billion francs of indemnity, which was made at the congress of the victorious countries in Aachen in 1818. The rejected were, as creditors, the Rothschilds organized a sharp the rate of fall of the French government bonds of the loan of 1817, which began to threaten the collapse of the Paris and other major stock exchanges in Europe. So France, which has come to its senses, also became the debtor of the Rothschilds.

“I am a simple person ... I do things without leaving the cash register,” said the “English Rothschild”. One of these cases was an unsuccessful attempt to cash out a nominal bill, in which the bank referred to the fact that it cashed only the securities of the National Bank itself. Then Nathan Rothschild began to “nightmare the business” of the National Bank of England by daily redemption of its gold reserve, the directors of which, after an urgent consultation, yielded, deciding to save the bank from ruin. Now the Rothschild bills have acquired equal status to the bills of the National Bank of England.

Nathan pioneered the technique of issuing international loans. His London banking house for ninety years since its opening placed foreign loans in the amount of 6500 million dollars, from 1776 to 1814 English subsidies amounted to 19 million 56 thousand 778 thalers in Hesse, in 1815 the Bavarian subsidies of Arnold von Aichthal amounted to 608 thousand £695, from 1811 to 1816 almost half of the British subsidies to the countries of the Continent passed through their Rothschild hands.

Between 1818 and 1832, loans were issued in the amount of 21 million pounds, which gave Edrikhin-Vandam reason to call the English "Rothschild people." The interest on eighteen loans to foreign governments alone amounted to $700 million. In fact, the history of the Central Bank of England began as early as 1694, when another war bled almost all the silver out of England, and bankers, including the Rothschilds, persuaded William to take out a loan of 1.2 million pounds and establish a new financial structure for the war with France.

The rise to dominance in the financial sphere is replete with stories of fierce competition, which is not consistent with the theory of a "single Jewish conspiracy", "observers" as Anna Harendt put it "made the very wrong conclusion that the Jewish people are a relic of the Middle Ages, and did not see that this a new caste of very recent origin. Its education was completed only in the 19th century, and it included, in quantitative terms, probably no more than a hundred families. But since they were in plain sight, the entire Jewish people began to be considered a caste.

Perhaps they were prompted to such conclusions by the fact that this new caste primarily used fellow tribesmen to achieve their goals, which is logical and does not carry elements of a “conspiracy theory”, but gave rise to such as the French writer Louis Ferdinand Celine to assert that “ Jews prevented the evolution of Europe towards political unity, served as the cause of all European wars since 843 and plotted to destroy both France and Germany, inciting their mutual enmity.

But at the same time, it should be noted that the path to a financial monopoly led to the ruin, first of all, of the competing financial structures of the tribesmen of the English Abraham Goldsmith, the French Achilles Fuld, David Parish, and other Austrian usurers. The description of these economic battles is beyond the scope of this chapter, but their essence was as follows: in order to work with the Rothschilds, it was necessary to get under the "red roof".

The confrontation in the competitive struggle of factors gave rise not just to a “single caste within fellow believers”, but to a much more cohesive “international caste system” of relatives, between whom half of the 59 marriages entered into by the Rothschilds in the 19th century were performed.

The daughter of the royal court banker of Bavaria and Prussia, the Sicilian and Austrian Consul General Karl Rothschild, married Maximilian Goldschmit, a native of the Frankfurt banking family, who became Baron Goldschmit-Rothschild.

The representative of the oldest English family, the “flower of the Jewish aristocracy” Abraham Montefiori, who was related to the daughter of Amschel Rothschild, was asked to change his surname to Rothschild in order to be admitted to financial affairs. Later, Australia became Montefiori's almost monopoly. The marriage of Kalman with Adelheid Hertz, the future favorite of the Neapolitan king, provided Rothschild with not only business, but also indirect family ties with the Oppenheimers, while each of the marriages increased their aristocratic status, which was a deliberate policy.

They raised their status once again in 1814 when they became related to the Warburgs, a family whose interests are closely connected with the creation of the US Federal Reserve System, its first head was Paul Warburg. Representatives of the Italian Jewish dynasty in the 16th century became Warburgs, having arrived in the Westphalian town of Warburg from Bologna.

In 1798, the brothers Moses-Mark and Gerson Warburg founded the M. M. Warburg & Co., to this day the largest private financial institution in Germany. After the sons of Mayer Amschel settled in different countries to create a future empire, the eldest son and his father moved to a five-story Frankfurt mansion, which he shared with the family of another banker, Schiff, who was one of Rothschild's brokers.

In 1873, the Rothschilds accompanied Schiff's acquisition of Kuhn's interest in Kuhn, Loeb & Co., made possible by the fact that the new owner married the eldest daughter of the co-owner of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. Solomon Leib, Teresa. Felix Warburg married his daughter, Frieda Schiff. And his brother, Paul Warburg, married Nina, the youngest daughter of Solomon Leib, whose father was a supplier of wheat and wine from the aforementioned Hessian city of Worms and entered the USA only in 1849.

The “American” interests of the Rothschilds do not end there: August Schonberg, another distant relative of the Rothschilds through his grandmother, served as the personal secretary of Amsheld von Rothschild from the age of 18, and in 1837 opened a branch of his bank in Cuba. As a result of the crisis, his own company "August Belmont & Co." on Wall Street bought up bankrupt American businesses. Having grown rich, Schonberg became "Belmont" for the sake of prestige, which went down in history as the chairman of the US Democratic National Committee, whose efforts financed the northerners during the Civil War.

According to Bismarck's candid admission, "the division of the United States into federations of equal strength was decided long before the Civil War. The bankers feared that the United States ... would overturn their financial dominance of the world and the voice of the Rothschilds prevailed in this.

In this war, the Rothschilds made money on both sides: the London bank financed the northerners, and the Paris bank financed the southerners, as a result of which the national debt rose from $64,844,000 in 1860 to $2,755,764,000 in 1866. Pay debts without loss sovereignty was not so easy, as the 19th-century English publicist Dunning wrote about capital: “... at 300 percent, there is no such crime that he would not risk, at least under pain of the gallows”:

According to biographer Ferguson, rivals of the American Civil War also made sure to carefully destroy the Rothschild correspondence from 1854-1860. Only an oral statement by Baron Jacob Rothschild to the US representative in Belgium, Henry Sanford, about those who died in the Civil War, has survived: “When a patient is desperately ill, you take any measures, up to bloodletting.

A new round of "recovery of the American economy" gave a loan of $150 million. The issuance of most of which was suspended with the requirement for Lincoln to reduce the cost of government papers by 25%. On February 33, 1862, the House of Representatives passed a law on a state loan of 150 million dollars in the form of state papers independent of creditors, mandatory for acceptance as a means of payment. By March 1863, the circulation of such papers began to reduce the turnover of gold settlements controlled by the Rothschilds. The move away from gold ran counter to the requirement that Treasuries be issued as interest-bearing bonds, which were issued at 35 cents on the dollar and converted at 100 cents after the war ended.

The future Earl of Beaconsfield, Benjamin Disraeli, before whose eyes the events described were unfolding, was a close friend of Lionel Rothschild, "whom he traditionally visited at the end of the week," and apparently heard enough at the dinner table that, holding a pen, wrote two novels, in one "Jewish money determine the rise and fall of courts and empires and reign supreme in the sphere of diplomacy", and in another he "developed a plan for a Jewish empire in which the Jews would rule as a strictly isolated class", but it will be a separate task for the Rothschilds to isolate it in a period of widespread assimilation .

heraldic shield

Young Montefiori (who preferred to remain Montefiori) would not have been so surprised by this proposal if he had once looked into the archives of the Heraldic College of the Austrian Imperial House. This institution was engaged in registration of patents for the nobility and titles of nobility.

The college was the first imperial institution to come face to face with the almost defiant and naive arrogance of the Rothschild brothers, with whom they imposed their beloved two-syllable surname on the whole world.

At the beginning of 1817, the patience of the staff of the collegium was seriously tested, since they had to communicate closely and for quite a long time with the Family. The Rothschild boys carried out another brilliant operation to transfer finance from England to Vienna, leaving other bankers far behind. After that, they felt they were ready to accept one or more differences from the imperial house, such as a title of nobility.

Privy Chancellor von Lederer, on whom the solution of this issue depended not least, understood that a gold snuffbox, decorated with a diamond monogram with the name of His Majesty, would come in handy.

The Minister of Finance, Prince Stadion, like any other Minister of Finance in the world, reacted to the claims of the Rothschilds with greater scrupulousness. In his opinion, the deal that was offered to the chancellor was clearly unfair. In the end, a compromise between the doubts of the minister and the sober calculation of the chancellor was found. It was based on the recognition of the fact that, although the Rothschild brothers are the sons of the people of Israel, they can be given the title of nobility of the lowest dignity and the right to add a piece of “von” to their surname. Now they were supposed to have a coat of arms, laid down by an Austrian nobleman, which should have been designed.

It is curious to read the letter from the boys to the Heraldic College, in which the draft of the future coat of arms is pathetically outlined:

“... in the upper left square on a purple background is a black eagle (which caused obvious associations with the Austrian imperial coat of arms) ... in the adjacent field there is a leopard looking to the right, with its right front paw raised (and this, in turn, reminded you of the coat of arms of the English kings)… the lower field is occupied by a lion standing on its hind legs (this is directly copied from the coat of arms of Hesse)… the composition is completed by a hand clutching five arrows against a blue background…”

The heraldic brethren from the college were indignant and in disarray. The upstarts, who had just added the prefix "von" to their surname, thought that they could get royal and ducal symbols for their coat of arms. But even this did not satisfy the claims of the Rothschilds. In the center of the emblem, they wanted to place a purple shield, which was supported by a hound on the right, symbolizing loyalty and devotion, and on the left, a stork, symbolizing piety and humility (pretty humility!). On the crosshair was a crown crowning the head of the newly-minted baron. And such a coat of arms wanted to get people who did not belong to the tribal nobility and only recently were ranked among the petty nobility. What a cheek! Taking a deep breath, the college officials began to compose a report for the imperial court.

“…They ask to place a crown on the coat of arms, a shield in the center, images of animals, a leopard symbolizing England, the Hessian lion… These proposals are completely unacceptable… the petty nobility is only entitled to the image of a helmet… If this rule is not followed, there will be no distinction between different degrees noble dignity ... a crown, images of animals and shields in the center of the coat of arms - this is allowed only on the coats of arms of the highest nobility ... And moreover. No government can allow the symbols of another state to be placed on the coat of arms, since noble dignity and titles are bestowed for service to their ruler and their country, and not to any other country or its government. The lion is exclusively a symbol of courage, which is in no way applicable to petitioners.

The board began to shred the proposed coat of arms. The crown with seven teeth and signs of baronial dignity turned into a small helmet. All the noble fauna was destroyed, and the storks, symbolizing piety, and the hounds, symbolizing fidelity, and lions, and all the others, disappeared. Only one bird managed to escape, and even then not entirely. Half of the Austrian eagle was left on the coat of arms. A hand holding arrows has also been preserved, but this image has also undergone a severe correction - instead of five arrows, the hand squeezed only four. Indeed, only four brothers were involved in the successful transfer. (Officially, Nathan did not take part in organizing the deal.) In this truncated form, the coat of arms was approved on March 25, 1817. But not for long. A famous congress soon took place at Aix, and then the Duke of Metternich, his Majesty's all-powerful chancellor, received a personal loan of 900,000 guilders from the House of Rothschild. On the one hand, it was an absolutely fair deal, and the loan provided was fully repaid seven years before the expiration date. And on the other hand, it was concluded on September 23, 1822, and six days later the imperial decree saw the light, which elevated all five brothers and their legitimate descendants of either sex to baronial dignity.

Officials of the Heraldic College powerlessly gnashed their teeth, they no longer dared to bite. On the coat of arms of the Rothschilds, a crown with seven teeth shone, exactly the one that the brothers proposed in the first version. Only now she was surrounded by three plumed helmets. The shield in the center of the coat of arms was restored, noble animals were also returned, but now in a new form, even more majestic. In place of the faithful hound was the Lion of Hesse; the galloping unicorn replaced the pious stork, the half-eagle recovered to its natural size, and next to it, among the helmets, another royal bird spread its wings. The grandeur of the image was complemented by the inscription at the base of the coat of arms: "Consent Unity Action".

The most desired changes were made to the lower left and upper right segments of the coat of arms. In each of them was placed the symbol of the Family - a hand squeezing five arrows. Five, not four!

And today, on the letterheads of the English House of Rothschild, you can see the same coat of arms of the Rothschilds. And five arrows still sparkle on it, reminiscent of five boys, five brothers obsessed with their ideas, who realized their wildest dreams and reigned in the five capitals of Europe.

This text is an introductory piece.