Of all the sons of Maier Amschel Rothschild, Nathan, born in 1777, was undoubtedly the most prominent. Inheriting his father’s spirit, he left his home at the early age of twenty-two, and in 1798 opened a small shop as a banker and money-lender at Manchester. He had left Frankfurt, where his father’s house had just been knocked into ruins by the bombardment of Marshal Kleber, with only a thousand florins in his pocket. But the cotton interest was just then beginning to develop itself, and Nathan took such clever advantage of the opportunities this offered him, that at the end of five years he came from Manchester to London with a fortune of £200,000, where he became the son-in-law of Levi Barnett Cohen, one of the Jewish City magnates. The report of his Manchester successes had preceded him to the Capital, and he immediately engaged largely in Stock Exchange speculations. Whilst houses of the oldest standing were tottering or falling, owing to the State loan of 1810 having turned out a failure, and the fortunes of the Peninsular War seemed most doubtful, some drafts of Wellington to a considerable amount came over here, and there was no money in the Exchequer to meet them. Nathan Rothschild, satisfied as to England’s final victory, purchased the bills at a large discount, and finally found the means of redeeming them at par. It was a splendid speculation, which resulted in his entering into closer intercourse with the Ministry, and he was chiefly employed in transmitting the subsidies which England furnished—most foolishly indeed—to the Continental Powers. The circumstance that Nathan was supplied by his brothers at Frankfurt and elsewhere with the earliest and most reliable intelligence, and his trustworthy connections and arrangements in London, enabled him to turn such knowledge to immediate and profitable account. But there being then neither railways nor telegraphs, news was slow in coming. Nathan trained carrier pigeons, and organized a staff of agents, whose duty it was to follow the march of the armies, and daily and hourly to send reports in cipher, tied under the wings of the pigeons. His agents, by means of fast-sailing boats, taking the shortest routes, indicated by Nathan himself—the mail-boats between Folkestone and Boulogne of the present day follow one of these routes—carried large sums between the coasts of Germany, France, and England. And when events on the Continent were coming to a crisis, Nathan on more than one occasion hurried over to the Continent to watch the course of affairs. It is said that Nathan Rothschild, on June 18, 1815, was on the field of Waterloo,[#] and watched the battle till he saw the French troops in full retreat, when he immediately rode back to Brussels, whence a carriage took him to Ostend. The sea was stormy; in vain Nathan offered 500 francs, 600 francs, 800 francs, to carry him across; at last a poor fisherman risked his life for 2,000