The Scum of the Earth

by Colin Brown

  According to Leopold de Rothschild, grandson of Nathan Mayer Rothschild, a copy of this gazette was rushed to Captain Cullen, the captain of a small ship, who was another of Rothschild’s agents. Cullen weighed anchor for the English coast and a courier raced with the bulletin to New Court, arriving forty-eight hours before Percy delivered the Waterloo Despatch. The next day, N.M. Rothschild had the news confirmed by his intelligence network, direct from the Hotel d’Hane Steenhuyse in Ghent, where the exiled Louis XVIII was staying with his court.

  The London Courier reported on Wednesday 21 June:

  The following is said to have been brought by a gentleman who was at Ghent on Monday at one o’clock. He states ‘that a general battle was fought the day before; that he was on Monday at Ghent opposite the hotel of Louis XVIII when at 1 p.m. an officer arrived covered with dust; and as the King receives every despatch openly he instantly entered the hotel with the officer who forthwith congratulated his Majesty on the great victory just gained. ‘We have taken all the heavy artillery,’ he exclaimed, ‘and a great and decisive victory is ours’.

  The ‘gentleman’ who brought the news to London was almost certainly N.M. Rothschild’s agent, who may have had special access to the court because, according to an account in the Daily Graphic of 1903, Rothschild was also giving financial support to the Bourbon king in exile. Either way, the event was seen from the street. The king was in the habit of relaxing in public view before large bow windows opening onto the street.* A crowd had gathered and witnessed the moment when the Russian messenger handed the Bourbon king the note written by Pozzo di Borgo at Wellington’s request the night before. It told the king that Bonaparte had been defeated and his army was in retreat – Louis XVIII could proceed to Paris to reclaim the throne of France. The king’s reaction to the news was spontaneous – Louis XVIII kissed everyone in sight. Years later Wellington gave his account of what happened at one of his dinner parties:

  Before that bow-window there happened to be passing an agent of Rothschild – a Jew. He saw the Russian officer enter, and after the letter was read he saw everyone embrace him, and then each other – there was nothing but embracing and kissing in the room. Upon which the Jew concluded that it must be the tidings of joy, and that the fighting which was already known must have ended in a most decisive victory. He said nothing but instantly set off for London. At Ostend, at embarking, he saw Malcolm** to whom he declared that he knew no news – observed strict silence all the way – got to London – went with Rothschild to the Stock Exchange and do his little business there – and when that was done, then Rothschild brought him to Lord Liverpool early in the afternoon.6

  Wellington was right about the scene in Ghent but he was completely wrong that Rothschild’s agent ‘happened’ to be passing the window. It was no accident. Rothschild had posted the agent outside the hotel. He had raced by post-horse from Ghent to Ostend, then boarded the Nymph, one of the many small packet boats that plied their trade across the Channel from the French ports to the English coast. On reaching the safe haven of Dover, the messenger commandeered one of Rothschild’s horses and turned towards London, 70 miles away. It was late on Tuesday when the messenger, using horses at staging posts on the route, galloped across Old London Bridge to reach New Court in St Swithin’s Lane.

  The messenger knew the financier was impatient and told Nathan what he had witnessed. Soon the bells would be ringing throughout most of Europe to herald the victory, but for Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the speed of the victory could turn into a financial disaster unless he handled his affairs very carefully. By the time the messenger arrived at New Court, it was too late to go to the Royal Exchange to act on the news from Waterloo. Nathan spent an anxious night at the counting house with his wife and children, worrying about how it would all play out, before setting out in the morning to rescue what he could from his losses.

  I followed in Nathan Mayer Rothschild’s footsteps along the route he would have taken on Wednesday, 21 June 1815, from New Court to the Royal Exchange, where he did his business. I crossed Lombard Street, went through medieval Pope’s Head Alley, where Pepys once bought a catcall from a toy shop run by Adam Chard, and I arrived at the Exchange. The walk took no more than two minutes.

  St Swithin’s Lane has been at the financial heart of London since the seventeenth century, when the trading of stocks started in the coffee houses of Change Alley. Sir John Soane’s pillared Bank of England building, a temple dedicated to money, is in nearby Threadneedle Street. The Exchange, which was rebuilt after a fire in 1838, is now a pillared luxury shopping mall. The trading floor where Rothschild stood is filled with the tables of an expense-account all-day brasserie and surrounded by luxury shops trading in expensive brands such as Tiffany and Hermes for today’s bankers. Outside, an equestrian statue of Lord Wellington guards the entrance. It was cast in bronze from Napoleon’s cannon captured at Waterloo and was erected by the City merchants for its reopening by Queen Victoria in 1844, as a ‘thank you’ to the great victor over Napoleon.

  There is little doubt that N.M. Rothschild put the information to good use – he did go to the Exchange and do some trading, before going with his messenger to No. 10. Five weeks after Waterloo, John Rowarth, one of Rothschild’s most trusted agents based in Paris, who had been at the Battle of Waterloo, sent Nathan a note from Paris saying: ‘I am informed by Commissary White you have done well by the early information which you had of the victory gaind [sic] at Waterloo.’7 It is a tantalising clue. Rowarth’s note in the Rothschild Archive suggests that Nathan did make a killing on the news about Waterloo before he went to Downing Street with his exclusive intelligence about the outcome of the battle.

  The prime minister, Lord Liverpool, was unsure about the reliability of Rothschild’s messenger and sent for John Wilson Croker, the Secretary of the Admiralty, to help him. He told Croker it was difficult to accept the messenger’s account as genuine. According to the editor of the Croker Papers, Croker began to question the man ‘with all his legal acumen, but he succeeded no better than Lord Liverpool in making the narrative intelligible’. When about to give it up in despair, as a last resort and by a sudden impulse, Croker questioned the messenger about the French king:

  He asked him how the King was dressed. The messenger replied, ‘In his dressing-gown’. Mr Croker then asked him what the King did and said to him, to which the messenger replied: ‘His Majesty embraced me, and kissed me’. Mr Croker asked, ‘How did the King kiss you?’ ‘On both cheeks,’ replied the messenger upon which Mr Croker emphatically exclaimed: ‘My Lord, it is true; his news is genuine.’8

  Liverpool cautiously decided he would have to wait for Wellington’s official despatch from Waterloo. It would take another twelve hours to arrive. It was a tortuous journey for Wellington’s ADC, Major Percy.

  At the moment Rothschild and his agent were in Downing Street, Wellington’s official despatch was still being carried across the Channel by the Honourable Henry Percy of the 14th Light Dragoons, grandson of the first Duke of Northumberland. Incredibly, at that moment, Percy was rowing.

  Percy had waited at Wellington’s house in Brussels on Monday 19 June for the Duke to produce a ‘fair copy’ of the despatch he had begun at Waterloo. It was addressed to Lord Bathurst at the Colonial Office in Downing Street. When it was ready, Percy put it for safekeeping in the ladies’ purple velvet handkerchief purse he had been given as a keepsake by an unnamed lady at the Duchess of Richmond’s Ball on the evening of 15 June. Like many officers who were there, he had rushed off to the battle still wearing his dress uniform, forgetting he had the purse tucked inside.

  It was about midday on 19 June that Percy set out from Brussels in a chaise (a small coach) with two battle trophies, the two gold-topped eagle standards captured from Napoleon’s 45th and the 105th, which Wellington said in his despatch he had the honour of ‘laying at the feet of the Prince Regent’. It took twenty-four hours for Percy to get to Ostend in the coach, according to Percy’s own
notebook. It was not until after midday on Tuesday, 20 June that Percy boarded HMS Peruvian, a 200-ton brig sloop of sixteen guns, skippered by Captain James Kearny White. Percy’s arrival was noted by Captain White in his ship’s log:

  Tuesday 20 June 1 p.m. Received a Major and Despatches from the Duke of Wellington telling of a desperate action having been fought at Waterloo in which the French retreated with considerable loss. Also a King’s Messenger for passage across.

  Percy’s despatch must have been burning a hole in his purse but they had to wait for the tide and they did not set sail from Ostend until 6.30 p.m. By this time, although Percy did not know it, Rothschild’s agent from Ghent had landed in Kent and was riding hard for London. Normally, with a fair wind, the voyage to Dover would have taken six hours but the storms that had lashed Belgium on Saturday had abated and the winds had dropped to no more than a light air across the water. After slipping out of the harbour, HMS Peruvian spent all night trying to make progress but by 8 a.m. the log shows they were still becalmed off the English coast. Because of the urgency of Percy’s mission, Captain White had no alternative but to get out the ship’s gig, the small rowing boat, with four stout sailors to help them row the remaining distance to the shore at Broadstairs.

  At 11.50 a.m. on Wednesday 21 June, as Rothschild was taking his agent to Downing Street, it was noted in the ship’s log: ‘Light airs, made all possible sail – out gig. Captain White and the Major shoved off in the gig with the despatches.’ Ten minutes later the noonday watch on board HMS Peruvian noted in the log: ‘Noon. Bearing and distance at noon. Ramsgate W 4/5 leagues. Light airs, sultry wind ...’ Four to five leagues is between 15 and 17 miles – a daunting distance to row a boat in a hurry. It was just as well Percy, an Old Etonian, was used to rowing on the Thames. The six rowers, including Percy and Captain White, covered the distance in about three hours, around 5 miles an hour. They shipped the oars and ran up the sandy beach at Broadstairs sometime after 3 p.m.; they must have been exhausted, but Percy could not delay. Percy and Captain White hired a chaise and four and rode to London with the eagles sticking out of the window. They were cheered as they went, and when Percy and Captain White reached Whitehall long after nightfall, large crowds were already following their carriage. Percy had orders to deliver the despatch to Lord Bathurst at the War and Colonial Office in Downing Street.*

  The Secretary to the Treasury, Charles Arbuthnot, whose wife, Harriet, who was to become a close and respected friend of Wellington, had returned from the Commons and was quietly working at his desk in the old Treasury office (at the back of what is now the Cabinet Office) and went out to see what all the commotion was about. According to Stanhope he thought it was a riot against the Corn Laws: ‘He heard a great uproar in Downing Street which he ascribed at first to one of the Corn Laws mobs that were frequent at that time.’ He was astonished to see the coach with the eagles, but told Percy that Bathurst was attending the regular Wednesday dinner given by Lord Harrowby, the President of the Council, at his house at Grosvenor Square. He jumped in the coach and they set off again, with Arbuthnot showing the coachman the way.

  There were loud cheers in Brooks’s club when the carriage with the eagles sticking out of the window went clattering by. Those at Brooks’s that night included Thomas Creevey’s friend, the Whig MP Henry Grey Bennet. ‘When the shouts in the street drew us to the window, we saw the chaise and the eagles,’ Bennet wrote to Creevey.

  Lord Harrowby’s daughter, Mary, who was 14, later recalled peeping over the bannisters and seeing an officer in a scarlet tunic with gold on it, arriving at Lord Harrow’s house. He was brandishing the despatch and was followed by two other men crying out ‘Victory, Victory, Bonaparte has been beaten.’ She noticed how tired and dishevelled Percy looked. He was wearing the ADC’s uniform he had worn for the Duchess of Richmond’s ball, which was stained with the blood of a fellow officer. At first, Harrowby doubted Percy’s account, questioning whether the victory could have been so complete as he said. Percy was adamant. Mary heard bursts of cheering from the dining room and her father went outside to announce the news to the crowd in the square. Then Percy had to climb back into the carriage with Arbuthnot, the despatch and the eagles and race off in search of the Prince Regent, accompanied by the cheering crowds. He found the prince at a ball at Mrs Boehm’s, a society hostess at nearby 16 St James’s Square, which is today the East India Club, a gentleman’s club founded in the middle of the nineteenth century for officers of the East India Company, the army and navy. The music died and Percy went down on bended knee to the Prince Regent, saying ‘Victory … victory, sire.’ The prince retreated to a small room to read Wellington’s despatch and emerged in tears at the numbers of officers who had been killed. Percy was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel on the spot by the Prince Regent, and he was later rewarded by Wellington with a gold Breguet watch, which was inscribed on the back. The watch is priceless and is now at Levens Hall in the Lake District, which has a family connection to Percy.

  Percy retired on half pay in 1821 and became an MP for the family borough of Bere Alston. He was practically anonymous as an MP and died after a bout of ill health at 8 Portman Square, aged 40. He was a national hero for bringing the news back from Waterloo but today he is virtually forgotten. The scarlet-and-gold ADC’s coatee he wore at the ball and through the battle are on display in Percy’s other ancestral home, Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, alongside the ladies’ deep-purple handkerchief sachet in which he carried the Waterloo Despatch. Today the perfectly preserved medieval castle is more famous as the setting for the opening credits of Black Adder or as Harry Potter’s school, Hogwart’s, in the Hollywood movies than for the long-forgotten hero who brought back Wellington’s Waterloo Despatch.

  For Mrs Boehm, Percy’s historic arrival was a disaster – it wrecked her ball and her husband went bust in 1819. In old age she still complained of ‘that dusty figure’ Percy arriving with the ‘unseasonable news of the Waterloo victory – (surely) it could have been kept until morning?’ Not even a gift from the Prince Regent – a solid-gold eagle – could assuage her.

  So how did Nathan Mayer Rothschild make his fortune? N.M. Rothschild had quickly made his mark at the Royal Exchange and was followed by other traders, who were keen to cash in on his inside information. He was said to possess ‘eyes like shuttered windows’ and generally gave nothing away to rival traders who were anxious to use his secret intelligence. It would have been easy for him to engineer a run on government stocks. Regency bucks at Brooks’s club in St James’s, who would bet on anything, including a peer of the realm having sex in a balloon over 1,000 yards off the ground,* had been betting on a victory by Napoleon for days. That morning, he was said to have looked gloomy as he stood at his favourite pillar to give the false impression that Wellington had been defeated. It is alleged he dumped government stocks, known as Omnium and Consuls, but secretly bought them up when the price went through the floor, knowing they would rise when London learned the truth, that Napoleon had been defeated by Wellington. Rothschild vehemently denied it, but the story of his Stock Exchange coup has persisted for two centuries. One report blamed him for others’ losses that day:

  He leaned against ‘his’ pillar. He did not invest. He sold. He dumped consols. Consols plummeted until, a split second before it was too late, Nathan suddenly bought a giant parcel for a song. Moments afterwards the great news broke, to send consols soaring. We cannot guess the number of hopes and savings wiped out by this engineered panic.

  His family took great pains to try to scotch such rumours persisting nearly a century later. It is understandable why: fraud on the Stock Exchange was a serious a crime and it would have damaged the reputation of the financial institution he founded. The punishment for defrauding the Stock Exchange was more severe in 1815 than it is today, for in addition to a fine, miscreants could be pelted in the stocks. Only the year before, in 1814, Rear Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane, the swashbuckling naval captain and Radi
cal MP on whom the Captain Jack Aubrey novels by Patrick O’Brian were based, had been accused of similar fraudulent behaviour when he was found guilty of what became known as ‘The Great Stock Exchange Fraud’. Cochrane (like Aubrey) was convicted of trying to rig the Stock Exchange on false news that Napoleon had died. The Rear Admiral was fined the large sum, for that time, of £1,000 and, worse, he was ordered to stand in the stocks opposite the Royal Exchange for an hour. Pillorying was not merely humiliating. Victims could have their eyes knocked out of their sockets if organised thugs threw stones at the unfortunates in the stocks. Cochrane had many powerful friends in Parliament and to avoid a riot, the authorities arranged for him to be granted a Royal pardon by the Prince Regent; he escaped the pillory, but the scandal wrecked his Royal Navy career for nearly two decades. He was expelled from the service and not reinstated until a second Royal pardon in 1832.

  The allegations against Nathan Mayer Rothschild may have started as grumbles by jealous rival brokers, but they were turned into crude anti-Semitic smears in a pamphlet of 1846 in Paris after a journalist tried to blackmail the Rothschild family. They were picked up and embellished in a Polish account published in East Prussia in 1868 that claimed: ‘Nathan rode on an Indian horse at the side of the hero Wellington.’ This was nonsense. There is a letter in the Rothschild Archive that was written by Nathan between 16 and 20 June to his brother Carl in Amsterdam that proves he was in London when the battle took place.9 The Rothschilds tried to stop further publication of the smears in a book called the Romance of the Rothschilds as late as 1913. The English courts threw out their case on the grounds that you cannot libel the dead, and Nathan had died in 1836.