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When peace was established, the Elector of Hesse-Cassel received back the whole of his capital with a fair amount of interest, and Mayer Rothschild was able to congratulate himself on having benefited alike the Elector and himself.
War had broken out again, and Napoleon had undertaken that campaign against Russia which was to bring him to ruin, when Mayer Rothschild died, like a patriarch, surrounded by his ten children. He had never quitted his house in the Juden-gasse, and, millionaire as he now was, had never abandoned the long, characteristic frock-coat of the Frankfort Jews.
Of the ten children surrounding the bed of the dying financier, five were sons – Anselm, Solomon, Nathan, Charles, and James. In giving them his last blessing he exhorted them to live together in the most perfect harmony: a command which was to be religiously obeyed. The five brothers formed in common an immense banking house, with the central establishment at Frankfort, and four branches at Vienna, London, Naples, and Paris. To undertake no important operation without the consent of all the partners, to be content with a relatively small profit, to leave nothing to chance, to be always punctual and exact – such were the principles by which they were to be guided; and in formally adopting them they took this motto: Concordia, Industria, Integritas.
The events of 1813 and 1814 offered to this fraternal association admirable opportunities. It was applied to for loans, first by the coalition of Powers marching against France, and, after Napoleon’s final defeat, by the new monarchical Government of France, in view of the war indemnity. From this moment the house of Rothschild assumed colossal proportions. It seemed to hold Europe at every point, and no important financial operation could be undertaken without its consent and aid. The Emperor of Austria ennobled the brothers Rothschild in 1815, at the time of the Vienna Conferences, and in 1822 created them barons and appointed them consuls-general for Austria in the different cities where they were established.
Of Mayer Rothschild’s five sons, Baron Anselm, the eldest, born at Frankfort in 1773, assumed, after the death of his father, the direction of the Frankfort bank, and while remaining at its head took an active part in founding the four branch houses at Paris, London, Vienna, and Naples. He died at Frankfort in 1855. Baron Solomon de Rothschild, Mayer Rothschild’s second son, born at Frankfort in 1774, died at Paris in 1855. After founding the branch bank of Vienna, he directed, in concert with his brother Anselm, most of the great financial operations undertaken in Germany. He was an intimate friend of Prince Metternich’s, and his son, Baron Anselm Solomon, became, less from political tastes than in virtue of his rank, a member of the Austrian Reichsrath.
After quitting Vienna, Baron Solomon, the father, went to Paris, where, in association with his brother James, he undertook the management of the French bank. His son, the before-mentioned Baron Anselm Solomon, died at Vienna in 1874, leaving behind him one of the finest art galleries in the world. He had three sons, Nathaniel, Ferdinand, and Albert, the last-named of whom took the direction of the Vienna bank.
Baron Nathan de Rothschild, brother of the preceding, was born at Frankfort in 1777, and died there in 1836. His father, the founder of the family, had sent him as early as 1798 to England, where, after passing some years at Manchester, he established himself in London in 1806. After the death of his father he remained at the head of the London house, and played a considerable part in the great financial operations undertaken by the five brothers in common. In 1813 he lent large sums to the English Government, as well as to England’s allies, and, after the peace, was, like his four brothers, appointed consul-general for Austria, and created baron. Nathan, who, by the way, never made use of his title, died at Frankfort in 1836, and was succeeded in the direction of the London house by Baron Lionel de Rothschild. Baron Charles de Rothschild, the fourth of the five brothers, was born at Frankfort in 1788, and died at Naples in 1855. He directed the Naples bank from its first establishment until his death. He reconstructed the finances of Piedmont and Tuscany, and, in association with his brothers, borrowed for the Roman Government between 1831 and 1856 some 200,000,000 francs.
Baron James de Rothschild, the last of the brothers, born at Frankfort-on-the-Maine in 1792, died at Paris in 1868. It is with him we have chiefly to do, since it was he who in the year 1812, immediately after the death of his father, established at Paris the great banking house which now forms one of the most striking features of the Rue Laffitte. The post of consul-general for Austria was given to him in 1822. Under the Restoration, in December, 1823, Baron James subscribed for a loan of nearly five hundred millions, and, in association with his brothers, he undertook nearly all the important loans issued in Portugal, Prussia, Austria, France, Italy, and Belgium. He rendered important financial aid to the French Government under the reign of Louis Philippe, and during the Second Empire. It was Baron James de Rothschild, moreover, who furnished the brothers Pereire with the sums necessary for the construction of the first railways in France.
Falsely accused of having speculated in corn during the dearth of 1847, he had reason to fear, at least for a time, after the Revolution of 1848, that he could no longer live safely at Paris. His house was pillaged and burnt, and he was indeed on the point of quitting France, when the Prefect of Police, Caussidière, persuaded him to stay, and placed at his disposal a picket of the Republican Guard, which was stationed in the courtyard of his mansion night and day. The baron gave 50,000 francs towards the relief of the wounded of February, illuminated his house to show that he was not hostile to Republican institutions, and tranquilly continued his operations at the bank. When Caussidière, obliged to leave France, decided to set up as a wine merchant in London, Baron James, mindful of the service he had rendered him, did not, it is true, offer him a present of money, which might have been refused, but in the handsomest manner ordered such large annual consignments of wine from him, that Caussidière could thenceforth have lived comfortably without selling a drop of his stuff to any other customer. The baron never boasted of this action, but the wine merchant took delight in telling the story of his patron’s delicate gratitude. Thanks to his state loans, to his banking and exchange transactions, and to the great commercial enterprises which he had created or protected, the financier had amassed enormous wealth. He richly endowed or founded all kinds of Jewish institutions, notably a vast hospital in the Rue Picpus, and the synagogue of the Rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth. Every year he sent to Judæa large sums of money, which the Rabbis distributed to the poor; and the Jews of the East attributed to him the project of redeeming Jerusalem from the government of the Turks.
His château at Ferrières, in the department of Seine-et-Marne, is a sumptuous palace; and besides this and his two other residences in the Rue Laffitte and the Bois de Boulogne, he possessed innumerable houses in Paris. In nearly all the great cities and towns of Europe, moreover, he owned valuable properties – at Rome, for instance, Naples, and Turin, where some of the finest palaces and mansions were his. To the end of his life the great financier displayed a most prodigious activity. He was quick, hot-tempered, peevish, and surly to approach. But if he has been often reproached with brutality to underlings, he, on the other hand, treated the great with none too much ceremony. One day the Count de Morny entered the baron’s office at a moment when he was busily engaged. “Take a chair,” said the financier, without looking at him. “Pardon me,” said the injured visitor; “you cannot have heard my name. I am the Count de Morny.” “Take two chairs,” replied Baron James, without lifting his eyes off the papers before him. This prince of millionaires never carried more than fifty francs in his pocket; and he himself declared that by means of this aid to economy he had saved half a million francs in the course of his life. At the club of the Rue Royale, where he was accustomed to play whist after dinner, much amusement was caused by the extraordinary purse he always carried. It was fitted with a lock, and the key to this lock hung as a pendant to the baron’s watchchain. To pay a debt of ten sous he had first to get hold of the key and then open the lock; nor even when he had done so was there always enough in the purse to discharge his liability. At his club he was called simply “The Baron” – his compeers were all barons of something or other; and for this title he had always a punctilious regard. He was a great lover of art, and had formed a magnificent collection in the château at Ferrières. By his marriage with his niece, daughter of Baron Solomon de Rothschild, he left four sons – Edmond, Gustave, Alphonse, and Nathaniel, of whom the first-named became naturalised in France, and assumed on his father’s death the direction of the Paris house. During the siege of the capital in January, 1871, he, in association with his brothers, expended 300,000 francs on the relief of the necessitous; and in 1872 subscribed for a sum of 2,750,000,000 francs towards the loan required to buy the foe out of the country.
The three houses in the Rue Laffitte occupied by the Rothschilds are numbered 17, 19, and 21. At 21 is the banking establishment, now presided over by Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, third son of the late Baron James. Baron Alphonse is a painter of the highest distinction, in token of which he has been elected a member of the Academy of Fine Arts. No. 19 is the residence of the Dowager Baroness James de Rothschild; while № 17 is occupied by various administrative offices. Close by is the mansion which, under the First Empire, was inhabited by the Queen of Holland. In one of the rooms overlooking the garden was born, April 20th, 1808, Napoleon Louis, the future Emperor of the French.
In the middle of the Rue de la Victoire stands the finest of the three synagogues of Paris, built by the architect Aldrophe in the Roman style.
The perspective of the Rue Laffitte terminates at the frontispiece of the church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. The plan of this edifice is that of an ancient Roman basilica, and its aspect that of an Italian church. The interior is very richly adorned with works from the chisels of half a dozen famous sculptors, and from the brushes of a still greater number of distinguished painters. This church, situated in the midst of those quarters where literature, art, and the drama have made their home, is marked by an elegance which approaches the mundane.
Passing northwards through the Rue Laffitte, the visitor sees, rising before him, the hill of Montmartre, which overlooks the church. The windmills which five-and-twenty years ago waved their arms on the summit of this eminence have given way to the imposing church of the Sacred Heart, a massive structure suggestive of a fortress.
The Butte Montmartre, to give the hill its French name, figures on almost every page of the annals of Paris. It is supposed, with a certain degree of probability, that temples to Mars and Mercury were raised there in the Roman era. Three different etymologies have been given to the Butte Montmartre, namely, Mons Martis, or Mount of Mars; Mons Mercurii, or Mount of Mercury; and finally Mons Martyrum, or Mount of the Martyrs. The last-named derivation is justified by the martyrdom of St. Denis, first Archbishop of Paris, who in the third century perished upon this spot. The hill bears a reservoir of water, artistically decorated; and close to it an obelisk erected in 1736 to serve as a point of view by which, from the opposite or southern side of Paris, the city could be surveyed and measured. Our illustration shows, to the right of this edifice, the Observatory of Montmartre, and to the left the Moulin de la Galette, or Muffin Mill.
Close by is the church of St. Peter, which presents a miserable front, but which archæologists prize as a monument of extraordinary interest. It dates back to the earliest ages of Christianity. Destroyed by the Romans, it was completely rebuilt in 1137. Partly burnt in 1559, it was half demolished in 1792, and restored without any regard to regularity or unity of design. It thus presents, at first sight, the aspect of a ruin held together by means of shaky scaffoldings.
The Butte Montmartre is an enormous mass of gypsum, about 125 metres high, and it has furnished century after century the finest kind of plaster, required for the construction of buildings in Paris. As a consequence it has been dangerously hollowed out, and in recent times a part of the hill gave way and precipitated itself upon the district below. The massive church of the Sacred Heart was built with a special eye to the insecurity of the hill; for it rests on an artificial foundation, in the shape of huge masses of cement, reaching deep down into the lower strata.
In the last generation the Butte Montmartre was, to Parisians, simply a fresh-air resort, picturesque with the before-mentioned windmills, to which rustic taverns were usually attached. From the summit, where city-pent children used on Sundays joyously to romp on the future site of the church of the Sacred Heart, a magnificent view is obtained of the Plain of Saint-Denis, the course of the Seine, and beyond that the fringe of the Montmorency Forest. Then, turning suddenly towards the south, the astonished visitor sees the whole city of Paris lying at his feet.
At the bottom of the Rue Lepic a vast enclosure is visible full of trees of various kinds, with the cypress prominent amongst them. This is the cemetery of Montmartre, or, by its official designation, Cemetery of the North. It contains many a monument as remarkable for its artistic beauty as for the character or celebrity of the sleeper beneath it; that of Godefroi Cavaignac, for instance, brother of the general of the same name, and one of the hopes of the Republican party under the monarchy of Louis Philippe; of Henri Beyle (otherwise “Stendhal”), author of “The Life of Rossini,” the treatise on “Love,” and of several admirable novels, including “La Chartreuse de Parme,” described as a masterpiece by so competent a judge as Balzac. Here, too, repose Paul Delaroche the painter, Marshal Lannes, Halévy, composer of La Juive, and Henri Murger, observer, if not inventor, of the literary and artistic Bohemian, described with so much gaiety, vivacity, and picturesqueness in the “Scènes de la Vie de Bohême.”
Until a few years ago the Montmartre Cemetery barred the way from Paris to the Butte Montmartre. But since 1888 a bridge or viaduct has connected the Boulevard Clichy with the Rue Caulaincourt. The Barrière Clichy has given its name to one of the most characteristic of Horace Vernet’s works – the picture of this barrier as seen in 1814 during the advance upon Paris of the allied armies.
The prison of Clichy, familiarly known as “Clichy,” in the street of the same name, was the Paris prison for debt. Here, until the Second Empire, debtors were confined under conditions peculiar to France, or at least never known in England. The duration of the imprisonment was determined by the magnitude of the debt, up to a period of five years; the maximum term, whatever amount might be owed. The debtor was maintained at the cost of the creditor, who had to deposit a sum of forty-five francs with the prison officials before his victim could be admitted within the prison walls. From early morning until ten o’clock at night the prisoners were free to walk about the grounds and occupy themselves as they thought fit. There were two hundred rooms for men, and sixteen for women; and, contrary to the general opinion on the subject, largely due to humorous writers and caricaturists, the prisoners belonged, for the most part, not to the aristocratic class, but to the class of small tradesmen. As the enforced allowance from the creditor was only sufficient to provide the necessaries of life, a fund was maintained among the prisoners for supplementing the ordinary bill of fare. There was a restaurant for prisoners of means, and light wines were on sale, to the exclusion of dessert wines and liqueurs. If, as often happened, the creditor omitted to pay for the support of the debtor, the latter was set free.
It is recorded in the chronicles of Clichy that among the wines forbidden, as savouring specially of a luxury unbecoming on the part of a man unable to pay his debts, was champagne. The heart of the creditor, says one writer on this subject, would have been too much vexed by the thought of bursting corks and foaming wine. The prisoners at Clichy became, according to the French caricaturists, inordinately fat; and in one of Gavarni’s pictures of Clichy a prisoner is represented saying to a friend who has called to see him: “If they don’t let me out soon I shall be unable to get through the door.” Thus, the mouse of the fable, having crept through a small hole into a basket of provisions, feasted till he was too big to squeeze his way out again.
If, under the French system, the creditor was bound to maintain the debtor, the debtor, on his side, was denied the liberties accorded to him in England. Here a man who refused to pay his debts might be detained as long as the creditor wished without any charge to the latter; but here, also, the debtor might lead a luxurious life, and even leave the prison day after day on condition only of returning by a certain hour at night. To live “within the rules” of the Queen’s Bench was simply to inhabit an unfashionable and remote part of London, with the additional obligation of getting home early every night. A former manager of Her Majesty’s Theatre – King’s Theatre, as it was then called – passed several years in the Queen’s Bench Prison. This gentleman, Taylor by name, maintained, indeed, that it was the only place where an operatic manager could live so as to be quite beyond the reach of tenors dissatisfied with their parts, and prime donne clamouring for new dresses and increased salaries. In fact, he once declared, it was the only place where a man so rash as to undertake an operatic speculation ought to be allowed to live, since no such person was fit to be at large.
Close to the Clichy district is the more important one of Les Batignolles, a growth of the present century and, one may almost say, of the last half-century. The village of Les Batignolles has developed into a town, inhabited for the most part by retired tradesmen and small annuitants. Close, again, to the Batignolles is the beautiful Parc Monceau, with its Avenue de Villiers, favourite abode of so many painters of the modern school.
We are now once more in the neighbourhood of the Champs Élysées, with its picturesque avenues, its children, its popular theatres, and its cafés without number. Once more, too, we are in the vicinity of that Bois de Boulogne, with its beautiful drives, its luxurious restaurants, its enchanting lake, and its forest renowned for duels.
CHAPTER XXXII
PARIS DUELS
The Legal Institution of the Duel – The Congé de la Bataille– in the Sixteenth Century – Jarnac – Famous Duels.
PARISIAN duels are no longer to the death. As a rule, one of the combatants receives a scratch, and the farce is at an end. The story is well known of a Paris journalist’s wife, who, alarmed by the sudden disappearance of her husband, continued for a long time to fret and worry about him, until a friend of his told her that he had gone into the country to fight a duel, whereupon she exclaimed: “Thank Heaven! Then he is safe.”
From antiquity, however, until very recent times duels in Paris and in France generally have been only too sanguinary. The French first learned duelling from a ferocious nation. The ancient Franks, in invading Gaul, established there what was known as the “judicial combat.” Previously, in their own country, it had been a custom amongst the Franks for an individual who had suffered any private wrong, serious or trivial, to wreak a personal vengeance on the offender, inflicting death, or no matter what bodily injury, in the most barbarous fashion. At length the law intervened and instituted formal combat between the parties at strife – a custom which, in due course, was introduced by the Franks into conquered Gaul. In the regulations of Philippe le Bel, 1306, it is set forth: —
“That the lists shall be forty feet in width and eighty feet in length.
“That the duel shall only be permitted when there is presumptive evidence against the accused, but without clear proof.
“That on the day appointed the two combatants shall leave their houses on horseback, with visor raised; their sabre, sword, axe, and other reasonable arms for attack and defence being carried before them; when they shall advance slowly, making from step to step the sign of the cross, or bearing an image of the saint to whom they are chiefly devoted and in whom they have most confidence.
“That having reached the enclosure, the appellant, with his hand on his crucifix, shall swear on his baptismal faith, on his life, his soul, and his honour, that he believes himself to have got a just subject of contention, and moreover that he has not upon him, nor upon his horse, nor among his arms, any herbs, charms, words, stones, conjurations, pacts, or incantations that he proposes to employ; and that the respondent shall take the same oaths.
“That the body of the vanquished man, if he is killed, shall be delivered to the marshal, until the king has declared if he wishes to pardon him or to do justice upon him; that is to say, hang him up to a gibbet by one of his feet.
“That if the vanquished man still lives, his aiguillettes shall be cut off; that he shall be disarmed and stripped; that all his harness shall be cast here and there about the field; and that he shall remain lying on the ground until the king, in like manner, has declared if he wishes to pardon him or to do justice upon him.
“That, moreover, all his property shall be confiscated for the benefit of the king, after the victor has been duly paid his costs and damages.”
In regard to capital crimes, the issue of a combat authorised by law and consecrated by religious ceremonies was looked upon as a formal judgment by which God made known the truth or falsehood of the accusation. The defeated combatant was dragged on a hurdle in his shirt to the gallows, where, dead or alive, he was hanged. The church itself adopted and sanctioned the superstitious idea that the vanquished in the judicial duel must necessarily be guilty. The one who had been killed in such a duel or combat was, says Brantôme, “in no case received by the church for Christian burial; and the ecclesiastics alleged as a reason for this that his defeat was a judgment from Heaven, and that he had succumbed by the will of God because his quarrel was unjust.”
The judicial duel was fully recognised by the Church of Paris. Louis VI. declared that the serfs and ecclesiastics of the Church of Paris might “testify,” that is to say maintain their word by a duel. In the reign of Louis the Young the monks of the Abbey of Saint-Geneviève, whose domains covered all the high ground which now overlooks the Panthéon, offered to prove by duel that the inhabitants of the little village in the neighbourhood were the serfs of their abbey. In the same reign (1144) the monks of Saint-Germain-des-Prés having demanded a duel in order to prove that Étienne de Maci had wrongly imprisoned one of their serfs, the two champions fought for a long time with equal advantage; but at last, “by the help of God,” says a chronicler, “the champion of the abbey took out the eye of his adversary, and obliged him to confess that he was conquered.”
Among the most remarkable judicial duels may be mentioned one that took place between two Norman knights behind the church of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields in presence of Charles VI. and the whole court. Jacques Legris had been accused by the wife of Jean Carrouge of having entered his castle, masked, in the middle of the night, under pretence of being her husband, who was on his way from the Holy Land and whose return she was daily expecting. He protested his innocence, and on the demand of Carrouge the Parliament ordered the matter to be decided by duel. The judgment of God was unfavourable to Legris, and on being vanquished he was hung up at the gallows attached to the lists. Some time afterwards a malefactor, on the point of being executed for other crimes, confessed to having committed the infamous action for which Legris had suffered. This cruel mistake led to the abolition of the judicial duel. All demands on the subject addressed to the Parliament were from this time rejected – the judicial duel was at an end.
Appeals for a decision by single combat could still be made to the king, who sometimes granted what was known as the Congé de la Bataille. But simple crimes were no longer the cause of duels; and the personal conflicts that now take place turn upon the modern “point of honour.” Assemblies, however, were still held for the purpose of enacting that duels should not be fought without the recognition of the superior authorities and without fair play. Two French officers having quarrelled on a campaign, one of whom had suffered from the other a personal affront, the case was brought before a tribunal of honour, with the highest personages of the court, the Chancellor, the Pope’s legate, two cardinals, and a certain number of prelates as judges; when, without any appeal to the sword, it was decided that one of the antagonists should go down on his knees before the other and declare that “madly and rashly, irreverentially, badly advised and badly counselled, he had given a box on the ear or blow with the fist to the other, in the tent and presence of the Duke de Longueville.”
The court of honour might or might not be the preliminary to the Congé de la Bataille. When the latter was granted the fact was announced by the king’s herald. The duel might on certain grounds be declined, and an example of this is cited, in which Count William of Furstenberg refused to meet a certain Sieur de Vassé on account of his inferior birth. Victor Hugo has well reproduced this spirit of aristocratic punctilio, which did not spring from personal haughtiness alone, in his drama of Marion Delorme. Didier, the hero, of obscure birth, challenges a distinguished nobleman, who asks for his adversary’s name. “Didier,” is the reply. “Didier de quoi?” inquires the nobleman. “Didier de rien!” answers the bearer of the homely name, who declares that he never knew his father; whereupon the aristocrat, giving him the benefit of the doubt, observes that he may possibly be of the highest lineage, and at once consents to cut throats with him. This idea of disqualification on account of inferior birth disappeared with the Revolution. But it was maintained, with only the rarest exceptions, until the great outbreak of 1789. Voltaire challenged a duke who had caused him to be waylaid and beaten by hired ruffians, but with no result, except to get himself sent to the Bastille. The incident of the water-carrier, in one of Paul de Kock’s novels, challenging and fighting a gentleman by whom he has been aggrieved, would, before the Revolution, have been not merely an improbable, but an impossible one.
While tolerating duels up to the time of Louis XIII., the French kings sometimes intervened in person to put a stop to them. Charles VIII. separated two gentlemen who had “come furiously to blows,” and Francis I. brought to an end a combat that was taking place between two gentlemen of Berry, named Veniers and Harzai.
In the sixteenth century the duel was accompanied by great ceremony. Take, for example, the one fought between La Chateigneraie and Guychabot, better known under the name of Jarnac. Guychabot, a distinguished member of the court of Francis I., and afterwards of Henry II., had taken an important part in the war of Italy. But he is chiefly remembered by his duel with La Chateigneraie, arising from the rival influences at court of the Duchess of Étampes and Diana of Poitiers. An offensive statement about him having been made, or rather repeated, by the Dauphin, he replied by charging its author, whoever he might be, with mendacity. La Chateigneraie, as Jarnac may or may not have known, was the originator of the calumny, for which, indeed, he accepted full responsibility. Francis I., now in his old age, would not permit the adversaries to fight; and it was not until Henry II. came to the throne that the duel took place, on the plain of Saint-Germain, with all the pomp and ceremony of the ancient judicial duels, and in presence of the whole court. Jarnac, weaker and less skilful than his enemy, who was one of the first duellists of the age, had taken lessons of an Italian bravo; and he dealt La Chateigneraie a violent and unexpected thrust in the leg (afterwards to be known as le coup de Jarnac). La Chateigneraie perished in the duel, and Henry II. swore on his corpse never to permit another. He endeavoured to keep his word; but his authorisation was dispensed with, and duelling became one of the fashions of the day. In 1560 the States-General of the Kingdom, assembled at Orleans, begged Charles IX. to punish without remission all duellists; and the Tiers État having formulated the same request, a royal order was published, which served as basis to the edicts on this subject published by Henry IV. and Louis XIV. In these documents duelling was placed in the category of capital offences; which had no effect but to increase the number of duels. Among the remarkable duels of this period must be mentioned one which was fought in the island of the City, between two gentlemen, who, finding themselves pursued by the police in an approaching boat, fought with such a determination to get the affair quickly to an end, that four sabre strokes sufficed to lay both dead.
