The French Rothschilds

The Rothschilds, the bankers to kings, were among the world's paramount financial powers in the nineteenth century, and their wealth remains the stuff of legend. The French Rothschilds is an award-winning biographer's penetrating portrait of the most regal and influential branch of this international family, one that came to prominence under Napoleon in France and has ever since been locked in a turbulent relationship with its adopted state. Throughout much of the nineteenth century, the Rothschilds were the single most important source of funds in Europe for governments in war and peace (preferably peace), for the extraction of raw materials from the earth, and for the factories that turned them into wealth. They were instrumental in bringing capitalism to maturity. There have been a number of books on the Rothschilds, but never one that focused so closely on the French branch of the family. Yet the French Rothschilds, with their eventful careers in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the anti-Semitism they faced; their contribution to the settlement of Palestine; the assaults they endured from first the Petain regime and later the Mitterrand Socialists; and their famous racehorses and prestigious wines, are in many respects the most fascinating branch of this astonishing family.