to buy cotton goods for the German market, and there he remained till 1805. He was naturalised as a British subject on 12 June 1804, and next year settled at St. Helen's Place, London, in order to undertake business in association with his father. He soon removed to New Court, St. Swithin's Lane, which is still his descendants' place of business. Although for a time he acted as a general merchant as well as a financier, he concentrated his attention on finance. On arriving in London he bought, for exchange purposes, at an auction of the East India Company, a quantity of gold which had just arrived from Calcutta. The broker of the English government asked him to re-sell it to the government with a view to paying with it the subsidies of their German allies. Rothschild declined. Thereupon the secretary of the treasury summoned him to an interview, and, impressed by Rothschild's ability and foresight, invited him to undertake himself the payment of the foreign subsidies. Rothschild assented, and for nearly ten years was actively engaged in this service, which gave him a commanding position in the city of London. In some cases the foreign princes, instead of having the money remitted to them, desired it to be invested in English consols—an arrangement which greatly facilitated Rothschild's operations. As agent for the English government he likewise forwarded funds to Wellington throughout the Peninsular war, and rendered especially valuable financial assistance to England and to Europe in their struggle with Napoleon in 1813, by paying in behalf of the English government the large sums due to England's allies—Prussia, Russia, and Austria—under the terms of the treaty of Töplitz. The king of Prussia, in recognition of the aid rendered to the coalition by Rothschild and his brothers, made them all members of the council of commerce.
Rothschild realised the importance of obtaining news of public events at the earliest possible moment. He not only employed a staff of couriers on the continent, but organised a pigeon post, which the firm long maintained. One of Rothschild's agents, a man named Roworth, seems to have been at Ostend awaiting news of the result while the battle of Waterloo was in progress. Procuring an early copy of the Dutch ‘Gazette,’ which promptly announced the victory of the allies, he hurried across the Channel, and was the first to bring the news to London, where he arrived early on the morning of 20 June. In this way Rothschild was in possession of the intelligence before any one else in London, and at once communicated it to the English government. The ministers received it with incredulity; but Rothschild's news was confirmed in Downing Street from another source a few hours later—on the afternoon of 20 June. Major Henry Percy (1785–1825) [q. v.] reached London with Wellington's despatch next day. The story that Rothschild himself brought the news from Waterloo, and was in exclusive possession of the information for a sufficiently long period to enable him to operate largely before it was generally known, is mythical (Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. vi. 434, 448, 501, 4th ser. ii. 114, 283, 375, 7th ser. v. 486). After the peace of 1815 he, with his brothers, received a patent of nobility from the emperor of Austria, on the recommendation of Count Metternich; and on 29 Sept. 1822 the title of baron of the Austrian empire was conferred on each of the brothers. Nathan himself never assumed the title. In 1822, however, he became consul-general of Austria in England.
After the war the London house made rapid progress under Rothschild's astute guidance. The deaths in 1810 of both Sir Francis Baring [q. v.] and Abraham Goldsmid [q. v.] left him without any very formidable competitor in the London money-market. In 1818 he, with representatives of the London firms of Baring and Hope, was present at the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, when arrangements were made for the evacuation of France by the allied troops, before the French government had fully paid the war indemnity (Alison, Continuation of History, vol. i. chap. vi. § 61). In 1819 he undertook a loan of 12,000,000l. for the English government, and during the following years he, with his brothers, rendered similar assistance to France, Prussia, Russia, Austria, Brazil, Belgium, and Naples. Nathan Meyer contrived to make foreign loans popular in England by arranging for the payment of interest in London in sterling coin, thus avoiding all fluctuations in exchange, and by making private advances when the debtors were temporarily unable to remit payment. Most of his loans proved eminently successful, and in the less fortunate transactions the losses were very widely distributed. The greatest actual loss incurred by Rothschild was probably that in connection with the scheme of Nicholas Vansittart (afterwards Lord Bexley) [q. v.], chancellor of the exchequer in Lord Liverpool's administration, for the funding of exchequer bills in a new 3½ per cent. stock; Rothschild was reported to have lost half a million by his efforts to float the scheme. During the speculative fever and commercial panic in
