24 hours, as written in a 30-centime pamphlet

The source of the story that Nathan Rothschild made his fortune by being the first to know the result of the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815, is an anti-Semitic pamphlet sold for 30 centimes in Paris in 1846. When we line up the arrival of the official dispatch (night of June 21), the letter from Ghent (also on the 21st), the 'Mr. C of Dover' who first brought the news (morning of the 21st), and the market price table for June, neither 'a day early' nor 'twenty million in one stroke' can be found anywhere in the historical sources. The rumor was copied into a biography in 1887, dictionaries in 1897 and 1911, a propaganda film in 1940, and is still in circulation today.

The original question In June 1815, who knew first, and who gained what? And in 1846, who wrote it and for what purpose?

On Sunday, June 18, 1815, south of Brussels, the armies of Wellington and Blücher defeated Napoleon. London officially learned of it three days later. Major Percy carried the dispatch written by the Duke, dated "Waterloo, June 19," arriving at Downing Street on the night of Wednesday, June 21. The full text was published the next day, Thursday the 22nd, in the 'London Gazette Extraordinary' No. 17028. Who knew what during those three days, and how did the market move? And how was the story of those three days retold 31 years later? The case is composed of these two layers.

The market prices for June are recorded in a month-end table in 'The Gentleman's Magazine'. The 3% Consols had no price as the books were closed from June 3, so the 3% Reduced Annuities serve as a benchmark. The price, which was 58¼ on June 1, fell to 53⅞ on the 15th when Napoleon made his move, and to 53¾ on the 16th. The day after the battle, the 19th, it was 54⅛, and 54⅝ on the 20th. On Wednesday the 21st it was 55½, Thursday the 22nd 56½, the 23rd 57½, and by the 27th it had recovered to 59⅛. In the same table, Omnium, the scrip for a government loan issued that month, is recorded at a premium of 9½ on the 23rd, 12½ on the 26th, and 13 on the 27th and 28th.

The first person to bring the news to London was a man identified in that week's newspapers only as "Mr. C of Dover." On Monday, June 19, Mr. C was present in Ghent, where the exiled Louis XVIII was staying, when a letter announcing the victory arrived. He hurried to London via Ostend, arriving on the night between Tuesday and Wednesday. By Wednesday morning, he was speaking of it openly in the City, and there were printed reports by noon. An essay from the family's archive states that, based on contemporary records, the honour of "the first to know" belongs to Mr. C. There are no historical sources linking Mr. C and Nathan Rothschild, other than table talk privately recounted by Wellington in the 1820s and 1830s, and early versions of that story do not mention Rothschild's name.

What Nathan received was a letter, not a messenger. A London dispatch in the 'Caledonian Mercury' of June 24 reads as follows, written on Wednesday night: "Good news—from a certain source—Lord Wellington, joined by 20,000 Prussians under Bülow on the 18th, completely defeated Bonaparte... Omnium has risen to 6. This I heard from a person who saw a letter from Ghent received by Rosschild." A letter dated June 20, 1815, preserved in the archives, shows that the employee Roworth, who was thought to be the messenger, was in London on Monday the 19th, eliminating the possibility that he was in Ghent. The time the letter arrived is unknown, but the essay interprets it as Wednesday afternoon, after the evening paper's deadline but before the exchange closed.

The official news arrived with Major Percy at around 11 o'clock that night. The market rose the next morning, with the 3% Reduced Annuities at 56½ on Thursday and 57½ on Friday. The market column of the 'Morning Chronicle', cited in the essay regarding Omnium, reports an opening price of 4¾ premium on Wednesday, reaching nearly 6 during the day, and closing at 4¾. Although it retreated from the day's high, the opening price for that day was the highest to date, and there is no movement in the price tables that could be called a crash.

31 years later, in 1846, a 30-centime pamphlet was sold in Paris: 'The Instructive and Curious History of Rothschild I, King of the Jews'. The author called himself 'Satan'. On June 15 of the same year, the Northern Railway, led by the Rothschild family, was inaugurated. On July 8, a train fell into a swamp at Fampoux, and the author's eyewitness account states that by the 10th, 39 bodies had been recovered. In its 1815 chapter, the pamphlet tells how Nathan watched Waterloo in Belgium, arranged for relay horses to Ostend, crossed the stormy Channel in a small boat by the power of gold, and 'arrived in London 24 hours before the news, gaining twenty million in one stroke', and concluded in the chapter on the railway accident, 'He who speculated on the corpses of Waterloo can also speculate on the corpses of the victims of the Northern Railway'.

The money moving through Nathan Rothschild's firm in 1815 was for government contracts, not stock speculation. In a letter dated 11 January 1814, illustrated by the Archive, Chancellor of the Exchequer Vansittart instructs Herries to appoint Nathan as a government agent. The Archive's biography page states that by 1814, Nathan was in a position to fulfil contracts to purchase and transport gold coin for Wellington's army on the continent, and that after the victory at Waterloo, he secured further contracts to handle British subsidy payments to its allies. In a report by Herries, cited by Balla in 1913, the House paid out nearly £18 million on the continent from the spring of 1814, and its profits were earned "honestly and openly".

What moved on the market in June were Omnium and 3% Reduced Annuities. Omnium was the scrip for a government loan raised that month, which subscribers, having bought at par, could sell on the market. The Archive's article cites a postscript from a letter written by Roworth from Paris on 27 July: "I hear from Commissary White that you did very well by the early information of the victory at Waterloo," and concludes that Nathan bought Omnium on Wednesday afternoon. The article calculates that buying at around 5 and selling at over 8 the next day would have been worthy of "doing well" for an overnight profit. At the same time, the article notes that while the original subscribers who bought at par could hold as much as they liked, Nathan, who entered the market late, had no way of competing. One of the subscribers was Ricardo.

The story that he "crashed the market and then bought" does not match the sequence of prices. The 3% Reduced Annuities rose on both Wednesday and Thursday: 54⅝ on the 20th, 55½ on the 21st, and 56½ on the 22nd. Omnium did not fall below its opening price on Wednesday. The article points out that there is no mention of huge profits in Nathan's correspondence with his brothers, in newspapers during his lifetime, or in his obituaries. It also notes that a few weeks after the victory, the government offered Nathan a knighthood, which he declined, suggesting that the government did not consider his actions dishonourable. A letter survives from James to his brother, dated 24 August 1815, in which he writes that he cannot believe Nathan refused the knighthood.

Let's count the range of market movements. The 3% Reduced Annuities fell 4½ points from 58¼ on 1 June to 53¾ on the 16th, then recovered 5¼ points to 59 by the 28th. Omnium rose 3½ points from a 9½ premium on the 23rd to 13 on the 27th. The phrase "twenty million in one fell swoop" does not specify a currency unit, and nowhere in these tables is there a movement of that order of magnitude.

"He knew a day earlier than the official news and made twenty million in one stroke." The source is page 12 of the 1846 pamphlet. The official dispatch arrived on the night of the 21st, Nathan's letter during the day of the same 21st, and Mr. C's story was being openly told in the City from the morning of the 21st. The "24 hours earlier" could apply to Mr. C, but he shared the information freely. The unit for the twenty million is not written in the pamphlet, and there is no market movement of that magnitude in the price tables.

"He crossed the stormy channel for a large sum of money." The storm and the small boat appear in an 1846 pamphlet, and the price paid to the fisherman varies by edition: Reeves (1887) states it was 2,000 francs after being refused at 500, 600, and 800 francs, while Balla (1913) gives it as 2,000 francs after 500, 800, and 1,000 francs. "Nathan watched the battlefield from a high place" is also found in Reeves and Balla, and the 11th edition of the *Britannica* wrote that "he is said to have been at the battlefield." The essay notes that the key figures of Waterloo are well known, and anyone familiar with the battle knew that Nathan was not there.

“‘He spread rumors of a defeat to crash the market, then bought up everything at the bottom to make a million pounds.’ The outline of this stratagem—Nathan standing pale by a pillar of the Exchange, an agent selling openly, and another agent buying secretly—is described in the same form by Reeves in 1887 and Balla in 1913. The study writes that this element appears in Balla (1913) as a later addition, but it is already present in Reeves (1887). The market tables show prices rising on both Wednesday and Thursday; there was no crash.”

“‘The messenger Roworth rushed from the battlefield.’ In a letter dated June 20, 1815, Roworth was in London on Monday the 19th. A dictionary from 1897 writes, with reservations, that ‘he seems to have been waiting for the result in Ostend,’ and the time of early morning on June 20 does not match the letter in the archives. The dictionary itself describes the story of Nathan carrying the news himself and trading exclusively as a ‘fabrication’.”

“‘A network of carrier pigeons and fast ships.’ There was no systematic use of carrier pigeons in Britain in 1815, and the archives have no records of pigeons or the facilities to support them from that period. Nevertheless, Reeves wrote that ‘he spent a vast sum on pigeons,’ the *Dictionary of National Biography* notes that he ‘long maintained’ a pigeon organization, and *Britannica* wrote of ‘carrier pigeons and his own fast ships.’ The account in Gallatin's diary, dated June 18, 1815, which states ‘couriers were placed from Brussels to Ostend, where a fast boat was waiting,’ has been shown to be a late 19th-century forgery.”

“‘The family made its fortune at Waterloo.’ A 1846 pamphlet wrote, ‘Their speculation and their kingship of the Exchange begin with 1815 and Waterloo,’ a sentence that became the title of the 1940 propaganda film *Die Rothschilds: Aktien auf Waterloo*. The study writes that the aim of Satan and this film was to cast Nathan in the image of Shylock or Fagin, and after acknowledging that some historians have repeated it without anti-Semitic intent, concludes that it is time to relegate this legend to the footnotes due to its origins and lack of evidence. Longford in 1972 and Ferguson in 1998 also repeated the ‘knew first’ claim.”

Rumors have a year and medium of creation. After a railway accident in July 1846, the author of a pamphlet superimposed the trope of ‘speculating on dead bodies’ onto the existing story of ‘profits in 1815,’ and a satirical document juxtaposed the three terms: ‘1815 — Waterloo — Fampoux.’ If the origin can be stated by year and medium, a rumor becomes a historical source.

What remains from this incident today is not the prices, but the way the timing of information is counted. Who knew what, when, and by what means? Arranging the timeline from the perspective of the sources, the sequence is: Ghent on Monday, London on Tuesday night, the City on Wednesday morning, a letter on Wednesday afternoon, the official bulletin on Wednesday night, and the official gazette on Thursday. The subject of who was ‘one day early’ changes. As for the market, it rose on Wednesday as it awaited news, and rose further on Thursday after receiving confirmation.

In terms of mechanism, a clue is how public debt is created. The omnium of June 1815 involved underwriters taking on government-issued debt at par value, and the scrip then acquired a market value. What could be gained from the same news differed for those who underwrote at par and those who bought on the market. In modern finance courses, the mechanism of bidding and underwriting is covered under the topic "How are government bonds created?"

The Panic of 1907 in New York can be compared in that a narrative formed around a single banker who "moved" the market, while records show a different role. The former involved weeks of bank runs; the latter, the arrival times of a single dispatch and one letter. The financial mechanisms are not comparable.

It cannot be compared with Madoff's fraud. The nature of the deception is different between the perpetrator who created false records and a rumor created by a third party 31 years later. Nor can it be compared with the 2007-09 Global Financial Crisis. A rumor-based incident and a funding crisis are on different levels; this case involves neither credit nor collateral.