In the spacious guest room in the first floor lobby, 38-year-old Nathan Rothschild sat quietly on the sofa stool. He held his knees with his hands, frowned slightly, and his eyelids lowered, making him seem motionless. In the aisle outside, the sound of footsteps and all kinds of noises had nothing to do with him.

Taking time every day to think about problems quietly without interference is a personal habit that Nathan has developed for a long time. As the third son of old Rothschild, Nathan is also the most courageous of the five brothers. In 1798, he was sent by his father from Frankfurt to England to explore the banking business of the Rothschild family. With his amazing financial talent and unpredictable methods, by 1810, while Nathan accumulated a large amount of wealth for the "Red Shield Family", he himself became a recognized successful person in the London banking industry.

From the outside, Nathan Rothschild is not tall, has a bald hair, and looks a little fat. But every time he talks to a stranger, he always smiles, speaks calmly, and likes additional gestures to indicate, making people think that he is a simple and easy-to-get ordinary businessman. Almost no one noticed that they could not find any faults from Nathan's conversation, but they were always within imaginable range.

In the eyes of his British colleagues, Nathan is a cunning, decisive and ambitious banker, because no one has ever truly understood his inner world, and he doesn't know why he can always capture important business opportunities that ordinary people cannot detect in the unpredictable financial market. In the London financial world, no one denies Nathan's personal charm. He is wise and cunning, firm will and far-sighted.

In the eyes of the London cabinet, especially the military officials, Nathan was a loyal, reliable, capable and full of justice. He not only raised a large amount of gold for Commander Wellington of the British Expeditionary Force as military expenditure, but also made a public promise when Britain began to abolish slavery and borrowed 20 million pounds (equivalent to 400 million francs) from the Cabinet Government to compensate the losses of British slave owners.

The above praise made Nathan feel extremely happy, although his words and actions were still steady and humble. However, there was one bad thing that made the successful Jewish banker feel like he was stuck in his throat and unable to sleep or eat. That was, in the United Kingdom of Catalonia and Aragon, a wave of anti-Semitism seemed to be vaguely set off.

Prince Regent Andrew Desey was behind the incident, and the cause was the Mediterranean Commercial Bank share dispute caused by his younger brother James. Nathan originally thought that after the Rothschild family lost money and took the initiative to give in, Duke Hruna could voluntarily, maintain the existing tolerant religious policies in the country, and continue to cooperate with Jewish merchants in the field of financial and trade.

However, the development of things was beyond the expectations of Nathan Rothschild.

Some Jewish merchants who had openly and secretly held stakes in the Mediterranean Bank wrote to Nathan, saying that their shares were ordered to be forcibly acquired by the Regent. Although the price of the transaction was reasonable, Jewish merchants were gradually losing the economic voice of the emerging Mediterranean country.

Not only that, starting from July this year, all Jewish merchants in Catalonia-Aragorn have been required to re-register and report their commercial activities to the local military police regularly, and they must not be concealed. Violators will be severely punished or even deported.

In August, with the help of Barcelona's political Qing-Battle, some Jews who supported conservative aristocrats were arrested and many were deported. The most heavy loss was the Barcelona Shipping Insurance Company under the control of Jewish merchants, which was almost at the point of liquidation and bankruptcy.

In September, the official mouthpiece representing the Duke of Hruna and Manresa's government, the Mediterranean Monitor pointed the finger at the largest Jewish Freemason, the Rothschild family, and blatantly accused him of "they have huge wealth, they boast that they can decide war and peace, and that the credibility of the country is under their control; they have countless correspondents, whose messengers are more than monarchs and princes; government ministers are also favored by them. They are already, or are preparing to become the supreme rulers of Frankfurt, London, Paris, Vienna, and Naples, wanting to control the continent through this invisible hand of the financial market."

Although there have been no large-scale violence in Catalonia and Aragon, the suppression of Jewish merchants has been common. At first, members of the Rothschild family, including Nathan, were full of anger at Duke Hruna's actions of rebelling against each other, so they placed their hopes on the British-Portugal coalition forces and demanded a strong lesson in the arrogant French nobles.

But what everyone unexpected was that the Desay Division captured Evora from Badajos Fortress and forced arriving in Lisbon. Tens of thousands of coalition forces were either killed in battle or captured, and few escaped. For a time, rumors that the British Expeditionary Force was about to be encircled and annihilated by the French army spread around the London financial market, which caused Nathan, who had mastered the huge British government debt volume, suffered heavy losses.

However, when British Foreign Secretary Richard Wellesley proposed to the Jewish banker that he needed to spend £300,000 to buy Andrew Desay, Nathan did not hesitate to take out the family gold reserves under his control as diplomatic support.

At the same time, another bad news came from the Freemason, in conjunction with the actions of the Duke of Hruna (Portugal Crown Prince) in Catalonia, the largest gathering place for Jews in Europe, some cities in the north-central and northern part of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw seemed to be beginning to promote and instigate anti-Semitism. The local banks controlled by Jewish merchants were the first to be affected. A few days ago, Nathan received a secret letter from his father, Rothschild, asking him to set off for Lisbon immediately, and make peace with Desai with sincerity, persuade and stop the anti-Semitic incidents in the two emerging countries of the Mediterranean and the Baltic.

At this time, Nathan was already regretful and deeply blamed himself. At that time, if he had not tried his best to incite his elderly father to let go, and James, who was only 18 years old, went to Paris to start a career, would not have caused trouble today. In the final analysis, it was the young, energetic and careless brother who took the initiative to get involved in the dictatorship that he should not have messed with, and completely exposed the Rothschild family's ambition to control the entire European financial market in advance to Andrew Desay, thus triggering a series of strong backlash from those in power.

After self-reflection and review, Nathan must seriously think about how to make up for this mistake. The savvy Jewish banker studied the economic development policies of the Catalonian-Aragorn Kingdom in detail. Soon, he found two important bargaining chips that could convince Andrew Desay to stop all anti-Semitism and then accept the transaction in full:

One is the national construction bond volume; the other is the industrial raw material cotton.

Nathan learned from the Rothschild family that despite the over two years of war, Duke Hruna has been fighting in Spain and Portugal, and has also obtained hundreds of millions of riyals in war from Paris and London, and can only barely fill the government's fiscal deficit since 1809. It is expected that by the beginning of the new year of 1811, the Minister of Finance of the Manresa Cabinet, who upholds the wishes of Duke Hruna, will issue up to 1 billion riyals, equivalent to 10 million pounds of national construction debt.

According to Nathan's research and analysis, these construction bonds used in the textile industry, steel smelting, machinery manufacturing, road traffic and bridge erection can only digest about 30% of them at best among the millions of subjects of the Catalonian-Aragorn King, and the remaining majority, namely, 7 million pounds of construction funds, must be raised by overseas securities trading markets. Among them, the London securities trading market, which is located in the European financial center, needs to bear at least 5 million pounds of bonds.

Although Downing Street has agreed that the financial representatives of the Manresa cabinet will rush to the UK by the end of this year to start the bond collection business. In fact, in the entire City of London, both investors and bankers, they are generally not optimistic about the national bonds issued by the emerging Catalonia-Aragorn Kingdom, and the market forecast is very pessimistic.

There has even been a famous economic critic in the Times financial column, proclaiming publicly that the 5 million pound national bond rolls will fall below 80% of their face value on the day of listing; in a week, less than 50%; in two months, the construction bond rolls of this Mediterranean country will become waste paper coated with different numbers and various pigments.

At this time, the only manipulator who could successfully help Duke Hruna turn decay into magic in the London financial market was Nathan and the Rothschild family behind him.

In addition to the big problem of issuing national bonds, there is also a fatal flaw in the core industrial economy and textile industrial system of the Catalonia-Agra Kingdom, that is, there is no broad and stable source of high-quality cotton.

Faced with concerns and fears about the Great Famine, the Manresa Cabinet mandated that the land use of potatoes, cereals, and the development of animal husbandry must be much larger than the planting area of ​​economic crops such as cotton. This basic national policy led to textile factories in Barcelona having to purchase more than 30% of cotton from overseas markets as textile raw materials. By the second half of 1811, with the significant increase in the production capacity of each cotton yarn mill, the import volume of cotton will account for 70% to 80% of the total consumption of the country's textile industry.

Unlike the British Empire, which had vast overseas colonies such as India, America, Africa, etc., they could get sufficient cotton supply anytime and anywhere. Under the rule of Desai, this emerging Mediterranean country had no colonies and had a serious shortage of cotton planting. Once there was any disturbance in the international cotton market, the entire Barcelona textile industry would fall into the abyss of "cotton famine".

Similarly, the Rothschild family also solved the major problem of lack of textile raw materials for Duke Hruna.

In the past two years, the Rothschild family has bribed the Ottoman Turkish royal family and local nobles with the help of Jewish Freemasons living in Istanbul, and then successfully obtained the authority to purchase cotton in Egypt, Greece and other places. This (Egypt) long-length cotton produced in the eastern coast of the Mediterranean not only has high yields but also has good cotton quality, which is most suitable for large-scale mechanized textiles.

As long as the negotiations are about to begin, he will throw out these two irresistible chips at the right time: building bonds and Egyptian lint cotton, the Duke of Hruna, who is not worried about being arrogant and suspicious, will not accept the "peace proposal" of the Rothschild family.

When he thought of this, the sad face on Nathan's face swept away, and then a smile appeared, and everything seemed to be in a sure way.

Soon, someone knocked on the door of the reception room, and a lieutenant officer walked in and informed the Jewish banker who was getting up that Duke Hruna invited him to the second floor study to meet.
Chapter completed!