Salomon Mayer von Rothschild

The Rothschild banking dynasty, at its height of power and influence during the 1800s, is believed to have possessed by far the largest private fortune in the world as well as by far the largest fortune in modern world history.

The Emperor of Austria, Francis II, makes the five Rothschild brothers barons in 1823.

Nathan Mayer Rothschild in London chooses not to take up the title.

The family will become famous as bankers in the major countries of Europe.

Salomon Rothschild founds the Vienna branch of the family bank in 1825.

The Rhodes blood libel is made against the Jews of Rhodes in February 1840.

On February 17, 1840, a boy from a Greek Orthodox family in Rhodes goes for a walk and does not return.

The next day his mother reports the disappearance to the Ottoman authorities.

The island's governor, Yusuf Pasha, orders a search, but several days' efforts prove fruitless.

The European consuls press the governor to solve the case: the boy's family is Christian, though without foreign protection.

The Greek Christian population of Rhodes, meanwhile, has no doubts that the boy has been murdered by the Jews for ritual purposes.

The assurance of the local Christians having been impressed upon the Ottoman authorities, they begin searching the Jewish quarter, again in vain.

Several days later, two Greek women report having seen the boy walking towards the city of Rhodes accompanied by four Jews.

The women claim that one of the Jews was Eliakim Stamboli, who is arrested, questioned, and subjected to five hundred blows of the bastinado.

On February 23, he is interrogated again and tortured in the presence of many dignitaries, including the governor, the qadi (Muslim judge), the Greek archbishop, and European consuls.

Under severe torture, Stamboli confesses to the ritual murder charge and incriminates other Jews, opening the door to further arrests.

Some half dozen Jews are accused of the crime and tortured, and the chief rabbi is intensely questioned as to whether Jews practice ritual murder.

At the instigation of the Greek clergy and the European consuls, the governor Yusuf Pasha blockades the Jewish quarter on the eve of Purim and arrests Jacob Israel the chief rabbi.

The inhabitants can obtain neither food nor fresh water.

The Jews thwart a subversive attempt to smuggle a dead body into the Jewish quarter.

The Muslim authorities, on the whole, are not keen to pursue the ritual murder accusation against the Jews.

The Muslim official in charge of the blockade is found smuggling bread to the imprisoned residents; at the insistence of the British consul, he is bastinadoed and dismissed from service.

The qadi openly sympathizes with the Jews.

At the end of February, he initiates further hearings on the case, after which evidence is declared insufficient to convict the prisoners.

The governor, on the other hand, refuses to lift the blockade of the Jewish quarter, though he seems to waver somewhat.

Yusuf Pasha sends to Constantinople asking for instructions in early March. 

Only after the blockade has lasted for twelve days is the governor forced to lift it by a high treasury official who visits the island on a tour of inspection.

At this point, the Jews think that the affair is over.

The relief, however, is dashed in early March by news of the Damascus affair.

Reports that the Jews of Damascus have confessed to having murdered Father Thomas reinforces the belief of the Christian community in the ritual murder charge.

Eight Jews are arrested, including the chief rabbi and David Mizrahi, who are tortured by being suspended swinging from hooks in the ceiling in the presence of the European consuls.

Mizrahi loses consciousness after six hours, while the rabbi is kept there for two days until he suffers a hemorrhage.

Nevertheless, neither confess and they are released after a few days.

The other six Jews remain in prison in early April.

The European vice-consuls in Rhodes are united in believing the ritual murder charge.

They play the key role in the interrogation, with J. G. Wilkinson, the British consul, and E. Masse from Sweden being involved.

The consuls are also present during much of the torture.

Some Jewish inhabitants of Rhodes accuse the consuls of a conspiracy to exploit the case in order to eliminate Elias Kalimati, a local Jew, who represents the business interests of Joel Davis, a Jewish businessman from London.

Davis is rapidly increasing his share in the profitable sponge exports from the island, and he is a major business rival of the European consuls.

Elias Kalimati, however, is not among the persons held in the affair, calling that allegation into question.

In the first days of the blockade, someone manages to smuggle a letter out of the Jewish quarter to the Jewish leadership in Constantinople.

It is not until March 27 that the leaders of the Jewish community in the Ottoman capital forwards it to the Rothschild family, together with a similar call for help from the Jews of Damascus.

To these documents, the Jewish leaders attach their own statement in which they cast doubt on their ability to influence the sultan.

The intervention of the Rothschilds in the blood libel accusations bears the quickest fruit in Austria.

The head of the Rothschild family bank in Vienna, Salomon Mayer von Rothschild, plays the key role in raising financing for the Austrian Empire, and he has a very close relationship with the Austrian chancellor Klkemens von Metternich.

Metternich dispatches instruction regarding both the Damascus and Rhodes affairs on April 10 to Bartholomäus von Stürmer, ambassador in Constantinople, and Anton von Laurin, consul in Alexandria.

In his dispatch, Metternich writes: "The accusation that Christians are deliberately murdered for some blood-thirsty Passover festival is by its nature absurd…"

A delegation elected by the Board meets on April 30, with the foreign secretary Lord Palmerston, who calls the blood libel a "calumny" and promises that "the influence of the British government should be exerted to put a stop to [the] atrocities."

Lord Palmerston, in his dispatch of May 5, tells Lord Ponsonby, the British ambassador in Constantinople, to communicate the material on the Rhodes affair to the Ottoman government "officially and in writing" and to "request… an immediate and strict inquiry to be made… especially into the allegation that these atrocities were committed at the instigation of the Christians and the European consuls."

A consensus forms within the European diplomatic community in Constantinople that the persecution of the accused Jews has to be stopped.

This opinion is held not only by Lord Ponsonby, but also by von Stürmer, whose correspondence reveals that he is not at all convinced of the innocence of the Jews; by the French ambassador Edouard Pontois, whose government stands by the French consuls who support blood libels in Rhodes and Damascus; and by the Prussian ambassador Hans von Königsmark.

Consequently, the way is open for Lord Ponsonby, by far the most powerful diplomat in Constantinople, to intervene unopposed on behalf the Jews of Rhodes.

The Ottoman government, in response to Yusuf Pasha's request, had sent its instructions to Rhodes, where they arrived at the end of April.

The government has set up an official investigatory commission before which representatives of the Jewish and Greek communities are ordered to present their evidence.

In mid-May, the government sends orders to release the six remaining Jewish prisoners.

On May 21, they are ceremoniously called before the court (shura) and freed under the guarantees of the elders of the Jewish community.

The Christians respond  to these actions of the central government with a fresh wave of fury against the Jews so that in late May violence is in the air.

The Jews describe many cases in which they are assaulted or beaten by the Greeks, and the sons of the British and the Greek consuls are among those who beat up a number of Jews.

When the Jews complain to the governor, he orders the complainants subjected to four to five hundred blows of the bastinado.

The qadi disassociates himself from the actions of the governor, who declares that he has acted upon the demands of the consuls.

On top of that, the governor orders five other Jews arrested.

The Greek and Jewish delegations from Rhodes, each numbering five, had arrived at Constantinople on May 10, joined in the capital by the qadi, the French consul, and the Austrian vice-consul.

On May 26, the investigatory tribunal had held its first open session chaired by Rifaat Bey.

The qadi had argued that "the entire affair is the product of hatred; [and] was instigated by the English and Austrian consuls alone."

The consuls insist on the guilt of the Jews, and they present a concurring written testimony from their colleagues who had stayed on Rhodes.