The very interesting picture on the back page of The Times of June 21, showing the recent UK re-enactment of the famous Battle of Waterloo, naturally could not highlight the many facets, non-military, or political, which revolve round that important historic event. One of these often features conspicuously when the issue of belligerence related to financing comes up for discussion in history circles.

The Spanish academic Miguel A. Lopez-Morell (Universidad De Murcia) insists in his books that the Spanish arm of the Rothschilds' financiers family had been financing Wellington even before Waterloo. He feels that the question of what real role was played by the Rothschilds' agents (including some who were also bankers in their own right) should arise in both a context of information/communication methodologies used, as well as in a specific modern regulatory context: For example, to what extent did the Rothschilds use "insider" information at the disposal of their agents for their own benefit?

The images of the younger Rothschilds scurrying about Europe in coaches with secret compartments stuffed with bullion, and making themselves available as financiers for whoever won, or lost, battles, are well narrated by various writers.

But Derek Wilson, in his seminal account of the power and wealth of that famous family, questions how much truth actually lies in those stories. However, he submits as fact that by the end of 1813 Nathan Rothschild was already discounting Wellington's bills in London, and he may well have been doing that even before. Ever since 1809 Wellington had been complaining of an acute shortage of cash to pay his troops (including no doubt his mercenaries) and, according to Wilson, Wellington had been obliged to borrow, at exorbitant rates, from Spanish and Maltese bankers. Angry despatches from the peninsula were the common stock of daily discussion in the commercial and political circles where Nathan Rothschild moved. He would therefore have known all about Wellington's bitter complaints, and probably shared the conviction (voiced in one of Wellington's despatches to Lord Liverpool) that Britain's only choice lay between fighting Napoleon in Spain and fighting him at home.

In short, therefore, there is much to suggest that the great Wellington wasn't exactly superbly supported from "back home", in terms at least of the financing needed for his military efforts. That German (or should we, so cunningly spread all over the place were all the Rothschilds, say European?), plus Sicilian and Maltese bankers, had in some way featured as financial providers to help the man in his military travails, is certainly a matter of interest to financial historians.