At the time of his death, nathan rotschild was by far and away the richest man in the world. His fortune, if you use an inflation calculator, was something like ten to 15 billion dollars. When Nathan dies, James becomes the new de facto head of the rothchild family. He takes the family business in a slightly different direction and invests heavily in railroads. The french roschilds are invested heavily in railroad lines,. There's a huge financial collapse throughout europe, but guess who is basically unscathed by all this? And so the british rosschilds come to the rescue of the other banks.