The Battle of Waterloo occurred on June 18th 1815. The battle ended with the defeat of Napoleon, which effectively ended his reign. He spent the last six years of his life in confinement by the British. Nathan Rothschild and his four brothers set up a network of shippers, agents and couriers to transport both gold and vital information across Europe.
The myth here is quite popular, you can find more on the myth itself it seems than on what actually happened. It's said that Rothchild's agents got the news of Napoleon's defeat before the newspapers. The London Gazette reported the defeat on June 22nd 1815.
This part of the story is true. Nathan did indeed receive the news before the media. Here's where fact dissolves into myth. Alex Jones is found of this one, it's featured in his conspiracy-fest film Endgame where he states it as fact. Supposedly once Nathan received the news he "took up his usual position beside the famous 'Rothschild Pillar.'" and with some secretive gestures his agents began to dump consuls onto the British stock market. The following paragraph is sourced here.
"Nathan continued to lean against 'his' pillar, emotionless, expressionless. He continued to sell, and sell and sell. Consuls kept on falling. Word began to sweep through the Stock Exchange: "Rothschild knows." "Rothschild knows." "Wellington has lost at Waterloo."
The selling turned into a panic as people rushed to unload their 'worthless' consuls or paper money for gold and silver in the hope of retaining at least part of their wealth. Consuls continued their nosedive towards oblivion. After several hours of feverish trading the consul lay in ruins. It was selling for about five cents on the dollar.
Nathan Rothschild, emotionless as ever, still leaned against his pillar. He continued to give subtle signals. But these signals were different. They were so bubtly different that only the highly trained Rothschild agents could detect the change. On the cue from their boss, dozens of Rothschild agents made their way to the order desks around the Exchange and bought every consul in sight for just a 'song'!
A short time later the 'official' news arrived in the British capital. England was now the master of the European scene.
Within seconds the consul skyrocketed to above its original value. As the significance of the British victory began to sink into the public consciousness, the value of consuls rose even higher.
Napoleon had 'met his Waterloo.' Nathan had bought control of the British economy. Overnight, his already vast fortune was multiplied twenty times over"
This is basically the course of events that people believe, but did it actually happen? What do you think? According to an actual expert, (something CT's aren't fond of) Niall Ferguson, no. Later research by the Rothschild family themselves and others traced the myth to an anti-Semitic French pamphlet in 1846. It got popular and spread from there. Now what really happened?
Since Nathan now had a large pile of money that no one needed, for a war that was now over, there were no more soldiers wages and no more subsides to Britain's war time allies. Now the price of gold, which had skyrocketed during the war, was going to fall. This was a disaster for Rothschild. The family had been banking on a protracted military campaign, so the losses of this turn of events far offset what had been made during the war. It has been shown that the size of the market in government bonds at the time would not have enabled a scenario producing a profit of anything near £1 million. Ferguson, in his 2008 book, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, goes on to show, starting on page 84, how Nathan's huge stock market risk with great purchases of British government bonds, was how he was able to turn around the loss into such a gigantic wealth.
There's really not much more to say about this one.
