The financiers of the landing in England
William of Orange was, then, poor; or rather, perennially in debt and in search of money for his wars. One needs, therefore, to know who his financiers were, beginning with those with whom dealings were overt.
The political and military activities of William of Orange, including the invasion of England, were sustained by three principal sources of finance: the Jewish bankers, the Admiralty of the city of Amsterdam, and a number of patrician families.
The Jewish bankers occupied a prominent place in the financial life of Amsterdam and all of Holland. Among them, the Baron Lopes Suasso stood out; besides acting as diplomatic intermediary between Madrid, Brussels and Amsterdam, he generously financed William. According to contemporaries, he advanced him 2 million Dutch florins without any guarantee, referring to the loan with the famous phrase: "If you are fortunate, you will return it to me; if you are unfortunate, I am willing to lose it." Other financial help for William came from the
Provediteurs-General
(as he himself called them) Antonio Alvarez Machado and Jacob Pereira, two Sephardi Jewish bankers (cf. Swetschinski, D. and Schoenduve, N.,
Defamilie Lopes Suasso, financiers van Willem
III,
Zwolle 1988).
No less important for William was the support of the Admiralty of Amsterdam, which, according to the historian Jonathan Israel, supplied about sixty per cent of the warships and crews that disembarked in England. According to contemporary estimates, these numbered about 1800 men who, when the landing was imminent, worked watches day and night.
Finally, William obtained contributions from several Dutch families, although this was beset with a thousand difficulties. Obsessed by the dangers of arming a prince, Israel observed, the patricians of Amsterdam arranged matters in such a way that the funds which they advanced were not officially destined for the English expedition, as though that was entirely William's business and not that of Amsterdam and all the United Provinces. William therefore had in the end to stand with a burning fuse in his hand: the responsibility was his and the debts were his. To achieve this window-dressing, the money was advanced under a fictitious heading, so that nothing should appear in the public accounts. Part of the finance was, for instance, secretly drawn from the 4 million florins which the United Provinces had collected in July before the expedition to improve their system of fortifications. All this is explained by the fact that in the end William's personal property stood surety with his creditors, in other words, the Principality of Orange. On the other hand, William was to become King of England, which was supposed to enable him to resolve all his problems of indebtedness (Israel, J., "The Amsterdam Stock Exchange and the English Revolution of 1688" in
Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis
103 (1990), pp. 412-440).
The Bartolotti
Next, come the hidden financiers: the Odescalchi. The Pope's family may perhaps not have directly financed William's landing in England, but it is certain that they had for a long time channelled money to the House of Orange via highly tortuous and secret routes. The most interesting of the channels in question was that of the Bartolotti, the family of which Cloridia speaks to the apprentice in their first conversation. This family came from Bologna, but soon their blood was completely mixed with that of the van den Heuvel family, which continued to bear the Italian name solely for hereditary reasons.
Well integrated into the Dutch aristocracy, some of the Bartolotti-van den Heuvel family obtained high office: they became commanders of the Amsterdam infantry, regents of the city or Calvinist pastors. Ties with the ruling class were at last crowned by the marriage of the daughter of Costanza Bartolotti with Constantin Huygens, Secretary to William III of Orange (Elias, J.E.,
De vroedschap van Amsterdam,
Amsterdam 1963,1, 388-389).
It was, however, possible to ascend the social ladder only by accomplishing a corresponding ascent in regard to wealth; and, in the space of a few decades, the Bartolotti had become among the most powerful bankers, in a position to serve the great, including the House of Orange. Guillelmo Bartolotti, for instance, was among the organizers of a loan of 2 million florins at 4 per cent to Frederick Henry of Orange, William's grandfather. And it was with Guillelmo that William's grandmother, Amalia of Solms, had pawned her family jewels.
The son of Guillelmo Bartolotti, who took his father's name, lent money with interest and did business with a partner called Frederik Rihel (both figure among the debtors in the ledgers of Carlo Odescalchi, Archivio di Stato di Roma,
Fondo Odescalchi
, Libri mastri, XXIII A2 p. 152). From his father, Guillelmo Bartolotti the younger inherited not only money and real estate but also letters of credit. And, when his mother, too, died in December 1665, Guillelmo Bartolotti the younger became a creditor of William III of Orange, who was then just fifteen years old. The Prince of Orange in fact owed the Bartolotti 200,000 florins, to be reimbursed on the basis of two bonds. The first, of 150,000 florins was guaranteed by a mortgage "on the domain of the city of Veere and its polders". The remaining sum was guaranteed by a mortgage on "certain estates in Germany", where the Orange family did in fact have some possessions (Elias,
op. cit.,
I, p. 390).
As we have seen, in two of the three above-board channels used by the Prince of Orange and identified by historians (i.e. the Admiralty in Amsterdam, noble Dutch families and Jewish bankers) the money of the Odescalchi was circulating. Loans from the family of Innocent XI had ended up in the hands of the Admiralty (in the person of Jean Neufville, who was made an admiral by William of Orange himself) and of numerous families of the Dutch economic and financial aristocracy: the Deutz, Hochepied and the Bartolotti, all of whom are mentioned in Carlo Odescalchi's ledgers.
Two channels out of three, then, were supplied by the family of the Blessed Innocent. In their support of the House of Orange, the Odescalchi had only one rival: the Jewish bankers. It may be a coincidence, but among the many strict measures introduced by Innocent XI during his pontificate, one specifically affected the world of finance. The Blessed Innocent banned Jews, on pain of severe penalties, from exercising banking activities, the very field in which the Odescalchi family excelled. This grave measure, which marked the end of a long period of tolerance by the popes, brought about the economic downfall of Rome's Jewish community who, until the nineteenth century, were forced to stand impotently by while their debts piled up and their takings collapsed. At the same time, Pope Innocent gave strong backing to the charitable institution known as Monte di Pieta, which—while in itself a worthy and socially beneficial initiative—took even more resources and customers away from the Jewish bankers.
This ban on the lending of money with interest was introduced by Innocent XI in 1682. In the same year, the Jewish banker Antonio Lopes Suasso had granted William of Orange a loan of 200,000 guilders. A coincidence?
The secret of the ledgers
Deciphering Carlo Odescalchi's ledgers proved a time-consuming task. The keeping of account books was made compulsory by the Venetian authorities in the sixteenth century in order to guarantee and protect commerce. No sooner had the measure been introduced, however, than it was cleverly circumvented by merchants, who transformed their books into dense and incomprehensible lists of figures and names, drawn up by trusted accountants under the direct supervision of their principal and only decipherable by the latter. Carlo Odescalchi did even more: he compiled his ledgers personally in an almost illegible hand. Family account books, like those of Carlo Odescalchi, were the receptacles of even more recondite secrets and of the most delicate private matters. They were kept under lock and key in inaccessible hiding places and often destroyed before they could fall into the hands of strangers (cf. for example: Alfieri, V,
La partita doppia applicata alle scritture delleanticheaziendemercantileveneziane,
Turin 1881).
The double entry system, a technique applied—however crudely—by Italian merchants, does not appear to have been employed in the accounts of the Odescalchi. Transactions are mixed without any strict chronology or charging-in account. Investments are shown, but the results of single operations remain unknown and, above all, the final overall result.
It would all have been far simpler had it been possible to consult the company's journals which describe the transactions, the amounts of which are entered in the ledgers; but the journals have unfortunately not been kept. The inventory of Carlo Odescalchi's estate could also have helped retrace any loans made to William of Orange, but there is no trace of the inventory either.
Carlo the diligent
The Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan (fondo Trotti n. 30 and 43) holds the diary, never located hitherto, which Carlo Odescalchi kept meticulously from 1662 until his death. Unfortunately, it tells us nothing about the family business; it contains methodical notes concerning health of the author, the meetings of the day, the weather. On 30th December, 1673, an anonymous hand described the dying man's last moments: the administering of Extreme Unction, the spiritual assistance provided by two fathers of the Society of Jesus, death faced with the fortitude "of a true
Cavagliere".
There follows a brief eulogy of his qualities: prudence, humility, justice. But, above all, "he was most diligent in noting all his business with his own hand, which was useful in ensuring that nothing should be lost after his death, and all inventories could be made of movable and fixed property, credits and external interests."
In praise of the deceased, the anonymous commentator spends more words on the precision with which he kept and recorded accounts and business documentation than on his moral virtues. The "
Cavagliere
" Carlo Odescalchi must have been a master archivist. How is it, then, that neither the inventory of his legacy nor the journals of his ledgers can be found?
Repayment of the loan
Was the Odescalchi's loan to William of Orange ever repaid? To answer that question, one must look into another no less extraordinary affair.
Innocent XI passed away in August 1689. A few months later, his death was followed by that in Rome of Christina of Sweden, the sovereign who, some thirty years previously, had converted from Protestantism to the Catholic religion and had moved to Rome, under the protection of the papacy.
Before dying, Christina made Cardinal Decio Azzolino her heir. The Cardinal who had, for long years, been her counsellor and intimate friend, was himself to die only a few months later, and the estate of Queen Christina passed into the hands of a relative, Pompeo Azzolino.
Pompeo, an obscure provincial gentleman (the Azzolino family came from Fermo, in the Marche, like Tiracorda and Dulcibeni) found himself the possessor of the gigantic legacy of Christina of Sweden: over two hundred works of art by Raphael, Titian, Tintoretto, Rubens, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Domenichino, Van Dyck, Andrea del Sarto, Bernini, Guido Reni, the Carracci, Giulio Romano, Parmigianino, Giorgione, Velazquez and Palma the Elder; tapestries inlaid with gold and silver thread designed by Raphael; hundreds of drawings by famous artists, an entire gallery of sculptures, busts, heads, vases and marble columns; more than six thousand medals and medallions; arms, musical instruments, valuable furniture; jewels stored in Holland, financial claims on the Swedish and French crowns, as well as claims on certain properties in Sweden; and lastly, Christina's extraordinary library, with thousands of printed books and manuscripts which contemporaries regarded as priceless.
When he inherited Christina's treasure, Pompeo refrained from jumping for joy. Christina's estate was also heavily burdened with debts, and, unless he could sell it as soon as possible, he risked ending up strangled by creditors. Very few have the means to acquire a patrimony of such dimensions; this meant perhaps entering into negotiations with some prince, provided he was not too indebted. But Pompeo was a
parvenu,
he did not know even where to begin, and Rome was full of adventurers ready to pull the wool over the eyes of this timid gentleman who had just arrived from the provinces.
Pompeo endeavoured to simplify matters, selling the estate undivided, but the operation proved difficult and risky. The creditors began to become nervous. Pompeo then decided hurriedly to dismantle the estate and to sell single collections and individual items. The tapestries and other precious furnishings (including a mirror designed by Bernini) soon went to the Ottoboni, the powerful family of the new Pontiff, Alexander VIII; the books enriched the Vatican Library.
Nevertheless, the complications only increased. Apart from debts, Christina's estate entailed a number of insidious legal disputes. Sweden laid claim to Christina's jewels held in Holland, as a banker's security, and had them seized by the Amsterdam magistrates.
A diplomatic incident with Sweden was the last thing that Pompeo wanted. He was advised to petition the person best placed to mediate with the Swedes and to influence matters in Holland: Prince William of Orange, who had now become King of England.
In March 1691, Pompeo Azzolino therefore addressed a petition to William, begging for his protection and help in the matter of the jewels. The response was, to say the least, unexpected: no sooner had he learned that the estate of Christina was for sale than he proposed to purchase all that remained of it, immediately requesting an inventory of the collections.