Page 103 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg

Alfred Rosenberg

state treasury somewhat, if one would permit the Jews entry but
took from them a good sum of money for it. But these measures
came to be expensive for the kingdom. For the Jewish representative
in Paris, Manasse de Vesou, a crafty diplomat, knew how to demand
unheard of privileges: the loan interests were raised up to 80%, the
pronouncement of a Jew alone sufficed to prove a claim of debt
against a Christian. The Jews were withdrawn from the jurisdiction
of all the judicial authorities of the land and subjected only to a
special government commissioner.
And it happened again as it had to. The people who had
recourse to Jewish money saw their debts soon rise inordinately
and many, bereft of all possessions, had to perform slave service to
the Jews. In their blindness and their insatiability the Jews did not
satisfy themselves now with the permitted 80% but crossed even
this limit. Complaints against this were struck down by the Jewish
money, the king himself found himself dependent, whereupon new
favours were wrung from him with regard to the trade at the annual
market.
Now, when an uprising broke out in Paris in 1 3 80 and many
Jews were driven out and killed, the others used the opportunity to
lament their poverty and to give out that they had lost all their pawns.
They also saw to it that their return would be cancelled. But,
regardless of this naturally faked poverty, they supported the king
with money, in his war as well as other duties, whereby they made
him still more obliged to them.
Finally they obtained from the inept Charles VII (1388) the
ultimate: the permission to take not only 80% but also compound
interest! And when a loud murmuring went through the people, the
king passed an edict according to which the Jews were protected
from all complaints for ten years.
Never had usury reached such a monstrous and legally
approved height in France, and it was naturally clear - which,
however, the greedy usurers could never in their blindness perceive
at the right time in the course of their entire history - that this
condition could not be sustained for a long time. A short period of
triumph was granted to the Jews in France, Burgundy, Provence

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