RUMANIA 144 RUMFORD revenue and expenditure balanced at $124,624,000. The public debt on June 30, 1918, was about $1,025,000,000. Government. — A constituent Assembly elected in May and June, 1920, unified the different constitutions of old Rumania, Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transylvania. There is a legislature of two houses. The Senate consisted in 1920 of 170 members and the Chamber of Deputies of 347 mem- bers. All citizens of over 21 years of age paying taxes are electors. The exe- cutive is vested in a Council of Ministers. History. — The country that is now Ru- mania was anciently part of Dacia, which was conquered by Trajan and made a Roman province in A. D. 106, a great many Roman colonists being then settled in it. In the 3d century it was overrun by the Goths, and subsequently by the Huns, Bulgars, Avars, and Slavs, _ all of whom have left more or less distinct traces on the land and people. At the beginning of the 9th century Rumania formed part of the great Bulgarian king- dom, after the fall of which in 1019 it nominally belonged to the Eastern Roman empire, though soon taken possession of by Turkish tribes. Wallachia and Mol- davia were long divided. About 1241 Radu Negru, "Duke" of Fogeras, is said to have founded a voivodeship in Wal- lachia, which finally fell under Turkish supremacy after the battle of Mohacs in 1526. The boiars retained the nominal right of electing the voivodes till 1726; but thenceforward the Sultan openly sold the office to the highest bidders, who, with- out security of tenure, mercilessly plun- dered the unfortunate province so long as their power lasted. In Moldavia, Dra- gosh or Bogdan, about 1354, founded a kingdom, much as Radu had done in Wallachia, and it, too, fell under the over- lordship of the Porte after the death of the voivode, Stephan the Great, in 1504. The Turks subsequently introduced the same custom of selling the hospodarship or voivodeship. In both provinces the gov- ernment was most frequently purchased by Phanariotes, Greek inhabitants of the Phanar district of Constantinople. The successive wars between Russia and Tur- key, the first of which began in 1768, were on the whole beneficial to Rumania, for the Russians gradually established a kind of protectorate over their fellow- Christians on the Danube. The treaty of Paris in 1856, after the Crimean War, confirmed the suzerainty of the Porte, but preserved the rights and privileges of the Danubian principalities, and added to them a part of Bessarabia. In 1858 the two provinces, each electing John Couza as its hospodar, were united by a personal union which in 1861 was for- mally converted into a real and national union. Couza, who assumed the title of Prince Alexander John I. in 1860, was forced by a revolution to abdicate the throne in 1866, and Prince Charles of Hohenzollern - Sigmaringen was elected to reign in his place. In the Russo- Turkish War of 1877-1878 Rumania sided with Russia and proclaimed its indepen- dence of Turkey. This claim was recog- nized by the treaty of Berlin in 1878, but Rumania was compelled to retrocede to Russia the part of Bessarabia which it acquired at the close of the Crimean War, and to receive the Dobrudja in ex- change. In 1881 the principality declared itself a kingdom. When the Balkan War (q. v.) broke out in 1912, Rumania was at first neutral, but joined with Serbia and Greece in the second Balkan War against Bulgaria and as a result was awarded a part of the Dobrudja. King Charles died in 1914 and was succeeded to the throne by Crown Prince Ferdinand. Rumania was neutral in the World War until 1916 when she joined the Allies. At first success rewarded her arms, but ow- ing largely to the failure of Russia to render promised help, her resistance crumbled under the swift invasion of powerful German armies. By the Peace Treaty of May, 1918, Bulgaria received that part of the Dobrudja awarded to Rumania in 1913, Germany obtained con- cessions in petroleum, salt, etc., and Aus- tria obtained mountain-passes, and min- eral rights. (By the Peace of Versailles in 1919, all these concessions forced from Rumania were abolished.) In 1918 Bes- sarabia, after being ravaged by the Bol- sheviki, voted almost unanimously on April 9, 1918, for union with Rumania. RUMELIA, EAST. See BULGARIA. RUMEX, dock; a genus of Polygoneas; sepals six, the three inner ones enlarging; petals none; stamens six, styles three, stigma multified; achene triquetrous, cov- ered by the enlarged inner sepals, the lat- ter often tuberculate. There are about 50 known species; generally distributed. RTJMFORD, BENJAMIN THOMP- SON, COUNT, an American scientist; born in Woburn, Mass., March 26, 1753. Being a Tory in sympathy, he lived in London during the American Revolution. After serving England for a time, he entered the service of the Elector of Ba- varia, rose to the position of Minister of War, and was finally created a count of the Holy Roman Empire. He took the title Rumford from the village of that name (now Concord, N. H.), where he had married. He spent the last years of his life at Auteuil, busily engaged in scientific researches — particularly on the nature and effects of heat, studies with
