had been strengthened by the hattisherif of 1802; while the treaties of 1812, 1826 and 1829 had respectively yielded up Bessarabia, the Sulina mouth of the Danube and the St George mouth to the tsar. From 1834 to 1848 the Russian consul at Bucharest was all-powerful.
The revolutionary movement of 1848 extended from the Rumans of Hungary and Transylvania to their kinsmen of the Movement of 1848. Transalpine regions. Here its real object was the overthrow of Russian influence. In Moldavia the agitation was mostly confined to the boiars, and the hospodar Michael Sturdza succeeded in arresting the ringleaders. In Walachia, however, the outbreak took a more violent form. The people assembled at Bucharest, and demanded a constitution. Prince Bibescu, after setting his signature to the constitution submitted to him, fled to Transylvania, and a provisional government was formed. The Turks, however, urged thereto by Russian diplomacy, crossed the Danube, and a joint Russo-Turkish dictatorship restored the Organic Law. By the Balta-Liman convention of 1849 the two governments agreed to the appointment of Barbǔ Stirbeiǔ (Stirbey) as prince of Walachia, and Gregory Ghica for Moldavia.
On the entry of the Russian troops into the principalities in 1853, the hospodars fled to Vienna, leaving the government in Russian and Austrian occupation, 1853-54. the hands of their ministers. During the Danubian campaign that now ensued great suffering was inflicted on the inhabitants, but in 1854 the cabinet of Vienna induced the Russians to withdraw. Austrian troops occupied the principalities, and the hospodars returned to their posts. One important consequence of the revolution had been the banishment of many rising politicians to western Europe, where they were brought into contact with a higher type of civilization. The practice initiated by the more liberal Phanariotes of sending Rumanian students to the French, German and Italian universities tended in the same direction. Statesmen such as I. C. Bratianu, D. A. Sturdza, S. I. Ghica, D. Ghica and Lascar Catargiu (whose biographies are given under separate headings) received their political training abroad, and returned to educate their countrymen. To this fact the surprisingly rapid progress of Rumania, as compared with the Balkan States, may very largely be attributed.
By the treaty of Paris in 1856 the principalities with their existing privileges were placed under the collective guarantee Treaty of Paris, 1856. of the contracting Powers, while remaining under the suzerainty of the Porte—the Porte on its part engaging to respect the complete independence of their internal administration. A strip of southern Bessarabia was restored to Moldavia, so as to push back the Russian frontier from the Danube mouth. The existing laws and statutes of both principalities were to be revised by a European Commission, sitting at Bucharest, and their work was to be assisted by a Divan or national council which the Porte was to convoke for the purpose in each of the two provinces, and in which all classes of Walachian and Moldavian society were to be represented. The European commission, in arriving at its conclusions, was to take into consideration the opinion expressed by the representative councils; the Powers were to come to terms with the Porte as to the recommendations of the commission; and the final result was to be embodied in a hattisherif of the sultan, which was to lay down the definitive organization of the two principalities. In 1857 the commission arrived, and the representative councils of the two peoples were convoked. On their meeting in September Union of the principalities. they at once proceeded to vote with unanimity the union of the two principalities into a single state under the name of Romania (Rumania), to be governed by a foreign prince elected from one of the reigning dynasties of Europe, and having a single representative assembly. The Powers decided to undo the work of national union. By the convention concluded by the European congress at Paris in 1858, it was decided that the principalities should continue as heretofore to be governed each by its own prince. Walachia and Moldavia were to have separate assemblies, but a central commission was to be established at Fokshani for the preparation of laws of common interest, which were afterwards to be submitted to the respective assemblies. In accordance with this convention the deputies of Moldavia and Walachia met in separate assemblies at Bucharest and Jassy, but the choice of both fell unanimously on Prince Alexander John Cuza (January 1859). (A. J. E.; X.)
(5) Rumania.—Thus the union of the Rumanian nation was accomplished. A new conference met in Paris to discuss Prince Cuza, 1859-66. the situation, and in 1861 the election of Prince Cuza was ratified by the Powers and the Porte. The two assemblies and the central commission were preserved till 1862, when a single assembly met at Bucharest and a single ministry was formed for the two countries. The central commission was at the same time abolished, and a council of state charged with preparing bills substituted for it. In May 1864, owing to difficulties between the government and the general assembly, the assembly was dissolved, and a statute was submitted to universal suffrage giving greater authority to the prince, and creating two chambers (of senators and of deputies). The franchise was now extended to all citizens, a cumulative voting power being reserved, however, for property, and the peasantry were emancipated from forced labour. Up to this point the prince had ruled wisely; he had founded the universities of Bucharest and Jassy; his reforms had swept away the last vestiges of feudalism and created a class of peasant freeholders. But the closing years of his reign were marked by an attempt to concentrate all power in his own hands. He strove to realize his democratic ideals by despotic methods. His very reforms alienated the goodwill of all classes; of the nobles, by the abolition of forced labour; of the clergy, by the confiscation of monastic estates; of the masses, by the introduction of a tobacco monopoly and the inevitable collapse of the inflated hopes to which his agrarian reforms had given rise. His own dissolute conduct increased his unpopularity, and at last the leading statesmen in both provinces, who had long believed that the national welfare demanded the election of a foreign prince, conspired to dethrone him. In February 1866 he was compelled to abdicate; and a council of regency was formed under the presidency of Prince Ion Ghica. The count of Flanders, brother to the king of the Belgians, was proclaimed hospodar of the united provinces, but declined the proffered honour.
Meanwhile a conference of the Powers assembled at Paris and decided by a majority of four to three that the new hospodar Election of Prince Charles, 1866. should be a native of the country. The principalities, however, determined to elect Prince Charles, the second son of Prince Charles Antony of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. On a referendum, 685,969 electors voted in his favour, against 224 dissentients. Prince Charles was an officer in the Prussian army, twenty-seven years of age, and was related to the French imperial family as well as to the royal house of Prussia: his nomination obtained not only the tacit consent and approval of his friend and kinsman King William of Prussia, but also the warm and more open support of Napoleon III. The king of Prussia, however, had agreed that the new hospodar should be a native of the principalities, and could not therefore openly approve of Prince Charles's election. Acting on the advice of Bismarck, the prince asked for a short leave of absence, resigned his commission in the Prussian army on crossing the frontier, and hastened down the Danube to Rumania, under a feigned name and with a false passport. On the 20th of May he landed at Turnu Severin, where he was enthusiastically welcomed. He reached Bucharest on the 22nd, and on the same day, in the presence of the provisional government, took the oaths to respect the laws of the country and to maintain its rights and the integrity of its territory. In October Prince Charles proceeded to Constantinople and was cordially received by his suzerain, the sultan, who bestowed on him the firman of investiture, admitted the principle of hereditary succession in his family, and allowed him the right of maintaining an army of 30,000
