F ?? V ?(.. evld^ ? .. 'r" t ? ..0 t?itz"'. Girli ?e a ? l O 51ltstria.
Bibliography
- A list of the numerous statistical and other official publications issued at Bucharest in Rumanian or French is given yearly in Annual statistic al Romdniei. The final results of the census of 1899 were published by the ministry of agriculture in 1905, with introduction by Dr L. Colescu. See also G. J. Lahovari, Marele dictzonar geografic al Romdniei (vols. 1-5, Bucharest, 18 991902); A. de Gubernatis, La Roumanie et les Roumains (Florence, 1898); E. de Martonne, La Valachie, essai de monographie geographique; J. Samuelson, Rumania, Past and Present (London, 1882); G. Beuger, Rumania in 1900 (trans. from the German by A. H. Keane (London, 1901)); A. Bellessort, La Roumanie contemporaine (Paris, 1905) L. Colescu, Progres economiques.. realises sous la regne de Sa Majeste le Roi Carol I. (Bucharest, 1907); G. D. Creanga, Grundbesitzverteilung and Bauernfrage in Rumanien (Leipzig, 1907); C. Baicoianil, Histoire de la politique douaniere de la Roumanie de 1870 -1903 (2 vols., Bucharest, 1904). (X.) History (I) Introduction. - The earliest record of the lands which constitute the kingdom of Rumania begins with the period immediately preceding their conquest by the Romans. For information upon this period, and upon the subsequent centuries of Roman or Byzantine rule, see Dacia. From the 6th to the 12th century, wave after wave of barbarian conquerors, Goths, Tatars, Sla y s and others, passed over the country, and, according to one school of historians, almost obliterated its original Daco-Roman population; the modern Vlachs, on this theory, representing a later body of immigrants from Transdanubian territory. According to others, the ancient inhabitants were, at worst, only submerged for a time, and their direct descendants are the Rumans of to-day. Each of these conflicting views is supported by strong evidence; and the whole controversy, too large and too obscure for discussion here, is considered under the heading Vlachs.
Towards the close of the 13th century, Walachia and Moldavia were occupied by a mixed population, composed partly of Vlachs, but mainly of Sla y s and Tatars; in Great Walachia,1 also called Muntenia, the Petchenegs and Cumanians The predominated. Rumanian historians have striven, by Vlachs piecing together the stray fragments of evidence which survive, to prove that their Vlach ancestors had not, as sometimes alleged, been reduced to a scattered community of nomadic shepherds, dwelling among the Carpathians as the serfs of their more powerful neighbours. The researches of HaSdeu, Xenopol and other historians tend to show the existence of a highly organized Vlach society in Transylvania, Oltland and certain districts of Hungary and Moldavia; of a settled commonalty, agricultural rather than pastoral; and of a hereditary feudal nobility, bound to pay tribute and render military service to the Hungarian crown, but enjoying many privileges, which were defined by a distinct customary law (jus valahicum) . Although the characteristic titles of voivode, knez and ban (all implying military as well as civil authority) are of Slavonic origin, and perhaps derived from the practice of the later Bulgarian (or Bulgaro-Vlachian) empire, the growth of Vlach feudal institutions is attributed to German influences, which permeated through Hungarian channels into the Vlach world, and transformed the primitive tribal chiefs into a feudal aristocracy of boiars or boyards 2 (nobles).
With the r3th century, at latest, begins the authentic political history of the Vlachs in Rumania, but it is not the history of a united people. The two principalities of Walachia of and Moldavia developed separately, and each has its separate annals. About the year 1774 it first - becomes possible to trace the progress of these ality Danubian Principalities in a single narrative, owing to the uniform system of administration adopted by the Turkish authorities, and the rapid contemporary growth of a national consciousness among the Vlachs. At last, in 1859,. the two principalities were finally united under the name of Rumania. The subjoined history of the country is arranged under the four headings: Walachia, Moldavia, the Danubian Principalities and Rumania, in order to emphasize this historical development.
(2) Walachia. - Tradition, as embodied in a native chronicle of the 16th century, entitled the History of the Ruman Land since the arrival of the Rumans (Istoria tierei Romdnesci de candii au descalicata Romdnii), gives a precise account of the founding of the Walachian state by Radu Negru, Princi or Rudolf the Black (otherwise known as Negru Voda, pality. the Black Prince), voivode of the Rumans of Fogaras in Transylvania, who in 1290 descended with a numerous people into the Transalpine plain and established his capital first at Campulung and then at Curtea de Argesh. Radu dies in 1310, and is succeeded by a series of voivodes whose names and dates are duly given; but this early chapter of Walachian history has been rudely handled by critical historians. A considerable body of Vlachs doubtless emigrated from Hungary at this time, and founded in Walachia a principality dependent 1 Walachia east of the Olt, not to be confused with the Meyc BAaxia in southern Macedonia (see Balkan Peninsula).
In later Rumanian history there arose a class who obtained their rank by merit or favour, and did not necessarily bequeath it to their heirs. But the hereditary aristocracy also survived, and feudalism. remained characteristic of Rumanian society up to 1860.
Dacia. on the Hungarian crown; but material is lacking for a detailed description of the movement.
In 1330 the voivode John Bassaraba 1 or Bazarab the Great (1310-38) succeeded in inflicting a crushing defeat on his suzerain King Charles I. of Hungary, and for fourteen years Walachia enjoyed complete independence. Louis the Great (1342-82) succeeded for a while in restor acy. ing the Hungarian supremacy, but in 1367 the voivode Vlad or Vladislav inflicted another severe defeat on the Hungarians, and succeeded for a time in ousting the Magyar governor of Turnu Severin, and thus incorporating Oltland in his own dominions. Subsequently, in order to retain a hold on the loyalty of the Walachian voivode, the king of Hungary invested him with the title of duke of Fogaras and Omlas,. Ruman districts in Transylvania.
Under the voivode Mircea (1386-1418), whose prowess is still celebrated in the national folk-songs, Walachia played for a. while a more ambitious part. This prince during the earlier part of his reign sought a counterpoise to Hungarian influence in close alliance with King Ladislaus V. of Poland. He added to his other titles that of " count of Severin, despot of the Dobrudja, and lord of Silistria," and both Vidin and Sistora appear in his possession. A Walachian contingent, apparently Mircea's, aided the Servian tsar Lazar in his vain endeavour to resist the Turks at Kossovo (1389); later he allied himself with his former enemy Sigismund of Hungary against the Turkish sultan Bayezid I., who inflicted a crushing defeat on the allied armies at Nikopolis in 1396. Bayezid subsequently invaded and laid waste a large part of Walachia, but the voivode succeeded in inflicting considerable loss on the retiring Turks, and the capture of Bayezid by Timur in 1402 gave the country a reprieve. In the internecine struggle that followed amongst the sons of Bayezid, Mircea espoused the cause of Musa; but, though he thus obtained for a while considerable influence in the Turkish councils, this policy eventually drew on him the vengeance of the sultan Mahomet I., who succeeded in reducing him to a tributary position.
During the succeeding period the Walachian princes appear alternately as the allies of Hungary or the creatures of the Turk. In the later battle of Kossovo of 14 4 8, between the Hungarians, led by Hunyadi Janos and the sultan Hungary Murad II., the Walachian contingent treacherously surrendered to the Turks; but this did not hinder the prevalent laxity of marriage, the frequency of divorce, and the fact that illegitimate children could succeed as well as those born in lawful wedlock, by multiplying the candidates for the voivodeship and preventing any regular system of succession, contributed much to the internal confusion of the country. The elections, though often controlled by the Turkish Divan, were still constitutionally in the hands of the boiars, who were split up into various factions, each with its own pretender to the throne. The princes followed one another in rapid succession, and usually met with violent ends. A large part of the population led a pastoral life, and at the time of Verantius's visit to Walachia in the early part of the 16th century, the towns and villages were built of wood and wattle and daub. Tirgovishtea alone, at this time the capital of the country, was a considerable town, with two stone castles.
A temporary improvement took place under Neagoe Bassaraba (1512-21). Neagoe was a great builder of monasteries; he founded the cathedrals of Curtea de Argesh (q.v.) and Tirgovishtea, and adorned Mount Athos with his pious works. He transferred the direct allegiance of the Walachian Church from the patriarchate of Ochrida in Macedonia to that of Constantinople. On his death, however, the brief period of comparative prosperity which his architectural works attest was tragically interrupted, and it seemed for a time that Walachia was doomed to Turkish sink into a Turkish pashalic. The Turkish commander, Mahmud Bey, became treacherously possessed of Neagoe's young son and successor, and, sending him a prisoner to Stambul, proceeded to nominate Turkish governors in the towns and villages of Walachia. The Walachians resisted desperately, elected Radu, a kinsman of Neagoe, voivode, and succeeded with Hungarian help in defeating Mahmud Bey at Grumatz in 1522. The conflict was prolonged with varying fortunes until in 1524 the dogged opposition of the Walachians triumphed in the sultan's recognition of Radu.
But the battle of Mohacs in 1526 decided the long preponderance of Turkish control. The unfortunate province served as a transit route for Turkish expeditions against Hungary and Transylvania, and was exhausted by continual requisitions. Turkish settlers were gradually making good their footing on Walachian soil, and mosques were rising in the towns and villages. The voivode Alexander, who succeeded in 1591, and like his predecessors had bought his post of the Divan, carried the oppression still further by introducing a janissary guard and farming out his possessions to his Turkish supporters. Meanwhile the Turkish governors on the Bulgarian bank never ceased to ravage the country, and again it seemed as if Walachia must share the fate of the Balkan States and succumb to the direct government of the Ottoman.
In the depth of the national distress the choice of the people fell on Michael, the son of Petrushko, ban of Craiova, the first dignitary of the realm, who had fled to Transylvania to escape Alexander's machinations. Supported at Constantinople by two influential personages, Sigismund Bathory, prince of Transylvania (1581-98 and 1601-2), and the English ambassador, Edward Barton, and aided by a loan of 200,000 florins, Michael succeeded in procuring from the Divan the deposition of his enemy and his own nomination.
The genius of Michael " the Brave " (1593-1601) secured Walachia for a time a place in universal history. The moment for action was favourable. The emperor Rudolph II. had gained some successes over the Turks, and Sigismund Bathory had been driven by Turkish extortions to throw off the allegiance to the sultan. But the first obstacle to be dealt with was the presence of the enemy within the walls. By previous concert with the Moldavian voivode Aaron, on the 13th of November 1594, the Turkish guards and settlers in the two principalities were massacred at a given signal. Michael followed up these " Walachian Vespers " by an actual invasion of Turkish territory, and, aided by Sigismund Bathory, succeeded in carrying by assault Rustchuk, Silistria and other places on the right bank of the lower Danube. A simultaneous invasion of Walachia by a large Turkish and Tatar host was successfully defeated; victorious sultan from massacring the prisoners and adding to the tribute a yearly contribution of 3000 javelins and 4000 shields. In 1453 Constantinople fell; in 1454 Hunyadi died; and a year later the sultan invaded Walachia to set up Vlad IV. (1455-62), the son of a former voivode. The father of this Vlad had himself been notorious for his ferocity, but his son, during his Turkish sojourn, had improved on his father's example. He was known in Walachia as Dracul, or the Devil, and has left a name in history as Vlad the Impaler. The stories of his ferocious savagery exceed belief. He is said to have feasted amongst his impaled victims. When the sultan Mahomet, infuriated at the impalement of his envoy, the pasha of Vidin, who had been charged with Vlad's deposition, invaded Walachia in person with an immense host, he is said to have found at one spot a forest of pales on which were the bodies of men, women and children. The voivode Radu (1462-75) was substituted for this monster by Turkish influence, and constrained to pay a tribute of 12,000 ducats; but Vlad returned to the throne in 1476-77.
The shifting policy of the Walachian princes at this time is well described in a letter of the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus (1458-90) to Casimir of Poland. " The voivodes," he writes, " of Walachia and Moldavia fawn alternately upon the Turks, the Tatars, the Poles and the Hungarians, that among so many masters their perfidy may remain unpunished." The A. Sturdza gives - a genealogical table, showing that Radu belonged to the great native dynasty of Bassarab or Bassaraba, which continued, though not in unbroken succession, to rule in Walachia until 1658, and in Moldavia until 1669.
the/Tatar khan withdrew with the loss of his bravest followers, and, in the great victory of Mantin on the Danube (1595), the -Turkish army was annihilated, and its leader, Mustafa, slain. The sultan now sent Sinan Pasha, " the Renegade," to invade Walachia with ioo,000 men. Michael withdrew to the mountains before this overwhelming force, but, being joined by Báthory with a Transylvanian contingent, the voivode resumed the offensive, stormed Bucharest, where Sinan had entrenched a Turkish detachment, and, pursuing the main body of his forces to the Danube, overtook the rearguard and cut it to pieces, capturing enormous booty. Sinan Pasha returned to Constantinople to die, it is said, of vexation; and in 1597, the sultan, weary of a disastrous contest, sent Michael a red flag in token of reconciliation, reinvested him for life in an office of which he had been unable to deprive him, and granted the succession to his son.
In 1599, on the abdication of Sigismund Bfithory in Transylvania, Michael, in league with the imperialist forces, and in connivance with the Saxon burghers, attacked and of Tran- defeated his successor Andreas Bathory near Hermannstadt, and, seizing himself the reins of government, secured his proclamation as prince of Transylvania. The emperor consented to appoint him his viceroy (locum tenens per Transylvaniam), and the sultan ratified his election. As prince of Transylvania he summoned diets in 1599 and 1600, and, having expelled the voivode of Moldavia, united under his sceptre three principalities. The partiality that he showed for the Ruman and Szekler parts of the population alienated, however, the Transylvanian Saxons, who preferred the direct government of the emperor. The imperial commissioner General Basta lent his support to the disaffected party, and Michael was driven out of Transylvania by a successful revolt, while a Polish army invaded Walachia from the Moldavian side. Michael's coolness and resource, however, never deserted him. He resolved to appeal to the emperor, rode to Prague, won over Rudolph by his singular address, and, richly supplied with funds, reappeared in Transylvania as imperial governor. In conjunction with Basta he defeated the superior Transylvanian forces at Goroslo, expelling Sigismund Bfithory, who had again aspired to the crown, and taking one hundred and fifty flags and forty-five cannon. But at the moment of his returning prosperity Basta, who had quarrelled with him about the supreme command of the imperial forces, procured his murder on the 19th of August 1601. Not only had Michael succeeded in rolling back for a time the tide of Turkish conquest, but for the first and last time in modern history he united what once had been Trajan's Dacia, in its widest extent, and with it the whole Ruman race north of the Danube, under a single sceptre.
Michael's wife Florika and his son Nicholas were carried off into Tatar captivity, and erban or Sherban, of the Bassaraba family, was raised to the voivodeship of Walachia by imperialist influences, while Sigismund resumed the government of Transylvania. On his deposition by the Porte in 1610, there followed a succession of princes who, though still for the most part of Ruman origin, bought their appointment at Stambul. Walachian contingents were continually employed by the Turks in their Polish wars, and the settlement of Greeks in an official or mercantile capacity in the principality provoked grave discontent, which on one occasion took the form of a massacre.
The reign of the voivode Matthias Bassaraba (1633-54) was an interval of comparative prosperity. Matthias repulsed his powerful rival, Basil the Wolf, the voivode of Moldavia and his Tatar and Cossack allies. His last days were embittered, however, by an outbreak of military anarchy. His illegitimate son and successor, Constantine erban (1654-58), was the last of the Bassaraba dynasty to rule over Walachia; and on his death the Turkish yoke again weighed heavier on his country. The old capital, Tirgovishtea, was considered by the Divan to be too near the Transylvanian frontier, and the voivodes were accordingly compelled to transfer their residence to Bucharest, which was finally made the seat of government in 1698.
The mechanical skill of the Walachians was found useful by the Turks, who employed them as carpenters and pontonniers; and during the siege of Vienna in 1683 the Walachian contingent, which, under the voivode erban Cantacu zene, had been forced to co-operate with the Turks, was entrusted with the construction of the two bridges over the Danube above and below Vienna. The Walachian as well as the Moldavian prince, who had been also forced to bring his contingent, maintained a secret system of communication with the besieged, which was continued by §erban after his return to Walachia. The emperor granted him a diploma creating him count of the empire and recognizing his descent from the imperial house of Cantacuzene, §erban meanwhile collecting his forces for an open breach with the Porte. His prudence, however, perpetually postponed the occasion, and Walachia enjoyed peace to his death in 1688. This peaceful state of the country gave the voivode leisure to promote its internal culture, and in the year of his death he had the satisfaction of seeing the first part of a Walachian Bible issue from the first printingpress of the country, which he had established at Bucharest. He had also caused to be compiled a history of Walachia, and had called to the country many teachers of the Greek language, whose business it was to instruct the sons of the boiars in grammar, rhetoric and philosophy.
Immediately on erban's death the boiars, to prevent the Porte from handing over the office to the Greek adventurer who bid the highest, proceeded to elect his sister's son Constantine Brancovan. The Turkish envoy then in Bucharest was persuaded to invest Brancovan with the caftan, or robe of office, in token of Turkish approval, and the patriarch of Constantinople, who was also present, and the archbishop of Walachia, Theodosius, consecrated him together at the high altar of the cathedral, where he took the coronation oath to devote his whole strength to the good of his country and received the boiars' oath of submission. Brancovan, it is true, found it expedient to devote his predecessor's treasure to purchasing the confirmation of his title from the Divan, but the account of his coronation ceremony remains an interesting landmark in the constitutional history of the country. In his relations with the Habsburg power he displayed the same caution as the voivode §erban. In spite of defeats inflicted on the Turks by the imperial troops at Pozharevats, Nish and Vidin, in 1689, it was only by an exercise of force that they secured winter quarters in Walachia.; and though, after the battle of Poltava in 1709, Brancovan concluded a secret treaty with the tsar Peter the Great, he avoided giving open effect to it. The tranquillity which he thus obtained was employed by Brancovan as by his predecessor in furthering the internal well-being of the country, with what success is best apparent from the description of Walachia left by the Florentine Del Chiaro, who visited the country in 1709 and spent seven years there. He describes the stoneless Walachian plain, with its rich pastures, its crops of maize and millet, and woods so symmetrically planted and carefully kept by Brancovan's orders that hiding in them was out of the question. Butter and honey were exported to supply the sultan's kitchen at Stambul; wax and cattle to Venice; and the red and white wine of Walachia, notably that of Pitesei, to Transylvania. The Walachian horses were in demand among the Turks and Poles. Near Ribnik and elsewhere were salt-mines which supplied all the wants of the Transdanubian provinces of Turkey; there were considerable copper mines at Maidan; and iron was worked near Tirgovishtea. The gipsy community was bound to bring fifteen pounds weight of gold from the washings of the Argesh. Many of the boiars were wealthy, but the common people were so ground down with taxation that " of their ancient Roman valour only the name remained." To avoid the extortion of their rulers numbers had emigrated to Transylvania and even to the Turkish provinces. The principal Walachian city was Bucharest, containing a population of about 50,000; but, except for two large p ans or merchants' halls built by Brancovan and his XXIII. 2 7 predecessor, and the recently erected palace, which had a marble staircase and a fine garden, the houses were of wood. The dress of the men was thoroughly Turkish except for their lambskin caps, that of the women half Greek, half Turkish. The houses were scrupulously clean and strewn with sweet herbs. Del Chiaro notices the great imitative capacity of the race, both artistic and mechanical. A Walachian in Venice had copied several of the pictures there with great skill; the copper-plates and wood engravings for the new press were executed by native hands. The Walachians imitated every kind of Turkish and European manufacture; and, though the boiars imported finer glass from Venice and Bohemia, a glass manufactory had been established near Tirgovishtea which produced a better quality than the Polish. From the Bucharest press, besides a variety of ecclesiastical books, there were issued in the Ruman tongue a translation of a French work entitled The Maxims of the Orientals and The Romance of Alexander the Great. In 1700 Brancovan had a map of the country made and a copperplate engraving of it executed at Padua.
The prosperity of Walachia, however, under its " Golden Bey," as Brancovan was known at Stambul, only increased the Turkish exactions; and, although all demands were punctually met, the sultan finally resolved on the removal of his too prosperous vassal. Brancovan was accused of secret correspondence with the emperor, the tsar, the king of Poland and the Venetian republic, of betraying the Porte's secrets, of preferring Tirgovishtea to Bucharest as a residence, of acquiring lands and palaces in Transylvania, of keeping agents at Venice and Vienna, in both of which cities he had invested large sums, and of striking gold coins with his effigy.' An envoy arrived at Bucharest on the 4th of April 1714, and proclaimed Brancovan mazil, i.e. deposed. He was conducted to Constantinople and beheaded, together with his four sons. A scion of the rival Cantacuzenian family was elected by the pasha's orders, and he, after exhausting the principality for the benefit of the Divan, was in turn deposed and executed in 1716.
From this period onwards the Porte introduced a new system with regard to its Walachian vassals. The line of national The princes ceased. The office of voivode or hospodar was sold to the highest bidder at Stambul, to be farmed out from a purely mercenary point of view. The princes who now succeeded one another in rapid succession were mostly Greeks from the Phanar quarter of Constantinople who had served the palace in the quality of dragoman (interpreter), or held some other court appointment. They were nominated by imperial firman without a shadow of free election, and were deposed and transferred from one principality to another, executed or reappointed, like so many pashas. Like pashas they rarely held their office more than three years, it being the natural policy of the Porte to multiply such lucrative nominations. The same hospodar was often reappointed again and again as he succeeded in raising the sum necessary to buy back his title. Constantine Mavrocordato was in this way hospodar of Walachia at six different times, and paid on one occasion as much as a million lion-dollars (40,000) for the office. The princes thus imposed on the country were generally men of intelligence and culture. Nicholas Mavrocordato, the first of the series, was himself the author of a Greek work on duties, and maintained at his court Demeter Prokopios of Moschopolis in Macedonia, who wrote a review of Greek literature during the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries. Constantine Mavrocordato was the author of really liberal reforms. He introduced an urbarium or land law, limiting to 24 the days of angaria, or forced labour, owed yearly by the peasants to their feudal lord. In 1747 he decreed the abolition of serfdom, but this enactment was not carried 1 One of these, with the legend " Constantinvs Bassaraba De Brancovan D.G.Voevoda Et Princeps Valachiae Transalpinae," and having on the reverse the crowned shield of Walachia containing a raven holding a cross in its beak between a moon and a star, is engraved by Del Chiaro. They were of 2, 3 and io ducats weight.
into effect. But the rule of the Phanariotes could not but be productive of grinding oppression, and it was rendered doubly hateful by the swarms of Greek adventurers who accompanied them. Numbers of the peasantry emigrated, and the population rapidly diminished. In 1745 the number of tax-paying families,. which a few years before had amounted to 147,000, had sunk to 70,000. Yet the taxes were continually on the increase, and the hospodar Scarlat Ghica (1758-61), though he tried to win some popularity by the removal of Turkish settlers and the abolition of the vakarit or tax on cattle and horses, which was peculiarly hateful to the peasantry, raised the total amount of taxation to 25,000,000 lion-dollars, about £I,000,000. The Turks meantime maintained their grip on the country by holding on the Walachian bank of the Danube the fortresses of Giurgevo, Turnu Severin and Orsova, with the surrounding districts.
But the tide of Ottoman dominion was ebbing fast. Already, by the peace of Passarowitz Pozharevats in 1718, the banat of Craiova had been ceded to the emperor, though by the peace of Belgrade in 1739 it was recovered by the Porte for its Walachian vassal. In 1769 the Russian general Romanzov occupied the principality, the bishops and clergy took an oath of fidelity to the empress Catherine, and a deputation of boiars followed. The liberties of the country were guaranteed, taxation reformed and in 1772 the negotiations at Fokshani between Russia and the Porte broke down because the empress's representatives insisted on the sultan's recognition of the independence of Walachia and Moldavia under a European guarantee. Turkish rule was, however, definitely restored by the treaty of Kutchuk Kainardji, in 1774; and as from this period onwards Walachian history is closely connected with that of Moldavia, it may be convenient before continuing this review to turn to the earlier history of the sister principality.
(3) Moldavia. - According to the native traditional account,. as first given by the Moldavian chroniclers of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, Dragosh the son of Bogdan, the founder of the Moldavian principality, emigrated with his followers from the Hungarian district of Marmaros in the northern Carpathians.. The dates assigned to this event vary from 1299, given by Urechia, to 1342, given by the monastic chronicle of Putna.. The story is related with various fabulous accompaniments. From the aurochs (zimbru), in pursuit of which Dragosh first arrived on the banks of the Moldova, is derived the ox-head of the Moldavian national arms, and from his favourite hound who perished in the waters the name of the river. From the Hungarian and Russian sources, which are somewhat more precise, the date of the arrival of Dragosh, who is confused with the historical Bogdan Voda (1349-1365), appears to have been 1349, and his departure from Marmaros was carried out in defiance of his Hungarian suzerain.
These legendary accounts seem to show that the Moldavian voivodate was founded, like that of Walachia, by Vlach immigrants from Hungary, during the first half of the 14th century. Its original strength lay probably in the compact Ruman settlements among the eastern Carpathians, first mentioned by Nicetas of Chonae, about 1164. The Moldavian lowlands were still held by a variety of Tatar tribes, who were only expelled after 135c, by the united efforts of Andrew Laszkovich, voivode of Transylvania, and Bogdan Voda, the first independent prince of Moldavia. Coins bearing the name of Bogdan are still extant; and there is an inscription over his tomb at the monastery of Radautzi, in Bukovina, placed there by Stephen the Great of Moldavia (1457-1504).
In the agreement arrived at between Louis of Hungary and the emperor Charles IV. in 1372, the voivodate of Moldavia was recognized as a dependency of the crown of St Stephen. The overlordship over the country was, however, contested by the king of Poland, and their rival claims were a continual source of dispute between the two kingdoms. In 1412 a remarkable agreement was arrived at between Sigismund, in his quality of king of Hungary, and King Ladislaus II. of Poland, by which both parties consented to postpone the question of suzerainship in Moldavia. Should, however, the Turks invade the country, the Polish and Hungarian forces were to unite in expelling them, the voivode was to be deposed, and the Moldavian territories divided between the allies. During the first half of the 15th century Polish influence was preponderant, and it was customary for the voivodes of Moldavia to do homage to the king of Poland at his cities of Kameniec or Snyatin.
In 1456 the voivode Peter, alarmed at the progress of the Turks, who were now dominant in Servia and Walachia, offered the sultan Mahomet II. a yearly tribute of 2000 ducats.
On his deposition, however, in 1457 by Stephen, known as " the Great," Moldavia became a power formidable alike to Turk, Pole and Hungarian. Throughout the long reign of this voivode, which lasted forty-six years, from 1458 to 1504, his courage and resources never failed. In the early part of his reign he appears, in agreement with the Turkish sultan and the king of Poland, turning out the Hungarian vassal, the ferocious Vlad, from the Walachian throne, and annexing the coast cities of Kilia and Cetatea Alba or Byelgorod, the Turkish Akkerman. These cities he refused to cede to the sultan, and, about this period, he entered into negotiations with Venice and the shah of Persia, in the vain hope of organizing a world-wide coalition against the Turks. In the .autumn of 1474 the sultan Mahomet entered Moldavia at the head of an army estimated by the Polish historian Dlugosz at 120,000 men. The voivode Stephen withdrew into the interior at the approach of this overwhelming host, but on the 17th ,of 'January 1475, turned to bay at Rahova (Podul malt, near Vaslui) and gained a complete victory over the Turks. Four pashas were among the slain; over a hundred banners fell into the Moldavian hands; and only a few survivors succeeded in reaching the Danube. In 1476 Mahomet again invaded Moldavia, but, though successful in the open field, the Turks were sorely harassed by Stephen's guerilla onslaughts, and, being thinned by pestilence, were again constrained to retire. In 1484 the same tactics proved successful against an invasion of Bayezid II. Three years later a Polish invasion of Moldavia under John Albert with 80,000 men ended in disaster, and shortly afterwards the voivode Stephen, aided by a Turkish and Tatar contingent, laid waste the Polish territories to the upper waters of the Vistula, and succeeded in annexing for a time the Polish province of Pokutia, between the Carpathians and the Dniester.
Exclusive of this temporary acquisition, the Moldavian territory at this period extended from the river Milcovu, which formed the boundary of Walachia, to the Dniester. It in circa cluded the Carpathian region of Bukovina, literally the beechwood, " where lay Sereth and Suciava (Suczawa), the earliest residences of the voivodes, the maritime district of Budzak (the later Bessarabia), with Kilia, Byelgorod and the left bank of the lower Danube from Galatz to the Sulina mouth. The government, civil and ecclesiastical, was practically the same as that described in the case of Walachia, the officials bearing for the most part Slavonic titles derived from the practice of the Bulgaro-Vlachian tsardom. The church was Orthodox Oriental, and depended from the patriarch of Ochrida. In official documents the language used was Slavonic, the style of a Moldavian ruler being Nachalnik i Voievoda Moldovlasi, prince and duke (= Ger. Furst and Herzog) of the Moldovlachs. The election of the voivodes, though in the hands of the boiars, was strictly regulated by hereditary principles, and Cantemir describes the extinction of the house of Dragosh in the 16th century as one of the unsettling causes that most contributed to the ruin of the country. The Moldavian army was reckoned 40,000 strong, and the cavalry were especially formidable. Verantius of Sebenico, an eye-witness of the state of Moldavia at the beginning of the 16th century, mentions three towns of the interior provided with stone walls - Suciava, Chotim (Khotin) and Ncamtzu; the people were barbarous, but more warlike than the Walachians and more tenacious of their national costume, punishing with death any who adopted the Turkish.
In 1504 Stephen the Great died, and was succeeded by his son, Bogdan III. " the One-eyed. " At feud with Poland about Pokutia, despairing of efficacious support from hardpressed Hungary, the new voivode saw no hope of safety except in a dependent alliance with the ad vancing Ottoman power, which already hemmed Moldavia in on the Walachian and Crimean sides. In 1513 he agreed to pay an annual tribute to the sultan Selim in return for the sultan's guarantee to preserve the national constitution and religion of Moldavia, to which country the Turks now gave the name of Kara Bogdan, from their first vassal. The terms of Moldavian submission were further regulated by a firman signed by the sultan Suleiman at Budapest in 1529 by which the yearly present or backshish, as the tribute was euphoniously called, was fixed at 4000 ducats, 40 horses and 25 falcons, and the voivode was bound at need to supply the Turkish army with a contingent of r000 men. The Turks pursued much the same policy as in Walachia. The tribute was gradually increased. A hold was obtained on the country by the occupation of various fortresses on Moldavian soil with the surrounding territory - in 1538 Cetatea Alba, in 1592 Bender, in 1702 Chotim (Khotin). Already by the middle of the 16th century the yoke was so heavy that the voivode Elias (1546-51) became Mahommedan to avoid the sultan's anger.
At this period occurs a curious interlude in Moldavian history. In 1561 the adventurer and impostor Jacob Basilicus succeeded with Hungarian help in turning out the voivode Alexander Lapusheanu (1552-61 and 1563-68) and seizing on the reins of government. A Greek by birth, adopted son of Jacob Heraklides, despot of Paros, Samos and other Aegean islands, acquainted with Greek and Latin literature, and master of most European languages; appearing alternately as a student of astronomy at Wittenberg, whither he had been invited by Count Mansfeld, as a correspondent of Melanchthon, and as a writer of historical works which he dedicated to Philip II. of Spain, Basilicus, finding that his Aegean sovereignty was of little practical value beyond the crowning of poet laureates, fixed his roving ambition on a more substantial dominion. He published an astounding pedigree, in which, starting from " Hercules Triptolemus," he wound his way through the royal Servian line to the kinship of Moldavian voivodes, and, having won the emperor Ferdinand to his financial and military support, succeeded, though at the head of only 1600 cavalry, in routing by a bold dash the vastly superior forces of the voivode, and even in purchasing the Turkish confirmation of his usurped title. He assumed the style of BaatX€i !MoX8a,ias, and eluded the Turkish stipulation that he should dismiss his foreign guards. In Moldavia he appeared as a moral reformer, endeavouring to put down the prevalent vices of bigamy and divorce. He erected a school, placed it under a German master, and collected children from every part of the country to be maintained and educated at his expense. He also busied himself with the collection of a library. But his taxes - a ducat for each family - were considered heavy; his orthodoxy was suspected, his foreign counsellors detested. In 1563 the people rose, massacred the Hungarian guards, the foreign settlers, and finally Jacob himself.
The expelled voivode Alexander was now restored by the Porte, the schools were destroyed, and the country relapsed into its normal state of barbarism under Bogdan IV. (156872). Bogdan's successor, John the Terrible (1572-74), was provoked by the Porte's demand for 120,000 ducats as tribute instead of 60,000 as heretofore to rise against the oppressor; but after gaining three victories he was finally defeated and slain (1574), and the country was left more than ever at the mercy of the Ottoman. Voivodes were now created and deposed in rapid succession by the Divan, but the victories of Michael the Brave in Walachia infused a more independent spirit into the Moldavians. The Moldavian dominion was now disputed by the Transylvanians and Poles, but in 1600 Michael succeeded in annexing it to his " Great Dacian " realm. On Michael's murder the Poles under Zamoyski again asserted their supremacy, but in 1618 the Porte once more recovered its dominion and set up successively two creatures of its own as voivodes - Gratiani, an Italian who had been court jeweller, and a Greek custom-house official, Alexander.
As in Walachia at a somewhat later date, the Phanariote regime seemed now thoroughly established in Moldavia, and it became the rule that every three years the voivode should procure his confirmation by a large baksheesh, and every year by a smaller one. But Prince Basil the Wolf (Vasilie Lupul), an Albanian, who succeeded in 1634, showed great ability, and for twenty years maintained his position on the Moldavian throne. He introduced several internal reforms, codified the written and unwritten laws of the country, established a printing press, Greek monastic schools, and also a Latin school. He brought the Moldavian Church into more direct relation with the patriarch of Constantinople, but also showed considerable favour to the Latins, allowing them to erect churches at Suciava, Jassy and Galatz. The last voivode of the Bassaraba family, Elias Voda, reigned from 1667 to 1669.
During the wars between Sobieski, king of Poland (167496), and the Turks, Moldavia found itself between hammer and anvil, and suffered terribly from Tatar devastations. The voivode Duka was forced like his Walachian contemporary to supply a contingent for the siege of Vienna in 1683. After Sobieski's death in 1696, the hopes of Moldavia turned to the advancing Muscovite power. In 1711 the voivode Demetrius Cantemir, rendered desperate by the Turkish exactions, concluded an agreement with the tsar Peter the Great by which Moldavia was to become a protected and vassal state of Russia, with the enjoyment of its traditional liberties, the voivodeship to be hereditary in the family of Cantemir. On the approach of the Russian army the prince issued a proclamation containing the terms of the Russian protectorate and calling on the boiars and people to aid their Orthodox deliverers. But the long Turkish terrorism had done its work, and at the approach of a Turkish and Tatar host the greater part of the Moldavians deserted their voivode. The Russian campaign was unsuccessful, and all that Peter could offer Cantemir and the boiars who had stood by him was an asylum on Russian soil.
In his Russian exile Cantemir composed in a fair Latin style his Descriptio Moldaviae, the counterpart, so far as Moldavia Can is concerned, to Del Chiaro's contemporary descrip tion of Walachia. The capital of the country was now Jassy, to which city Stephen the Great had trans tion of ferred his court from Suciava, the earlier residence of the voivodes. It had at this time forty churches - some of stone, some of wood. Fifty years before it had contained 12,000 houses, but Tatar devastations had reduced it to a third of its former size. The most important commercial emporium was the Danubian port of Galatz, which was frequented by vessels from the whole of the Levant from Trebizond to Barbary. The cargoes which they here took in consisted of Moldavian timber (oak, deal and cornel), grain, butter, honey and wax, salt and nitre. Kilia, at the north mouth of the Danube, was also frequented by trading vessels, including Venetian and Ragusan. Moldavian wine was exported to Poland, Russia, Transylvania, and Hungary; that of Cotnar was in Cantemir's opinion superior to Tokay. The excellence of the Moldavian horses is attested by a Turkish proverb; and annual droves of as many as 40,000 Moldavian oxen were sent across Poland to Danzig. Moldavia proper was divided into the upper country or T'erra de sus, and the lower country, or T'erra de josu. Bessarabia had been detached from the rest of the principality and placed under the direct control of the military authorities. It was divided into four provinces: that of Budzak, inhabited by the Nogai Tatars; that of Cetatea Alba, the Greek Monkastron, a strongly fortified place; and those of Ismaila and Kilia. The voivodes owed their nomination entirely to the Porte, and the great officers of the realm were appointed at their discretion. These were the Great Logothete (Marele Logofetu) or chancellor; the governor of Lower Moldavia - Vorniculu de t'erra de josu; the governor of Upper Moldavia - Vorniculu de t'erra de sus; the Hatman or commander - in - chief; the high chamberlain - Marele Postelnicu; the great Spathar, or sword-bearer; the great cupbearer - Marele Paharnicu; and the treasurer, or Vistiernicu, who together formed the prince's council and were known as Boiari de Svatu. Below these were a number of subordinate officers who acted as their assessors and were known as boiars of the Divan (Boiari de Divanu). The high court of justice was formed by the prince, metropolitan and boiars: the Boiari de Svatu decided on the verdict; the metropolitan declared the law; and the prince pronounced sentence. The boiars were able to try minor cases in their own residences, but subject to the right of appeal to the prince's tribunal. Of the character of the Moldavian people Cantemir does not give a very favourable account. Their best points were their hospitality and, in Lower Moldavia, their valour. They cared little for letters, and were generally indolent, and their prejudice against mercantile pursuits left the commerce of the country in the hands of Armenians, Jews, Greeks and Turks. The pureblood Ruman population, noble and plebeian, inhabited the cities and towns or larger villages; the peasantry were mostly of Little Russian and Hungarian race, and were in a servile condition. There was a considerable gipsy population, almost every boiar having several Zingar families in his possession; these were mostly smiths.
From this period onwards the character of the Ottoman domination in Moldavia is in every respect analogous to that of Walachia. The office of voivode or hospodar was farmed out by the Porte to a succession of wealthy Greeks from the Phanar quarter of Constantinople. - All formality of election by the boiars was now dispensed with, and the princes received their caftan of regime. office at Constantinople, where they were consecrated by the Greek patriarch. The system favoured Turkish extortion in two ways: the presence of the voivode's family connexions at Stambul gave the Porte so many hostages for his obedience; on the other hand the princes themselves could not rely on any support due to family influence in Moldavia itself. They were thus mere puppets of the Divan, and could be deposed and shifted with the same facility as so many pashas - an object of Turkish policy, as each change was a pretext for a new levy of baksheesh. The chief families that shared the office during this period were those of Mavrocordato, Ghica, Callimachi, Ypsilanti and Murusi. Although from the very conditions of their creation they regarded the country as a field for exploitations, they were themselves often men of education and ability, and unquestionably made some praiseworthy attempts to promote the general culture and well-being of their subjects, In this respect, even the Phanariote regime was preferable tc mere pasha rule, while it had the further consequence of preserving intact the national form of administration and the historic offices of Moldavia. Gregory Ghica (1774-77), who himself spoke French and Italian, founded a school or " gymnasium " at Jassy, where Greek, Latin and theology were taught in a fashion. He encouraged the settlement of German Protestant colonists in the country, some of whom set up as watchmakers in Jassy, where they were further allowed to build an evangelical church. J. L. Carra, a Swiss who had been tutor to Prince Ghica's children, and who published in 1781 an account of the actual state of the principalities, speaks of some of the boiars as possessing a taste for French literature and even for the works of Voltaire, a tendency actively combated by the patriarch of Constantinople.
The Russo-Turkish War, which ended in the peace of Kutchuk Kainardji (1774), was fatal to the integrity of Moldavian territory. The house of Austria, which had already annexed Galicia in 1772, profited by the situation to cession of 77 ? P Y Bukovina. arrange with both contending parties for the peace ful cession of Bukovina to the Habsburg monarchy. This richly wooded Moldavian province, containing Suciava (Suczawa), the earliest seat of the voivodes, and Cernautii or Czernovicz, was in 1774 occupied by Habsburg troops with Russian connivance, and in 1777 Baron Thugut procured its formal cession from the sultan.
(4) The Danubian Principalities: 1774-1859. - By the treaty of Kutchuk Kainardji Russia consented to hand back the principalities to the sultan, but by Article xvi. several stipulations were made in favour of the Wal- KainardJi. achians and Moldavians. The people of the principalities were to enjoy all the privileges that they had possessed under Mahomet IV.; they were to be freed from tribute for two years, as some compensation for the ruinous effects of the last war; they were to pay a moderate tribute; the agents of Walachia and Moldavia at Constantinople were to enjoy the rights of national representatives, and the Russian minister at the Porte should on occasion watch over the interests of the principalities. The stipulations of the treaty, though deficient in precision (the Walachians, for instance, had no authentic record of the privileges enjoyed under Mahomet IV.), formed the basis of future liberties in both principalities; but for the moment all reforms were postponed.
The treaty was hardly concluded when it was violated by the Porte, which refused to recognize the right of the Walachian boiars to elect their voivode, and nominated Alexander Ypsilanti, a creature of its own. In 1777 Constantine Murusi was made voivode of Moldavia in the same high-handed fashion. The Divan seemed intent on restoring the old system of government in its entirety, but in 1783 the Russian representative extracted from the sultan a decree (hattisherif) defining more precisely the liberties of the principalities and fixing the amount of the annual tribute - for Walachia 619 purses exclusive of various "presents" amounting to 130,000 piasters, and for Moldavia 1 3 5 purses and further gifts to the extent of 115,000 piasters. By the peace of Jassy in 1792 the Dniester was recognized as the Russian frontier, and the privileges of the principalities as specified in the hattisherif confirmed. In defiance of treaties, however, the Porte continued to change the hospodars almost yearly and to exact extraordinary installation presents. The revolt of Pasvan Oglu in Bulgaria was the cause of great injury to Walachia. The rebels ravaged Little Walachia in 1801-2, and their ravages were succeeded by those of the Turkish troops, who now swarmed over the country. Exaction followed exaction, and in 1802 Russia resolved to assert her treaty rights in favour of the oppressed inhabitants of the principalities. On the accession of Constantine Ypsilanti (1802-6) in Walachia, and of Alexander Murusi (1802-6) in Moldavia, the Porte was constrained to issue a new hattisherif by which every prince was to hold his office for at least seven years, unless the protec- Porte satisfied the Russian minister that there were good and sufficient grounds for his deposition. This clause of the hattisherif was not enforced. All irregular contributions were to cease, and all citizens, with the exception of the boiars and clergy, were to pay their share of the tribute. The Turkish troops then employed in the principalities were to be paid off, and one year's tribute remitted for the purpose. The boiars were to be responsible for the maintenance of schools, hospitals and roads; they and the prince together for the militia. The number of Turkish merchants resident in the country was limited. Finally, the hospodars were to be amenable to representations made to them by the Russian envoy at Constantinople, to whom was entrusted the task of watching over the Walachian and Moldavian liberties. This, it will be seen, was a veiled Russian protectorate.
In 1804 the Serbs under Karageorge rose against the Turkish dominion, and were secretly aided by the Walachian voivode Ypsilanti. The Porte, instigated by Napoleon's ambassador Sebastiani, resolved on Ypsilanti's deposition, but the hospodar succeeded in escaping to St Petersburg. In the war that now ensued between the Russians and the Turks, the Russians were for a time successful, and even demanded that the Russian territory should extend to the Danube. They occupied the principalities from 1806 to 1812. In 1808 they formed a governing committee consisting of the metropolitan, another bishop, and four or five boiars under the presidency of General Kusnikov. The seat of the president was at Jassy, and General Engelhart was appointed as vice-president at Bucharest. By the peace of Bucharest, however, in 1812, the principalities were restored to the sultan under the former conditions, with the exception of Bessarabia, which was ceded to the tsar. The Pruth thus became the Russian boundary.
The growing solidarity between the two Ruman principalities received a striking illustration in 1816, when the Walachian and Moldavian hospodars published together a code applicable to both countries, and which had been elaborated by a joint commission. The Greek movement was now beginning to assume a practical shape. About 1780 Riga Velestiniul, a Hellenized Vlach from Macedonia who is also known by the purely Greek name of Rigas Phereos, had founded in Bucharest a patriotic and revolutionary association known as the Society of Friends (e'Taepia 7c;'v 4LXcvv) which gradually attained great in- The fiuence. In 181 o Ignatius, the metropolitan of Walachia, " founded a Greek literary society in Bucharest which 1st" soon developed into a political association, and many similar bodies were formed throughout the Greek world, and finally united into one powerful secret society, the Hetairia. Some of the members even cherished the fantastic hope of restoring the ancient Byzantine empire. In 1821 Alexander Ypsilanti, a son of the voivode, and an aide-de-camp of the tsar Alexander I., entered Moldavia at the head of the Hetaerists, and, representing that he had the support of the tsar, prevailed on the hospodar Michael Sutzu to aid him in invading the Ottoman dominions. To secure Walachian help, Ypsilanti advanced on Bucharest, but the prince, Theodore Vladimirescu, who represented the national Ruman reaction against the Phanariotes, repulsed his overtures with the remark " that his business was not to march against the Turks, but to clear the country of Phanariotes." Vladimirescu was slain by a Greek revolutionary agent, but Ypsilanti rashly continuing his enterprise after he had been repudiated by the Russian emperor, his forces were finally crushed by the Turks at Dragashani, in Walachia, and at Skuleni, in Moldavia; and the result of his revolt was a Turkish occupation of the principalities. In 1822 the Turkish troops, who had committed great excesses, were withdrawn on the combined representations of Russia, Austria and Great Britain. The country, however, was again ravaged by the retiring troops, quarters of Jassy and Bucharest burnt, and the complete evacuation delayed till 1824, when the British government again remonstrated with the Porte (see Eastern Question; Greece; Ypsilanti; Alexander).
By the convention of Akkerman between the Russians and the Turks in 1826 the privileges of the principalities were once more confirmed, and they were again ratified in 1829, under Russian guarantee, by the peace of Adrianople. Adria- By this peace all the towns on the left bank of the Danube were restored to the principalities, and the Porte undertook to refrain from fortifying any position on the Walachian side of the river. A Russian army occupied the country until the Porte fulfilled its promises. The principalities were to enjoy commercial freedom, and the right of establishing a quarantine cordon along the Danube or elsewhere. The internal constitution of the countries was to be regulated by an " Organic Law," which was drawn up b y assemblies of bishops and boiars at Jassy and Bucharest, acting, however, under Russian control. The Organic Law thus elaborated was by no means of a liberal character, and amongst other abuses maintained the feudal privileges of the boiars. It was ratified by the Porte in 1834, and the Russian army of occupation thereupon withdrew. The newly elected hospodars, Alexander Ghica (1834-42) and George Bibescu (1842-48) in Walachia, and Michael Sturdza (1834-49) in Moldavia, ruled in accordance with the Organic Law. Their reigns were marked by the social, financial and political predominance of Russia, which had steadily increased since 1711. The treaty of 1774 had given Russia a firm foothold in Rumanian politics. This 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 Transalpine regions. Here its real object was the overthrow of Russian influence. In Moldavia the agitation 1848. 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 Barbii Stirbeiti (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 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 i nduced 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 of the contracting Powers, while remaining under the Paris, suzerainty of the Porte - the Porte on its part engag 1856. ing to respect the complete independence of their internal administration. A strip of southern Bessarabia was restored to Moldavia, so as to push back he 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 they at once proceeded to vote with unanimity the union of the two principalities into a single state under princi- 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 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 should be a native of the country. The principalities, however, determined to elect Prince Charles, the of Prince second son of Prince Charles Antony of HohenzollernSigmaringen. On a referendum, 685,969 electors 1866. 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 10th 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 men. Rumania was to remain part of the Ottoman empire within the limits fixed by the capitulations and the treaty of Paris.
The first Rumanian ministry formed under the new prince was composed of the leading statesmen of all political parties, care being taken that the two provinces should be equally represented. A new constitution was unanimously passed by the chamber on the 11th of July. It provided for an Upper and Lower House of Representatives, and conferred on the prince the right of an absolute and unconditional veto on all legislation. Other reforms were urgently needed. There was an empty treasury, and the floating debt amounted to X7,000,000; maladministration was rampant in every department of the state; the national guard was mutinous, while the small army of regulars was badly organized and inefficient. The existence of famine and cholera added to the difficulties of the government, and in March 1867 the Lower House, by a majority of three, passed the laconic resolution, " The chamber inflicts a vote of blame on the government. " As the result of this vote M. Kretzulescu, a Moderate Conservative, was called to the head of affairs, and I. C. Bratianu entered the government as minister of the interior. The new ministry, of which Bratianu was the leading spirit, showed considerable energy: a concession was granted for the construction of the first Rumanian railway, from Bucharest to Giurgevo, and the reorganization of the army was undertaken. Among other less judicious measures, a decree was passed ostensibly directed against all vagabond foreigners, but really aimed at the Jews, large numbers of whom, including many respected landowners and men of business, were imprisoned, or expelled, from Jassy, Bacau and other parts of Moldavia. This harsh treatment created intense indignation abroad, especially in France and Great Britain; and the emperor Napoleon wrote personally to Prince Charles, protesting against the persecution. The country could not afford to lose the goodwill of the emperor of the French, at that time one of the most powerful factors in Europe - in July 1869 Bratianu, although immensely popular, found it necessary to resign office, and with him fell the rest of the cabinet.
On the 15th of September 1869, Prince Charles married Princess Elizabeth of Wied, afterwards celebrated under her literary name of Carmen Sylva.' In the same year the army was reorganized, and a rural police created. Every able-bodied citizen was rendered liable to give three days' work yearly towards the construction of roads, or to pay a small tax as an equivalent. An important railway concession, which subsequently caused grave political complications, was granted to the German contractors Strausberg and Offenheim.
Much excitement was aroused in Rumania by the outbreak of the war between Prussia and France. The sympathies of The the Rumanians were entirely on the side of the French, rebellion whom they regarded as a kindred Latin race, while of 1870. those of the prince were naturally with his native country. The excitement culminated in a revolutionary outbreak at Ploesci, where a hot-headed deputy, Candianu Popescu, after the mob had stormed the militia barracks, issued a proclamation deposing Prince Charles and appointing General Golescu regent. Owing to the loyalty of the regular army the insurrection was speedily quelled. But the feeling in the country was strong against the German sovereign, who seriously thought of abdicating when a jury acquitted the accused rebels. On the 7th of December he wrote confidentially to the sovereigns whose representatives had signed the treaty of Paris, suggesting that the future of Rumania should be regulated by a European congress.
A few days subsequently the prince learned that the German railway contractor Strausberg was unwilling or unable to pay The rail- the coupons of the railway bonds due on the 1st of way crisis January 1871, which were mostly held by influential of 1871. people in Germany. This threw the responsibility of payment on Rumania, and was a severe blow to the prince, 'For biographical details, see Charles, king of Rumania; and Elizabeth, queen of Rumania.
through whose instrumentality the loan had been placed. Matters were brought to a crisis by the Prussian government threatening to force the Rumanian government to provide for the unpaid coupons. The country was financially in no condition to comply. Bitter indignation prevailed against everything German, and culminated in an attack on the German colony in Bucharest on the 22nd of March 1871. On the following morning the prince summoned the members of the council of regency of 1866, and informed them of his intention to place the government in their hands. Lascar Catargiu and General Golescu, the only two members present, as well as Dimitrie Sturdza and other influential persons, declined to accept the responsibility. Catargiu offered to unite the different sections of the Conservative party in order to deal with the crisis. The prince accepted his offer. The elections took place early in May 1871, and the government, to which all the most respectable elements in the country had rallied, obtained a large majority. When parliament met in May the prince had a most enthusiastic reception. The anti-German feeling in the country had greatly subsided, in consequence of the crushing defeat of France; and in. January 1872 the chambers passed a law by which Rumania undertook to pay the railway coupons. The German syndicate was satisfied, and the railway crisis ended.
Catargiu's ministry was the tenth that had held office in the five years since the prince's arrival, but it was the first one that was stable. In March 1875 the budget for 1876, The amounting to £4,000,000, nearly, double in amount Catargiu that of the year 1866, was passed without difficulty, ministry, and on the 28th of the month the parliamentary 1871-75, session closed. It was the first occasion in Rumania that the same chamber had sat for the whole constitutional period of four years, and also the first time that the same ministry had opened and closed the same parliament.
Only the fall of the Catargiu ministry saved the country from revolution. The leading Liberals had promoted a conspiracy for the arrest and expulsion of the prince, and the formation of a provisional government under General Dabija. The prospect of a return to power put an end to these machinations. Catargiu's ministry was succeeded by an administration under General Florescu, known as the " cabinet of the generals," and, a month later, by the so-called " ministry of conciliation " under M. Jepureanu. A commission of the chambers drew up an indictment against Catargiu and his late colleagues, accusing them of violating the constitution and the public liberties, squandering the state revenues, and other abuse of power. Unable to stem the tide of popular passion, which was crying for the impeachment of Catargiu, Jepureanu resigned office, and Bratianu formed a new Liberal cabinet, destined to guide the country through many eventful years.
But the re-opening of the Eastern Question was destined to bring to a climax the great struggle of Rumania for existence and independence, and temporarily to throw into the The shade all domestic questions. The insurrection in Russo- Bulgaria, with its accompanying horrors, followed by Turkish the deposition of sultan Murad and the succession of w ar of 1877-78. the sultan Abdul Hamid, contributed to indicate the near approach of a Russo-Turkish war. Russia had shown symptoms of anger against Rumania for not having taken up a decided attitude in the approaching struggle, and the Russian ambassador Ignatiev had some months previously threatened that his government would seize Rumania as a pledge as soon as the Turks occupied Servia and Montenegro. Prince Charles decided to send a mission, composed of Bratianu and Colonel Slaniceanu (the minister of war), to the imperial headquarters at Livadia. They were well received by the emperor (October 1876), but in spite of mixed threats and cajoleries on the part of Gorchakov, Ignatiev and others, Bratianu returned without having definitively committed his country to active measures.
On the 14th of November six Russian army corps were mobilized to form the army of the south under the grand duke Foreign and domestic politics, 1866-70. Nicholas. A few days later two secret envoys arrived at Bucharest, the one M. de Nelidov, to negotiate on the part of the Russian government for the passage of their army through Rumania, the other Ali Bey, to arrange on behalf of the sultan a combination with Rumania against Russia. Prince Charles cleverly temporized with both powers. Negotiations with Russia were continued, and Bratianu was sent to Constantinople to put pressure upon Turkey to secure certain rights and privileges which would practically have made Rumania independent, except that it would still have paid a fixed tribute; but the conference of the powers assembled at that capital came to a definite end on the i 9th of January 1877, when the Turkish government declined every proposal of the conference. Meanwhile the Porte, in issuing Midhat Pasha's famous scheme of reforms, had greatly irritated Rumanian politicians by including their country in the same category as the other privileged provinces, and designating its inhabitants as Ottoman subjects. A secret convention was signed between Russia and Rumania on the 16th of April, by which Rumania allowed free passage to the Russian armies, the tsar engaging in return to maintain its political rights and to protect its integrity, while all matters of detail connected with the passage of the Russian troops were to be regulated by a special treaty. On the 23rd of April Russia declared war against Turkey, and the grand duke Nicholas issued a proclamation to the Rumanian nation, announcing his intention of entering their territory in the hope of finding the same welcome as in former wars. The Rumanian government made a platonic protest against the crossing of the frontier, and the Rumanian troops fell back as the Russians advanced; provisions and stores of all kinds were supplied to the invading army against cash payments in gold, and the railways and telegraphs were freely placed at its disposal. The Rumanian chambers were assembled on the 26th of April, and the convention with Russia was sanctioned. The Ottoman government immediately broke off diplomatic relations with Rumania, and on the 11th of May the chambers passed a resolution that a state of war existed with Turkey. (For a detailed account of the subsequent campaign, in which Prince Charles and the Rumanian army contributed greatly to the success of the Russian arms, see Russo-Turkish Wars, and Plevna.) The fall of Plevna left the Russian army free to march on Constantinople, and on the 31st of January 1878 the preliminaries of peace were signed at Adrianople. They stipulated that Rumania should be independent and receive an increase of territory.
Peace between Russia and Turkey was signed at San Stefano on the 3rd of March. On the 29th of January the Rumanian agent at St Petersburg was officially informed of the intention of the Russian government to regain posses sion of the Rumanian portion of Bessarabia, i.e. that portion which was ceded to Moldavia by Russia after the Crimean War. Rumania was to be indemnified at the expense of Turkey by the delta of the Danube and the Dobrudja as far as Constantza. The motive assigned was that this territory had not been ceded to Rumania, but to Moldavia, and had been separated from Russia by. the almost obsolete treaty of Paris (1856). But the proposed exchange of territory aroused the most bitter indignation at Bucharest. Bratianu and Cogalniceanu were sent to Berlin to endeavour to prevail on the representatives of the Powers there assembled in June 1878 to veto the cession of Bessarabia to Russia; but the Rumanian delegates were not permitted to attend the sittings of the congress until the Powers had decided in favour of the Russian claim. The treaty of Berlin in dealing with Rumania decided to recognize its independence, subject to two conditions: First (Art. xlv.), that the principality should restore to the emperor of Russia that portion of the Bessarabian territory detached from Russia by the treaty of Paris in 1856, bounded on the west by the mid-channel of the Pruth, and on the south by the mid-channel of the Kilia branch and the Staryi Stambul mouth. Second (Art. xliv.), that absolute freedom of worship should be granted to all persons in Rumania; that no religious beliefs should be a bar to the enjoyment of any political rights; and, further, that the subjects of all the powers should be treated in Rumania on a footing of perfect equality. Article xlvi. declared that the islands forming the delta of the Danube, the Isle of Serpents, and the province of Dobrudja, as far as a line starting from the east of Silistria and terminating on the Black Sea south of Mangalia, should be added to Rumania. Other articles defined the international position of Rumania, while Article liii. decreed that it should have a representative on the European commission of the Danube. Bratianu wrote with some truth that the Great Powers by sacrificing Rumania were able to obtain more concessions for themselves from Russia, and Lord Beaconsfield was constrained to admit that " in politics ingratitude is often the reward of the greatest services. " The Rumanians submitted reluctantly to the retrocession of Bessarabia; and the Dobrudja was occupied by Rumanian troops on the 26th of November 1878.
But Article xliv. of the treaty of Berlin caused tremendous agitation throughout the country, and almost provoked a revolution. Article vii. of the constitution of 1866 laid 2. The down that " only Christians can become citizens of Jewish Rumania " - in other words, all Jews were excluded from the rights of citizenship; and as no foreigner could own land in Rumania outside the towns, no Jew could become a country proprietor. Public opinion in Rumania rendered it almost impossible for any government to carry out the wishes of the Berlin tribunal. To do so involved a change in the constitution, which could only be effected by a specially elected constituent assembly. This body met on the 3rd of June, and sat through the entire summer. The irritation of the powers at the unexpected delay was so great that Great Britain proposed a collective note on the subject, to be executed by the Austrian cabinet; while Prince Bismarck threatened, if the Berlin proposition were not carried out, to refer to the suzerain power at. Constantinople. At last, however, on the 18th of October, Article vii. was repealed, and it thus became possible for Rumanian Jews to become naturalized and to hold land. It was further decided to admit to naturalization the 883 Jewish soldiers who had served in the war; but with all other Jews individual naturalization was required, and this was hedged about by so many difficulties, a special vote of the legislature being required, with a two-thirdsmajority in each individual case, that although the compromise thus effected was accepted by the powers, the actual result was that, from 1880 to 1884, out of 385 persons who were naturalized in Rumania, only 71 were Rumanian Jews. As the process of naturalization has never been accelerated, the 300,000 Jews said to inhabit Rumania are still regarded as foreigners; and although liable to military service and to the payment of taxes, are unable to own rural land or possess electoral or other civil rights.
Italy was the first of the Powers to notify its recognition of Rumanian independence (December 1879); but Bismarck succeeded in prevailing on the Western Powers not Estab- to give official recognition until Rumania should have purchased the railways from their German owners. of the This unpopular measure caused some delay; but Great Britain, France and Germany formally recognized the independence of the country on the 10th of February 1880. Early in 1881 it was generally felt that the time had arrived for Rumania to be created a kingdom. On the 13th of March the tsar Alexander II. was assassinated, and the Rumanian opposition chose this occasion to accuse the Liberal government of aiming at republican and anti-dynastic ideals. To refute this charge, the ministry proposed the elevation of the Rumanian principality into the kingdom of Rumania. The prince accepted the resolution; within ten days the new kingdom was recognized by all the Great Powers, and the coronation took place at Bucharest on the 22nd of May 1881. The royal crown was constructed of steel made from Turkish cannon captured at Plevna.
ment in 1882. Relations with Russia had remained Austria- strained ever since the war. The delimitation of the Dobrudja frontier was still unsettled, and owing to Russian opposition was not finally disposed of till 1884. Expenses incurred during the war led to much controversy, especially when the Russian government claimed the return of £120,000 advanced to enable the Rumanians to mobilize, and considered by them as a free gift. A compromise was made, both parties withdrawing their claims, in April 1882.
Relations with Austria-Hungary were also on a very unpleasant footing. There were two principal subjects of discord - the navigation of the Danube (q.v.) and the " national question," i.e. the status of the Vlach communities outside Rumania, and especially in Transylvania and Macedonia (see Vlachs and Macedonia). The Danube question became acute in 1881, 1883 and 1899; the national question is a more permanent source of trouble, affecting Austria-Hungary, Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria. King Charles, who naturally favoured the ally of Germany, and Bratianu, who regarded Russian policy with suspicion, endeavoured to promote a better understanding with Austria-Hungary. But there was a strong anti-German party in the country, especially among the old boiars and the peasantry. Community of creed, ancient traditional influence, the entire absence of Russian merchants, and t the consequent avoidance of many small commercial rivalries, contributed to bring about a sort of passive preference for Russia, while the bitter disputes that had occurred with Germany on the question of railway finance had left a very hostile feeling.
In March 1883 the government decided to introduce various important changes into the constitution. Three electoral colleges were formed instead of four; a considerable addition R of the was made to the numbers of the senate and chamber; Consti- trial by jury was established for press offences, except those committed against the royal family and the 1883-84. sovereigns of foreign states; these were to be tried by the ordinary tribunals without jury. A bill was passed endowing the crown with state lands, giving an annual rent of £24,000 in addition to the civil list fixed in 1866 at £49,000; another measure granted free passes on the railways and an allowance of £1 daily during the sitting of parliament to all senators and deputies. The revision of the constitution had estranged the two heads of the Liberal party, I. C. Bratianu, who was mainly responsible for the new measures, and C. A. Rosetti, who unsuccessfully advocated reforms of a far more democratic character. These two had been united by a most intimate friendship. One had never acted without the other. Rosetti was said to be the soul whilst Bratianu was the voice of the same personality. Henceforward Bratianu had sole control of the Liberal government. The revising chambers having fulfilled their special mandate, were dissolved in September 1884, and a new parliament assembled in November, the government, as usual, obtaining a large majority in both houses.
Since 1876 Bratianu had exercised an almost dictatorial power, and anything like a powerful parliamentary opposition had ceased to exist. But he had been too long in of power; the numerous state departments were ex clusively filled with his nominees; and some pecuniary I. C. scandals, in which the minister of war and other high officials were implicated, helped to augument his fast-growing unpopularity. New parties were formed in opposition, and the National Liberal and Liberal-Conservative parties combined to attack him. The first of these maintained that the government should be essentially Rumanian, and, while maintaining friendly relations with foreign Powers, should in no wise allow them to interfere with interal affairs. They also advocated reduction of expenditure and the inde pendence of the magistracy. The Liberal-Conservatives held generally the same views, but had as their ideal of foreign policy a guaranteed neutrality. Another party which now attracted considerable attention was that of the Junimists, or Young Conservatives. The name was taken from the Junimea, a literary society formed in Jassy in 1874 by P. Carp, T. Rosetti, and Maiorescu, and transformed into a political association in 1881. Their programme for home affairs involved the amelioration of the position of the peasantry and artisan classes, whose progress they considered had been overlooked, the irremovability of the magistracy, and a revision of the communal law in the sense of decentralization. In financial matters they advocated the introduction of a gold standard and the removal of the agio on gold, also the introduction of foreign capital to develop industries in the country; and as regards foreign policy, they were strong advocates of intimate and friendly relations with Austria-Hungary. Elections for a new chamber took place in February 1888, and the whole of the leaders of the opposition were elected, including Dimitrie Bratianu, the premier's brother, and Lascar Catargiu. I. C. Bratianu definitely retired on the 4th of April, after having held the premiership for twelve eventful years. Had he continued much longer in office it is probable that there would have been a revolutionary movement against the dynasty. During the previous parliament a Conservative manifesto, signed by Catargiu, D. Bratianu and other leaders of the opposition, openly threatened that if the ministers were not removed before the general election, the responsibility would be thrown, " not on those who served the crown, but on him who bore it "; and the name of Prince George Bibescu had been openly mentioned as a possible successor.
In ' the new chamber elected in October 1888 only five members of Bratianu's party retained their seats. The most prominent statesman in the new Conservative-Junimist ad- - ministration was P. Carp, who in the spring of 1889 succeeded in passing a bill which authorized the distribution of state lands among the peasantry. Despite this admirable measure, he was unable to retain office, and three changes of ministry followed. The Conservative-Junimist parliament nevertheless restored tranquillity to the country. On the 22nd of May 1891, the 25th anniversary of the king's accession was celebrated with great enthusiasm. Meanwhile the gold standard had been introduced (1889), and the financial situation was regarded as satisfactory. In December 1891 a stable cabinet was at last formed by Lascar Catargiu. The new ministry during their four years' tenure of office passed several useful measures through parliament. The state credit was improved by the conversion of the public debt; the sale of the state lands to the peasantry was actively continued; a law was passed making irremovable the judges of the court of appeal and the presidents of tribunals, and other important judicial reforms were carried out; a mining law was passed with the object of introducing foreign capital; and the commercial marine was developed by the formation of a state ocean service of passsenger and cargo steamers. Great reforms, which had been unsuccessfully attempted by former governments, were made in the service of public instruction and in the organization of the clergy. In 1893 and 1894 commercial and extradition treaties and a trade-mark convention were made with Great Britain, AustriaHungary and Germany. Meanwhile the Liberal opposition was being reorganized. On the death. of I. C. Bratianu, in 1891, his brother Dimitrie was proclaimed chief of the united Liberal party, but he also died in June 1892, and the veteran statesman Dimitrie Sturdza was recognized as the head of the Liberals. In 1894 he started a very violent agitation in favour of the Rumanians in Hungary. Another popular opposition cry was " Rumania for the Rumanians. " The new mining law, among other concessions, gave foreigners the right to lease lands for long periods for the working of petroleum, and this was denounced by the opposition as being hostile to national interests, and also as being against the spirit of the constitution, XXIII. 27 a Rumania was now comparatively, but not entirely, free from fears of serious foreign complications. Austria and Russia alike resented the decision to fortify Bucharest with and the Sereth line, adopted by the Rumanian govern which prohibited foreigners from holding lands. The bill was carried by the government in April 1895, as well as another important measure favouring the construction of local railways by private contractors. The Liberal opposition protested, retired from the chamber, and took no further part in legislative proceedings. The Liberal party had been out of office for eight years, the Conservative -Junimist coalition had practically carried out its complete programme, and legislation was at a deadlock owing to the abstention of the Liberal opposition. As the electorate showed itself in favour of a change of ministry, Catargiu resigned, and a new Liberal government was formed by D. Sturdza.
The advent to power of a statesman who had recently been making such violent attacks on the Hungarian government caused some anxiety in Austria-Hungary. When once office was obtained, it was to the interest of the new government that the agitation should subside. The official opening by the emperor of Austria of the new channel through the Iron Gates of the Danube, on the 27th of September 1896, was the means of bringing about a great improvement in the relations between the two countries. It led to an exchange of visits between the emperor and King Charles, who also visited the tsar Nicholas II. in August 1898. The visit was the symbol of a reconciliation between the Rumanians and the Russians, the relations between whom had been the reverse of cordial since 1878. As regards home politics, the overwhelming majority of the Liberal party at the elections of 1895, instead of being a source of strength, proved the very reverse. It caused the party to split up into factions - Sturdzists, Aurelianists and Flevists, so called after the names of their respective chiefs. Sturdza himself soon had to retire. The head of the Orthodox Church, the metropolitan Gennadius, had for some years past, as head of the philanthropic establishments founded by the princess Brancovan, desired to obtain the entire management of these wealthy foundations, and had made violent attacks on the two administrators, Prince George Bibescu and Prince Stirbei, both members of the Brancovan family. In the quarrel that ensued the prelate was openly accused of simony, of heresy, and other matters more suitable for a criminal court. After a public trial before the Holy Synod, he was found guilty of certain canonical offences, and sentenced to be deposed. The same night, he was seized by the police, and removed by force to a neighbouring monastery. This harsh treatment of the head of the Church led to an attack on Sturdza. On the 3rd of December 1896, the president of the council, M. Aurelian, was called on to reconstitute a Liberal cabinet, with the principal object of calming public opinion by the settlement of this question. Aurelian then appealed to the patriotic sentiments of the Conservative party to help to solve the difficulty, and with the aid of Lascar Catargiu and Tache Ionescu the following decision was reached: the Holy Synod was to reverse its judgment, and the metropolitan was to be restored to his ecclesiastical rank; but, after holding it for a few days, he was voluntarily to resign and to receive as compensation a handsome pension. Calm was thus restored, but Aurelian and his colleagues were not inclined to hand over their portfolios to Sturdza and his partisans. The struggle terminated in the success of Sturdza, who in April 1897 returned to power and remained president of the council until 1899. Few of the important measures promised in the Liberal programme were passed, one for the reform of public instruction being the most noteworthy. Sturdza's government, which had risen to power mainly on the national question, was also destined to fall on it. A popular agitation was raised on the subject of certain subsidies made by the Rumanians for the support of the Rumanian schools at Kronstadt in Transylvania, and Sturdza was accused of too great subserviency to the Hungarian government. The agitation culminated in street riots at Bucharest. On the same evening that Sturdza tendered his resignation to the king (April 1899) the veteran Conservative statesman Lascar Catargiu suddenly died.
The Conservatives, led by G. G. Cantacuzene, returned to office with an overwhelming majority. They were immediately confronted by an acute economic crisis. The financial The position of the country had hitherto on the surface been very satisfactory. The public debt, mostly crisis of placed in Germany, amounted to about £51,000,000. The interest had been regularly paid. But the facility with which money had always been borrowed gave rise to great extravagance. Expenses which ought to have been defrayed out of the ordinary budget, such as the erection of magnificent public offices at Bucharest, were frequently defrayed out of the loans; and the custom had arisen when money was scarce of issuing treasury bonds. When the Conservatives came into office they found that the payment of 21 millions of these bonds would shortly become due, and there were no resources in the treasury to meet them. Owing to the Transvaal War and other causes, the money market was most unfavourable, especially in Germany; and there was an almost entire failure of the harvest. The value of cereals exported in 1898 was about 9 millions sterling, in 1899 only 31 millions. The government managed to extricate itself from its immediate difficulties in the autumn of 1899, by raising a loan of £7,000,000 in Berlin, but on very stringent terms. Besides paying a much higher rate of interest than heretofore, it bound itself not to contract any further loans until this one was paid. The Conservatives were united in wishing to meet the financial crisis by a moderate reduction of expenditure and a large increase of taxation, while the Liberal opposition advocated the permanent reduction of the annual expenditure of £800,000, which would necessitate the raising of £200,000 only by fresh taxation. The Conservative programme was naturally unpopular; Carp and the Junimists were unwilling to co-operate with the government, and, on the 26th of February 1901, D. Sturdza again became premier.
His administration lasted until the 31st of December 1904, and averted the impending bankruptcy of Rumania by a policy of strict retrenchment. In 1904 Sturdza was able to exceed the proposed limit of annual expenditure, £8,740,000, owing to a great increase in the value 1901-5. of the tobacco monopoly. Even a recurrence of agricultural depression during the same year left the national credit intact. Another financial reform was undertaken by the Conservatives, who returned to power on the 4th of January 1905, with G. G. Cantacuzene as prime minister, and in May floated the conversion loan, already described.
The chief causes of the agrarian insurrection in March 1907 have been outlined above (under Land Tenure). But an additional cause was the harsh treatment of the peasants on the state and communal lands leased to Jewish middlemen. At first an attack on the Jews 1907. alone, the rising soon became a jacquerie directed against all the large landowners. Numerous towns and villages were sacked and partly burned, and 140,000 soldiers were employed to suppress the revolt. On the 24th of March the Cantacuzene ministry resigned and was succeeded by a Liberal government under the leadership of D. Sturdza, who completed the restoration of order by strong military measures and afterwards initiated remedial legislation. He abolished the system by which public lands were leased to middlemen, reduced the land tax on small holdings, and granted new facilities for obtaining credit to the peasants. After a general election in June 1907, Sturdza remained in office with an overwhelming majority. To meet the cost of agrarian reform, and of the reorganization of the army (1908), he introduced various fiscal changes, notably an alteration in the budget system, by which the total revenue and expenditure were shown for the first time (see Finance, above).
Rumania was little affected by the political changes in the Balkan Peninsula (1908-10) coincident with the Turkish revolution, the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the Dual Monarchy, the proclamation of Bulgarian independence and the erection of Montenegro into a kingdom. South of the Danube its chief political interest centred in the Kutzo-Vlach communities in Macedonia, which were the object of a Panhellenic propaganda most offensive to Rumanian nationalism. An irade of the sultan Abdul Hamid had in 1906 recognized the existence of the Kutzo-Vlachs as a religious body (millet), forming an integral part of the Rumanian Church. This decision was regarded by the Greeks as a blow to their own interests, and Greek revolutionary bands were accused of persecuting the Kutzo-Vlachs. (See also Macedonia.) Even before 1906 there was keen rivalry between Greece and Rumania, and the " Macedonian question " was the underlying cause of the disputes which, arising ostensibly from quite trivial causes, led temporarily to the rupture of diplomatic relations between Greece and Rumania in 1905, 1906 and 1910.
Bibliography. - No scientific history of Rumania was published up to the 20th century, but the task of collecting and editing original documents was partially carried out by the Rumanian Academy and by private students, especially after 1880. The so-called Chronicle of Hurul is a modern forgery, and up to the 14th century the only valid authorities are Slavonic, Hungarian and Byzantine chroniclers. Thenceforward a great mass of material is available. It is partly incorporated in the yearly Annalele of the Academy, 2nd series, from 1880; and in the 30 volumes of E. de Hurmuzaki's Documente privitore relative la istoria Romdnilor (Bucharest, 1876, &c.). Other important original documents, or works containing such documents, are Verantius's 16th-century De situ Transylvaniae, Moldaviae, et Transalpinae, in Kovachich's Scriptores rerum Hungaricarum minores (Budapest, 1798); G. Urechia's late 16th-century Chronique de Moldavie, ed. J. Picot (Paris, 1878); Rumanian text in Old Slavonic characters, with French translation and notes of great value; the 17th-century Opere Complete of Miron Costiu, ed. V. A. Urechia (Bucharest, 1886); A. M. del Chiaro, Istoria delle moderne rivoluzioni della Valachia con la descrizione del paese (Venice, 1878); the early 18th-century Operele principelui D. Cantemirii, issued by the Academy (Bucharest, 1872, &c.); N. lorga, Acte si fragmente cu privire la istoria Romdnilor (Bucharest, 1895-97) M. Kogalniceanu, Cronicele Romeinii (Bucharest, 1872-74); J. L. Carra, Histoire de Moldavie et de Valachie, avec une dissertation sur l'etal actuel de ces deux Provinces (Jassy, 1 777); A. M. Blanc de Lanautte, Memoire sur l'etat ancien et actuel de la Moldavie, presente d S.A.S. le prince A. Ypsilanti 1787 (Bucharest, 1902); D. A. Sturdza, Acte si documente relative la istoria renascerei Romdnii (Bucharest, 1900, &c.); ibid., Scrierile si cuvintarile lui I. C. Bratianu (Bucharest, 1903, &c.). On the Phanariote period see P. Eliade, De l'influence francaise sur l'esprit public en Roumanie. Les origines. Etude sur l'etat de la societe roumaine a l'epoque des regnes phanariotes (Paris, 1898). For a general history of Rumania, see V. A. Urechia, Istoria Romdnilor (Bucharest, 1891, &c., 8 vols.); A. D. Xenopol, Istoria Rominilor din Dacia Traiana (Jassy, 1888-93, 6 vols. - abridged French edition entitled Histoire des Roumains, 2 vols., Paris, 1896); and P. Negulescu, Histoire du droit et des institutions de la Roumanie (Paris, 1898, &c.). Sketches of Rumanian history are given in A. Sturdza, La terre et les races roumaines (Paris, 1905); and W. Miller, The Balkans (London, 1896). For a comprehensive bibliography of Rumanian history, see N. Iorga's introduction to vol. x. of the Hurmuzaki collection; vol. xxii. of the Annalele; Bibliografia Romdnesca veche 1508-1830, by C. Bianu and H. Hodos (Bucharest, 1903, &c.); and D. Onciul, Originile principatelor romdne (Bucharest, 1898). (H. TR.; X.) Language Rumanian 1 is, geographically, an isolated eastern member of the group of Romance languages, being severed from all the rest by countries in which the predominant speech is Slavonic or Magyar. It represents the original rustic Latin of the Roman provincials in Moesia and Dacia, as modified by centuries of alien rule. Structurally, its Latin characteristics have been well preserved; but its vocabulary has undergone great changes, becoming so far Slavonized that the ratio of words of Slavonic origin to words of Latin origin is approximately as three to two; large numbers of loan-words have also been added from Turkish, Greek, Magyar and other sources. It is noteworthy, however, that where Latin words have survived they are sometimes purer than in the Romance languages of the West 1 i.e. the so-called Daco-Rumanian, spoken by the vast majority of Rumans over the whole of Rumania, in Transylvania, Bukovina, the Banat, Bessarabia, and some districts of Servia and Bulgaria bordering on the Danube. The two most important dialects are the Istro-Rumanian, spoken in part of Istria but rapidly becoming extinct, and the Macedo-Rumanian, spoken by the Kutzo-Vlachs (see Vlachs). The Istro-Rumanian forms, as it were, a link - now completely severed - between the Romance of the Balkans and/the Romance of the West. In the Macedo-Rumanian there are no Magyar loan-words, but there is a large Albanian element, and Greek loan-words are more numerous than Slavonic.
Lat. domina is better represented by Rum. domna, " lady," than by Ital. donna, Span. dona, Port. dona, Fr. dame). Some words indeed 2 - such as laudare, to praise, ducere, to lead - retain unaltered the forms under which they were used by Virgil and Cicero. A feature of the language which distinguishes it from all other members of the group, and appears to be of even higher antiquity than the word-forms above mentioned, is the retention of a suffix article - e.g. frate, brother, fratele, the brother; zi, day, ziva, the day. This usage seems to have survived from the pre-Roman period. A similar suffix article is retained in Albanian, which almost certainly represents the original language of the Thraco-Illyrian tribes (see Albania); and these tribes belonged to the same ethnical and linguistic group as the Daco-Moesians represented by the Vlachs.
Rumanian orthography remained in a transitional state throughout the 19th century. The Latin alphabet is used, with special signs to represent sounds borrowed from Slavonic, &c. All the unaccented vowels except e are pronounced as in Italian; e has the same phonetic value as in Old Slavonic (=French e) and is often similarly preiotized (= ye in yet), notably at the beginning of all words except neologisms. The accented vowels é and ó are pronounced as ea and oa (petra, rock, = peatra; morte, death, = moarte); they are written in full, as diphthongs, at the end of a word and sometimes in other positions. The sound of the Slavonic y,J (a guttural y) is represented by d, e or o, though these letters occur as frequently in words of Latin origin (e.g. cind =quando) as in those derived from Slavonic; is represented by d or i, having the nasal sound of un in French; i and is at the end of a word are mute or short. Of the consonants, c followed by e or i=ch (as in church), otherwise k; d or d resembles the English j; g is hard before e and i, otherwise soft; h is guttural, as ch in loch; j is pronounced as in French; r as in Russian; s ors (Sla y. III) as sh; t or t (Sla y. II,) as is or tz; w is wanting. The remaining consonants have the same phonetic values as in English.
Rumanian is highly inflected. It possesses two regular substantive declensions and six cases, the vocative being in common use. The large class of heterogeneous nouns which are masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural constitute what is sometimes called the neuter declension. There are three regular conjugations, distinguished (as in Latin) according to the termination of the present infinitive in a, e or i; e.g. (I) a ara or arare, to plough, (2) a crede or credere, to believe, (3) a dormi or dormire, to sleep. Verbs ending in f, however, are sometimes classed as a fourth conjugation. The second form of the present infinitive (arare, credere, dormire) is used as a noun. The so-called " simple perfect " (perfectul simplu) has often the force of an aorist. Compound tenses are formed by the addition of certain particles and of the auxiliary verbs - a a y e, to have, a fi, to be, and a voi, to will. For the passive voice, a fi is used, with the past participle of the required verb. All tenses of reflexive verbs except the imperative and present participle are formed by prefixing the pronoun which indicates the object to the verb, in the dative or genitive case (abbreviated) as the verb may require; but in the reflexive imperative and present participle the verb precedes the pronoun; e.g. a propune, to propose, a si propune, to propose to oneself, but propune i, propose to yourself.
The accentuation of Rumanian, though complex, is governed by certain broad principles, except in the case of neologisms, many of which have been borrowed from French and Italian without change of accent. Nouns retain the accent of the nominative singular in all cases and in both numbers (e.g. copila, girl, vocative plur, copilelor), except when a diminutive or augmentative suffix is added; the accent then shifts to the suffix. The language is very rich in diminutive and augmentative forms; e.g. the name Ion or loan (John), has the diminutives lonicei, Ionita, Ionascii, Ianache, Ienachel, &c. In verbs - apart from a few exceptional tenses - the accent falls on the first syllable of the inflectional suffix, e.g. en dorm, I sleep, but 'eu' dormissem, I had slept. For the sake of euphony, a vowel is frequently interpolated between two consonants; e.g. in masculine nouns terminating in a consonant, an interpolated u precedes 1 to form the suffix article (om, man, om-u-1, the man).
Second Period: 1710-1830
The Phanariote period has been described as one of total decay; the political degradation of Rumania was thought to be reflected in its spiritual life. But the facts do not warrant this opinion. The few who had taken the trouble to study Rumanian literature paid not the slightest attention to the vast MS. material accumulated during the years of the Phanariote dominion, and out of sheer ignorance and political bias condemned this period as sterile. Another influence was far more potent than the conduct of the Greek princes, though some of them were real benefactors of the people. In Transylvania one section of the Rumanian population had accepted the spiritual rule of the pope; they became now Greek-Catholic, instead of Greek Orthodox. Rome took good care to educate the priesthood far above the status of the Orthodox priests, and continued an extensive proselytizing activity. So long as the Rumanians were spiritually united with the other Orthodox nations, and so long as they used the Slavonic or Cyrillic alphabet, they would practically be cut off from the Latin West. If, however, they could be induced to discard the old Slavonic alphabet and substitute for it the Latin, and could be brought to recognize their national and ethnical unity with ancient Rome, it was hoped that then they would be more easily induced to enter into the unity of faith. Thus a great change was wrought towards the end of the 18th and in the first half of the 10th century in the whole current of Rumanian literature. It suited the promoters of that movement to pretend that they started a new era. But the Latin or Transylvanian movement wrought great havoc in Rumanian literature and caused the greatest confusion in the language. Only now are some authors beginning to free themselves from the evil influence.
By the end of the 17th century Rumanian had become the authorized language of the Church, and the Rumanian translation of the Gospels (printed 1693) had become the Authorized, Version. Most of the liturgical books officially adopted gicaJ and revised in this period are still used for church ser vices. Such are the Ceasoslov, revised by Bishop Kliment of Ramnicu Valcea (1745), the Evhologion (1764), the Katavasiar (1753), The monumental publication of the Mineiu, in 12 folio volumes, by Bishops Kesarie and Filaret of Ramnicu Valcea (1776-80), is equal in im portance if it be not superior to the no less monumental publication of the Lives of Saints, also in 12 huge folio volumes, published under the direction and with the assistance of the metropolitan Veniamin of Moldavia. The latter was translated from the Russian, appeared in Neamtzu (1809-12), and was reprinted in Bucharest (1835-36). In beauty, richness and lucidity of language, and in dignity of style, these two books resemble the Bible of 1688.
Slavonic having entirely disappeared from the sources of literature, writers and translators turned to Greek originals and for more than a century were busy translating into Rumanian the most important works of the older Fathers of the Church. Some of these translations were printed much later; thus the Hexaemeron of Basil the Great (andof Epiphanius) translated inthe middle of the 18th century, was printed at Bucharest in 1827. The Scala Coeli of Joh. Klimakus, the Treasury of St Damascenus (MS. 1747 by a certain Mihalacea), the homilies of Cyril of Alexandria, and those of Ephraem the Syrian, were printed at Neamtzu in 1818. The Panoplia of Euthymius Zygabenus ('1775) and the Commentary of Theophylact were printed by Veniamin (Jassy, 1805). The homilies of Theodor Studites (MS. of 1712) were edited by Bishop Filaret and published at Ramnicu Valcea in 1784; a translation of Gregory of Nazianzus appeared at Bucharest in 1727. The great polemical work of Simeon of Thessalonica, the Greek original of which was published by Dositheiu (Jassy, 1683), had been translated into Rumanian long before it was printed (Bucharest, 1756). The Lafsaikon, mentioned above, was printed at Bucharest in 1754. All these translations are written in good Rumanian. One can see how a language not originally suited for abstract problems and theological dialectics was slowly but surely improved and made capable of expressing profound and subtle ideas.
In Transylvania, with the conversion to Greek-Catholicism of Bishop Athanasius in 1701, the Greek Orthodox had to place themselves down to 1850 under the protection of the Servian metropolitan of Karlovatz. No writer of any consequence arose among them. The " United " fared better, and many a gifted young Rumanian was sent to Rome and helped from Vienna to obtain a serious education and occasionally also temporal promotion. With a view probably to counteract the literary activity in Rumania, the bishops P. P. Aaron and Ioan Bobb were indefatigable in the translation of Latin writers. First and foremost a new translation of the whole Bible was undertaken by Samuel Klain. It appeared in Blazh (1 793-95)It falls short of the older version of 1688; it was modernized in its language, and no doubt a careful examination would reveal differences in the translation of those passages in which the Catholic tradition differs from the Eastern. Bobb translated Thomas A. Kempis's Imitatio Christi (Blazh, 1812); he wrote a Theologhie moralti (ibid. 1801) and adapted the Rumanian service-books to the new order of things. Popular catechisms and various histories of the Church were then written. Mention may be made of a few more moral treatises such as the Ufa poceiintei, " Gate of Penitence " (Kronstadt, 1812); Oglinda omului din eiuntru, " The Mirror of the Inner Man "; or Pilde filosofesti, " Philosophical Saws and Maxims " (Tirgovishtea, 1715). Of greater importance was the collection of fables with their " moral " translated and modified from the Servian of Obrenovich - Fabule moralicesti, by Tzikindeal (Budapest, 1814). These are heavy and follow the original too literally. Tzikindeal (d. 1818) and his contemporaries in Hungary had lost contact with the Rumanian literature in Walachia and Moldavia, and the same was the case with the other writers of their school. Radovici or Dinu din Golesti, an enlightened Walachian boyar, who was one of the first Rumanians to describe a journey in Western Europe, is also the author of a collection of maxims and parables, Adunare de pilde bisericesti filosofesti (Budapest, 1824); he left a larger collection in MS. partly edited by Zane in his Proverbele Romdnilor, vols. xi. - xvi.
After 1727 Rumanian was recognized as the language of the law-courts, and through the annexation of Bukovina by Austria (1774) and of Bessarabia by Russia (1812), codes for the civil and political administration of those provinces were drawn up in Rumanian, either in accordance with the established law of the land or in consonance with the laws of Austria and Russia.
Such legal codes reflect the German or Russian original. They were however, of importance as they served as models (to some extent) for the new legislative code compiled in Moldavia under Prince Calimach; this was originally published in Greek (1816), and afterwards translated into Rumanian with the assistance of G. Asaki. (Jassy, 1833). The Walachian civil laws and local usages were collected and arranged under the direction of Prince Ypsilanti (1780) in Greek and Rumanian; and under Prince Caragea another code was published (1817), which remained in force until 1832, when the " Organic Law " changed the whole trend of legislation. One more collection, an abstract from the Greek Basilica, published by Donici (Jassy, 1814), must be mentioned, for through it the legal. terminology of the modern codes was more or less fixed.
The last and probably the best writer of Rumanian history in the Phanariote period is Neculcea. He wrote a history of Moldavia. to his own time, but for the period before 1684 his work is History.. more or less an abstract from older writers. The original part covers the period from 1684-1743, and is to some extent an autobiography of a very adventurous life. Neculcea adds to his. chronicle a collection of historical legends, many of them still found in the ballads of Moldavia. Among other historians might be mentioned N. Roset, the continuator of Neculcea. Enaki (lanache) Cogalniceanu wrote a history of the period 1730-1774, and followed the example of Greek writers by introducing rhymes into it. He was also the author of some political satires and other poems on G. Ghica, M. Bogdan and Ioan Cuza. The historians of the time under pressure of political exigencies did not scruple to invent treaties between the Porte and the Rumanian principalities. A series of such spurious collections of treaties were submitted to the Powers for ratification; in them imaginary rights and privileges alleged to. have been granted by the Turks were described, and the Rumanian representatives asked that after the peace negotiations of 1774 they should be sanctioned afresh. In Walachia there was not a single historian of importance in the first half of the 18th century. In the second we have the chronicle of Dionisie Eclesiarh (1764-1815),. a simple-minded and uncritical writer who describes contemporary events. The ancestor of a great family of poets and writers, I. Vacarescu described the history of the Ottoman empire from the beginning to 1791, interpolating doggerel verses. Alexander Beldiman describes in a rhymed epic, Eteria (1821), the first battles, between the Greeks and the Turks in Moldavia. It is a bitter satire upon the Greeks. Similar in tendency is another rhymed chronicle known under the name of Zilot (c. 1825).
Whilst a political and national revival was taking place in Moldavia and Walachia, towards the beginning of the 19th century, the Latin movement went on in Transylvania. There ethical and religious tendencies got the upper hand. Three historians had been partly educated in Rome under the protection of Prince Borgia and the influence of the Jesuit Minotto and the College of the Propaganda; they were Samuel Klain, Petru Maior and George Sincai. To, Klain's initiative can be traced most of the work of the three. Unfortunately his writings, with a few exceptions, are still in MS. He is the author of the first history of the Rumanians in Dacia written according to the standards of Western science. It seems to. have described the wars between the Romans and the Dacians, and to have been continued down to 1795; a history of the Rumanian Church also formed part of the book. P. Maior published an almost identical history (Budapest, 1812), and it is probable that he had made use of Klain's composition. In both the tendency is the same - to trace the modern Rumanians directly from the ancient Romans, and to prove their continuity in these countries from the time of Trajan to this day. Political and religious aims were combined in this new theory. A conflict was raging between the Hungarians and Rumanians, and history was required to furnish proofs of the greater antiquity of the Rumanians in Transylvania. George Sincai (1753-1816), who was an intimate friend of Klain and collaborated in most of his works, succeeded him as revisor at the printing office in Budapest. Sincai worked for nearly forty years at his monumental History of Rumania, which the Hungarian censor did not allow to be printed on account of its nationalist and anti-Magyar tendencies. It remained until 1853-54, when it was printed at the expense of Prince Gr. Ghica. The edition of 1886 is only a reprint,. though both the original MS. and a better copy had meanwhile been discovered.
These books had no immediate influence in Walachia and Moldavia, where fiction and the drama had developed under the influence, first, of Greek and then to an increasing extent of French, Italian and German models. It was towards the end of /magin- thei 8th century that Rumanian literature began to emanci pate itself, very slowly of course, and to start on a career o f Litera- its own in poetry and belles lettres. Curiously enough, the first novel to be translated was the " Ethiopic History " of Bishop, Heliodorus. The Odyssey and Iliad were then translated into prose, and the Arabian Nights, after undergoing an extraordinary change in Italian and modern Greek, appear in Rumanian literature at the middle of the 18th century under the name of Halima. The Glykis, a Greek printing firm in Venice, published many popular books in Rumanian which found their way into the principalities. The epic of Vincenzo Cornaro was translated into prose alternating with verse, first under the name of Erotocrit and then slightly changed as Filerot si Antusa. Anton Pann printed it as his own composition. Kritil ,si Andronius (Jassy, 1794) is almost the last novel or story translated direct from the Greek. The young men of Walachia had come into contact with Western literature, which they were anxious to transplant to their own country. Some had been sent to Paris for their education, such as Poteca, Marcovici, the Voinescus, Moroiu and others, who developed an almost feverish activity in translation. Most of the writings of Florian, Marmontel, Le Sage, Montesquieu and others were rapidly translated into Rumanian. The picaresque novel Lazarillo de Tormes also found its translator, and appeared in 1839, Paul and Virginia in 1831. Campe's German Robinson Crusoe (1816) and his Discovery of America were translated by Draghici (1835). G. Asaki and Alexander Beldiman in Moldavia developed a similar activity. Beldiman copied a number of ancient chronicles, wrote a satire on the Greeks, and translated and adapted a number of French tragedies and dramas, in verse and prose.
Nowhere has the theatre played a more important role in the history of civilization than in Walachia and Moldavia, more in the former than in the latter. It formed the rallying-ground for the new generation which chafed under the tyranny of a 1? Greek court. A certain Aristia, of Greek origin, but soon acclimatized to his surroundings as teacher at the high school in Bucharest, was the first to adapt foreign dramas for the Rumanian stage. These were first performed in Greek and afterwards translated into Rumanian. The plays produced on the Rumanian stage included most of the dramas of Moliere, some of Corneille, Kotzebue and Metastasio, whose Achille in Schiro was the first drama translated into Rumanian (by Iordache Slatineau, printed at *ibiu in 1797). Schiller was also translated, and a few plays of Shakespeare (Hamlet, &c.) from a French version. Victor Hugo's Angelo and Maria Tudor were translated by Constantin Negrutin. Those who kept in touch with the old literature - men such as Beldiman, Marcovici and Negrutin - were able even in their metrical translations to do justice to the originals and at the same time not to distort the character of the Rumanian language. Among such translators was Skavinschi, who came originally from Transylvania to Jassy, and translated Regnald's Democrit into verse.
The lyrical and epic poetry of the time follows somewhat the same lines, but with certain notable differences. The individuality Poety. of the authors is more marked, and they advance much sooner from translations to independent poetry. Transylvania, which awoke to a new life towards the end of the 18th century, produced some of the most popular poets. Among them were Vasile Aaron (1770-1822) and Ion Barak (1779-1848). Aaron wrote the Passion, in 10,000 verses (1802; often reprinted); the lyrical romances of Piram Tisbe (1808) and Sofronim si Hdriti (1821); and the humorous Leonat .i Dorofata, a satire on bad women and on drunken husbands, now a chapbook. Barak wrote Ra sipirea Ierusalimului (1821), " The Destruction of Jerusalem," almost as long as Aarori's Passion; and he versified a Magyar folktale, Arghir si Elena, which has also become a chapbook, and has been interpreted as a political poem with a hidden meaning. He also translated the Arabian Nights from the German. In Walachia .a certain Ion Budai Deleanu, a man of great learning, author of a hitherto unpublished Rumanian dictionary of great value, wrote a satirical epos in which gipsies play the chief part. It is called riganiafa (1812) and consists of 12 songs and of many thousand verses. The author displays a profound knowledge of the life and the customs of the gipsies, and of Western literature from the Batrachomyomachia to the Pucelle of Voltaire.
The love-songs of the time are primitive imitations of the NeoGreek lyric dithyrambs and rhapsodies, which through the teaching of the princes .of Walachia were considered as the fountainhead of poetical inspiration. But a closer acquaintance with the West led to greater independence in poetical composition. In the three generations of the Vacarescu one can follow this process of rapid ' evolution. Ianache Vacarescu, author of the first native Rumanian grammar on independent lines, was also the first who tried his hand at poetry, following Greek examples. He then studied Italian, French and German poetry, and made translations from Voltaire .and Goethe. His son Alecu (b. 1795) followed his example. Both were overshadowed by the grandson Ioan (b. 1818), who was more than any other man both the representative of an epoch fast vanishing and the harbinger of the new spirit that was stirring young Rumania. The collected poems of I. Vacarescu were published in 1848; but among them were some of the poems of Ianache and Alecu, which were confused with his own work. In this volume, Colectie din poeziile domnului mare logofet I. Vacarescu, there are -odes, hymns, patriotic poems, ballads, lyrical and didactic poems, some of them among the most beautiful in the language. A contemporary of his earlier period, Paris Mumuleanu (1794-1837), wrote his Rost de poezie (1820) under Greek influence, but afterwards passed under the spell of Maior and Tzikindea, whose Latin propaganda he was one of the first to advocate in Rumania. In 'his Caractere (Bucharest, 1828) Latin forms are common. One more poet, and a real one, is Vasile Carlova (1809-1831), whose Ruins of Tirgovishtec sufficed to place him among the foremost Rumanian. p oets of the 19th century.
In Moldavia a similar development took place, translations leading up to independent production. The most prominent figure is that of the scholar and linguist Constantin Konaki (1777-1849), who might be termed the Rumanian Longfellow for the facility and felicity of his translations from Western poetry and for his short poems, easily set to music and very popular. His Alcatuiri tcilmaciri appeared in 1858. Constantin Negrutin, who was at first influenced by the Russian poets, notably Pushkin, successfully translated poems of Victor Hugo, and rivalled Konaki in his dexterity and fidelity to the original.
Third Period: 1830 - . - The agitation for the transliteration of the alphabet, the elimination of all non-Latin words from the language and the ostracism of the old literature, completely crippled all literary activity, first in Transylvania and then in Rumania. The Latin movement was first brought into Walachia by a certain George Lazar from across the mountains. Lazar was appointed teacher at the St Sava school of Bucharest, where he spread the new doctrine of the Latin origin of the Rumanians; Latinizing tendencies were, however, not yet imported into the language. Of his pupils there was one whose influence became decisive: Ion Eliade (Heliade), afterwards also known as I. E. Radulescu (1802-1872), a man of immense activity, of great power of initiative and of still greater imagination. He it was who ushered in the new epoch, and for close upon forty years he stood at the head of almost every literary undertaking.
There were two periods in his life - the latter the exact opposite and negation of the former. Up to 1848 he was closely connected with politics, the theatre and the school - he was the successor to Lazar; he wrote grammars, and the introductions to his grammars are models of lucidity, combined with a wide historical view. He was the founder of the first political and literary review, and he had a genius for discovering talent, and the merit of assisting it. Through his reviews he trained the middle-class to read and to take an active interest in literary problems. Through his Curier de ambe sexe (1837-41) he disseminated translations from political and other works, thus paving the way for the political change of 1848. About this time he turned to philology, and fell under the spell of the Transylvanian school. Slowly he developed his theories about language and writing, and he ended as a fanatic wedded to extraordinary views. He was a prolific writer and translator of dramas and novels from French and Italian, the latter appearing mostly in his periodical. The number of his publications is legion.
All the prominent Rumanians of that period were politicians; they strove to obtain the emancipation of the country from Turkish dominion, and, later on, the union of Walachia and Mol- Boling davia. Everything was placed at the service of this national "ea"'aspiration, which is the keynote of the poems of Bolinti neanu (1826-1873). He also was discovered by Radulescu, who published his first and best known poem, " The Dying Virgin." In 1848 he was exiled, together with the other leaders of the revolution, and he spent the next nine years in travels in the East. There he gathered the materials for his lyrical poems " Macedonele " and " Florile Bosforului ? " Returning in 1857 to Walachia, he occupied high administrative posts, and he wrote a number of historical novels (Traian, Mircea, ,Stefan, &c.), dramas (Leipu,neanu, Mihnea, Mihaiu, &c.), longer poems (Sorin, Conrad), and his politico-philosophical novel Elena. These mostly patriotic compositions were as a rule less felicitous than his political satires (Nemesis, Menade, &c.). His peculiar strength lay in the historical ballad, which he was the first to introduce into Rumanian poetry, and in the vivid portraiture of Oriental scenery and emotions. He died in a lunatic asylum forgotten by all, and even his writings have, save in one early edition, not been published without unwarranted alterations by the editor Sion.
A contemporary of Bolintineanu was Grigorie Alexandrescu (1812-188'5), also a pupil of Eliade. imperfect in his rhyme and rhythm, his poetry is of a didactical nature, and his best - poems are rhymed fables, many of which are thinly disguised political satires. He also translated the Alzire (1834) and Merope (1847) of Voltaire. Among his contemporaries may be mentioned G. Creteanu (1829-1887) and A. Sihleanu (1834-1857), who left some weak poems of a sentimental and patriotic character. A Deparatianu (1835-1865), whose language shows traces of the new Latinizing school; and Nicolae Nicoleanu (1833-1871), whose powerful poems, full of deep and often mystical reflections, lead on from Alexandrescu to Eminescu, all three being the poets of pessim- ism. In TeodorSerbanescu (b. 1839) we find the reflex of Bolintineanu of the earlier period, in the beauty and simplicity of his lyrical poems - not yet published in complete form. Like *erbanescu, Vasile Alecsandri (1821-1890), the greatest of Rumanian lyrical poets (see Alecsandri),. was a Moldavian. In France, under the influence of Beranger and the romantic school, he was led to turn to popular poetry for inspiration. He collected Rumanian popular songs and Alec- ballads (Dome, 1844) (Llicramioare, 1853). In Pasteluri . (1867) he introduced admirable pictures of popular life into Rumanian poetry. In Legende (1871) and Osta.Fii noctrii (1877) he strikes the patriotic note. His fame rests on his lyrical poetry alone, which retains some of the charm of popular poetry. Alecsandri is less successful in his dramas, most of which are adaptations from French originals; the only merit of his novels is that amidst the phonetic and philological turmoil he kept to the purer language of the people.
From Alecsandri there is a natural transition to his great rival, who was also his superior in depth of thought and in mastery of form and language, the great poet of pessimism, Mihail E Eminescu (q.v.). Mention may also be made of Matilde Cugler Poni (b. 1853), who published some admirable short poems in the Rumanian reviews (Poesii, 1888). Veronica Miele (1853-1889) belongs to the same circle of gifted Moldavian women (Poesii, 1887). But all these men or women disappear with the appearance of Eminescu, who, like Bolintineanu, started a new school of poetry and left a deep and growing influence upon the new generation. His best follower, though possessing originality of his own, is A. VlahuCa (b. 1859). G. Cosbuc, who has risen more recently to fame, is the poet of the unfortunate Rumanian peasant, emancipated only in name and on paper, and a prey to greedy landowners and to a medieval administration. The poets of this school drew their inspiration from popular poetry, and all of them were sons of the lower middle class or of peasants, who by dint of heavy work and great hardship were able to rise above the narrow social conditions in which they were born.
Somewhat different has been the development of the Rumanian prose writers. They suffered in consequence of the philological confusion brought about by Eliade and his assistants,. mostly men who after 1848 immigrated from Transylvania and brought with them their own prejudices and narrow intolerance. Too great influence was accorded to them, and the result was that for a long time scarcely a single Rumanian novelist or historian can be mentioned. It was only after N. Balcescu had undertaken the edition of the ancient Walachian chronicles, and had found in them admirable prose writers, that he ventured on a continuous history (1851-52) of the Rumanians under Michael the Brave, written not as a didactic treatise but as a poem in prose - full of colour and of energy. A. Odobescu, the friend and literary executor of Balcescu, was a consummate scholar of ancient and medieval antiquities, and wrote a history of ancient art. His Pseudkynegetikos is an unsurpassed model of elegant writing and of fine irony. What Alecsandri was for verse, Odobescu was for prose. He also created the Rumanian historical novel, by his Mihnea Voda (1858) and Doamna Kiajna (1860). The first novel describing human nature in everyday life is the Ciocoii vechi not (1863) of Nicolae Filimon (1819-1865). In Moldavia where the knowledge of the old chroniclers had not entirely died out and disturbing philological influences were not so acutely felt, we find the vigorous writings of Mihail Cogalniceanu - one of the leading spirits of the 19th century, the greatest mind and the real founder of Rumania. Cogalniceanu published various reviews, some of a political, others of a more literary character, such as the Dacia literar y (1840) and Archiva romdneasca (1845-46); he has also the great merit of having published for the first time a collection of the Moldavian chronicles. G. Asaki (1788-1871), a second Eliade, helped to inaugurate a literary reform in Moldavia; but the result was disappointing, until the literary society known as the Junimea was started, in the 'seventies, by Titu Maiorescu (b. 1839), who was then a professor at Jassy. Titu Maiorescu put a stop to the prevailing Latinism, and turned the current of Rumanian literature into a more healthy channel, by the publication of his Critice (1874).
Ioan Ghica, a contemporary of the revolutionaries of 1848, gathered his recollections of those agitated times into two volumes, Amintiri (1890) and Scrisori catre V. Alecsandri (1887), which besides their historical value have become a model of Rumanian prose. Among writers of fiction three names stand out prominently: Ion Slavici (b. 1848) describes the life of the people, notably of the Transylvanian peasants, in short stories, Nuvele din popor. Barbu Stefanescu de la Vrancea (b. 1858) also wrote short popular stories characterized by a wealth of imagery and richness of language; but the characters are all mostly unreal and exaggerated. The best known collections are Sulteinica (1885) and Trubadurul (1887). Ioan Caragiali (b. 1852), the most popular Rumanian dramatist of modern times, who has brought on the stage living types of the lower and middle classes, and has skilfully portrayed the effect of modern veneer on old customs, is also the author of the powerful short novel Faclia de pate. Dobrogeanu Gherea (b. 1853) has in his Studii critice (1890 sqq.) been a ruthless but none the less judicious critic.
Curiously enough, there is not a single novel in the Rumanian literature with a sustained plot; none which presents a study of the development of human character amid the multifarious vicissitudes of life. The reason for this deficiency is perhaps the unsettled conditions of Rumanian life, and the lack of a profound and longestablished civilization; or it may be found in the unstable and fickle character of the people. Whatever the cause may be, while Rumanian poetry could well compare with that of any Western nation, in the domain of prose writing, and of novels in particular, one must look to the future to fill up the gap now existing.
There existed in Rumania another set of literary monuments at least as old as any of the books hitherto enumerated, but which appealed to a wider circle. Rumanian folk-literature contains both popular written books and oral songs, ballads, &c. It is advisable to group the material in three sections: (1) the romantic and secular literature; (2) the religious) literature; - both of these being written - and (3) the modern collections of ballads, songs, tales, &c.
To the first belong the oldest books, such as the History of Alexander the Great, which was known in Rumania in the 17th century. It rests mostly upon a Sloveno-Greek text and is of the utmost interest for the study of this cycle of legends. The first printed copy appeared in 1794, and has been reprinted in innumerable editions. Next comes the legend of Constantine, of his town and his exploits - a remarkable collection of purely Byzantine legends. In addition to these there is the history of St Sylvester and the conversion of Constantine, &c., all still in MS. The History of Barlaam and loasaf (see Barlaam And Josaphat) may also be mentioned here, for it appealed to the people not so much for its religious interest as for the romantic career of the hero. The parables and apologues contained in the legend were incorporated into the Teachings of Prince Neagoe, and were also circulated separately; they are found in many old MSS. Udriste (Uriil) Nasturel translated the History from the Slavonic in 1640. One of its episodes, the farewell song of the prince departing into the forest, has since become one of the most widespread popular songs. Of similar oriental origin is the Dream of Mamer, the interpretation of which goes back to the Panchatantra, and must have reached Rumania early in the 18th century, probably in Slavonic. The history of Syntippa and the Seven Masters has also become a popular book. It was translated from the Greek version. To the same cycle of oriental tales belongs the Halima, already described, which G. Gorjeanu printed (3 vols., 1835-37) as his own work. The History of Arkir and Anadam, printed by Anton Pann from older MSS., is the now famous Old Testament apocryphon of Akyrios the Wise, mentioned in Tobit and found in many languages. In Rumanian it rests on an older Greek-Slavonic text, and owes its great popularity to the wise and witty proverbs it contains. " Esop," whose wonderful biography (by Planudes) agrees, in many points with Arkir, has also become one of the Rumanian popular books. The history of Bertoldo, which, though of Italian origin, reached Rumania through a Greek translation, belongs to the same cycle of rustic wisdom and cunning, and is the last representative of an old series of legends clustering round the figures of Solomon and Ashmodai, or Solomon and Markolph. These books are of course anonymous, most of them being translations and adaptations. One man, however, stands out prominently in this section of romantic and secular folk-literature. This was Anton Pann, who was born in 1797 at Slivden, of Bulgarian parentage, and died at Bucharest in 1854. Carried away by the Russians in his early youth, he settled in Rumania, learned Church music, and became one of its best exponents, married four times, had an adventurous life, but lived among the people for whom he wrote and composed his tunes. In about twenty years he published no less than fifty books, all of them still popular. Besides his edition of the Rumanian Church service-books with musical notation, he published a series of tales, proverbs and songs either from older texts or from oral information; and he made the first collection' of popular songs, Spitalul amorului, " The Hospital of Love " (1850-53), with tunes either composed by himself or obtained from the gipsy musicians who alone performed them. Of his numerous writings two or three are of the greatest interest to folklore. His Povestea vorbii (first ed. 1 vol., 1847; 2nd ed. 3 vols., 1851-53) is a large collection of proverbs ingeniously connected with one another and leading up to or starting from a popular tale exemplifying the proverb. The Fabule ,si istorioare (2 vols., 1839-41) is a collection of short popular stories in rhyme; SezVoarea la tarci (1852-53) is a description of the Rumanian Spinnstube, for which the peasants gather in one of their houses on a winter's night, the girls and women spinning and working, the young men telling tales, proverbs, riddles, singing songs, &c. Pann also collected the jokes of the Turkish jester, Nasreddin, under the title of Neisdraveiniile lui Nastratin Hogea (1853), also in rhyme. He also published a collection of Christmas carols, set to music by himself; these are still sung by boys on Christmas night.
Far larger than the secular is the religious popular literature; it comprises many apocryphal tales from the Old and the New Testaments, and not a few of the heretical tales circulated by the various sects of Asia Minor and Thracia, which percolated into Rumania through the medium of Slavonic. A brief enumeration of the chief tales must suffice. Only a few of them have hitherto been published. They exist in numerous MSS. which testify to their great popularity; in the popular songs one finds many traces of their influence upon the people's imagination. They include the History of Adam and Eve, the Legend of the Cross, The Apocalypse of Abraham, the History of the Sibyl, the Legends of Solomon; numerous New Testament apocryphal tales, starting with legends of St John the Baptist; a very remarkable version of the Gospel of Nicodemus; and the Epistle of Pilate. Printed in tens of thousands of copies are certain apocalyptic legends dealing with eschatological problems. The ancient Apocalypse of Peter appears here under the name of Paul, then there is an Apocalypse of the Virgin Mary, who, like Peter, is carried by the Archangel through the torments of Hell and the bliss of Paradise, and through whose intervention sufferers are granted pardon on certain days of the year. Combined with these is the Sunday Epistle, sent from Heaven, enjoining strict observance, not only of Sunday, but also of Friday and Wednesday, as holy days. Most of these texts date in their Rumanian form from the 16th and 17th centuries; the Sunday Epistle is well known in connexion with the Flagellants. In the same pamphlet as the Sunday Epistle was published the legend of St Sisoe and sometimes that of Avestitza, - the former saved the children of his sister from the attacks of the devil, who had devoured them and had to restore them alive; the latter is the female child-stealing demon, who is prevented by an angel from carrying out her evil design. In both cases the repetition of the legend and the recitation of a string of mystical names serve, like some other tales, apocryphal and otherwise, as amulets, sufficient to protect from the devil. Upon the recitation of some of these texts rest many popular charms and incantations. Therein lies the importance of this written literature, for it gives us the clue to much that now lives in the mouths of the people, and is by some considered to be of immemorial antiquity. A number of astrological calendars and prognostics are among the best known and most widely circulated popular books, and the lives of St Alexius, Xenophon, &c. have become chapbooks.
The whole of this popular literature belongs to what may be called the cycle of the Balkan nations, in every one of which exact parallels are to be found. Not that there was any direct, deliberate borrowing by one nation from the other, but all of them seem to have stood for a long time under identical psychological influences and to have developed on similar lines. The superstitions of one are often found to be those of the others, and in such a form that they could not have been taken over independently from a third source; they show too much family likeness. Thus also the popular songs of Rumania, the " doine," the " hora," the " cantece," " colinde," " legende," i.e. the love songs, the heroic ballads, legends, songs at the ring-dance, hymns and carols, though instinct with a charm of their own, find their counterparts in many a song, ballad, &c. of the Balkan nations. The heroes are often the same: Serbs, Bulgars and Rumanians sing the heroic deeds of Baba Novak and recite the legend of the Monastery of Argesh, or the ballad of Iorgovan, found in the Malorussian Byliny. One of the first to collect these treasures of Rumanian poetry was V. Alecsandri (1852-1866), who, however, retained only their poetical beauty and did not reproduce them with that strict accuracy which modern study of folklore demands. A. M. Marienescu collected those of Transylvania (1859); S. F. Marian, those of the Bukovina (1873); T. T. Burada, those of the Dobrudja (1880); but the most complete collection is that of G. Dem. Teodorescu, Poesii populare romane (Bucharest, 1885). The collection of fairy tales started later than that of the ballads. The first collection is the German translation of tales heard by the Brothers Schott (1845). The most important collections, now deservedly considered as classical from every point of view, are the successive publications of P. Ispirescu. The collected tales of the Moldavian Ion Creanga (1837-89) appeared in his Opere complecte (1908). Excellent collections are those of D. Stancescu, Basme (1885-1893), I. G. Sbiera, Basme (1886), Freincu si Candrea (1888). Kutzo-Vlach tales and folklore will be found in G. Weigand, Die Aromunen, vol. ii. The only review devoted to the study of folklore is the Sazatoare, founded in 1892.
In recent times a kind of stagnation seems to have overtaken Rumania, and although attempts have been made to place the intellectual life of the nation on a sounder basis, the work of transition from the past to the present has hitherto absorbed more energy than appears necessary. Whatever the causes may have been, the fact remains, that now there is a great dearth of talent and great poverty in output.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-M. Gaster, Chrestomathie roumaine (2 vols., Leipzig, 1891); id., Literatura populara romanei (Bucharest, 1883); id., " Geschichte der rumdnischen Litteratur," in Gruber, Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, ii. pp. 264-428; L. Saineanu, Autorii roman moderni (Bucharest, 1891). (M. G.)
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Bibliography Information
Chisholm, Hugh, General Editor. Entry for 'Rumania'. 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/r/rumania.html. 1910.
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