The Balkans
by
Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
Part 4 out of 6
neither of them had any conflicting claims with Greece, since the Greek
and South-Slavonic nationalities are at no point geographically in
contact. With Bulgaria, a nation of Slavonic speech and culture, though
not wholly Slavonic in origin, Serbia had quarrelled for years over the
ultimate destiny of the Ueskueb district in north-western Macedonia, which
was still subject to Turkey; but in the summer of 1912 the two states
compromised in a secret treaty upon their respective territorial
ambitions, and agreed to refer the fate of one debatable strip to the
arbitration of Russia, after their already projected war with Turkey had
been carried through. There was a more formidable conflict of interests
between Bulgaria and Greece. These two nationalities are conterminous over
a very wide extent of territory, stretching from the Black Sea on the east
to the inland Lake of Okhrida on the west, and there is at no point a
sharp dividing line between them. The Greek element tends to predominate
towards the coast and the Bulgar towards the interior, but there are broad
zones where Greek and Bulgar villages are inextricably interspersed, while
purely Greek towns are often isolated in the midst of purely Bulgar rural
districts. Even if the racial areas could be plotted out on a large-scale
map, it was clear that no political frontier could be drawn to follow
their convolutions, and that Greece and Bulgaria could only divide the
spoils by both making up their minds to give and take. The actual lines
this necessary compromise would follow, obviously depended on the degree
of the allies' success against Turkey in the common war that was yet to be
fought, and Venezelos rose to the occasion. He had the courage to offer
Bulgaria the Greek alliance without stipulating for any definite minimum
share in the common conquests, and the tact to induce her to accept it on
the same terms. Greece and Bulgaria agreed to shelve all territorial
questions till the war had been brought to a successful close; and with
the negotiation of this understanding (another case in which Venezelos
achieved what Trikoupis had attempted only to fail) the Balkan League was
complete.
The events that followed are common knowledge. The Balkan allies opened
the campaign in October, and the Turks collapsed before an impetuous
attack. The Bulgarians crumpled up the Ottoman field armies in Thrace at
the terrific battle of Lule Burgas; the Serbians disposed of the forces in
the Macedonian interior, while the Greeks effected a junction with the
Serbians from the south, and cut their way through to Salonika. Within two
months of the declaration of war, the Turks on land had been driven out of
the open altogether behind the shelter of the Chataldja and Gallipoli
lines, and only three fortresses--Adrianople, Yannina, and Scutari--held
out further to the west. Their navy, closely blockaded by the Greek fleet
within the Dardanelles, had to look on passively at the successive
occupation of the Aegean Islands by Greek landing-parties. With the winter
came negotiations, during which an armistice reigned at Adrianople and
Scutari, while the Greeks pursued the siege of Yannina and the Dardanelles
blockade. The negotiations proved abortive, and the result of the renewed
hostilities justified the action of the Balkan plenipotentiaries in
breaking them off. By the spring of 1913 the three fortresses had fallen,
and, under the treaty finally signed at London, Turkey ceded to the Balkan
League, as a whole, all her European territories west of a line drawn from
Ainos on the Aegean to Midia on the Black Sea, including Adrianople and
the lower basin of the river Maritsa.
The time had now come for Greece and Bulgaria to settle their account, and
the unexpected extent of the common gains ought to have facilitated their
division. The territory in question included the whole north coast of the
Aegean and its immediate hinterland, and Venezelos proposed to consider it
in two sections. (1) The eastern section, conveniently known as Thrace,
consisted of the lower basin of the Maritsa. As far as Adrianople the
population was Bulgar, but south of that city it was succeeded by a Greek
element, with a considerable sprinkling of Turkish settlements, as far as
the sea. Geographically, however, the whole district is intimately
connected with Bulgaria, and the railway that follows the course of the
Maritsa down to the port of Dedeagatch offers a much-needed economic
outlet for large regions already within the Bulgarian frontier. Venezelos,
then, was prepared to resign all Greek claims to the eastern section, in
return for a corresponding concession by Bulgaria in the west. (2) The
western section, consisting of the lower basins of the Vardar and Struma,
lay in the immediate neighbourhood of the former frontier of Greece; but
the Greek population of Salonika,[1] and the coast-districts east of it,
could not be brought within the Greek frontier without including as well a
certain hinterland inhabited mainly by Bulgarians. The cession of this was
the return asked for by Venezelos, and he reduced it to a minimum by
abstaining from pressing the quite well-founded claims of Greece in the
Monastir district, which lay further inland still.
[Footnote 1: The predominant element within the walls of Salonika itself
is neither Greek nor Bulgarian, but consists of about 80,000 of those
Spanish-speaking Jews who settled in Turkey as refugees during the
sixteenth century.]
But Venezelos' conciliatory proposals met with no response from the
Bulgarian Government, which was in an 'all or nothing' mood. It swallowed
Venezelos' gift of Thrace, and then proceeded to exploit the Bulgar
hinterland of Salonika as a pretext for demanding the latter city as well.
This uncompromising attitude made agreement impossible, and it was
aggravated by the aggressive action of the Bulgarian troops in the
occupied territory, who persistently endeavoured to steal ground from the
Greek forces facing them. In May there was serious fighting to the east of
the Struma, and peace was only restored with difficulty. Bulgarian
relations with Serbia were becoming strained at the same time, though in
this case Bulgaria had more justice on her side. Serbia maintained that
the veto imposed by Austria upon her expansion to the Adriatic, in
coincidence with Bulgaria's unexpected gains on the Maritsa to which
Serbian arms had contributed, invalidated the secret treaty of the
previous summer, and she announced her intention of retaining the Monastir
district and the line of the Salonika railway as far as the future
frontier of Greece. Bulgaria, on the other hand, shut her eyes to Serbia's
necessity for an untrammelled economic outlet to one sea-board or the
other, and took her stand on her strictly legal treaty-rights. However the
balance of justice inclined, a lasting settlement could only have been
reached by mutual forbearance and goodwill; but Bulgaria put herself
hopelessly in the wrong towards both her allies by a treacherous
night-attack upon them all along the line, at the end of June 1913. This
disastrous act was the work of a single political party, which has since
been condemned by most sections of Bulgarian public opinion; but the
punishment, if not the responsibility for the crime, fell upon the whole
nation. Greece and Serbia had already been drawn into an understanding by
their common danger. They now declared war against Bulgaria in concert.
The counter-strokes of their armies met with success, and the intervention
of Rumania made Bulgaria's discomfiture certain.
The results of the one month's war were registered in the Treaty of
Bucarest. Many of its provisions were unhappily, though naturally,
inspired by the spirit of revenge; but the Greek premier, at any rate,
showed a statesmanlike self-restraint in the negotiations. Venezelos
advocated the course of taking no more after the war than had been
demanded before it. He desired to leave Bulgaria a broad zone of Aegean
littoral between the Struma and Maritsa rivers, including ports capable of
satisfying Bulgaria's pressing need for an outlet towards the south. But,
in the exasperated state of public feeling, even Venezelos' prestige
failed to carry through his policy in its full moderation. King George had
just been assassinated in his year of jubilee, in the streets of the
long-desired Salonika; and King Constantine, his son, flushed by the
victory of Kilkish and encouraged by the Machiavellian diplomacy of his
Hohenzollern brother-in-law, insisted on carrying the new Greek frontier
as far east as the river Mesta, and depriving Bulgaria of Kavala, the
natural harbour for the whole Bulgarian hinterland in the upper basins of
the Mesta and Struma.
It is true that Greece did not exact as much as she might have done.
Bulgaria was still allowed to possess herself of a coastal strip east of
the Mesta, containing the tolerable harbours of Porto Lagos and
Dedeagatch, which had been occupied during hostilities by the Greek fleet,
and thus her need for an Aegean outlet was not left unsatisfied altogether;
while Greece on her part was cleverly shielded for the future from those
drawbacks involved in immediate contact with Turkish territory, which she
had so often experienced in the past. It is also true that the Kavala
district is of great economic value in itself--it produces the better part
of the Turkish Regie tobacco crop--and that on grounds of nationality
alone Bulgaria has no claim to this prize, since the tobacco-growing
peasantry is almost exclusively Greek or Turk, while the Greek element has
been extensively reinforced during the last two years by refugees from
Anatolia and Thrace.
Nevertheless, it is already clear that Venezelos' judgement was the
better. The settlement at the close of the present war may even yet bring
Bulgaria reparation in many quarters. If the Ruman and South Slavonic
populations at present included in the complexus of Austria-Hungary are
freed from their imprisonment and united with the Serbian and Rumanian
national states, Bulgaria may conceivably recover from the latter those
Bulgarian lands which the Treaty of Bucarest made over to them in central
Macedonia and the Dobrudja, while it would be still more feasible to oust
the Turk again from Adrianople, where he slipped back in the hour of
Bulgaria's prostration and has succeeded in maintaining himself ever
since. Yet no amount of compensation in other directions and no abstract
consideration for the national principle will induce Bulgaria to renounce
her claim on Greek Kavala. Access to this district is vital to Bulgaria
from the geographical point of view, and she will not be satisfied here
with such rights as Serbia enjoys at Salonika--free use of the port and
free traffic along a railway connecting it with her own hinterland. Her
heart is set on complete territorial ownership, and she will not compose
her feud with Greece until she has had her way.
So long, therefore, as the question of Kavala remains unsettled, Greece
will not be able to put the preliminary problem of 'national
consolidation' behind her, and enter upon the long-deferred chapter of
'internal development'. To accomplish once for all this vital transition,
Venezelos is taking the helm again into his hands, and it is his evident
intention to close the Greek account with Bulgaria just as Serbia and
Rumania hope to close theirs with the same state--by a bold territorial
concession conditional upon adequate territorial compensation
elsewhere.[1]
[Footnote 1: The above paragraph betrays its own date; for, since it was
written, the intervention of Bulgaria on the side of the Central Powers
has deferred indefinitely the hope of a settlement based upon mutual
agreement.]
The possibility of such compensation is offered by certain outstanding
problems directly dependent upon the issue of the European conflict, and
we must glance briefly at these before passing on to consider the new
chapter of internal history that is opening for the Greek nation.
The problems in question are principally concerned with the ownership of
islands.
The integrity of a land-frontier is guaranteed by the whole strength of
the nation included within it, and can only be modified by a struggle for
existence with the neighbor on whom it borders; but islands by their
geographical nature constitute independent political units, easily
detached from or incorporated with larger domains, according to the
momentary fluctuation in the balance of sea-power. Thus it happened that
the arrival of the _Goeben_ and _Breslau_ at the Dardanelles in August
1914 led Turkey to reopen promptly certain questions concerning the
Aegean. The islands in this sea are uniformly Greek in population, but
their respective geographical positions and political fortunes
differentiate them into several groups.
1. The Cyclades in the south-west, half submerged vanguards of mountain
ranges in continental Greece, have formed part of the modern kingdom from
its birth, and their status has never since been called into question.
2. Krete, the largest of all Greek islands, has been dealt with already.
She enjoyed autonomy under Turkish suzerainty for fifteen years before the
Balkan War, and at its outbreak she once more proclaimed her union with
Greece. This time at last her action was legalized, when Turkey expressly
abandoned her suzerain rights by a clause in the Treaty of London.
3. During the war itself, the Greek navy occupied a number of islands
which had remained till then under the more direct government of Turkey,
The parties to the Treaty of London agreed to leave their destiny to the
decision of the powers, and the latter assigned them all to Greece, with
the exception of Imbros and Tenedos which command strategically the mouth
of the Dardanelles.
The islands thus secured to Greece fall in turn into several sub-groups.
Two of these are _(a)_ Thasos, Samothraki, and Lemnos, off the European
coast, and _(b)_ Samos and its satellite Nikaria, immediately off the west
coast of Anatolia; and these five islands seem definitely to have been
given up by Turkey for lost. The European group is well beyond the range
of her present frontiers; while Samos, though it adjoins the Turkish
mainland, does not mask the outlet from any considerable port, and had
moreover for many years possessed the same privileged autonomy as Krete,
so that the Ottoman Government did not acutely feel its final severance.
_(c)_ A third group consists of Mitylini and Khios,[1] and concerning this
pair Greece and Turkey have so far come to no understanding. The Turks
pointed out that the littoral off which these islands lie contains not
only the most indispensable ports of Anatolia but also the largest
enclaves of Greek population on the Asiatic mainland, and they declared
that the occupation of this group by Greece menaced the sovereignty of the
Porte in its home territory. 'See', they said, 'how the two islands flank
both sides of the sea-passage to Smyrna, the terminus of all the railways
which penetrate the Anatolian interior, while Mitylini barricades Aivali
and Edremid as well. As soon as the Greek Government has converted the
harbours of these islands into naval bases, Anatolia will be subject to a
perpetual Greek blockade, and this violent intimidation of the Turkish
people will be reinforced by an insidious propaganda among the disloyal
Greek elements in our midst.' Accordingly the Turks refused to recognize
the award of the powers, and demanded the re-establishment of Ottoman
sovereignty in Mitylini and Khios, under guarantee of an autonomy after
the precedent of Krete and Samos.
[Footnote 1: Including its famous satellite Psara.]
To these arguments and demands the Greeks replied that, next to Krete;
these are the two largest, most wealthy, and most populous Greek islands
in the Aegean; that their inhabitants ardently desire union with the
national kingdom; and that the Greek Government would hesitate to use them
as a basis for economic coercion and nationalistic propaganda against
Turkey, if only because the commerce of western Anatolia is almost
exclusively in the hands of the Greek element on the Asiatic continent.
Greek interests were presumably bound up with the economic prosperity and
political consolidation of Turkey in Asia, and the Anatolian Greeks would
merely have been alienated from their compatriots by any such impolitic
machinations. 'Greek sovereignty in Mitylini and Khios', the Greeks
maintained, 'does not threaten Turkish sovereignty on the Continent. But
the restoration of Turkish suzerainty over the islands would most
seriously endanger the liberty of their inhabitants; for Turkish promises
are notoriously valueless, except when they are endorsed by the guarantee
of some physically stronger power.'
Negotiations were conducted between Greece and Turkey from these
respective points of view without leading to any result, and the two
standpoints were in fact irreconcilable, since either power required the
other to leave vital national interests at the mercy of an ancient enemy,
without undertaking to make corresponding sacrifices itself. The problem
probably would never have been solved by compromise; but meanwhile the
situation has been entirely transformed by the participation of Turkey in
the European War, and the issue between Greece and Turkey, like the issue
between Greece and Bulgaria, has been merged in the general problem of the
European settlement.
The Balkan War of 1912 doomed the Ottoman power in Europe, but left its
Asiatic future unimpaired. By making war against the Quadruple Entente,
Turkey has staked her existence on both continents, and is threatened with
political extinction if the Central Powers succumb in the struggle. In
this event Greece will no longer have to accommodate her regime in the
liberated islands to the susceptibilities of a Turkey consolidated on the
opposite mainland, but will be able to stretch out her hand over the
Anatolian coast and its hinterland, and compensate herself richly in this
quarter for the territorial sacrifices which may still be necessary to a
lasting understanding with her Bulgarian neighbour.
The shores that dominate the Dardanelles will naturally remain beyond her
grasp, but she may expect to establish herself on the western littoral
from a point as far north as Mount Ida and the plain of Edremid. The Greek
coast-town of Aivali will be hers, and the still more important focus of
Greek commerce and civilization at Smyrna; while she will push her
dominion along the railways that radiate from Smyrna towards the interior.
South-eastward, Aidin will be hers in the valley of the Mendere
(Maiandros). Due eastward she will re-baptize the glistening city of Ala
Shehr with its ancient name of Philadelphia, under which it held out
heroically for Hellenism many years after Aidin had become the capital of
a Moslem principality and the Turkish avalanche had rolled past it to the
sea. Maybe she will follow the railway still further inland, and plant her
flag on the Black Castle of Afiun, the natural railway-centre of Anatolia
high up on the innermost plateau. All this and more was once Hellenic
ground, and the Turkish incomer, for all his vitality, has never been able
here to obliterate the older culture or assimilate the earlier population.
In this western region Turkish villages are still interspersed with Greek,
and under the government of compatriots the unconquerable minority would
inevitably reassert itself by the peaceful weapons of its superior energy
and intelligence.
4. If Greece realizes these aspirations through Venezelos' statesmanship,
she will have settled in conjunction her outstanding accounts with both
Bulgaria and Turkey; but a fourth group of islands still remains for
consideration, and these, though formerly the property of Turkey, are now
in the hands of other European powers.
_(a)_ The first of those in question are the Sporades, a chain of islands
off the Anatolian coast which continues the line of Mitylini, Khios, and
Samos towards the south-east, and includes Kos, Patmos, Astypalia,
Karpathos, Kasos, and, above all, Rhodes. The Sporades were occupied by
Italy during her war with Turkey in 1911-12, and she stipulated in the
Peace of Lausanne that she should retain them as a pledge until the last
Ottoman soldier in Tripoli had been withdrawn, after which she would make
them over again to the Porte. The continued unrest in Tripoli may or may
not have been due to Turkish intrigues, but in any case it deferred the
evacuation of the islands by Italy until the situation was transformed
here also by the successive intervention of both powers in the European
War. The consequent lapse of the Treaty of Lausanne simplifies the status
of the Sporades, but it is doubtful what effect it will have upon their
destiny. In language and political sympathy their inhabitants are as
completely Greek as all the other islanders of the Aegean, and if the
Quadruple Entente has made the principle of nationality its own, Italy is
morally bound, now that the Sporades are at her free disposal, to satisfy
their national aspirations by consenting to their union with the kingdom
of Greece. On the other hand, the prospective dissolution of the Ottoman
Empire has increased Italy's stake in this quarter. In the event of a
partition, the whole southern littoral of Anatolia will probably fall
within the Italian sphere, which will start from the Gulf of Iskanderun,
include the districts of Adana and Adalia, and march with the new
Anatolian provinces of Greece along the line of the river Mendere. This
continental domain and the adjacent islands are geographically
complementary to one another, and it is possible that Italy may for
strategical reasons insist on retaining the Sporades in perpetuity if she
realizes her ambitions on the continent. This solution would be less ideal
than the other, but Greece would be wise to reconcile herself to it, as
Italy has reconciled herself to the incorporation of Corsica in France;
for by submitting frankly to this detraction from her national unity she
would give her brethren in the Sporades the best opportunity of developing
their national individuality untrammelled under a friendly Italian
suzerainty.
_(b)_ The advance-guard of the Greek race that inhabits the great island
of Cyprus has been subject to British government since 1878, when the
provisional occupation of the island by Great Britain under a contract
similar to that of Lausanne was negotiated in a secret agreement between
Great Britain and Turkey on the eve of the Conference at Berlin. The
condition of evacuation was in this case the withdrawal of Russia from
Kars, and here likewise it never became operative till it was abrogated by
the outbreak of war. Cyprus, like the Sporades, is now at the disposal of
its _de facto_ possessor, and on November 5, 1914, it was annexed to the
British Empire. But whatever decision Italy may take, it is to be hoped
that our own government at any rate will not be influenced exclusively by
strategical considerations, but will proclaim an intention of allowing
Cyprus ultimately to realize its national aspirations by union with
Greece.[1]
[Footnote 1: Since the above was written, this intention, under a certain
condition, has definitely been expressed.]
The whole population of the island is Greek in language, while under an
excellent British administration its political consciousness has been
awakened, and has expressed itself in a growing desire for national unity
among the Christian majority. It is true that in Cyprus, as in Krete,
there is a considerable Greek-speaking minority of Moslems[1] who prefer
the _status quo_; but, since the barrier of language is absent, their
antipathy to union may not prove permanent. However important the
retention of Cyprus may be to Great Britain from the strategical point of
view, we shall find that even in the balance of material interests it is
not worth the price of alienating the sympathy of an awakened and
otherwise consolidated nation.
[Footnote 1: In Cyprus about 22 per cent.]
This rather detailed review of problems in the islands and Anatolia brings
out the fact that Greek nationalism is not an artificial conception of
theorists, but a real force which impels the most scattered and
down-trodden populations of Greek speech to travail unceasingly for
political unity within the national state. Yet by far the most striking
example of this attractive power in Hellenism is the history of it in
'Epirus'.[1]
[Footnote 1: The name coined to include the districts of Himarra,
Argyrokastro, and Koritsa.]
The Epirots are a population of Albanian race, and they still speak an
Albanian dialect in their homes; while the women and children, at any
rate, often know no other language. But somewhat over a century ago the
political organism created by the remarkable personality of Ali Pasha in
the hinterland of the Adriatic coast, and the relations of Great Britain
and France with this new principality in the course of their struggle for
the Mediterranean, began to awaken in the Epirots a desire for
civilization. Their Albanian origin opened to them no prospects, for the
race had neither a literature nor a common historical tradition; and they
accordingly turned to the Greeks, with whom they were linked in religion
by membership of the Orthodox Church, and in politics by subjection to
Ali's Government at Yannina, which had adopted Greek as its official
language.
They had appealed to the right quarter; for we have seen how Greek culture
accumulated a store of latent energy under the Turkish yoke, and was
expending it at this very period in a vigorous national revival. The
partially successful War of Liberation in the 'twenties of the nineteenth
century was only the political manifestation of the new life. It has
expressed itself more typically in a steady and universal enthusiasm for
education, which throughout the subsequent generations of political
stagnation has always opened to individual Greeks commercial and
professional careers of the greatest brilliance, and often led them to
spend the fortunes so acquired in endowing the nation with further
educational opportunities. Public spirit is a Greek virtue. There are few
villages which do not possess monuments of their successful sons, and a
school is an even commoner gift than a church; while the State has
supplemented the individual benefactor to an extent remarkable where
public resources are so slender. The school-house, in fact, is generally
the most prominent and substantial building in a Greek village, and the
advantage offered to the Epirots by a _rapprochement_ with the Greeks is
concretely symbolized by the Greek schools established to-day in generous
numbers throughout their country.
For the Epirot boy the school is the door to the future. The language he
learns there makes him the member of a nation, and opens to him a world
wide enough to employ all the talent and energy he may possess, if he
seeks his fortune at Patras or Peiraeus, or in the great Greek commercial
communities of Alexandria and Constantinople; while, if he stays at home,
it still affords him a link with the life of civilized Europe through the
medium of the ubiquitous Greek newspaper.[1] The Epirot has thus become
Greek in soul, for he has reached the conception of a national life more
liberal than the isolated existence of his native village through the
avenue of Greek culture. 'Hellenism' and nationality have become for him
identical ideas; and when at last the hour of deliverance struck, he
welcomed the Greek armies that marched into his country from the south and
the east, after the fall of Yannina in the spring of 1913, with the same
enthusiasm with which all the enslaved populations of native Greek dialect
greeted the consummation of a century's hopes.
[Footnote 1: There is still practically no literature printed in the
Albanian language.]
The Greek troops arrived only just in time, for the 'Hellenism' of the
Epirots had been terribly proved by murderous attacks from their Moslem
neighbours on the north. The latter speak a variety of the same Albanian
tongue, but were differentiated by a creed which assimilated them to the
ruling race. They had been superior to their Christian kinsmen by the
weight of numbers and the possession of arms, which under the Ottoman
regime were the monopoly of the Moslem. At last, however, the yoke of
oppression was broken and the Greek occupation seemed a harbinger of
security for the future. Unluckily, however, Epirus was of interest to
others besides its own inhabitants. It occupies an important geographical
position facing the extreme heel of Italy, just below the narrowest point
in the neck of the Adriatic, and the Italian Government insisted that the
country should be included in the newly erected principality of Albania,
which the powers had reserved the right to delimit in concert by a
provision in the Treaty of London.
Italy gave two reasons for her demand. First, she declared it incompatible
with her own vital interests that both shores of the strait between Corfu
and the mainland should pass into the hands of the same power, because the
combination of both coasts and the channel between them offered a site for
a naval base that might dominate the mouth of the Adriatic. Secondly, she
maintained that the native Albanian speech of the Epirots proved their
Albanian nationality, and that it was unjust to the new Albanian state to
exclude from it the most prosperous and civilized branch of the Albanian
nation. Neither argument is cogent.
The first argument could easily be met by the neutralization of the Corfu
straits,[1] and it is also considerably weakened by the fact that the
position which really commands the mouth of the Adriatic from the eastern
side is not the Corfu channel beyond it but the magnificent bay of Avlona
just within its narrowest section, and this is a Moslem district to which
the Epirots have never laid claim, and which would therefore in any case
fall within the Albanian frontier. The second argument is almost
ludicrous. The destiny of Epirus is not primarily the concern of the other
Albanians, of for that matter of the Greeks, but of the Epirots
themselves, and it is hard to see how their nationality can be defined
except in terms of their own conscious and expressed desire; for a nation
is simply a group of men inspired by a common will to co-operate for
certain purposes, and cannot be brought into existence by the external
manipulation of any specific objective factors, but solely by the inward
subjective impulse of its constituents. It was a travesty of justice to
put the Orthodox Epirots at the mercy of a Moslem majority (which had been
massacring them the year before) on the ground that they happened to speak
the same language. The hardship was aggravated by the fact that all the
routes connecting Epirus with the outer world run through Yannina and
Salonika, from which the new frontier sundered her; while great natural
barriers separate her from Avlona and Durazzo, with which the same
frontier so ironically signalled her union.
[Footnote 1: Corfu itself is neutralized already by the agreement under
which Great Britain transferred the Ionian Islands to Greece in 1863.]
The award of the powers roused great indignation in Greece, but Venezelos
was strong enough to secure that it should scrupulously be respected; and
the 'correct attitude' which he inflexibly maintained has finally won its
reward. As soon as the decision of the powers was announced, the Epirots
determined to help themselves. They raised a militia, and asserted their
independence so successfully, that they compelled the Prince of Wied, the
first (and perhaps the last) ruler of the new 'Albania', to give them home
rule in matters of police and education, and to recognise Greek as the
official language for their local administration. They ensured observance
of this compact by the maintenance of their troops under arms. So matters
continued, until a rebellion among his Moslem subjects and the outbreak of
the European War in the summer of 1914 obliged the prince to depart,
leaving Albania to its natural state of anarchy. The anarchy might have
restored every canton and village to the old state of contented isolation,
had it not been for the religious hatred between the Moslems and the
Epirots, which, with the removal of all external control, began to vent
itself in an aggressive assault of the former upon the latter, and
entailed much needless misery in the autumn months.
The reoccupation of Epirus by Greek troops had now become a matter of life
and death to its inhabitants, and in October 1914 Venezelos took the
inevitable step, after serving due notice upon all the signatories to the
Treaty of London. Thanks in part to the absorption of the powers in more
momentous business, but perhaps even in a greater degree to the confidence
which the Greek premier had justly won by his previous handling of the
question, this action was accomplished without protest or opposition.
Since then Epirus has remained sheltered from the vicissitudes of civil
war within and punitive expeditions from without, to which the unhappy
remnant of Albania has been incessantly exposed; and we may prophesy that
the Epiroi, unlike their repudiated brethren of Moslem or Catholic faith,
have really seen the last of their troubles. Even Italy, from whom they
had most to fear, has obtained such a satisfactory material guarantee by
the occupation on her own part of Avlona, that she is as unlikely to
demand the evacuation of Epirus by Greece as she is to withdraw her own
force from her long coveted strategical base on the eastern shore of the
Adriatic. In Avlona and Epirus the former rivals are settling down to a
neighbourly contact, and there is no reason to doubt that the _de facto_
line of demarcation between them will develop into a permanent and
officially recognized frontier. The problem of Epirus, though not,
unfortunately, that of Albania, may be regarded as definitely closed.
The reclamation of Epirus is perhaps the most honourable achievement of
the Greek national revival, but it is by no means an isolated phenomenon.
Western Europe is apt to depreciate modern 'Hellenism', chiefly because
its ambitious denomination rather ludicrously challenges comparison with a
vanished glory, while any one who has studied its rise must perceive that
it has little more claim than western Europe itself to be the peculiar
heir of ancient Greek culture. And yet this Hellenism of recent growth has
a genuine vitality of its own. It displays a remarkable power of
assimilating alien elements and inspiring them to an active pursuit of its
ideals, and its allegiance supplants all others in the hearts of those
exposed to its charm. The Epirots are not the only Albanians who have been
Hellenized. In the heart of central Greece and Peloponnesus, on the plain
of Argos, and in the suburbs of Athens, there are still Albanian enclaves,
derived from those successive migrations between the fourteenth and the
eighteenth centuries; but they have so entirely forgotten their origin
that the villagers, when questioned, can only repeat: 'We can't say why we
happen to speak "Arvanitika", but we are Greeks like everybody else.' The
Vlachs again, a Romance-speaking tribe of nomadic shepherds who have
wandered as far south as Akarnania and the shores of the Korinthian Gulf,
are settling down there to the agricultural life of the Greek village, so
that Hellenism stands to them for the transition to a higher social phase.
Their still migratory brethren in the northern ranges of Pindus are
already 'Hellenes' in political sympathy,[1] and are moving under Greek
influence towards the same social evolution. In distant Cappadocia, at the
root of the Anatolian peninsula, the Orthodox Greek population, submerged
beneath the Turkish flood more than eight centuries ago, has retained
little individuality except in its religion, and nothing of its native
speech but a garbled vocabulary embedded in a Turkified syntax. Yet even
this dwindling rear-guard has been overtaken just in time by the returning
current of national life, bringing with it the Greek school, and with the
school a community of outlook with Hellenism the world over. Whatever the
fate of eastern Anatolia may be, the Greek element is now assured a
prominent part in its future.
[Footnote 1: Greece owed her naval supremacy in 1912-13 to the new cruiser
_Georgios Averof_, named after a Vlach millionaire who made his fortune in
the Greek colony at Alexandria and left a legacy for the ship's
construction at his death.]
These, moreover, are the peripheries of the Greek world; and at its centre
the impulse towards union in the national state readies a passionate
intensity. 'Aren't you better off as you are?' travellers used to ask in
Krete during the era of autonomy. 'If you get your "Union", you will have
to do two years' military service instead of one year's training in the
militia, and will be taxed up to half as much again.' 'We have thought of
that,' the Kretans would reply, 'but what does it matter, if we are united
with Greece?'
On this unity modern Hellenism has concentrated its efforts, and after
nearly a century of ineffective endeavour it has been brought by the
statesmanship of Venezelos within sight of its goal. Our review of
outstanding problems reveals indeed the inconclusiveness of the settlement
imposed at Bucarest; but this only witnesses to the wisdom of the Greek
nation in reaffirming its confidence in Venezelos at the present juncture,
and recalling him to power to crown the work which he has so brilliantly
carried through. Under Venezelos' guidance we cannot doubt that the
heart's desire of Hellenism will be accomplished at the impending European
settlement by the final consolidation of the Hellenic national state.[1]
[Footnote 1: This paragraph, again, has been superseded by the dramatic
turn of events; but the writer has left it unaltered, for the end is not
yet.]
Yet however attractive the sincerity of such nationalism may be, political
unity is only a negative achievement. The history of a nation must be
judged rather by the positive content of its ideals and the positive
results which it attains, and herein the Hellenic revival displays certain
grave shortcomings. The internal paralysis of social and economic life has
already been noted and ascribed to the urgency of the 'preliminary
question'; but we must now add to this the growing embitterment which has
poisoned the relations of Greece with her Balkan neighbours during the
crises through which the 'preliminary question' has been worked out to its
solution. Now that this solution is at hand, will Hellenism prove capable
of casting out these two evils, and adapt itself with strength renewed to
the new phase of development that lies before it?
The northern territories acquired in 1913 will give a much greater impetus
to economic progress than Thessaly gave a generation ago; for the
Macedonian littoral west as well as east of the Struma produces a
considerable proportion of the Turkish Regie tobacco, while the
pine-forests of Pindus, if judiciously exploited, will go far to remedy
the present deficiency of home-grown timber, even if they do not provide
quantities sufficient for export abroad. If we take into account the
currant-crop of the Peloponnesian plain-lands which already almost
monopolizes the world-market, the rare ores of the south-eastern mountains
and the Archipelago, and the vintages which scientific treatment might
bring into competition with the wines of the Peninsula and France, we can
see that Greece has many sources of material prosperity within her reach,
if only she applies her liberated energy to their development. Yet these
are all of them specialized products, and Greece will never export any
staple commodity to rival the grain which Rumania sends in such quantities
to central Europe already, and which Bulgaria will begin to send within a
few years' time. Even the consolidated Greek kingdom will be too small in
area and too little compact in geographical outline to constitute an
independent economic unit, and the ultimate economic interests of the
country demand co-operation in some organization more comprehensive than
the political molecule of the national state.
Such an association should embrace the Balkans in their widest extent--
from the Black Sea to the Adriatic and from the Carpathians to the Aegean;
for, in sharp contrast to the inextricable chaos of its linguistic and
ecclesiastical divisions, the region constitutes economically a
homogeneous and indivisible whole, in which none of the parts can divest
themselves of their mutual interdependence. Greece, for example, has
secured at last her direct link with the railway system of the European
continent, but for free transit beyond her own frontier she still depends
on Serbia's good-will, just, as Serbia depends on hers for an outlet to
the Aegean at Salonika. The two states have provided for their respective
interests by a joint proprietorship of the section of railway between
Salonika and Belgrade; and similar railway problems will doubtless bring
Rumania to terms with Serbia for access to the Adriatic, and both with
Bulgaria for rights of way to Constantinople and the Anatolian hinterland
beyond. These common commercial arteries of the Balkans take no account of
racial or political frontiers, but link the region as a whole with other
regions in a common economic relation.
South-eastern and central Europe are complementary economic areas in a
special degree. The industries of central Europe will draw upon the raw
products of the south-east to an increasing extent, and the south-east
will absorb in turn increasing quantities of manufactured plant from
central Europe for the development of its own natural resources. The two
areas will become parties in a vast economic nexus, and, as in all
business transactions, each will try to get the best of the continually
intensified bargaining. This is why co-operation is so essential to the
future well-being of the Balkan States. Isolated individually and mutually
competitive as they are at present, they must succumb to the economic
ascendancy of Vienna and Berlin as inevitably as unorganized, unskilled
labourers fall under the thraldom of a well-equipped capitalist. Central
Europe will have in any event an enormous initial superiority over the
Balkans in wealth, population, and business experience; and the Balkan
peoples can only hope to hold their own in this perilous but essential
intercourse with a stronger neighbour, if they take more active and
deliberate steps towards co-operation among themselves, and find in
railway conventions the basis for a Balkan zollverein. A zollverein should
be the first goal of Balkan statesmanship in the new phase of history that
is opening for Europe; but economic relations on this scale involve the
political factor, and the Balkans will not be able to deal with their
great neighbours on equal terms till the zollverein has ripened into a
federation. The alternative is subjection, both political and economic;
and neither the exhaustion of the Central Powers in the present struggle
nor the individual consolidation of the Balkan States in the subsequent
settlement will suffice by themselves to avert it in the end.
The awakening of the nation and the consolidation of the state, which we
have traced in these pages, must accordingly lead on to the confederation
of the Balkans, if all that has been so painfully won is not to perish
again without result; and we are confronted with the question: Will Balkan
nationalism rise to the occasion and transcend itself?
Many spectators of recent history will dismiss the suggestion as Utopian.
'Nationality', they will say, 'revealed itself first as a constructive
force, and Europe staked its future upon it; but now that we are committed
to it, it has developed a sinister destructiveness which we cannot remedy.
Nationality brought the Balkan States into being and led them to final
victory over the Turk in 1912, only to set them tearing one another to
pieces again in 1913. In the present catastrophe the curse of the Balkans
has descended upon the whole of Europe, and laid bare unsuspected depths
of chaotic hatred; yet Balkan antagonisms still remain more ineradicable
than ours. The cure for nationality is forgetfulness, but Balkan
nationalism is rooted altogether in the past. The Balkan peoples have
suffered one shattering experience in common--the Turk, and the waters of
Ottoman oppression that have gone over their souls have not been waters of
Lethe. They have endured long centuries of spiritual exile by the
passionate remembrance of their Sion, and when they have vindicated their
heritage at last, and returned to build up the walls of their city and the
temple of their national god, they have resented each other's
neighbourhood as the repatriated Jew resented the Samaritan. The Greek
dreams with sullen intensity of a golden age before the Bulgar was found
in the land, and the challenge implied in the revival of the Hellenic
name, so far from being a superficial vanity, is the dominant
characteristic of the nationalism which has adopted it for its title.
Modern Hellenism breathes the inconscionable spirit of the _emigre_.'
This is only too true. The faith that has carried them to national unity
will suffice neither the Greeks nor any other Balkan people for the new
era that has dawned upon them, and the future would look dark indeed, but
for a strange and incalculable leaven, which is already potently at work
in the land.
Since the opening of the present century, the chaotic, unneighbourly races
of south-eastern Europe, whom nothing had united before but the common
impress of the Turk, have begun to share another experience in common--
America. From the Slovak villages in the Carpathians to the Greek villages
in the Laconian hills they have been crossing the Atlantic in their
thousands, to become dockers and navvies, boot-blacks and waiters,
confectioners and barbers in Chicago, St. Louis, Omaha, and all the other
cities that have sprung up like magic to welcome the immigrant to the
hospitable plains of the Middle West. The intoxication of his new
environment stimulates all the latent industry and vitality of the Balkan
peasant, and he abandons himself whole-heartedly to American life; yet he
does not relinquish the national tradition in which he grew up. In America
work brings wealth, and the Greek or Slovak soon worships his God in a
finer church and reads his language in a better-printed newspaper than he
ever enjoyed in his native village. The surplus flows home in remittances
of such abundance that they are steadily raising the cost of living in the
Balkans themselves, or, in other words, the standard of material
civilization; and sooner or later the immigrant goes the way of his money
orders, for home-sickness, if not a mobilization order, exerts its
compulsion before half a dozen years are out.
It is a strange experience to spend a night in some remote
mountain-village of Greece, and see Americanism and Hellenism face to
face. Hellenism is represented by the village schoolmaster. He wears a
black coat, talks a little French, and can probably read Homer; but his
longest journey has been to the normal school at Athens, and it has not
altered his belief that the ikon in the neighbouring monastery was made by
St. Luke and the Bulgar beyond the mountains by the Devil. On the other
side of you sits the returned emigrant, chattering irrepressibly in his
queer version of the 'American language', and showing you the newspapers
which are mailed to him every fortnight from the States. His clean linen
collar and his well-made American boots are conspicuous upon him, and he
will deprecate on your behalf and his own the discomfort and squalor of
his native surroundings. His home-coming has been a disillusionment, but
it is a creative phenomenon; and if any one can set Greece upon a new path
it is he. He is transforming her material life by his American savings,
for they are accumulating into a capital widely distributed in native
hands, which will dispense the nation from pawning its richest mines and
vineyards to the European exploiter, and enable it to carry on their
development on its own account at this critical juncture when European
sources of capital are cut off for an indefinite period by the disaster of
the European War. The emigrant will give Greece all Trikoupis dreamed of,
but his greatest gift to his country will be his American point of view.
In the West he has learnt that men of every language and religion can live
in the same city and work at the same shops and sheds and mills and
switch-yards without desecrating each other's churches or even suppressing
each other's newspapers, not to speak of cutting each other's throats; and
when next he meets Albanian or Bulgar on Balkan ground, he may remember
that he has once dwelt with him in fraternity at Omaha or St. Louis or
Chicago. This is the gospel of Americanism, and unlike Hellenism, which
spread downwards from the patriarch's residence and the merchant's
counting-house, it is being preached in all the villages of the land by
the least prejudiced and most enterprising of their sons (for it is these
who answer America's call); and spreading upward from the peasant towards
the professor in the university and the politician in parliament.
Will this new leaven conquer, and cast out the stale leaven of Hellenism
before it sours the loaf? Common sense is mighty, but whether it shall
prevail in Greece and the Balkans and Europe lies on the knees of the
gods.
RUMANIA: HER HISTORY AND POLITICS
1
_Introduction_
The problem of the origin and formation of the Rumanian nation has always
provided matter for keen disputation among historians, and the theories
which have been advanced are widely divergent. Some of these discussions
have been undertaken solely for political reasons, and in such cases
existing data prove conveniently adaptable. This elastic treatment of the
historical data is facilitated by the fact that a long and important
period affecting the formation and the development of the Rumanian nation
(270-1220) has bequeathed practically no contemporary evidence. By linking
up, however, what is known antecedent to that period with the precise data
available regarding the following it, and by checking the inferred results
with what little evidence exists respecting the obscure epoch of Rumanian
history, it has been possible to reconstruct, almost to a certainty, the
evolution of the Rumanians during the Middle Ages.
A discussion of the varying theories would be out of proportion, and out
of place, in this essay. Nor is it possible to give to any extent a
detailed description of the epic struggle which the Rumanians carried on
for centuries against the Turks. I shall have to deal, therefore, on broad
lines, with the historical facts--laying greater stress only upon the
three fundamental epochs of Rumanian history: the formation of the
Rumanian nation; its initial casting into a national polity (foundation of
the Rumanian principalities); and its final evolution into the actual
unitary State; and shall then pass on to consider the more recent internal
and external development of Rumania, and her present attitude.
2
_Formation of the Rumanian Nation_
About the fifth century B.C., when the population of the Balkan-Carpathian
region consisted of various tribes belonging to the Indo-European family,
the northern portion of the Balkan peninsula was conquered by the
Thracians and the Illyrians. The Thracians spread north and south, and a
branch of their race, the Dacians, crossed the Danube. The latter
established themselves on both sides of the Carpathian ranges, in the
region which now comprises the provinces of Oltenia (Rumania), and Banat
and Transylvania (Hungary). The Dacian Empire expanded till its boundaries
touched upon those of the Roman Empire. The Roman province of Moesia
(between the Danube and the Balkans) fell before its armies, and the
campaign that ensued was so successful that the Dacians were able to
compel Rome to an alliance.
Two expeditions undertaken against Dacia by the Emperor Trajan (98-117)
released Rome from these ignominious obligations, and brought Dacia under
Roman rule (A.D. 106). Before his second expedition Trajan erected a stone
bridge over the Danube, the remains of which can still be seen at
Turnu-Severin, a short distance below the point where the Danube enters
Rumanian territory. Trajan celebrated his victory by erecting at Adam
Klissi (in the province of Dobrogea) the recently discovered _Tropaeum
Traiani_, and in Rome the celebrated 'Trajan's Column', depicting in
marble reliefs various episodes of the Dacian wars.
The new Roman province was limited to the regions originally inhabited by
the Dacians, and a strong garrison, estimated by historians at 25,000 men,
was left to guard it. Numerous colonists from all parts of the Roman
Empire were brought here as settlers, and what remained of the Dacian
population completely amalgamated with them. The new province quickly
developed under the impulse of Roman civilization, of which numerous
inscriptions and other archaeological remains are evidence. It became one
of the most flourishing dependencies of the Roman Empire, and was spoken
of as _Dacia Felix_.
About a century and a half later hordes of barbarian invaders, coming from
the north and east, swept over the country. Under the strain of those
incursions the Roman legions withdrew by degrees into Moesia, and in A.D.
271 Dacia was finally evacuated. But the colonists remained, retiring into
the Carpathians, where they lived forgotten of history.
The most powerful of these invaders were the Goths (271-375), who, coming
from the shores of the Baltic, had shortly before settled north of the
Black Sea. Unaccustomed to mountain life, they did not penetrate beyond
the plains between the Carpathians and the Dnjester. They had consequently
but little intercourse with the Daco-Roman population, and the total
absence in the Rumanian language and in Rumanian place-names of words of
Gothic origin indicates that their stay had no influence upon country or
population. Material evidence of their occupation is afforded, however, by
a number of articles made of gold found in 1837 at Petroasa (Moldavia),
and now in the National Museum at Bucarest.
After the Goths came the Huns (375-453), under Attila, the Avars
(566-799), both of Mongolian race, and the Gepidae (453-566), of Gothic
race--all savage, bloodthirsty raiders, passing and repassing over the
Rumanian regions, pillaging and burning everywhere. To avoid destruction
the Daco-Roman population withdrew more and more into the inaccessible
wooded regions of the mountains, and as a result were in no wise
influenced by contact with the invaders.
But with the coming of the Slavs, who settled in the Balkan peninsula
about the beginning of the seventh century, certain fundamental changes
took place in the ethnical conditions prevailing on the Danube. The
Rumanians were separated from the Romans, following the occupation by the
Slavs of the Roman provinces between the Adriatic and the Black Sea. Such
part of the population as was not annihilated during the raids of the
Avars was taken into captivity, or compelled to retire southwards towards
modern Macedonia and northwards towards the Dacian regions.
Parts of the Rumanian country became dependent upon the new state founded
between the Balkans and the Danube in 679 by the Bulgarians, a people of
Turanian origin, who formerly inhabited the regions north of the Black Sea
between the Volga and the mouth of the Danube.
After the conversion of the Bulgarians to Christianity (864) the Slovenian
language was introduced into their Church, and afterwards also into the
Church of the already politically dependent Rumanian provinces.[1] This
finally severed the Daco-Rumanians from the Latin world. The former
remained for a long time under Slav influence, the extent of which is
shown by the large number of words of Slav origin contained in the
Rumanian language, especially in geographical and agricultural
terminology.
[Footnote 1: The Rumanians north and south of the Danube embraced the
Christian faith after its introduction into the Roman Empire by
Constantine the Great (325), with Latin as religious language and their
church organization under the rule of Rome. A Christian basilica, dating
from that period, has been discovered by the Rumanian; archaeologist,
Tocilescu, at Adam Klissi (Dobrogea).]
The coming of the Hungarians (a people of Mongolian race) about the end of
the ninth century put an end to the Bulgarian domination in Dacia. While a
few of the existing Rumanian duchies were subdued by Stephen the Saint,
the first King of Hungary (995-1038), the 'land of the Vlakhs' (_Terra
Blacorum_), in the south-eastern part of Transylvania, enjoyed under the
Hungarian kings a certain degree of national autonomy. The Hungarian
chronicles speak of the Vlakhs as 'former colonists of the Romans'. The
ethnological influence of the Hungarians upon the Rumanian population has
been practically nil. They found the Rumanian nation firmly established,
race and language, and the latter remained pure of Magyarisms, even in
Transylvania. Indeed, it is easy to prove--and it is only what might be
expected, seeing that the Rumanians had attained a higher state of
civilization than the Hungarian invaders--that the Hungarians were largely
influenced by the Daco-Romans. They adopted Latin as their official
language, they copied many of the institutions and customs of the
Rumanians, and recruited a large number of their nobles from among the
Rumanian nobility, which was already established on a feudal basis when
the Hungarians arrived.
A great number of the Rumanian nobles and freemen were, however, inimical
to the new masters, and migrated to the regions across the mountains. This
the Hungarians used as a pretext for bringing parts of Rumania under their
domination, and they were only prevented from further extending it by the
coming of the Tartars (1241), the last people of Mongolian origin to harry
these regions. The Hungarians maintained themselves, however, in the parts
which they had already occupied, until the latter were united into the
principality of the 'Rumanian land'.
To sum up: 'The Rumanians are living to-day where fifteen centuries ago
their ancestors were living. The possession of the regions on the Lower
Danube passed from one nation to another, but none endangered the Rumanian
nation as a national entity. "The water passes, the stones remain"; the
hordes of the migration period, detached from their native soil,
disappeared as mist before the sun. But the Roman element bent their heads
while the storm passed over them, clinging to the old places until the
advent of happier days, when they were able to stand up and stretch their
limbs.'[1]
[Footnote 1: Traugott Tamm, _Ueber den Ursprung der Rumaenen,_, Bonn, 1891.]
3
_The Foundation and Development of the Rumanian Principalities_
The first attempt to organize itself into a political entity was made by
the Rumanian nation in the thirteenth century, when, under the impulse of
the disaffected nobles coming from Hungary, the two principalities of
'Muntenia' (Mountain Land), commonly known as Wallachia and 'Moldavia',
came into being. The existence of Rumanians on both sides of the
Carpathians long before Wallachia was founded is corroborated by
contemporary chroniclers. We find evidence of it in as distant a source as
the _History of the Mongols,_ of the Persian chronicler, Rashid Al-Din,
who, describing the invasion of the Tartars, says: 'In the middle of
spring (1240) the princes (Mongols or Tartars) crossed the mountains in
order to enter the country of the Bulares (Bulgarians) and of the
Bashguirds (Hungarians). Orda, who was marching to the right, passed
through the country of the Haute (Olt), where Bazarambam met him with an
army, but was beaten. Boudgek crossed the mountains to enter the
Kara-Ulak, and defeated the Ulak (Vlakh) people.'[1] Kara-Ulak means Black
Wallachia; Bazarambam is certainly the corrupted name of the Ban Bassarab,
who ruled as vassal of Hungary over the province of Oltenia, and whose
dynasty founded the principality of Muntenia. The early history of this
principality was marked by efforts to free it from Hungarian domination, a
natural development of the desire for emancipation which impelled the
Rumanians to migrate from the subdued provinces in Hungary.
[Footnote 1: Xenopol, _Histoire des Roumains,_ Paris, 1896, i, 168.]
The foundation of Moldavia dates from after the retreat of the Tartars,
who had occupied the country for a century (1241-1345). They were driven
out by an expedition under Hungarian leadership, with the aid of Rumanians
from the province of Maramuresh. It was the latter who then founded the
principality of Moldavia under the suzerainty of Hungary, the chroniclers
mentioning as its first ruler the Voivod Dragosh.[1]
[Footnote 1: The legend as to the foundation of Moldavia tells us that
Dragosh, when hunting one day in the mountains, was pursuing a bison
through the dense forest. Towards sunset, just when a successful shot from
his bow had struck and killed the animal, he emerged at a point from which
the whole panorama of Moldavia was unfolded before his astonished eyes.
Deeply moved by the beauty of this fair country, he resolved to found a
state there. It is in commemoration of this event that Moldavia bears the
head of a wild bison on her banner.]
The rudimentary political formations which already existed before the
foundation of the principalities were swept away by the invasion of the
Tartars, who destroyed all trace of constituted authority in the plains
below the Carpathians. In consequence the immigrants from Transylvania did
not encounter any resistance, and were even able to impose obedience upon
the native population, though coming rather as refugees than as
conquerors. These new-comers were mostly nobles (boyards). Their
emigration deprived the masses of the Rumanian population of Transylvania
of all moral and political support--especially as a part of the nobility
had already been won over by their Hungarian masters--and with time the
masses fell into servitude. On the other hand the immigrating nobles
strengthened and secured the predominance of their class in the states
which were to be founded. In both cases the situation of the peasantry
became worse, and we have, curiously enough, the same social fact brought
about by apparently contrary causes.
Though the Rumanians seem to have contributed but little, up to the
nineteenth century, to the advance of civilization, their part in European
history is nevertheless a glorious one, and if less apparent, perhaps of
more fundamental importance. By shedding their blood in the struggle
against the Ottoman invasion, they, together with the other peoples of
Oriental Europe, procured that security which alone made possible the
development of western civilization. Their merit, like that of all with
whom they fought, 'is not to have vanquished time and again the followers
of Mohammed, who always ended by gaining the upper hand, but rather to
have resisted with unparalleled energy, perseverance, and bravery the
terrible Ottoman invaders, making them pay for each step advanced such a
heavy price, that their resources were drained, they were unable to carry
on the fight, and thus their power came to an end'.[1]
[Footnote 1: Xenopol, op. cit., i. 266.]
From the phalanx of Christian warriors stand out the names of a few who
were the bravest of a time when bravery was common; but while it is at
least due that more tribute than a mere mention of their names should be
paid to the patriot princes who fought in life-long conflict against
Turkish domination, space does not permit me to give more than the
briefest summary of the wars which for centuries troubled the country.
It was in 1389, when Mircea the Old was Prince of Wallachia, that the
united Balkan nations attempted for the first time to check Ottoman
invasion. The battle of Kosovo, however, was lost, and Mircea had to
consent to pay tribute to the Turks. For a short space after the battle of
Rovine (1398), where Mircea defeated an invading Turkish army, the country
had peace, until Turkish victories under the Sultan Mohammed resulted, in
1411, in further submissions to tribute.
It is worthy of mention that it was on the basis of tribute that the
relations between Turkey and Rumania rested until 1877, the Rumanian
provinces becoming at no time what Hungary was for a century and a half,
namely, a Turkish province.
In a battle arising following his frustration--by means not unconnected
with his name--of a Turkish plot against his person, Vlad the Impaler
(1458-62) completely defeated the Turks under Mohammed II; but an
unfortunate feud against Stephen the Great, Prince of Moldavia, put an end
to the reign of Vlad--a fierce but just prince.
A period of the most lamentable decadence followed, during which Turkish
domination prevailed more and more in the country. During an interval of
twenty-five years (1521-46) no less than eleven princes succeeded one
another on the throne of Muntenia, whilst of the nineteen princes who
ruled during the last three-quarters of the sixteenth century, only two
died a natural death while still reigning.
In Moldavia also internal struggles were weakening the country. Not
powerful enough to do away with one another, the various aspirants to the
throne contented themselves with occupying and ruling over parts of the
province. Between 1443-7 there were no less than three princes reigning
simultaneously, whilst one of them, Peter III, lost and regained the
throne three times.
For forty-seven years (1457-1504) Stephen the Great fought for the
independence of Moldavia. At Racova, in 1475, he annihilated an Ottoman
army in a victory considered the greatest ever secured by the Cross
against Islam. The Shah of Persia, Uzun Hasan, who was also fighting the
Turks, offered him an alliance, urging him at the same time to induce all
the Christian princes to unite with the Persians against the common foe.
These princes, as well as Pope Sixtus IV, gave him great praise; but when
Stephen asked from them assistance in men and money, not only did he
receive none, but Vladislav, King of Hungary, conspired with his brother
Albert, King of Poland, to conquer and divide Moldavia between them. A
Polish army entered the country, but was utterly destroyed by Stephen in
the forest of Kosmin.
Having had the opportunity of judging at its right value the friendship of
the Christian princes, on his death-bed Stephen advised his son Bogdan to
make voluntary submission to the Turks. Thus Moldavia, like Wallachia,
came under Turkish suzerainty.
For many years after Stephen's death the Turks exploited the Rumanian
countries shamelessly, the very candidates for the throne having to pay
great sums for Turkish support. The country groaned under the resultant
taxation and the promiscuousness of the tribute exacted till, in 1572,
John the Terrible ascended the Moldavian throne. This prince refused to
pay tribute, and repeatedly defeated the Turks. An army of 100,000 men
advanced against John; but his cavalry, composed of nobles not over-loyal
to a prince having the peasant cause so much at heart, deserted to the
enemy, with the result that, after a gallant and prolonged resistance, he
suffered defeat.
Michael the Brave, Prince of Muntenia (1593-1601), was the last of the
Vlakhs to stand up against Turkish aggression. This prince not only
succeeded in crushing a Turkish army sent against him, but he invaded
Transylvania, whose prince had leanings towards Turkey, pushed further
into Moldavia, and succeeded in bringing the three Rumanian countries
under his rule. Michael is described in the documents of the time as
'Prince of the whole land of Hungro-Wallachia, of Transylvania, and of
Moldavia'. He ruled for eight years. 'It was not the Turkish sword which
put an end to the exploits of Michael the Brave. The Magyars of
Transylvania betrayed him; the German emperor condemned him; and a Greek
in Austria's service, General Basta, had him sabred: as though it were
fated that all the enemies of the Rumanian race, the Magyar, the German,
and the Greek, should unite to dip their hands in the blood of the Latin
hero.'[1] The union of the Rumanian lands which he realized did not last
long; but it gave form and substance to the idea which was from that day
onward to be the ideal of the Rumanian nation.
[Footnote 1: Alfred Rumbaud, Introduction to Xenopol, op, cit., i. xix.]
The fundamental cause of all the sufferings of the Rumanian principalities
was the hybrid 'hereditary-elective' system of succession to the throne,
which prevailed also in most of the neighbouring countries. All members of
the princely family were eligible for the succession; but the right of
selecting among them lay with an assembly composed of the higher nobility
and clergy. All was well if a prince left only one successor. But if there
were several, even if illegitimate children, claiming the right to rule,
then each endeavoured to gain over the nobility with promises, sometimes,
moreover, seeking the support of neighbouring countries. This system
rendered easier and hastened the establishment of Turkish domination; and
corruption and intrigues, in which the Sultan's harem had a share, became
capital factors in the choice and election of the ruler.
Economically and intellectually all this was disastrous. The Rumanians
were an agricultural people. The numerous class of small freeholders
(moshneni and razeshi), not being able to pay the exorbitant taxes, often
had their lands confiscated by the princes. Often, too, not being able to
support themselves, they sold their property and their very selves to the
big landowners. Nor did the nobles fare better. Formerly free,
quasi-feudal warriors, seeking fortune in reward for services rendered to
their prince, they were often subjected to coercive treatment on his part
now that the throne depended upon the goodwill of influential personages
at Constantinople. Various civil offices were created at court, either
necessitated by the extension of the relations of the country or intended
to satisfy some favourite of the prince. Sources of social position and
great material benefit, these offices were coveted greedily by the
boyards, and those who obtained none could only hope to cheat fortune by
doing their best to undermine the position of the prince.
4
_The Phanariote Rule_
These offices very presently fell to the lot of the Phanariotes (Greek
merchants and bankers inhabiting the quarter of Phanar), who had in some
way or another assisted the princes to their thrones, these being now
practically put up to auction in Constantinople. As a natural consequence
of such a state of affairs the thoughts of the Rumanian princes turned to
Russia as a possible supporter against Ottoman oppression. A formal
alliance was entered into in 1711 with Tsar Peter the Great, but a joint
military action against the Turks failed, the Tsar returned to Russia, and
the Porte threatened to transform Moldavia, in order to secure her against
incipient Russian influence, into a Turkish province with a pasha as
administrator. The nobles were preparing to leave the country, and the
people to retire into the mountains, as their ancestors had done in times
of danger. It is not to be wondered at that, under the menace of losing
their autonomy, the Rumanians 'welcomed the nomination of the dragoman of
the Porte, Nicholas Mavrocordato, though he was a Greek. The people
greeted with joy the accession of the first Phanariote to the throne of
the principality of Moldavia'[1] (1711).
[Footnote 1: Xenopol, op. cit., ii. 138]
Knowledge of foreign languages had enabled the Phanariotes to obtain
important diplomatic positions at Constantinople, and they ended by
acquiring the thrones of the Rumanian principalities as a recompense for
their services. But they had to pay for it, and to make matters more
profitable the Turks devised the ingenious method of transferring the
princes from one province to another, each transference being considered
as a new nomination. From 1730 to 1741 the two reigning princes
interchanged thrones in this way three times. They acquired the throne by
gold, and they could only keep it by gold. All depended upon how much they
wore able to squeeze out of the country. The princes soon became past
masters in the art of spoliation. They put taxes upon chimneys, and the
starving peasants pulled their cottages down and went to live in mountain
caves; they taxed the animals, and the peasants preferred to kill the few
beasts they possessed. But this often proved no remedy, for we are told
that the Prince Constantin Mavrocordato, having prescribed a tax on
domestic animals at a time when an epidemic had broken out amongst them,
ordered the tax to be levied on the carcasses. 'The Administrative regime
during the Phanariote period was, in general, little else than organized
brigandage,' says Xenopol[1]. In fact the Phanariote rule was instinct
with corruption, luxury, and intrigue. Though individually some of them
may not deserve blame, yet considering what the Phanariotes took out of
the country, what they introduced into it, and to what extent they
prevented its development, their era was the most calamitous in Rumanian
history.
[Footnote 1: Ibid, op. cit., ii. 308]
The war of 1768 between Russia and Turkey gave the former power a vague
protectorate over the Rumanian provinces (Treaty of Kutchuk Kainardji). In
1774 Austria acquired from the Turks, by false promises, the northern part
of Moldavia, the pleasant land of Bucovina. During the new conflict
between Turkey and Russia, the Russian armies occupied and battened upon
the Rumanian provinces for six years. Though they had again to abandon
their intention of making the Danube the southern boundary of their
empire--to which Napoleon had agreed by the secret treaty with Tsar
Alexander (Erfurt, September 27, 1808)--they obtained from Turkey the
cession of Bessarabia (Treaty of Bucarest, May 28, 1812), together with
that part of Moldavia lying between the Dnjester and the Pruth, the
Russians afterwards giving to the whole region the name of Bessarabia.
5
_Modern Period to 1866_
In 1821 the Greek revolution, striving to create an independent Greece,
broke out on Rumanian ground, supported by the princes of Moldavia and
Muntenia. Of this support the Rumanians strongly disapproved, for, if
successful, the movement would have strengthened the obnoxious Greek
domination; If unsuccessful, the Turks were sure to take a terrible
revenge for the assistance given by the Rumanian countries. The movement,
which was started about the same time by the ennobled peasant, Tudor
Vladimirescu, for the emancipation of the lower classes, soon acquired,
therefore, an anti-Greek tendency. Vladimirescu was assassinated at the
instigation of the Greeks; the latter were completely checked by the
Turks, who, grown suspicious after the Greek rising and confronted with
the energetic attitude of the Rumanian nobility, consented in 1822 to the
nomination of two native boyards, Jonitza Sturdza and Gregory Ghica,
recommended by their countrymen, as princes of Moldavia and Wallachia. The
iniquitous system of 'the throne to the highest bidder' had come to an
end.
The period which marks the decline of Greek influence in the Rumanian
principalities also marks the growth of Russian influence; the first meant
economic exploitation, the second was a serious menace to the very
existence of the Rumanian nation. But if Russia seemed a possible future
danger, Turkey with its Phanariote following was a certain and immediate
menace. When, therefore, at the outbreak of the conflict with Turkey in
1828 the Russians once more passed the Pruth, the country welcomed them.
Indeed, the Rumanian boyards, who after the rising of 1821 and the Turkish
occupation had taken refuge in Transylvania, had even more than once
invited Russian intervention.[1] Hopes and fears alike were realized. By
the Treaty of Adrianople (1829) the rights of Turkey as suzerain were
limited to the exaction of a monetary tribute and the right of investiture
of the princes, one important innovation being that these last were to be
elected by national assemblies for life. But, on the other hand, a Russian
protectorate was established, and the provinces remained in Russian
military occupation up to 1834, pending the payment of the war indemnity
by Turkey. The ultimate aim of Russia may be open to discussion. Her
immediate aim was to make Russian influence paramount in the
principalities; this being the only possible explanation of the anomalous
fact that, pending the payment of the war indemnity, Russia herself was
occupying the provinces whose autonomy she had but now forcibly retrieved
from Turkey. The _Reglement Organique_, the new constitutional law given
to the principalities by their Russian governor, Count Kisseleff, truly
reflected the tendency. From the administrative point of view it was meant
to make for progress; from the political point of view it was meant to
bind the two principalities to the will of the Tsar. The personal charm of
Count Kisseleff seemed to have established as it were an unbreakable link
between Russians and Rumanians. But when he left the country in 1834 'the
liking for Russia passed away to be replaced finally by the two sentiments
which always most swayed the Rumanian heart: love for their country, and
affection towards France'.
[Footnote 1: Sec P. Eliade, _Histoire de l'Esprit Public en Roumanie_, i,
p. 167 et seq.]
French culture had been introduced into the principalities by the
Phanariote princes who, as dragomans of the Porte, had to know the
language, and usually employed French secretaries for themselves and
French tutors for their children. With the Russian occupation a fresh
impetus was given to French culture, which was pre-eminent in Russia at
the time; and the Russian officials, not speaking the language of the
country, generally employed French in their relations with the Rumanian
authorities, French being already widely spoken in Rumania. The contact
with French civilization, at an epoch when the Rumanians were striving to
free themselves from Turkish, Greek, and Russian political influence,
roused in them the sleeping Latin spirit, and the younger generation, in
constantly increasing numbers, flocked to Paris in search of new forms of
civilization and political life. At this turning-point in their history
the Rumanians felt themselves drawn towards France, no less by racial
affinity than by the liberal ideas to which that country had so
passionately given herself during several decades.
By the Treaty of Adrianople the Black Sea was opened to the commercial
vessels of all nations. This made for the rapid economic development of
the principalities by providing an outlet for their agricultural produce,
the chief source of their wealth. It also brought them nearer to western
Europe, which began to be interested in a nation whose spirit centuries of
sufferings had failed to break. Political, literary, and economic events
thus prepared the ground for the Rumanian Renascence, and when in 1848 the
great revolution broke out, it spread at once over the Rumanian countries,
where the dawn of freedom had been struggling to break since 1821. The
Rumanians of Transylvania rose against the tyranny of the Magyars; those
of Moldavia and Muntenia against the oppressive influence of Russia. The
movement under the gallant, but inexperienced, leadership of a few
patriots, who, significantly enough, had almost all been educated in
France, was, however, soon checked in the principalities by the joint
action of Russian and Turkish forces which remained in occupation of the
country. Many privileges were lost (Convention of Balta Liman, May 1,
1849); but the revolution had quickened the national sentiment of the
younger generation in all classes of society, and the expatriated leaders,
dispersed throughout the great capitals of Europe, strenuously set to work
to publish abroad the righteous cause of their country. In this they
received the enthusiastic and invaluable assistance of Edgar Quinet,
Michelet, Saint-Marc Girardin, and others.
This propaganda had the fortune to be contemporaneous and in agreement
with the political events leading to the Crimean War, which was entered
upon to check the designs of Russia. A logical consequence was the idea,
raised at the Paris Congress of 1856, of the union of the Rumanian
principalities as a barrier to Russian expansion. This idea found a
powerful supporter in Napoleon III, ever a staunch upholder of the
principle of nationality. But at the Congress the unexpected happened.
Russia favoured the idea of union, 'to swallow the two principalities at a
gulp,' as a contemporary diplomatist maliciously suggested; while Austria
opposed it strongly. So, inconceivably enough, did Turkey, whose attitude,
as the French ambassador at Constantinople, Thouvenel, put it, 'was less
influenced by the opposition of Austria than by the approval of
Russia'.[1] Great Britain also threw in her weight with the powers which
opposed the idea of union, following her traditional policy of preserving
the European equilibrium. The treaty of March 30, 1856, re-incorporated
with Moldavia the southern part of Bessarabia, including the delta of the
Danube, abolished the Russian protectorate, but confirmed the suzerainty
of Turkey--not unnaturally, since the integrity of the Ottoman Empire had
been the prime motive of the war. By prohibiting Turkey, however, from
entering Rumanian territory, save with the consent of the great powers, it
was recognized indirectly that the suzerainty was merely a nominal one.
Article 23 of the treaty, by providing that the administration of the
principalities was to be on a national basis, implicitly pointed to the
idea of union, as the organization of one principality independently of
the other would not have been national. But as the main argument of Turkey
and Austria was that the Rumanians themselves did not desire the union, it
was decided to convene in both principalities special assemblies (divans
_ad hoc_) representing all classes of the population, whose wishes were to
be embodied, by a European commission, in a report for consideration by
the Congress.
[Footnote 1: A. Xenopol, _Unionistii si Separatistii_ (Paper read before
the Rumanian Academy), 1909.]
To understand the argument of the two powers concerned and the decision to
which it led, it must be borne in mind that the principalities were in the
occupation of an Austrian army, which had replaced the Russian armies
withdrawn in 1854, and that the elections for the assemblies were to be
presided over by Turkish commissaries. Indeed, the latter, in
collaboration with the Austrian consuls, so successfully doctored the
election lists,[1] that the idea of union might once more have fallen
through, had it not been for the invaluable assistance which Napoleon III
gave the Rumanian countries. As Turkish policy was relying mainly on
England's support, Napoleon brought about a personal meeting with Queen
Victoria and Prince Albert, at Osborne (August 1857), the result of which
was a compromise: Napoleon agreed to defer for the time being the idea of
an effective union of the two principalities, England undertaking, on the
other hand, to make the Porte cancel the previous elections, and proceed
to new ones after revision of the electoral lists. The corrupt Austrian
and Turkish influence on the old elections was best demonstrated by the
fact that only three of the total of eighty-four old members succeeded in
securing re-election. The assemblies met and proclaimed as imperatively
necessary to the future welfare of the provinces, their union, 'for no
frontier divides us, and everything tends to bring us closer, and nothing
to separate us, save the ill-will of those who desire to see us disunited
and weak'; further, a foreign hereditary dynasty, because 'the accession
to the throne of princes chosen from amongst us has been a constant
pretext for foreign interference, and the throne has been the cause of
unending feud among the great families of this country'. Moreover, if the
union of the two principalities was to be accomplished under a native
prince, it is obvious that the competition would have become doubly keen;
not to speak of the jealousies likely to be arousal between Moldavians and
Muntenians.
[Footnote 1: The edifying correspondence between the Porte and its
commissary Vorgorides regarding the arrangements for the Rumanian
elections fell into the hands of Rumanian politicians, and caused a great
sensation when it appeared in _L'Etoile du Danube_, published in Brussels
by Rumanian _emigres_.]
Such were the indisputable wishes of the Rumanians, based on knowledge of
men and facts, and arising out of the desire to see their country well
started on the high road of progress. But Europe had called for the
expression of these wishes only to get the question shelved for the
moment, as in 1856 everybody was anxious for a peace which should at all
costs be speedy. Consequently, when a second Congress met in Paris, in May
1858, three months of discussion and the sincere efforts of France only
resulted in a hybrid structure entitled the 'United Principalities'. These
were to have a common legislation, a common army, and a central committee
composed of representatives of both assemblies for the discussion of
common affairs; but were to continue to form two separate states, with
independent legislative and executive institutions, each having to elect a
prince of Rumanian descent for life.
Disappointed in their hopes and reasonable expectations, the Rumanians
adopted the principle of 'help yourself and God will help you', and
proceeded to the election of their rulers. Several candidates competed in
Moldavia. To avoid a split vote the name of an outsider was put forward
the day before the election, and on January 17, 1859, Colonel Alexander
Ioan Cuza was unanimously elected. In Wallachia the outlook was very
uncertain when the assembly met, amid great popular excitement, on
February 5. The few patriots who had realized that the powers, seeking
only their own interests, were consciously and of set purpose hampering
the emancipation of a long-suffering nation, put forth and urged the
election of Cuza, and the assembly unanimously adopted this spirited
suggestion. By this master-stroke the Rumanians had quietly accomplished
the reform which was an indispensable condition towards assuring a better
future. The political moment was propitious. Italy's military preparation
prevented Austria from intervening, and, as usual when confronted with an
accomplished fact, the great powers and Turkey finished by officially
recognizing the action of the principalities in December 1861. The central
commission was at once abolished, the two assemblies and cabinets merged
into one, and Bucarest became the capital of the new state 'Rumania'.
If the unsympathetic attitude of the powers had any good result, it was to
bring home for the moment to the Rumanians the necessity for national
unity. When the danger passed, however, the wisdom which it had evoked
followed suit. Cuza cherished the hope of realizing various ideal reforms.
Confronted with strong opposition, he did not hesitate to override the
constitution by dissolving the National Assembly (May 2, 1864) and
arrogating to himself the right, till the formation of a new Chamber, to
issue decrees which had all the force of law. He thus gave a dangerous
example to the budding constitutional polity; political passions were let
loose, and a plot organized by the Opposition led to the forced abdication
of Cuza on February 23, 1866. The prince left the country for ever a few
days later. No disturbance whatever took place, not one drop of blood was
shed.
A series of laws, mostly adapted from French models, was introduced by
Cuza. Under the Education Act of 1864 all degrees of education were free,
and elementary education compulsory. A large number of special and
technical schools were founded, as well as two universities, one at Jassy
(1860) and one at Bucarest (1864). After the _coup d'etat_ of 1864
universal suffrage was introduced, largely as an attempt to 'swamp' the
fractious political parties with the peasant vote; while at the same time
a 'senate' was created as a 'moderating assembly' which, composed as it
was of members by right and members nominated by the prince, by its very
nature increased the influence of the crown. The chief reforms concerned
the rural question. Firstly, Cuza and his minister, Cogalniceanu,
secularized and converted to the state the domains of the monasteries,
which during the long period of Greek influence had acquired one-fifth of
the total area of the land, and were completely in the hands of the Greek
clergy (Law of December 13, 1863). More important still, as affecting
fundamentally the social structure of the country, was the Rural Law
(promulgated on August 26, 1864), which had been the cause of the conflict
between Cuza and the various political factions, the Liberals clamouring
for more thorough reforms, the Conservatives denouncing Cuza's project as
revolutionary. As the peasant question is the most important problem left
for Rumania to solve, and as I believe that, in a broad sense, it has a
considerable bearing upon the present political situation in that country,
it may not be out of place here to devote a little space to its
consideration.
Originally the peasant lived in the village community as a free
land-owner. He paid a certain due (one-tenth of his produce and three
days' labour yearly) to his leader (_cneaz_) as recompense for his
leadership in peace and war. The latter, moreover, solely enjoyed the
privilege of carrying on the occupations of miller and innkeeper, and the
peasant was compelled to mill with him. When after the foundation of the
principalities the upper class was established on a feudal basis, the
peasantry were subjected to constantly increasing burdens. Impoverished
and having in many cases lost their land, the peasants were also deprived
at the end of the sixteenth century of their freedom of movement. By that
time the cneaz, from being the leader of the community, had become the
actual lord of the village, and his wealth was estimated by the number of
villages he possessed. The peasant owners paid their dues to him in labour
and in kind. Those peasants who owned no land were his serfs, passing with
the land from master to master.
Under the Turkish domination the Rumanian provinces became the granary of
the Ottoman Empire. The value of land rose quickly, as did also the taxes.
To meet these taxes--from the payment of which the boyards (the
descendants of the cneazi) were exempt--the peasant owners had frequently
to sacrifice their lands; while, greedy after the increased benefits, the
boyards used all possible means to acquire more land for themselves. With
the increase of their lands they needed more labour, and they obtained
permission from the ruler not only to exact increased labour dues from the
peasantry, but also to determine the amount of work that should be done in
a day. This was effected in such a way that the peasants had, in fact, to
serve three and four times the number of days due.
The power to acquire more land from the freeholders, and to increase the
amount of labour due by the peasants, was characteristic of the
legislation of the eighteenth century. By a decree of Prince Moruzi, in
1805, the lords were for the first time empowered to reserve to their own
use part of the estate, namely, one-fourth of the meadow land, and this
privilege was extended in 1828 to the use of one-third of the arable land.
The remaining two-thirds were reserved for the peasants, every young
married couple being entitled to a certain amount of land, in proportion
to the number of traction animals they owned. When the Treaty of
Adrianople of 1829 opened the western markets to Rumanian corn, in which
markets far higher prices were obtainable than from the Turks, Rumanian
agriculture received an extraordinary impetus. Henceforth the efforts of
the boyards were directed towards lessening the amount of land to which
the peasants were entitled. By the _Reglement Organique_ they succeeded in
reducing such land to half its previous area, at the same time maintaining
and exacting from the peasant his dues in full. It is in the same Act that
there appears for the first time the fraudulent title 'lords of the land',
though the boyards had no exclusive right of property; they had the use of
one-third of the estate, and a right to a due in labour and in kind from
the peasant holders, present or prospective, of the other two-thirds.
With a view to ensuring, on the one hand, greater economic freedom to the
land-owners, and, on the other, security for the peasants from the
enslaving domination of the upper class, the rural law of 1864 proclaimed
the peasant-tenants full proprietors of their holdings, and the
land-owners full proprietors of the remainder of the estate. The original
intention of creating common land was not carried out in the Bill. The
peasant's holding in arable land being small, he not infrequently ploughed
his pasture, and, as a consequence, had either to give up keeping beasts,
or pay a high price to the land-owners for pasturage. Dues in labour and
in kind were abolished, the land-owners receiving an indemnity which was
to be refunded to the state by the peasants in instalments within a period
of fifteen years. This reform is characteristic of much of the legislation
of Cuza: despotically pursuing the realization of some ideal reform,
without adequate study of and adaptation to social circumstances, his laws
provided no practical solution of the problem with which they dealt. In
this case, for example, the reform benefited the upper class solely,
although generally considered a boon to the peasantry. Of ancient right
two-thirds of the estate were reserved for the peasants; but the new law
gave them possession of no more than the strip they were holding, which
barely sufficed to provide them with the mere necessaries of life. The
remainder up to two-thirds of the estate went as a gift, with full
proprietorship; to the boyard. For the exemption of their dues in kind and
in labour, the peasants had to pay an indemnity, whereas the right of
their sons to receive at their marriage a piece of land in proportion to
the number of traction animals they possessed was lost without
compensation. Consequently, the younger peasants had to sell their labour,
contracting for periods of a year and upwards, and became a much easier
prey to the spoliation of the upper class than when they had at least a
strip of land on which to build a hut, and from which to procure their
daily bread; the more so as the country had no industry which could
compete with agriculture in the labour market. An investigation undertaken
by the Home Office showed that out of 1,265 labour contracts for 1906,
chosen at random, only 39.7 per cent, were concluded at customary wages;
the others were lower in varying degrees, 13.2 per cent. of the cases
showing wages upwards of 75 per cent. below the usual rates.
Under these conditions of poverty and economic serfdom the peasantry was
not able to participate in the enormous development of Rumanian
agriculture, which had resulted from increased political security and the
establishment of an extensive network of railways. While the boyards found
an increasing attraction in politics, a new class of middlemen came into
existence, renting the land from the boyards for periods varying generally
from three to five years. Owing to the resultant competition, rents
increased considerably, while conservative methods of cultivation kept
production stationary. Whereas the big cultivator obtained higher prices
to balance the increased cost of production, the peasant, who produced for
his own consumption, could only face such increase by a corresponding
decrease in the amount of food consumed. To show how much alive the rural
question is, it is enough to state that peasant risings occurred in 1888,
1889, 1894, 1900, and 1907; that new distributions of land took place in
1881 and 1889; that land was promised to the peasants as well at the time
of the campaign of 1877 as at that of 1913; and that more or less happily
conceived measures concerning rural questions have been passed in almost
every parliamentary session. The general tendency of such legislation
partook of the 'free contract' nature, though owing to the social
condition of the peasantry the acts in question had to embody protective
measures providing for a maximum rent for arable and pasture land, and a
minimum wage for the peasant labourer.
Solutions have been suggested in profusion. That a solution is possible no
one can doubt. One writer, basing his arguments on official statistics
which show that the days of employment in 1905 averaged only ninety-one
for each peasant, claims that only the introduction of circulating capital
and the creation of new branches of activity can bring about a change. The
suggested remedy may be open to discussion; but our author is undoubtedly
right when, asking himself why this solution has not yet been attempted,
he says: 'Our country is governed at present by an agrarian class.... Her
whole power rests in her ownership of the land, our only wealth. The
introduction of circulating capital would result in the disintegration of
that wealth, in the loss of its unique quality, and, as a consequence, in
the social decline of its possessors.'[1] This is the fundamental evil
which prevents any solution of the rural question. A small class of
politicians, with the complicity of a large army of covetous and
unscrupulous officials, live in oriental indolence out of the sufferings
of four-fifths of the Rumanian nation. Though elementary education is
compulsory, more than 60 per cent. of the population are still illiterate,
mainly on account of the inadequacy of the educational budget. Justice is
a myth for the peasant. Of political rights he is, in fact, absolutely
deprived. The large majority, and by far the sanest part of the Rumanian
nation, are thus fraudulently kept outside the political and social life
of the country. It is not surmising too much, therefore, to say that the
opportunity of emancipating the Transylvanians would not have been
wilfully neglected, had that part of the Rumanian nation in which the old
spirit still survives had any choice in the determination of their own
fate.
[Footnote 1: St. Antim, _Cbestiunea Social[)a] [^i]n Rom[^a]nia,_ 1908, p.
214.]
6
_Contemporary Period: Internal Development_
In order to obviate internal disturbances or external interference, the
leaders of the movement which had dethroned Prince Cuza caused parliament
to proclaim, on the day of Cuza's abdication, Count Philip of Flanders--
the father of King Albert of Belgium--Prince of Rumania. The offer was,
however, not accepted, as neither France nor Russia favoured the proposal.
Meanwhile a conference had met again in Paris at the instance of Turkey
and vetoed the election of a foreign prince. But events of deeper
importance were ripening in Europe, and the Rumanian politicians rightly
surmised that the powers would not enforce their protests if a candidate
were found who was likely to secure the support of Napoleon III, then
'schoolmaster' of European diplomacy. This candidate was found in the
person of Prince Carol of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, second son of the head
of the elder branch of the Hohenzollerns (Catholic and non-reigning).
Prince Carol was cousin to the King of Prussia, and related through his
grandmother to the Bonaparte family. He could consequently count upon the
support of France and Prussia, while the political situation fortunately
secured him from the opposition of Russia, whose relations with Prussia
were at the time friendly, and also from that of Austria, whom Bismarck
proposed to 'keep busy for some time to come'. The latter must have viewed
with no little satisfaction the prospect of a Hohenzollern occupying the
throne of Rumania at this juncture; and Prince Carol, allowing himself to
be influenced by the Iron Chancellor's advice, answered the call of the
Rumanian nation, which had proclaimed him as 'Carol I, Hereditary Prince
of Rumania'. Travelling secretly with a small retinue, the prince second
class, his suite first, Prince Carol descended the Danube on an Austrian
steamer, and landed on May 8 at Turnu-Severin, the very place where,
nearly eighteen centuries before, the Emperor Trajan had alighted and
founded the Rumanian nation.
By independent and energetic action, by a conscious neglect of the will of
the powers, which only a young constitutional polity would have dared, by
an active and unselfish patriotism, Rumania had at last chosen and secured
as her ruler the foreign prince who alone had a chance of putting a stop
to intrigues from within and from without. And the Rumanians had been
extremely fortunate in their hasty and not quite independent choice. A
prince of Latin origin would probably have been more warmly welcomed to
the hearts of the Rumanian people; but after so many years of political
disorder, corrupt administration, and arbitrary rule, a prince possessed
of the German spirit of discipline and order was best fitted to command
respect and impose obedience and sobriety of principle upon the Rumanian
politicians.
Prince Carol's task was no easy one. The journal compiled by the
provisional government, which held the reins for the period elapsing
between the abdication of Cuza and the accession of Prince Carol, depicts
in the darkest colours the economic situation to which the faults, the
waste, the negligence, and short-sightedness of the previous regime had
reduced the country, 'the government being in the humiliating position of
having brought disastrous and intolerable hardship alike upon its
creditors, its servants, its pensioners, and its soldiers'.[1] Reforms
were badly needed, and the treasury had nothing in hand but debts. To
increase the income of the state was difficult, for the country was poor
and not economically independent. Under the Paris Convention of 1858,
Rumania remained bound, to her detriment, by the commercial treaties of
her suzerain, Turkey, the powers not being willing to lose the privileges
they enjoyed under the Turkish capitulations. Moreover, she was specially
excluded from the arrangement of 1860, which allowed Turkey to increase
her import taxes. The inheritance of ultra-liberal measures from the
previous regime made it difficult to cope with the unruly spirit of the
nation. Any attempt at change in this direction would have savoured of
despotism to the people, who, having at last won the right to speak aloud,
believed that to clamour against anything that meant 'rule' was the only
real and full assertion of liberty. And the dissatisfied were always
certain of finding a sympathetic ear and an open purse in the
Chancellories of Vienna and St. Petersburg.
[Footnote 1: D.A. Sturdza, _Treizeci de ani de Domnie ai Regelui Carol,_
1900, i.82.]
Prince Carol, not being sufficiently well acquainted with the conditions
of the country nor possessing as yet much influence with the governing
class, had not been in a position to influence at their inception the
provisions of the extremely liberal constitution passed only a few weeks
after his accession to the throne. The new constitution, which resembled
that of Belgium more nearly than any other, was framed by a constituent
assembly elected on universal suffrage, and, except for slight
modifications introduced in 1879 and 1884, is in vigour to-day. It
entrusts the executive to the king and his ministers, the latter alone
being responsible for the acts of the government.[1] The legislative power
is vested in the king and two assemblies--a senate and a chamber--the
initiative resting with any one of the three.[2] The budget and the yearly
bills fixing the strength of the army, however, must first be passed by
the Chamber. The agreement of the two Chambers and the sanction of the
king are necessary before any bill becomes law. The king convenes,
adjourns, and dissolves parliament. He promulgates the laws and is
invested with the right of absolute veto. The constitution proclaims the
inviolability of domicile, the liberty of the press and of assembly, and
absolute liberty of creed and religion, in so far as its forms of
celebration do not come into conflict with public order and decency. It
recognizes no distinction of class and privilege; all the citizens share
equally rights and duties within the law. Education is free in the state
schools, and elementary education compulsory wherever state schools exist.
Individual liberty and property are guaranteed; but only Rumanian citizens
can acquire rural property. Military service is compulsory, entailing two
years in the infantry, three years in the cavalry and artillery, one year
in all arms for those having completed their studies as far as the
university stage. Capital punishment does not exist, except for military
offences in time of war.
[Footnote 1: There are at present nine departments: Interior, Foreign
Affairs, Finance, War, Education and Religion, Domains and Agriculture,
Public Works, Justice, and Industry and Commerce. The President of the
Cabinet is Prime Minister, with or without portfolio.]
[Footnote 2: All citizens of full age paying taxes, with various
exemptions, are electors, voting according to districts and census. In the
case of the illiterate country inhabitants, with an income from land of
less than L12 a year, fifty of them choose one delegate having one vote in
the parliamentary election. The professorial council of the two
universities of Jassy and Bucarest send one member each to the Senate, the
heir to the throne and the eight bishops being members by right.]
The state religion is Greek Orthodox. Up to 1864 the Rumanian Church was
subordinate to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In that year it was
proclaimed independent, national, and autocephalous, though this change
was not recognized by the Patriarchate till 1885, while the secularization
of the property of the monasteries put an end _de facto_ to the influence
of the Greek clergy. Religious questions of a dogmatic nature are settled
by the Holy Synod of Bucarest, composed of the two metropolitans of
Bucarest and Jassy and the eight bishops; the Minister for Education, with
whom the administrative part of the Church rests, having only a
deliberative vote. The maintenance of the Church and of the clergy is
included in the general budget of the country, the ministers being state
officials (Law of 1893).
Religion has never played an important part in Rumanian national life, and
was generally limited to merely external practices. This may be attributed
largely to the fact that as the Slavonic language had been used in the
Church since the ninth century and then was superseded by Greek up to the
nineteenth century, the clergy was foreign, and was neither in a position
nor did it endeavour to acquire a spiritual influence over the Rumanian
peasant. There is no record whatever in Rumanian history of any religious
feuds or dissensions. The religious passivity remained unstirred even
during the domination of the Turks, who contented themselves with treating
the unbelievers with contempt, and squeezing as much money as possible out
of them. Cuza having made no provision for the clergy when he converted
the wealth of the monasteries to the state, they were left for thirty
years in complete destitution, and remained as a consequence outside the
general intellectual development of the country. Though the situation has
much improved since the Law of 1893, which incorporated the priests with
the other officials of the Government, the clergy, recruited largely from
among the rural population, are still greatly inferior to the Rumanian
priests of Bucovina and Transylvania. Most of them take up Holy orders as
a profession: 'I have known several country parsons who were thorough
atheists.'[1]
[Footnote 1: R. Rosetti, _Pentru ce s-au r[)a]sculat [t'][)a]ranii_, 1907,
p. 600]
However difficult his task, Prince Carol never deviated from the strictly
constitutional path: his opponents were free to condemn the prince's
opinions; he never gave them the chance of questioning his integrity.
Prince Carol relied upon the position in which his origin and family
alliances placed him in his relations with foreign rulers to secure him
the respect of his new subjects. Such considerations impressed the
Rumanians. Nor could they fail to be aware of 'the differences between the
previously elected princes and the present dynasty, and the improved
position which the country owed to the latter'.[1]
[Footnote 1: Augenzeuge, _Aus dem Leben Koenig Karls von Rum[)a]nien,
1894-1900,_ iii. 177.]
To inculcate the Rumanians with the spirit of discipline the prince took
in hand with energy and pursued untiringly, in spite of all obstacles, the
organization of the army. A reliable and well-organized armed force was
the best security against internal trouble-mongers, and the best argument
in international relations, as subsequent events amply proved.
The Rumanian political parties were at the outset personal parties,
supporting one or other of the candidates to the throne. When Greek
influence, emanating from Constantinople, began to make itself felt, in
the seventeenth century, a national party arose for the purpose of
opposing it. This party counted upon the support of one of the
neighbouring powers, and its various groups were known accordingly as the
Austrian, the Russian, &c., parties. With the election of Cuza the
external danger diminished, and the politicians divided upon principles of
internal reform. Cuza not being in agreement with either party, they
united to depose him, keeping truce during the period preceding the
accession of Prince Carol, when grave external dangers wore threatening,
and presiding in a coalition ministry at the introduction of the new
constitution of 1866. But this done, the truce was broken. Political
strife again awoke with all the more vigour for having been temporarily
suppressed.
The reforms which it became needful to introduce gave opportunity for the
development of strong divergence of views between the political parties.
The Liberals--the Red Party, as they were called at the time--(led by C.A.
Rosetti and Ioan Bratianu, both strong Mazzinists, both having taken an
important part in the revolutionary movements of 1848 and in that which
led to the deposition of Cuza) were advocating reforms hardly practicable
even in an established democracy; the Conservatives (led by Lascar
Catargiu) were striving to stem the flood of ideal liberal measures on
which all sense of reality was being carried away.[1] In little more than
a year there were four different Cabinets, not to mention numerous changes
in individual ministers. 'Between the two extreme tendencies Prince Carol
had to strive constantly to preserve unity of direction, he himself being
the only stable element in that ever unstable country.' It was not without
many untoward incidents that he succeeded. His person was the subject of
more than one unscrupulous attack by politicians in opposition, who did
not hesitate to exploit the German origin and the German sympathies of the
prince in order to inflame the masses. These internal conflicts entered
upon an acute phase at the time of the Franco-German conflict of 1870.
Whilst, to satisfy public opinion, the Foreign Secretary of the time,
M.P.P. Carp, had to declare in parliament, that 'wherever the colours of
France are waving, there are our interests and sympathies', the prince
wrote to the King of Prussia assuring him that 'his sympathies will always
be where the black and white banner is waving'. In these so strained
circumstances a section of the population of Bucarest allowed itself to be
drawn into anti-German street riots. Disheartened and despairing of ever
being able to do anything for that 'beautiful country', whose people
'neither know how to govern themselves nor will allow themselves to be
governed', the prince decided to abdicate.
[Footnote 1: A few years ago a group of politicians, mainly of
the old Conservative party, detached themselves and became the
Conservative-Democratic party under the leadership of M. Take Ionescu.]
So strong was the feeling in parliament roused by the prince's decision
that one of his most inveterate opponents now declared that it would be an
act of high treason for the prince to desert the country at such a crisis.
We have an inkling of what might have resulted in the letter written by
the Emperor of Austria to Prince Carol at the time, assuring him that 'my
Government will eagerly seize any opportunity which presents itself to
prove by deeds the interest it takes in a country connected by so many
bonds to my empire'. Nothing but the efforts of Lascar Catargiu and the
sound patriotism of a few statesmen saved the country from what would have
been a real misfortune. The people were well aware of this, and cheers
lasting several minutes greeted that portion of the message from the
throne which conveyed to the new parliament the decision of the prince to
continue reigning.
The situation was considerably strengthened during a period of five years'
Conservative rule. Prince Carol's high principles and the dignified
example of his private life secured for him the increasing respect of
politicians of all colours; while his statesmanlike qualities, his
patience and perseverance, soon procured him an unlimited influence in the
affairs of the state. This was made the more possible from the fact that,
on account of the political ignorance of the masses, and of the varied
influence exercised on the electorate by the highly centralized
administration, no Rumanian Government ever fails to obtain a majority at
an election. Any statesman can undertake to form a Cabinet if the king
assents to a dissolution of parliament. Between the German system, where
the emperor chooses the ministers independently of parliament, and the
English system, where the members of the executive are indicated by the
electorate through the medium of parliament, independently of the Crown,
the Rumanian system takes a middle path. Neither the crown, nor the
electorate, nor parliament possesses exclusive power in this direction.
The Government is not, generally speaking, defeated either by the
electorate or by parliament. It is the Crown which has the final decision
in the changes of regime, and upon the king falls the delicate task of
interpreting the significance of political or popular movements. The
system--which comes nearest to that of Spain--undoubtedly has its
advantages in a young and turbulent polity, by enabling its most stable
element, the king, to ensure a continuous and harmonious policy. But it
also makes the results dangerously dependent on the quality of that same
element. Under the leadership of King Carol it was an undoubted success;
the progress made by the country from an economic, financial, and military
point of view during the last half-century is really enormous. Its
position was furthermore strengthened by the proclamation of its
independence, by the final settlement of the dynastic question,[1] and by
its elevation on May 10, 1881, to the rank of kingdom, when upon the head
of the first King of Rumania was placed a crown of steel made from one of
the guns captured before Plevna from an enemy centuries old.
[Footnote 1: In the absence of direct descendants and according to the
constitution, Prince Ferdinand (born 1865), second son of King Carol's
elder brother, was named Heir Apparent to the Rumanian throne. He married
in 1892 Princess Marie of Coburg, and following the death of King Carol in
1914, he acceded to the throne as Ferdinand I.]
From the point of view of internal politics progress has been less
satisfactory. The various reforms once achieved, the differences of
principle between the political parties degenerated into mere opportunism,
the Opposition opposing, the Government disposing. The parties, and
especially the various groups within the parties, are generally known by
the names of their leaders, these denominations not implying any definite
political principle or Government programme. It is, moreover, far from
edifying that the personal element should so frequently distort political
discussion. 'The introduction of modern forms of state organization has
not been followed by the democratization of all social institutions....
The masses of the people have remained all but completely outside
political life. Not only are we yet far from government of the people by
the people, but our liberties, though deeply graven on the facade of our
constitution, have not permeated everyday life nor even stirred in the
consciousness of the people.'[1]
[Footnote 1: C. Stere, _Social-democratizm sau Poporanizm_, Jassy.]
It is strange that King Carol, who had the welfare of the people sincerely
at heart, should not have used his influence to bring about a solution of
the rural question; but this may perhaps be explained by the fact that,
from Cuza's experience, he anticipated opposition from all political
factions. It would almost seem as if, by a tacit understanding, and
anxious to establish Rumania's international position, King Carol gave his
ministers a free hand in the rural question, reserving for himself an
equally free hand in foreign affairs. This seems borne out by the fact
that, in the four volumes in which an 'eyewitness', making use of the
king's private correspondence and personal notes, has minutely described
the first fifteen years of the reign, the peasant question is entirely
ignored.[1]
[Footnote 1: The 'eyewitness' was Dr. Schaeffer, formerly tutor to Prince
Carol.]
Addressing himself, in 1871, to the Rumanian representative at the Porte,
the Austrian ambassador, von Prokesch-Osten, remarked: 'If Prince Carol
manages to pull through without outside help, and make Rumania governable,
it will be the greatest _tour de force_ I have ever witnessed in my
diplomatic career of more than half a century. It will be nothing less
than a conjuring trick.' King Carol succeeded; and only those acquainted
with Rumanian affairs can appreciate the truth of the ambassador's words.
_7_
_Contemporary Period: Foreign Affairs_
Up to 1866 Rumanian foreign politics may be said to have been
non-existent. The offensive or defensive alliances against the Turks
concluded by the Rumanian rulers with neighbouring princes during the
Middle Ages were not made in pursuance of any definite policy, but merely
to meet the moment's need. With the establishment of Turkish suzerainty
Rumania became a pawn in the foreign politics of the neighbouring empires,
and we find her repeatedly included in their projects of acquisition,
partition, or compensation (as, for instance, when she was put forward as
eventual compensation to Poland for the territories lost by that country
in the first partition).[1] Rumania may be considered fortunate in not
having lost more than Bucovina to Austria (1775), Bessarabia to Russia
(1812), and, temporarily, to Austria the region between the Danube and the
Aluta, called Oltenia (lost by the Treaty of Passarowitz, 1718; recovered
by the Treaty of Belgrade, 1739).
[Footnote 1: See Albert Sorel, _The Eastern Question in the Eighteenth
Century_ (Engl. ed.), 1898, pp. 141, 147 &c.]
While her geographical position made of Rumania the cynosure of many
covetous eyes, it at the same time saved her from individual attack by
exciting countervailing jealousies. Moreover, the powers came at last to
consider her a necessary rampart to the Ottoman Empire, whose dissolution
all desired but none dared attempt. Austria and Russia, looking to the
future, were continually competing for paramount influence in Rumania,
though it is not possible to determine where their policy of acquisition
ended and that of influence began.
The position of the principalities became more secure after the Paris
Congress of 1858, which placed them under the collective guarantee of the
great powers; but this fact, and the maintenance of Turkish suzerainty,
coupled with their own weakness, debarred them from any independence in
their foreign relations.
A sudden change took place with the accession of Prince Carol; a
Hohenzollern prince related to the King of Prussia and to Napoleon III
could not be treated like one of the native boyards. The situation called
for the more delicacy of treatment by the powers in view of the
possibility of his being able to better those internal conditions which
made Rumania 'uninteresting' as a factor in international politics. In
fact, the prince's personality assured for Rumania a status which she
could otherwise have attained only with time, by a political, economic,
and military consolidation of her home affairs; and the prince does not
fail to remark in his notes that the attentions lavished upon him by other
sovereigns were meant rather for the Hohenzollern prince than for the
Prince of Rumania. Many years later even, after the war of 1878, while the
Russians were still south of the Danube with their lines of communication
running through Rumania, Bratianu begged of the prince to give up a
projected journey on account of the difficulties which might at any moment
arise, and said: 'Only the presence of your Royal Highness keeps them [the
Russians] at a respectful distance.' It was but natural under these
circumstances that the conduct of foreign affairs should have devolved
almost exclusively on the prince. The ascendancy which his high personal
character, his political and diplomatic skill, his military capacity
procured for him over the Rumanian statesmen made this situation a lasting
one; indeed it became almost a tradition. Rumania's foreign policy since
1866 may be said, therefore, to have been King Carol's policy. Whether one
agrees with it or not, no one can deny with any sincerity that it was
inspired by the interests of the country, as the monarch saw them.
Rebuking Bismarck's unfair attitude towards Rumania in a question
concerning German investors, Prince Carol writes to his father in 1875: 'I
have to put Rumania's interests above those of Germany. My path is plainly
mapped out, and I must follow It unflinchingly, whatever the weather.'
Prince Carol was a thorough German, and as such naturally favoured the
expansion of German influence among his new subjects. But if he desired
Rumania to follow in the wake of German foreign policy, it was because of
his unshaken faith in the future of his native country, because he
considered that Rumania had nothing to fear from Germany, whilst it was
all in the interest of that country to see Rumania strong and firmly
established. At the same time, acting on the advice of Bismarck, he did
not fail to work toward a better understanding with Russia, 'who might
become as well a reliable friend as a dangerous enemy to the Rumanian
state'. The sympathy shown him by Napoleon III was not always shared by
the French statesmen,[1] and the unfriendly attitude of the French
ambassador in Constantinople caused Prince Carol to remark that 'M. de
Moustier is considered a better Turk than the Grand Turk himself'. Under
the circumstances a possible alliance between France and Russia, giving
the latter a free hand in the Near East, would have proved a grave danger
to Rumania; 'it was, consequently, a skilful, if imperious act, to enter
voluntarily, and without detriment to the existing friendly relations with
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