The election to the Romanian throne in 1866 followed the deposition of Prince Alexandre Ioan Cuza, with the aim of giving the united principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia a new ruler.
Cuza's deposition, despite his major reforms which had initiated the modernization of the Romanian principalities, had been engineered by an alliance of inherently opposed political and social forces: the "Monstrous Coalition", backed by Russia, wanted the sovereign to leave, accusing him of Caesarist tendencies. His succession proved a delicate matter.
The issue went beyond the Danube principalities, since it involved the political balance and economic interests of the main European powers, as well as the Ottoman Empire, the principalities' sovereign. A provisional Romanian governmental lieutenancy was set up to appoint a new candidate. The 1858 Paris intergovernmental conference had called for the election of an indigenous sovereign, but the Romanian provisional government opted straightaway for a prince from a European dynasty.
The first candidate, Prince Philippe, Count of Flanders and brother of King Leopold II, elected before he was even informed, almost directly declined the offer made on February 23, 1866, as he had no wish to lead an "Eastern Belgium" that would be a vassal of the Ottoman Empire. Meeting in Paris on March 10, the chancelleries of the European guarantor powers were divided over the Danube principalities, weakening the international political situation whose prospects were already clouded by the imminence of the Austro-Prussian War.
Rejecting Nicolas de Leuchtenberg's overly Russophile candidacy, the powers suggested several other candidates, which were quickly rejected. Ahead of the dithering chancelleries, the Romanian government chose its own candidate, after secret negotiations with France and Germany. Prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was elected by the Romanian parliament in a referendum on April 20, 1866.
Presenting the Ottoman Empire with a fait accompli, the Prussian prince accepted and officially entered Bucharest on May 22, 1866, where he became "Domnitor" (sovereign prince). Under the name of Carol I, he established, within the framework of the new Romanian constitution, the beginnings of the Kingdom of Romania, which became fully independent in 1878, and founded the dynasty of sovereigns who reigned over Romania until 1947.
Background
Unification of the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia
After almost four centuries of exclusive vassalage to the Ottoman Empire, the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia were placed under the protection of Russia by the Treaty of Andrianople of September 14, 1829, while remaining under the domination of the Ottoman Empire. The Romanian revolution of 1848 (essentially intellectual in Moldavia, but more martial in Wallachia) was peacefully subdued in Moldavia by Austria, but severely repressed by Ottoman troops, backed up by Russian troops, in Wallachia..
Following the Crimean War, the 1856 Treaty of Paris confirmed the autonomy of the two principalities, ceding back to Moldavia the three southern Russian departments of Bessarabia, but restricting this autonomy by keeping it under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire and under the guarantee of the signatory powers.. The principalities retained independent national administration, as well as freedom of worship, legislation, trade and navigation.
After three months of meetings between the guarantor powers and the Ottoman Empire, a convention on the organization of the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia was signed at the Paris Conference on August 19, 1858. The convention was ratified on October 7 by France, Austria, Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, Sardinia and the Ottoman Empire. It stipulated that the Danubian principalities would henceforth be known as the "United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia", and would remain under the sovereignty of the Sultan, while administering themselves freely without Ottoman interference. In each of the principalities, public powers were entrusted to a hospodarThe term "Hospodar" meaning "prince-sovereign" is rarely, if ever, used by Romanians, who prefer the term "Domnitor".Georgiade Mihail Obedenaru, "La Roumanie économique d'après les données le plus récentes", Paris, Ernest Leroux, 1876, 435 p., p. 304. and an elective Assembly.
Three months later, Colonel Alexandre Ioan Cuza, a Francophile from the noble boyar class but a modest landowner, was elected Hospodar of Moldavia on January 17, 1859. This choice astonished the chancelleries, who were convinced that he would fall to Mihail Sturdza, formerly reigning prince of Moldavia, an enlightened despot who had enriched himself greatly personally. The vote in Cuza's favor was reiterated when he was unanimously appointed hospodar of Wallachia on the following February 5.
This double election of the same hospodar demonstrated the will of the two principalities to be united from now on, driven by the mission to destroy every last vestige of the absolutism of the past. The Paris conference of April 1859, held to settle the question of Cuza's double election, validated the fait accompli, but maintained the administrative separation of the two principalities. A further conference was held in Paris in September 1859, at which time, after taking note of Sultan Abdülaziz's authorization, a protocol validated the acceptance of Cuza's double investiture. The Ottoman Empire, through the firman (royal decree) of December 4, 1861, enshrined the legislative union of the two principalities for as long as Cuza was alive, thus paving the way for the legislative and administrative union of the two principalities. However, the Sultan refused to allow them to be called "Romania". The Moldavian and Wallachian Assemblies merged on February 5, 1862.
Reign and reforms of Alexandre Ioan Cuza
Although Prince Alexandre lacked personal ascendancy, he did have the merit of choosing progressive ministers, eminent figures in Romania's cultural Renaissance, such as Vasile Alecsandri, a man of letters, Carol Davila, head of the army medical service and Mihail Kogălniceanu, historian and jurist. Cuza was thus the political representative of a Romania that was now united and determined to break away from the frameworks inherited from the Middle Ages and enter modernity. The image of France as a model was very present in Romania. Ties between French diplomatic representatives in the Romanian principalities and the new power in Bucharest were close. Victor Place, the French consul in Iași, was one of Alexandre Cuza's main advisors.
Assisted by his Prime Minister Mihail Kogălniceanu, an intellectual leader active during the 1848 revolution, Alexandre Cuza undertook a series of reforms that contributed significantly, in a short space of time, to the modernization of Romanian society and state structures.
Status of farmers and their land For this largely unindustrialized nation, Romania's main source of wealth was agriculture. In December 1863, Alexander Cuza decided to secularize the immense ecclesiastical estates belonging to the 172 monasteries, and to confiscate "mainmorte" property (belonging to congregations and therefore exempt from the inheritance fees associated with transfers by death). These measures affected almost a quarter of the useful agricultural area belonging to Orthodox monks under the monastic republic of Mount Athos or the Patriarch of Constantinople, to whom they sent a substantial part of their enormous land income.. A few months later, the agrarian reform of August 1864 freed peasants from the last feudal drudgery and granted them freedom of movement. In a country with 4,425,000 inhabitants and 684,000 farming families, some 512,000 peasant families became owners of the land they farmed.Rural law divided peasants into three categories, according to the number of livestock they owned. Peasants received seven, four or two hectares in Wallachia; eight, six or three in Moldavia and nine, six or four in Bessarabia."Correspondance de Bucarest", Journal de Bruxelles, n.129, 1864.
Emancipation of minorities The secularization of monastery property and agrarian reform led to the complete emancipation of the Roma, who were no longer tied to a boyar family or monastery.. As for the Jews (whose numbers had increased considerably since 1860, following mass emigration from Poland and Galicia to Moldavia), the granting of communal rights to indigenous Jews under certain conditions by the law of March 31, 1864, and the naturalization of those who met certain requirements laid down by the new civil code, improved their status and fostered recognition of their community. However, no Jews were actually naturalized in the two months between the implementation of the civil code and the deposition of Alexandre Cuza.
Political and judicial reforms Following the referendum of June 4 and 7, 1864, a Senate was created on July 3 in the Romanian provinces, which were then represented by a bicameral system."Situation extèrieure", L'Echo du Parlement, n.171, 1864. Its first president was the Metropolitan Primate of Bucharest, Nifon Rusailă.. That same year, Alexandre Cuza implemented and promulgated a new civil code in December 1865, most of which was translated from the 1804 French civil code and also inspired by Prussian laws.. French legal influence was grafted onto the Franco-Romanian socio-cultural bond. The Civil Code influenced Romanian society in its entirety, preparing minds to accept new French ideas embodied in Romanian law. At first glance, however, the Code's reception by Romania's rural majority proved difficult, due to the modernity of its provisions and the language used. At the same time as the new Civil Code, a Commercial Code was published, also inspired by French law. In October 1864, the new penal code abolished the death penalty and corporal punishment, considerably changing the Romanian legal landscape.
Education and healthcare
Cuza promoted the introduction of free, compulsory public primary education for both sexes in the majority of rural communes and the organization of secondary education in seven colleges and lyceums across the country. He opened the National University of Art in Bucharest, as well as military, medical and pharmacy schools. He also created two new public universities: the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași in 1860 (formerly the Mihăileană Academy, with three faculties: law, philosophy and theology) and the University of Bucharest in 1864, which opened faculties of law, science and literature..
While there were already 35 hospitals (including a hospital for the insane and two institutes for abandoned children) in the country, either publicly funded (central hospitals and district hospitals) or privately initiate, a new hospital structure, established in Colentina (a district of Bucharest), was inaugurated in February 1864 by Alexandre Cuza to celebrate his five-year reign. The hospital offered patients 100 medical and surgical beds, as well as a free consultation service..
Development of communications and the army