Still the war brought its compensating advantages. The Dobrudscha which the Roumanians received in exchange for Bessarabia, is proving a more valuable acquisition both for trade and for strategical purposes than was at first anticipated.
The Treaty of San Stephano, which was executed between Russia and Turkey on February 19 [March 3], 1878, and was practically confirmed by the Berlin Conference, contained amongst its other provisions this one (part of Article V.): 'The Sublime Porte recognises the independence of Roumania, which will establish its right to an indemnity to be discussed between the two countries;' and (part of Article XII.): 'All the Danubian strongholds shall be razed. There shall be no strongholds in future on the banks of this river, nor any men-of-war in the waters of the Principalities of Roumania, Servia, and Bulgaria, except the usual stationnaires and the small vessels intended for river police and custom-house purposes.' And Article XIX. gave to Russia that part of Turkey bordering on the Danube, known as the Dobrudscha, which Russia 'reserves the right of exchanging for the part of Bessarabia detached from her by the treaty of 1856,' and which, to the great indignation of the Roumanians, she subsequently forced them to relinquish in 'exchange' for her newly acquired territory.
But n'importe. Roumania was free; and this time she had fought for and won her complete independence.
VII.
There is something unsettled in the nature of an independent principality. The title fails to convey the idea of a free and sovereign people, and we are always disposed to regard it as the possible province of some annexing neighbour. So thought a writer on Roumania four years ago, at the close of the war of liberation. 'Situated as it is, as an independent State, it must sooner or later fall to Russia or Austria, more probably to the former.'[193] So, in all probability, thought the Russian diplomatists when they created a number of weak principalities south of the Danube to serve them as stepping-stones to Constantinople. And so, too, thought the Roumanians themselves. They knew that a name is 'neither hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man,' and so they 'doffed the name,' and on May 23, 1881, with the concurrence of the great Powers of Europe, they invested their prince and princess with the royal dignity, placing upon their sovereign's head a crown made from the very guns which he had captured whilst he was fighting for their liberties.
The poetic sentiment which attaches to this last act of the people of Roumania brings vividly before our mind's eye the dramatic character of her whole national career. Twice have we found the course of her history lost in darkness—first in the clouds of antiquity by which the early life of every nation is obscured; then in the still impenetrable gloom of the so-called dark ages, which continued to hang over the Danubian plains long after it was lifted from every other part of Europe. Conquered first, and civilised by one who ranks amongst the greatest heroes of the Roman Empire, she has inherited a high antiquity of which she may be justly proud, remembering, however, that honourable ancestry alone is not the measure of a nation's greatness. But then, for ages we might almost say, the blast which swept across her plains with all the fury of a tempest, but, as it travelled westward, broke and moderated under the influence of the older civilisation, caused a second blank in her existence; and when she once more rose from her prostration, she found herself whole centuries behind the western peoples. But hardly had she time to breathe again, and ere the wounds inflicted on her by the Goths, and Huns, and Avars were yet fully healed, another ruthless conqueror had laid hands upon her; and spite of all her efforts to regain her liberty he held her fast, and sent her taskmasters as cruel and exacting as the leaders of barbarian hordes had been before. And yet her spirit was indomitable; bowed but not broken she continued to live on, and ever strove for freedom. Mircea, Stephen, Michael, those are the names which vindicate her claim to courage, and which shield her from the charge of cowardly submission. And next she is the object of contention between two neighbouring despots, the one endeavouring to hold, the other to annex her. It is a marvelt hat between them she was not dismembered limb from limb.
At length for her, as for all suffering peoples, the day of liberation was at hand; the iron bonds which Oriental despotism had forged were loosened by the agency of Western progress, and, lightened of her load, she this time struck a more effectual blow for liberty, and was amongst the first to unfurl the flag of freedom in the East. But a long succession of barbarian governors, the license of repeated military occupations, the proximity of Tartar savagery on the one side and of Oriental effeminacy on the other, these incidents of her long-continued vassalage have necessarily, and, it is to be hoped, but for a time, left their evil influence upon the nation, which it is now the earnest endeavour of her patriotic leaders to exterminate.