Goethe (West-Oestlicher Divan).
It is said to have been a chance occasion which gave the first impetus towards the compilation of the German original[1] from which these "Reminiscences of the King of Roumania have been re-edited and abridged." One day an enterprising man of letters applied to one who had followed the King's career for years with vivid interest: "The public of a country extending from the Alps to the ocean is eager to know something about Roumania and her Hohenzollern ruler." The King, without whose consent little or nothing could have been done, thought the matter over carefully; in fact, he weighed it in his mind for several years before coming to a final decision. At first his natural antipathy to being talked about—even in praise (to criticism he had ever been indifferent)—made him reluctant to provide printed matter for public comment. On the other hand, he had long been most anxious that Roumania should attract more public attention than the world had hitherto bestowed on her. In an age of universal trade competition and self-advertisement, for a country to be talked about possibly meant attracting capitalists and opening up markets: things which might add materially to her prosperity. With such possibilities in view, the King's own personal taste or scruples were of secondary moment to him. So the idea first suggested by a stranger gradually took shape in his mind, and with it the desire to see placed before his own subjects a truthful record of what had been achieved in Roumania in his own time. By these means he hoped to give his people an instructive synopsis of the difficulties which had been successfully overcome in the task of creating practical institutions out of chaos.
As so often happens in such cases, the work grew beyond the limits originally entertained. But the task was no easy one, and involved the labour of several years. However, the result achieved is well worth the trouble, for it is an historical document of exceptional political interest, containing, among other material, important letters from Prince Bismarck, the Emperor William, the Emperor Frederick, the Czar of Russia, Queen Victoria, and Napoleon III. It is, in fact, a piece of work which a politician must consult unless he is to remain in the dark concerning much of moment in the political history of our time, and particularly in the history of the Eastern Question. "The Reminiscences of the King of Roumania" constitute an important page in the story of European progress. Nor is this all. They also contain a study in self-revelation which, so far as it belongs to a regal character, is absolutely unique in its completeness—even in an age so rich in sensational memoirs as our own.
The subject-matter deals with a period of over twenty-five years in the life of a young European nation, in the course of which she gained her independence and strove successfully to retain it, whilst more than trebling her resources in peaceful work. In this eventful period greater changes have taken place in the balance of power in Europe than in many preceding centuries. A republic has replaced a monarchy in France, and also on the other side of the Atlantic, in Brazil, since the days when a young captain of a Prussian guard regiment, a scion of the House of Hohenzollern, set himself single-handed the Sisyphean task of establishing a constitutional representative monarchy on a soil where hitherto periodical conspiracies and revolts had run riot luxuriously. Just here, however, our democratic age has witnessed the realisation of the problem treated by Macchiavelli in "Il Principe"—the self-education of a prince.
To-day, the man who thirty-three years ago came down the Danube as a perfect stranger—practically alone, without tried councillors or adherents—is to all intents and purposes the omnipotent ruler of a country which owes its independence and present position entirely to his statesmanship. Nor can there be much doubt that but for him Roumania and the Lower Danube might be now little more than a name to the rest of Europe—as, indeed, they were in the past.
II
King Charles of Roumania is the second son of the late Prince Charles Anthony[2] of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen: the elder South German Roman Catholic branch of the House of Hohenzollern, of which the German Emperor is the chief. Until the year 1849 the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringens, whose dominions are situated between Württemberg and Baden, near the spot where the Danube rises in the Black Forest, possessed full sovereign rights as the head of one of the independent principalities of the German Confederation. These sovereign rights of his own and his descendants Prince Charles Anthony formally and voluntarily ceded to Prussia on December 7, 1849. Of him we are credibly informed:
"Prince Charles Anthony lives in the history of the German people as a man of liberal thought and high character, who of his own free will gave up his sovereign prerogative for the sake of the cause of German Unity. His memory is green in the hearts of his children as the ideal of a father, who—for all his strictness and discipline—was not feared, but ever loved and honoured, by his family. He was always the best friend and adviser of his grown-up sons." His letters to his son Charles, which are frequently quoted in the present memoir, fully bear out this testimony to the Prince's intimate, almost ideal, relationship with his children, as also to the magnanimity with which he is universally credited.
Of the King's mother—Princess Josephine of Baden—we learn: "Princess Josephine was deeply religious without being in the least bigoted. Her unselfishness earned for her the love and devotion of all those who knew her. As a wife and a mother her life was one of exceptional harmony and happiness. The great deference which King Charles has always shown to the other sex has its source in the veneration which he felt for his mother."
Prince Charles was born on April 20, 1839, at the ancestral castle of the Hohenzollerns at Sigmaringen on the Danube, then ruled over by his grandfather, the reigning Prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. The castle was not in those days the treasury of art and history which it is at the present day. The grandfatherly régime was of a patriarchal, almost despotic kind: every detail of household affairs was regulated with a view to strict economy. Though, perhaps, unpleasant at times, all this proved to be invaluable training for the young Prince, whose ultimate destiny it was to rule over one of the most extravagant peoples in Europe. Punctuality was strictly enforced: at nine o'clock the old Prince wound up his watch as a sign that the day was over, and at ten darkness and silence reigned supreme over the household.