Both in itself and as an episode of the present European conflagration, the death of the King of Rumania is an event of singular importance. The late King was in many respects the maker of his adopted country. When, in March, 1866, he accepted the crown the condition of the Danubian principalities, Moldavia and Wallachia, was little better than that of a misgoverned Turkish province. They still owned Ottoman suzerainty, their army was non-existent, their financial resources were precarious, the condition of their people was wretched, their means of communication were primitive, and their public affairs were in a condition bordering on anarchy. With the support of the French Emperor, to whom he was distantly related, Prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen faced one of the most difficult tasks ever allotted to an inexperienced ruler, and carried it to triumphal completion.
He created an army, introduced railways, won independence for his realm and for himself. He evolved order out of chaos, secured military renown at Plevna as commander of the joint Russo-Rumanian forces in the Russo-Turkish war, established national finance on a sound basis, built up a considerable export trade, extended the frontiers of the principality and raised it to the rank of a kingdom, and watched with untiring vigilance over every aspect of national development. Not only as the first recognized and independent sovereign of modern Rumania, but as her creator, King Charles will ever hold a foremost place in Rumanian history.
In this great work the late ruler derived advantage, not only from his eminent personal qualities, but from his foreign origin. As a German Prince, powerfully connected, he stood outside and above Rumanian party factions, and succeeded gradually in imposing his will on them all. Born on April 20, 1839, at Sigmaringen, near the source of the Danube, he was barely 27 when he accepted the call to rule an unknown country with which his only connection was that, like the estates of his family, it, too, was watered by the Danube. Of middle height, well built, pronounced features, and clear, gray eyes, his personality expressed quiet energy. His statecraft he learned by experience and from the excellent counsel of his father, Prince Charles Anthony of Hohenzollern, head of the senior and Roman Catholic branch of the Hohenzollerns. Only once did he falter. In March, 1871, when the French sympathizers of his subjects exposed him as a German Prince and a Hohenzollern to great unpopularity, while the bankruptcy of the Jewish speculator to whom his railway schemes had been intrusted threw discredit upon his ideas of economic development, he summoned the members of the Provisional Government from whom he had accepted the crown and announced to them his decision to abdicate. Fortunately for Rumania, they succeeded in dissuading him from his purpose. The famous Conservative statesman, Lascar Catargi, formed a Ministry which held office for five years and enabled the ruler to turn the most dangerous corner of his reign. Thenceforward the path was comparatively clear, though by no means easy. It led to Rumanian participation in the Russo-Turkish war, to the conquest of national independence, and eventually, on May 22, 1881, to his coronation as King of Rumania, with a crown made of steel from a Turkish gun captured by Rumanian troops at Plevna.
Yet the Rumanian triumph was not unalloyed. Russia injudiciously and ungratefully insisted on depriving Rumania of the portion of Rumanian Bessarabia of which Russia had been deprived after the Crimean war, and allotted the Dobrudja, a swampy region south of the Danube, to the principality as compensation. The indignation in Rumania was indescribable and has never entirely subsided. The Senate in the Chamber declared the resolve of the country to defend its integrity by force. The Czar threatened to disarm the Rumanian Army—a threat which drew from Prince Charles the proud reply: "The Rumanian Army, which fought so gallantly before Plevna under the eyes of the Czar, may be annihilated, but will never be disarmed." But he nevertheless recognized the futility of resistance to the Russian demand, and exerted himself to calm the national excitement. In later years the breach was partially if not wholly healed.
Of the more material achievements of his reign there is little space to speak. The best record of his life is to be found in the present condition of the country—si monumentum requiris circumspice. His furtherance of the petroleum industry, of the export of grain, timber and other agricultural produce, the building of the great bridge over the Danube at Tchernavoda, and the extensive harbor at Constanza, the network of railways, the immense system of fortifications defending the capital, and the line Fokshani-Galatz—all these and much more are mainly his work.
Little is yet known of the action of King Charles in the last crisis of his life. It is a strange coincidence that just as the Franco-German war of 1870-71 brought him into conflict with the Francophil tendencies of his subjects and led to his offer of abdication, so the present war should again have engendered rumors of his abdication on account of his alleged antagonism to the national desire for the acquisition of Transylvania and the Southern Bukovina, which are peopled by more than 3,000,000 Hungarian and Austrian Rumanes. The Rumanian people felt that the hour for the liberation of their kindred had struck. Russia is understood to have invited Rumania to occupy the desired territory. But King Charles, who brought and kept Rumania within the orbit of the Triple Alliance, was, as a Hohenzollern and a German Prince, averse to hostile action against the German Emperor and the Emperor Francis Joseph. It is, moreover, stated that he was bound by his word of honor never to take the field against a Hohenzollern cause.
The late King Charles married, in November, 1869, Princess Elizabeth of Wied, the gifted "Carmen Sylva," whose brilliant literary and artistic talents have gained her a worldwide reputation. The only child of the marriage, the infant Princess Marie, died in 1874—a bereavement that ever left a note of sadness in the lives of her parents.
THE NEW KING.
King Ferdinand, who now succeeds his uncle on the throne of Rumania, was born in August, 1865, and, like his predecessor, is a Hohenzollern and a Roman Catholic.
Among his near relatives are the King of the Belgians and his namesake, Tsar Ferdinand of the Bulgarians, who are both first cousins, and his niece, Queen Augustina Victoria, the consort of Dom Manoel. Through his mother, the Princess Antonia, who was born an Infanta of Portugal, King Ferdinand is kin with all the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, to which his consort, the new Queen Mary, belongs as daughter of the late Duke of Edinburgh.