The Union of the Principalities (1859) and the Reign of Alexandru Ioan Cuza

After the Crimean War (1853–1856), in which Russia was defeated, the Peace Congress of Paris (1856) placed the Principalities under the collective guarantee of the Great Powers and returned southern Bessarabia (the counties of Cahul, Bolgrad and Ismail) to Moldavia. The Great Powers decided to consult the population through ad hoc Assemblies, which in 1857 demanded the union of the Principalities under a foreign prince, together with autonomy. The most important resolution was the one adopted by the ad hoc Divan of Moldavia. It prepared the way for a unified Romanian state.

The Paris Convention of 1858 gave Moldavia and Wallachia a common organization under the name “the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia”, but with two princes, two governments and two assemblies. The Romanians exploited a gap in the text of the Convention, which did not forbid the election of the same person in both countries. On 5 January 1859, in Iași, the Elective Assembly of Moldavia chose Colonel Alexandru Ioan Cuza as prince. On 24 January 1859, in Bucharest, the Assembly of Wallachia elected the same man. Thus the union was achieved “by the fait accompli”.

The Great Powers gradually accepted the situation, and in 1861 the Porte recognized the union for the duration of Cuza’s reign. On 24 January 1862 a single government and a single parliament were formed, with Bucharest as the capital. The state was named Romania, and Romanian became the official language. Cuza, born in 1820 at Bârlad, had studied in Paris and had taken part in the Revolution of 1848. He was a modest man, a patriot and a reformer. The prime minister in 1862 was Barbu Catargiu, who was assassinated soon afterwards, and later Mihail Kogălniceanu. Cuza thus secured international recognition of the fait accompli.

Cuza carried out a broad programme of modern reforms. In 1863 he secularized the monastic estates, which made up almost a quarter of the country’s territory and were largely exploited by the Greek Church. In August 1864 he promulgated the rural law, by which the peasants bound to labour service were granted land in exchange for compensation paid over 15 years, and were freed from their feudal obligations. Also in 1864 the Law on Public Instruction, which introduced free and compulsory primary education, and the Civil Code, modelled on the French one, were adopted. The universities of Iași (1860) and Bucharest (1864) were founded.

The reforms provoked the opposition of the conservative boyars, and Cuza, dissatisfied with parliament, established an authoritarian regime with a new statute through the coup d’état of 2 May 1864. On 11 February 1866 a “monstrous coalition” of conservatives and liberals forced him to abdicate. Cuza went into exile and died in Heidelberg in 1873. In his place a foreign prince, Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, was brought in, elected by plebiscite in April 1866. Cuza remains in history as the founder of the modern Romanian state. The modern state he had built would outlive him.