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  REMINISCENCES OF THE
  KING OF ROUMANIA

[Illustration:

  _F. Mándy Bucharest._      _Art Repro Co. London._

Carol]




  REMINISCENCES OF THE

  KING OF ROUMANIA

  EDITED FROM THE ORIGINAL WITH

  AN INTRODUCTION BY

  SIDNEY WHITMAN

  WITH PORTRAIT

  _AUTHORIZED EDITION_

  NEW YORK AND LONDON

  HARPER & BROTHERS

  1899




CONTENTS


                                                   PAGE.

  INTRODUCTION                                       vii

  I. THE PRINCIPALITIES OF MOLDAVIA AND WALLACHIA      1

  II. THE SUMMONS TO THE THRONE                       11

  III. STORM AND STRESS                               32

  IV. MARRIAGE AND HOME LIFE                          83

  V. FINANCIAL TROUBLES                              129

  VI. THE JEWISH QUESTION                            143

  VII. PEACEFUL DEVELOPMENT                          155

  VIII. THREATENING CLOUDS                           218

  IX. THE ARMY                                       250

  X. THE WAR WITH TURKEY                             265

  XI. THE BERLIN CONGRESS AND AFTER                  311

  EPILOGUE                                           355




INTRODUCTION

    Volk und Knecht und Ueberwinder,
    Sie gestehn zu jeder Zeit;
    Höchstes Glück der Erdenkinder
    Sey nur die Persönlichkeit.

  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.

  [1] "Aus dem Leben König Karls von Rumänien. Aufzeichnungen eines
  Augenzeugen." Stuttgart: Verlag der J. G. Cotta'schen Buchhandlung.

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.

  [2] This Prince always wrote his name Karl Anton, as a double name:
  hence the retention here.

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.

Prince Charles was a delicate child, and was considered so
throughout his early manhood, though in reality his health and
bodily powers left little to be desired. The first happy years of
his childhood were passed at Sigmaringen and the summer residences
of Inzigkofen and Krauchenw