Carol I of Romania
Carol I was a Prussian officer of twenty-seven who travelled to Romania in 1866 on a Danube steamer with a false passport, reigned for forty-eight years, won the country its independence on a battlefield in Bulgaria, made it a kingdom, and died six weeks into a world war after his crown council refused to join the side he had secretly promised. He was born Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen in 1839, of the Catholic branch of the Prussian house, and was serving in the dragoons when the Romanians who had deposed Cuza offered him the throne with Bismarck's quiet approval and Napoleon III's open one; the Porte and Austria objected and he came through Austria incognito. He took the oath in Bucharest in May 1866 to a constitution modelled on Belgium's that the liberals had written, and spent the reign making it work with a parliament of boyars and lawyers who did not want a German. In 1877 Russia went to war with the Ottomans and asked for passage; Carol declared independence in May, crossed the Danube with his army when the Russians were stuck in front of Plevna, and commanded the allied siege there himself from August until Osman Pasha surrendered in December. The Congress of Berlin recognised Romania in 1878, took southern Bessarabia back for Russia and gave Dobruja, and in March 1881 parliament made him king. He built the state around the army and the railways, a bridge over the Danube at Cernavodă, a palace at Sinaia, and the oil industry, and in 1883 signed a secret alliance with Germany and Austria that only a handful of ministers ever saw. The peasant rising of 1907, put down with artillery and some eleven thousand dead, was the reign's other side. He had no son; his brother's boy Ferdinand was the heir. In the Second Balkan War of 1913 he took southern Dobruja from Bulgaria. When the war of 1914 came the crown council at Sinaia on 3 August voted for neutrality against him, since the country wanted Transylvania from Austria and not Bessarabia from Russia, and he died in October, it was said of the humiliation. Ferdinand joined the other side in 1916.
- Lived: 1839 CE – 1914 CE
- Nationality: Romanian
- Roles: king, monarch
