[From The London Times, Oct. 12, 1914.]
King Charles of Rumania died of heart failure early on Saturday
morning at the Castle of Pelesh, Sinäia.
Yesterday Parliament was convoked, and the new King took the oath of
allegiance. Subsequently the Government issued a proclamation stating
that the new King would follow in the footsteps of his predecessor and
realize the ideals of the Rumanian race.
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.