Historian and radical leader of the Wallachian Revolution of 1848 who argued for land reform and universal suffrage
Born in 1819 into a family of low-ranking nobility in Bucharest, he was imprisoned for two years after a conspiracy of 1840 against Prince Alexandru II Ghica and contracted tuberculosis there. After his release he led the secret society Frăția, edited a historical magazine and wrote for land reform that would take the boyars' large estates for landless peasants. In Paris in 1846 he led the Society of Romanian Students. After taking part in the rising in France in 1848 he returned to Bucharest for the June revolution and was for two days minister and secretary of state of the provisional government. Arrested by the Ottoman authorities in September and expelled from Transylvania, he met Kossuth at Debrecen in May 1849 to mediate between the Hungarian government and Avram Iancu's Romanian force. He died of tuberculosis in exile in Palermo in 1852.
Career timeline
- 1836Joined the Wallachian Army
- 1840–1842Imprisoned in Mărgineni Monastery for the plot against Prince Ghica
- 1844Co-editor of Magazin istoric pentru Dacia
- 1848Minister and secretary of state of the Wallachian provisional government
- 1849Mediated between Kossuth and the Transylvanian Romanians at Debrecen
Transylvanian Romanian lawyer who led the peasant legion of the Apuseni Mountains against the Hungarian army in 1848–1849
Born in 1824 at Vidra de Sus in Transylvania into a peasant family freed from serfdom, he studied law at the Piarist College of Cluj. A law clerk when news of the March 1848 revolutions in Vienna and Pest arrived, he was indignant that the Hungarian revolutionaries refused to debate the abolition of serfdom. At the Blaj assemblies he joined the radical wing that opposed the union of Transylvania with Hungary, and he led the 4,000 men of the "Auraria Gemina" Legion in joint actions with the Austrian army. Holding his stronghold in the Apuseni Mountains to the end, he destroyed Hatvany's Hungarian force in May 1849, and at the end of July guaranteed that he would not attack the withdrawing Hungarian troops. After the war he was watched and twice arrested; when the police stopped him petitioning the emperor in Vienna he broke down, and he died in 1872.
Career timeline
- 1848Radical wing at the Blaj assemblies
- 1848–1849Commander of the Auraria Gemina Legion
- 1852Arrested a second time by the Austrian authorities
Literary critic and founder of Junimea who, as Romanian prime minister, hosted the Bucharest peace that ended the Second Balkan War
Born in Craiova, he graduated from the Theresianum in Vienna, took a doctorate at Giessen and a law degree in Paris, and became a professor at Iași at 22 and rector at 23. In the 1860s he co-founded the Junimea Society and in 1867 the review Convorbiri Literare; as the leading critic of his time he fostered writers such as Eminescu, Creangă and Caragiale and attacked imported "forms without root". A member of the Conservative Party, he was foreign minister from 1910 to 1914 and prime minister from 1912 to 1913, and represented Romania at the Bucharest peace conference that ended the Second Balkan War. Favouring Germany, he opposed Romania's entry into the First World War against it, but refused to collaborate with the German army after it occupied Bucharest.
Career timeline
- 1863Rector of the University of Iași
- 1867Founded the Junimea review Convorbiri Literare
- 1910–1914Foreign Minister of Romania
- 1912–1913Prime Minister of Romania
- 1913Romanian delegate at the Bucharest peace conference
Romanian aristocrat, briefly prime minister in 1927, who negotiated the armistice in Cairo in 1944
Grandson of Prince Barbu Știrbei of Wallachia, he studied law in Paris and was a great landowner who chaired the boards of several banks and firms. Superintendent of the Crown Domain from 1913 and the closest adviser of King Ferdinand I and Queen Marie, he favoured the National Liberal Party of his brother-in-law Brătianu and was prime minister of a “national union” government for two weeks in June 1927. Exiled to Paris under Carol II, he returned in 1940 and in March 1944 negotiated armistice terms with the Allies in Cairo, in effect on behalf of both Antonescu and Maniu. After the coup he led the delegation to Moscow and signed the armistice on 12 September. In 1945 King Michael tried to make him prime minister, but Vyshinsky refused; he died of liver cancer the next year.
Career timeline
- 1913Superintendent of the Crown Domain
- 1927.06Prime minister
- 1930–1940Exile in Paris
- 1944.03Armistice talks with the Allies in Cairo
- 1944.09.12Signs the armistice in Moscow
- 1945.02Nomination as prime minister blocked by Vyshinsky
