the dawn of freedom had been struggling to break since 1821.  The Rumanians of Transylvania rose against the tyranny of the Magyars; those of Moldavia and Muntenia against the oppressive influence of Russia.  The movement under the gallant, but inexperienced, leadership of a few patriots, who, significantly enough, had almost all been educated in France, was, however, soon checked in the principalities by the joint action of Russian and Turkish forces which remained in occupation of the country.  Many privileges were lost (Convention of Balta Liman, May 1, 1849); but the revolution had quickened the national sentiment of the younger generation in all classes of society, and the expatriated leaders, dispersed throughout the great capitals of Europe, strenuously set to work to publish abroad the righteous cause of their country.  In this they received the enthusiastic and invaluable assistance of Edgar Quinet, Michelet, Saint-Marc Girardin, and others.

This propaganda had the fortune to be contemporaneous and in agreement with the political events leading to the Crimean War, which was entered upon to check the designs of Russia.  A logical consequence was the idea, raised at the Paris Congress of 1856, of the union of the Rumanian principalities as a barrier to Russian expansion.  This idea found a powerful supporter in Napoleon III, ever a staunch upholder of the principle of nationality.  But at the Congress the unexpected happened.  Russia favoured the idea of union, ’to swallow the two principalities at a gulp,’ as a contemporary diplomatist maliciously suggested; while Austria opposed it strongly.  So, inconceivably enough, did Turkey, whose attitude, as the French ambassador at Constantinople, Thouvenel, put it, ’was less influenced by the opposition of Austria than by the approval of Russia’.[1] Great Britain also threw in her weight with the powers which opposed the idea of union, following her traditional policy of preserving the European equilibrium.  The treaty of March 30, 1856, re-incorporated with Moldavia the southern part of Bessarabia, including the delta of the Danube, abolished the Russian protectorate, but confirmed the suzerainty of Turkey—­not unnaturally, since the integrity of the Ottoman Empire had been the prime motive of the war.  By prohibiting Turkey, however, from entering Rumanian territory, save with the consent of the great powers, it was recognized indirectly that the suzerainty was merely a nominal one.  Article 23 of the treaty, by providing that the administration of the principalities was to be on a national basis, implicitly pointed to the idea of union, as the organization of one principality independently of the other would not have been national.  But as the main argument of Turkey and Austria was that the Rumanians themselves did not desire the union, it was decided to convene in both principalities special assemblies (divans ad hoc) representing all classes of the population, whose wishes were to be embodied, by a European commission, in a report for consideration by the Congress.