To inculcate the Rumanians with the spirit of discipline the prince took in hand with energy and pursued untiringly, in spite of all obstacles, the organization of the army.  A reliable and well-organized armed force was the best security against internal trouble-mongers, and the best argument in international relations, as subsequent events amply proved.

The Rumanian political parties were at the outset personal parties, supporting one or other of the candidates to the throne.  When Greek influence, emanating from Constantinople, began to make itself felt, in the seventeenth century, a national party arose for the purpose of opposing it.  This party counted upon the support of one of the neighbouring powers, and its various groups were known accordingly as the Austrian, the Russian, &c., parties.  With the election of Cuza the external danger diminished, and the politicians divided upon principles of internal reform.  Cuza not being in agreement with either party, they united to depose him, keeping truce during the period preceding the accession of Prince Carol, when grave external dangers wore threatening, and presiding in a coalition ministry at the introduction of the new constitution of 1866.  But this done, the truce was broken.  Political strife again awoke with all the more vigour for having been temporarily suppressed.

The reforms which it became needful to introduce gave opportunity for the development of strong divergence of views between the political parties.  The Liberals—­the Red Party, as they were called at the time—­(led by C.A.  Rosetti and Ioan Bratianu, both strong Mazzinists, both having taken an important part in the revolutionary movements of 1848 and in that which led to the deposition of Cuza) were advocating reforms hardly practicable even in an established democracy; the Conservatives (led by Lascar Catargiu) were striving to stem the flood of ideal liberal measures on which all sense of reality was being carried away.[1] In little more than a year there were four different Cabinets, not to mention numerous changes in individual ministers.  ’Between the two extreme tendencies Prince Carol had to strive constantly to preserve unity of direction, he himself being the only stable element in that ever unstable country.’  It was not without many untoward incidents that he succeeded.  His person was the subject of more than one unscrupulous attack by politicians in opposition, who did not hesitate to exploit the German origin and the German sympathies of the prince in order to inflame the masses.  These internal conflicts entered upon an acute phase at the time of the Franco-German conflict of 1870.  Whilst, to satisfy public opinion, the Foreign Secretary of the time, M.P.P.  Carp, had to declare in parliament, that ’wherever the colours of France are waving, there are our interests and sympathies’, the prince wrote to the King of Prussia assuring him that ’his sympathies will always be where the black and white banner is waving’.  In these so strained circumstances a section of the population of Bucarest allowed itself to be drawn into anti-German street riots.  Disheartened and despairing of ever being able to do anything for that ‘beautiful country’, whose people ’neither know how to govern themselves nor will allow themselves to be governed’, the prince decided to abdicate.