1848 Revolutions in Romania

• Comment: The subject is clearly notable but the draft contains historical claims that are not cited such as "Almost all western histories ignore the 1848 Romanian Revolution for two reasons". It also presents several disputed or interpretive characterisations in Wikipedia's voice, particularly concerning the Hungarian Revolution and the relationship between the Moldavian, Wallachian and Transylvanian revolutions. Please substantially improve the inline sourcing and rewrite these passages to reflect reliable secondary sources neutrally. SuperCode111 (talk to me!) 23:43, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

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Revolutionary Romania by Constantin Daniel Rosenthal (1850).

The 1848 Revolutions in Romania formed part of both the revolutions of 1848 and the Romanian cultural renaissance. They began in February 1848. In long-unified countries like France these revolutions had an essentially social character, whilst in politically-divided countries like Germany, Italy and Romania it also included demands for national liberation and unification.

Almost all western histories ignore the 1848 Romanian Revolution for two reasons - firstly, the Ottoman Empire had no such revolutions and they mistake the Principality of Wallachia and Principality of Moldavia for provinces of that empire (when they were in fact autonomous principalities governed by hospodars as vassals of that Empire); secondly, regarding the Austrian Empire, they only consider the revolutions in Vienna and Hungary and view the Principality of Transylvania as merely a region of the Kingdom of Hungary (when it reality until 1867 it was an autonomous Grand Principality separate from that Kingdom and ruled by a governor nominated by the Emperor).

Course

Moldavia

The Romanian principalities as of 1848.

Main article: Moldavian Revolution of 1848

The Moldavian contribution to the 1848 revolutions was mainly an intellectual one. Moldavian teachers and writers met on 27 March that year in the salons of the Petersburg Hotel in Iași and formed a kind of constituent assembly with Vasile Alecsandri as its president. It produced a thirty-five-point programme. The hospodar Mihail Sturdza was aware of that assembly and - playing the part of an enlightened despot - let it continue. In fact, the boyar aristocracy and middle classes rallied to the assembly's cause, especially as the programme was relatively moderate. Young people demonstrated, whilst workers and rural labourers agitated, but Mihail Sturdza soon learned that Russian troops were massing at the frontier to suppress the beginnings of the revolution. He then also warned Alecsandri that he and his associates were going to be 'preventatively' arrested, sent to Constantinople and there assigned homes. During the transfer, at Brăila in Wallachia, Sturdza's friend princess Maria Rosetti enabled them to 'escape' and secretly get to the Bukovina (the Austrian part of Moldavia) via Transylvania.

In summer 1848 fifty Moldavian revolutionary leaders, including Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Mihail Kogălniceanu, Costache Negri, Alecou Russo and Vasile Alecsandri met at Chernivtsi. There, in August, Kogălniceanu published a new thirty-six-point-programme entitled "The Wishes of the Nation of Moldavia Party". Unlike the moderate version from March, this new programme was much more radical - it demanded political and civil equality for all citizens regardless of religion, origin or gender, the establishment of free and compulsory primary education, agricultural reform, the abolition of the 'Organic Regulation' (a law imposed in 1834 by the Russian Empire with the agreement of the Ottoman Empire) and unifying Wallachia and Moldavia. Transylvania, the Bukovina and Bessarabia were not mentioned in it so as not to provoke the neighbouring empires to invade, but a map by César Bolliac circulating in revolutionary circles showed "Romania" in large characters stretching from Timișoara in the Austrian Empire to Cetatea Albă in the Russian Empire.

This was enough for the Austrian authorities to break up the revolutionary leaders and putting them under house arrest in various places across the Bukovina, smothering the Moldavian revolution in the cradle.

Wallachia

Main article: Wallachian Revolution of 1848

As in the Wallachian uprising of 1821 the revolutionary movement was much more intense in Wallachia, where the former 'panduri' led by Tudor Vladimirescu managed to rallying much of the army and the administration to their cause. City dwellers almost unanimously supported the revolution.

At Craiova on 7 June Gheorghe Magheru, Nicolae Bălcescu and Costache Romanescu formed a committee of public safety with twenty members. On 9 June at Islaz that committee gained the support of the local prefect Ioan Maiorescu, commander Nicolae Pleșoianu (sent from Craiova with troops to put down the movement) and the boyars Ștefan Golescu and Costache Romanescu. Romanescu became the committee's secretary and - with the addition of Ion Heliade Rădulescu (a publisher and professor from Bucarest) and general Christian Tell - it turned into a provisional revolutionary government with an army at its disposal. Prince Gheorghe Bibescu had been ordered to arrest all Romanian revolutionaries returning from Paris at the border and was thus declared to have forfeited all his rights. The provisional revolutionary government ordered pope Radu Șapcă to organise an estates general, which adopted the Proclamation of Islaz, similar to the Moldavian thirty-six-point programme.

At Bucarest on 11 June the pro-revolutionary army forced Bibescu to sign the Proclamation, which became the new Wallachian constitution in place of the 'Organic Regulation'. On 12 June the Russian ambassador came to the palace and presented the prince with an ultimatum - revoke his signature or Russia would occupy Wallachia. Bibescu preferred to abdicate on the field of battle and so two parallel and antagonistic sources of power faced off against each other - in the districts near Bucarest and in the provinces the revolutionaries and their committees held sway, but in Craiova and central Bucarest a conservative or "legitimist" government was shored up by the Russian garrisons.

On 13 June the Russians and conservatives preferred to leave Craiova and be mocked when they heard that the revolutionary troops were approaching. A jubilant crowd listened to a reading of the new constitution and at dawn on 14 June a "legitimist" delegation demanded an audience with Ion Heliade Rădulescu. When he received them in the town hall the "legitimist" colonel Ion Vlădoianu and fifty armed soldiers disguised as civilians took control of the building and ejected the revolutionaries from it. However, Gheorghe Magheru, Grigore Bengescu, Iancu Obedeanu, Nică Locusteanu and Ioan Maiorescu mobilised their troops and the city's inhabitants and surrounded and captured Vlădoianu's detachment.

The 1848 revolutionary flag ("Justice, Brotherhood").

Also on 14 June, in Craiova, the revolutionary government adopted a blue-yellow-red tricolour symbolising Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. The first flag in those colours was sewn by Maria Alexandrina,Gheorghe Magheru's young daughter, in homage to the 1821 Revolution. In the 1930s the colours were explained in a nationalist rather than universalist way, with blue being Wallachia, yellow Transylvania and red Moldavia, despite work by historians and heraldry scholars such as Nicolae Șerban Tanașoca to the contrary.

The following day the provisional government and its army set out from Craiova towards Bucarest and the Russian ambassador in Constantinople told the Ottoman government that Russia would not tolerate a hotbed of revolution on its doorstep and that - if the Ottomans did not intervene to suppress its vassal states - Russia would.

On 16 June the revolutionaries from Craiova joined up with those in Bucarest, with the latter much more aware of the threat the neighbouring empires posed to the revolution and thus more moderate. A new government was formed under Metropolitan Nophyte, primate of the Wallachian church, and ordered to reassure the Austrian, Russian and Ottoman ambassadors and gain France's support. Its members included Tell, Rădulescu, Nicolae and Stefan Golescu, Gheorghe Magheru, Constantin A. Rosetti and Nicolae Bălcescu and also the moderate Ion C. Brătianu.

On 19 June in Bucarest armed "legitimists" attempted a coup d'État with backing from small Russian garrison, but the revolutionaries mobilised the city's population under the rich merchant Ana Ipătescu and Nicolae Golescu. Promoted to general, Gheorge Magheru became Minister for Defence. Also on 19 June, in Giurgiu, Russia and the Ottomans signed an intervention protocol, under which the Russians were to occupy Moldavia and the Ottomans Wallachia. The Wallachian government therefore sent an ambassador to the Ottoman commander Soliman Pacha to assure him that their intentions towards the Ottomans were peaceful and cordial. Soliman Pacha refused this and demanded the provisional government's dissolution before he entered Bucarest and personally oversaw the formation of a new government acceptable to the Ottomans.

The people disliked these demands but the government accepted them, received Soliman Pacha in Bucarest without his army, negotiated and signed a compromise with him, making him its "princely regent", guaranteed by Ion Heliade Rădulescu, Cristian Tell and Nicolae Golescu and with Ottoman support. This recognition led the other European governments to recognise the new government of Wallachia, but Russia still did not do so, instead demanding Soliman Pacha be dismissed and replaced by Fouad Pacha, who supported unlimited repression.

In July and August the new "regent" governed moderately, freed "legitimists" and put in place several social measures in accordance with the Proclamation of Islaz. However, the Ottomans gave in to the Russian demanded and massed troops along the Danube, the frontier with Wallachia, even as the Wallachian government continued to make strenuous efforts to reassure the empires of its intentions. The Ottoman force invaded Wallachia on 11 September and two days later took Bucarest, massacring the revolutionary army. The last defenders were a company of firefighters on the Dealul Spirii, led by captain Pavel Zăgănescu - 13 September is still Romania's National Firefighters' Day. The war then spread to the provinces, with fierce repression in its wake.

With the whole revolutionary army now dead, wounded or captured, on 30 November the Ottoman 1st Division of around 10,000 men under Husseïn Pacha approached Craïova. Swollen by thousand of people from neighbouring villages, the town's population armed itself with anything to hand and built barricades, fighting street by street and refusing to surrender in what became a massacre. Despite its superiority in numbers and weapons the Ottomans lost almost 2,000 men, but the Wallachian Revolution was finally at an end. As in Moldavia the feudal regime was re-established and the revolutionary leaders went back into exile in Brussels and Paris.

Transylvania

The Hungarian Revolution of 1848 under Lajos Kossuth was centralising and Jacobin in character, hoping to annex Transylvania and Croatia, suppress any local autonomy and force them to speak Hungarian. Transylvania had already risen up in 1784 but the 1848 context left the Romanian-speakers there with no chance of having their demands met. Therefore a minority of Romanian-speakers, less attached to their culture, backed Kossuth's programme at the diets of Cluj/Kolozsvár and Debrecen, whilst a majority opposed that programme and began its own separate anti-Hungarian revolution. This worked to the reactionaries' advantage, all the more so because Kossuth's revolutionary army was very brutal towards anyone who so much as questioned the decisions made in Budapest.

Avram Iancu

On 15 May 1848 the national revolutionary assembly of Romanians in Transylvania was formed at Blaj by the lawyer Avram Iancu (also known in Hungarian as Janko Abraham). This revolution essentially repeated the demands of the 1784 Supplex libellus valachorum and the Moldavian thirty-six points. Its leaders included Alexandru Papiu-Ilarian, Ioan Axente Sever, Simion Balint, Simion Bărnuțiu, Ioan Buteanu, Petru Dobra, Timotei Cipariu, Ioan Dragoș, Ioan Sterca-Șuluțiu and David Urs de Margina.

Lancu also set up a volunteers' corps of mountain-dwellers hardened by privations and expert in ambushes and traps. Kossuth's force reacted by firing without warning, but the corps pushed them back twice at Abrud and Mărișel in the Bihor massif (the 1784 revolutionaries had beaten the Hungarian hussars on the same slopes).

An extraordinary meeting of the Transylvanian diet was held on 29 May at Cluj/Kolozsvár. The census-based suffrage system meant that the country's Romanian-speaking majority (70% of the population) was very poorly represented at the diet with only three of the three hundred deputies (273 were Hungarian and twenty-four were German-speakers). Most of those at the diet were pro-Kossuth Hungarians and they announced that Hungary had annexed Transylvania, an unpopular announcement to the Romanian-speakers, Saxons and some of the Székelys. Even the great poet Sándor Petőfi, a Hungarian from Transylvania, opposed the annexation.

This led to a final split between the Hungarian revolutionaries and their Croatian and Romanian counterparts. The revolutionary government of Wallachia sent Nicolae Bălcescu to try to mediate between them but his efforts came to nothing, even after a personal meeting in Budapest with Kossuth (they spoke in French). Part of the Hungarian army was still busy suppressing the Romanians in Transylvania when Russian troops invaded at the Habsburgs' request (keen to re-form the Austrian Empire) and in accordance with the Holy Alliance. The Hungarian Revolution was thus crushed at the battle of Șiria near Arad.

The imperial authorities granted the Romanian revolutionaries an amnesty on condition that they lay down their arms - most of them did so, with the rest going into exile. Transylvania was made autonomous again for nineteen years until that status was conclusively abolished in 1867. Iancu fell into a depression, stopped practicing law, started behaving eccentrically (walking round villages playing the flute), was dismissed from the bar, refused a decoration for opposing Kossuth from the young Franz Joseph I during the latter's visit to Transylvania, and caused such a scene in Franz Joseph's presence that he was declared mad and manhandled away.

Results

Like almost all the revolutions of 1848 those in Romania were a failure, but the conservatives had to keep its social reforms in place. It also showed the revolutionaries in exile that good coordination and progressive, diplomatic and political action was more likely to achieve their goals than violent revolution. Only eleven years after 1848 the "Danubian principalities" of Wallachia and Moldavia joined to become the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, which reformed institutions, seized church goods and lands, carried out some agricultural reform, made primary education compulsory and gained recognition from the rest of Europe for its existence and its regime. It nominally remained an Ottoman vassal state until 1878 but was de facto already an independent state.

Bibliography

In Romanian

• Lucian Predescu, Enciclopédie Cugetarea

In French

• Ion Heliade Rădulescu, Mémoires sur l’histoire de la régénération roumaine ou sur les événements de 1848 accomplis en Valachie, Paris, 1851
• Constantin C. Giurescu and Dinu C. Giurescu, Histoire des Roumains, ed. Enciclopedică, Bucarest
• Apostol Stan, La révolution roumaine de 1848

References

Category:Riots and civil disorder in Romania Category:19th century in Romania Category:1848 in Europe Category:19th-century revolutions Category:Revolutions of 1848

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