Averescu becomes prime minister of Romania

On 9 February 1918 (27 January by the Julian calendar, then in force in Romania) King Ferdinand I entrusted General Alexandru Averescu with the task of forming a new government. The day before, the cabinet of Ion I. C. Brătianu had resigned, unwilling to conduct the peace negotiations that the Central Powers demanded after Field Marshal Mackensen’s ultimatum. The ministers of the new government were sworn in on 11 February (29 January Old Style). The British chronology of the war gives 9 February as the date of the appointment. On the same day at Brest-Litovsk the Central Powers made peace with Ukraine, which isolated Romania still further.

Averescu, born in 1859, had fought in the War of Independence of 1877–1878. In 1907, as Minister of War in the Liberal government, he suppressed the peasant revolt with great severity. During the war he commanded the Second Army and won the most successful Romanian offensive, the Battle of Mărăști, in the summer of 1917. Among the soldiers and in public opinion he was regarded as one of the few generals who knew how to win, and as a man free of party ties. He also often clashed with the high command of General Constantin Prezan.

The choice was not accidental. According to Romanian historians, it was Brătianu himself who suggested Averescu’s candidacy to the king. The general had no political experience or party of his own, so the Liberal leader counted on being able to steer him. Averescu was to relieve Brătianu of responsibility for talks with the enemy, while alienating neither the Germans nor the Allies. The king, who feared losing his throne, agreed to this solution. In a government made up mainly of non-party experts and Conservatives, Averescu also temporarily took the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The war portfolio went to General Constantin Iancovescu, and justice to Constantin Argetoianu, who quickly became the prime minister’s right-hand man.

The new government tried above all to gain time. According to the account of the Liberal politician Ion G. Duca, a delegation was sent to Mackensen asking for a thirty-day extension of the armistice, but only ten days could be obtained. In the second half of February Averescu himself went to Buftea, near occupied Bucharest, for a talk with the field marshal. Romanian sources give different dates for this meeting, 18 or 22 February. Mackensen was reserved, and the general returned full of hopes that soon proved vain.

The Averescu government did not gain much from playing for time. At the end of February the foreign ministers of Germany and Austria-Hungary joined the talks, and on 5 March Argetoianu signed at Buftea a preliminary peace in which Romania agreed to give up Dobruja. A dozen or so days later Averescu stepped down. His place was taken by the pro-German Conservative Alexandru Marghiloman, whose government concluded the Treaty of Bucharest on 7 May 1918.