Averescu resigns

On 12 March 1918 (27 February by the Julian calendar, which Romania then used) the Prime Minister, General Alexandru Averescu, submitted the resignation of his government. At four o’clock that afternoon he had an audience of an hour and a half with King Ferdinand I in Iași. As he noted in his diary, he told the monarch that everyone had the impression that the King had no confidence in the cabinet. If he had, he should tell the ministers so; if not, the government would step down. Ferdinand prevaricated for a long time, until finally he admitted that he no longer had confidence and accepted the resignation. When Averescu passed on this news at a meeting of the council of ministers, his colleagues greeted it with a cry of relief. The War Minister, General Constantin Iancovescu, at once pushed a sheet of paper towards the Prime Minister: “Please, write the resignation before he changes his mind.” A British chronology of the war records Averescu’s resignation under the same day.

The government, which was meant to play for time with the Central Powers, had lost its reason for existence after only a month. A week earlier, on 5 March, its minister Constantin Argetoianu had signed the preliminary peace of Buftea, and the government had thereby taken upon itself the odium of humiliating terms. The Prime Minister’s position had already been weakened by the deliberations of the crown council at the beginning of March, when the heir to the throne, Prince Carol, on behalf of Queen Marie, publicly called for resistance to the last. The ministers had wanted to resign then and stayed only at the King’s request, and Averescu complained that two policies were being pursued at court, the King’s and that of the Queen and her son. In the night of 9–10 March a rumour that German troops might cut off the route of the French military mission leaving Romania caused panic in Iași. The King then summoned a crown council, although according to Averescu the matter was purely one for the government and in fact already settled. Generals again came to the deliberations, summoned without the Prime Minister’s knowledge, it was said, by the Queen.

Behind the scenes a game over the succession was also being played. For some time Ferdinand had wanted to talk to Alexandru Marghiloman, leader of the Conservatives and a supporter of good relations with Germany, who had remained in Bucharest throughout the occupation. Averescu warned that if the meeting had a political undertone it would be a mistake, but the King assured him that it concerned other matters. Marghiloman arrived in Iași on precisely 12 March and in the morning, a few hours before Averescu, had an audience with the King. The Central Powers were also counting on a change. The Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Ottokar Czernin had already said in his conversation with Ferdinand on 27 February that in his view a Marghiloman cabinet would accept the peace terms, and he promised Marghiloman himself in writing considerable concessions on the Carpathian border if he became head of the government.

The resignation, however, caused anxiety. Averescu instructed Argetoianu to announce a government crisis at Buftea and to suspend the negotiations until a new cabinet was appointed. The German side replied that in view of the crisis it needed new guarantees, and that if no agreement was reached by the expiry of the extended armistice on 19 March, it might harden the terms or break off the talks. According to Argetoianu’s account the government’s resignation made a disastrous impression at Buftea. Averescu’s ministers remained in office for a few more days, and on 18 March Marghiloman formed a new government. The general himself soon founded his own party, the People’s League, later transformed into the People’s Party, and twice more became head of government.