King Carol I of Romania dies

On 10 October 1914, at Peleș Castle in the mountain resort of Sinaia, Carol I, the first King of Romania, died. He was 75 and had ruled the country for almost half a century. His death removed the most important obstacle to Romania’s rapprochement with the Entente.

A German on the Romanian throne

Carol was born in 1839 at Sigmaringen as a prince of the Catholic line of the Hohenzollerns, related to the Prussian royal dynasty. In 1866 he was elected Prince of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 he personally commanded the Romanian army at Plevna, and the Congress of Berlin in 1878 recognised Romania’s independence. In 1881 the country was proclaimed a kingdom and Carol was crowned king. During his reign Romania built a modern army, a railway network and the bridge over the Danube at Cernavodă.

In foreign policy Carol relied on Germany and Austria-Hungary. In 1883 Romania concluded a secret alliance with them, whose existence was known only to a handful of politicians.

The Crown Council at Sinaia

When war broke out, the King believed that honour required Romania to keep the alliance and take the side of the Central Powers. On 3 August 1914 he summoned a Crown Council at Sinaia. Prime Minister Ion I. C. Brătianu and almost all the politicians present were, however, of the opposite view. The alliance was defensive in character, and Austria-Hungary had declared war on Serbia without consulting Bucharest. Above all, Romanian public opinion sympathised with France, and some three million Romanians lived under Hungarian rule in Transylvania. The council decided that Romania would remain neutral. Carol, a constitutional monarch, submitted to this decision, although he experienced it as a personal defeat.

In the following weeks Bucharest drew ever more clearly towards the Entente. At the turn of September and October Romania concluded a secret agreement with Russia, in which Petrograd recognised its right to Transylvania in return for benevolent neutrality. The ailing King got out of bed less and less often, and in Bucharest there was even talk of his abdication.

A new king

Carol’s only daughter had died in childhood, and his nephew had long since been designated as his successor. The King was buried in the monastery at Curtea de Argeș, the necropolis of the Romanian kings. The throne passed to Ferdinand I. Although also a Hohenzollern, he was less attached to Germany, and his wife, Queen Marie, a granddaughter of Britain’s Queen Victoria, openly favoured the Entente. Taking the oath before parliament, Ferdinand declared that he would reign as a good Romanian.

Romania remained neutral for almost two more years. Brătianu waited for the most favourable moment and the highest price. In August 1916, after the successes of the Russian Brusilov Offensive, Romania concluded a treaty with the Entente and declared war on Austria-Hungary. Ferdinand, who led the country into war against a Germany ruled by his relatives, earned the epithet “the Loyal” because he kept the oath he had sworn to Romania.