Peace of Buftea

On 5 March 1918 (20 February by the Julian calendar, which Romania still used until 1919) a preliminary peace treaty between Romania and Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey was signed at Buftea, near occupied Bucharest. It was signed for Romania by the Minister of Justice in the government of General Alexandru Averescu, Constantin Argetoianu, and for the Central Powers by, among others, the German Foreign Secretary Richard von Kühlmann and the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Ottokar Czernin. Two days after Soviet Russia had made peace with the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk, the Entente’s last ally in the east dropped out of the war.

Three days of crown council

The road to Buftea was short and dramatic. From Averescu’s first conversation with Kühlmann and Czernin on 24 February it was clear that the Central Powers demanded above all Dobruja. On 27 February Czernin met King Ferdinand I at Răcăciuni station and gave him 48 hours to reply. On 1 March the government in Iași replied that it accepted the bases for negotiations, but not as absolute conditions. According to Averescu’s diary the reply was judged insufficient: if unconditional consent did not arrive by noon the next day, the armistice would be denounced. And so it was.

From 2 to 4 March (17–19 February Old Style) a crown council sat in Iași. Averescu declared that since he had failed to win peace on better terms, his government’s mission was over. Ion I. C. Brătianu argued for resuming resistance, Take Ionescu for withdrawing the government and the army deep into Russia. Neither of them, however, wanted to take responsibility for his plan himself, and both insisted that Averescu’s cabinet should remain. The generals called to the meeting argued that the army could still defend itself, but the army’s quartermaster presented supply figures which showed that prolonged resistance was a utopia. Averescu concluded that fighting would be possible, but short, and would end in the destruction of the army. Queen Marie opposed capitulation to the end, and her son, the heir to the throne Carol, declared on her behalf at the last session that the women of Romania hoped a statesman would be found who would not allow the King to sign such a peace. During the deliberations a note arrived from the Central Powers with new conditions for restoring the armistice: the immediate demobilisation of eight divisions, the passage of German troops through northern Moldavia and the use of the railways. The King, barely holding back tears, decided that they had to bow to circumstances. Argetoianu went to Buftea with full powers.

The terms

The preliminary peace extended the armistice by 14 days, counting from 5 March. During that time the provisions of the final treaty were to be agreed. Romania ceded to the Central Powers Dobruja up to the Danube. In return the Central Powers undertook to secure for it a trade route to the Black Sea through Constanța. Czernin had promised such a guarantee earlier. Romania accepted “in principle” the border corrections demanded by Austria-Hungary in the Carpathians, and economic obligations “appropriate to the situation”. The details of both points had not yet been specified, which left the Central Powers a free hand at the later stage of the negotiations.

The military clauses were the most painful. Romania was immediately to demobilise at least eight divisions, jointly with the command of Mackensen’s army group. The rest of the army was to be disbanded after the conclusion of peace between Russia and Romania, apart from the units needed to keep order on the Russo-Romanian border. Romanian troops had to leave the scraps of Austro-Hungarian territory they occupied. The government undertook to help with the transport of Central Powers troops by rail through Moldavia (PL) and Bessarabia to Odessa. It also had immediately to release from Romanian service the officers of the Entente states, to whom the Central Powers guaranteed free departure. This concerned above all the French military mission of General Henri Berthelot, which for a year and a half had been rebuilding the Romanian army. The treaty came into force immediately.

Dobruja and Bessarabia

The question of Dobruja was the hardest condition for the Romanians, but it also caused the Central Powers trouble. Bulgaria demanded the whole region with the mouth of the Danube and threatened that, if disappointed, it might lose heart for the war. Turkey, which had helped to conquer it, demanded in return the restoration of the lands on the Maritsa ceded to the Bulgarians in 1915. The Buftea formula, giving Dobruja to all four Central Powers rather than to Bulgaria alone, postponed this dispute. Czernin stressed in his memoirs that in its main outlines the Dobruja question had been decided precisely at Buftea.

Romania could count on compensation in the east. In his conversation with the King on 27 February Czernin assured him that Vienna would diplomatically support its efforts to obtain Bessarabia, where Romanian troops had stood since January. Ferdinand reportedly replied that Bessarabia, steeped in Bolshevism, was of no concern to him, and that Dobruja could not be given up. Formally the treaty was silent on Bessarabia, but the reservation about the troops needed on the border with Russia allowed the Romanians to stay beyond the Prut. According to most studies, on the same day Averescu’s government also signed a protocol with the Bolsheviks in which it promised to withdraw from Bessarabia within two months.

What came next

In Iași the peace was received with bitterness, but in Germany too it did not satisfy everyone. Erich Ludendorff wrote in his memoirs that the diplomats had deluded him with the hope that the Romanians would themselves remove the King, and that he had therefore not demanded the complete disarmament of their army. He called the negotiations with Romania and the peace itself half-measures. For the Central Powers Buftea meant above all the closing of the last section of the Eastern Front before the great offensive in the west. For Averescu’s government it was the beginning of the end. The negotiations for the final treaty were conducted by the cabinet of Alexandru Marghiloman, and the Treaty of Bucharest was signed on 7 May 1918. It developed the provisions of Buftea: northern Dobruja came under the joint administration of the Central Powers, southern Dobruja went to Bulgaria, and Germany obtained a long-term lease of the Romanian oil fields. The dynasty, however, survived, and the government in Iași kept power in Moldavia. King Ferdinand never ratified that treaty.