Romania's treaty with the Entente

On 17 August 1916 (4 August by the Julian calendar, then still used in Romania) two secret documents that settled Romania’s entry into the war were signed in Bucharest: a political treaty and a military convention. On the Romanian side they were signed by the prime minister, Ion I.C. Brătianu, who was also in charge of the war ministry. The political treaty was signed by the ministers of the four Entente powers in Bucharest: the Russian of Polish descent Stanisław Koziełł-Poklewski, the Frenchman Count Charles de Saint-Aulaire, the Briton Sir George Barclay and the Italian Carlo Fasciotti. The military convention was signed by the military attachés of those countries. According to the memoirs of the Romanian minister Ion G. Duca, the documents were signed in the house of the prime minister’s brother, Vintilă Brătianu. The British chronology of the war records both acts under the same day as two separate events.

Long bargaining

From the start of the war Brătianu had wanted to win for Romania the Romanian-inhabited lands of the Habsburg monarchy, above all Transylvania, but at the lowest possible cost and at the most favourable moment. As early as the autumn of 1914 he had secured a secret agreement with Russia that recognised these claims without forcing him into war. For a year and a half talks on military co-operation stalled, because the Romanians demanded a large Russian army in the Dobruja and the Russians would not provide one.

The breakthrough came with the Brusilov offensive. The Russians occupied Bukovina and stood at the Carpathian passes, right on the Romanian frontier. The Austrian official history states that at the beginning of July the chief of staff to the Russian Supreme Commander, General Mikhail Alekseyev, had Brătianu told that Romania had a choice: join now or never. If the Romanians waited for the Austrians to weaken further, their help would prove unnecessary, and then there would be no reason to let them join the victorious march into the monarchy. According to the British official history, on 4 July Brătianu told the French minister that he was ready to sign a military convention on condition that Romania was shielded from Bulgaria by Russian troops or by an offensive from Salonika. France pressed hardest. As early as March General Joseph Joffre had written to the Russians that no price for an alliance with Romania was too high.

The negotiations nevertheless dragged on for another six weeks. Russia and France wanted Romania to attack Bulgaria as well, with which Russia had no common frontier, but whose army could threaten the Romanians from the south. Brătianu refused. At the Allied military conference in Paris on 23 July it emerged that Romania intended to declare war only on Austria-Hungary and to turn its whole strength against Transylvania. In Petrograd, meanwhile, Sazonov was dismissed and foreign affairs were taken over by the prime minister, Stürmer. Disputes over the details of the convention also kept postponing the offensive that General Maurice Sarrail was to launch in Macedonia.

The promises

The political treaty had seven articles. Great Britain, France, Italy and Russia guaranteed the integrity of Romania’s frontiers and recognised its right to annex the lands of Austria-Hungary up to an agreed line. This took in Transylvania, Crișana, Maramureș, the whole of the Banat and the greater part of Bukovina, south of the Prut and the Cheremosh. In the west the frontier was to run at first along the Tisza, then a few kilometres east of Debrecen, and reach the Tisza north of Szeged. Bucharest was thus getting far more than the 1914 agreement had provided for, which had divided Bukovina along national lines.

In return Romania had to declare war on Austria-Hungary and break off economic relations with all the enemies of the Allies. It also promised not to build fortifications opposite Belgrade and to compensate the Serbs of the Banat who wished to emigrate within two years after the war. This concession did not reassure the Serbs, who for months had been protesting against handing the whole Banat to Romania. The parties undertook not to conclude a separate peace, and Romania was to sit at the peace conference on equal terms with the Great Powers. The last article required the treaty to be kept secret until a general peace was concluded.

According to the British historian John Keegan, even before Romania entered the war the Allies had quietly agreed that after the war they would not have to honour all their territorial promises. When in 1918 Romania, isolated after Russia’s exit from the war, signed a separate peace with the Central Powers, the powers later held that the treaty had lapsed, which became a source of bitter disputes at the peace conference.

The military convention

The convention had seventeen articles. In the first article Romania undertook to mobilise all its land and naval forces and to attack Austria-Hungary no later than 28 August (15 August by the Julian calendar). Hostilities were to begin on the day war was declared. At the moment of mobilisation Russia was to send two infantry divisions and a cavalry division to the Dobruja to fight the Bulgarians together. This was much less than the Romanians had demanded earlier. The Russians also promised to attack along the whole Austro-Hungarian front, especially in Bukovina, and from 25 August to cover the Romanian Black Sea coast with their fleet.

The Allies undertook that at least eight days before Romania entered the war a decisive offensive would begin by the army at Salonika, which would tie down the Bulgarians and make Romania’s mobilisation easier. It was fixed for 20 August. For weeks Sarrail had been preparing this blow with the reconstituted Serbian army and new Allied contingents. The powers promised to deliver to Romania at least 300 tonnes of arms and ammunition a day. The only route from the West, however, led through Archangel and the overloaded Russian railways. The Romanian army was to operate independently, not under Russian command, and its advance was to go, if the situation south of the Danube allowed, through Transylvania towards Budapest.

What came next

The plan began to fall apart the same day. On 17 August the Bulgarians themselves struck in Macedonia, on both wings of the front, and forestalled Sarrail’s offensive. Even so, the Romanian government did not draw back. The Central Powers did not know the contents of the treaty. The Austrians, thanks to intercepted wireless messages, expected a Romanian attack soon. The chief of the German General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, however, did not believe these warnings and counted on the Romanians waiting at least until the harvest was in. On 27 August Romania declared war on Austria-Hungary, a day before the deadline set in the convention.