Goethe (West-Oestlicher Divan).

It is said to have been a chance occasion which gave the first impetus towards the compilation of the German original[1] from which these "Reminiscences of the King of Roumania have been re-edited and abridged." One day an enterprising man of letters applied to one who had followed the King's career for years with vivid interest: "The public of a country extending from the Alps to the ocean is eager to know something about Roumania and her Hohenzollern ruler." The King, without whose consent little or nothing could have been done, thought the matter over carefully; in fact, he weighed it in his mind for several years before coming to a final decision. At first his natural antipathy to being talked about—even in praise (to criticism he had ever been indifferent)—made him reluctant to provide printed matter for public comment. On the other hand, he had long been most anxious that Roumania should attract more public attention than the world had hitherto bestowed on her. In an age of universal trade competition and self-advertisement, for a country to be talked about possibly meant attracting capitalists and opening up markets: things which might add materially to her prosperity. With such possibilities in view, the King's own personal taste or scruples were of secondary moment to him. So the idea first suggested by a stranger gradually took shape in his mind, and with it the desire to see placed before his own subjects a truthful record of what had been achieved in Roumania in his own time. By these means he hoped to give his people an instructive synopsis of the difficulties which had been successfully overcome in the task of creating practical institutions out of chaos.

As so often happens in such cases, the work grew beyond the limits originally entertained. But the task was no easy one, and involved the labour of several years. However, the result achieved is well worth the trouble, for it is an historical document of exceptional political interest, containing, among other material, important letters from Prince Bismarck, the Emperor William, the Emperor Frederick, the Czar of Russia, Queen Victoria, and Napoleon III. It is, in fact, a piece of work which a politician must consult unless he is to remain in the dark concerning much of moment in the political history of our time, and particularly in the history of the Eastern Question. "The Reminiscences of the King of Roumania" constitute an important page in the story of European progress. Nor is this all. They also contain a study in self-revelation which, so far as it belongs to a regal character, is absolutely unique in its completeness—even in an age so rich in sensational memoirs as our own.

The subject-matter deals with a period of over twenty-five years in the life of a young European nation, in the course of which she gained her independence and strove successfully to retain it, whilst more than trebling her resources in peaceful work. In this eventful period greater changes have taken place in the balance of power in Europe than in many preceding centuries. A republic has replaced a monarchy in France, and also on the other side of the Atlantic, in Brazil, since the days when a young captain of a Prussian guard regiment, a scion of the House of Hohenzollern, set himself single-handed the Sisyphean task of establishing a constitutional representative monarchy on a soil where hitherto periodical conspiracies and revolts had run riot luxuriously. Just here, however, our democratic age has witnessed the realisation of the problem treated by Macchiavelli in "Il Principe"—the self-education of a prince.

To-day, the man who thirty-three years ago came down the Danube as a perfect stranger—practically alone, without tried councillors or adherents—is to all intents and purposes the omnipotent ruler of a country which owes its independence and present position entirely to his statesmanship. Nor can there be much doubt that but for him Roumania and the Lower Danube might be now little more than a name to the rest of Europe—as, indeed, they were in the past.

II

King Charles of Roumania is the second son of the late Prince Charles Anthony[2] of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen: the elder South German Roman Catholic branch of the House of Hohenzollern, of which the German Emperor is the chief. Until the year 1849 the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringens, whose dominions are situated between WÜrttemberg and Baden, near the spot where the Danube rises in the Black Forest, possessed full sovereign rights as the head of one of the independent principalities of the German Confederation. These sovereign rights of his own and his descendants Prince Charles Anthony formally and voluntarily ceded to Prussia on December 7, 1849. Of him we are credibly informed:

"Prince Charles Anthony lives in the history of the German people as a man of liberal thought and high character, who of his own free will gave up his sovereign prerogative for the sake of the cause of German Unity. His memory is green in the hearts of his children as the ideal of a father, who—for all his strictness and discipline—was not feared, but ever loved and honoured, by his family. He was always the best friend and adviser of his grown-up sons." His letters to his son Charles, which are frequently quoted in the present memoir, fully bear out this testimony to the Prince's intimate, almost ideal, relationship with his children, as also to the magnanimity with which he is universally credited.

Of the King's mother—Princess Josephine of Baden—we learn: "Princess Josephine was deeply religious without being in the least bigoted. Her unselfishness earned for her the love and devotion of all those who knew her. As a wife and a mother her life was one of exceptional harmony and happiness. The great deference which King Charles has always shown to the other sex has its source in the veneration which he felt for his mother."

Prince Charles was born on April 20, 1839, at the ancestral castle of the Hohenzollerns at Sigmaringen on the Danube, then ruled over by his grandfather, the reigning Prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. The castle was not in those days the treasury of art and history which it is at the present day. The grandfatherly rÉgime was of a patriarchal, almost despotic kind: every detail of household affairs was regulated with a view to strict economy. Though, perhaps, unpleasant at times, all this proved to be invaluable training for the young Prince, whose ultimate destiny it was to rule over one of the most extravagant peoples in Europe. Punctuality was strictly enforced: at nine o'clock the old Prince wound up his watch as a sign that the day was over, and at ten darkness and silence reigned supreme over the household.

Prince Charles was a delicate child, and was considered so throughout his early manhood, though in reality his health and bodily powers left little to be desired. The first happy years of his childhood were passed at Sigmaringen and the summer residences of Inzigkofen and Krauchenwies. This peaceful life was broken by a visit in 1846 to his maternal grandmother, the Grand Duchess StÉphanie of Baden. On this occasion Prince Charles attracted the attention and interest of Mme. Hortense Cornu, the intimate friend and confidant of Prince Louis Napoleon—later Napoleon III.

It cannot be said that the young Prince progressed very rapidly in his studies; but though he learned slowly, his memory proved most retentive. His naturally independent and strong character, moreover, prevented him from adopting outside opinions too readily, and this trait he retained in after years. For though as King of Roumania he is ever willing to listen to the opinion of others, the decision invariably remains in his own hands.

An exciting period supervened for the little South German Principality with the year 1848, when the revolutionary wave forced the old Prince to abdicate in favour of his son Prince Charles Anthony. Owing to the action of a "Committee of Public Safety," the Hohenzollern family quitted Sigmaringen on September 27. This the children used to call the "first flight" in contradistinction to the "second," some seven months later. Though Prince Charles Anthony succeeded in gaining the upper hand over the revolutionary movement of '48, the trouble commenced again in 1849 owing to the insurrection in the Grand Duchy of Baden. As soon as order had been completely restored, Prince Charles Anthony carried out his long-cherished plan of transferring the sovereignty of the Hohenzollern Principality to the King of Prussia, and in a farewell speech he declared his sole reason to be "the desire to promote the unity, greatness, and power of the German people." The family settled first at Neisse in Prussian Silesia, then at DÜsseldorf, as Prince Charles Anthony was appointed to the command of the Fourteenth Military Division, while Prince Charles Anthony, and later on also his brother Friedrich, were settled with their tutor in Dresden, where Prince Charles spent seven years.

Before joining his parents at DÜsseldorf, Prince Charles successfully passed his ensign's examination, though he was entitled as a Prince of the House of Hohenzollern to claim his commission without submitting to this test. As a reward for his success he was permitted to make a tour through Switzerland and Upper Italy before being placed under his previously appointed military governor, Captain von Hagens. This officer was a man in every way fitted to instruct and prepare the young Prince for his career by developing his powers of initiative and independence of action. In accordance with his expressed wish, he was gazetted Second Lieutenant in the Prussian Artillery of the Guard, but was not required to join his corps until his studies were completed. A thorough knowledge of the practical part of his profession was acquired at the fortress of JÜlich, followed, after a visit to the celebrated Krupp Works at Essen, by a course of instruction at Berlin.

The betrothal of his sister, Princess StÉphanie, to King Pedro V. of Portugal, in the autumn of 1857, was followed by her marriage by proxy at Berlin on April 29, 1858, whilst another important family event occurred in November of the same year. William, Prince of Prussia (afterwards King William I., who had assumed the regency during the illness of his brother the King, Frederick William IV.), appointed Prince Charles Anthony, of Hohenzollern, to the Presidency of the Prussian Ministry. His son Charles developed the greatest interest in politics, and at that time unconsciously acquired a fund of diplomatic knowledge and experience which was to stand him in good stead in his future career.

In the midst of the gaieties of Berlin the Prince was deeply affected by the melancholy news of the death of his sister StÉphanie on July 17, 1859. Two years later the marriage of his brother Leopold to the Infanta Antoinette of Portugal afforded him a welcome opportunity of visiting the last resting-place of his dearly loved sister near Lisbon. On his return from his journey, Prince Charles requested to be transferred to an Hussar Regiment, as the artillery did not appear at that time to take that place in public estimation to which it was entitled. This application, however, was postponed until his return from a long tour through the South of France, Algiers, Gibraltar, Spain, and Paris. After a short stay at the University of Bonn, Prince Charles again resumed military duty as First Lieutenant in the Second Dragoon Guards stationed at Berlin, where he speedily regained the position he had formerly held in the society of the capital. The Royal Family, especially the Crown Prince, welcomed their South German relative most warmly, and the friendship thus created was subsequently more than equal to the test of time and separation.

A second visit to the Imperial Court of France in 1863, this time at the invitation of Napoleon III., was intended by the latter to culminate in a betrothal to a Princess of his House, but the project fell through, as the proposed conditions did not find favour with the King of Prussia. Prince Charles was forced to content himself with the consolation offered by King William, that he would soon forget the fair lady amidst the scenes of war (in Denmark). As orderly officer to his friend the Crown Prince of Prussia, Prince Charles took part in the siege and assault of the DÜppel entrenchments, the capture of Fridericia, and the invasion of JÜtland. The experience he gained of war and camp-life during this period was of inestimable benefit to the young soldier, who was afterwards called upon to achieve the independence of Roumania on the battlefields of Bulgaria.

The war of 1864 having come to an end, Prince Charles returned to the somewhat dreary monotony of garrison life in Berlin. This not unnaturally soon gave rise to a feeling of ennui and a consequent longing on his part for more absorbing work than that of mere subordinate military routine. Nothing then indicated, however, that in a short time he would step from such comparative obscurity to the wide field of European politics by the acceptance of a hazardous, though pre-eminently honourable, position of the utmost importance in Eastern Europe—the throne of the United Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, which, thanks to his untiring exertions and devotion to duty, are now known as the Kingdom of Roumania.

III

In starting on his adventurous, not to say perilous, experiment, Prince Charles already possessed plenty of valuable capital to draw upon. In the first place, few princes to whose lot it has fallen to sway the destinies of a nation have received an early training so well adapted to their future vocation, or have been so auspiciously endowed by nature with qualities which in this instance may fairly be said to have been directly inherited from his parents. His early and most impressionable years had been passed in the bosom of an ideally happy and plain-living family, and this in itself was one of the strongest of guarantees for harmonious development and for future happiness in life. Both his father and mother had earnestly striven to instil into their children the difference between the outward aspect and the true inwardness of things—the very essence of training for princes no less than for those of humbler rank. Also we find the following significant reference to the Prince and his feelings on the threshold of his career:

"The stiff and antiquated 'Junker' spirit which in those days was so prevalent in Prussia and Berlin, and more particularly at the Prussian Court, was most repugnant to him. His nature was too simple, too genuine, for him to take kindly to this hollow assumption, this clinging to old-fashioned empty formula. His training had been too truly aristocratic for him not to be deeply imbued with simplicity and spontaneity in all his impulses. His instincts taught him to value the inwardness of things above their outward appearance."

Nor was it long before he had ample opportunity of putting these precepts into practice. Neither as Prince nor as King has the Sovereign of Roumania ever permitted prosecution for personal attacks upon himself. The crime of lÈse majestÉ has no existence—or, to say the least, is in permanent abeyance—in Roumania.

Anti-dynastic newspapers have for years persisted in their attacks upon the King, his policy, and his person—sometimes in the most audacious manner. Although his Ministers have from time to time strenuously urged his Majesty to authorise the prosecution of these offenders, he has never consented to this course. He even refused to prosecute those who attacked his consort, holding that the Queen is part of himself, and, like himself, must be above taking notice of insults, and must bear the penalty of being misunderstood, or even calumniated, and trust confidently to the unerring justice of time for vindication.

The King's equable temperament has enabled him to take an even higher flight. For let us not forget that it is possible to be lenient, even forgiving, in the face of calumny, and yet to suffer agonies of torture in the task of repressing our wounded feelings. King Charles is said to have read many scurrilous pamphlets and papers directed against him and his dynasty—for singularly atrocious examples have been ready to his hand—and to have been able sometimes even to discover a fund of humour in the more fantastic perversions of truth which they contained.

Speaking of one of the most outrageous personal attacks ever perpetrated upon him, he is reported to have said that such things could not touch or affect him—that he stood beyond their reach. Here the words employed by Goethe regarding his deceased friend Schiller might well be applied:

His absolute indifference towards calumny is doubtless due to his conviction that time will do him justice—that a ruler must take his own course, and that the final estimate is always that of posterity.

IV

One who for years has lived in close contact with the Roumanian royal family gives the following sympathetic and yet obviously sincere description of the personal impression the King creates:

"King Charles had attained his fiftieth year when I saw him for the first time. There is, perhaps, no other stage of life at which a man is so truly his full self as just this particular age. The physical development of a man of fifty is long completed, whereas on the other hand he has not yet suffered any diminution of strength or elasticity. His spiritual individuality is also ripe and complete, in so far as any full, deep nature can ever be said to have completed its development. It is only consonant with that true nobility which precludes every effect borrowed or based on calculation, that the first impression the King makes upon the stranger is not a striking one: he is too distinguished to attract attention; too genuine to create an effect for the eye of the many. An artist might admire the handsome features; but the King lacks the tall figure, the impressive mien which is the attribute of the hero of romance, and which excites the enthusiasm of the crowd. On the other hand, his slender figure of medium height is elegant and well knit; his gait is energetic and graceful. His sea-blue eyes, which lie deep beneath strong black eyebrows—meeting right across his aquiline nose—now and then take a restless roving expression. They are those of an eagle, a trite comparison which has often been made before. Moreover, their keenness and their great reach of sight justifies an affinity with the king of birds."

It is not generally known—but it is true, nevertheless—that the King of Roumania is half French by descent. His grandmother on his father's side was a Princess Murat, and his maternal grandmother, as already mentioned, was a French lady well known to history as StÉphanie Beauharnais, the adopted daughter of the first Napoleon, and later, by her marriage, Princess StÉphanie of Baden. It is to this combination in his ancestry that people have been wont to ascribe some of the marked characteristics of the King. His personal appearance—notably the fine clear-cut profile—undoubtedly recalls the typical features of the old French nobility. Also the slight, symmetrical, and graceful figure is rather French Beauharnais than German Hohenzollern. His gift for repartee—l'esprit du moment, as it is so aptly styled—is decidedly French; and perhaps not less so his sanguine temperament, which has stood him in such good stead, and encouraged him not to lose heart in the midst of his greatest troubles, particularly years ago, when his subjects did not know and value him as they do now. An abnormal capacity for work and an absolute indifference towards every form of material enjoyment—or gratification of the senses—have also singularly fitted him for what posterity will probably deem to have been King Charles's most striking vocation: that of the politician. And his success as a politician is all the more remarkable, since his youthful training as well as his early tastes were almost exclusively those of the Prussian soldier. He even lacked the study of law and bureaucratic administration, which are commonly held to be the necessary groundwork of a political career. Yet not an atom of German dreaminess is to be detected in him; nor aught of roughness: little of the insensible hardness of iron; but rather something of the fine temper of steel—the elasticity of a well-forged blade—which, though it will show the slightest breath of damp, and bend at times, yet flies back rigid to the straight line. Thus I am assured is King Charles as a politician—not to be swayed or tampered with by influences of any kind, the sober moderation of an independent judgment has, in fact, never deserted him. It is also owing to a felicitous temperament that he has always been able to encounter opposition—even bitter enmity—without feeling its effect in a way common to average mankind.

He had to begin by acquiring the difficult art of "taking people," and this—as the King himself admits—he only acquired gradually. However, he possessed an inborn genius for the business of ruler. By nature he is a practical realist whose insatiable appetite for facts, faits politiques, crowds out most other interests. So he quickly profited by experience, which, added to an independence of judgment which he always possessed, has made him an opportunist whose opportunity always means the welfare of his country. In dealing with public questions he endeavours to start with the Gladstonian open mind: i.e., by having no fixed opinion of his own. He listens to all—forms his own opinion in doing so—and invariably finishes by impressing and influencing others. He even indirectly manipulates public opinion by constantly seeing and conversing with a vast number of people. For in Roumania there is no class favouritism so far as access to the monarch is concerned. Anybody may be presented at Court, and on any Sunday afternoon all are at liberty to call and see the King even without the formality of an audience paper to fix an appointment.

Personal favouritism has never existed under him. In fact, so thoroughly has he realised and carried into practice what he considers to be his duty of personal impartiality, that he once vouchsafed the following justification of an apparent harshness: that a ruler must take up one and drop another as the interests of the country require. In other words, he must not allow personal feeling to sway him—whereas in private life he should never forsake a friend. And yet withal King Charles is anxiously intent upon avoiding personal responsibility—not from timidity, but from an idea that it is irreconcilable with the dignity of a constitutional king to put himself forward in this way. Thus not "Le Roi le veut," but rather "I hold it to be in the public interest that such and such a thing should be done" is his habitual form of speech in council with his Ministers.

One of the King's favourite aphorisms is singularly suggestive in our talkative age: "It is not so much by what a prince does as by what he says that he makes enemies!" Like all men of true genius—or what the Germans call "geniale Naturen"—King Charles is of simple, unaffected nature;[3] without a taint of the histrionic in his composition, yet gifted with great reserve force of self-repression, and rare powers of discernment and well-balanced judgment.

With all the pride of a Hohenzoller, a sentiment which he never relinquishes, and which, indeed, is a constant spur to regulate his conduct by a high standard, he yet holds that nobody should let a servant do for him what he can do for himself. Also, he has ever felt an unaffected liking for people of humble station who lead useful lives, and have raised themselves honestly by their own merit. In fact, the man who works—however lowly his sphere of life—is nearer to his sympathies than one whose position gives him an excuse for laziness. He instinctively dislikes the "loafer," whatever his birth. He admits as little that exalted position is an excuse for a useless life as that it should be put forward to excuse deviation from the principles of traditional morality. And in this respect his own life, which has been singularly marked by what the German language terms "Sittenreinheit," "purity of morals," offers an impressive justification for his intolerance upon this one particular point.

V

It is said to be King Charles's earnest conviction that the maxims he has striven to put into practice are the only possible ones upon which a monarchy on a democratic basis can hope to exist in our time. But here he is obviously attempting to award to principle what, in this instance at least, must be largely due to the intuitive gifts of an extraordinary personality. Maxims are all very well so far as they go, but they did not go the whole length of the way. Did not even Immanuel Kant himself admit that, during a long experience as a tutor, he had never been able to put those precepts successfully into practice upon which his work on "PÄdagogik" is founded? Also many of the difficulties successfully encountered by the King of Roumania have been of such a nature as cut-and-dry application of precepts or maxims would never have sufficed to vanquish. Among these may be cited the acute crises which from time to time have been the product of bitter party-warfare in Roumania. Thus, during the Franco-German War, when the sympathies of the Roumanian people were with the French to a man, his position was one of extreme difficulty. The spiteful enmity he encountered in those days taxed his endurance to its utmost limits, and even called forth a threat of abdication. A weaker man would have left his post. Again, in 1888, when a peasant rising brought about by party intrigues seemed to threaten the results of many years' labour, even experienced statesmen hinted that the Hohenzollern dynasty might not last another six months. The King was advised to use force and fire upon the rioters. This he declined to do. He simply dismissed the Ministry from office, and called the Opposition into power, and subsequent events proved that his decision was the right one. But by far the greatest crisis of his reign, and at the same time the greatest test of his nerve and political sagacity, was furnished by the singularly difficult situation of Roumania during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877: here, indeed, the very existence of Roumania was at stake. The situation may be read between the lines in the present volume.

The King, by virtue of a convention, had allowed the Russians to march through Roumania, but the latter had declined an acceptable alliance which the Roumanians wished for. When things in Bulgaria went badly with the Russians, they wanted to call upon some bodies of Roumanian troops which were stationed on the banks of the Danube. The King, or, as he was then, Prince Charles, with the instinct of the soldier—and in this case, moreover, of the far-sighted politician—was burning to let Roumania take her share in the struggle. But he was determined that she should only enter the fray—if at all—as an independent belligerent power. So he held back—and held back again, risking the grave danger which might accrue to Roumania, and above all to himself, from ultimate Russian resentment. In the meantime, the Russians were defeated in the battles round Plevna; still he held back; not with a point-blank refusal, but with a dilatory evasiveness which drove the Russians nearly frantic. For, during those terrible months of July and August 1877, in which their soldiers were dying like flies, they could see the whole Roumanian army standing ready mobilised, but motionless, a few hours away to the north, on the Danube—immovable in the face of all Muscovite appeals for assistance. At last the Russians were obliged to accept Prince Charles's conditions, to agree to allow him the independent command of all Roumanian troops, and to place a large corps of Russian troops besides under his orders. Then, indeed, the former Prussian lieutenant started within twenty-four hours, after playing the Russians at their own game for four months, and beating them at it to boot. Had Russia refused his demands, not a single Roumanian would have entered upon that struggle in the subsequent course of which their Sovereign covered himself with renown. It was no part of his business as the ruler of Roumania to seek military glory per se, although the instinct for such was strong within the Hohenzoller. Also on the 11th September, the battle of Grivitza—which was fought against his advice—saw him at his post, and sixteen thousand Russians and Roumanians[4] were killed and wounded under his command, probably a greater number slain in open battle in one day than England has lost in all her wars since the Crimea! Surely there was something of the heroic here; and yet it could hardly weigh as an achievement when compared with those Fabian tactics which preceded it, and the execution of which, until the psychological moment came, called for nerves of steel. Hardly ever has la politique dilatoire—of which Prince Bismarck was such a master in his dealings with Benedetti—had an apter exponent than King Charles on this eventful occasion. And its results, although afterwards curtailed by the decision of the Berlin Congress, secured the independence of Roumania and its creation as a kingdom.

VI

King Charles is peculiarly German in his passionate love of nature. At Sinaja—his summer residence—he looks after his trees with the same solicitude which filled his great countryman, Prince Bismarck. He spends his holidays by preference amid romantic scenery—at Abbazia, on the blue Adriatic, or in Switzerland. He visits Ragatz nearly every year, and thoroughly enjoys his stay among the bluff Swiss burghers. It is impossible for him to conceal his identity there; but he does his best to avoid the dreaded royalty-hunting tourist of certain nationalities, and finds an endless fund of amusement in the rough politeness of the inhabitants, with their customary greeting: "Herr KÖnig, beehren Sie uns bald wieder"—"Mr. King, pray honour us again with your visit."

He also loves to roam at will unknown among the venerable buildings of towns, such as Vienna and Munich, to look at the picture and art galleries, and gather ideas of the way to obtain for his own people some of those treasures of culture which he admires in the great centres of civilisation. He has even, at great personal sacrifice, collected quite a respectable gallery of pictures at Bucharest and Sinaja.

If I have dwelt somewhat at length upon the King's personal characteristics and his political methods, it has been in order to assist the reader to appreciate what kind of man he is, and so the more readily to understand cause and effect in estimating how the apparently impossible grew into an accomplished fact. This seemed to be all the more necessary as the "Reminiscences" themselves—far more of a diary than a "Life"—are conceived in a spirit of rarely dispassionate impartiality. The letters, in particular, addressed to the King by his father—whilst they afford us a sympathetic insight into a charming relationship between father and son—do credit to the fearless spirit of the latter in publishing them; and the frankness with which the most painful situations are placed on record can scarcely fail to elicit the sympathy and respect of the reader. In fact, the book contains passages which it would trouble the self-love of many a man to publish. This it is, however, which stamps it with the invaluable hall-mark of veracity, whilst, at the same time, it leaves the reader full liberty to form his own judgment.

SIDNEY WHITMAN.

REMINISCENCES OF THE KING OF ROUMANIA