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

CHAPTER I

THE PRINCIPALITIES OF MOLDAVIA AND WALLACHIA

After the conquest of the Balkan Peninsula by the Turks, who were intent on extending the Ottoman Empire even to the north of the Danube, there was little left for the Roumanian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, deserted and abandoned to their fate by the neighbouring Christian