Turkey. The ultimate aim of Russia may be open to discussion. Her
immediate aim was to make Russian influence paramount in the
principalities; this being the only possible explanation of the anomalous
fact that, pending the payment of the war indemnity, Russia herself was
occupying the provinces whose autonomy she had but now forcibly retrieved
from Turkey. The _Reglement Organique_, the new constitutional law given
to the principalities by their Russian governor, Count Kisseleff, truly
reflected the tendency. From the administrative point of view it was meant
to make for progress; from the political point of view it was meant to
bind the two principalities to the will of the Tsar. The personal charm of
Count Kisseleff seemed to have established as it were an unbreakable link
between Russians and Rumanians. But when he left the country in 1834 'the
liking for Russia passed away to be replaced finally by the two sentiments
which always most swayed the Rumanian heart: love for their country, and
affection towards France'.

[Footnote 1: Sec P. Eliade, _Histoire de l'Esprit Public en Roumanie_, i,
p. 167 et seq.]

French culture had been introduced into the principalities by the
Phanariote princes who, as dragomans of the Porte, had to know the
language, and usually employed French secretaries for themselves and
French tutors for their children. With the Russian occupation a fresh
impetus was given to French culture, which was pre-eminent in Russia at
the time; and the Russian officials, not speaking the language of the
country, generally employed French in their relations with the Rumanian
authorities, French being already widely spoken in Rumania. The contact
with French civilization, at an epoch when the Rumanians were striving to
free themselves from Turkish, Greek, and Russian political influence,
roused in them the sleeping Latin spirit, and the younger generation, in
constantly increasing numbers, flocked to Paris in search of new forms of
civilization and political life. At this turning-point in their history
the Rumanians felt themselves drawn towards France, no less by racial
affinity than by the liberal ideas to which that country had so
passionately given herself during several decades.

By the Treaty of Adrianople the Black Sea was opened to the commercial
vessels of all nations. This made for the rapid economic development of
the principalities by providing an outlet for their agricultural produce,
the chie