f source of their wealth. It also brought them nearer to western
Europe, which began to be interested in a nation whose spirit centuries of
sufferings had failed to break. Political, literary, and economic events
thus prepared the ground for the Rumanian Renascence, and when in 1848 the
great revolution broke out, it spread at once over the Rumanian countries,
where the dawn of freedom had been struggling to break since 1821. The
Rumanians of Transylvania rose against the tyranny of the Magyars; those
of Moldavia and Muntenia against the oppressive influence of Russia. The
movement under the gallant, but inexperienced, leadership of a few
patriots, who, significantly enough, had almost all been educated in
France, was, however, soon checked in the principalities by the joint
action of Russian and Turkish forces which remained in occupation of the
country. Many privileges were lost (Convention of Balta Liman, May 1,
1849); but the revolution had quickened the national sentiment of the
younger generation in all classes of society, and the expatriated leaders,
dispersed throughout the great capitals of Europe, strenuously set to work
to publish abroad the righteous cause of their country. In this they
received the enthusiastic and invaluable assistance of Edgar Quinet,
Michelet, Saint-Marc Girardin, and others.

This propaganda had the fortune to be contemporaneous and in agreement
with the political events leading to the Crimean War, which was entered
upon to check the designs of Russia. A logical consequence was the idea,
raised at the Paris Congress of 1856, of the union of the Rumanian
principalities as a barrier to Russian expansion. This idea found a
powerful supporter in Napoleon III, ever a staunch upholder of the
principle of nationality. But at the Congress the unexpected happened.
Russia favoured the idea of union, 'to swallow the two principalities at a
gulp,' as a contemporary diplomatist maliciously suggested; while Austria
opposed it strongly. So, inconceivably enough, did Turkey, whose attitude,
as the French ambassador at Constantinople, Thouvenel, put it, 'was less
influenced by the opposition of Austria than by the approval of
Russia'.[1] Great Britain also threw in her weight with the powers which
opposed the idea of union, following her traditional policy of preserving
the European equilibrium. The treaty of March 30, 1856, re-incorporated
with Moldavia the southern part of Bessarabia, including the delt