Alexandru Marghiloman – a model of assumed political sacrifice Cover Image

Alexandru Marghiloman – model de sacrificiu politic asumat
Alexandru Marghiloman – a model of assumed political sacrifice

Author(s): Constantin Coman
Subject(s): History, Local History / Microhistory, Military history, Political history, Government/Political systems, Pre-WW I & WW I (1900 -1919), Period(s) of Nation Building
Published by: ArtPoligraf SRL
Keywords: Junimist group; Crown Council; armed expectation; Great Union; Basarabia; dynasty; occupation; territorial kidnapping; requisitions;

Summary/Abstract: Alexandru Marghiloman was the most important political man from Buzău at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. At the Crown Council of Sinaia, on 21 July 1914, when he was convened by the old King Carol I to decide the fate of the country in those critical moments at the the beginning of the war, Marghiloman proposed the solution of “armed expectation”, i.e. a neutrality that seemed to be favorable to the Central Powers. Alexandru Marghiloman reached the peak of his political career between 5 March and 24 October 1918, when on the one hand he managed with great patriotism the union of Basarabia with Romania, on 27 March/9 April, and on the other hand he assumed the sacrifice of saving the state and the dynasty by signing a “Punic peace” with the Triple Alliance, on 24 April/7 May. The Bucharest peace negotiations concerned not only the territorial seizure of Dobrogea, desired by the Bulgarians, and the mountain ridges, desired by the Austro-Hungarians, but espescially the maintenance of the military administration in order to exploit until exhaustion the territory under the occupation of the Central Powers. Although accused of collaborationism with the German occupier by his political opponents, many eager to capture the glory of the creation of Greater Romania, Marghiloman’s justification is masterly: „Greater Romania was made neither according to your political conceptions, nor according to our plans, Romania came out of the instinct of all Romanians, not from the calculations made by others!”

  • Issue Year: IV/2022
  • Issue No: supplement
  • Page Range: 104-110
  • Page Count: 7
  • Language: Romanian