The first half of the 19th century represented a time of recovery for the Romanian Lands. Of the partial recovery – ideological and national, at least – of the gap that separated them from the European West. Europe itself is in a deep effervescence after the Revolution of 1789, after the Napoleonic epic, the Restoration, the revolutions in Greece (1821), Belgium and Poland in 1830, the carbonar movement in Italy, all that social and national fervor, the fruit of industrialization and urbanization processes, of the awakening of the national consciousness, culminating brilliantly and tragically with that 1848, the year of the “spring of the peoples”. Moldavia and Wallachia, torn by a century of Phanariot domination by a Europe of which they were still part, – and not only geographically – seem to reconnect, especially through French influence, to the great upsurges that animated Western society.
Through the Russian officers established here on the occasion of frequent consecutive occupations following the wars with the Ottoman Gate, then thanks to the dozens of young boyars sent to school, especially in Paris, Romanian society is rooted in civilization and language, but also new currents of ideas that animated French society in the first decades of the nineteenth century. „Through its noisy movement, the French bourgeoisie, although later than its English sister, […] nevertheless established itself as the vanguard of the entire European bourgeoisie. Paris became the revolutionary center from where the subjugated Europe learned to wait for the signal of the freedom movement”(Stefan Zeletin).
The main problem of Romanian society, however, was the quasi-existence of the bearers of the messages of emancipation and modernization, those representatives of the third state about whom Abbot Sieyes said in 1789 that “they are nothing, but they want to be everything”, in a nutshell, the bourgeoisie. Only the freedom of trade, gained from the peace of Adrianople in 1829, then the development of cities and the internal market, as well as the gradual reintegration of the Principalities into the European economic and civilization system will germinate here the germs of capitalism and its ideas.
However, the main exponents of the new way of thinking and making Romanian society move forward will also be the boyars, younger and more enlightened, generally recruited from the middle and lower levels of this social class. Their patriotism, but also their pragmatic interest in streamlining the properties they owned or the businesses they wanted to try, made many of our boyars plot to overthrow an old regime and triumph over the ideals of the French Revolution. „All the sins of this world can be blamed on the boyar class. But two findings must be made objectively: first, that out of an «active minority» out of the nobility came all the doctrinaires of the national renaissance, most of them the leaders of the revolution of 1848 and the reformers after the Union; then, that to the political intelligence […] of a bunch of great boyars probably owes the Romanian Lands the luck […] of not having been transformed into simple governments of the kingdom of the countries.” (Neagu Djuvara)
Bratianu brothers, Mihail Kogalniceanu, Ion Ghica, C.A. Rosetti, the Golesti brothers, Vasile Alecsandri are just a few examples, and among them is a special figure, through his faith in the future of his people, through his intransigence, determination and dedication to the cause of the revolution: Nicolae Balcescu.
The Bucharest of the early nineteenth century appeared to the viewer on one of the seven hills that guarded the city as an endless expanse of gardens and greenery, small houses, typical of the countryside, with porches and thatched or shingled roofs, narrow streets and winding streets, with mud in the fall and dust in the summer, with dozens of churches towering over an ever-lively and animated city, full of merchants, innkeepers, craftsmen and Romanian, Greek, Jewish, Bulgarian, Albanian, Turkish or German innkeepers, a city often decimated by plagues, floods, earthquakes and wars, but always reborn from the spirit of survival of its inhabitants, a spirit that had made the capital of Wallachia the most important urban center of Southeast Europe, between Buda and Istanbul.
Balcescu’s first years
In one of the many slums of the city, that of Botean, located around the still current church of the same name, is born, on a blessed holiday – Saints Peter and Paul, the Holy Apostles – of 1819, in a family of rather escaped boyars, Nicolae Balcescu. He was the fourth child of the spouses Barbu Petrescu and Zinca Balcescu, preceded by Costache (born in 1813), Maria (1817), Sevastita (1818) and followed by Barbu (1824), all adopting their mother’s family name. Balcescu’s parents were part of the small nobility of Muntenia, as the material condition of the mother was superior to that of the husband: she owned in 1811 (the year of marriage with Barbu) half of the Balcesti estate, on Topolog, in Arges county, as well as 12 vineyards on Valea Orlitei, jewelry worth 5,500 thalers, gypsy slaves, cattle, etc. However, the Balcescu family’s fortune was rather modest, encumbered by some debts not recovered by Barbu Petrescu from the taxpayers he had pastored as the governor of Dolj County in 1820-1821. In 1825, Barbu dies, leaving his wife with five children and an uncertain financial situation, with which the combative Zinca was not satisfied and which she has been trying to solve for over two decades.
The first years of education of little Nicolae take place in a family setting, under the careful guidance of his mother Zinca, the historical and revolutionary future becoming only in 1832 a student of the College of St. Sava. Founded in 1694 by Constantin Brancoveanu, at the suggestion of his uncle, steward Constantin Cantacuzino, the Academy of Saint Sava, hosted by the cells of the monastery with the same name, located on the site of the current University of Bucharest, will be for 170 years the main place of higher education from Wallachia. Among the famous teachers of this institution we can mention Gheorghe Lazar, who, by the way, introduces education in Romanian (until 1821 it was conducted exclusively in Greek), Ion Heliade-Radulescu, Dinicu Golescu, Grigore Alexandrescu etc. No less brilliant will be other students of the famous college, besides Balcescu, here understanding the first mysteries of geometry, grammar, history, law, Latin or French: the Bratianu brothers, C.A. Rosetti, Christian Tell, Ion Ghica, all future comrades of ideas and action in the great political enterprises of the century: the Revolution of 1848, the Union of 1859, Independence of 1877.
„A thin, skinny boy” defending his piece of halvita
We also owe to Ion Ghica the oldest memory about Balcescu, “a thin and skinny boy”, involuntarily involved in a disproportionate conflict with the school’s “Goliath”, a certain Sotea, who “as soon as someone bought a pretzel or an apple, he would rush like a heretic and snatch it from their hand.” But Ghica recalled with tender nostalgia, in a letter sent from London to his friend Vasile Alecsandri, in October 1886: „This time, however, the boy had resisted, although he fell to the ground, but did not let his halvita escape; he defends it with his hands and feet, with his teeth and nails”. The help that Ion Ghica will give to Bălcescu in this childish circumstance, taking him out of the hands of the bully Sotea, will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, never altered by the divergences of political opinions between the two, fact confirmed in the same letter by Ghica: „Throughout Nicu Balcescu’s life, we were in the closest connection of friendship and community of thought. We lived a lot in the same city, in Bucharest, in Paris and in Constantinople and when we were separated from each other, we were in continuous correspondence, we always communicated everything we thought, everything we worked”. But what struck Ion Ghica from the beginning and made him turn his attention to the child three years younger was not so much the hardness with which Bălcescu defends himself, but the care with which the 13-year-old boy will recover the torn and ragged notebook in the fire of battle: “The torn sheets were glued and patched each in its place, with meticulous care. But what surprised me the most was to see on some pages written in capital letters phrases like: «Petru Maior says… Fotino says… From Constantin Capitanul… After the logof. Radu Greceanu…» This surprised me all the more because at that time it was not mentioned in our schools of national history”.
How relevant for Bălcescu’s future are these attitudes caught by Ion Ghica’s keen eye! We discern in them the determination and intransigence of the later revolutionary, but also the meticulousness and passion of the one who through his „Romanians under the Rule of Michael the Brave” (Romanii supt Mihai-Voievod Viteazul) will lay the foundation of our modern national historiography.
Photo: “Public Assembly” in Bucharest in 1837 (lithograph after a drawing by Raffet)
Balcescu’s activity, intensely used by the communist propaganda apparatus
In the summer of 1835, Balcescu finished his education in the institutional framework offered by St. Sava College, his passing on the benches of this school being, among other things, propagandistically speculated a century later by the communist regime, which in 1948 named the high school after him, trying to forget the memory of a saint, who fell for reasons easily understood in the disfavor of the atheist authorities in Bucharest. Balcescu’s personality and activity were well received and intensely used by the propaganda apparatus of the regime established in 1944-1947, in Romania. His tragic fate, exile and death in harsh conditions, far from the country, at the (Christian) age of only 33 years old, allowed communist service historians to contrast him with his generation colleagues, who later became ministers, prime ministers, presidents of Legislative Bodies in a bourgeois-landlord Romania, obviously reprehensible.
The most “vibrant” literary homage was paid to him by Camil Petrescu, who, in a river novel of almost 2000 pages – worthy in size of Solohov’s Quiet Don – shows us a caricatured Balcescu, alone against all, an obvious tribute paid to socialist realism and the price of comfort rewarded with his election to the Academy. Probably in the last years of his life, the master of the brilliant psychological introspections „Jocul ielelor” and „Suflete tari” wanted to experience in his own spirit the famous assertion that belongs to him: „As much drama as lucidity”.
Boulevards, streets, squares, and even a district of Bucharest were named after the revolutionary dead in Palermo. Even more – supreme honor! – the most valuable monetary payment instrument of the regime, the famous 100 lei blue banknote, wore Balcescu’s face on it, ironically associating over time the symbol of relative well-being from the communist years with the image of a man for whom the financial precariousness of life was a constant.
The Conspirator
For the next three years after graduating from college, Balcescu dedicated himself to enriching his knowledge, especially in the field of history, philosophy, French, etc. His vivid intelligence and a remarkable memory helped him to assimilate and process everything that interested him, so that, at the age of 20, he had read „everything he could find, here and there, about our national history” (Ion Ghica). Another contemporary, friend and future Foreign Minister of the revolutionary government of 1848, Ion Voinescu II, will notice, in addition to his „extended intelligence” and „rich imagination”, an astonishing capacity for memory: „We heard it ourselves, in many times, reciting hundreds of verses, as if reading in a book”. This was the man Balcescu at almost 20 years old. Perhaps in other historical circumstances he would have become an important scholar of his country, but the concrete circumstances of his time prompted him on a different path.
The material worries of his family, which the fierce Zinca failed to overcome, but also the conviction that he must get involved in the social life of the country, make Bălcescu request on June 13, 1838 to enlist in the army of Wallachia, a request approved favorably, so that on July 8, we find him already enlisted as a junker in the 3rd Cavalry Squadron. Beyond the military training inherent in his rank, Bălcescu will be actively involved in the school training of soldiers. He is appointed teacher, along with two other former colleagues from St. Sava, in this capacity having the task of teaching the young soldiers reading and geography. But his great passion, the history of the Romanian people, will make him often, most often, preoccupied with the patriotic education of the soldiers; a testimony in this regard once again are the memories of Ion Ghica: “it was known that at the barracks he gathered several sergeants and soldiers around him, to whom he told about the bravery of the Romanians in the battles with the Turks, the Tartars, the Hungarians and the Lehii, from the time of Mircea, Mihai and Stefan”.
But Balcescu was not satisfied only with the nostalgic contemplation of a heroic past. This explains his involvement (in 1840) in the conspiracy led by Mitica Filipescu, a young boyar with liberal ideas, doctor of law in Paris. The plot was directed against the ruler Alexandru Ghica (1834-1842) and aimed to establish the republic, the equality of all before the law, the abolition of the clique and the solution of the agrarian problem through the ownership of the peasants, etc. Along with Balcescu, we find among the members of the conspiracy Eftimie Murgu from Banat and the Frenchman J.A. Vaillant (both professors at St. Sava), but also Marin Serghiescu-Nationalul, Cezar Bolliac, Constantin Telegescu and Dimitrie Macedonschi, one of Tudor Vladimirescu’s supporters in 1821. Once the movement was discovered by the authorities, Balcescu was sent to prison, sentenced to three years in prison, of which he executed only two, first in the Gorgani detention center, then at the Margineni monastery, founded by the steward Constantin Cantacuzino, where it will irreversibly alter his health, unfortunately. „I started my life by going to prison for the revolution” – Balcescu will write later – „and prison obliges, as does the nobility”.
How the Fratia [Brotherhood] Secret Society is born
But Balcescu was not going to prove his revolutionary nobility only through his penitentiary internship, his thoughts and actions being directed towards organizing a movement – obviously secret – capable of preparing the future revolution. From the failure of the conspiracies led by Ion Campineanu (1838) and Mitica Filipescu (1840), Balcescu, like the other future confreres in the revolution, had concluded that a thorough conspiracy of the organization and activity of the association he wanted to found should be ensured.
The idea of the “Brotherhood”, like any great idea, came unexpectedly, but it was the consequence of intense emotional turmoil that crushed both Bălcescu and his comrades. If there had not been Ion Ghica’s desire to relive the old times, to confess to his old friend Vasile Alecsandri, evoking people and facts, many of them unknown, today we would probably be deprived of much of the information necessary for the historian to unravel the secrets of some events and phenomena that deeply marked the Romanian society in the middle of the 19th century. Here is how Ghica describes, in a style of juicy orality, similar to that of Ion Creanga, the foundation of the “Brotherhood” secret society, which prepared and organized the revolution of 1848 in Wallachia: „One night, while picking the vines, when the moonlight was beginning to melt in the morning rays and I had reached the houses of Simeon Marcovici, after a little advice between the two of us, in the crossroads, instead of taking it to the hill, Oteteleseanu, let’s go out to my house, […] we decided […] to go out to Mihai-Voda, and from there we would head to Filaret, to go to lunch with a pair of rose sausages and a glass of grape must. We were approaching the church of the Holy Apostles, when we met Captain Tell on the way, going to his barracks at Mihai-Voda; and the three of us set off on our way… The further we went up the coast, the deeper our speech became […] We blamed each other for our lack of patriotism and energy; for the miserable and humiliated state of the country, so when we returned to the valley, […] we had sworn to dedicate ourselves to the homeland with body and soul, we had bound ourselves as blood brothers and for each of us to he submits, with the price of life and wealth, to the decisions of the other two; that very day we gathered to compile the statutes and regulations of the “Brotherhood.”
Photo: Proclamation of the Constitution in Bucharest. 1848
Initiators: Balcescu, Ghica, Tell
The organization of the “Brotherhood” will respect the Masonic principles and will be based on the sealing of the compartments that constituted it. There were groups of ten initiates, each of them knowing only his direct head or leader, “deacon” or “bishop”, not the other members. The orders were carried out without question, and the secret was absolute. The “brotherhood” from Muntenia tried to secure its connections with other similar organizations from Moldavia or Transylvania. They were part of the association, especially members of the liberal nobility and the bourgeoisie, but also small merchants, peasants, etc.
Of great importance for the success of the “Brotherhood” was the accession of several officers and civil servants. Apart from the three initiators – Bălcescu, Ghica and Tell – the most famous names that will be registered under the society’s motto, “Justice and Brotherhood”, will include: C.A. Rosetti, Dimitrie Bolintineanu, Cezar Bolliac, Alexandru Golescu-Negru, Aaron Florian, Daniel Rosenthal etc.
Socially, the “Brotherhood” aimed to solve the peasant issue, as well as the abolition of class privileges, and politically, the democratization of society and the union of Moldavia with Wallachia, seen as the decisive step towards independence. This secret society, born from the long walks of Balcescu and Ghica on the streets of Bucharest, will be the main responsible for the organization, triggering and success – it is true, ephemeral – of the revolution of 1848 in Wallachia.
Historical: the almost obsessive interest for the personality of Michael the Brave
Throughout his life, Balcescu tried to double his political action with the theoretical approach meant to justify his options, to convince his compatriots and to become a guide for his descendants. That is why, not coincidentally, his preoccupations were directed, since adolescence, towards the study of history, convinced that “We lack a true national history. It still lies beneath the dust of contemporary chronicles and documents. […] All those who were engaged in writing history gave us only the biography of the rulers. No one has accurately reproduced the social institutions, ideas, feelings, customs, trade, and intellectual culture of the past. How much we need such a history!” Balcescu’s vision of the philosophy of history was surprisingly modern, given that it will be almost a hundred more years before the leaders of the “Annales” school – Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre, Fernand Braudel – will provoke, in 1929 , a real revolution in historiography, relying on historical knowledge not so much on political life, but especially on the study of mentalities, social and cultural phenomena, human psychology, the small facts of life.
The first historical study published by Balcescu will be „Armed power and military art from the founding of the Wallachian Principality until now” in “Scientific and Literary Sheet” published in Iasi by Kogalniceanu, Alecsandri and Negruzzi, in 1844. Balcescu explains the inclination to first know the military history of our forerunners by saying that: “We preferred to work the military institutions before any others, because these institutions are the most wonderful that our parents had, […] finally, because I am convinced that the land of the Romanians if it ever takes its rightful place among the peoples of Europe, it will be more indebted to the regeneration of its old military institutions”.
To Balcescu, history was alive, ancestors were role models for contemporaries, and contemporaries became, through history, witnesses to the deeds of bravery of the forerunners. This first scientific work brought Balcescu on the attention of his contemporaries, George Baritiu and Ion Heliade-Radulescu, expressing extremely favorable opinions towards the author, whom Kogalniceanu considered, a year later, as the only Muntenian historian „of the most beautiful hopes”. In the same year, 1845, together with the Transylvanian professor August Treboniu Laurian, Balcescu managed to start publishing a historical periodical, suggestively entitled „Historical magazine for Dacia”. The circulation was unusually large for that time: over 1,500 copies, which denotes the interest of subscribers, located throughout the territory inhabited by Romanians. „Having a diffusion among the different social categories, and not only in Wallachia, but also in Moldavia and Transylvania, the «Historical Magazine for Dacia» exerted with authority an influence that made it not a simple specialized publication, but a strong ideological weapon.” (Dan Berindei).
In „Historical Magazine…” Bălcescu will publish his following historical studies, the most important of which are: „Romanians and Phanariots”, „Armed power and military art among Moldavians during their rise”, „On the social status of plow workers in The Romanian Principalities in special times”, but especially „The campaign of the Romanians against the Turks from 1595”, published in January 1847, when the author was in Paris. This last work, dedicated to the battle of Călugăreni, will be the first publicist sign of the almost obsessive interest that Bălcescu will show for the personality of Michael the Brave. Apart from his revolutionary activity, almost all his intellectual efforts, undermined, unfortunately, by an increasingly poor health, will be directed towards the completion of his main work: „Romanians under the rule of Michael the Brave”.
Balcescu, the man: the love story with Alexandra Florescu
Recalling Balcescu’s life, we seem to forget, but only for a moment, that we are talking, however, about a young man who, when released from prison, was only 23 years old, and at the time of his assertion as a leading exponent of Romanian historiography he was 26 years old. Had his heart been enslaved only by that patriotism of which Alecsandri said that „it occupies so much space that it is astonishing how other feelings could be sheltered in it”?
But at least in the autumn of 1843, someone else seems to have found a place in Bălcescu’s soul, apart from his love for the country and the nation’s past. It’s Alexandra Florescu, better known by the diminutive of Luxita, the third of the ten children of the great aga Iordache, three years older than Balcescu and already gone through a rather unfortunate marital experience, but ended quickly, with the parish priest Filip Krijanovski, a Russian officer, stationed in Muntenia during the tsarist occupation (1829-1834). Maybe the aura of the revolutionary just released from of prison, maybe his brilliant intelligence or his special sensitivity, maybe all of a sudden he attracted Luxita towards Balcescu, but it is certain that a relationship of love will be established between the two at first, then warm friendship and affection, never denied until the unhappy end of our hero.
From this connection will be born, in Budapest, in May 1848, Bonifaciu Florescu, unrecognized by the snobbish family of Luxita, but adopted by his own mother in 1858. The character, bohemian and bizarre presence of the late nineteenth century, will teach history and the French language at St. Sava and the “Mihai Viteazul” high school, standing out as a poet, journalist and translator. His home was in “Pasajul Roman”, on the site of the current “Muzica” store on Calea Victoriei. As for Luxita, she will often accompany Balcescu in his pilgrimages, he will be constantly moral and sometimes material help, bringing a shadow of tender feminine tenderness to a tumultuous and tormented life.
„His whole person inspires sympathy and longing for friendship”
Balcescu had in the highest degree the cult of friendship. He liked to be surrounded by friends, to talk and walk with them, to help them when needed. He remained all his life bound by a warm friendship with Ion Ghica, even if during the exile, after 1848, different divergences appeared between them regarding the tactics that the revolutionaries had to follow. He was good friends with Ion Voinescu II, Cezar Bolliac and Alexandru Golescu-Negru, but also with Vasile Alecsandri, Mihail Kogalniceanu and Costache Negri. Unforgettable in the memory of the participants remained the meetings in Manjina, Negri’s estate in Galati county, meetings on the occasion of owner’s birthday (May 14) or name day (May 21). Here, around the host that Eminescu considered the man animated by „the purest patriotism and the most disinterested character” gathered young Moldavian and Wallachian patriots, eager to discuss, inform and make plans for the future for the Romanian people. Mihail Kogalniceanu, Ion Ionescu from Brad, Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Costache Filipescu, Alecu Russo and especially Vasile Alecsandri, Elena Negri’s boyfriend, Costache’s sister, made close friends at Manjina, elaborated projects, wrote poems (it seems that here was conceived by Russo and Balcescu, in collaboration, the famous „Song [of praise] to Romania”) etc.
„There were two points […] on earth, two very distant points where the Romanians of the ninth generation began to meet, one in France at the student district of Paris, and the other in Moldavia, at Costache Negri’s Manjina” (Vasile Alecsandri ). As for Balcescu, the same author remembers: „Great thoughts could be seen passing over his wide and clean forehead; […] His speech was sweet and convincing, like the speech of many people destined to die in their prime […]. In a nutshell, his whole person inspires sympathy and longing for friendship”.
Balcescu in Paris, between Rosetti and Ghica
At the beginning of the summer of 1846, Balcescu left for Paris, with the intention of returning after four months, a term for which, in fact, he had requested his passport. Initially, his trip to the French capital seemed to have as its main purpose a more rigorous documentation in the Paris archives for his historical concerns, but it is possible that the untimely departure was related to the divergences that grinded the Romanian community in Paris, more precisely between Ion Ghica and that Rosetti. The two were – the first as president, the other as secretary – at the head of the “Society of Romanian Students” in Paris, basically a revolutionary organization preparing for the important events to come and which, at that time, seemed inevitable.
Rosetti, who welcomes Balcescu to the French border and initially hosts him, was convinced that the revolution must be social and republican, following the model of France, which he saw as a true liberating homeland of all oppressed nations. Exalted and often utopian, Rosetti cannot restrain his enthusiasm at seeing Bălcescu again: “He sees France like me. France is freedom! God grant it may happen! May Balcescu be good, unite with me and give the Romanians freedom”. But Rosetti will end up disappointed. Balcescu, although he agreed with Ion him regarding the goals pursued, was of the same opinion as Ion Ghica regarding the means to be followed, much more realistic than Rosetti’s proposals. Ghica, balanced and diplomatic, sometimes overly cautious, better intuited the ways in which a liberal, democratic regime could be established in Moldavia and Wallachia, leading to their union.
Prudence and political realism will help him later become governor (bei) of Samos, prime minister five times, Romanian minister in London and president of the Academy. Rosetti, on the other hand, will remain the eternal republican revolutionary, always dissatisfied, although he will also be minister and president of the Assembly of Deputies at the time of the declaration of independence in 1877, but will end his political life arguing with his lifelong friend, I.C. Bratianu. Sentimentally, Rosetti can’t help but note on the evening of the day that Bălcescu moves from his apartment to Ghica’s: „I started to suffer again, but I control myself!”. After all, the differences in vision between the two groups of Romanian students in Paris came from the preeminence that Rosetti gave to the social, following his francophilia (France’s problems were social, not national), while Ghica and Bălcescu understood that, beyond by solving major and pressing social problems (agrarian reform), the substantive issues of the Romanian Lands were of a national nature (union and independence).
Rosetti: „I don’t like Balcescu’s health… it’s a curse for us to lose our best”
Beyond these differences, it must be said that the Romanians in Paris knew how to make a beautiful and effective propaganda for their cause, maintaining ties and gaining the support of personalities like Lamartine (the future head of the Provisional Government in Paris), Jules Michelet, Georges Sand , Edgar Quinet, Adam Mickiewicz etc. The presence of C.A. Rosetti and the Brătianu brothers in the Masonic lodges “Athenaeum of Foreigners” and “Rose du Parfait Silence” was played a great role, at a time when the influence of Freemasonry was important, joining it among others Mihail Kogălniceanu, Vasile Alecsandri or Ion Heliade Rădulescu.
The common conclusion reached in the “Student Society” will be that they all return to the country within a year to „provoke a movement against the Russian protectorate first and then against the regime of noble privileges contained in the Organic Regulations”. The first to submit to this decision are Ghica and Rosetti, who, although formally remaining in their previous positions, practically leave the management of the Company to Nicolae Bălcescu and Scarlat Varnav, the cashier of the organization. The latter, in fact, will make an important donation, which will allow the purchase of a building, in Place de Sorbonne, number 3, which will open, in addition to a reading room and a meeting room for Romanians in Paris, the Romanian Library. Its inauguration, on January 1, 1847, will give Bălcescu the opportunity to deliver a speech, a true political manifesto of the Pasoptist generation, full with patriotism, visionary and realistic at the same time: „We consider that our target cannot be other than the national unity of the Romanians. Unity first in ideas and feelings, which will then bring political unity […] Romanianism it is our flag, under it we must call all Romanians”.
Unfortunately, Balcescu’s health is starting to visibly deteriorate, an opportunity for Rosetti to write worriedly to Ion Ghica: „I don’t like Bălcescu’s health […] He has no money, he has no fun and I am worried about him […] I am doubly afraid for him because it is a curse for us to lose our best”. Between February and May 1847, Balcescu undertook a trip to Italy, whose climate was considered – false, by the way – much more conducive to treating the phthisis he suffered from. Here he will meet Luxita Florescu again, but especially his old friends Alecsandri and Elena Negri, who are in Palermo, the cursed place of the last stop in Balcescu’s life, in six years. There will be a few weeks of happiness, later evoked with nostalgia by Alecsandri, the last happy days for Elena Negri who will die in the arms of her boyfriend, a few weeks later, on the way back to the country, right at the entrance to the Bosphorus. But the verses of the inconsolable poet will remain behind her, to immortalize her: “You, who are lost in the black eternity / Sweet and beloved star of my soul / And who once shone so alive / When I was in the world you alone and I”.
The last months of 1847 are dominated in Paris by a disturbing pre-revolutionary state – from Lenin’s reading! – marked by the “banquet” campaign and the fiery courses held by Michelet and Quinet, at which hundreds of students chanted “Vive la Republique!”. On February 23, 1848, street demonstrations took place against Prime Minister Guizot and King Louis-Philippe. They shoot and people died, the next day the king abdicates and leaves France. A Provisional Government is formed headed by the poet Alphonse de Lamartine, who proclaims the republic. Balcescu, excited, is in the forefront of the insurgents, and the Romanian Library is transformed into a first aid point for the wounded. „Note that the great nation has risen and that the freedom of the world has been saved. The wonderful Revolution […] will change the face of the world. The king fled. The republic is proclaimed by all”, Balcescu will write to Alecsandri, adding as a sign of his participation in events a piece of velvet that had worn the throne of the ousted monarch. A month later, accompanied by Alexandru Golescu-Negru, Balcescu leaves Paris to return to the country and start the revolution.
Balcescu, the revolutionary
„The truth is, since 1848, Europe has caught up with France and in many ways surpasses it. Until now, France was pulling the continent; henceforth, most of the time, France will not respond to Europe’s calls. Which, incidentally, was not yet the case in 1848, when the French movement was taking place at the same time as the European unrest” (Jacques Madaule). Nothing could be further from the truth: France gave the signal in 1848, but the conditions for the outbreak of the revolution were met in almost all of Europe. For various reasons related to traditions, economic development, social welfare or the efficiency of the repressive apparatus, only the Scandinavian countries, Great Britain, the Iberian Peninsula and the tsarist empire escape this huge revolutionary wave. Otherwise, from Paris to Pest and from Milan to Prague or Berlin, the revolts destruct the system of power established by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Popular aspirations are, on a case-by-case basis, political (democratizing public life by electing legislative assemblies for which the monarch is responsible), social (resolving the agrarian property regime and the situation of the peasantry) or national, especially in areas dominated by Habsburg Empire (Hungary, Croatia, Czech Republic, Italy).
In this context, Iasi and Bucharest are the most advanced eastern outposts of the European revolution, which makes, for the first time in our modern history, the Romanian Lands to be synchronous with the evolutions on the old continent. Although unitary in time, the revolutionary movements in Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania also had their distinct features, due to the historical evolution and the momentary conditions of manifestation of the revolutionary spirit: “in Moldavia, practically, everything took place in three days (27- March 29 st.v.); in Wallachia, the revolutionaries managed to stay in power for three months (June 11-September 13), and the capital problem was to solve the agrarian issue; in Transylvania, the revolution lasted until 1849, and the social gave way to the national” ( Florin Constantiniu).
June, the month of the Revolution: „the crowd, at the signal given by the ringing of the bell at the Metropolitan Church, begins to gather”
After the arrival of the revolutionaries in Paris, from where they had received vague promises of support from the Provisional Government, the preparations for launching the action went in a straight line. A meeting is held on April 9 at the home of C.A. Rosetti to set the start date of the revolution. One month later, on May 10, a Revolutionary Committee was formed, composed, among others, of Ion Heliade Radulescu, Cezar Bolliac, Ion and Dumitru Bratianu, Ion Ghica, C.A. Rosetti and, of course, Nicolae Balcescu. At the same time, it is established that on June 10, the revolutionary movement will start, initially in Islaz, in Romanați County, whose authorities were favorable to the revolution, and in Bucharest. On June 9, the revolution broke out in Islaz, where a 22-point proclamation is read (in fact, the future Constitution), drafted by Nicolae Balcescu, but wearing the grandiloquent and mystical forms of Heliade Radulescu’s style.
The motto of the proclamation, “Respect for property. Respect for people”, was also the personal contribution of Heliade Radulescu, eager to spread the boyars’ fears regarding the fate of their estates. The most important points of the revolutionary program were: administrative autonomy, adoption of a new constitution, equal political rights, abolition of slavery, representative public assembly, responsibility of ministers, national guard and especially point 13: emancipation and ownership of tenant farmers by compensation.
In Bucharest, the start of the revolution was postponed by an unsuccessful attack on the life of Prince Gheorghe Bibescu, followed by the necessary arrests. However, on June 10, at the meeting held in the house of the Transylvanian Axente Sever (future tribune of Avram Iancu) from Dobroteasa, the decision was made to unleash the revolution the next day, at 4 p.m. Indeed, on June 11, “the crowd, at the signal given by the ringing of the bell from the Metropolis, begins to gather; flags, cockades and tricolor scarves appear; hats are adorned with tricolor feathers; in cheers they all head for the palace”. Now we can see, in fact, the fruits of the tenacious work of the „Brotherhood”, to attract as wide classes from Bucharest as possible, especially small merchants and craftsmen (tanners, butchers, etc.) who give consistency to the revolutionary approach. Under pressure from the crowd, Bibescu signed the new constitution, but then sympathized with the position of Russia, whose consul in Bucharest, Kotzebue, left the capital as a protest and took refuge in Brasov.
Power is taken over by the „Temporary Government” (provisional), chaired by Metropolitan Neophyte (guarantee of stability and tranquility of conservative elements), with Nicolae Balcescu in Foreign Affairs (later replaced by Ioan Voinescu II), Heliade Radulescu in Cults, Nicolae Golescu in the Interior, Ion Campineanu in Justice, Colonel Ioan Odobescu in the War, etc. Following the French model, Nicolae Balcescu, C.A. Rosetti, I.C. Bratianu and A.G. Golescu, will be named secretaries of the government; in fact, the youngest, but also the most radical elements of the revolution. Balcescu will be in charge, among other things, of organizing revolutionary propaganda in the country, an action for which he adopts a measure inspired by the experience of the Revolution of 1789, but also applied by the Provisional Government of Paris in 1848, namely the establishment of propaganda commissioners, a kind of extraordinary representatives of the government in the territory.
Violation of the point 13 of the Proclamation, one of the causes of the failure of the Wallachian revolution
From the very beginning, two tendencies were visible in the Provisional Government: a radical one, formed by Balcescu, the Bratianu brothers, Al.G. Golescu-Negru, C.A. Rosetti, and the other, moderate and majority, who were joined by Ion Ghica, Christian Tell, Ion Campineanu, brothers Nicolae and Stefan Golescu, etc. Above all, dressed in his white mantle with a cross, Ion Heliade-Radulescu was officiating, the de facto head of the Government, recognized by all for his cultural activity, experience and intellectual value, but obviously overwhelmed by the importance of his position. Balcescu will not be shy to criticize – it is true, more in private correspondence, in order not to attack the revolutionary unity – Heliade-Radulescu for his attitude during the revolution: „Eliad was so scared of Turks, as long as he went to pray to Suleiman Pasha’s secretary, who had come to Bucharest, to make an alms not to bind him and not to send him to Constantinople, as he has poor children etc.”
In fact, there were two main issues that separated the two groups: one of an internal nature, the ownership of the peasants, the other of an external nature, the attitude to be adopted towards Russia and the Ottoman Empire. For Balcescu in particular, the immediate application of point 13 from Islaz was an absolute necessity, both from a moral point of view and from the point of view of revolutionary tactics to attract the great mass of peasants to the side of the revolution. In „The Sovereign People”, the press body of the Provisional Government, Balcescu will fight in harsh terms the opposition of the owners of estates to recognize to the peasants a right over the land, „because if you contributed with your lands and we contributed with our arms, contribution which is a property as legitimate, as sacred as your property”.
At Balcescu’s insistence, the government will reluctantly agree to set up a property commission consisting of 17 representatives of the owners and 17 of the peasants, meant to solve the agrarian problem. The discussions in the commission were particularly heated and, after nine meetings, Heliade abolished it, leaving the task of resolving this issue to a future „Public Assembly”, which was to be elected and which obviously never met. It was in 1864, during Cuza’s reign, when this desideratum will be partially solved. The violation of point 13 of the Proclamation undoubtedly belongs to one of the causes of the failure of the Wallachian revolution: “But in the Romanian Principalities there was no revolutionary proletarian army (workers) in 1848 […] In the absence of such an army, the group of Romanian revolutionaries addressed the peasantry. […] Rather, the peasants are a chaotic mass and need a central force to lead them in their revolutionary movement […] The lack of this central force […] clearly explains why the help of the peasantry, which was ready to support the movement of our revolutionaries in 1848, remained without effect” (Stefan Zeletin).
In September 1848, Ottoman troops entered Bucharest
Aware of the need to rally different social categories, Balcescu struggles a lot, publishes, proposes radical measures within the government, gives speeches, is tireless. He supports the adoption of energetic measures against the opponents of the revolution, „with tones reminiscent of Jacobins and announcing the Bolsheviks”, to use Florin Constantiniu’s inspired phrase: „Now we have a way to get rid of all reactionaries. The judgment must be very expeditious […]. In difficult and extraordinary circumstances, extraordinary measures are needed. Do not make poems and sentimentality, but terrible justice”.
However, the radical measures envisaged by Balcescu, not shared by the moderate majority of the revolutionary government, only fueled Russia’s fears, which did not look favorably on the existence of this outbreak of turbulence on its borders. Ion Ghica, Heliade-Radulescu, Christian Tell and the others rightly considered that a moderate attitude would bring them the support of the Gate, which in a first phase, through Suleiman Pasha, recognizes the Provisional Government, in order to face the Russian pressure of suppression, by force, of the revolution. „Unfortunately for them, the Gate was not able to ignore Russia’s injunctions, determined not to tolerate, at its borders, a revolutionary outbreak” (Florin Constantiniu).
The tsarist mixture, seen as the main danger to the autonomy of Wallachia, rather than the formal Turkish suzerainty, provoked the popular reaction, the people of Bucharest burning in public the Organic Regulation imposed on the country in 1834 by Pavel Kiseleff, on September 6, 1848, in the Metropolitan Hill. One week later, Ottoman troops led by Fuad-Pasha (Suleiman-Pasha’s replacement, considered too favorable to the Provisional Government) enter Bucharest and occupy the capital, arresting the main leaders of the revolution. The honor of the Romanian army is washed away by the „blood bath” from Dealul Spirii, where a „wheel” of firefighters led by Captain Zaganescu withstands for three hours a Turkish detachment led by Kerim-Pasha. On September 25, 1848, the „Romanian Herald” published the decree of exile of 22 revolutionary leaders, including Nicolae Balcescu, Heliade-Radulescu, C.A. Rosetti, the Bratianu brothers, etc. The last will return from exile in July 1857, but Balcescu never. The revolution was over.
In exile
The exile will be bitter for Balcescu, disappointed, sick and deprived of the material means necessary for existence. Arrested by the Turks, Balcescu and the other revolutionary leaders will be embarked on a ship of an Austrian company, but escorted by a Turkish officer and six soldiers. The trip on the Danube, after the stops in Rusciuk and Vidin, will end up lucky, in Orsova, in exchange for a not very consistent tip, they being released on Austrian territory. From here, together with Cezar Bolliac and Dimitrie Bolintineanu, Balcescu goes to Sibiu, to see the situation of the Romanian revolution in Transylvania and Banat, then in December 1848 we find him in Belgrade, to arrive in Constantinople after two months, accompanied by his good friend, Ion Ghica.
He militates for the unitary organization of the entire Romanian revolutionary emigration, proposing Costache Negri as its sole leader, “the only Moldavian who is better known in both countries and has attracted more sympathies.” This proposal probably also had the advantage of offering as a leader of the exiled revolutionaries an uncontroversial personality and not involved in the disputes that still separated Balcescu from his former comrades in the Provisional Government. However, the victories of General Bem’s Hungarian revolutionary armies against the Austrians revive the hope of victory in Balcescu’s soul. This time, he linked the resurgence of the revolution in Wallachia to a possible Romanian-Hungarian agreement, followed by the descent of the Transylvanian revolutionaries led by Avram Iancu south of the Carpathians. The major misunderstandings between Kossuth, the leader of the Hungarian revolution, who only wanted to grant Transylvanian Romanians social rights, and not national rights, and the Transylvanian revolutionary leaders meant that the „Peace Project”, negotiated by Balcescu, Bolliac and Kossuth, to be signed only on July 2, 1849, too late to avoid the defeat of the Hungarian army against the tsarist army, called for help by the Austrian Emperor Francis Joseph in Siria on August 1, 1849.
Once this glimmer of hope is gone, Balcescu leaves for Paris, where, after many adventures, arrives on October 16. From now on, he will dedicate his efforts, increasingly diminished by the disease, to the organization of Romanian emigration and to gaining the support of the great powers, especially of France and England, for the Romanian cause. On January 17, 1850, he was received in London by the illustrious Palmerston in person, the British Prime Minister, to whom he sent a memorandum on the situation in the Romanian Lands and from which he obtained vague promises regarding the end of the Turkish occupation in the Principality. He is concerned at the same time about achieving revolutionary solidarity with the leaders of the Polish and Hungarian emigrations, but only on the basis of full equality in rights: „Our political principle is simple: respect, recognition, equality and solidarity of nationalities.”
Dissensions among the Romanian revolutionaries in Paris, and not only, the coup d’etat of Napoleon Bonaparte of December 2, 1851, which seemed to put an end to hopes in support of France for a new revolution, but especially the increasingly precarious state of his health make Bălcescu devote the little time he had left to the completion of his main historical work, the monograph dedicated to Michael the Brave.
Romanians under the rule of Michael the Brave
The fascination that the personality of the Brave exercised over Balcescu is obviously linked to the major act of 1600, the union of all Romanians under the same scepter, a historical enterprise that became an exhortation and a symbol for future generations. It was logical for the historian and politician Balcescu, who considered national unity as the main target of his generation, to lean on the life of the first maker of this unity. He probably began to reflect on the monograph dedicated to Michael the Brave from the time of research undertaken for his first study, „Armed Power and Military Art from the Founding of the Principality of Wallachia to the Present”, followed by the „Romanian’s Campaign of 1595”.
The first certain mention of the work that interests us can be found in a letter sent to Vasile Alecsandri on October 1, 1847 from Paris: “For the time being, I am collecting here from libraries, historical documents that can be found. I want to work on an extensive writing, a historical poem on Michael the Brave. […] The idea of the work I want to do feeds me now and gives me life”. The revolution and the events that followed removed Balcescu from the realization of his project. It was not until February 1850 that he began to concern himself with the continuation of the work. „I want to finish a writing on Michael the Brave and lay the foundation stone of national unity”, he will write to Ion Ghica. Despite the disease that crushes his weakened body, Balcescu dedicates his body and soul to the completion of his masterpiece, a true national testament that he wanted to leave to his people. He calls for help Maria Cantacuzino, a distinguished and remarkable intellectual, his friend and that of Vasile Alecsandri, to whom he dictates the text of the work. „I found him in a state of health that leaves no hope of healing”, Maria Cantacuzino will later report. “But he worked with a passion that betrayed his fears; he often got up at night to work on the history of Michael the Brave. These efforts exhausted him! I proposed him to dictate it to me”. On the eve of the 33rd chapter of the fifth book, Balcescu loses the battle with death, but wins the battle with posterity.
„Romanians under the Rule of Michael the Brave” is a writing about the ruler who made the Union, but also about Balcescu and his time. The scientist collaborates organically with the revolutionary, giving the work a communicative warmth that makes it not only accessible to the reader, but very vivid and deeply contemporary to the Romanians of 1850. Elaborated and documented, „Romanians under the Rule of Michael the Brave” will become the Bible of our romantic historiography, the most precious guide of the generations before the Great Union of 1918. „Today is the time – wrote Al. I. Odobescu, the editor from 1877 of the first complete version of the manuscript – for the Romanian nation to hear and at the same time to deeply feel the invigorating thoughts and strong words of that noble soul, of that vast Romanian intelligence, which was once called Nicolae Balcescu!”
The end
In the last days of 1851, Balcescu’s health deteriorated worryingly. „Since my arrival here, Al.G. Golescu-Negru will write to Paul Bataillard, on January 21, 1852 – he suffered three new crisis, three hemorrhages that reduced him to such a state of weakness that he was not allowed to speak, write or to read”.
With the last powers he tries to reach the country, but the request for return is denied by the ruler Barbu Știrbei. He only has the consolation of embracing his mother, in the last days of August 1852, but at Nicopolis, on the Turkish bank of the Danube. Returning to Constantinople, Balcescu embarked for Naples, then Palermo, where he stayed at the Trinacria Hotel. Desperate and overwhelmed by loneliness, he sends letters to his friends Ion Ghica, Vasile Alecsandri, Mihail Kogalniceanu, Maria Cantacuzino, to come and spend the winter with him. But he will be alone in the last hour of his life, which will come on November 29, 1852, at 7:30 p.m. The next day, his body is buried in the Capuchin cemetery; later it was moved to an ossuary that, most likely, still rests its remains today. Balcescu lost the fight with the disease, but won the fight with the posterity. And as an epitaph on a hypothetical place of eternity, what else would fit better than the words that the great revolutionary and historian had once said to Maria Cantacuzino: “How important is everything? Long live our country!”…