Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/167



The result of this influence in Turkey too brought about the astonishing revolution which crystallised into a complete transformation of public administration, the work of the young entlightened generation of Reshid, Ali and Fouad.

After this poetical state of mind, which dominated all nations and all states for several decades, Napoleon III, nationalist, democrat, socialist and mystic, but first and foremost the true successor of his famous uncle, the renovator of the old Roman forms, was the real and supreme ruler of all South-Eastern Europe.

From him the Turks imbibed the dangerous idea of a unitary empire, without historical privileges for national territories, such as the future united Roumania, which were considered as suzerain « provinces » and their hereditary rulers as mere chiefs of provinces; an idea which was transmitted by the victorious Sultan Abdul Medgid to the depressing period Abdul Hamid’s rule. In Constantinople not only the administrative routine, but the financial policy also was French. Roumania was liberated from Russian intrusion by the Crimean war, and it was the will of the French emperor against the resistance of his own diplomatist which was responsible for the union of Moldavia and Wallachia. The Roumanian prince for both Principalities, the great reformer John Alexander Cuza, was an admirer of Napoleon, who sustained his new throne with all his immense authority.

The fall of the Second Empire rendered France impotent to pursue her former policy in these countries.

What remained of a work of so many centuries was here, as in Russia, and especially in the Roumanian cities, the formation of a wholly denationalised upper class — and the success of the present Russian revolution can also be attributed to this moral condition. In Roumania public demonstrations