CHARLES I.,
prince of Roumania, born in
Prussia, April 20, 1839. He is a son of Prince
Anthony of Hohenzollern, and a brother of
Prince Leopold, who was proposed for the
Spanish throne in 1870, and belongs to a junior
and mediatized branch of the Prussian royal
family. He was educated in Dresden, entered
the Prussian army in 1857, and served during
the Schleswig-Holstein campaign in 1864.
After Couza's downfall in 1866, and the
refusal of the count of Flanders, brother of
Leopold II. of Belgium, to become the ruler of
Roumania, Prince Charles was elected in April
to that position, with hereditary rights, by a
plebiscite
of the Roumanian people. He reached
Bucharest on May 20, in disguise, in order to
avoid complications with Austria, which, on the
eve of war with Prussia, had protested against
the elevation of a Prussian to the sovereignty of
the Danubian principalities. He assumed the
government on May 22, and was formally
recognized on Oct. 24 by the sultan and by the other
powers, who had guaranteed the treaties relating
to the status of Roumania. Disgusted with
the factious spirit of the opposition in the
chambers, and insulting anti-Prussian manifestations
during the Franco-German war, he
declared in 1871 his readiness to resign, but was
persuaded to desist from this determination.