page_title: Regulamentul Organic
section_title: Crimean War
hierarchical_section_title: Regulamentul Organic / Crimean War
caption_attribution_description: English: The Moldavian-Russian boundary in 1856/1857
context_page_description: Regulamentul Organic was a quasi-constitutional organic law enforced in 1831–1832 by the Imperial Russian authorities in Moldavia and Wallachia. The document partially confirmed the traditional government and set up a common Russian protectorate which lasted until 1854. The Regulament itself remained in force until 1858. Conservative in its scope, it also engendered a period of unprecedented reforms which provided a setting for the Westernization of the local society. The Regulament offered the two Principalities their first common system of government.
context_section_description: The Crimean War again brought the two countries under Russian military administration, inaugurated in 1853. The hospodars of the period, Prince Grigore Alexandru Ghica in Moldavia and Prince Barbu Dimitrie Știrbei in Wallachia, were removed from their thrones, and the region was governed by the Russian general Aleksandr Ivanovich Budberg.
  As the Balkans remained a secondary theatre of war, the two Principalities were taken over by a neutral Austrian administration in September 1854—part of a settlement between the Porte and Russia (the Austrians remained until 1857). Grigore Ghica and Știrbei were returned to the thrones in the same year, and completed the last series of reforms carried under the terms of the Regulament. The most far-reaching among these were the ones concerning Roma slavery. In Moldavia, Romas were liberated, without a period of transition, on December 22, 1855; the change was more gradual in Wallachia, where measures to curb trade had been taken earlier, and where the decision to ban the ownership of slaves was taken by Știrbei on February 20, 1856. Concerned by worsening boyar-peasant relations, Știrbei, who governed without an Assembly (and had instead appointed his own Divan), enacted measures to improve the situation in the countryside, and ultimately enforced contract-based work as the rule on estates (whereby peasants who were not indebted after five years in service could leave the land they were working on).
  This was the moment when the call for union of the two Principalities began to be voiced with confidence, and the two monarchs showed more or less approval for the designs of the unionist Partida Națională (created by 1848 revolutionaries who had returned from exile).
  The war ended with the Treaty of Paris (March 30, 1856), which placed the countries, still as Ottoman vassals, under the protectorate of all European Powers (the United Kingdom, the French Empire, the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, Prussia, Austria, and, never again completely, Russia).  The protector states had to decide on a compromise formula for the projected union; the Ottomans demanded and obtained, in contradiction with the Regulament, the removal of both hospodars from their thrones, pending elections for the ad hoc Divans.  The outcome remained disputed until the election of Alexandru Ioan Cuza, who reigned as first Domnitor of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, the basis of modern Romania.
caption: Russian–Moldavian border in 1856–1857
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