Carol I of Romania

Biography

The German-born prince Carol I brought Romania — still nominally an Ottoman vassal — into the war on Russia's side, and his intervention proved decisive at the moment of crisis. When the second Russian assault on Plevna failed, it was Carol, given overall command of the allied siege forces, and his Romanian army that helped storm the redoubts and complete the encirclement of Osman Pasha. Romanian troops paid heavily in blood at Plevna and Grivitsa, and in return Romania emerged from the war fully independent of the Ottoman Empire, its sovereignty recognised at the Congress of Berlin. In 1881 Carol crowned himself the first King of Romania with a crown forged from a captured Ottoman cannon, and he reigned for nearly half a century as the founder of modern Romanian statehood.

Key Battles