Brătianu, whose career benefitted greatly from his friendship. In opposition to King Carol I, Știrbey favored having Romania enter the First World War on the Allied side, seeing this as the best chance to gain Transylvania, a region of the Austrian empire with a Romanian majority, albeit with large Magyar and ethnic German minorities. " On 27 September 1914, King Carol I died, and his nephew Ferdinand came to the throne, Marie's political influence increased as she dominated her husband. Marie once stated: "it had been the throne's salvation that I had taken the fiddle out of Ferdinand's hands-a habit I could never break once I had tried it". Charles de Beaupoil, comte de Saint-Aulaire, the French minister in Bucharest noted: "There is only man in Romania and that is the Queen". The half-British, half-Russian Marie tended to naturally favor the Allies. Marie was an outspoken champion of her "beloved England", and the German legation in Bucharest called her "the Entente in Bucharest". On 27 August 1916, Romania entered the war on the Allied side and was promptly defeated, losing Wallachia, forcing the royal family to retreat into Moldavia to escape the advancing armies of Germany and the Austrian empire. During these travels, Știrbey was perpetually by Marie's side, advising her to continue the war until the Allies won. The Romanian historian Mihai Ghițulescu noted in her diary that: ""Barbu came to tea" is a leitmotif of the story" as she mentions him in almost every entry of her wartime sections of her diary in 1916–1917. Știrbey encouraged Marie to strike her populist "Mother of Romania" persona as the Queen became very much the face of the government, constantly being seen to donate money to charities to assist the war-ravaged nation and to work as a nurse taking care of wounded soldiers. Though Marie always spoke Romanian with an English accent, she was very popular with the Romanian people, who saw her as their friend and champion. Fearful of the impact of the Russian Revolution, in 1917 Știrbey pressed Marie and through her, King Ferdinand to promise land reform. Though as a boyar land reform would hurt his own interests, the pragmatic conservative Știrbey felt that the only way to save the social order in Romania was to reform it. The text of the royal proclamation issued in the temporary wartime capital of Iași by King Ferdinand promising land reform