Bienio progresista

In the history of Spain, the bienio progresista (, "Progressive Biennium" or "Progressivist Biennium") was the two-year period from July 1854 to July 1856, during which the Progressive Party attempted to reform the political system of the reign of Isabella II, which had been dominated by the Moderate Party since 1843 in the so-called "década moderada". The Progressives were "exaltados" or "veinteañistas", advocates of radical liberalism, in contrast to the conservative liberalism of the "doceañistas" or Moderates.
Background.
After a decade of rule by the Moderates, the Spanish were aware of massive government corruption in the entrenched Moderate regime. Furthermore, all but the wealthiest were disenfranchised by a system of census suffrage that left less than one percent of the population eligible to participate in the country's electoral politics.
The perceived injustice of this situation provoked protests and subversive movements. These movements were led by those liberal leaders who were not in accord with the Moderate government. For the most part, this meant the Progressives, but there were also moderates such as General Leopoldo O'Donnell who were simply opposed to what an increasingly corrupt and ineffective regime.
The dismissal of prime minister Juan Bravo Murillo toward the end of 1852 marked the acceleration of the decline of the Moderate regime. The government attempted to rule by decree, ignoring its own constitution. Even many of the most prominent Moderates were unhappy with the cabinet that had been hand-picked by the queen mother Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies. Francisco Martínez de la Rosa, Alejandro Mon y Menéndez and Leopoldo O'Donnell wished to form a government that would restore the country's confidence without handing power over to the Progressives, but they were excluded from any role in the government.
"La Vicalvarada".
Street protests began in Zaragoza in February 1854, and had extended throughout the country by July. On 28 June 1854, O'Donnell, who had been hiding in Madrid during a wave of persecutions of prominent figures not aligned with the current regime, managed to unite diverse forces and to confront troops loyal to the government at Vicálvaro southeast of Madrid, where he demanded a new government that would put an end to the corruption. He made it clear that he respected Queen Isabella, but not her government. This coup attempt became known as La Vicalvarada; it did not result in the immediate fall of the government, but neither was it quickly crushed. Through the ensuing weeks, troops in Barcelona also pronounced in favor of "La Vicalvarada".
General O'Donnell and his troops retired to the south, where they connected with the Progressive general Serrano. Together they issued the Manifesto of Manzanares on 7 July 1854:
This manifesto was distributed among the populace, inviting the people to rise up in support. The popular reaction was immediate, with agitations and popular revolts throughout the country in support of the Manifesto. On 17 July, civilians and soldiers took to the streets of Madrid, (as well as Alzira, Cuenca, Logroño, Valencia and Zaragoza) in a violent uprising that threatened the life of queen mother Maria Christina, who had to seek refuge. The result was a revolution, to which the Catalan workers also allied themselves.
Isabella II had no choice but to accede to the demands of the Manifesto. The "bienio progresista" began.
Development.
The "bienio progresista" was a period full of illusion and hope among great sectors of the populace. The new government led by Baldomero Espartero attempted to put the Manifesto of Manzanares into practice, but ultimately it failed.
Political aspect.
The Progressives, desiring a progressive constitution, annulled the Moderate Constitution of 1845 and attempted to write a new constitution based on the Progressive Constitution of 1837. However, they proved not to have enough unity to agree on a text. Nonetheless, they supported the rights of citizens, such as freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of political association. Other political parties arose, including socialist and federalist parties. The political panorama became much more complicated. Taking advantage of the new liberties, the workers' movement sprang into action, above all by means of the general strike. The peasants also began to protest and demand improvements in their situation.
Municipal government was decentralized, with the restoration of local elections. The resulting municipal governments were yet another source of pressure on the Progressive government. On the other hand, the Moderates in the Cortes hounded the Progressives, taking advantage of a free press to attack them from the right.
Legislative and economic aspects.
In the midst of all this political instability, the government brought about a major economic reform. First, there was the civil confiscation under Finance Minister Pascual Madoz: properties owned by municipalities, military orders, hospitals, hospices and "casas de misericordia" (charity homes) were confiscated and sold to raise funds for the State. The negative consequences were suffered not only by the agents of these institutions but by the poorer villagers, who used the municipal commons for their subsistence. When these lands were placed in private hands, they could no longer use them. Second, another law gave major benefits and privileges to whoever would invest in the construction of railways, given that transport was essential to the process of industrialization that was beginning to develop in Spain. Under this law, foreign investors, especially from France and the United Kingdom employed their capital in constructing railways; the law also proved very beneficial to the banks. Third and finally, a liberalization of banking and corporate law attempted to expand the financial system to underwrite industrial development.
Whatever the intentions, the result was chaos. In the face of instability and conflict, O'Donnell led another coup in July 1856. The "bienio progresista" had ended in failure.


2005 Polish presidential election

Presidential elections were held in Poland on 9 October and 13 October 2005. The outgoing President of Poland, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, had served two five-year terms and was unable to stand for a third term. Lech Kaczyński defeated Donald Tusk to become President of Poland.
Background.
Two center-right candidates, Donald Tusk, chairman of the Civic Platform (PO) and Deputy Marshal of the Sejm, and Lech Kaczyński, honorary chairman of Law and Justice (PiS) and mayor of Warsaw, led the poll in the first round, as was widely expected. As neither received 50 percent of the vote, a second-round was held on 23 October. In this round, Kaczyński defeated Tusk, polling 54.04 percent of the vote.
Although both leading candidates came from the center-right, and their two parties had planned to form a coalition government following the legislative elections on 25 September, there were important differences between Tusk and Kaczyński. Tusk wanted to enforce separation of church and state, favored rapid European integration and supported a free-market economy. Kaczyński was very socially conservative, a soft Eurosceptic, and supported state interventionism. Such differences led to the failure of PiS-PO coalition talks in late October.
Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, the candidate of the Alliance of the Democratic Left, which was the governing party before the legislative election withdrew from the race on September 14. At the time he withdrew he was third in the polls, still having the most chances to get to the second round (besides Kaczyński and Tusk).
Other candidates, who withdrew from the elections, but initially have signed to, were Zbigniew Religa and Maciej Giertych. Daniel Tomasz Podrzycki, who had also signed, died in an accident before the elections.
Ten people had registered themselves in election procedure, but failed to gather 100,000 support signatures: Arnold Buzdygan, Stanisław Ceberek, Gabriel Janowski, Jan Antoni Kiełb, Waldemar Janusz Kossakowski, Marian Romuald Rembelski, Zbigniew Roliński, Sławomir Salomon, Maria Szyszkowska, Bolesław Tejkowski.
The figure of Józef Tusk, grandfather of incumbent Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, was in the center of the "Wehrmacht affair" over his brief period of service after being drafted into the German army during the late stages of World War II, which was the biggest controversy of the election.
Results.
Voters turnout in the first round was quite low with only 49.7 percent of all eligible voters casting their votes.


Three valli of Sicily

During the Muslim rule on Sicily, the island was divided into three different administrative regions: the "Val di Noto" in the southeast, the "Val Demone" in the northeast and the "Val di Mazara" in the west. Each zone has a noticeably different agriculture and topography and they converged near Enna (Castrogiovanni). The term "val" or "vallo" (plural "valli") is probably derived from the , meaning "province".
There are many Arab-derived names in the Val di Mazara (and more Christians converted to Islam from this region), are more mixed in the Val di Noto, while Christian (particularly Greek) identities survived strongest in the Val Demone (with the least Arab-derived names), which was the last to fall to the Muslims, where Christian refugees from other parts of Sicily had assembled, and which furthermore remained in contact with Byzantine southern Italy. Even in 21st century Sicily, differences between the east and west of the island are often explained by locals as being due to the Greek and Arab descent of the populations, respectively. Later Christian Lombard settlements would split the remaining Muslims of Sicily in half, separating the Val di Mazara and the Val di Noto.
Even after Muslim rule, the three valli system was still continued up until 1818, when Sicily was divided into seven provinces. From the 16–17th century, the population of Val di Noto expanded the most slowly of the three valli, with Val di Mazara growing the fastest.
The three valli are represented by the three-legged Trinacria symbol, which appears on the flag of Sicily.
Etymology.
Generally, the term can be traced back to Siculo-Arabic through "the word wālī" (Arabic: وال一). However, the term defines the magistrates in charge of the provinces and not the provinces themselves, which instead were "called wilāyah"


Count of Barcelona

The Count of Barcelona (, , , ) was the ruler of the County of Barcelona and, by extension, the Principality of Catalonia for much of Catalan history, from the 9th century until the 18th century.
History.
The County of Barcelona was created by Charlemagne after he had conquered lands north of the river Ebro and Barcelona, after a siege in 801. These lands, called the "Marca Hispanica", were partitioned into various counties, of which the count of Barcelona, usually holding other counties simultaneously, eventually obtained the primacy over the region. As the county became hereditary in one family, the bond of the counts to their Frankish overlords loosened, especially after the Capetian dynasty supplanted the Carolingians.
In the 12th century, the counts of Barcelona became kings of Aragon through inheritance, establishing the Crown of Aragon. In 1258, the king of France relinquished his claim of feudal authority over the county in the Treaty of Corbeil. The counts were also hereditary kings of Castile from the 16th century, eventually forming the Kingdom of Spain. The title of count of Barcelona remained one of the many hereditary titles of the Spanish monarchy.
In the 20th century, the title regained some prominence when Juan de Borbón, the exiled heir to the Spanish throne, adopted the title of count of Barcelona. In doing so, he claimed a historical royal title without claiming to be the current king of Spain, especially after his son Juan Carlos became the prospective successor of the then-ruler of Spain, Francisco Franco. In 1977, after Juan Carlos had become king upon Franco's death in 1975, he officially awarded the comital title to his father, who had renounced his rights to the throne. Juan held that title until his death in 1993, when it reverted to Juan Carlos. Juan de Borbón's widow used the title countess of Barcelona until her death in 2000.
List of counts of Barcelona.
House of Sunifred, 878–1162.
The succession of Ramon Berenguer IV and Petronilla led to the creation of the Crown of Aragon.
House of Barcelona, 1164–1410.
Martin was the last direct descendant of Wilfred the Hairy to rule; died without legitimate heirs ("interregnum" 31 May 1410 – 24 June 1412). By the Compromise of Caspe of 1412 the County of Barcelona and all its associated dominions passed to a branch of the House of Trastámara.
The County of Barcelona formed a constituent part of the Crown of Spain under the rule of the House of Habsburg, until the Nueva Planta decrees (1707 and 1716), when Philip de Bourbon declared that all the territories from the Crown of Aragon should merge into Castile, building the centralized Kingdom of Spain. In Barcelona this was promulgated in 1716, and the title of Count of Barcelona became one of the many unused hereditary titles of the modern Spanish monarchy.
Reapers' War, 1641-1659.
During the Reapers' War, the States-General ("Braços Generals") on 21 January 1641 declared the French king Louis XIII Count of Barcelona as Louis I. Despite the reconquest of Barcelona by Spain in 1652, the kings of France held on to the part of Catalonia north of the Pyrénées, where Catalan institutions remained. This lasted until the conclusion of the Franco-Spanish War and the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, where French authorities renounced Catalonia, but received Northern Catalonia, which became the French province of Roussillon.


Hesse-Marburg

The Landgraviate of Hesse-Marburg () was a German landgraviate, and independent principality, within the Holy Roman Empire, that existed between 1458 and 1500, and between 1567 and 1604/1650.
It consisted of the city of Marburg and the surrounding towns of Gießen, Nidda and Eppstein, approximately what is today called Upper Hesse ("").
The area had been a semi-independent county under the counts Giso or Gisonen since the 11th century, which at their extinction fell to the Landgraves of Thuringia in the 1130s.
When the daughter of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Sophie of Brabant, was able to secure the Western parts of Thuringia for her son Henry the Child in 1265, therefore founding the state of Landgraviate of Hesse, the Marburg area became its core territory.
However, Hesse-Marburg, by its name, refers only to the subdivision around Marburg. Basically the old county. This became an independent principality due to inheritance, i.e. by a landgrave splitting his possessions among two or more sons.
When, in 1604 Louis IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Marburg died without male issue, he bequeathed equal shares of his territory to the landgraviates of Hesse-Kassel (Marburg) and Hesse-Darmstadt (), yet under the condition that both territories should remain Lutheran. Hesse-Kassel was Calvinist at that time.
As the two lines argued over the details of the division, Maurice, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel annexed the whole territory and introduced Calvinism. After a long dispute and armed conflict, Maurice — who had enemies at home as well — resigned in 1627 and left his part of the territory to the Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt.
However, in the Hessian War of 1645–48, which was a sub-conflict of the Thirty Years' War, the two lines, which were on different sides, again fought over the territory. This war led to the loss of life of up to two-thirds of the civilian population, one of the highest death toll in any German region in history.
In the end, the territory was divided as stipulated in Louis IV's will. Hesse-Kassel taking the northern and Hesse-Darmstadt the southern part.
All areas of Hesse-Marburg are today located within the German state of Hesse.


Liebfrauenkapelle (Rapperswil)

Liebfrauenkapelle ("St. Mary Chapel") is a chapel in Rapperswil, Canton of St. Gallen, Switzerland, which dates back to the ossuary that was built by the House of Rapperswil around 1253 AD.
Geography.
The chapel is located next to the Stadtpfarrkirche Rapperswil ( away to the west) and next to the Rapperswil Castle ( away to the east). It is situated on the Lindenhof hill's eastern slope named "Herrenberg", just west of the Stadtmuseum Rapperswil. The Catholic city cemetery is situated to the north, hence, the chapel is used as cemetery chapel.
History.
The chapel respectively the ossuary was built around 1253 or earlier when the parish passed from the Busskirch church to the Rapperswil church and accordingly a cemetery was established inside the town walls of the medieval city of Rapperswil. The first chapel was associated to the Rapperswil Castle, but it was built outside of the castle'swalls, as a castle chapel for its inhabitants, probably as the family chapel for the members of the House of Rapperswil, later also for the citizens of Rapperswil. The preceding building of the "Liebfrauenkapelle" was built as an ossuary around 1220 to 1253. The charnel house was first mentioned as "intra cymeterium ecclesia", meaning the church in the cemetery. The present chapel was erected above the ossuary, and latter was rebuilt in our times into a funeral service room. In the second half of the 15th century, the supposedly preceding building (maybe the second one) was mentioned as "capellum novam in ceometerio" ("new cemetery chapel"). From the ossuary a staircase led in the overlying interior of the chapel; in turn, the access to the ossuary took place from the south via another staircase. The construction of the new building, presumably the third construction phase of the small church, was initiated by the religious "Brotherhood of Our Lady" (German: "Bruderschaft Unserer Lieben Frau") which was founded in 1489 to probably finance the present "Liebfrauenkapelle".
Architecture.
The chapel stands on an approximately high base – that in fact are the foundation walls of the ossuary – as a rectangular single naved church. It measures about x , with an eaves height of about , having an east-facing apse, a small ridge turret with a single bell and a steep gable roof. The late Gothic stone building was built in 1489. The consecration to the Virgin Mary took place on 20 June 1493. The altar was ordained to Mary, the apostles Peter and Paul, Sebastian, Christophorus, Anna and All Saints.
On its eastern side, a five-sided closed choir was added in 1675. Two ogival north-facing windos and one south-facing window illuminate the nave, two arched windows illuminate the choir. The interior is decorated with neo-Gothic furniture and, on occasion of the extensive renovation works in 1917, with Art Nouveau paintings.
In 1875, just before the adjacent parish church burned down, the sloping terrain had to be refilled for an extension of the cemetery. For this reason, a staircase to the lower part of the churchyard was built on the west side, and the access to the ossuary was made now one level higher than before. After the fire of 1882 some of the epitaphs of the parish church were attached to the outside wall of the chapel. The former ossuary was converted into a storage facility for the funeral service in 1964. The outside decoration of the chapel was renewed in 1978/79. On occasion of the exterior renovation, the grave stones, except one at the entrance, were removed and two epitaphs moved into the former ossuary in the basement of the chapel.
The crucifixion scene at the staircase on the south side was created in the 17th century when Maria and Magdalena were painted on plaster on either side of a wooden crucifix. On the cross hung a corpus from the period around 1490, part of the late Gothic decoration of the neighbouring parish church where it found a place in its choir in 1979.
The small church is used as the cemetery chapel of the Roman Catholic city cemetery and is popular for weddings.
Interior.
In 1916/17 the interior with the small choir was redesigned fundamentally as the then designers sought a "stylistic unification" with the parish church that had to be renewed in 1885. The original plaster ceiling was replaced by a wooden ceiling according to the Gothic style, as well as the seating and the vault of the choir. Jean Rotenfluh, a native of Rapperswil, carried out the decorations, only the decorative painting, as the angel in the choir arch, have Art Nouveau elements. The semicircular chancel arch is decorated on its side walls with the figure of a guardian angel with child and a statue of Joseph with the infant Jesus. The originally Baroque altar stands today in the Saint Pancras church in Bollingen; it was replaced by a neo-gothic altarpiece whose center is a lovely statue of Our Lady. Due to the liturgical reform in 1979, a simple altar table was added. The original Gothic windows were widened, and the interior designed for the purposes of historicism. Inside the church, the wall paintings from the 17th century were unfortunately removed, and the walls decorated with oil paintings from the late Gothic and the Baroque periods with religious motifs: The wooden relief with Christ on the Mount of Olives by an unknown woodcarver originates around 1530, just as the late-Gothic Crucifixion panel. One painting on the back wall dates from the Baroque and presents Mary as intercessor for the poor souls, the oval image of Aloysius Gonzaga may be a work by the Rapperswil artist Elisa (Louise) Fornaro (1726–1796).
Mariensäule.
"Mariensäule" (literally "Maria column") is situated between the castle's exterior walls, the parish church and "Liebfrauenkapelle" and was moved from Bern to its present location in 1914.
Cultural heritage.
The Stadtpfarrkirche Rapperswil and the chapel are listed in the Swiss inventory of cultural property of national and regional significance as "Class B" objects of regional importance.


History of Romania

This article covers the history and bibliography of Romania and links to specialized articles.
Prehistory.
34,950-year-old remains of modern humans with a possible Neanderthalian trait were discovered in present-day Romania when the "Peștera cu Oase" ("Cave with Bones") was uncovered in 2002. In 2011, older modern human remains were identified in the UK (Kents Cavern 41,500 to 44,200 years old) and Italy (Grotta del Cavallo 43,000 to 45,000 years old) but the Romanian fossils are still among the oldest remains of "Homo sapiens" in Europe, so they may be representative of the first such people to have entered Europe. The remains present a mixture of archaic, early modern human and Neanderthal morphological features.
The Neolithic-Age Cucuteni area in northeastern Romania was the western region of the earliest European civilization, which is known as the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture. The earliest-known salt works is at Poiana Slatinei near the village of Lunca; it was first used in the early Neolithic around 6050 BC by the Starčevo culture and later by the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture in the pre-Cucuteni period. Evidence from this and other sites indicates the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture extracted salt from salt-laden spring water through the process of briquetage.
Dacia.
The earliest written evidence of people living in the territory of present-day Romania comes from Herodotus in Book IV of his "Histories", which was written in 440 BC; He writes that the tribal confederation of the Getae were defeated by the Persian Emperor Darius the Great during his campaign against the Scythians. The Dacians, who are widely accepted as part of the Getae described earlier by the Greeks, were a branch of Thracians who inhabited Dacia, which corresponds with modern Romania, Moldova, northern Bulgaria and surrounding nations.
The Dacian Kingdom reached its maximum expansion during the reign of King Burebista between 82 BC and 44 BC. Under his leadership, Dacia became a powerful state that threatened the regional interests of the Romans. Julius Caesar intended to start a campaign against the Dacians due to the support that Burebista gave to Pompey but he was assassinated in 44 BC. A few months later, Burebista was assassinated by his own noblemen. Another theory suggests he was killed by Caesar's friends. Burebista's powerful state was divided into four and was not reunified until 95 AD under the reign of the Dacian king Decebalus.
The Roman Empire conquered Moesia by 29 BC, reaching the Danube River. In 87 AD, Emperor Domitian sent six legions into Dacia, which were defeated at Tapae. The Dacians were eventually defeated by Emperor Trajan in two campaigns that lasted from 101 AD to 106 AD, and the core of their kingdom was turned into the province of Roman Dacia.
Roman Dacia (106–275 AD).
The Romans exploited the rich ore deposits of Dacia. Gold and silver were especially plentiful, and were found in great quantities in the Western Carpathians. After Trajan's conquest, he took to Rome over 165 tons of gold and 330 tons of silver. The Romans colonized the province extensively, beginning a period of intense romanization, during which the language Vulgar Latin morphed into the Proto-Romanian language.
Dacia's geographical position made it difficult to defend against the barbarians and during 240–256 AD, Dacia was lost under attacks of the Carpi and the Goths. The Roman Empire withdrew from "Dacia Romana" around 271 AD, making it the first province to be abandoned.
Early Middle Ages.
Between 271 and 275, the Roman army and administration left Dacia, which was invaded later by the Goths. The Goths mixed with the local people until the 4th century, when the Huns, a nomadic people, arrived. The Gepids, the Avars, the Bulgars and their Slavic subjects ruled Transylvania until the 8th century. The territories of Wallachia and Moldavia were under the control of the First Bulgarian Empire from its establishment in 681 until around the time of the Hungarian conquest of Transylvania at the end of the 10th century.
After the disintegration of Great Bulgaria following Khan Kubrat's death in 668, a large group of Bulgars followed Asparukh, the third son of the great Khan, who headed westwards. In the 670's they settled in the area known as the Ongal to the north of the Danube delta. From there, Asparukh's cavalry in alliance with local Slavs annually attacked the Byzantine territories in the south. In 680, the Byzantine Emperor Constantine IV led a large army to fight the Bulgars but was defeated in the battle of Ongal and the Byzantines were forced to acknowledge the formation of a new country, the First Bulgarian Empire. The northern border of the country followed the southern slopes of the Carpathian mountains from the Iron Gates and reached the Dneper river or possibly just the Dniester river to the east.
The Bulgarians' main rivals in the area were the Avars to the west and the Khazars to the east. The Khazars were a serious threat; they marched westwards after they crushed the resistance of Kubrat's eldest son Bayan and waged a war against Asparukh, who perished in battle in 700. To protect their northern borders, the Bulgarians built several enormous ditches that ran the whole length of the border from the Timok river to the Black Sea.
In 803, Krum of Bulgaria became Khan. The new, energetic ruler focused on the north-west where Bulgaria's old enemies the Avars experienced difficulties and setbacks against the Franks under Charlemagne. Between 804 and 806, the Bulgarian armies annihilated the Avars and destroyed their state. Krum took the eastern parts of the former Avar Khaganate and took over rule of the local Slavic tribes. Bulgaria's territory twice extended twice from the middle Danube to the north of Budapest to the Dnester, though its possession of Transylvania is debatable. In 813 Khan Krum seized Odrin and plundered the whole of Eastern Thrace. He took 50,000 captives who were settled in "Bulgaria across the Danube".
During the Middle Ages the Bulgarian Empire controlled vast areas to the north of the river Danube (with interruptions) from its establishment in 681 to its fragmentation in 1371–1422. These lands were called by contemporary Byzantine historians Bulgaria across the Danube, or Transdanubian Bulgaria. Original information for the centuries-old Bulgarian rule there is scarce as the archives of the Bulgarian rulers were destroyed and little is mentioned for this area in Byzantine or Hungarian manuscripts. During the First Bulgarian Empire, the Dridu culture developed in the beginning of the 8th century and flourished until the 11th century. It represents an early medieval archaeological culture which emerged in the region of the Lower Danube. In Bulgaria it is usually referred to as Pliska-Preslav culture.
The Pechenegs, the Cumans and Uzes are also mentioned by historic chronicles on the territory of Romania until the founding of the Romanian principalities of Wallachia in the south by Basarab I around 1310 in the High Middle Ages, and Moldavia in the east, by Dragoş around 1352.
High Middle Ages.
The Pechenegs, a semi-nomadic Turkic people of the Central Asian steppes, occupied the steppes north of the Black Sea from the 8th to the 12th centuries, and by the 10th century they were in control of all of the territory between the Don and the lower Danube rivers. During the 11th and 12th centuries, the nomadic confederacy of the Cumans and Eastern Kipchaks dominated the territories between present-day Kazakhstan, southern Russia, Ukraine, southern Moldavia and western Wallachia.
It is a subject of dispute whether elements of the mixed Daco–Roman population survived in Transylvania through the Dark Ages to become the ancestors of modern Romanians or whether the first Vlachs and Romanians appeared in the area in the 13th century after a northward migration from the Balkan Peninsula. There is also debate over the ethnicity of Transylvania's population before the Hungarian conquest.
There is evidence the Second Bulgarian Empire, at least nominally, ruled the Wallachian lands up to the Rucăr–Bran corridor until the late 14th century. In a charter by Radu I, the Wallachian voivode requests tsar Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria to order his customs officers at Rucăr and the Dâmboviţa River bridge to collect taxes following the law. The presence of Bulgarian customs officers at the Carpathians indicates Bulgarian suzerainty over those lands, though Radu's imperative tone implies a strong and increasing Wallachian autonomy. Under Radu I and his successor Dan I, the realms in Transylvania and Severin continued to be disputed with Hungary. Basarab was succeeded by Nicholas Alexander and Vladislav I. Vladislav attacked Transylvania after Louis I occupied lands south of the Danube, conceded to recognize him as overlord in 1368 but rebelled again in the same year. Vladislav's rule also witnessed the first confrontation between Wallachia and the Ottoman Empire, a battle in which Vladislav was allied with Ivan Shishman. After the Magyar conquest of the 10th and 11th centuries, Transylvania became an autonomous and multi-ethnic voivodeship that was led by a voivode who was appointed by the King of Hungary until the 16th century.
Several Kings of Hungary invited settlers from Central and Western Europe, such as the Saxons, to occupy Transylvania. The Székelys were brought to southeastern Transylvania as border guards. Romanians are mentioned by the Hungarian documents of a township called "Olahteluk" in 1283 in Bihar County. The "land of Romanians" ("Terram Blacorum") appeared in Făgăraş and this area was mentioned under the name "Olachi" in 1285. After the collapse of the Hungarian Kingdom following the disastrous Battle of Mohács in 1526, the region became the independent Principality of Transylvania until 1711.
Many other small states with varying degrees of independence developed on the territory of today's Romania. In the 14th century, the larger principalities Moldavia and Wallachia emerged to fight the Ottoman Turks, who conquered Constantinople in 1453.
Independent Wallachia had been near the border of the Ottoman Empire since the 14th century until it had gradually succumbed to the Ottomans' influence during the next centuries with brief periods of independence. Vlad III the Impaler, also known as Vlad Dracula , was a Prince of Wallachia in 1448, 1456–62, and 1476. Vlad III is remembered for his raids against the Ottoman Empire and his initial success of keeping his small country free for a short time. In the Western world, Vlad is best known for being the inspiration for the main character in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel "Dracula". The Romanian historiography evaluates him as a ferocious but just ruler. the defender of the Wallachian independence and of the European Christianity against Ottoman expansionism.
The Principality of Moldavia reached its most glorious period under the rule of Stephen the Great between 1457 and 1504. Stephen () ruled for 47 years, an unusually long period for that time. He was a successful military leader and statesman, losing only two out of fifty battles; he built a shrine to commemorate each victory, founding 48 churches and monasteries, many of which have a unique architectural style and are listed in UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites. Stefan's most prestigious victory was over the Ottoman Empire in 1475 at the Battle of Vaslui, for which he raised the Voroneţ Monastery. For this victory, Pope Sixtus IV nominated him as "verus christianae fidei athleta" (a true Champion of the Christian Faith). After Stephen's death, Moldavia also came under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire during the 16th century.
Although the core religious vocabulary of the Romanian language originated from Latin, many terms were adopted from the Slavic Orthodoxy, showing a significant influence dating from the Bulgarian Empire (681-1396).
Early modern period.
By 1541, the entire Balkan peninsula and northern Hungary became Ottoman provinces. Moldavia, Wallachia, and Transylvania came under Ottoman suzerainty but remained fully autonomous and until the 18th century, had some external independence. During this period, the Romanian lands experienced a slow disappearance of the feudalism and the distinguishing of some rulers like Vasile Lupu and Dimitrie Cantemir in Moldavia, Matei Basarab and Constantin Brâncoveanu in Wallachia, and Gabriel Bethlen in Transylvania. At that time, the Russian Empire appeared to become the political and military power the threatened the Romanian principalities.
John II, the non-Habsburg King of Hungary, moved his royal court to Alba Iulia in Transylvania and after his abdication from the Hungarian throne, he became the first Prince of Transylvania. His 1568 Edict of Turda was the first decree of religious freedom in the modern European history. In the aftermath, Transylvania was ruled by mostly Calvinist Hungarian princes until the end of the 17th century, and Protestantism flourished in the region.
Michael the Brave (Romanian: Mihai Viteazul) was the Prince of Wallachia from 1593 to 1601, of Transylvania from 1599 to 1600, and of Moldavia in 1600. For a short time during his reign, Transylvania was ruled together with Moldavia and Wallachia in a personal union. After his death the union dissolved and as vassal tributary states, Moldavia and Wallachia still had internal autonomy and some external independence, which was finally lost in the 18th century.
The Principality of Transylvania reached its golden age under the absolutist rule of Gábor Bethlen from 1613 to 1629. In 1699, Transylvania became a part of the Habsburg Monarchy following the Austrian victory over the Turks. The Habsburgs rapidly expanded their empire; in 1718 Oltenia, a major part of Wallachia, was annexed to the Habsburg monarchy and was only returned in 1739. In 1775, the Habsburgs later occupied the north-western part of Moldavia, which was later called Bukovina and was incorporated to the Austrian Empire in 1804. The eastern half of the principality, which was called Bessarabia, was occupied in 1812 by Russia.
During the Austro-Hungarian rule of Transylvania, Romanians formed the majority of the population. Nationality issues occurred between Hungarians and Romanians due to the Magyarization policy.
After their defeat to the Russians, the Ottoman Empire restored the Danube ports of Turnu, Giurgiu and Braila to Wallachia, and agreed to give up their commercial monopoly and recognize freedom of navigation on the Danube as specified in the Treaty of Adrianople, which was signed in 1829. The political autonomy of the Romanian principalities grew as their rulers were elected for life by a Community Assembly consisting of boyars, a method used to reduce political instability and Ottoman interventions. Following the war, Romanian lands came under Russian occupation under the governance of General Pavel Kiselyov until 1844. During his rule, the local boyars enacted the first Romanian constitution.
Revolutions of 1848.
In 1848, there was a revolution in Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania perpetrated by Tudor Vladimirescu and his Pandurs in the Wallachian uprising of 1821. The goals of the revolutionaries were full independence for Moldavia and Wallachia, and national emancipation in Transylvania; these were not fulfilled but were the basis of the subsequent revolutions. The uprising helped the population of all three principalities recognize their unity of language and interests; all three Romanian principalities were very close in language and geography.
After the unsuccessful 1848 revolution, the Great Powers rejected the Romanians' desire to officially unite in a single state, forcing the Romanians to proceed alone their struggle against the Turks. Heavily taxed and badly administered under the Ottoman Empire, in 1859, people's representatives in both Moldavia and Wallachia elected the same "Domnitor" (ruling Prince of the Romanians); Alexander John Cuza.
Romania was created as a personal union that did not include Transylvania, where the upper class and the aristocracy remained mainly Hungarian, although Romanian nationalism clashed with Hungarian nationalism at the end of the 19th century. Austria-Hungary, especially under the Dual Monarchy of 1867, kept the territory firmly in control even in parts of Transylvania where Romanians constituted a vast majority.
Status of women.
In Romania between the 1750s and the 1830s, the exclusion of dowered women from the family inheritance led to increased cohesion within the nuclear family. The wife's male relatives controlled the dowry but she retained sole ownership of the dowry and wedding gifts. Her relatives could prosecute the husband for squandering a dowry; wives gained some ability to leave an abusive marriage. The long-term result was a greater legal empowerment of women while providing economic security to divorced women, widows, and children.
Independence and Kingdom of Romania.
In an 1866 "coup d'état", Cuza was exiled and replaced with Prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. He was appointed Domnitor, Ruling Prince of the United Principality of Romania, as Prince Carol of Romania. Romania declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire after the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War, in which the Ottomans fought against the Russian empire.
In the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, Romania was officially recognized as an independent state by the Great Powers. In return, Romania ceded the district Bessarabia to Russia in exchange for access to the Black Sea ports and acquired Dobruja. In 1881, the Romania's principality status was raised to that of a kingdom and on 26 March that year, Prince Carol became King Carol I of Romania.
The period between 1878 and 1914 was one of stability and progress for Romania. During the Second Balkan War, Romania joined Greece, Serbia and Montenegro against Bulgaria. In the Treaty of Bucharest of 1913, Romania gained Southern Dobruja and established the Durostor and Caliacra counties.
The governments of Britain and the United States repeatedly protested the brutal treatment of Romanians Jews, who were regarded as aliens who had no civil or political rights. The Romanian government tolerated their frequent humiliation and exclusion from many professions and government services. Romania engaged in arbitrary expulsions of Jews as vagabonds and tolerated violent pogroms against Jews, many of whom fled to the United States.
World War I.
The new state, which was located between the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires, looked to the West—particularly to France—for its cultural, educational, military and administrative models.
In August 1914, when World War I broke out, Romania declared its neutrality. Two years later, under the pressure of the Allies—especially France, which was desperate to open a new front. Between 14 and 27 August 1916, Romania joined the Allies, for which it was promised support for the accomplishment of national unity, including recognition of Romanian rights over Transylvania, which was part of Austria-Hungary. Romania declared war on Austria-Hungary.
The Romanian military campaign ended in disaster for Romania as the Central Powers conquered two-thirds of the country and captured or killed the majority of its army within four months. Moldavia remained in Romanian hands after the invading forces were stopped in 1917. In May 1918, Romania could not continue the war and negotiated a peace treaty with Germany. In November 1918, Romania rejoined the war after the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires had disintegrated.
Greater Romania (1918–1940).
In 1918, at the end of World War I, the union of Romania with Bukovina was ratified in 1919 in the Treaty of Saint Germain, and some of the Allies recognized the union with Bessarabia in 1920 through the never ratified Treaty of Paris. On 1 December, the Deputies of the Romanians from Transylvania voted to unite Transylvania, Banat, Crișana and Maramureș with Romania by the "Proclamation of Union" of Alba Iulia. Romanians today celebrate this as the Great Union Day, that is a national holiday.
The Romanian expression "România Mare" (Great or Greater Romania) refers to the Romanian state in the interwar period and to the territory Romania covered at the time. At that time, Romania achieved its greatest territorial extent, almost ), including all of the historic Romanian lands.
Most of the claimed territories were granted to the Old Kingdom of Romania, which was ratified in 1920 by the Treaty of Trianon that defined the new border between Hungary and Romania. The union of Bucovina and Bessarabia with Romania was ratified in 1920 by the Treaty of Versailles. Romania also acquired Southern Dobruja territory called "The Quadrilateral" from Bulgaria as a result of its participation in the Second Balkan War in 1913.
As a result of the peace treaties, most regions with clear Romanian majorities were merged into a single state. It also led to the inclusion of sizable minorities, including Magyars (ethnic Hungarians), Germans, Jews, Ukrainians and Bulgarians—about 28% of the country's population. National minorities were recognized by the 1923 Constitution of Romania and supported by laws; they were represented in Parliament and several of them created political parties, although a unique standing of minorities with autonomy on a wide basis, provided for at the assembly of Transylvanian Romanians on 1 December 1918, was not fulfilled.
Transition to authoritarian rule.
Two periods can be identified in Romania between the two World Wars. From 1918 to 1938, Romania was a monarchy whose liberal Constitution was seldom respected in practice, but one facing the rise of the nationalist, anti-semitic parties, particularly Iron Guard, which won about 15% of the votes in the general elections of 1937. From 1938 to 1944, Romania was a dictatorship. The first dictator was King Carol II, who abolished the parliamentary regime and ruled with his "camarilla".
In 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which stipulated, among other things, the Soviet "interest" in Bessarabia. Following the severe territorial losses of 1940 ("see next section"), Carol was forced to abdicate, replaced as king by his son Mihai, but the power was taken by the military dictator Ion Antonescu (initially in conjunction with the Iron Guard). In August 1944, Antonescu was arrested by Mihai.
World War II and aftermath (1940–1947).
During the Second World War, Romania tried to remain neutral but on 28 June 1940, it received a Soviet ultimatum with an implied threat of invasion in the event of non-compliance. Under pressure from Moscow and Berlin, the Romanian administration and the army were forced to retreat from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to avoid war. This and other factors prompted the Romanian government to join the Axis powers. Southern Dobruja was awarded to Bulgaria while Hungary received Northern Transylvania as result of an Axis arbitration.
In 1940, Romania lost territory in both its east and west: In June 1940, after receiving an ultimatum from the Soviet Union, Romania ceded Bessarabia and northern Bukovina Two-thirds of Bessarabia was combined with a small part of the USSR to form the Moldavian SSR. Northern Bukovina and Budjak were apportioned to the Ukrainian SSR. In August 1940, Northern Transylvania was awarded to Hungary by Germany and Italy through the Second Vienna Award. Southern Dobruja was ceded to Bulgaria shortly after Carol's abdication.
Because Carol II lost so much territory through failed diplomacy, the army supported seizure of power by General Ion Antonescu. For four months—the period of the National Legionary State—he shared power with the Iron Guard but the latter overplayed its hand in January 1941 and was suppressed. Romania entered World War II under the command of the German Wehrmacht in June 1941, declaring war on the Soviet Union to recover Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. Romania continued to participate in the invasion after recovering the territories and was also awarded the territory between Dniester and the Southern Bug by Germany to administer under the name of "Transnistria", where Romanians built a concentration camp for the extermination of Jews.
During the war, Romania was the most important source of oil for Nazi Germany, prompting multiple Allied bombing raids. By means of the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, Romania recovered Bessarabia and northern Bukovina from Soviet Union under the leadership of general Ion Antonescu.
The Antonescu government played a major role in the Holocaust, following to a lesser extent the Nazi policy of oppression and massacre of the Jews and Romas, primarily in the Eastern territories Transnistria and Moldavia, which Romania recovered from the Soviet Union. According to an international commission report released by the Romanian government in 2004, Antonescu's dictatorial government was responsible for the murder in various forms including deportations to concentration camps and executions by the Romanian Army and Gendarmerie, and the German "Einsatzgruppen" of between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews on Romanian territories and in the war zones Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transnistria.
On 20 August 1944, the Soviet Red Army crossed the border into Romania. On 23 August 1944, Antonescu was toppled and arrested by King Michael I of Romania, who joined the Allies and declared war on Germany. On 31 August 1944, the Red Army entered Bucharest. Despite Romania's change of sides, its role in the defeat of Nazi Germany was not recognized by the Paris Peace Conference of 1947.
With the Red Army forces still stationed in the country and exerting "de facto" control, Communists and their allied parties claimed 80% of the vote through a combination of vote manipulation, elimination and forced mergers of competing parties, thus establishing themselves as the dominant force. Romania suffered heavy casualties fighting the Nazis in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. By the end of the war, the Romanian army had suffered almost 300,000 casualties.
A the end of World War II, the Paris Peace Treaty rendered the Vienna Awards void: Northern Transylvania was returned to Romania but Bessarabia, northern Bukovina and southern Dobruja were not recovered. The Moldavian-SSR became independent of the Soviet Union after the latter's 1991 demise and turned into the Republic of Moldova.
Communist period (1947–1989).
Soviet occupation following World War II strengthened the position of Communists, who became dominant in the left-wing coalition government that was appointed in March 1945. King Michael I was forced to abdicate and went into exile. Romania was proclaimed a people's republic and remained under military and economic control of the Soviet Union until the late 1950s. During this period, Romania's resources were drained by the "SovRom" agreements; mixed Soviet-Romanian companies were established to mask the Soviet Union's looting of Romania.
Romania's leader from 1948 to his death in 1965 was Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, the First Secretary of the Romanian Workers' Party. Between 1947 and 1962, people were detained in prisons and camps, deported and put under house arrest and administrative detention. According to writer Cicerone Ioniţoiu, there were hundreds of thousands of cases of abuse, death and torture against a large range of people from political opponents to ordinary citizens. Between 60,000 and 80,000 political prisoners were detained. Ioniţoiu estimated two million people were victims of Communist repression in Romania. According to Benjamin Valentino, probably tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths occurred as part of political repression and agricultural collectivization in Communist Romania, though he said documentation is insufficient for an accurate estimate to be made.
Gheorghiu-Dej attained greater independence for Romania from the Soviet Union by persuading Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev to withdraw troops from Romania in April 1958. After the negotiated withdrawal of Soviet troops, Romania under the new leadership of Nicolae Ceauşescu started to pursue independent policies, including the condemnation of the Soviet-led 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia—Romania being the only Warsaw Pact country not to take part in the invasion—the continuation of diplomatic relations with Israel after the Six-Day War of 1967 (again, the only Warsaw Pact country to do so), and the establishment of economic (1963) and diplomatic (1967) relations with West Germany. Romania's close ties with Arab countries and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) allowed to play a key role in the Israel-Egypt and Israel-PLO peace processes by intermediating the visit of Egyptian president Sadat to Israel.
Between 1977 and 1981, Romania's foreign debt sharply increased from US$3 to US$10 billion and the influence of international financial organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank grew, in conflict with Ceauşescu's autarchic policies. Ceauşescu's independent foreign policy meant leaders of Western nations leaders were slow to criticize Romania's government which, by the late 1970s, had become arbitrary, capricious and harsh. The Romanian economy grew quickly through foreign credit but this was replaced with austerity and political repression, which became more draconian through the 1980s.
Ceauşescu eventually initiated a project of full reimbursement of the foreign debt; to achieve this, he imposed austerity policies that impoverished Romanians and exhausted the nation's economy. The project was completed in 1989, shortly before his overthrow. He greatly extended the authority of the "Securitate" (secret police) and imposed a cult of personality, leading to a dramatic decrease in Ceauşescu's popularity and culminating in his overthrow and execution in the bloody Romanian Revolution in December 1989.
1989 Revolution.
The Romanian Revolution resulted in more than 1,000 deaths in Timișoara and Bucharest, and brought the fall of Ceauşescu and the end of the Communist regime in Romania. After a week of unrest in Timişoara, a mass rally summoned in Bucharest in support of Ceauşescu on 21 December 1989 turned hostile. The Ceauşescu couple fled Bucharest by helicopter but ended up in the custody of the army.
After being tried and convicted by a kangaroo court for genocide and other crimes, they were executed on 25 December 1989.
Ion Iliescu, a former Communist Party official marginalized by Ceauşescu, attained national recognition as the leader of an impromptu governing coalition, the National Salvation Front (FSN) that proclaimed the establishment of democracy and civil liberties on 22 December 1989. The Communist Party was initially outlawed by Ion Iliescu, but he soon revoked that decision; as a consequence, Communism is not outlawed in Romania today. However, Ceauşescu's most controversial measures, such as bans on abortion and contraception, were among the first laws to be changed after the Revolution.
Transition to free market (1990–2004).
After the fall of Ceauşescu, the National Salvation Front (FSN) led by Ion Iliescu introduced partial multi-party democratic and free market measures. A university professor with family roots in the Communist Party, Petre Roman, was named prime minister of the new government, which mostly consisted of former communist officials. The government initiated modest free market reforms. Several major political parties of the pre-war era, the National Christian Democrat Peasant's Party (PNŢCD), the National Liberal Party (PNL) and the Romanian Social Democrat Party (PSDR), were reconstituted.
In April 1990, after several major political rallies that January), a sit-in protest questioning the legitimacy of the government began in University Square, Bucharest, organized by the main opposition parties. The protest became ongoing mass demonstration known as the Golaniad. The protesters accused the FSN of being made up of former Communists and members of the Securitate. Presidential and parliamentary elections were held on 20 May 1990. Taking advantage of FSN's tight control of the national radio and television, Iliescu won 85% of the vote. The FSN secured two-thirds of the seats in Parliament. Though most protesters left University Square after the government gained a large parliamentary majority, a minority deemed the results undemocratic and demanded the exclusion from political life of the former high-ranking Communist Party members. The peaceful demonstrations degenerated into violence; some of the protesters attacked the police headquarters, national television station, and the Foreign Ministry. After the police failed to bring the demonstrators to order, Ion Iliescu called on the "men of good will" to defend the state institutions in Bucharest.
Various worker groups from Romania's industrial platforms responded, some of them engaged in altercations with the protesters. The coal miners of the Jiu Valley, thousands of whom arrived in Bucharest on 14 June, were the most visible and politically influential. According to the miners, most of the violence was perpetrated by government agents who were agitating the crowds. Some of the counter-protesters attacked the headquarters and private residences of opposition leaders. Later parliamentary inquiries showed members of the government intelligence services were involved in the instigation and manipulation of both the protesters and the miners, and in June 1994, a Bucharest court found two former "Securitate" officers guilty of ransacking and stealing $100,000 from the house of a leading opposition politician. Petre Roman's government fell in late September 1991, when the miners returned to Bucharest to demand higher salaries. A technocrat, Theodor Stolojan, was appointed to head an interim government until new elections could be held.
New constitution.
In December 1991, a new constitution was drafted and subsequently adopted, after a popular referendum, which, however, attracted criticism from international observers. The constitution was most recently revised by a national referendum on 18–19 October 2003, and took effect on 29 October 2003.
In March 1992, the FSN split into two groups: the Democratic National Front (FDSN), led by Ion Iliescu and the Democratic Party (PD), led by Petre Roman. Iliescu won the presidential elections in September 1992 and his FDSN won the general elections held at the same time. With parliamentary support from the nationalist Romanian National Unity Party (PUNR), Greater Romania Party (PRM), and the ex-communist Socialist Workers' Party (PSM), a new government was formed in November 1992 under Prime Minister Nicolae Văcăroiu. The FDSN changed its name to Party of Social Democracy in Romania (PDSR) in July 1993.
The subsequent disintegration of the FSN produced the Romanian Democrat Social Party (PDSR) (later Social Democratic Party, PSD), the Democratic Party (PD) and the ApR (Alliance for Romania). The PDSR party governed Romania from 1990 until 1996 through several coalitions and governments with Ion Iliescu as head of state.
Emil Constantinescu of the Democratic Convention (CDR) won the second round of the 1996 presidential elections and replaced Iliescu as chief of state. The PDSR won the largest number of seats in Parliament, but was unable to form a viable coalition. Constituent parties of the CDR joined the Democratic Party (PD), the National Liberal Party (PNL) and the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) to form a centrist coalition government, holding 60% of the seats in Parliament.
This coalition implemented several critical reforms. The new coalition government, under prime minister Victor Ciorbea remained in office until March 1998, when Radu Vasile (PNŢCD) took over as prime minister. The former governor of the National Bank, Mugur Isărescu, eventually replaced Radu Vasile as head of the government.
The 2000 election brought Iliescu's PDSR, known as Social Democratic Party (PSD) after the merger with the PSDR, back to power. Iliescu won a third term as the country's president. Adrian Năstase became the prime minister of the newly formed government.
In 2004 Traian Băsescu was elected president with an electoral coalition called Justice and Truth Alliance (DA). The government was formed by a larger coalition which also included the Conservative Party and the ethnic Hungarian party.
NATO and European Union membership (2004–present).
Post–Cold War Romania developed closer ties with Western Europe, eventually joining NATO in 2004.
Presidential and parliamentary elections took place again on 28 November 2004. No political party secured a viable parliamentary majority and opposition parties alleged the PSD had committed large-scale electoral fraud. There was no winner in the first round of the presidential elections. The joint PNL-PD candidate Traian Băsescu won the second round on 12 December 2004 with 51% of the vote and became the third post-revolutionary president of Romania.
The PNL leader, Călin Popescu Tăriceanu was assigned the task of building a coalition government without the PSD. In December 2004, the new coalition government (PD, PNL, PUR Romanian Humanist Party—which eventually changed its name to Romanian Conservative Party and UDMR—was sworn in under Prime Minister Tăriceanu.
In June 1993, the country applied for membership in the European Union (EU). It became an Associated State of the EU in 1995, an Acceding Country in 2004, and a full member on 1 January 2007.
Following the free travel agreement and politic of the post–Cold War period, as well as hardship of the life in the post 1990s economic depression, Romania has an increasingly large diaspora. The main emigration targets are Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Canada and the USA.
In April 2008, Bucharest hosted the NATO summit.
In 2009, President Traian Basescu was re-elected for a second five-year term as the President of Romania.
In January 2012, Romania experienced its first national protests since 1989, motivated by the global economical crisis and as an answer to the crisis situations and unrest in Europe of 2000s.
In January 2014, Romania's supreme court sentenced former Prime Minister Adrian Nastase, who held office between 2000 and 2004, to four years in prison for taking bribe.
In 2014, Klaus Iohannis was elected as the President of Romania, and he was re-elected with a landslide victory in 2019.
In December 2020, parliamentary election was won by opposition Social Democrats (PSD). Prime minister Ludovic Orban resigned because of the defeat of his National Liberal Party (PNL). However, Florin Cîțu, a member of the National Liberal Party (PNL), became the new Prime Minister, forming a three party, center-right coalition of the PNL, the USR-PLUS and the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR).
See also.
General:


Jan van Schaffelaar

Jan van Schaffelaar ( 1445 – 1482) was a cavalry officer in the duchy of Guelders (or Gelre), the Netherlands. Born in the region of Barneveld in the Veluwe Quarter about 1445, he was in the military service of David of Burgundy, the Bishop of Utrecht during the region's factional war known as the Hook and Cod Wars. He famously jumped to his death to spare his besieged troops.
Historical significance.
The oldest still existing historical record of Van Schaffelaar's actions can be found in the Utrecht Chronicle ("Utrechse Kroniek") titled "Annales Rerum in Hollandia et Dioceso Ultratrajectina gestarum Ann.MCCCCLXXXI et duobus seqq. auctore incerto sed accurato et aequali eorum temporum" ("Almanac of Holland-Utrecht Occurrences 1481-83, from the pen of an anonymous but trustworthy and contemporary author"), first published by the 17th-century Utrecht historian Antonius Matthaeus III in his series "Veteris aevi analecta" in 1698. According to this chronicle, on July 16, 1482, Cod troops from castle Rosendael near Arnhem under the command of Jan van Schaffelaar got into conflict with Hook troops from billen
Amersfoort and Nijkerk. The troops from Rosendael captured the church and tower of the village of Barneveld, but they were shot at with cannons, killing four or five. After negotiations, their opponents stated that they would accept their surrender only if the defenders would throw their commander from the tower. The men were unwilling to do so, but Van Schaffelaar stated that he would have to die some day and that he did not want to cause his men trouble. Having said this, he put his hands to his sides and jumped off the tower. Despite the great height of the tower he was not immediately killed, but was finished off by his enemies.
Other versions expand on this account by stating that the troops under Van Schaffelaar were promised safe passage from the tower. In some versions, the demand was that Van Schaffelaar be turned in. Van Schaffelaar surprised his opponents by turning himself in to his enemies in such a way that he would not be alive for long.
When the church was restored in 1978, the grave of Jan van Domselaar was opened. It was assumed that in this grave actually were the remains of Jan van Schaffelaar. Inspection of the skull suggested that Van Schaffelaar was shot after his fall, causing a pin from his visor to enter his skull. He died because of internal bleeding caused by his fall or a blow from a weapon. He was initially buried in a mass grave near the tower and later transferred to the family grave of the Hackfort family in the choir of the church (Prins 1981, 1982). Later research made this assumption unlikely. (Janse 2003) It has been a challenge to identify this late 15th-century warrior in contemporary historical documents, but historical anthropologist A.H.J. Prins, who grew up in Barneveld, found the name Van Schaffelaar in a 1476 muster roll in the Archives Nationales in Paris. Recorded in French, this roll identifies Van Schaffelaar as a heavily-armed "francqenet" (knight) in 1476, en route on horseback to Lausanne, Switzerland, ready to command an infantry troop in an army commanded by Charles the Bold, the Duke of Burgundy. But, his large army was defeated by the Duke of Lorraine and a large Swiss army.
Recognition.
Jan van Schaffelaar became a minor Dutch hero. He features in several novels and poems, "De Schaapherder" by and "Hasse Simonsdochter" by Thea Beckman being some of the better known ones.
On September 15, 1903, among great festivities, a statue was erected in his honour near the tower that he jumped from. It was hewn by Bart van Hove after a design by H. ten Ham E. Jzn.
An illustration of this event can be found in the great hall of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Name.
Jan van Schaffelaar is sometimes written as Jan van Schaffelaer or Jan van Scaffelaer (archaic).


Camunni

The Camuni or Camunni were an ancient population located in Val Camonica during the Iron Age (1st millennium BC); the Latin name "Camunni" was attributed to them by the authors of the 1st century. They are also called ancient Camuni, to distinguish them from the current inhabitants of the valley (the "Camuni" or "Camunians"). The Camunni were among the greatest producers of rock art in Europe; their name is linked to the famous rock engravings of Valcamonica.
A people of obscure origin, they lived in a region, the Val Camonica, that had already been the site of a cultural tradition dating back to the early Neolithic. The Camunni are mentioned by classical historiographical sources from the 1st century BC, corresponding to the Iron Age in Val Camonica (from the 12th century BC until about Romanization). In ancient Greek, Strabo referred to them as ("Kamounoi"), while Cassius Dio called them ("Kamounnioi").
Conquered by Rome at the beginning of the 1st century AD, the Camunni were gradually incorporated into the political and social structures of the Roman Empire as a self-governing polity called the "Res Publica Camunnorum". They were granted Roman citizenship from the second half of the 1st century, with a rapid process of Latinization.
History.
The Camunni in classical sources.
The Greek historian Strabo (63/64 BC–ca. 24 AD) described the Camunni as part of the Rhaetian peoples and related to the Celtic Lepontii:

The Roman historian Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD), citing the Origines of Cato the Elder (234–149 BC), spoke instead of the Camunni as one of several tribes of the Euganei:
Contacts with the Etruscans and Celts.
The Etruscans, already widespread in the Po Valley, had contacts with Alpine populations by the 5th century BC. Surviving traces of Etruscan cultural influence are recorded in the aforementioned rock art in over two hundred texts written in the Camunic alphabet, which is a variant of the North Etruscan alphabet. At the beginning of the 7th century BC, the Celtic Gauls arrived in Italy. Coming from Transalpine Gaul, they settled in the Po plain and came in touch with the Camunian population. Some of the petroglyphs in Valcamonica with figures of Celtic deities such as Kernunnos attest this Gaulish presence.
The Roman conquest.
Val Camonica was subjected to Rome during the campaigns of Augustus to conquer Raetia and the Alpine arc, conducted by his generals Nero Claudius Drusus and Tiberius (the future emperor) against the mountain peoples in 16–15 BC. Publius Silius Nerva, governor of Illyricum, was to complete the conquest of the eastern Alpine front, which reached from the valley of Como to Lake Garda (therefore including the Valcamonica), in addition to the Vennoneti of Vinschgau.
The Roman conquest is also mentioned by the Roman historian Cassius Dio writing in Greek:

"The Camunni and Vennoni, Alpine tribes, took up arms against the Romans, but were conquered and subdued by Publius Silius."
This conquest was celebrated in the Trophy of the Alps ("Tropaeum Alpium"), a Roman monument erected in 7–6 BC and located in the French town of La Turbie, whose frontal inscription named the conquered Alpine peoples:
After the Roman conquest, the Camunni were annexed to the nearest cities in a condition of semi-subjection through the practice of "adtributio", which allowed them to maintain their own tribal constitution while the dominant city became the administrative, judicial, and fiscal center. The city that the Camunni were assigned to was probably Brixia. At first they were assigned the status of "peregrinus", and then they obtained Roman citizenship; in the Flavian Age they were assigned to the Quirina tribe, while they maintained a certain self-government; in fact, a "Res Publica Camunnorum" has been recorded.
Romanization proceeded from Civitas Camunnorum (Cividate Camuno), a city founded by the Romans around 23 BC, during the principate of Tiberius. Beginning in the 1st century, the Camunni were included in stable Roman political and social structures, as evidenced by the numerous legionaries, artisans, and even gladiators of Camunian origins in several areas of the Roman Empire. Camunian religion went through the process of interpretatio Romana, forming a syncretic combination with Roman religion.
Religion.
Camunian stone carvings, 70–80% of which date to the Bronze Age, are thought to have held value for celebratory, commemorative, initiatory, and propitiatory rituals. The Sanctuary of Minerva, found at Spinera between Cividate Camuno and Breno in 1986, dates to the Roman period and was finely decorated with mosaics.
The beginning of the Middle Ages coincided with the arrival of the Christian religion among the Camunni. The 4th and 5th centuries witnessed the destruction of the ancient places of worship, with the destruction of statue menhirs in Ossimo and Cemmo and the burning of the Sanctuary of Minerva.
Language.
Surviving traces of the language spoken by the Camunni are scarce and undeciphered. Among the Rock Drawings in Valcamonica there are some inscriptions written in the Camunic language, written in a northern variant of the Etruscan alphabet. There is insufficient knowledge about Camunic to be able to determine whether it belongs to a broader language family.


2005 in Northern Ireland

The following details notable events from the year 2005 in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is a country of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland. Northern Ireland shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west.


Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz

Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz (15 December 1886–1968), code name “Alinka”” or “Alicja”, was a leading figure in Warsaw’s underground resistance movement throughout the years of German occupation during World War II in Poland, co-founder of Żegota. As the well-connected wife of a former ambassador to Washington, she used her contacts with both the military and political leadership of the Polish Underground to materially influence the underground's policy of aiding Poland's Jewish population during the war.
Early on, Krahelska-Filipowicz used her influence to persuade the Government in Exile, including members of the Delegatura and its military counterpart, the AK, of the importance of setting up a central organization to help Poland's Jews, and to back the policy with significant funding.
Krahelska-Filipowicz also personally sheltered Jewish individuals in her own home early during the German occupation. Among the refugees was the widow of the Jewish historian Szymon Aszkenazy.
A Catholic Socialist activist and a devout Democrat, she was the editor of the Polish art magazine "Arkady".
In the pre-World War I partitioned Poland, on 18 August 1906, at the age of twenty she took part in an assassination attempt on the Russian governor-general of Warsaw, Georgi Skalon. She threw three 'dynamite bombs' on the governor's coach; two did explode and slightly injured three persons in governor's entourage. Afterwards, she fled to Cracow in Austrian part of Poland, entered into fictional marriage with painter Adam Dobrodzicki and became citizen of Austria-Hungary. Austria refused to extradite her to Russia and instead arranged a trial in Wadowice, starting on 16 February 1908. Wanda Dobrodzicka had confessed but was acquitted.


Mad Jack Hall

 'Mad' Jack Hall (John Hall; also known as Crazy Jack Hall) (1672 – 13 July 1716) was a Scottish Jacobite leader and property owner and a Justice of Peace in Northumberland. He was a member of Clan Hall, a Scottish clan of Norman descent and owned the Otterburn Tower in Redesdale, Northumberland; his initials are still carved over a doorway today.
Early life and background.
He was born John Hall, probably at Otterburn Tower, in 1672. His father, John Hall, was born 1624 and died 1692. John "Mad Jack" Hall's wife was Alderman Hutchison's daughter, Mary. They were married in Newcastle. Marriage Bond found dated 1701 Nov 4, Longbenton Parish. Hall had served many years as a Justice of Peace in Northumberland.
Rebellion and execution.
He was a major figure during the Jacobite rising of 1715.
He was taken into captivity in Preston and was reportedly reprieved at least five times before being executed. While awaiting trial in prison, Hall remarked to a fellow prisoner "Our fathers gained land in Cromwell's time as sequestrators of rebels, now we are going to lose them for being rebels." He was beheaded at Tyburn for high treason on 13 July 1716.
He was described as a "violent, passionate and indiscreet man" but who was highly generous and beloved by his men.
It was his fiery and energetic temper which procured him the name of "Mad Jack Hall of Otterburn".


Galymbek Zhumatov

Galymbek Zhumatov (, "Ғалымбек Сағымбайұлы Жұматов"; born 15 October 1952 in Ulguli, Kazakhstan) is a Kazakh writer, poet, member of the Union of Writers of Kazakhstan, and the founder of the newspaper Shahar.
Life.
Galymbek Zhumatov born in the family of a veteran of the Second World War. His father Sagymbai Zhumatov participated in the Battle of Stalingrad and was seriously injured. After high school, he was served in the Soviet Army. Service was held in Lviv. After serving in the Army Zhumatov arrives at the Faculty of Journalism in the Kazakh State University. After graduation, he began working in the regional newspaper "Kyzyl tu" (now Saryarka samaly), first as a correspondent, then deputy editor. Between 1991 and 1995, correspondent of the republican newspaper "Halyk kenesi." In 2007 Galymbek Zhumatov founded the first in the Pavlodar Region the commercial newspaper in the state language "Shaһar." Zhumatov now is the chief editor of the literary magazine "Nayzatas."
Work.
Writing style.
Galymbek Zhumatov began literary career as children's writer. His first book "Трактор қалай жасалады?" ("How tractor built?") tells about the story of a boy who found himself on the Pavlodar tractor plant. This book was published in 1984. Two years later, in 1986, he published a book "Ала көжек" ("The Motley Rabbit"), which the author brings fame. In addition to prose works Zhumatov writes poetry. In 2005 he released a collection of songs "Жеңіс жалауын желбіреткен" (Jeńis jalaýyn jelbiretken) about the collection of World War II veterans.


James Dougherty (civil servant)

Sir James Brown Dougherty, (13 November 1844 – 3 January 1934) was an Irish clergyman, academic, civil servant and politician.
Dougherty was born in Garvagh, County Londonderry, Ireland, to Archibald Dougherty, Esq., M.R.C.S., a surgeon, and Martha Dougherty (née Brown) of Garvagh. He was educated at Queen's College, Belfast, and at Queen's University, Belfast (B.A. 1864 & M.A., 1865).
In 1880, he married Mary Dougherty (née Donaldson) (d.1887), of The Park, Nottingham, with whom he had a son, John Gerald Dougherty (b. 1883). In 1888, he married Elizabeth Dougherty (née Todd), of Oaklands, Rathgar, County Dublin.
Ordained a Presbyterian minister, he was Professor of Logic and English at then-Presbyterian Magee College, Londonderry from 1879 to 1895. He served as Assistant Commissioner on the Educational Endowments Commission of Ireland (1885–92) and was Commissioner of Education from 1890 to 1895. He became Professor of Logic and English at Magee College in Londonderry in 1879, holding the post until 1895. In 1895, he was appointed Assistant Under-Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland (Lord Houghton) and became Under-Secretary for Ireland in 1908. He was appointed Clerk to H.M.'s Privy Council, and Deputy Keeper of the Privy Seal in 1895. He became a Liberal MP for Londonderry City from 1914–18, succeeding fellow Liberal David Cleghorn Hogg. He was succeeded by Eoin MacNeill of Sinn Féin in the 1918 general election.
Honours.
Dougherty was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (Civil Division) (CB) in the 1900 Birthday Honours list. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 1902 Coronation Honours list published on 26 June 1902, and was knighted by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Earl Cadogan, at Dublin Castle on 11 August 1902. He was appointed a Companion of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO) in 1903; advanced to a Knight Commander of the Bath (Civil Division) (KCB) in 1910; and promoted to a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) in 1911.


Tricornium


Order of the Red Eagle

The Order of the Red Eagle () was an order of chivalry of the Kingdom of Prussia. It was awarded to both military personnel and civilians, to recognize valor in combat, excellence in military leadership, long and faithful service to the kingdom, or other achievements. As with most German (and most other European) orders, the Order of the Red Eagle could only be awarded to commissioned officers or civilians of approximately equivalent status. However, there was a medal of the order, which could be awarded to non-commissioned officers and enlisted men, lower ranking civil servants and other civilians.
History.
The predecessor to the Order of the Red Eagle was founded on November 17, 1705, by the Margrave Georg Wilhelm of Brandenburg-Bayreuth as the "Ordre de la Sincerité". This soon fell into disuse but was revived in 1712 in Brandenburg-Bayreuth and again in 1734 in Brandenburg-Ansbach, where it first received the name of "Order of the Brandenburg Red Eagle". The statutes were changed in 1777 and the order named therein as the "Order of the Red Eagle". The order was conferred in one class, limited to fifty knights.
The Kingdom of Prussia absorbed both Brandenburg-Bayreuth and Brandenburg-Ansbach in January 1792, and on June 12, 1792, King Frederick William II again revived the order as a Prussian royal order. After the Order of the Black Eagle, the Order of the Red Eagle was the second highest order of the kingdom in order of precedence.
In 1810, King Frederick William III revised the statutes of the order, expanding it into three classes. In 1830, a breast star was authorized for the Second Class and the First Class General Honor Decoration became the Fourth Class of the order. The statutes were further revised in 1861, and a Grand Cross was established as the highest class of the order. By change to the statutes of the Order of the Black Eagle, every member of that order was automatically invested with the new Grand Cross of the Order of the Red Eagle, as well as with the Order of the Prussian Crown. By 1918, an affiliated soldier's medal had been made available to commoners and enlisted men.
Following the Kaiser's abdication at the close of the First World War, a new German constitution was signed into law on August 11, 1919, effectively putting a legal end to the monarchy. All orders and decorations formally conferred by the monarchy ceased to exist, but recipients of the Order of the Red Eagle continued to wear it with their other decorations during the eras of the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and the restored republic.
Classes.
By the time of World War I, the order had evolved into six classes:
Within these six classes, however, were a bewildering array of variations. Among these were:
There were also a set of special versions, the Stars 1st through 4th Class, for non-Christians.
Insignia.
The badge of the order for the Grand Cross was a gold (gilt after 1916) Maltese Cross enameled in white, with red enameled eagles between the arms of the cross; the gold central disc bore the Royal monogram, surrounded by a blue enameled ring bearing the motto of the Order, "Sincere et Constanter".
The badge for the 1st to 3rd classes was a gold (gilt after 1916) cross pattée, enameled in white; that for the 4th class was similar but with smooth, plain silver arms. After 1879 the silver arms of the 4th class cross were pebbled in texture and appearance. The central disc bore the red eagle on a white enamel background on the obverse, with the royal cipher of King Friedrich Wilhelm surmounted by the Prussian crown on the reverse. The enlisted man's medal was of a relatively simple, round design, topped with the Prussian crown, with a depiction of the regular badge in the center of the medal on the obverse, with the royal cipher of the reigning monarch on the reverse.
The breast star of the order was (for the Grand Cross) a golden eight-pointed star, (for 1st Class) a silver eight-pointed star, or (for 2nd Class) a silver four-pointed star with a white enameled cross pattée, all with straight rays. The central disc bore the red eagle on a white enamel background, surrounded by a ring (enameled blue for Grand Cross, white for the others) bearing the motto of the Order, "Sincere et Constanter".
After September 16, 1848, awards of all classes (except the medal) bestowed for military merit had two golden swords crossed through the central medallion.
The traditional ribbon of the order was white with two orange stripes at the edges, but combat awards were frequently conferred with a black and white ribbon similar to that of the Iron Cross. Numerous variations of the ribbon existed, depending on the nature of the specific award.
Recipients.
What follows are some additional details on a fair cross section of individuals who were known to be conferred with the order in its several classes, in order of precedence. The Order of the Red Eagle was conferred frequently upon foreign nationals, both royal and non-royal, to honor their individual position or work and to further the diplomatic relations with their respective nations, in much the same way that the Order of the Bath is still conferred by the British monarchy.
Grand Cross (1861–1918).
German / Prussian
Foreign
Knights 1st Class (1705–1918).
German
Foreign
Knights 2nd Class (1810–1918).
German
Foreign


James Coigly

Father James Coigly (1761 – 7 June 1798) was a Roman Catholic priest in Ireland active in the republican movement against the British Crown and the kingdom's Protestant Ascendancy. He served the Society of United Irishmen as a mediator in the sectarian Armagh Disturbances and an envoy both to the government of the French Republic and to radical circles in England with whom he sought to coordinate an insurrection. In June 1798 he was executed in England for treason having been detained as he was about to embark on a return mission to Paris.
Education: Dundalk and Paris.
James Coigly (sometimes rendered Quigley or "O'Coigly") was born 1761 into a small farming/weaving family Kilmore, County Armagh in the Kingdom of Ireland. During his formative years the Penal Laws, which had systematically excluded the Ireland's Roman Catholic majority from land ownership, the professions and public office, were by stages relaxed. Catholic families of at least middling income could aspire to educating their sons. Coigly was sent to Dundalk Grammar School for classical studies. Despite this being a Protestant school he acquired a religious vocation.
After Dundalk Coigly entered the priesthood in the archdiocese of Armagh. In January 1785 he was ordained by the Coadjutor Bishop of Armagh Richard O'Reilly. In the absence of a seminary in Ireland, he was sent for further studies, to the Collège des Lombards (the Irish College) in Paris where Irish students, bound for careers not only in the Church but also in law, medicine, or in service with the Irish Brigade in the French army were taught.
Discounting a report hat he had been involved in the Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 along with fellow student James Blackwell, Coigly has been described as "no friend of the revolution". He stayed in Paris until 12 October 1789, by which time Louis XVI had been brought back from Versailles by the women of Paris and clerical members had been hounded from National Assembly. Coigly himself narrowly escaped "lanternisation" (being hung from a street lantern) by a mob who took his clerical garb as a token of royalist sympathies. But already at the College Coigly had already demonstrated what the historian of the diocese of Down and Conor recorded as the "systematic insubordination" that was the "forerunner of his sad and subsequent career, which terminated on the scaffold". Coigly took the unprecedented step of initiating legal proceedings against the college to secure a scholarship, and then followed this up with an appeal to restore to students the right to elect their superiors.
"Uniting business" in Armagh.
In Ireland the French Revolution had revived the Volunteer movement in Presbyterian Belfast and its hinterlands and emboldened the Catholic Committee in Dublin. As government made clear the limits for potential reform, more radical elements in the two centres formed themselves as the United Irishmen. Drawing on the growing discontents of tenant farmers, market-town traders, journeymen and weavers, United Irish "societies" multiplied rapidly across Ulster and the Irish midlands.
In 1791 Coigly returned to the Armagh diocese (where he held a curacy in Dundalk, 1793–6) to find "the inhabitants of . . . County Armagh engaged in a civil war, and religion made the pretext".--the Armagh disturbances. Armagh had been the premier volunteering county in Ireland, but in contrast to Belfast and the surrounding Presbyterian-majority districts of Down and Antrim, it was a sectarian borderland with comparatively large English-descendant Established Church population. Lord Charlemont Volunteers refused to admit Catholics, and collaborated with the Peep o' Day Boys who, on the pretext of searching for illegally held arms, invaded and destroyed Catholic homes. (Coigly's family home, itself, was ransacked and his father was pressed at gunpoint to recant his religion). In celebrations following the defeat of Catholic "Defenders" in the Battle of the Diamond, the combination of local vigilantism and gentry patronage led to the formation in 1795 of the Orange Order.
Pursuing a "union of power among Irishmen of every religious persuasion", the United Irish societies reached out to the Defenders. They were able to offer practical assistance: legal counsel, aid and refuge. Displaced families were sheltered on Presbyterian farms in Down and Antrim, and the goodwill earned used to open the Defenders to trusted republicans. There was "little doubt" that Coigly’s efforts to protect, and seek out support for, his parishioners "merged into the 'uniting business’ of Theobald Wolfe Tone, Samuel Neilson, and John Keogh" in the neighbouring centres of sectarian conflict in south Down. The first biographer of the United Irishmen, R.R. Madden, believes that it was Coigly who introduced the Defenders of County Louth to the Dublin United Irish leader Napper Tandy.
By January 1797 Coigly is said to have been a member of the United Irishmen's Ulster Council, having been sworn into the movement at the house of Valentine Lawless in Dublin. His profile within the United Irish movement increased following a series of arrests in the Autumn of 1796, including of Charles Teeling who had been securing command over the Down, Antrim and Armagh Defenders, and by his association with Lord Edward Fitzgerald and others impatient with the incumbent leadership. In February 1797, the informer Leonard MacNally reported on Coigly’s "political mission at Dundalk and Armagh’"; he had met with Richard McCormick (United Irishman and Catholic Committee activist) and other leading radicals, and had also made visits to the state prisoners at Kilmainham.
Coigly played a leading role in what proved to be the United Irishmen's last test of constitutional means: campaigns to return Lord Edward Fitzgerald from Down and Arthur O’Connor from Antrim in the 1797 parliamentary elections. Coigly made himself "as active as possible" and is suspected of having been the author of the campaign pamphlet, "A view of the present state of Ireland" (sometimes attributed to Arthur O'Connor). Jemmy Hope declared that it "contained more truth than all the volumes I have seen written on the events of 1797 and 1798".
Envoy to England and France.
In his "Life", Coigly attributed his decision to leave Ireland in June 1797 to the persecution of his enemies. But divisions sharpened by the failure of the French under General Lazare Hoche to effect a landing at Bantry Bay in December 1796 and by the ruthlessness of government counter-measures may have played a role. While the dominant view in the leadership was that a resort to arms had to await a further French attempt, Coigly "took the radical view of O’Connor, Fitzgerald and Neilson, that independent action was essential".
Coigly, however, took the opportunity of exile to form the alliances that would reassure the more hesitant leaders in Ireland and advance the call for a general insurrection. He had been to Paris in 1796 and on that occasion had carried an address from the "Secret Committee of England" to the French Directory. Coigly radicalism was closer to egalitarianism of the Defenders than to the liberal constitutionalism of many the leading United Irishmen. He found that it resonated with the distressed textile workers of Lancashire as it had with artisans, journeymen and their apprentices in Belfast and Dublin.
In Manchester Coigly, describing himself as an emissary of the United Irish executive and carried copies of an address that encouraged the assassination of "the petty tyrants of Manchester … and the rest would fear as they did in Ireland". He made contact with James Dixon, a cotton spinner from Belfast, who had been instrumental in converting the Manchester Corresponding Society into the republican United Englishmen bound by a test that promised to "Remove the diadem and take off the crown ... [and to] exalt him that is low and abuse him that is high". Together they helped to spread of the United system to Stockport, Bolton, Warrington and Birmingham, while further north, contact was made with the United Scotsmen.
From Manchester, Coigly travelled on to London where he conferred with those Irishmen who had hastened the radicalisation of the London Corresponding Society. Among them were Colonel Edward Despard (who was to be executed for high treason in 1803), brothers Benjamin and John Binns, Valentine Brown, Roger O'Connor, Alexander Galloway (president of the LCS in 1797), Jone Bone (secretary in 1797) and Thomas Evans (secretary in 1798). Resolved "to overthrow the present Government, and to join the French as soon as they made a landing in England", they financed Coigly's onward journey to France.
In Paris, to which he travelled with Arthur MacMahon, a Presbyterian minister from Holywood, Coigly had an audience with Talleyrand. But he felt himself insufficiently supported by Edward Lewins who, seconded by Wolfe Tone, was recognised as the official United Irish delegate in the French capital. Lewins position had been challenged by the arrival from the United States in June 1797 of the more impatient Napper Tandy, as was weakened by the sudden death, in September, General Hoche their key ally in the French leadership. Siding with Tandy, Coigly resolved to secure in Dublin Lewins’s replacement. In December 1797 Coigly crossed to London via Hamburg where he stayed some days with Samuel Turner of Newry, the United Irish representative in the city. Turner was a British informer so that on his arrival in England, Coigly's every move was monitored by Bow Street Runners.
On 3 January 1798 at Furnival's Inn, Holborn, Coigly met with united delegates from London, Scotland and the regions. Styling themselves national committee of the United Britons they voted a solidarity with the United Irishmen, an address that Coigly and Benjamin Binns carried to Dublin. It was widely circulated among the United Irish and encouraged their military preparations. Lord Edward Fitzgerald granted Coigly a commission to replace Lewins in Paris with Arthur O’Connor. Coigly returned to London in the first week of February. He met with the north of England radicals en route, informing them that this would be his last visit; if he returned it would be to see the Tree of Liberty planted in Manchester.
Arrest, trial and execution.
On 28 February 1798 Coigly was apprehended in a party with O'Connor, Benjamin Binns, and two others as they were about to embark from Margate on a return Channel crossing to France.
Brought before the Privy Council, Coigly denied under questioning from William Pitt ever being a member of the Corresponding Society, the Whig Club or "any other of the political societies" in England or to have ever attended their meetings. The arrests and the appearance of the prisoners before the Privy Council caused great excitement and occasioned, on grounds of conspiracy with France, the arrest, in a raid on Oliver Bond's house in Dublin, of almost the entire Leinster directory of the United Irishmen, and a round up of English radicals extending to Manchester, Leicester and Birmingham.
O'Connor impressed the jurors with an appearance on his behalf by Charles James Fox, while mounting a defence in which he was reprimanded by the judge for prejudicing the case of the other defendants. In Coigly's coat pocket had been found what proved to be the only admissible evidence of treason, an address from "The Secret Committee of England’" to the Directory of France. While its suggestion of a mass movement primed to welcome Napoleon, the "hero of Italy", was scarcely credible, it was proof that Coigly intent was to invite and encourage a French invasion. Coigly refused the offer of his life in return for implicating O’Connor and Binns.
In response to Coigly's request for last sacraments, his jailers delivered a loyalist priest (a "Castle-Catholic") who refused rites unless Coigly revealed to him the names of those the authorities still hoped to implicate in his conspiracy. Father Coigly would not talk and without final absolution Coigly was hanged at Penenden Heath, Maidstone on 7 June 1798. As he had in his trial, from the scaffold he deined being "a member of any political society in Great Britain". His crime, he declared, was to "taught the people that no man can serve his God by persecuting other for religious opinions" and to have been "very active in procuring a long address to the king, to put an end to a calamitous and destructive war".
On receiving the news of Coigly’s execution, Tone, wrote in his diary: "If I ever reach Ireland I will be the first to propose a monument to his memory". Yet Coigly was written out of the general narrative history of 1798. For the centenary of the rebellion pilgrimages were organised to Maidstone and addressed by member of the Irish Parliamentary Party, but the events attracted little attention.