page_title: Moldavian Revolution of 1848
section_title: Iaşi
hierarchical_section_title: Moldavian Revolution of 1848 / Course of events / Iaşi
caption_attribution_description: English: Communist-era plaque in Iaşi, Romania, marking the site of the Petersburg Hotel, where the proclamation of the 1848 revolution was drawn up on 27 March/8 April that year. Translated into English, the inscription reads: "On this site, where the Petersburg Hotel stood, the popular assembly of the Moldavian revolutionaries took place on 27 March/8 April. This signalled the start of the 1848 bourgeois-democratic revolution in the Romanian principalities." This is a photo of a historic monument in județul Iași, classified with number IS-III-m-B-04316
context_page_description: The Moldavian Revolution of 1848 is the name used for the unsuccessful Romanian liberal and Romantic nationalist movement inspired by the Revolutions of 1848 in the principality of Moldavia. Initially seeking accommodation within the political framework defined by the Regulamentul Organic, it eventually rejected it as imposed by foreign powers and called for more thorough political reforms. Led by a group of young intellectuals, the movement was mostly limited to petitioning and constitutional projects, unlike the successful uprising taking place later that year in neighbouring Wallachia, and it was quickly suppressed. This was despite the fact that the Moldavian revolutionaries were more moderate and willing to compromise in their demands for reforms than their Wallachian counterparts, as Moldavian political and social life continued to be dominated by a landed, conservative aristocracy, with the middle class still embryonic.
context_section_description: Moldavian revolutionaries arrived in Iaşi after violence had broken out in Wallachia. On 8 April 1848, a few great boyars opposed to Sturdza, younger liberal boyars, and representatives of the middle class and other urban classes, perhaps a thousand in all, met in the Hotel Petersburg to decide on a course of action. This meeting was the culmination of several weeks of small private gatherings and several public manifestos denouncing despotism, all occasioned by news of the events in Paris, Vienna and Berlin. Moderates prevailed, persuading the gathering to support a petition to the prince setting forth all their grievances and proposing suitable reforms. They also agreed to dissolve their assembly and all other associations right after delivering the petition. Such caution seems principally to have been inspired by fear that the urban lower classes and peasantry would push the protest movement to extremes.
  A committee chaired by the poet Vasile Alecsandri drew up Petiţia-proclamaţie ("The Petition-Proclamation") addressed to the general population and to the prince. Their overall objective was to install a moderate liberal political regime and to stimulate economic development. Strict adherence to the law by officials as well as citizens was set down as a basic principle of government—unmistakably a reference to the corruption and arbitrariness of Sturdza's authoritarian regime. Rules were then outlined for electing a new, more representative assembly with increased powers, including the right to make proposals to the prince on all matters affecting the general welfare and to examine all government ordinances concerning public affairs and judicial administration before they were put into effect. They urged the creation of a national bank "to facilitate commerce" and the abolition of all tariffs "harmful to agriculture and commerce", also making a general plea for an improvement in peasants' relations with landlords and the state. While committed to reform and good institutions, they did not intend to overturn the country's existing political and social structures.
  Sturdza received the petition-proclamation on 9 April and agreed to 33 of its 35 points, rejecting those that concerned dissolution of the general assembly and the formation of a national guard, also, it appears, objecting to the abolition of censorship. To his surprise, the movement leaders demanded acceptance of the entire petition. Sturdza withdrew to the army barracks and that evening took steps to crush the opposition. Several people were killed in brief fighting, and some 300 were arrested. Among those who fled, either to Transylvania or Bukovina, were Alecsandri and the young officer Alexandru Ioan Cuza, who would come to rule the United Principalities in the 1860s. Sturdza, now bent on permanently halting all dissent, made anyone even suspected of opposition subject to arrest, imposed strict censorship, and had students returning from France stopped at the border and interrogated before being allowed to proceed.
  The Moldavian movement and its Wallachian counterpart alarmed Russia, which in late March had warned Sturdza and Prince Gheorghe Bibescu that armies would be sent across the Prut if changes were pondered in the Organic Statute system. The threat emboldened Sturdza to resist the liberals' demands. In April, after the Iaşi petitioners were scattered, Tsar Nicholas sent an aide, General Alexander Duhamel, to investigate the situation; in Iaşi he urged the prince to make a few modest concessions to defuse the situation, but the latter rejected any move toward "liberalism".
caption: Communist-era plaque marking the site of the Petersburg Hotel, where an assembly on 8 April met and drew up a petition for Prince Mihail Sturdza.
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