Capital of The United Principalities
The Paris treaty called for the creation of ad hoc Divans in Moldavia and Wallachia, the first venue for the advocacy of a union between the two countries. Bucharest returned only delegates from the unionist Partida Naţională to the new forums, but the overall majority in Wallachia was constituted of anti-unionists conservatives; on January 22, 1859, Partida Naţională members decided to vote for the Moldavian candidate for Prince, colonel Alexandru Ioan Cuza, who had already been elected in Iaşi - their vote was carried on January 24, after street pressure forced the other delegates to change their vote, leading to the eventual creation of the United Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, a state with Bucharest as its capital and seat of its Parliament. Cuza, who ruled as Domnitor, paved the Bucharest streets with a better class of cobblestone, established gymnasia and several academic societies (including the University of Bucharest), and ordered the building of a railway between the capital and the Danube port of Giurgiu together with several metallurgical plants in the Ilfov County area; during his day, brick and stone lodgings became the norm.
On February 22, 1866, the city witnessed the coup against Domnitor Cuza, carried out by a coalition of Liberals and Conservatives disenchanted with the attempted land reform and the increasingly authoritarian regime - they occupied the ruler's residence and arrested Cuza and his mistress Marija Obrenović, instating a Regency.
The largely Francophile population of Bucharest came close to causing the fall of Carol I, Cuza's successor, during the Franco-Prussian War, after a clash with the German residents of Bucharest in March 1871 - it was averted by the nomination of the Conservative Lascăr Catargiu as premier; the welcoming of Russian intervention by Bucharesters at the start of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 contributed to the Ottoman decision to bombard the left bank of the Danube, as Romania's independence was being proclaimed by Parliament.
Read more about this topic: History Of Bucharest
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