History of The Flags of Romania - Flags of The United Principalities

Flags of The United Principalities

On 6 February 1859, on his first journey to Bucharest since being elected domnitor of Wallachia, Alexandru Ioan Cuza was greeted at the edge of the city of Buzău by the commander of the dorobanţi, who was carrying a tricolor flag. The sight deeply moved Cuza.

Until 1861 the old flags of Moldavia and Wallachia were used alongside the tricolor. On 22 June of that year, Cuza decreed the tricolor as the United Principalities’ official civil flag.

The flag was the red-yellow-blue Romanian tricolor, with horizontal stripes. Neither the order of stripes nor the proportion of the civil flag are known. This is first described in Almanahul român din 1866: “the tricolor flag, divided in three stripes, red, yellow and blue and laid out horizontally: red above, blue below and yellow in the middle”. Some sources suggest that the top stripe was blue until 1862 (as in the revolutionary Wallachian tricolor of 1848), replaced that year by red. An approximate ratio of 1:3 has been suggested, although the princely and army flags, both preserved, had a 2:3 proportion. As for symbolism, P. V. Năsturel asserts that “from 1859 to 1866 it represented just what it had done in 1848: liberty, justice, fraternity".

The flag gained a degree of international recognition. Relating prince Cuza’s May–June 1864 journey to Constantinople, doctor Carol Davila observed: “The Romanian flag was raised on the great mast, the Sultan’s kayaks awaited us, the guard was armed, the Grand Vizier at the door... The Prince, quiet, dignified, concise in his speech, spent 20 minutes with the Sultan, who then came to review us... Once again, the Grand Vizier led the Prince to the main gate and we returned to the Europe Palace, the Romanian flag still fluttering on the mast...”