Diplomatic efforts Thus Cuza achieved a
de facto union of the two principalities. The Powers backtracked, with
Napoleon III of France remaining supportive, while the
Austrian ministry withheld approval of such a union at the
Congress of Paris (18 October 1858); partly as a consequence, Cuza's authority was not recognized by his nominal
suzerain,
Abdülaziz, the
Sultan of the
Ottoman Empire, until 23 December 1861. Cuza's double election in Moldavia and WallachiaAssisted by his councilor
Mihail Kogălniceanu, an intellectual leader of the 1848 revolution, Cuza initiated a series of reforms that contributed to the modernization of Romanian society and of state structures. His first measure addressed a need for increasing the land resources and revenues available to the state, by
nationalizing monastic estates in 1863. Probably more than a quarter of Romania's farmland was controlled by untaxed
Eastern Orthodox "
Dedicated monasteries", which supported Greek and other foreign monks in shrines such as
Mount Athos and Jerusalem, presenting a substantial drain on state revenues. Cuza got his parliament's backing to expropriate these lands. During the secularization of the Antiochian
Metochion in Bucharest, Cuza exiled its proistamenos the Metropolitan Ioannikios of Palmyra and arrested its hegumen Seraphim, later Metropolitan of Irenopolis in Isauria. He offered compensation to the
Greek Orthodox Church, but
Sophronius III, the
Patriarch of Constantinople, refused to negotiate; after several years, the Romanian government withdrew its offer and no compensation was ever paid. State revenues thereby increased without adding any domestic tax burden. The
land reform, liberating peasants from the last
corvées, freeing their movements and redistributing some land (1864), was less successful. He consequently governed the country under the provisions of
Statutul dezvoltător al Convenției de la Paris ("Statute expanding the Paris Convention"), an
organic law adopted on 15 July 1864. With his new plenary powers, Cuza then promulgated the Agrarian Law of 1863. Peasants received title to the land they worked, while landlords retained ownership of one third. Where there was not enough land available to create workable farms under this formula, state lands (from the confiscated monasteries) would be used to give the landowners compensation. Despite the attempts by
Lascăr Catargiu's cabinet to force a transition in which some corvées were to be maintained, Cuza's reform marked the disappearance of the boyar class as a privileged group, and led to a channeling of energies into
capitalism and
industrialization; at the same time, however, land distributed was still below necessities, and the problem became stringent over the following decades – as peasants reduced to destitution sold off their land or found that it was insufficient for the needs of their growing families. Cuza's reforms also included the adoption of the Criminal Code and the Civil Code based on the
Napoleonic Code (1864), a Law on Education, establishing tuition-free, compulsory public education for primary schools (1864; the system, nonetheless, suffered from drastic shortages in allocated funds; illiteracy was eradicated about 100 years later, during the communist regime). He founded the
University of Iași (1860) and the University of Bucharest (1864), and helped develop a modern, European-style Romanian Army, under a working relationship with France. He is the founder of the Romanian Naval Forces. ==Downfall and exile==