Beginnings Born in Mușătești, his father Ion "Niță" Dobrescu was a
Romanian Orthodox priest. Constantin was the eldest of eight children born to him and Maria Popescu, "a woman famed for her beauty and familial decency". All other seven children were daughters. One of them, Paraschiva, later married Alexandru Valescu, who was Constantin's political disciple and long-time collaborator; another daughter married P. T. Rădulescu, also noted a schoolteacher and activist. Constantin's ancestors included
Pitar Nicolae Popescu, who had fought in the
Wallachian uprising of 1821, becoming secretary to its leader,
Tudor Vladimirescu; Vladimirescu would serve as an inspiration to Dobrescu in his own efforts of social improvement. Nicolae Popescu's brother, known as "Popa Dincă", had established the school in Mușătești, which was used as a rallying spot for the local peasants during the
June 1848 Revolution. Constantin's maternal grandfather, Toma Popescu, also credited as an influence on the young Dobrescu, had participated in the upheaval and had gone into hiding upon its defeat. Dobrescu, who became fluent in French, was widely read in matters of
political economy, having studied
Montesquieu,
Jules Michelet,
François Guizot,
Adolphe Thiers, and
Le Play. He was additionally much inspired by the political articles of
Mihai Eminescu, which he read out to, and put into more accessible language for, his peasant constituents. After attending Popa Dincă's school, where he used dirt and his own fingers as writing utensils, Dobrescu continued his education at
Curtea de Argeș and
Pitești. He studied at the Orthodox theological seminary in the former town, one of several peasant inductees. A distinguished learner, he also dedicated some of his time there to the study of
Romanian folklore, taking notes on the songs and dances performed by less intellectual colleagues. Made confident by his parents' material and spiritual support, Constantin opted not to join the clergy—though he was persuaded to remain with them in Mușătești, it was as a schoolteacher. He sanitized and enlarged the school, while also adopting new teaching methods that were inspired by readings from
Herbert Spencer,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and
Pestalozzi. As a result of his efforts, the
Education Ministry opened up two more teaching positions in his village. Each year in August, Dobrescu gave lectures to other teachers and acquired notoriety as an educationist. In 1876, he sheltered and tutored seminary pupils who had been expelled for reporting on bribery at that institution. His success in this endeavor became apparent when all of his trainees passed their state examination and found steady employment. During this period, Dobrescu also became interested in the cause of peasant representation, militating against the
weighted suffrage established under the
Constitution of 1866, and implicitly against the
two-party system that it favored. As he put it, the peasant could have "an active part, of the uttermost importance". He challenged the political establishment by noting that peasant representation had steadily declined, from 36 deputies in the
ad-hoc Divans to 33 in the "
United Principalities" era, and then to none in the
Assembly of Deputies. As noted by the agrarianist writer
Ilariu Dobridor, Dobrescu was the second person in Romanian history, after
Ion Ionescu de la Brad, to have championed peasantism as a political, not merely "philanthropic", effort. Also according to Dobridor, Dobrescu's first attempts to set up an agrarian movement brought him into contact with left-wing figures such as
Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești and
Constantin Mille—both disappointed him. Social historian Mircea Vrânceanu sees the
legislative election of 1878 as Dobrescu's political debut. Able to converse in both the
rustic dialect and the emerging
literary language, he was called by one the candidates to "translate the purpose of elections" for the peasant caucus in Pitești. and was asked by those present to be their candidate; he had to decline, as he was not yet qualified under the law. At that stage, Argeș was becoming an electoral fief of the
National Liberal Party, whose leader
Ion Brătianu owned estates in
Ștefănești. Possibly acting on Brătianu's orders,
Nicolae Dimancea, known as the county's "
Pasha", tried to coax Dobrescu into joining their party; his offer was rejected. According to records kept by educationist
Stanciu Stoian, Dobrescu's first office was as a county councilor for Argeș, elected despite having only just reached the voting age. He put himself up as a candidate in the
repeat election of 1879, winning an Assembly seat for the Fourth College in Argeș. However, the electoral law specified that he had to be aged 25 to qualify, and so his mandate was invalidated. The elections did produce one peasant deputy,
Dincă Schileru (Schileriu), who affiliated with the
Radical Party of
C. A. Rosetti and
George Panu. He served almost continuously
to 1911. Dobrescu's other work was focused on cultural activism, for the goal of creating and popularizing "rural dramas, rural comedies, rural poetry, [...] our own philosophy, our own arts, purpose, traditions and our own sort of civilization". In order to facilitate the peasantry's access to education and the amenities of modern life, Dobrescu also advocated for the establishment of free libraries (the first of which were set up in 1878–1879 in Mușătești and
Poenărei), which stages plays that he had written himself. This was followed in 1884 by the country's first
cooperative, set up at
Domnești under the name of
Frăția ("Brotherhood")—although Mușătești remained the hub for the
cooperative movement for the next two decades.
Committees In order to better organize for his struggle, in 1881 Dobrescu founded at Mușătești a Peasants' Committee, a political network that brought together activists from Argeș and
Gorj, later expanded into other regions of
Muntenia and
Oltenia. Its co-leaders were Schileru and Mucenic Dinescu, and its first congress was held at
Corbeni in August 1882. The previous month, Dobrescu and Schilleru had dined together in
Bâlteni, where Dobrescu first outlined the idea of a "peasant party", which would have been focused on preserving the peasantry's constitutional rights; his program in this respect greatly enraged the political establishment, including the National Liberals, who favored expanding the urban middle classes, and the
Conservative Party, focused on preserving landowner privileges. During the early 1880s, Dobrescu was also considering
corporatism, with each social group electing representatives exclusively from its own ranks—knowing that peasants had secured a permanent numerical advantage. Historian Ioan Scurtu notes that the Corbeni gathering had over 400 people in attendance, but also that these were "well-off peasants", or
chiaburi. Aware that the authorities would eventually intervene to ban such gatherings, Dobrescu and other delegates attempted to quickly rouse the peasants of
Muscel County, riding into
Nămăești and announcing a second congress to be held in that village. By some accounts, the meeting was broken up by police, who asked that all Argeș envoys be sent back to their homes. Journalist Luca Paul suggests instead that the Nămăești rally was held "in broad daylight", indifferent to any threats made by the authorities. An ardent
nationalist and "
irredentist", Dobrescu also supported the clandestine activities of Romanians in
Transylvania and other parts of
Austria-Hungary. With these, he earned more attention from Brătianu, who was serving as
Prime Minister of Romania; against the irredentist agenda, he wished to preserve good relations with the Austrian establishment and expected civil peace in his constituency. Dobrescu was secretly investigated by a Captain Vinieru, who reported from
Sălătrucu that Dobrescu was coordinating illegal activities over the frontier, and had himself traveled to the area around
Rothenturm for unknown purposes. The Vinieru episode came shortly after the democratization reforms initiated by Brătianu, which had increased representation for the middle classes, rural ones included, and merged the lower two electoral colleges into a Third. Such enfranchisement came with its own limitations: some 98% of the electorate could only vote for Assembly with
indirect suffrage, the rest being excluded from this by wealth and literacy requirements; some 41% of the deputies elected under these new laws represented rural constituencies, but most of them were not land-working peasants. By Dobrescu's own calculations, there was still a 1:20,000 ratio of representation in the new college, whereas the upper two had 1:180 and 1:421, respectively. Despite being constantly harassed with the authorities, the Committees sent four deputies to the Assembly in the
general election of 1883—one of them for Argeș. He was again invalidated, since, as a teacher, he had a
conflict of interest. He ran again in by-elections of 1885, though by then the Committees had disbanded. Although he had suspended his work in state education, Dobrescu was again faced with invalidation. This time, he was reproached for not having served in the
Romanian Army, but the real reason may have been his irredentist subversion. Days after the election, Brătianu had Dobrescu kidnapped and brought to his manor in Ștefănești, where he tried to either intimidate or persuade him into joining the National Liberals. According to Vrânceanu, this "meeting of two worlds" ended with Brătianu ordering his rival's release on condition that he return to teaching; Dobrescu was soon stripped of all but one of his teaching posts, for Brătianu to make sure that he would not the time and income for politics. Deaconu writes that Brătianu ordered the "insolent peasant" conscripted as an infantryman, but that this measure was toned down by Dimancea, who released Dobrescu and sent him back to Mușătești. He was eventually drafted and sent to
Northern Dobruja, where he fell gravely ill; upon his return, he discovered that his two fellow teachers in Mușătești had been sacked, and that his time was fully occupied with his handling the school. by
Ion Brătianu, as lampooned in
Bobârnacul (March 1886) Some official reports suggest that his subversive activity was never fully interrupted. In 1886, he traveled into Transylvania, creating additional outrage in National Liberal circles: government officials claimed that he was there to purchase fur hats "à la
Michael the Brave", to use as a quasi-uniform for his "peasant army" to invade
Bucharest with. Vinieru claims that Dobrescu was involved in the June 1887 episode which ended with a shootout between an "irredentist" group and the Army, at
Albeștii de Muscel. Also according to Vinieru, the affair was kept secret by the National Liberals, and altogether ignored by the opposition Conservatives. Dobrescu had parted ways with the other Peasants' Committee veterans. Under Schileru and Dinescu's watch, a revived Committee had turned into an agrarian branch of the National Liberal Party. As noted by Argeș historian Gheorghe I. Deaconu, Brătianu was using the committee as a wedge against the peasant caucus—and more specifically against Dobrescu's own electorate. Deaconu also argues that, in 1887, Brătianu sent
George D. Pallade to befriend and spy on Dobrescu, obtaining information which the establishment then used to bring down the peasant leader.
Parliamentary debut In the
October 1888 election, Dobrescu took a Third College seat at Argeș, with 491 votes from 571. He ran on a Conservative ticket—backing the government of
Theodor Rosetti, and defeating the National Liberal Theodor T. Brătianu. This mandate coincided with the peasant revolts of 1888, which Dobrescu anticipated in his Assembly speeches. Upon the rebellion's quashing, he expressed a moderate position, refusing to condemn Rosetti for his violent response to violence, and agreeing with him on the underlying causes of rural unrest. In February 1889, Dobrescu favored the project of settling peasant issues by selling off state properties, noting that thousands had already asked to be granted such plots. He described this as a quick solution to the social crisis: "the peasant was always grateful to those who were good to him. [...] If [peasants] revolted last year, and if they are currently in turmoil, it is only because of scoundrels who agitate them". Registering as an independent, he was closely aligned with Schileru's Radicals in February 1889, and is tentatively described by scholar Philip Gabriel Eidelberg as a "
liberal populist". In April 1889, he was listed as one of 17 Radical and dissident Liberal deputies, all of whom voted against the project to fortify Bucharest. Overall, Dobrescu argued for
class collaboration "on social issues", an attitude for which he was cited approvingly by the Conservative doyen
Petre P. Carp. By 1889, he was declaring his frustration with the over-representation of
ethnic minorities: "Professions, commerce, industry, they're all under occupation. And these foreigners don't treat us as if we were from their own house, they see us as the newcomers. Nowhere is there a sign of our supposed assimilationist strength." At that stage, he believed many in peasant self-help as a vehicle for progress, and mainly asked government that it form a "Ministry for the Peasantry", with no thoughts of forming a distinct political group. By contrast, Rosetti relied on selling state land to modest producers, in lots of 5
hectares, marginalizing both the landless and wealthier peasants. This period also brought his involvement in the controversy about socialist agitation in the countryside. Dobrescu had been curious about socialism, and frequented the
Marxist Ioan Nădejde. However, he soon grew to dislike both the movement and Nădejde, exposing the latter as an "ass in a lion's pelt". He also claimed that Nădejde had failed the test of
proletarian internationalism, since, allegedly, he opposed the naturalization of
Romanian Jews—possibly referring to the specific case of
Ralian Samitca. In turn, Mille, by then co-opted by the socialist journal
Drepturile Omului, ridiculed Dobrescu as a "carnival peasant". In February 1889, with fellow deputies Grigore Cozadini, Mihail Caracostea, and Ernest Sturdza, Dobrescu visited
Roman County to investigate the election of Lascăr Veniamin as socialist deputy. The commission's findings eventually led the other socialist deputy,
Vasile Morțun, to resign and demand that he be formally tried. Some of the peasants he met asked him to run for their constituency, following Veniamin's looming invalidation. Reportedly, this showed the abrupt decline of the socialist movement. In May 1890, Dobrescu, Panu and Nădejde still co-sponsored a bill together, namely one which would have removed references to the
King of Romania in the oath taken by judges (and which historian Vasile Niculae described as "Parliament's first socialist and democratic act to have an anti-monarchic nature"). , as depicted by the socialist cartoonist Tantal in 1889 Dobrescu also edited several periodicals:
Țĕranul (1881–1884), Romania's first rural cultural and political publication; and
Gazeta Poporului and
Gazeta Țăranilor (1892–1903), through which he attempted to spread his ideas into the villages, aiming to integrate all rural teachers into cultural societies. The former in particular was very time-consuming: "[it] was being put out in the Pitești press owned by C. Popescu. Here is where Dobrescu's torments would begin. On each Saturday, after finishing his work with the students, he would ride to Pitești on his
buckskin and, after ensuring that the paper would come out, traveled back on Sunday evening, to where his other work took him." Deaconu notes that this 100-kilometer weekly ride was seized upon as an opportunity for persecution by the National Liberal authorities, who sent inspectors to Dobrescu's school once every three days. From 1892, Dobrescu and Valescu set up the Society for Peasant Culture, which was designed as a funding mechanism for a more accessible printing press. In founding this venue, Dobrescu explained that "printing a peasant newspaper in someone else's printing shop is like hatching cuckoo eggs in a wren's nest." Alarmed by these developments, the authorities encouraged Dobrescu's adversaries in the teaching profession to sue him for embezzlement; the court ruled in Dobrescu's favor. Before September 1890, Dobrescu had come under investigation for supposedly illegal activities also involving the artillery guards, and was shamed for this by both the left-wing daily
Adevărul and the Conservative organ
Timpul. They suggested that he should resign his seat, and argued that his self-promotion was distasteful. Scurtu reads the Society's charter as a "moderate" political program; The
nameplate, Paul notes, carried a "common-sense" motto:
Respect la proprietate, pagubă nimănui; Respect la persoane, foloase generale ("Respect for property, at no harm to anyone; Respect for people, with benefits for all"). Completed in 1894–1898 with the sheet
Școala Poporului, the periodicals were put out by his own printing press in Mușătești, which he had purchased with money granted by
Ghenadie Petrescu, the
Bishop of Argeș. It was "the first printing press and bookbinder ever to have functioned in a rural commune."
Brussels and party formation Dobrescu pursued his mission in various other ventures: pioneering institutions founded by Dobrescu during this interval include, in 1893, the cooperative in Mușătești, named after
Vlad Țepeș, and, in 1895,
Școala Nouă ("The New School") of Domnești, furnished with a library and reading room. He was again elected to the Assembly, at Argeș, following the
race of 1891, and reelected
in 1892. and became known as
Dobrescu-Argeș to be distinguished from another Constantin Dobrescu, the National Liberal deputy of
Prahova. The two Dobrescus confronted each other over the issue of education reform: both agreed that Minister Ionescu's Conservative project was needlessly elitist; however, Dobrescu-Argeș contended that the National Liberal counter-proposal was even more "backward". His proposal was to create a network of compulsory primary schools with equal budgets, irrespective of whether they served rural or urban communities; it failed to register support on either side of the political divide. Dobrescu-Argeș's political stances were becoming ambiguous, and left-wingers came to suspect that he was secretly an ally of
Lascăr Catargiu and his Conservative cabinet. Dobrescu openly supported some Conservative causes: with his theater, he performed one of his plays in front of
King Carol I, who awarded him a decoration and his own portrait as a souvenir; in November 1892, he voted for adding 300,000
lei to the
civil list, going to the royal family. A serious scandal erupted in November 1893, during debates over the establishment of an agricultural bank. Dobrescu promised nationalists
A. C. Cuza and Constantin Popovici that he would endorse their amendment, excluding non-Romanians from the enterprise. He took the paper for signing, but never returned it, and found himself chased around the Assembly, threatened by Major N. Pruncu, and pummeled by Popovici. The incident was witnessed by writer (and deputy)
Alexandru Vlahuță, who declared himself disgusted and demoralized by the casualness of the affair. Such displays prompted his 1889 rival Morțun to reuse the derisive moniker of "carnival peasant", His abilities were also noted by the staff journalist at
Foaia Populară, who described Dobrescu as the "miraculous" figure of a
self-made man, and by Bacalbașa, who remembered him as "highly intelligent, cultured, and overflowing with political ambitions". In winter 1890, Dobrescu married Avida Poinăreanu, daughter of a Muscel peasant leader. From 1893, following her sudden death, he dedicated himself to field research among the peasants of France and the
Low Countries, and, hoping to silence his detractors, also pursued academic recognition. His life abroad was difficult: in August 1894, he wrote home to complain that he had no means of supporting himself in
Brussels, despite "work[ing] continuously 15 hours out of 24". He eventually obtained a doctorate in law from the
Free University of Brussels after studying there from 1894 to 1897. He was colleagues with the
anarchist Panait Mușoiu, and, as noted later by writer
Tudor Arghezi, he himself became a "quasi-anarchist" (read by Vrânceanu as a clue that Dobrescu was also a revolutionary socialist). Mușoiu himself remarked in 1901 that "Dobrescu never expressed very radical conceptions. He confined himself to what one may call a minimum. But this fact never prevented [...] the movement he stoked from being open to expansion, from continuing as something larger. The establishment was not wrong in listing Dobrescu among a class of people it feared, which is to say on the same side as us." By March 1895, Dobrescu stood in the generic opposition, and, alongside Cuza, attacked Catargiu's cabinet, and the Conservative Party in general, for not doing enough to improve rural education. The claim enlisted a lengthy retort from the Conservative
Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea, who furnished evidence for the role of upper classes in rural advancement. Alongside Ion Rădoi, Dobrescu was by then invested in creating a nation-wide peasants' group, called
Partida Țărănească ("Peasants' Party"). Reviewing Dobrescu's articles on this topic, Scurtu highlights the projected recruitment of "teachers, priests, communal councilors, mayors and notaries. Therefore, this was to be a party of the rural bourgeoisie." His agitation in favor of rural emancipation led to his arrest at
Costești, but he was soon released due to his
parliamentary immunity. this caucus also established a permanent Action Committee, co-chaired by Dobrescu and Rădoi. The group still enjoyed disproportionate support from
Bulgarians, who had grievances against the Romanian state and appreciated
Partidas anti-establishment ethos. The first party of its kind in Romania,
Partida operated until 1899. By 1894, Dobrescu had sided with the emerging caucus of politicians favoring a switch to the
universal suffrage—as he put it, the "8,000,000 citizens who make up the bulk of this nation" needed to be spoken for by a "league of resistance", which is what
Partida could represent. However, Panu and the
Adevărul team, who mounted this campaign, were openly alarmed by his alleged corruption and, in 1895, obtained his withdrawal from the nascent League of Universal Suffrage. According to Niculae, Dobrescu was merely used by the Radicals as a "pretext allowing them to ditch any concrete action in favor of universal suffrage, and to keep the masses uninformed about [their own] blatantly pro-conservative orientation". Dobrescu and his followers were more interested in
tax reform and a
balanced budget, with Dobrescu speaking up against state employees "whose number", Dobrescu argued, "has offset the number of electors". The group also called for predictability in taxation, and for adopting "those methods that statesmen in more civilized countries" have used to "increase peasant revenues". These goals went in tandem with unionization: Dobrescu spoke about legalizing agricultural syndicates to "protect labor".
Scandal Dobrescu was returned to the Assembly a final time
in 1895, after defeating the National Liberal Daniil Sterescu 645 votes to 280. In the latter race, he shared a ticket with his brother-in-law Valescu.
Partida also won a seat for Muscel, taken by M. Moisescu, with Dincă Schileru as a dissident National Liberal. The campaign in
Vâlcea County was mounted by Ștefan Drăghicescu, with
Partida registered locally as the Peasants and Workers' Party. It failed to win Drăghicescu a seat. Dobrescu also backed a Mușătești native, the policeman Ion Niculescu-Fotografu, who was running for a deputy's seat in
Suceava County. At the time, the two were close friends, with Dobrescu acting as a ghostwriter for Niculescu, and advertising for his artisans' guild. One report has it that the two of them worked on a series of handicraft-themed albums. Niculescu had paid for these to be printed, but could not make a profit, and blamed Dobrescu for the debacle. By then, Dobrescu's party had shifted some of its weight toward Muscel, with
Gazeta being printed from
Câmpulung before finally relocating to Bucharest. According to Dobrescu, during the 1895 electoral campaign Catargiu had ordered a clampdown on the printing press in Mușătești, with authorities threatening his readers throughout the region. The editorial offices, however, remained in place. Valescu was tasked with editing
Gazeta Țăranilor. He was singled out for retribution by the Conservative government, who suspended him from his job as a schoolteacher and wished to have him barred from that profession altogether. Dobrescu resolved this issue by assigning the editorial position to Rădoi, a former judge; he finally donated
Gazeta to Valescu in 1896. In August 1895, Rădoi highlighted his and
Partidas legalist credentials during an audience with King Carol. The monarch asked him to specify the difference between Dobrescu's followers and the socialists, to which Rădoi allegedly replied: "The socialists are mostly active in the cities, among the industrial workers, whereas we mostly work in the villages." On various topical causes, Dobrescu worked with both Fleva and Haret, but also with other major figures in politics and militant culture, including Arghezi,
Vasile Kogălniceanu,
Ion Luca Caragiale, and
Nicolae Filipescu. Nevertheless, Dobrescu was still adamantly opposed to Morțun's Marxism and the
Romanian Social Democratic Workers' Party, possibly because the latter was also trying to win over peasant constituents—but also because Dobrescu respected the
right of property and did not consider either an extensive land reform or centralized
collective farming. As noted by Scurtu,
Partida was effectively prevented from circulating its message outside speeches in the Assembly and the occasional electoral rally. Dobrescu soon found himself ignored by the establishment. As early as December 1895,
Vlașca deputy V. Iepurescu heckled his speech on the peasants' physical degeneration—as the socialist press put it, Iepurescu's remarks were "of the stupidest and most demagogic kind". In the session of March 10, 1898, Dobrescu's
interpellation about
bootlegging ended inconclusively, as most of his colleagues got up and left the Assembly hall. He received some attention from
Ion I. C. Brătianu, the new
Minister of Public Works, who agreed with him on building a railway link between Curtea de Argeș and
Câineni. That year, Haret, who was serving as Education Minister, made a point of expressing his support for the agrarian movement, refusing to shut down Malul de Răsună (accused of generating "socialist propaganda"), and awarding its president, G. Rădulescu, a medal of merit. By then, Dobrescu had been formally indicted of falsifying an insurance policy and embezzling funds. In June 1898, he was arrested and sent to
Văcărești Prison, but made
bail. As reported by Filipescu's
Epoca, his time in confinement was needlessly prolonged by hostile bailiffs, causing Dobrescu's mother to faint in public. However, the authorities discarded normal procedure, and left out
biometrics when Dobrescu refused to comply, threatening to kill himself. During his interval in prison, he met Filipescu, who was being held there after killing
Emanoil Lahovary in a duel—he and Filipescu became "friends for eternity." Dobrescu-Argeș pleaded his case at the Correctional Tribunal, arguing that any counterfeiting was by his mistress, Elena Ionescu. One detailed account suggests that she signed Poinăreanu's name to a
promissory note for one of Dobrescu's lenders, namely Predingher of
Ploiești, and that, since Dobrescu ended up paying his debt, no damage had actually been incurred.
Disgrace, sentencing, and death Valescu alleges that the Conservatives secretly rejoiced upon noting Pallade's efforts. He claims to quote
Alexandru Marghiloman, a junior Conservative, arguing that "the parties ought to serve each other" when it came to subduing the peasant ethos. Various other accounts similarly suggest that Dobrescu was being framed by the ruling class, although such accusations had surfaced independently in earlier years. In 1889, the peasants of Mușătești had complained that Dobrescu, hired to legalize their land claims, had absconded with their money. According to legend, Dobrescu also financed his party selling worthless bonds to peasants across the country. The scheme was only uncovered when one of his invoices showed up in a bankruptcy lawsuit. He was subsequently derided by his adversaries as
Dobrescu-Chitanță ("Dobrescu-Invoice"). Dobrescu's work in public subscription also collected funds for a statue of
Tudor Vladimirescu, in
Târgu Jiu. He began this project in March 1895, with articles in
Gazeta Țăranilor, increasingly revolutionary in tone; he also oversaw the printing of a Vladimirescu biography. He was free by January 1899, and, against Pallade's warning, continued and stepped up his political involvement, publishing a new program for the peasant movement. Also in 1899, as he inaugurated the Vladimirescu statue, Dobrescu spoke about his mission of bringing about "rule of the people, by the people", "democracy in both name and fact." Also in 1899, Dobrescu himself was again rallying with the controversial candidate
Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești, at
Slatina. He acted as electoral agent among the peasants, promising them that Bogdan-Pitești would redistribute land from a national reserve. When his patron was defeated, the enraged peasants rioted and had to be repressed using military force. Various reports have it that Dobrescu-Argeș retired himself as a candidate in the same election after being told by government agents that the charges against him would be lifted as part of that deal. As a backup plan, the National Liberals had begun circulating a brochure by Niculescu-Fotografu, containing "all manner of calumnies and insults". Meanwhile, Dobrescu's trial, in which he was represented by Fleva, came before the
Ilfov County tribunal, being postponed there over the absence of witnesses. Finally receiving a nine-month jail term in February 1900, Dobrescu was again free in mid 1901, when he was putting out, and almost exclusively contributing content for, the weekly magazine
Viața Națională ("National Life"). It was return to his educational-focused agenda, describing schools as the necessary sources of "
cultural nationalism". His term was reduced to three months in 1903, with Dobrescu serving his sentence at Văcărești. After being released, he was completely demoralized and soon disappeared from public life. The implications of his sentencing also included
felony disenfranchisement, meaning that "he was practically removed from Romania's political life." Vrânceanu notes that the agrarianist leader was finally able to move back home to treat his debilitating "
rheumatism" at the spas of
Brădet, between Corbeni and Mușătești. Dobrescu-Argeș's clinical depression aggravated the disease, which manifested as
ataxia and resulted in "great pain." He is credited as the founder of the Hydrotherapy Institute in that town, which opened in August 1902. Near the end of 1902, already paralyzed in both legs, he was taken from Bucharest to Mușătești. He was discreetly employed by
Vasile Lascăr, the
Interior Minister, to review or even draft new legislation. Filipescu, as the Agriculture Minister, handed him similar work; however, the conditions of his contract were reportedly determined by Lascăr, who had Dobrescu confined to a house in Bucharest and withheld payments. Dobrescu-Argeș had his final stay in Bucharest in August–November 1903, after which he returned to Curtea de Argeș, then Mușătești. He was bedridden on arrival; according to Deaconu, his health was entirely compromised when a physician, who was also a National Liberal voter, advised him to drink
plum brandy "that would cure his disease". The same author notes that, 70 years after the events, seniors in villages of the
Vâlsan Valley still held it that Dobrescu had been murdered by the landowners. Dobrescu died in his mother's home on the evening of December 10, 1903, "after horrible suffering"; his burial outside Mușătești Church gathered a large mass of peasant mourners, and, though not present there, Justice Ion Mandrea, who had convicted Dobrescu-Argeș, voiced his regrets. Two days after the funeral ceremony, the
University of Iași issued papers recognizing his doctoral diploma; these reportedly arrived alongside a gift of 2,000 lei from the Interior Ministry as payment for his services. ==Legacy==