After the
1848 Wallachian Revolutionary Government was overthrown by
Ottoman troops, and a new hospodar was to be named,
Sultan Abdülmecid I supported Barbu Știrbei for the office, and he was awarded the throne for a seven-year term (under the provisions of the 1849
Convention of Balta-Liman). His reign began under the common occupation of Ottoman Empire and Imperial Russia, occupation which ended in 1851, when Barbu Știrbei was awarded the
Order of St. Anna by the
Russian Emperor Nicholas I. During his reign, Știrbei pushed moderate reforms, such as a slight reform of the
judiciary system which led to an increase in the number of solved legal disputes. He took steps to enforce a (still very
conservative)
land reform, by passing a law, in 1851, in which the peasants were referred to as "tenants", and which allowed them to more easily move between
boyar properties. In the matter of
Roma slavery, Știrbei began by limiting the internal trading in slaves, forbade the separation of families through the latter, and ultimately abolished the institution altogether. At the beginning of the
Crimean War, in 1853, Wallachia was once again occupied by Imperial Russian troops. Barbu Știrbei stayed in Bucharest until the formal declaration of war from the Ottoman Empire, after which he fled to
Vienna, only to return the following year, in the autumn of 1854, after the Russian withdrawal, when the country was under Austrian and Ottoman occupation. In 1856, after the end of the war, at the
Treaty of Paris, the question of the unification of Moldavia and Wallachia, the two
Danubian Principalities, was debated. Știrbei supported the union, although not very strongly, as he hoped to become prince of the resulting state. However, in early summer, as his term had ended, he stepped back as hospodar and left for Paris. ==Later life==