Treaty of Bucharest (1916)

In 1915 Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Thomson, a fluent French speaker, was sent to Bucharest as British military attaché on Kitchener's initiative to bring Romania into the war. But when there he quickly formed the view that an unprepared and ill-armed Romania facing a war on three fronts against Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria would be a liability not an asset to the allies. This view was brushed aside by Whitehall and he signed a Military Convention with Romania on 13 August 1916. Thompson became head of the British Military Mission. ==Terms==

to Romania. The treaty had two parts: a political treaty (seven articles) and a military convention (seventeen articles). • The whole Banat territory ruled by Hungary, with a mixed Romanian (37.42 %), German (24.50 %), Serbian (17.97 %) and Hungarian (15.31 %) population. • Most of Bukovina (the whole region except the part at the left bank of the Prut river), the territory ruled by Austria, with a Romanian majority population, including Czernowitz. The exact borders stipulated by the treaty were those of prewar Romania (Article I) and those it was allowed to annex from Austria-Hungary, up to a line of demarcation described in Article IV: In Article IV Romania also bound itself not to construct fortifications opposite Belgrade and to indemnify Serbs from Banat for their properties if they emigrated from Romania in the two years following the conclusion of peace. Article VII bound the signatories to maintaining secrecy of the convention until a general peace was signed. The military convention stated that Romania was to attack Austria-Hungary from the south while Russia committed itself to start an offensive on the Austrian front to support the Romanian advance into Transylvania. Also, the Russian High Command promised to send two infantry divisions and one cavalry division into Dobruja to protect the rear of the front from a Bulgarian attack. The French and the British pledged to start an offensive on the Thessaloniki front in order to force Bulgaria out of the war. ==Romania in the war==

In the morning of 27 August 1916 (14 August O.S.), a Crown Council was held at the Cotroceni Palace, convened by King Ferdinand, In 1917, the Romanian Army recovered and succeeded in stopping German attempts to break the front, in spite of the disintegration of the Russian Army after the February Revolution. The exit of Russia from the war in March 1918 with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk left Romania alone in Eastern Europe, and a peace treaty between Romania and the Central Powers (Treaty of Bucharest (1918)) was negotiated in May 1918, but was not ratified by Romania, allowing them to re-declare war on the Central Powers on November 10, 1918, and thus participate as a victorious power in subsequent peace negotiations. The toll of the campaign was approximately 220,000 dead for Romania, but in the end it gained Transylvania, two-thirds of the Banat, Bukovina, and Bessarabia in the Treaty of Trianon. ==Gallery==

File:1916 - Tratatul politic 1.jpg|Political treaty(1st page) File:1916 - Tratatul politic 2.jpg|Political treaty(2nd page) File:1916 - Tratatul politic 3.jpg|Political treaty(3rd page) File:1916 - Conventia militara 3.jpg|Military convention(1st page) File:1916 - Conventia militara 2.jpg|Military convention(2nd page) File:1916 - Conventia militara 1.jpg|Military convention(3rd page) ==References==