Part of the Revolutions of 1848, and closely connected with the unsuccessful revolt in the Principality of Moldavia, it sought to overturn the administration imposed by Imperial Russian authorities under the Regulamentul Organic regime, and, through many of its leaders, demanded the abolition of boyar privilege.

Led by a group of young intellectuals and officers in the Wallachian Militia, the movement succeeded in toppling the ruling Prince Gheorghe Bibescu, whom it replaced with a provisional government and a regency, and in passing a series of major progressive reforms, announced in the Proclamation of Islaz.

The two Danubian Principalities, Wallachia and Moldavia, came under direct Russian supervision upon the close of the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829, being subsequently administered on the basis of common documents, known as Regulamentul Organic.

[4] This move met with stiff opposition from a majority of deputies in Wallachia, among whom was the radical Ioan Câmpineanu; in 1838, the project was nonetheless passed, when it was explicitly endorsed by Sultan Abdülmecid I and by Prince Ghica.

[5] The latter group, comprising many young boyars who had studied in France, also took direct inspiration from reformist or revolutionary-minded societies such as the Carbonari (and even, through Teodor Diamant, from Utopian socialism).

[10] The new ruler, Gheorghe Bibescu, released Bălcescu and other participants in the plot during 1843; soon afterwards, they became involved in founding a new Freemason-inspired secret society, known as Frăția ("The Brotherhood"), which was to serve as the central factor in the revolution.

[12] It was especially successful in Bucharest, where it also reached out to the middle class,[12] and kept a legal facade as Soțietatea Literară (the Literary Society), whose meetings were attended by the Moldavians Vasile Alecsandri, Mihail Kogălniceanu, and Costache Negruzzi, as well as by the Austrian subject Constantin Daniel Rosenthal.

[15] Originally, the revolutionary grouping had intended to take over various military bases throughout Wallachia, and planned to simultaneously organize public gatherings in Bucharest, Râmnicu Vâlcea, Ploiești, Romanați County and Islaz.

[16] A new government was formed on the spot, comprising Tell, Heliade Rădulescu, Ștefan Golescu, Șapcă, and Nicolae Pleșoianu—they wrote Prince Bibescu an appeal, which called on him to recognize the program as the embryo of a constitution and to "listen to the voice of the motherland and place himself at the head of this great accomplishment".

[17] As these events were unfolding, Bibescu was shot at in Bucharest by Alexandru or Iancu Paleologu (the father of French diplomat Maurice Paléologue) and his co-conspirators, whose bullets only managed to tear one of the Prince's epaulettes.

[15] In the afternoon, the Bucharest populace, feeling encouraged by this development, rallied in the streets; around four o'clock, the church bells on Dealul Mitropoliei began sounding the tocsin (by banging their tongues on only one side of the drum).

As early as April, Bălcescu, who maintained close contacts with many Romanian Transylvanian politicians, called on August Treboniu Laurian not to oppose the unification of Transylvania and revolutionary Hungary.

[31] This was the culmination of a process begun in 1843, when all state-owned slaves had been liberated, and continued in February 1847, when the Orthodox Church had followed suit and set free its own Roma labor force.

Those who have so far had the sinful shame of owning slaves are forgiven by the Romanian people; and the motherland, as a good mother, shall compensate, out of its treasury, whosoever shall complain of detriment as a result of this Christian deed".

[34] The authorities publicized their reforms by making use of new press institutions, the most circulated of which were Poporul Suveran (a magazine edited by Bălcescu, Bolliac, Grigore Alexandrescu, Dimitrie Bolintineanu and others) and Pruncul Român (published by Rosetti and Eric Winterhalder).

[37] Nevertheless, a Proclamation to estate-holders was issued (June 28, 1848), indicating that the reform was to be eventually enforced in exchange for unspecified sums, and calling on peasants to fulfill their corvées until autumn of the same year.

On July 21, 1848, Nicolae Bălcescu obtained the issuing of a decree to create Comisia proprietății (the Commission on Property), comprising 34 delegates, two for each Wallachian county, representing respectively peasants and landlords.

[41] Efforts were made to clarify that the movement did not seek to reject Ottoman suzerainty: for this purpose, Ion Ghica was sent to Istanbul as early as May 29, 1848; his mission was initially successful, but later events led Sultan Abdülmecid I to reconsider his position, especially after being faced with Russian protests.

[44] In parallel, Russia ordered its troops in Bessarabia to prepare for an intervention over the Prut River and into Bucharest—the prospect of a Russo-Turkish war was inconvenient for Abdülmecid, at a time when the French Second Republic and the United Kingdom failed to clarify their positions in respect to Ottoman policies.

[44] Over the following months, the population radicalized itself, and, on September 18, 1848, just one week before the Revolution was crushed, crowds entered the Interior Ministry, taking over the official copies of Regulamentul Organic and the register of boyar ranks (Arhondologia).

[49] While all revolutionaries who attended the meeting were placed under arrest, Ion Heliade Rădulescu and Christian Tell sought refuge at the British consulate in Bucharest, where they were received by Robert Gilmour Colquhoun in exchange for a sum of Austrian florins.

[58] In the meantime, Magheru, upon the advice of Colquhoun,[39] ordered the demobilization of his troops (October 10), and, accompanied by a few of his officers, passed the Southern Carpathians into Hermannstadt—at the time, the Transylvanian city was nominally in the Austrian Empire, but gripped by the Hungarian Revolution.

[49] Starting in December 1848, a number of Wallachian revolutionaries who had escaped or had been set free from arrest began mediating an understanding between Hungary's Lajos Kossuth and those Romanian Transylvanian activists and peasants who, under the leadership of Avram Iancu, were mounting military resistance to the Honvédség troops of Józef Bem.

Nicolae Bălcescu emerged from his refuge in the Principality of Serbia, and, together with Alexandru G. Golescu and Ion Ionescu de la Brad, began talks with Iancu in Zlatna.

[64] In contrast to the 1848–1849 setbacks, the period inaugurated by the Crimean War disestablished both Russian domination and the Regulamentul Organic regime, and, within the space of one generation, brought about the fulfillment of virtually all revolutionary projects.

[49] In early 1859, at the close of a turbulent period, Wallachia and Moldavia entered a personal union, later formalized as the Romanian United Principalities, under Moldavian-born Domnitor Alexandru Ioan Cuza (himself a former revolutionary).

[58] Having been allowed to return from exile after the Treaty of Paris, most of the surviving revolutionaries played a major part in the political developments, and organized themselves as Partida Națională, which promoted Cuza during simultaneous elections for the ad hoc Divans.

[68] Following an 1866 conflict between the increasingly authoritarian Cuza and the political class, various trends organized a coup which brought Prince Carol, a Hohenzollern, to the Romanian throne[67]—echoing a will expressed by some of the 1848 activists to have a foreign dynasty rule over a unified state.