He was disappointed when the country sided with Russia, and remained behind in Bucharest when it was occupied by the Central Powers; with Carp and other Conservatives, he organized a collaborationist bureaucracy, and served in it as Ephor of the Civilian Hospitals.

[13] He became a close friend and sponsor of Costache Negri, with whom he organized an 1847 protest against Prince Mihail Sturdza;[14] that year, he also adhered to a boyar project for the creation of a commercial bank.

[20] The family owned the large estate of Căiuți, nearby the spas of Slănic-Moldova, which was the childhood home of Radu and his siblings (a brother and several sisters, including Ana and Margot Rosetti).

A native speaker of Romanian, he learned Greek from his paternal grandmother; he later achieved fluency in French (his favorite language of expression), German, Italian and Spanish, and had a working knowledge of Latin and, from 1888, Old Church Slavonic.

[25] During his time in Switzerland, Rosetti indirectly witnessed the fall of France, with the surrender of the Armée de l'Est; he then became passionate about conservative and Legitimist politics, smuggling weapons into Navarre during the Third Carlist War.

[38] He continued to pursue his agriculturalist dream, investing his settlement money (against Henrieta's advice) to take up tenant farming in Urdești, on land owned by George Diamandy.

[39] From December 1888, encouraged by historians Ioan Bianu and Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, Rosetti published his first works of genealogy and agrarian history in the periodical Revista Nouă.

Filipescu turned to sabotaging Rosetti's work; the latter contacted Bianu and, through him, PNL chairman Dimitrie Sturdza, to help him appoint a bipartisan council of reputable men.

[44] After another series of challenges, including the cholera pandemic (eventually handled by Iacob Felix), Danube floods, and dockers' strikes,[45] Rosetti moved on to a similar position in Bacău County in October 1893.

[50] That October, when the government fell to a PNL one led by Sturdza, Rosetti was fired according to a tradition that a change in power brought about a wholesale replacement of civil servants with supporters of the new leadership.

[58] Although this new job was low in the ministerial hierarchy, his fluent knowledge of several languages (itself a precondition for working in the ministry)[59] and his penchant for historical exegesis helped Rosetti advance.

[64] By 1905 he had issued Cu paloșul, which enjoyed considerable success,[65] as a volume, alongside other historical sketches: monographs of Răducăneni–Bohotin and Vascani, a review of Moldavian Catholicism and the Csangos, and a genealogy of the Răducăneni Rosettis.

Published in French as La Roumanie et les Juifs, under the pen name "Verax", then translated by Rosetti himself into English,[69] it doubled as a polemic with the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU), and specifically with publicist Edmond Sincerus.

[78] Rosetti was a widower from September 1905, but enjoyed the moral and material support of his grown sons: Radu Jr was an officer and Henri a jurist,[79] while Eugène had quit school and was prospecting for Standard Oil.

[82] The first of his works to openly deal with the issue of agrarian inequalities and tensions over land was Despre originea și transformările clasei stăpânitoare din Moldova ("On the Origins and Transformations of the Moldavian Ruling Class").

[66][83] His thesis looked back on the sources of Vlach law, suggesting that ancient Romanians were all free men organized into obști, that latifundia were imposed through boyar theft, and that serfdom was only cemented by the will of Michael the Brave in the late 16th century.

[97] As highlighted by economic historian Gheorghe Zane, Rosetti was a outspoken against previous reformists, who had allowed the perpetuation of boyar privileges, but also acknowledged that some large estates, "modernized and limited in scope", would need to be preserved to ensure agricultural productivity.

[101] Philosopher Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, who coined the term "neo-serfdom" to describe Romanian labor relations, saw the work as "remarkable", "illuminating", and fundamentally compatible with his own Marxist sociology.

[105] Similarly, Ornea notes that Rosetti kept the "vain hope" that the land issue would be solved by King Carol I, and that he partly subscribed to the discredited theory according to which Jewish tenants, alongside socialists, were largely responsible for the "crisis".

[106] Throughout the year of the revolt, Rosetti also put out monographs on censorship in early 19th-century Moldavia, including the clampdown on Jewish literature during the Regulamentul Organic regime,[107] as well as the tacit support for nationalist propaganda under Grigore Alexandru Ghica and its repression by Mehmed Fuad Pasha.

[114] When his eldest son married Ioana Știrbey (orphaned daughter of Alexandru B. Știrbei and sister of the more famous Eliza), Rosetti became in-laws with Ion I. C. Brătianu, who was now leader of the PNL, replacing Sturdza as head of government.

[107] Returning as "Verax", Rosetti detailed the conflict between Romania and the Kingdom of Greece in the brochure Grèce et Roumanie, printed in Paris; under his real name, he also revisited the "Jewish Question", putting out a tract on developments to 1909.

[120] The issue was also touched in the article Un proces de sacrilegiu la 1836 în Moldova ("A Trial over Sacrilege in 1836 Moldavia"), where he suggested that Romanians were naturally tolerant and Jews generally fanatical.

[141] During the interval, Rosetti also began writing opinion pieces in Dimitrie S. Nenițescu's newspaper, Renașterea, where he issued reprimands against his erstwhile friend Brătianu and other PNL politicos.

[154] During the first 1920s, Rosetti Sr spent his summers writing, invited by a landowner friend to share his manors in Traian and Filipești; he was reportedly working on his volumes of recent history, which included a (never published) voluminous account of the war, which he was to call O partidă de stos ("A Game of Basset", jibing at Brătianu's political deals).

[158] Part of it doubled as oral history, collecting testimonies from Rosetti's elders, including details of Jewish toleration and pogroms, as well as on the looting and raping by marauding Ottomans[159] and the intermingling between Romanians and Roma slaves.

[160] As noted by literary historian George Călinescu, overall the series showed the boyar class being "unbelievably obsolete", "dazzled" by "the new liberal society"; Rosetti's style was "always agreeable.

A lost film adapted by Beldiman (who also appears in it as Taverner Ștrul),[165] it is noted for starring both Elvira Popescu and Ion Finteșteanu,[166] as well as for its depiction of sexual abuse by the boyars on their female slaves.

[181] His inclusion in Constantin C. Angelescu's 1964 overview of Romanian historical writing gave his birth date as unknown, and omitted mention of La Roumanie et le Juifs—errors which were signaled by the official magazine, Studii.

[182] Writing twelve years later, Silvestri noted: "The man, currently erased from literary memory, passes for an amateur, one who produced so-called historical novels which fantasize freely on the basis of some documentation.