The Bibescu lineage was purely Romanian by blood. Rising from among the Oltenian free peasants, they gave the country two rulers and many political and cultural personalities. Yet they were not destined to remain on their ancestral land; they left for France. And there they stayed, among the aristocracy, artists, and great writers of the age. The Bibescu family album includes intellectuals, diplomats, lawyers, people of society, record-setters. They fascinated the French!

The Oltenian origins of the Bibescu family

The Bibescu family was born and grew up on Romanian soil. In other words, they were great boyars of pure blood, without any foreign element. They rose by their own strength, from Oltenia—more precisely, from Gorj. In fact, today within the county there is a village that bears their name: Bibești. This is where the story begins.

Historical notes are, however, rather sparse in detail. It is said that the first ancestor of the family who can be confirmed by sources, around 1520, was a certain Micul Potârcan from Bibești. Later, there is also mention of a certain Udrea from Bibești, who is said to have reached the court of Matei Basarab, ruler of Wallachia.

A short distance to the north lies the commune of Jupânești, where history records the birth of Ioan, who had a son named Ștefan. Around 1700 lived this small boyar, about whom Nicolae Iorga wrote that he “came from a boyarship so small that it barely rose above the complete lack of boyar status.” Thus, his sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons gradually climbed the social ladder through marital alliances with other boyar families. That was how things worked. Advantageous marriages, financially or socially, were the rule.

The ascent to high boyar rank and the first rulers

Only two generations later, Dumitrachi Bibescu, great vornic of the Banate, succeeded in bringing the family name into the ranks of the first-class boyar elite. After the Peace of Küçük Kaynarca, that is, in the second half of the 18th century, Dumitrachi was a wealthy man with political and social influence. He held power.

In 1794, he married Ecaterina Văcărescu, daughter of Iorgu Văcărescu and great-granddaughter of Safta Brâncoveanu, and fully entered what was then the cream of society. The couple Catinca Văcărescu – Demetrius Bibescu (as Prince Gheorghe Bibescu, their grandson, called them in a biography) had two sons: Barbu Dimitrie (1799–1869) and Gheorghe (1804–1873). The lives of the two brothers would diverge, but not their destinies. Both were appointed rulers of Wallachia.

Gheorghe Bibescu and the troubled throne of Wallachia

Gheorghe D. Bibescu ascended the throne of Wallachia on 1 January 1843. He came to power in turbulent times, when the Romanian Principalities were a battlefield for Russians and Ottomans, when empires competed to be called protectors or suzerains over the small Romanian lands, when the Russians had just imposed the Organic Regulations, when cholera was still ravaging the country, and when the Porte appointed interim caimacams at will. In short, it was difficult.

Nevertheless, the day of his election as ruler was celebrated. “On the 1st of January 1843, the bells rang with all their might from one end of the Principality to the other, and throughout the day, at regular intervals, announced that an extraordinary act, more solemn than any before, was about to be accomplished. (…) At four o’clock in the morning, the ballot was closed. Almost unanimity of votes gathered around Gheorghe D. Bibescu: he was proclaimed Ruler of the Country, amid the enthusiastic acclamations of the Assembly, answered by those of the capital and, soon, of the entire Wallachian land,” stated the volume Quelques mots sur la Valachie.

History textbooks have generally passed rather quickly over his reign, given that it was marked by the Revolution of 1848, toward which there has always existed, and rightly so, a partisan attitude. Yet it must be emphasized: Bibescu was not a bad ruler. On the contrary, he shared several biographical traits with the revolutionaries. He was educated abroad, in Paris, where he had been sent by his father in 1817. He returned in 1824, a doctor of law.

“He possessed deeply the French, Greek, and Latin authors, and spoke with rare elegance the language of Homer. He was destined to make himself heard in the Romanian language as a first-rate orator,” described his son, Prince Bibescu, in the volume Romania from Adrianople to Balta Liman (1829–1849): The Reign of Bibescu, published in 1893.

Yet Bibescu-vodă did not boast of all his titles and offices, nor of the general state of well-being in which he lived. In 1851 he wrote to Nicolae, his second son: “The beginnings of my political career, which came so quickly, are owed, my dear Nicolae, to that ancient deity, Fatum, Fortuna, which you criticize too much in the composition you wrote for the competition at the Polytechnic School, and which, whatever you may say, plays a great role in the affairs of this world.”

In a way, it was so: the right man in the right place, alongside a General Kiseleff of historical kindness. For during the period of implementing the Organic Regulations, Gheorghe Bibescu became involved in politics. For this reason, some accused him of acute Russophilia or of having skipped stages in his ascent. This was not the case. Yet no one ever escaped the accusations of contemporaries.

Revolution, abdication, and exile in France

The Bibescus, even up to Gheorghe-vodă, claimed descent from the Brâncoveanu dynasty. This genealogy is demonstrable, though very complex for a brief account. Nevertheless, the name was preserved in various forms: Bibescu Brâncoveanu or Bibesco Bassaraba Brancovan. This was especially because Gheorghe Bibescu married Zoe Mavrocordat, adopted by Ban Grigore Brâncoveanu, who had no children.

Together, they had their first child, Grigore, born in 1827. However, Gheorghe divorced Zoe amid great scandal in 1845 and remarried another noblewoman, Maria Ghica, born Văcărescu, related to the adoptive mother of his first wife.

Gheorghe-vodă’s misfortune was that the revolution found him on the throne. Collective memory retained the idea that he was a weak ruler and that it was fortunate he was expelled. Things were not so black and white. First of all, during his reign, under his protection, several appropriate measures were adopted, such as increasing the army’s manpower and putting state finances in order. Moreover, his freedom of action was considerably constrained by the influence of the Russian Empire in the country’s internal affairs.

When 1848 arrived, the ruler was caught in an inescapable situation, between the revolutionaries and the Russians. What was to be done? Especially since he was personally accountable for the fact that his eldest son, Prince George Basarab den Brancoveni, was studying at the Saint-Cyr military school in France, where he had been enrolled through the direct intervention of King Louis-Philippe of France, who himself had been overthrown by the French revolutionaries.

Publicly, Bibescu sided with the Russians, yet he did not oppose the Revolution. He did not repress it. On the contrary, he signed the Proclamation of Islaz on 11 June 1848 and accepted the provisional revolutionary government. He abdicated the next day and withdrew to Câmpulung Muscel, then to Brașov, intending to go abroad. Before boarding the carriage into exile, Bibescu, C.A. Rosetti, and the painter Carol Szathmari embraced briefly and spoke in whispers.

“In three days the Russians will come!” Bibescu told Rosetti instead of farewell. The ruler went to Paris, followed soon after by almost his entire family. The name of the Romanian boyars was to become famous in the City of Light: Bibesco.

Barbu Dimitrie Știrbei and social reforms

Gheorghe’s older brother was Barbu Dimitrie Știrbei. His name reveals his belonging to another boyar family and coincides with that of another great Romanian political figure. He had been adopted by his grandfather, the wealthy Barbu Știrbei, who feared that the lack of heirs would lead to the disappearance of his historic name.

Like his brother, Barbu studied law in Paris, where he also refined his reformist spirit oriented toward political and social change. Returning to the country in 1821, he married Elisabeta Cantacuzino, from the Moldavian branch of the Cantacuzino family. He held several leading positions in the state, and in 1833 he was appointed great logothete of ecclesiastical affairs—a sort of minister of religious affairs—a position that allowed him to restore a series of medieval monasteries that had entered the national patrimony.

Two years later, he became actively involved in the School Eforia, from where he insisted on introducing the mother tongue into education. And it happened. “The greatest result of the current organization of schools is that all instruction is carried out in the Romanian language. This invaluable result, which can surely instill a national character even in the young man estranged for the sake of his education, will preserve everywhere this feeling of nationality,” said Barbu Știrbei.

He ascended the throne of Wallachia in the summer of 1849. The same context as during Gheorghe’s time: Russia prevailed in the internal affairs of the Principalities. He was appointed a “high official” with a seven-year mandate. This time, however, there was no celebration or pomp. He went to the metropolitan church without an entourage.

Yet his reign was not insignificant. Among other things, he achieved the complete emancipation of the Roma—no small matter—and passed an agrarian law that eliminated several peasant dues. Years later, at the inauguration of Barbu Știrbei’s statue in Craiova, King Ferdinand said: “Judging with a clear mind that penetrated even the future, that a free, content, and strong peasantry is one of the strongest and surest pillars of a lasting state, Vodă Știrbei devoted tireless care to regulating the rural question, through protective measures for peasant labor, and prepared the ground for later reforms.”

Elena Bibescu and the artistic salons of Europe

14 February 1873. The Great Theatre in Bucharest hosted a concert for the poor. The audience, however, was select, crowned by the royal couple Carol and Elisabeta. That evening, Prince Alexandru Bibescu, son of ruler Gheorghe Bibescu, proposed marriage to Elena Kostaki Epureanu, who had just debuted as a pianist on the theatre stage.

Elena Bibescu was considered one of the greatest pianists of 19th-century Europe. She studied piano in Vienna, where the Imperial Conservatory awarded her a medal of honor, then trained under Anton Rubinstein and Marc de la Nux. Concerts held in Bucharest and Parisian salons gathered the foremost figures of culture and aristocracy, from Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner to Camille Saint-Saëns, Claude Debussy, and Marcel Proust.

She was a close friend of Queen Elisabeta and introduced George Enescu to the world at one of the queen’s patronized concerts. Enescu became her main protégé and dedicated his entire work up to Oedipus to her.

Martha Bibescu, the princess who conquered Paris

Ana Elisabeta Brâncoveanu, later known as Martha Bibescu, was one of the most fascinating figures of European culture. A writer admired by Marcel Proust, Jean Cocteau, and André Gide, she was more than an aristocrat—she was a lucid observer of her age.

Her literary debut, The Eight Paradises, published in 1908, was an immediate bestseller. Proust himself praised her as a “perfect writer,” capable of addressing all the senses at once. Martha Bibescu was connected to all the great artists and political figures of her time, lived through wars and dictatorships, and remained a symbol of intelligence, courage, and elegance.

She died in Paris in 1973, in exile, surprised only by death itself. Her legacy, like that of the entire Bibescu dynasty, remains one of the most remarkable chapters in Romanian and European history.

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