Auguste-Felix-Charles de Beaupoil, Count of Saint-Aulaire, was born
\nin 1866 and died in 1954. He arrived as ambassador to Romania in the troubled
\nsummer of 1916, when Romania joined the fray in WWI. He wrote his recollections
\nof that time in a book called Notes of an Ambassador of Yore. In Romania,
\n1916-1920. The book is one of the most important and poignant sources
\ndocumenting political games and tragedies that occurred towards the end of the
\nwar. He loved Romania, was an anti-communist and advocated Romania’s joining
\nthe war. He had a sharp analytical spirit, and was a visionary when it came to
\nthe course of history.<\/p>\n
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\n
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Historian Alina Pavelescu recommends that we read Saint-Aulaire’s
\nbook twice: <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The first fragment I read
\ntells about his visit to the office of Aristide Briand, before going to
\nRomania, and he says about the latter that ‘the man’s desk was as bereft of
\npapers as his own head was of ideas’. Right away I started liking him a lot,
\nand I thought that he deserved the gratitude of everyone who puts off forever
\nputting order in the papers on their desk. I recommend that you read this book
\ntwice. The first reading is very easy for us Romanians, because it is favorable
\nto us. It is more favorable to us in many situations than the memoirs of many
\nRomanians of the time, because this Saint-Aulaire loved Queen Marie of Romania.
\nHe says extraordinarily beautiful things about the Romanians’ capacity for
\nsacrifice, and their generosity in sacrifice. He speaks about the Romanian
\npolitical class in terms that we are not used to. It is flattering to read
\nSaint-Aulaire when he says these things about Romanians, considering how
\ncritical he was the of the French political class.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The Count of Saint-Aulaire showed remarkable understanding of the
\nworld in which he arrived. Alina Pavelescu believes that the second reading
\nhelps us see better into the writer’s observations: <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
I recommend a second reading,
\nbecause the Count of Saint-Aulaire is only in appearance an easy source to
\nidentify within that landscape. Why? Because he is an aristocrat representing a
\nrepublic, he is a conservative who is a diplomat on behalf of a left wing
\ngovernment, he is a civilian who feels boxed in, alongside many others, in an
\nenvironment dominated by the army, by soldiers and their logic. We know how the
\nstory ends, but when we read his memoirs, we don’t know how it all ends. It is
\ntrue that he writes in 1953, he is saddened by the fate of Greater Romania, he
\nhas confirmations regarding the harsh judgment he issued after WWI. He doesn’t
\nknow, however, how the world ended up after the success of the USSR in WWII.
\nEvery time, the reader is taken through several stages in which we don’t know
\nhow the story ends. Being French, he came from a society which, at some point,
\nwas much more favorable towards the Russians than towards Romanians. The French
\nloved the Russians, maybe they still love them, much more than we Romanians
\never loved them. Saint-Aulaire does not have the sin of Russophilia, I would
\nsay rather the opposite, he had no illusions about Tsarist Russia either when
\nhe dealt in Bucharest with Russia’s representatives negotiating Romania’s entry
\ninto the war.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Literary historian Dan C. Mihailescu told us about the way in which
\nothers saw Saint-Aulaire: <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
I. G. Duca knows very well
\nhow to carry himself around diplomats, he is very clever in reading their
\ngestures and their words, and compares Russia’s Poplevski, who was discredited
\nby his fellow Bolsheviks, to Britain’s Lord Barclay, who was under the
\ninfluence of Jean Chrissoveloni. And he writes about Saint-Aulaire: ‘My God,
\nwas that man honest!’. Like all Frenchmen, he didn’t know how to adapt. To
\nadapt to the transactional nature of Romanians, to their two faced nature, was
\nvery hard for him. Poor Saint-Aulaire, he didn’t know how to maneuver among
\nMarghiloman’s and Carp’s conservatives,
\nwho were Germanophile, and the Francophiles Bratianu, Duca, Queen Marie and
\nBarbu Stirbey. Little by little, Duca showed him how to adapt to expectations,
\nand the Frenchman became an expert in the mercantile psychology of Romanians. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
As we can see in these memoirs, the Count of Saint-Aulaire was a
\nvisionary, he had the ability to anticipate the failure of communism, as Dan
\nMihailescu told us. Saint-Aulaire’s book is a book written by a man who
\nunderstood the world he lived in, and who saw into the future. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Augste-Felix-Charles de Beaupoil, Count of Saint-Aulaire, became ambassador to Romania in the troubled summer of 1916.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":129832,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41141],"tags":[42687,42689,42690,42688],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-129831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-history-show","tag-count-of-saint-aulaire","tag-historian-alina-pavelescu","tag-historian-dan-c-mihailescu","tag-notes-of-an-ambassador-of-yore-in-romania-1916-1920"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n