|
Nicolae Golescu (1810-1877) was the Prime Minister of Romania two times: in 1868 and 1870.
He was the son of a Wallachian boyar Dinicu Golescu and educated together with the other three brothers in Switzerland. Nicolae and his brother Ştefan returned in 1830 to join the army, where Nicolae became a major in 1834.
In the same year he joined the Philharmonic Society, a society similar to the Freemasonry. In 1840 he was a prosecutor in the trial of the participants in the Filipescu plot and later on he was a Minister of Internal Affairs.
In 1842, Wallachia was under the protectorate of Russia and Nicolae Golescu tried to obtain the throne, but he failed and remained a Minister of Internal Affairs until 1847. In the meantime he participated in various revolutionary societies.
Although he was born in a boyar family, he joined the radical liberals, being part of the 1848 revolutionary committee, together with Ion Ghica, Nicolae Bălcescu, Ion Heliade Rădulescu and others.
After, on 11 June 1848 the revolution started in Bucharest, Nicolae Golascu was once again a Minister of Internal Affairs. The following week he took care of the popular mobilization against and anti-revolution, so that the provisional govenment could keep its power.
However, on 25 July, the government resigns at the pressure of the Ottoman Empire, and after the Ottoman intervention of September, Nicolae Golescu goes in exile, returning in the 1850s to support Alexander John Cuza and the union of Wallachia and Moldavia. In 1866, he was for a short time a regent after Cuza's forced abdication.
He was then part of the Liberal Party of Ion C. Brătianu, having two mandates of Prime Minister of Romania.
| 
