predecessor, and the recently erected palace, which had a marble staircase and a fine garden, the houses were of wood. The dress of the men was thoroughly Turkish except for their lambskin caps, that of the women half Greek, half Turkish. The houses were scrupulously clean and strewn with sweet herbs. Del Chiaro notices the great imitative capacity of the race, both artistic and mechanical. A Walachian in Venice had copied several of the pictures there with great skill; the copper-plates and wood engravings for the new press were executed by native hands. The Walachians imitated every kind of Turkish and European manufacture; and, though the boiars imported finer glass from Venice and Bohemia, a glass manufactory had been established near Tîrgovishtea which produced a better quality than the Polish. From the Bucharest press, besides a variety of ecclesiastical books, there were issued in the Ruman tongue a translation of a French work entitled The Maxims of the Orientals and The Romance of Alexander the Great. In 1700 Brancovan had a map of the country made and a copperplate engraving of it executed at Padua.
The prosperity of Walachia, however, under its “Golden Bey,” as Brancovan was known at Stambul, only increased the Fall of Brancovan. Turkish exactions; and, although all demands were punctually met, the sultan finally resolved on the removal of his too prosperous vassal. Brancovan was accused of secret correspondence with the emperor, the tsar, the king of Poland and the Venetian republic, of betraying the Porte's secrets, of preferring Tîrgovishtea to Bucharest as a residence, of acquiring lands and palaces in Transylvania, of keeping agents at Venice and Vienna, in both of which cities he had invested large sums, and of striking gold coins with his effigy.[1] An envoy arrived at Bucharest on the 4th of April 1714, and proclaimed Brancovan mazil, i.e. deposed. He was conducted to Constantinople and beheaded, together with his four sons. A scion of the rival Cantacuzenian family was elected by the pasha's orders, and he, after exhausting the principality for the benefit of the Divan, was in turn deposed and executed in 1716.
From this period onwards the Porte introduced a new system with regard to its Walachian vassals. The line of national The Phanariote régime. princes ceased. The office of voivode or hospodar was sold to the highest bidder at Stambul, to be farmed out from a purely mercenary point of view. The princes who now succeeded one another in rapid succession were mostly Greeks from the Phanar quarter of Constantinople who had served the palace in the quality of dragoman (interpreter), or held some other court appointment. They were nominated by imperial firman without a shadow of free election, and were deposed and transferred from one principality to another, executed or reappointed, like so many pashas. Like pashas they rarely held their office more than three years, it being the natural policy of the Porte to multiply such lucrative nominations. The same hospodar was often reappointed again and again as he succeeded in raising the sum necessary to buy back his title. Constantine Mavrocordato was in this way hospodar of Walachia at six different times, and paid on one occasion as much as a million lion-dollars (£40,000) for the office. The princes thus imposed on the country were generally men of intelligence and culture. Nicholas Mavrocordato, the first of the series, was himself the author of a Greek work on duties, and maintained at his court Demeter Prokopios of Moschopolis in Macedonia, who wrote a review of Greek literature during the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries. Constantine Mavrocordato was the author of really liberal reforms. He introduced an urbarium or land law, limiting to 24 the days of angaria, or forced labour, owed yearly by the peasants to their feudal lord. In 1747 he decreed the abolition of serfdom, but this enactment was not carried into effect. But the rule of the Phanariotes could not but be productive of grinding oppression, and it was rendered doubly hateful by the swarms of Greek adventurers who accompanied them. Numbers of the peasantry emigrated, and the population rapidly diminished. In 1745 the number of tax-paying families, which a few years before had amounted to 147,000, had sunk to 70,000. Yet the taxes were continually on the increase, and the hospodar Scarlat Ghica (1758-61), though he tried to win some popularity by the removal of Turkish settlers and the abolition of the vakarit or tax on cattle and horses, which was peculiarly hateful to the peasantry, raised the total amount of taxation to 25,000,000 lion-dollars, about £1,000,000. The Turks meantime maintained their grip on the country by holding on the Walachian bank of the Danube the fortresses of Giurgevo, Turnu Severin and Orsova, with the surrounding districts.
But the tide of Ottoman dominion was ebbing fast. Already, by the peace of Passarowitz Pozharevats in 1718, the banat of Craiova had been ceded to the emperor, though by the peace of Belgrade in 1739 it was recovered by the Porte for its Walachian vassal. In 1769 the Russian general Romanzov occupied the principality, the bishops and clergy took an oath of fidelity to the empress Catherine, and a deputation of boiars followed. The liberties of the country were guaranteed, taxation reformed and in 1772 the negotiations at Fokshani between Russia and the Porte broke down because the empress's representatives insisted on the sultan's recognition of the independence of Walachia and Moldavia under a European guarantee. Turkish rule was, however, definitely restored by the treaty of Kutchuk Kainardji, in 1774; and as from this period onwards Walachian history is closely connected with that of Moldavia, it may be convenient before continuing this review to turn to the earlier history of the sister principality.
(3) Moldavia.—According to the native traditional account, as first given by the Moldavian chroniclers of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, Dragosh the son of Bogdan, the founder of the Moldavian principality, emigrated with his followers from the Hungarian district of Marmaros in the northern Carpathians. The dates assigned to this event vary from 1299, given by Urechia, to 1342, given by the monastic chronicle of Putna. The story is related with various fabulous accompaniments. From the aurochs (zimbru), in pursuit of which Dragosh first arrived on the banks of the Moldova, is derived the ox-head of the Moldavian national arms, and from his favourite hound who perished in the waters the name of the river. From the Hungarian and Russian sources, which are somewhat more precise, the date of the arrival of Dragosh, who is confused with the historical Bogdan Voda (1340-1365), appears to have been 1349, and his departure from Marmaros was carried out in defiance of his Hungarian suzerain.
These legendary accounts seem to show that the Moldavian voivodate was founded, like that of Walachia, by Vlach Early History. immigrants from Hungary, during the first half of the 14th century. Its original strength lay probably in the compact Ruman settlements among the eastern Carpathians, first mentioned by Nicetas of Chonae, about 1164. The Moldavian lowlands were still held by a variety of Tatar tribes, who were only expelled after 1350, by the united efforts of Andrew Laszkovich, voivode of Transylvania, and Bogdan Voda, the first independent prince of Moldavia. Coins bearing the name of Bogdan are still extant; and there is an inscription over his tomb at the monastery of Radautzi, in Bukovina, placed there by Stephen the Great of Moldavia (1457-1504).
In the agreement arrived at between Louis of Hungary and the emperor Charles IV. in 1372, the voivodate of Moldavia was Rival claims of Poland and Hungary. recognized as a dependency of the crown of St Stephen. The overlordship over the country was, however, contested by the king of Poland, and their rival claims were a continual source of dispute between the two kingdoms. In 1412 a remarkable agreement was arrived at between Sigismund, in his quality of king of Hungary, and King Ladislaus II. of Poland, by which both parties
- ↑ One of these, with the legend “CONSTANTINVS BASSARABA DE BRANCOVAN D.G. VOEVODA ET PRINCEPS VALACHIAE TRANSALPINAE,” and having on the reverse the crowned shield of Walachia containing a raven holding a cross in its beak between a moon and a star, is engraved by Del Chiaro. They were of 2, 3 and 10 ducats weight.
