Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/29

Rh ROUMANIA 17 quest 'ran- that Walachia was doomed to sink into a Turkish pashalic. The Turkish commander Mahmoud Bey became treacherously possessed of Nagul's young son and successor, and, sending him a prisoner to Statnboul, proceeded to nominate Turkish governors in the towns and villages of Walachia. The "VValachians resisted desperately, elected Radul, a kinsman of Nagul, voivode, and succeeded with Hungarian help in defeating Mahmoud Bey at Grumatz in 1522. The conflict was prolonged with varying fortunes, but in 1524 the dogged opposition of the Walachians finally triumphed in the sultan's recognition of Radul. But, though Walachia thus escaped conversion into a Turkish pashalic, the battle of Mohacs in 1526 decided the long pre- ponderance of Turkish control. The unfortunate province served as a transit route for Turkish expeditions against Hungary and Transylvania, and was exhausted by continual requisitions. Turkish settlers were gradually making good their footing on "Walachian soil, and mosques were rising in the towns and villages. The voivode Alexander, who succeeded in 1591, and who like his predecessors had bought his post of the Divan, carried the oppres- sion still further by introducing against the capitulations a janizary guard, and farming out his possessions to his Turkish supporters. Meanwhile the Turkish governors on the Bulgarian bank never ceased to ravage the country, and again it seemed as if Walachia must share the fate of the Balkan states and succumb to the direct government of the Ottoman. In the depth of the national distress the choice of the people fell on Michael, the son of Petrushko, ban of Krajova, the first dignitary of the realm, who had fled to Transylvania to escape Alexander's machinations. Supported at Constantinople by two at that time influential personages, Sigmund Bathori and the English ambassador, Edward Barton, and aided by a loan of 200,000 florins, Michael succeeded in procuring from the Divan the deposition of his enemy and his own nomination. The genius of Michael " the Brave " (1593-1601) secured Walachia for a time a place in universal history. The moment for action was favourable. The emperor Rudolph II. had gained some successes over the Turks, and Sigmund Bathori, prince of Transylvania, had been driven by Turkish extortions to throw off the allegiance to the sultan. But the first obstacle to be dealt with was the presence of the enemy within the walls, and Michael had recourse to the same desperate expedient as the Montenegrins at a later date. By previous concert with the Moldavian voivode Aaron, on November 13, 1594, the Turkish guards and settlers in the two principalities were massacred at a given signal. Michael followed up these " Walachian Vespers " by an actual invasion of Turkish territory, and, aided by Sigmund Bathori, succeeded in carrying by assault Rustchuk, Silistria, and other places on the right bank of the lower Danube. A simultaneous invasion of Walachia by a large Turkish and Grim-Tatar host was successfully defeated ; the Tatar khan withdrew with the loss of his bravest followers, and, in the great victory of Mantin on the Danube (1595), the Turkish army was annihilated, and its leader Mustafa slain. The sultan now sent Sinan Pasha "the Renegade" to invade Walachia with 100,000 men. Michael withdrew to the moim tains before this overwhelming force, but, being joined by Bathori with a Transylvanian contingent, the voivode resumed the offensive, stormed Bucharest, where Sinan had entrenched a Turkish detach- ment, and, pursuing the main body of his forces to the Danube, overtook the rearguard and cut it to pieces, capturing enormous booty. Sinan Pasha returned to Constantinople to die, it is said, of vexation, and in 1597 the sultan, weary of a disastrous contest, sent Michael a red flag in token of reconciliation, reinvested him for life in an office of which he had been nnable to deprive him, and granted the succession to his son. In 1599, on the definitive abdication of Sigmund Bathori in Transylvania, Michael, in league with the imperialist forces under General Basta, and in connivance with the Saxon burghers, attacked and defeated his successor Andreas Bathori near Hermannstadt, and, seizing himself the reins of government, secured his proclama- tion as prince of Transylvania. The emperor consented to appoint him his " locum tenens per Transylvaniam," and the sultan ratified his election. As prince of Transylvania he summoned diets in 1599 and 1600, and, having expelled the voivode of Moldavia, united under his sceptre three principalities. The partiality that he showed for the Rouman and Szekler parts of the population alienated, however, the Transylvanian Saxons, who preferred the direct government of the emperor. The imperial commissioner General Basta lent his support to the disaffected party, and Michael was driven out of Transylvania by a successful revolt, while a Polish army under Zamoyski invaded Walachia from the Moldavian side. Michael's coolness and resource, however, never for a moment deserted him. He resolved to throw himself on the emperor, rode to Prague, won over Rudolph by his singular address, and, richly supplied with funds, reappeared in Transylvania as imperial governor. In conjunction with Basta he defeated the superior Transylvanian forces at Goroslo, expelling Sigmund Bathori, who had again aspired to the crown, and taking one hundred and fifty flags and forty-five cannon. But at the moment of his returning prosperity Basta, who had quarrelled with him about the supreme command of the imperial forces, procured his murder (August 19, 1601). Thus perished Michael the Brave in the forty-third year of his age, after performing in the course of his short reign achievements which, considering the small resources at his disposal, must place his name beside those of Hunyadi and Sobieski in the annals of eastern Europe. Not only did he succeed in rolling back for a time the tide of Turkish conquest, but for the first and last time in modern history he united what once had been Trajan's Dacia, in its widest extent, and with it the whole Rouman race north of the Danube, under a single sceptre. Michael's wife Florika and his son Petrushko were carried off Turkish, into Tatar captivity, and Serban, of the Bassaraba family, was domiua- raised to the voivodeship of Walachia by imperialist influences, tiou. On his deposition by the Porte in 1610, there followed a succession of princes who, though still for the most part of Rouman origin, bought their appointment at Stamboul. Walachian contingents were continually employed by the Turks in their Polish wars, and the settlement of Greeks in an official or mercantile capacity in the principality provoked grave discontent, which on one occasion took the form of a massacre. The reign of the voivode Matthias Matthias Bassaraba, who succeeded in 1633, was an interval of comparative Bassa- prosperity, and its length, twenty-one years, forms itself a panegyric, raba. He defended himself successfully against his powerful rival Vasilje Lupul, the voivode of Moldavia, and his Tatar and Cossack allies, and found a golden key to Turkish tolerance. He appears as a lawgiver, translating the Basilica of Jo. Comnenus, and founded many churches and monasteries. His last days were embittered, however, by an outbreak of military anarchy. On his death the Turkish yoke again weighed heavier on Walachia. The old capital Tirgovist was considered by the Divan to be too near the Transyl- vanian frontier, and the voivodes were accordingly compelled to transfer their residence to Bucharest. The mechanical skill of the Walachians was found useful by the Turks, who employed them as carpenters and pontonniers ; and during the siege of Vienna by Kara Mustafa in 1683 the Walachian contingent, which, under the voivode Serban Cantacuzene, had been forced to co-operate with Serban the Turks, was entrusted with the construction of the two bridges Canta- over the Danube above and below Vienna. The Walachian as cuzene. well as the Moldavian prince, who had been also forced to bring his contingent, maintained a secret intelligence with the besieged, an intelligence continued by the voivode Serban after his return to Walachia. The emperor granted him a diploma creating him count of the empire and recognizing his descent from the imperial house of Cantacuzene, Serban meanwhile collecting his forces for an open breach with the Porte. His prudence, however, per- petually postponed the occasion, and Walachia enjoyed peace to his death in 1688. This peaceful state of the country gave the voivode leisure to promote its internal culture, and in the year of his death he had the satisfaction of seeing the first part of a Walachian Bible issue from the first printing-press of the country, which he had established at Bucharest. He had also caused to be compiled a history of Walachia, and had called to the country many teachers of the Greek language, whose business it was to instruct the sons of the boiars in "grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy." Immediately on Serban's death the boiars, to prevent the Porte Constan- from handing over the office to the Greek adventurer who bid the tine highest, proceeded to elect his sister's son Constantine Brancovan. Bran- The Turkish capidji pasha, then in Bucharest, was persuaded to put covan. the caftan on his head in token of Turkish approval, and the patriarch of Constantinople, who was also present, and the arch- bishop of Walachia, Theodosius, consecrated him together at the high altar of the cathedral, where he took the coronation oath to devote his whole strength to the good of his country and received the boiars' oath of submission. Brancovan, it is true, found it expedient to devote his predecessor's treasure to purchasing the confirmation of his title from the Divan, but the account of his coronation ceremony remains an interesting landmark in the constitutional history of the country. In his foreign relations with the Hapsburg power he displayed the same caution as the voivode Serban. In spite of the victories of the margrave of Baden at Pojarevatz, Nish, and Widin in 1689, it was only by an exercise of force that the imperial troops secured winter quarters in Walachia, and, though after the battle of Pultava in 1709 Brancovan con- cluded a secret treaty with Czar Peter, he avoided giving open effect to it. The tranquillity which he thus obtained Avas employed by Brancovan as by his predecessor in furthering the internal well- being of the country, with what success is best apparent from the description of Walachia left by the Florentine Del Chiaro, who Del visited the country in 1709 and spent seven years there. He Chiaro'a describes the stoneless Walachian plain, with its rich pastures, its descrip- crops of maize and millet, and woods so symmetrically planted tion of and carefully kept by Brancovan's orders that hiding in them was Walachia, out of the question. Butter and honey were exported to supply the Grand Signer's kitchen at Stamboul ; wax and cattle to Venice ; and the red and white wine of Walachia, notably that of Pitesti, to Transylvania. The Walachian horses were in demand amongst XXI. 3