Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/30

Rh 18 ROU MANIA the Turks and Poles. Near Ribnik and elsewhere were salt-mines which supplied all the wants of the Transdanubian provinces ; there were considerable copper mines at Maidan ; and iron was worked near Tirgovist. The Gipsy community was bound to bring fifteen pounds weight of gold from the washings of the Argish. The boiars were many of them wealthy, but the common people were so ground down with taxation that '*of their ancient Roman valour only the name remained." To avoid the extortion of their rulers numbers had emigrated to Transylvania and even to the Turkish provinces. The principal Walachian city was Bucharest (Bucurest), containing a population of about 50,000 ; but, except for two large " hans " or merchants' halls built by Brancovan and his predecessor, and the recently-erected palace, which had a marble staircase and a fine garden, the houses were of wood. The other principal towns were Tirgovist, the old capital, Ceruetz, Fokshani, supplied by Brancovan with an aqueduct, Ploiesti, Ghierghitza, Rusi di Vede, and Krajova, the capital of the banat of that name, where a fine ban had also been built. At Cimpulungu was a great annual fair. 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 Walaehians 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 Tirgovist which produced a better quality than the Polish. From the Bucharest press, besides a variety of ecclesiastical books, there were issued in the Rouman 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 copper- plate engraving of it executed at Padua. Fall of The prosperity of Walachia, however, under its "Golden Bey," Bran- as Brancovan was known at Stamboul, only increased the Turkish covan. exactions. In 1701 the tribute was increased to 80,500 purses of 500 florins each. In 1703 the voivode was summoned in person to Adrianople, and again must resort to extraordinary means to mollify the Divan. Shortly after, the Walachians were called on to supply masons, carpenters, and other workmen for the fortification of Bender, and, though these and other demands were punctually met and the increased tribute regularly paid, the sultan finally resolved on the removal of his too prosperous vassal. Brancovan was accused of secret correspondence with the emperor, the czar, the king of Poland, and the Venetian republic, of betraying the Forte's secrets, of preferring Tirgovist 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, one of which, with the legend CONSTANTINVS BASSARABA DE BRANCOVAN D. o. VOEVODA ET PRINCEPS VALACHIJB TRANSALPINE, 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. A capidji pasha arrived at Bucharest on April 4, 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 Cantacuzcnian family was elected by the pasha's orders, and be, after exhausting the principality for the benefit of the Divan, was in turn deposed and executed in 1716. The From this period onwards the Porte introduced a new system with Fan- regard to its Walachian vassals. The line of national princes ceases, ariote The office of voivode or hospodar was sold to the highest bidder at regime. Stamboul, 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 Fanar quarter of Constantinople who had served the palace in the quality of dragoman, 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. Constantino Mavrocordato was in this way hospodar of Walachia at six different times, and paid on one occasion as much as a million lion-dollars for the office. The princes thus imposed on the country were generally men of intelli- gence and culture. Nicholas Mavrocordato, the first of the series, was himself the author of a Greek work on duties, and main- tained at his court Demeter Prokopios of Moschopolis, who wrote a review of Greek literature during the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries. Constantino Mavrocordato was the author of really liberal reforms. He introduced an "urbarium" for the peasants, limiting the days of "angaria," or forced labour for the landlord, to twenty- four, and in 1747 decreed the abolition of serfdom. But the new system could not but be productive of grinding oppression, and the swarms of "hungry Greekliugs" who accompanied the Fanariote rulers from Stamboul made their rule doubly hateful. Numbers of the peasantry emigrated, and the population rapidly diminished. In 1745 the number of tux-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 Scarlatu Ghika (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. The Turks meantime maintained their iron grip on the country by holding on the Walachian bank of the Danube the I'm tresses of Giurgevo, Turnul, and Orsova, with the surrounding districts. But the tide of Ottoman dominion was ebbing fast. Already, by the peace of Passarovitz (Pojarevatz) in 1718, the bauat of Krajova 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 Romanzoff 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 czarina's representatives insisted on the sultan's recognition of the independence of Walachia and Moldavia under an European guarantee. By the treaty of Kutshuk Kaimardji, concluded in Treaty; 1774, Russia consented to hand back the principalities to the Kutsh| sultan, but by Art. xvi. several stipulations were made in favour Kaim- of the Walachians and Moldavians. The people of the princi- ardji. palities were to enjoy all the privileges that they had possessed under Mahomet IV. ; they were to bo freed from tribute for two years, as some compensation for the ruinous effects of the last war ; they were to pay a moderate tribute ; the agents of Walachia and Moldavia at Constantinople were to enjoy the rights of nations, and the Russian minister at the Porte should on occasion watch over the interests of the principalities. The stipulations of the treaty of Kutshuk Kaimardji, though deficient in precision (the Walachians, for instance, had no authentic record of the privileges enjoyed under Mahomet IV.), formed the basis of the future liberties in both prin- cipalities ; 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 sisteE principality. Moldavia. The mention of Vlachs on the borders of Galicia in Early 1160 (Nic. Chon., p. 171) gives just ground for believing that a Mol- Rouman population existed in Moldavia at least as early as the first daviaa half of the 12th century. Under the successive domination, how- history ever, of Petchenegs, Cumans, and Tatars, it occupied as yet a sub- ordinate position. It was not till 1352 that the Tatars, already weakened by Polish assaults on the Podolian side, were expelled from this Cumanian region by the Transylvanian voivodo Andreas Laszkovich. It is in fact to the period immediately succeeding this event that the first establishment of an independent Rouman state in Moldavia is referred by the concurrent testimony of Moldavian, Russian, and Hungarian sources. According to the native traditional account, as first given by the Moldavian chroniclers of the 17th and 18th centuries (Grigorie Urechie and Miron Costin), Dragosh the son of Bogdan, the founder of the new principality, emigrated with his followers towards tho end of the 14th century from the Hungarian district of Marmaros in the North Carpathians. The story is related with various fabulous accompaniments. From tho aurochs (ziinbru), in pursuit of which Dragosh first arrived on the banks of the Molda, 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 tho Hungarian and Russian sources, which are somewhat more precise, the date of the arrival of Dragosh, who otherwise appears as Bogdan, in Moldavia appears to have been 1359, and his de- parture from Marmaros was carried out in defiance of bis Hungarian suzerain. In the agreement arrived at between King Louis of Hungary and Rival the emperor Charles IV. in 1372, the voivodate of Moldavia was claims recognized as a dependency of the crown of St Stephen. The over- Poland lordship over the country was, however, contested by the king of and Poland, and their rival claims were a continual source of dispute Hunga between the two kingdoms. In 1412 a remarkable agreement was arrived at between Sigismund, in his quality of king of Hungary, and King Jagierlo of Poland, by which both parties consented to postpone the question of suzerainship in Moldavia. Should, however, the Turks invade the country, the Polish and Hungarian forces were to unite in expelling them, the voivode was to be deposed, and the Moldavian territories divided between the allies. During the first half of the 15th century Polish influence was preponderant, and it was customary for the voivodes of Moldavia to do homage to tho king of Poland at Kameniec or Snyatin. In 1456 the voivode Peter, alarmed at the progress of the Turks,