Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/164

 that of the Wallachian ruler, Constantin Brâncoveanu, upon whom so dread a destiny waited (He was executed in Constantinople, after having been forced to look on while his sons were beheaded before him). He built and restored churches and monasteries, erected for himself and for his numerous family beautiful castles like that at Mogoșoaia near Bucharest; he kept a large retinue of boyards who had deserted their country houses in order to be ever under his eye; he commanded a chronicle of his reign to be written and ordered it to be changed accordingly as his own interest and sympathies waxed and waned.

Under the Regency, the revolutionary dissolutionist spirit of the so-called « philosophy »took hold on all minds. The salons of clever women took on the importance of the Court where Louis XV despised no means of avoiding great ceremonies and brilliant pageants. The thinkers and theorists on an abstract system of society were the teachers of the contemporary world which depended on their approval or condemnation. The reign of Voltaire had begun.

Nor was the East indifferent to this sweeping change of ideas and manners. Parallel to the Portugal of Pombal, the Spain of d’Aranda, and the Naples of Tannucci, Turkey too had her reformers. French adventurers were received in the houses of the mighty, who wished to give to the old world of the Ottoman Constantinople not only the prestige, but also the power which would result from drastic changes in all branches of the administration. At one moment there was talk of introducing in the capital of the Empire a parliament or assembly similar to that of the later French notables. Various technical and scientific French works were translated into the Turkish language. A printing press, an innovation contrived by a former