Two days after Bessarabba’s deposition, one Stephen Cantacuzene, of Greek origin, and calling himself a descendant of the imperial family of that name[[15]], was, by the Sultan’s order, raised to the Voïvodate.
On the 14th April, the Capigee-Bashi left Bukorest with Bessarabba, his wife, four sons, three daughters, and grandson, and escorted by the Turkish guard. They soon reached Constantinople, and the Voïvode, with all his family, was immediately confined in the state prison of the Seven Towers. His treasures not being found so considerable as had been expected, his sons were put to the torture for three successive days, that they might confess where their father had hidden the rest; or that the latter, being a witness to his children’s torments, might come forward and make that confession himself. But as these cruelties did not produce the intended effect, the Sultan, exasperated at the apparent obstinacy of the sufferers, ordered them to be executed in his presence. The prisoners were conducted to a square, under the windows of the seraglio, and a long list of accusations was read to them; it alluded particularly to the treachery of Bessarabba in the Austrian war, and to the indignant expressions he had made use of against the person of the Sultan, when his recall had been signified to him. The four sons were first beheaded, one after the other, and the execution of the father closed this scene of butchery. When the Sultan withdrew, the five heads were put upon pikes, and carried about the streets of Constantinople. The bodies were thrown into the sea, but they were picked up by some Christian boatmen, and conveyed to a Greek monastery in the little island of Halcky, in the Propontis, where they received burial.
As to the unfortunate princess and the remainder of her family, they were shortly after exiled to Cuttaya, in Asia Minor, but three years after they were permitted to return to Wallachia.[[16]]
The Voïvode Cantacuzene only remained in office two years, and he was the last Wallachian prince, whose nomination was effected through the formality of election. This important prerogative of the inhabitants had been abolished some years before in Moldavia. The Porte found it unnecessary to suffer it any longer in Wallachia, and indeed it had, since more than a century, become merely nominal.
Nicholas Marrocordato was transferred from the government of Moldavia to that of Wallachia, and proclaimed by a Turkish Capigee-Bashi in 1716. At this time the Porte was preparing to carry on a defensive war against Austria; and had the primates of Wallachia felt the courage to protest against so manifest a violation of their privileges, they would, most probably, have succeeded in securing a better observance of them.
Since the commencement of the decline of the Turkish power, the Ottoman court has made it an invariable policy to infringe little by little on the privileges allowed to foreign nations by treaty; and to conduct, by systematic stratagem, an administration which has been constantly falling in vigour and energy. If any infraction is left unnoticed by the party it concerns, and the article of a treaty, in its modified state, is once applied with success to any case to which it may relate, it becomes a precedent which the Porte will obstinately refer to at any other time that the strict interpretation of the article is insisted upon.
Thus, without assigning any satisfactory reason, and without repealing, in a plausible manner, the Wallachian law of election, the Sultan took to himself the exclusive right of appointing to the two Voïvodates. The measure was not opposed, and its repetition became habitual; and if, at the present moment, the inhabitants of the two Principalities were to recall their right to memory, and claim the enforcement of it, the Porte would consider and treat the proceeding as open rebellion on their part.
No prince of Wallachian or Moldavian birth or origin, was ever appointed after the recall of Bessarabba, and the Porte would have been willing to govern the principalities through the means of Turkish Pashahs; but the intrigues of the state-interpreter, Alexander Marrocordato, who was then endeavouring to secure either of the Voïvodates to his son Nicholas, induced at the time the Ottoman government to introduce another system, which subsequent motives have contributed to support to the present day. The Porte selected the new princes from the Greeks of Constantinople, whose long habit of obedience and servile degradation, appeared to render them suitable tools for the new policy adopted, relative to the government of the principalities. From that moment the princes have been appointed by Beratt, an imperial diploma, in which the Sultan, in proclaiming the nominations, commands the Wallachian and Moldavian nations to acknowledge and obey the bearers of it, as sole depositories of the sovereign authority.[[17]]
They were instructed to pursue the plan, of administration of the Voïvodes, and thus they were suffered to hold a court, to confer dignities and titles of nobility, and to keep up a show of sovereign splendour, circumstances which were most flattering to the vanity of the Greeks, and proved useful to the interested views of the Porte. But they were most strictly forbidden to maintain troops, or to collect any, under any pretence whatever. This precaution was indispensable, as it prevented the princes from acquiring military power, and the natives from aspiring to independency.
In the course of the last century, a variety of Greek princes succeeded to each other in the government of the principalities. One alone, Constantine Marrocordato, appointed in 1735 to Wallachia, devoted himself with zeal to the welfare of the country. Some wise institutions, to which we shall have occasion to advert in the sequel, attest the liberality of his views, and a generosity of character which is not to be traced in any of his successors. But he was twice recalled, because he refused to comply with demands of the Ottoman government, which appeared to him incompatible with duties he owed to the Wallachians. The other princes, less scrupulous, and more careful of their own interests, marked their administration by the most violent acts of extortion, and an invariable system of spoliation. Few of them died of natural death, and the Turkish scymetar was, perhaps, frequently employed with justice among them. In a political point of view, the short reigns of most of these princes offer nothing of sufficient importance or interest to deserve a place in history.