CHAPTER IX.

MOLDAVIA AND WALLACHIA.

System of Turkish government towards the tributary subjects.Powers and immunities of the clergy.-Offices of emolumént conferred on the rayahs.Peculiar advantages of the Grecks. Cause, and consequences of this distinction.-Exceptions to the usual mode of Turkish government.-Dacia.-Geography of Moldavia and Wallachia;-their departments and dioceses; -seasons, air, and soil;-husbandry and natural productions ;-appearance of the country.-Constitution and moral qualities of the inhabitants.—Civil distinctions.—Constitution and government.-Vaivoda or prince :-ceremony of inauguration;court, officers of state, and body-guards.-Divan or council;-its departments.-Boyars or nobility.-Powers of the divan.-Classes and privileges of the boyars.-Turkish magistrates.-Officers civil and military.-Laws and police. Revenue and taxes.Capital cities.—Public establishments. Manners of the Greeks and the boyars.Deposed princes.--Foreign relations,

WHILE the Turkish power was in a state of progressive aggrandizement, it was the constant policy of the government to expel

System of the nobles and great landed proprietors from

Turkish go

vernment those countries which they had incorporated

towards the

subjects.

tributary with their empire, and to make a new division of the lands according to the arrangements of their peculiar civil and military system. Under the equal pressure of this new despotism, every idea of nobility and all traces of distinction were effaced from the memory of the inhabitants; and, after a few generations, the posterity of the ancient families could no longer be recognized among the mass of conquered subjects. These were reduced to one common level of servitude: their talents were exerted only to procure the necessary means of subsistence, and were confined to the labours of agriculture, the exercise of the mechanical arts, and the dealings of commerce. The abolition of civil or honourable distinctions, of all which was derived from former institutions or which could

tend to perpetuate the memory of past independence, was inevitable, since their existence was incompatible with the safety of the new government*.

*The families are so fallen from their former splendour that they look more like husbandmen than nobles." Cantemir, p. 186, note 28.

"Hic mihi in mentem venit, quam levis et infirma res sit

immunities

clergy.

The power of the clergy, great as was Powers and their authority over the minds of their fol- of the lowers, and odious as it must have appeared to zealots professing adverse doctrines, excited, however, neither jealousy nor animosity. The influence of the clergy, who were detached from the ordinary concerns of life and who had no community of interests. with their fellow subjects, presented to a government, whose policy consisted in oppression, a powerful instrument for securing the obedience of the conquered people and for producing general habits of patience and submission, The Ottomans treated with the clergy in their corporate capacity as with a civil power, representative not merely of a sect, but of a nation, over which they had until then exerted only a spiritual authority. Their privileges were confirmed, and their powers augmented; they were invested with

quæ vulgo perhibetur, nobilitas. Nam cum de puellis quibusdam, quæ liberaliore erant forma, scire vellem, num quo essent genere, audiebam eas a summis ejus gentis satrapis originem ducere, aut etiam regium esse genus, jam bubulco aut opilioni desponsas. Sic in regno Turcarum jacet nobilitas. Vidi item postea aliis locis Cantacuzenorum et Palæologorum imperatorii generis reliquias, contemptius inter Turcas degentes quam vixit Dionysius Corinthi." (Busbeq. Epist. i, p. 23.)

Offices of

emolument

On the rayahs,

temporal authority, were appointed the political overseers of their flock, and were the only authorized and acknowledged organ of the people*.

The pride or the indolence of the Turks, conferred which made them disdain, or rendered them averse from attending to, the details of business, encouraged a mercenary emulation among the rayahs, to whom they confided the administration of several lucrative, though subaltern, departments. The rayahs thus became the bankers, the merchants, the contractors, the agents, of the porte, of the pashas, and of the farmers of the different branches of the revenue. They retaliated

*«Les Turcs traitèrent avec le patriarche Gennadius comme avec une puissance; ils l'admirent dans leur conseil, et en lui rendant sa dignité ils s'assurèrent de l'obéissance du peuple entier qu'ils venoient de conquérir." (Chevalier, voyage de la Propontide et du Pont Euxin, t. i, p. 117.)

"The influence of the patriarch with the porte is very extensive, as far as his own nation is concerned. His memorials are never denied, and he can, in fact, command the death, the exile, imprisonment for life, deposition from offices, or pecuniary fine, of any Greek he may be inclined to punish with rigour, or who has treated his authority with contempt." (Dallaway, p. 101.)

The Armenian patriarch and the khakham bashi or chief rab-bin of the Jews, are in like manner the temporal and spiritual heads of their respective communities.

upon their countrymen the humiliations which their employers forced them to endure, and they practised every refinement of tyranny stimulated by avarice*. Custom and precedent, which in Turkey soon acquire the force of law, have established the Jews in the offices of collecting the customs and of purchasing whatever is required for the use of the seraglio, while they have conferred on the Armenians the direction of the mint: these, however, are the highest civil employments to which either of them can attain.

advantages

It has been supposed, that the Turks, in Peculiar order to console the Greek descendants of of the the imperial family for the loss of empire,

Ce

"Les Grecs ont leurs plus grands ennemis parmi eux. sont ces codja-bachis, Grecs d'origine, prosternés aux pieds des Turcs, qui vexent avec plus de dureté ceux qu'ils devroient chérir et consoler. Par leur insolence, par leur fierté, et par la bassesse qui les caractérisent éminemment, ils ont établi une ligne de démarcation entre eux et la nation Grecque. Espèce dégénérée, ils ont tous les vices des esclaves, et ne se dédomma. gent des humiliations que les Turcs leur prodiguent qu'en exerçant le monopole, la délation, et le brigandage le plus révoltant. Dans les temples ils occupent la place voisine de l'autel, ils y déploient l'orgueil du Pharisien, contens d'une triste prérogative achetée au prix du bonheur de leurs compatriotes." "Sous le sabre du Turc, le Grec est esclave; mais sous la puissance de son compatriote, il est spolié et cent fois plus malheureux," (Pouqueville, voyages en Morée, &c. t. i, p. 106, 359.)

Greeks.