Whose revolution was 1821?

Chapter

January – February 1821

The call

Padeș, 23 January 1821

The camp

Țânțăreni: 4,000 foot, 500 horse

The answer

the people, not the plunderers

In January 1821 Prince Alexandros Soutzos died, and the boyar regency – the Comitet de oblăduire – agreed with the Pandurs to raise Oltenia before a new Phanariote prince could reach Bucharest. Their instrument was Tudor Vladimirescu, born around 1780 at Vladimiri in Gorj and decorated by Russia in the war of 1806–1812: on 15 January he wrote to the Sultan that his quarrel was with the Phanariotes, not the Empire.

On 21 January he seized the prefect at Târgu Jiu; on 22 January his men took Tismana Monastery; on Sunday 23 January, at Padeș, before about 100 plăieși, he read the call 'to all the human folk' remembered as the Padeș proclamation. No law, it said, stops a man from meeting evil with evil – and it summoned an Assembly of the People to strike the snake on the head with a cane.

The march through Mehedinți – Broșteni, Cerneți, Strehaia – emptied Craiova of its boyars by 29 January, and on 4 February the camp at Țânțăreni held some 4,000 foot and 500 horse. When the Divan sent Nicolae Văcărescu on 11 February to halt the march on Bucharest, Tudor answered that the fatherland is 'the people, and not the Coterie of plunderers'.

There is no law that would prevent a man from meeting evil with evil.

The Padeș proclamation, 23 January 1821

Meanwhile In the Russian port of Odessa, Alexandru Ypsilantis had just taken command of the Filiki Eteria, whose Bucharest council of May 1820 had approved a general anti-Ottoman rising.

Chapter

4 – 21 March 1821

The price

500,000 thaler

The crossing

the Olt, 10 March

The entry

bread and banner, 21 March

On 4 March the Pandurs took Slătioara, and Tudor sent the regents a five-point ultimatum: the Phanariotes out, a levy army, tax relief, and 500,000 thaler for his expenses. The Demands of the Romanian People added offices by merit instead of purchase, and the main tax reduced and split into quarterly instalments.

Pitești fell on 7 March; on 10 March the columns crossed the Olt and camped at Vadu-Lat; on 16 March they held Bolintin, and appeals of 16 and 20 March told Bucharest that 'we are all parts of the same people'. The army's size runs from 4,000 to 24,000 men depending on the source; Tudor himself claimed at least 12,000, with five to eight cannons.

On 21 March the column entered Bucharest down Podul Calicilor behind a white-and-blue banner, Tudor holding a loaf of bread as a sign of plenty. Metropolitan Dionisie received him with 'great joy', the remaining boyars called the movement 'useful and redeeming', and the Arnaut commander Sava Fochianos accepted a ceasefire after facing the Pandurs at the Metropolitan Church.

We are all parts of the same people.

Tudor's appeal to Bucharest, 20 March 1821

Meanwhile In Moldavia the Sacred Band was forming, and Tsar Alexander's minister Capodistria was already drafting the denunciation that would strip Ypsilantis of his Russian rank.

Chapter

22 February – 15 May 1821

The crossing

Sculeni, 22 February

The partition

25 March: two domains

The firman

'pity and justice' vs the outcast

On 22 February Ypsilantis crossed the Prut at Sculeni, and on 24 February, at Iași, he proclaimed 'Fight for Faith and Motherland', promising the Hellenes the support 'of a great power' and summoning them to the Ionian and Aegean shores, to Marathon and Thermopylae. Russia answered by disowning him, and Patriarch Gregory V answered with an anathema – yet the Sacred Band marched on toward Bucharest.

Kept outside the city at the Colentina manor, the Eterists met Tudor on 25 March and divided the country: Oltenia, Bucharest and southern Muntenia stayed his; the Carpathian counties went to the Sacred Band, 7,000 men on paper. In April Tudor barricaded himself in Cotroceni – fortifications drawn by Gheorghe Lazăr – and on 14 April his boyars denounced Ypsilantis as a dishonoured guest; on 18 April his envoys Jianu and Borănescu left for Silistra to parley with the Ottomans, and Jianu was arrested there.

In the last days of April the Ottoman armies crossed the Danube – 20,000 to 32,000 men in two columns, through Calafat and Călărași – and by 14 May they stood at Copăceni, in sight of Bucharest. The Sultan's firman promised justice separating 'the exploited from the exploiters', praised Tudor as a loyalist demanding 'pity and justice', and dismissed Ypsilantis as an outcast.

To arms, then, friends, the Motherland calls us!

Ypsilantis's Iași proclamation, 24 February 1821

Meanwhile In the Peloponnese the Greek rising was beginning, the southern front of the Eteria's plan.

Chapter

21 May 1821 – 1822

The arrest

Golești, 21 May

The night

Târgoviște, 27–28 May

The end

Drăgășani, 7 June

Tudor retreated toward Oltenia and Ypsilantis toward the northern hills, and discipline collapsed on the road: Tudor hanged men for desertion – Ioan Urdăreanu at Golești – and may have killed as many as 30 of his own soldiers, some by his own hand. The Macedonski brothers then charged him with embezzling 1 million thaler and threatened to hand him to the Divan for trial.

On 21 May the Eterists walked into the camp at Golești and seized Tudor without a shot, showing the Pandurs his correspondence with the Porte; the leaderless men rallied to their new captains, and the prisoner was carried to the Eterist headquarters at Târgoviște. There, in the night of 27–28 May, he was tortured, shot and cut to pieces, and his body was thrown into a pit.

The collaboration charge was never confirmed, and the Eteria never took command of his army: most of the Pandurs simply went home. At Drăgășani, on 7 June, the Sacred Band was destroyed by 2,000 Ottoman horsemen; in 1822 the Sultan gave the thrones to native princes – Grigore IV Ghica and Ioan Sturdza – and the Phanariote century ended.

You have broken your oaths, you have betrayed God and your country.

Ypsilantis's farewell to his army, June 1821

Meanwhile At Secu Monastery in Moldavia the last Eterists made their final stand – Olympios blew himself up with the powder store, Pharmakis was taken and beheaded.