80 Facts About John Caradja

John Caradja was the second, and last, member of the Karatzas or Caradja family to ascend to the Wallachian throne, but one of several to have held office as Great Dragoman of the Ottoman Empire.

John Caradja's progeny included Rallou Karatza-Argyropoulos, who was famous in her own right as a pioneer of modern Greek theater.

John Caradja's reign came at the apex of Phanariote influence in the Danubian Principalities, a time marked by political corruption, outside interference, and, increasingly, the affirmation of Romanian nationalism as an alternative to Greek hegemony.

John Caradja was then involved in securing jobs for his Greek retinue or in trafficking high offices in exchange for bribes; in order to meet Ottoman fiscal demands, but his own financial goals, he created an infamous system of spoliation which perplexed foreign observers and angered the Wallachian public.

John Caradja afforded Wallachian natives a victory by allowing Gheorghe Lazar to teach a Romanian course at his refurbished princely academy, and made some efforts to reintegrate disgruntled nationalists into his administration.

John Caradja lived in the Swiss Confederacy and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, supporting the Greek War of Independence, and becoming nominal head of the revolutionary government in the Peloponnese.

John Caradja remained generally vilified in Romanian literature and folklore, though he received positive recognition for his leniency toward the outlaw Iancu Jianu.

John Caradja sees him and other early Karatzas as Hellenized Pechenegs.

John Caradja is the common ancestor of all Wallachian Carageas.

John Caradja married Eleni Skanavi, the daughter of a banker, whose aunt was the wife of Nicholas Mavrogenes.

John Caradja began his second stint as Dragoman on 7 August 1812, replacing Panagiotis Moutouzis, and subsequently worked to become Wallachian Prince, hoping to outplay his powerful rivals from the Mourouzis family.

John Caradja's candidacy was publicly backed by the Austrian Empire, formed in 1804 from parts of the older Habsburg realm, as well by the Ottoman intriguer, Halet Efendi.

John Caradja reputedly rewarded intercessions on his behalf with 8,000 bags of Guilder, a "colossal sum" that he intended to recover from Wallachia's taxpayers.

John Caradja disguised himself in order to visit his designated palace, Curtea Noua, which had been damaged by the Imperial Russian Army during its use as a field hospital.

John Caradja opted not to use the building as his residence, and instead rented two boyar homes, one of them owned by Grigore Dimitrie Ghica, outside Curtea Veche.

John Caradja quickly transformed these into a makeshift palace that stood out for "bringing together all styles of Europe and Turkey", with frescoes done by Italian artist Alberto Giacometti.

John Caradja used St Nicholas in-a-Day Church as his family chapel; he ordered the construction of a covered footbridge leading directly from the palace and into that building, tearing down part of its south wall.

Immediately after his enthronement, John Caradja was becoming known to locals as harsh and swift in carrying out justice.

In 1812, Atanasie Vasta of Targoviste was whipped and exiled for having assaulted his own father, with John Caradja reminding him that the usual punishment involved the amputation of both arms.

John Caradja ordered Bucharest's health inspector, Archisatras, to give him routine reports on any signs of disease.

The country's economic decline, worsened by months of Russian military occupation, did not prevent John Caradja from instituting new fiscal policies which the population at large perceived as absurdly harsh.

The policies were not fully endorsed by the Wallachian Vistier Grigore Brancoveanu; within six months of office, John Caradja had him replaced with a more compliant Constantin Filipescu.

An 1815 note by diarist Asanache Lipianu informs that John Caradja "burdened down the guilds as much as he could", while ordering low-ranking boyars to pay a tax of 18 thaler.

Manuc alleges that John Caradja similarly confiscated 250,000 sheep, which was 100,000 more than the Ottomans had required of him, and that he sold off the difference at a profit.

John Caradja was one of those whom the Grand Vizier Hurshid Pasha asked to purge Wallachia of political figures seen as responsible for that debacle; the latter included Abdullah Ramiz Efendi, whom John Caradja beheaded at Colentina, and Manuc Bei, whom he probably tried to lure into an assassination trap.

John Caradja had more trouble in dealing with Manuc, to whom he owed 175,000 piasters, borrowed early on by Argyropoulos.

John Caradja sacked his confidants from the offices at the court, but was unable to lure Manuc himself, who was, or pretended to be, bedridden with malaria.

Mseriants provides details on John Caradja ordering Michael Soutzos to seize Manuc's assets and children, but notes that Soutzos failed in both attempts.

Reportedly, John Caradja intended to purchase Manuc's Inn, which was a lucrative business in downtown Bucharest.

John Caradja took a reported 650,000 piasters from this deal, while Gregory Soutzos, who had helped seal it, received 25,000.

John Caradja sent in some hundreds of his Wallachian militiamen, assisting the Ottoman army as it advanced down the Timok Valley, toward Negotin; together, these forces managed to defeat Hajduk Veljko in July 1813.

John Caradja took a special interest in Jewish affairs, discriminating against those coming in from other parts of Europe, classified as Suditi, but protecting Jewish guilds.

Hostile accounts suggest that John Caradja was in fact responsible for bringing the disease to Bucharest, with his Phanariote entourage.

John Caradja was forced to withdraw his donation upon being informed that it was exclusively reserved for impaling malefactors or their severed heads.

John Caradja became a champion of the Moldavian boyardom, which asked the great powers to endorse the reunification with Bessarabia.

John Caradja tried to persuade Metternich, through Gentz, to discuss Bessarabia at the Congress of Vienna, but was advised to drop the issue.

In one application of this prerogative, John Caradja pardoned the boyar outlaw Iancu Jianu and "married him off to the impoverished daughter of a Greek man".

John Caradja was forced to ask the Austrians for the right to import food from Backa and the Banat, in exchange for a promissory note.

John Caradja was alarmed about the spread of leprosy, and in May 1816 ordered Constantin Samurcas to form a lazaretto in Cotroceni.

Ledoulx writes that John Caradja was enthusiastic about Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, and celebrated it by dressing up a mannequin in Grande Armee uniform, which his servants used as a football.

John Caradja later questioned whether this had actually happened, but a Wallachian archival document confirmed that a coup had indeed been prepared by a "revolutionary organization".

John Caradja's projects were increasingly hampered by an upper-class approximation of Romanian nationalism, or "National Party", initially rallied around Constantin Filipescu.

John Caradja suggested that Pyotr Lopukhin's government collect on its 1812 debt, which, Manuc argued, would result in the downfall of Halet Efendi and his entire "Austrian" clique.

In mid-1816, these reports were heard by Russian Emperor Alexander I, who ordered that John Caradja be regarded as a suspect.

Meanwhile, Samurcas alerted his liege about Manuc's conspiracy to have him removed; John Caradja followed up by increasing the bribes he sent to Mahmud, and by dispatching more of his assets to safety in Austria.

On 1 January 1817, during the New Years' Feast at the home of his son-in-law Constantin Vlahutzi, John Caradja announced his court that he intended to cut down on taxes and expenditures; this was days after opening up to the "National Party", by making Brancoveanu his Spatharios.

John Caradja was providing selective tax breaks: in December 1816, he allowed the family of Clucer Dinca Socoteanu to have ten scutelnici.

John Caradja ordered her stripped down in case she would re-offend, though she was never apprehended.

In late 1813, John Caradja had made him administrator of Ploiesti city and its Romani encampments, which provided him with an annual income of over 200 thousand piasters.

At his new palace, John Caradja favored the glamorous side of Westernization, introducing sugar sculptures, country dances, Farobank, and carom billiards.

John Caradja is said to have hated the taste, but Rallou greatly enjoyed it.

In December 1817, John Caradja relented to nationalist pressures and created a Romanian-language school within the academy.

In documenting the Prince's rapacity for Manuc, Filipescu contended that John Caradja had taken almost 10 million piasters in bribes.

Langeron claims that, overall, John Caradja had "squeezed that unfortunate province [of Wallachia]" of 93 million piasters, or 50 million rubles, of which he kept 18 million; 70 million "went over to the sultan, to his ministers, and to the Phanariotes".

John Caradja then made complex efforts to stop Caradja from inventing new taxes, but to prevent Mahmud from simply replacing him with another Phanariote.

From 1 June 1817, John Caradja embarked on a correspondence with Kapodistrias, who became his partisan.

John Caradja began directing Wallachian treasury funds toward Kapodistrias' "Philomuse Society", which functioned as both an academic club and a subversive group favoring the Modern Greek Enlightenment and Greek nationalism.

Kapodistria sent in Nikolaos Galatis, who represented the radical-nationalist Filiki Eteria; though he refrained from joining its ranks, John Caradja allowed Mavrokordatos and Beizadea Konstantinos to be initiated by Galatis.

John Caradja himself caught up with rumors that he had been disgraced at the Ottoman court; he discovered that his Soutzos son-in-law, who wanted the throne of Moldavia, now supported the toppling of both Princes.

On 29 November 1818, they passed through Lausanne, with the local Gazette informing that John Caradja had with him some 15 servants an armed guard, and probably 50 million piasters as bounty.

John Caradja was able to recover and sell off his jewels, which were handled by Jean-Francois Bautte.

John Caradja enjoyed an unusually deep level of protection from the Tuscan authorities, with censors intervening to remove all criticism of Caradja from the local newspapers.

John Caradja's escape was seen as intolerable by Mahmud II; while the aged Alexandros Soutzos took over as Prince, the Sultan issued a decree that only four clans of Phanariotes, including two branches of the Soutzos, could ever expect to have members appointed to high office.

John Caradja's people surrounded and put to death the messengers of his doom, while the Hospodar fled with his family to the frontiers.

John Caradja left an explanatory letter that reached the Grand Vizier Burdulu Pasha, who showed it to Strogonov in January 1819.

John Caradja's flight deepened conflicts between Romanian nationalists and Phanariotes: immediately after, a delegation of boyars unsuccessfully demanded that all boyar dignities be assigned to men who could prove their Romanian background, and that John Caradja's native enemy, Brancoveanu, be recognized as Prince.

John Caradja had still not reconciled with Michael during his time in Geneva; he probably never intended to follow up on this invitation, but in any case he would have been prevented to do so by the Austrian authorities, who issued orders to stop him at the border.

John Caradja was appointed its chairman, and Michael Soutzos its vice-chairman, with a boat being sent in to pick them up from Pisa.

John Caradja finally settled in Athens in 1830, before the country transformed into a "Kingdom of Greece".

John Caradja finally died of the disease, in Athens, on the morning of 27 December 1844.

John Caradja's body was then buried in Saint George Church of Kolokynthou, which had been built under his patronage.

Historian Paul Cernovodeanu provides an overview of Caradja's political legacy: he notes that, unlike his uncle Nicholas, who enjoyed a sound reputation in Wallachian literary sources, John was vilified and cursed as the "great predator".

The claim that it commemorates Prince John Caradja was seen as baseless by Constantin Jean Karadja.

Similarly, cultural historian Alkis Angelou argues that John Caradja was "one of the three gifted and especially cultured Phanariote rulers", with the other two being the inaugural Phanariote Nicholas Mavrocordatos and the mid-18th-century Grigore III Ghica.

Scholar Walter Puchner notes that John Caradja's translations were important cultural landmarks, for completing "the first phase of Goldoni's reception in Greece, under the auspices of the Enlightenment", but that they were never used for actual stage productions.

John Caradja honored Wallachia's Orthodox tradition by allowing himself to appear in frescoes, including at Saints Nicholas and Andrew Church in Targu Jiu and Lainici Monastery.

John Caradja's descendants continued to reside in Wallachia and the successor Kingdom of Romania.

John Caradja argued for using "Karadja" as the family surname, noting that the Romanianized "Caragea" no longer showed its origins.

John Caradja's reign was revisited indirectly, in a fictionalized form, by Mateiu Caragiale in his 1929 novel Craii de Curtea-Veche.

John Caradja's reign is the backdrop for the Dinu Cocea's adventure-comedy films, Haiducii lui Saptecai and Zestrea domnitei Ralu.