ere seized by order of the
hospodar, Michael Stourdza, and sent into confinement, but most of them
escaped and returned to reorganise the revolt. In the same year,
however, as we shall hear presently, the Russians invaded the
principality, entered Jassy, and quelled the revolution.

In Wallachia the rising assumed more serious proportions. It was led by
Heliad and the brothers Golesco, George Maghiero, a Greek by descent,
Tell, Chapka, a priest, and by three young men, two of whom will
hereafter be spoken of in connection with the Roumania, of
to-day--Demetrius and John Bratiano and C. Rosetti. Although all these
men were united in the desire to liberate their fatherland from the
heavy burdens with which it was oppressed, they disagreed as to the best
mode of proceeding. Long experience had taught them that between the two
fires of St. Petersburg and Constantinople there was little hope of
escape, and some leaned to the former, others to the latter power,
whilst the younger men, the Bratianos and Rosetti, looked anxiously to
Western Europe and its advanced civilisation for succour. The hospodar
Bibesco soon yielded before the storm, and fled to Kronstadt in
Transylvania. A provisional government was formed, dissolved, and formed
again.[167] Great assemblages of the people took place at Bucarest;
proclamations were issued and oaths administered and taken; but the
whole thing eventually resolved itself into a 'Princely Lieutenancy,'
under the suzerainty of the Porte. This was at first recognised by the
Turkish general, Suleiman Pasha, who along with Omar Pasha had entered
Wallachia with Turkish armies; for it suited the policy of the Porte to
look favourably upon a rising which was chiefly directed against Russian
influence in the Principalities. But the Muscovite Cabinet was not
easily outwitted. Nicholas witnessed the rising with equal satisfaction,
for it justified a new intervention in the affairs of Moldo-Wallachia.
He issued a proclamation, calling the revolution the work of a turbulent
minority whose ideas of government were plagiarised from the socialistic
and democratic propaganda of Europe. This proclamation was followed by a
march of the Russians into the disturbed provinces as 'liberators.' The
nationalist leaders were glad to escape to France, Omar Pasha having
occupied and plundered Bucarest on the Russian approach, and a
convention--that of Balta-Liman--was entered into between Russia and
Turkey, which depr