Constantine Mavrocordato, who has ruled as prince…

Constantine Mavrocordato, who has ruled as prince of Wallachia six times and of Moldavia four times since 1739, is the only benevolent Phanariote prince.

Mavrocordato has attempted drastic reforms to staunch peasant emigration, abolishing several taxes on the boyars and clergy, freeing certain classes of serfs, and providing the peasants sufficient land, pasturage, and wood for fuel.

He has also published books, established schools, and required priests to be literate.

These reforms, however, had proven ephemeral; discomfited boyars' had undermined Mavrocordato's support at the Porte, and he had been locked away in a Constantinople prison.

Russia's influence waxes in Wallachia and Moldavia as Ottoman power wanes.

Mavrocordato, deposed as price of Wallachia in 1763, becomes Prince of Moldavia in 1769, but is wounded and taken prisoner by the Russian troops of Catherine II, after his resistance in Galaţi during the Fifth Russo-Turkish War, on November 5, 1769.

He is taken to Iaşi where he will die in captivity three weeks later.

Despite the boyars' attempts to have the reforms overturned, they will have to deal with their effects, as successive rulers are to confirm the laws' scope.