Vladimirescu, Tudor

▪ Walachian leader

born c. 1780, Vladimiri, Walachia [now in Romania]

died June 7, 1821, Târgoviște

      national hero, leader of the popular uprising of 1821 in Walachia.

      A participant in the Russo-Turkish War (1806–12), Vladimirescu was influenced by the anti-Ottoman autonomist movement in Serbia. He initially allied himself with the Greek revolutionary society—the Philikí Etaireía (“Friendly Brotherhood”)—that sought to overturn Turkish rule throughout the Balkans. With the Etairist rising in Moldavia under Gen. Alexander Ypsilantis (March 1821), however, he disavowed the Greek leadership of the revolution in the Romanian principalities. He organized a popular rising in Walachia to evict the predominantly Greek administration imposed by the Turkish government and end the spoliation of the native Romanian aristocracy (boieri) and the Romanian people. His eventual accommodation to the provisional aristocratic government at Bucharest, however, eroded his considerable initial support. When Ypsilantis suspected Vladimirescu of conspiring with the Turks to cut off the retreat of the Greek revolutionary forces from the Bucharest region, he ordered the arrest of the Romanian leader, who was court-martialed and executed.

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