Grigore Sturdza

Grigore Mihail Sturdza, first name also Grigorie or Grigori, last name also Sturza, Stourdza, Sturd̦a, and Stourza (also known as Muklis Pasha, George Mukhlis, and Beizadea Vițel; 23 May [O.S. 11 May] 1821– 8 February [O.S. 26 January] 1901), was a Moldavian, later Romanian, soldier, politician, and adventurer. He was the son of Prince Mihail Sturdza, a scion of the ancient boyardom, and, during the 1840s, an heir apparent to the Moldavian throne, for which he was known throughout his later life as Moldavia's Beizadea (junior prince). A rebellious youth famous for his feats of strength, he set up his own private militia which he used to corner the Moldavian grain trade, and entered a legal battle with Sardinian retailers. In 1845, he defied his father and French law by seeking to marry the much older, already married Countess Dash, and barricaded himself with her at Perieni. By 1847, Grigore had been reintegrated into the Moldavian establishment and, as a general in the Moldavian princely militia, personally handled repression during the attempted revolution of April 1848. During these events, the Beizadea became the personal enemy of three future statesmen—Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Mihail Kogălniceanu, and Manolache Costache Epureanu.

Following Mihail Sturdza's ouster in 1849, Grigore joined the Ottoman army as a colonel and took part in the Crimean War, serving under Michał Czajkowski and Omar Pasha. A mounted sniper noted for his feats of extreme courage, he was advanced to Brigadier General. A plan, discussed by Czajkowski, had Sturdza placed in a command position for an offensive into Southern Bessarabia; this never materialized, though Sturdza served on the commission which awarded that region back to Moldavia upon the end of the war. Grigore and Mihail Sturdza competed with each other for the princely election of 1858, with their rivalry playing a major part in the victory of a third candidate, Cuza. During the formation of the United Principalities in 1859–1864, Sturdza maintained conservative principles as a member of the Central Commission, thereafter alternating between loyal opposition in the Romanian Assembly of Deputies and anti-Cuza conspiracy, while being particularly adverse to Cuza's projected land reform. Himself a claimant to either the throne of a secessionist Moldavia or that of Romanian Domnitor, he participated in the "monstrous coalition" which managed to depose Cuza in early 1866.

With the arrival of Carol I as Domnitor, Sturdza became leader of the "White" conservatives in Iași, also taking up the cause of regionalism; he stirred national controversy by circulating an extreme conservative manifesto known as the "Petition of Iași". His views on international politics eventually brought him into a dispute with the moderate conservatives at Junimea. Shunning Junimist Germanophilia, Sturdza became a committed Russophile during the Romanian War of Independence, forming his own group, the National-Democratic Party. This faction broke apart after its members were questioned regarding an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Ion Brătianu; eventually, Sturdza himself was recruited by Brătianu's National Liberal Party in the 1890s. By then, the Beizadea was dedicated mostly to his non-political work, including attempts to establish his profile as a composer, philosopher, inventor, and art sponsor; his last activities included raising a Sturdza Palace in Bucharest. He was also absorbed and financially exhausted by a long trial involving his family inheritance. Known for his sexual promiscuity and fathering of illegitimate children, he left a diminished estate that was itself disputed among his progeny.

As reported by scholar Moses Gaster, Grigore's family, the Sturdzas, were "long and intimately associated with the government first of Moldavia and afterwards of Rumania." Their origin, Gaster speculates, was in the Empire of Trebizond, whence they settled Moldavia and Wallachia during the 17th century. Other sources indicate that the first known Sturdza actually lived in Moldavia during the mid-16th-century reigns of Alexandru Lăpușneanu; he was of plausible, but unconfirmed, Aromanian origin. The Beizadea's grandfather, Logothete Grigorașcu Sturdza, enshrined a legend according to which the family was a branch of the Hungarian Thurzós, and that it ultimately had Dalmatian origins. Reportedly, Grigore did not favor this claim, but instead regarded himself as a descendant of Vlad the Impaler. His contemporary, the genealogist and polemicist Constantin Sion, lists the Sturdzas as native Moldavians from Putna County.

In her 1901 obituary for the Société astronomique de France, Dorothea Klumpke noted that the Beizadea was a native of "Scutarie" village in Russia's Bessarabia Governorate (formerly a part of Moldavia), and gives his birth date as May 11, 1821. An 1849 letter sent by Sturdza clarifies the date as Julian, which remained in use in Moldavia and Romania throughout his life, and which corresponds to May 23. It also explains that the Bessarabian locality was in fact Sculeni, his family having fled there from the ravages of the Greek Revolution in Moldavia; as a baby, he lived in Bessarabia, then in Bukovina, Austrian Empire. Other obituaries and biographies suggest that Sturdza was born at Iași, the Moldavian capital city. Grigore's parents were Mihail and his first wife, Elisabeta "Săftica" Paladi, who descended from the Rosetti family. Her relative, the politician-historian Radu Rosetti, claims that the marriage was forced, noting that Mihail was "ugly-faced, ruddy-haired, short in stature, bowlegged [and] surly". Through Săftica and through his paternal grandmother Maria (a Callimachi), Grigore was partly Greek; his great-grandfather was a Phanariote, Gregory Callimachi, who served as Moldavian Prince in the 1760s.

By 1820, both countries were beginning their emancipation from Ottoman vassalage. A relative, Ioan "Ioniță" Sturdza, was being recognized by the Sublime Porte as the reigning Prince of Moldavia, putting an end to a century of Phanariote reigns. Unusually, he met most opposition from the "seven pillars of Moldavia, all of them great boyars"—a group which included Grigorașcu Sturdza. In February 1823, Grigorașcu and Maria's son Mihail was the first Moldavian to call himself a man of "conservative principles". The Sturdza ascendancy was interrupted by the Russo-Turkish War of 1828, during which Prince Ioan was captured by the Imperial Russian Army. The war ended with an increase of Russian influence over Wallachia and Moldavia, codified into the constitutional act, Regulamentul Organic. In April 1834, Mihail was selected for the Moldavian throne, beginning a reign which lasted to June 1849; during that interval, Grigore was to be referred to as Beizadea—an informal title bestowed upon sons of the Hospodar. However, his mother was no longer included in the princely family: in order to gain the trust of Ottoman Foreign Minister Mustafa Reşid Pasha, Mihail divorced Săftica and married Stefan Bogoridi's daughter, Smaranda. From this marriage, Grigore had two stepbrothers, both named Mihail—the first one died in 1846, the second one, born in 1848, only survived to 1863; a stepsister, Maria (1848–1905), went on to marry Konstantin Aleksandrovich, son of the Russian statesman Alexander Gorchakov.

Grigore began service in the Moldavian princely militia in August 1834, when he became a cavalry cadet. He was much impressed by the experience, which shaped his lifelong belief in militarism. Around coronation time, he and his elder brother Dimitrie were being tutored at Miroslava school by a Professor Victor de Lincourt. In September 1834, their father sent them to study in the Kingdom of France—alongside Mihail Kogălniceanu and other young boyars, and with Lincourt as a chaperon, they were assigned to a school in Lunéville. This path mirrored Mihail's own schooling and, in addition, was selected in order to prevent Grigore and Dimitrie from being educated in Russia. It was also designed to avoid Paris, which was the center of radical politics ever since the July Revolution: "youth from good families [had] to learn French, the language of diplomacy, and receive a good instruction, were carefully kept out of any contact with the liberal or revolutionary spirit." The news was finally communicated to the Russian Emperor, Nicholas I, who was indignant that his subordinate's sons were being educated in liberal France, and pondered having Sturdza dethroned. Another factor which made stay in France unlikely was an illegal duel, in which Grigore wounded his colleague Lippmann.

In August 1835 the two boys were relocated to the French Gymnasium in the Prussian capital, Berlin. In addition to the regular schedule, they were given lessons in legal history, and applied their new-found knowledge to the study of Moldavian law. Grigore earned top marks for his academic interests, but also for his courageous and passionate character; he and Dimitrie graduated together, enlisting at Berlin University in October 1837. Grigore was supposed to take lectures in natural law from Eduard Gans, but the latter died before he could enlist. He eventually studied political economy under Adolph Riedel, and technology with Heinrich Gustav Magnus, renouncing all legal study in April 1840; according to various records, he took history with Leopold von Ranke and was introduced to natural sciences by Alexander von Humboldt and Heinrich Wilhelm Dove. In a sarcastic note, Gérard de Nerval referred to Sturdza as having "more studied than understood Hegel's philosophy".