Saint Constantin Brâncoveanu

Constantin Brâncoveanu was Prince of Wallachia between 1688 and 1714. Constantin Brâncoveanu was the son of Pope Brâncoveanu (Matthew) and his wife, Stanca Cantacuzino. Maternally, he was a descendant of the noble Greek family Cantacuzino. Paternally, he was a descendant of the Craiovești boyar family and heir through his grandfather Preda of a considerable part of Matei Basarab′s fortune. Brâncoveanu was born on the estate of Brâncoveni and raised in the house of his uncle, stolnic Constantin Cantacuzino. He rose to the throne after the death of his uncle, prince Şerban Cantacuzino. He was initially supported by his maternal uncles Constantin and Mihai Cantacuzino, but grew increasingly independent from them in the course of his reign. Constantin Cantacuzino retreated to one of his estates and began advocating his son Ștefan's candidacy to the throne. The prince took steps in negotiating anti-Ottoman alliances first with the Habsburg monarchy, and then with Peter the Great's Russia (see Russo-Turkish War, 1710-1711): upon the 1710 Russian intervention in Moldavia, the prince contacted Tsar Peter and accepted gifts from the latter, while his rivalry with the Moldavian Prince Dimitrie Cantemir (the main regional ally of the Russians) prevented a more decisive political move. Instead, Brâncoveanu gathered Wallachian troops in Urlați, near the Moldavian border, awaiting for Russian troops to storm into his country and offer his services to the tsar, while also readying to join the Ottoman counter-offensive in the event of a change in fortunes. When several of his boyars fled to the Russian camp, the prince saw himself forced to decide in favor of the Ottomans or risk becoming an enemy of his Ottoman suzerain, and swiftly returned the gifts he had received from the Russians. Such policies were eventually denounced to the Porte.