SUBSTITUTING GREEKS. 
797 
not making the slightest effort to rescue their native prince from 
the hands of his too probable executioners. Two days after this 
event a stranger was thrust upon them in the person of Stephen 
Cantacuzene, the first Greek sent from the Fannar of Con¬ 
stantinople to rule in Valachia. Meanwhile the Capigee-Bashi 
carried away Bessarabba, his wife, four sons, three daughters, and 
a grandson, prisoners to the Turkish capital, and on reaching it 
they were closely confined in the dungeons of the Seven Towers. 
The Valaehian Prince’s treasures not being found so immense as 
were expected, his sons were put to the torture three successive 
days, to force them to say where their father had hidden the 
supposed greater part; and to make sure of the fullest inform¬ 
ation the unhappy parent was compelled to witness the torments 
of his children, in order to induce him to stop their augmentation 
by his own confession on the spot. But as these princes had 
really nothing to confess, the Sultan became so exasperated at 
the apparent obstinacy of the sufferers, that he ordered them to 
be finally executed in his own presence. The prisoners were 
then carried out into a square before the windows of the Se¬ 
raglio. The four sons were first beheaded one after the other, 
and the decapitation of the father closed the cruel scene. When 
the Sultan withdrew, the five heads were put upon spikes and 
carried about the streets of Constantinople. The bodies were 
thrown into the sea ; but some Christian boatmen lay in wait 
to pick them up unobserved, who conveying them to a Greek 
monastery in the little island of Halcky in the Propontis, saw the 
father and his sons put all together in one humble grave. The 
princess, with her daughters and infant grandson, were exiled 
to Cuttaya, in Asia Minor ; but the family being afterwards per¬ 
mitted to return to Valachia, a descendant of Bessarabba is yet 
