Roxani Karatza-Soutzos (Greek: Ρωξάνη Καρατζά Σούτσου or Σούτζου, also Ρωξάνη Βόδα Σούτσου, Roxani Voda Soutsou, Romanian: Roxandra or Roxana Caragea Suțu[l], Cyrillic: Роѯандра [Караџѣ] Сȣцȣл, French: Roxane Soutzo or Suzzo; 1783 – April 1868) was a Phanariote Greek cultural animator, initially active inside the Ottoman Empire; the daughter of John Caradja, sister of Rallou Karatza-Argyropoulos, and wife of Michael Soutzos, she served as Princess-consort of Moldavia in June 1819 – April 1821. This matrimonial arrangement united the powerful Caradjas with the more politically frail Soutzoses, but the two Phanariote clans were soon at odds with one another—Roxani favored her adoptive family. The break was initiated in late 1812, when Caradja was made Prince of Wallachia under Ottoman tutelage. Serving as the Great Dragoman, Michael also competed for that position, and worked to topple his father-in-law. The latter finally abandoned his throne in late 1818, but Michael lost the competition to his second-uncle, Alexandros; he was compensated with the Moldavian throne.
During her short reign, Roxani fully backed her husband's cooperation with the Filiki Eteria, and helped instigate the Greek War of Independence, which began on Moldavian soil in February 1821. As it became apparent that the Eterist cause would fail, Michael abdicated and decided to emigrate with his family—making Roxani the last-ever Phanariote Princess in Moldavia. The Soutzoses were evicted into the Russian Empire, settling for a while in Kishinev—where Roxani networked with two literary figures, Alexander Pushkin and Jean Alexandre Buchon. They were allowed to live there only until 1822, when the Ottomans asked for Michael to be extradited. After a three-year detention in the Austrian Empire, from 1825 they settled together with the Caradjas in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and involved themselves in political intrigues. They were left financially destitute after the Eterist adventure, obtaining intercessions on their behalf from Swiss banker Jean-Gabriel Eynard; for a while, Michael took his family to Geneva.
The newly proclaimed Greek Republic, which was generally anti-Phanariote in sentiment, ignored the Soutzoses throughout the 1820s, even as they pledged their allegiance to its government. Following Eynard's interventions, Michael was assigned to be a Greek diplomatic envoy in Bourbon France (which became the July Monarchy during his tenure), but ultimately marginalized as a dangerous supporter of the Russian Party. The subsequently established Greek kingdom assigned Michael to various positions, including that of Ambassador to Russia. Roxani lived with him in Paris and Saint Petersburg in the 1830s, as did their first-born son, Ioannis "Michalvoda", who was the legation secretary. The princely couple spent their final decades in Athens, where Roxani was heading a literary salon. By the time of her death in 1868, her in-laws included Greek academic Petros Paparrigopoulos and Romanian politician Dimitrie Sturdza.
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Biography
Early life and ascendancy
Roxani was born in 1783, which made her slightly older than her future husband. She descended not just from the Caradjas, but also from other major Phanariote clans of the Ottoman realm; her paternal grandmother Sultana was a Mavrocordatos—making Roxani the great-granddaughter of John II Mavrocordatos, who was Moldavia's Prince in the 1740s, as well as a distant descendant of pre-Phanariote Moldavian royalty (including 15th-century Prince Stephen the Great). Roxani's mother was Eleni Skanavi, daughter of a Phanariote banker. The couple had four other children. The best known among them is Princess Rallou, born in 1799 at Istanbul, who married Georgios Argyropoulos (or Arghiropol). John and Eleni's youngest daughter, Smaragda, married Spyridon Demetrios Mavrogenis; they also had two sons, Georgios and Konstantinos (the latter of whom was born "around 1799").
Roxani's father ascended to the position of Great Dragoman in 1812, and appointed Michael "Michalakis" Soutzos as his secretary. Michael and Roxani were known to have been married the same year, though genealogist Constantin Gane argues that they may have already been wed around 1800. Their first child, Ioannis "Michalvoda" Soutzos, was born on 30 August 1813. He was followed by three more sons—Gregorios, Georgios, Konstantinos—and three daughters—Rallou (married Paparrigopoulos), Eleni (Soutzos), Maria (Zographos). Of these, Georgios is known to have been born in 1817, and Konstantinos in 1820. According to an 1817 report by Prussian diplomat Alexander Freiherr von Miltitz, Michael, a "singularly handsome man", had, before his marriage, "barely had the means to support himself; since his marriage, he receives from his father-in-law a monthly stipend of seventy thousand piasters, and at times extraordinary installments of another fifty to a hundred and twenty thousand piasters each."
In late 1812, Roxani's father had obtained the throne of Wallachia, a Romanian-inhabited client-state of the Ottoman Empire, like neighboring Moldavia (the two "Danubian Principalities"). This also meant a political rise for Argyroupoulos, who seconded his father-in-law as Caimacam, and was later Great Ban over the Wallachian fief, Oltenia. As reported by Prussian diplomats in October 1815, at a time when Caradja had disappointed Sultan Mahmud II, Michael Soutzos was a favorite for the throne in Bucharest. He finally took over as Great Dragoman in October 1817, after purchasing support from Halet Efendi, the influential Ottoman courtier, who was also his alleged partner in fraudulent deals. He saw this position as a stepping stone toward the Wallachian throne, and spend money on bribes to obtain his appointment.
Eterist revolt and exile
Despite Ottoman expectations, Soutzos' short reign was marked by his full support for the Eteria, which had established bases in the Bessarabia Governorate (on Russia's new border with Moldavia). The Prince and the Eterist chief Alexander Ypsilantis conspired together to start a Greek War of Independence from Moldavia, with Soutzos pledging his wealth, as well as the entire military forces of Moldavia, to the realization of this goal. In February 1821 a Russian spy, Pavel Pestel, recorded rumors that Soutzos was made aware that the Eterists and the Arnauts were preparing a revolt, but had asked his boyars to keep quiet. According to his own testimony, Michael was not informed in advance when, later that month, Ypsilantis and his Sacred Band invaded Moldavia, thus initiating war with the Ottomans. Pestel reports that the Moldavian ruler visited the Eterist commander soon after his arrival, tolerated his pillaging of his subjects' property, and took personal charge of the Eterist recruitment drive. He was also in the audience at Iași when Ypsilantis recited his proclamation to the Greeks.
The princely couple followed news of the Eterist advances, as well as of the parallel uprising in Wallachia. The Freiherr von Miltitz alleges that the revolt was helped along by Michael, who ordered his more cautious great-uncle to be poisoned, ensuring a power-vacuum in Bucharest. In a letter to her father, dated 19 March, Roxani expressed the hope that the new government in Bucharest, formed around Postelnic Constantin Negri, would be fully Eterist. She optimistically urged Prince John to leave his place of exile and join them in Bessarabia or Moldavia-proper, claiming that the Imperial Russian Army was readying itself to join the war on the Greek side, and that Moldavian Greeks had collected 3 million piasters to help the cause. As noted by historian Nestor Camariano, John Caradja had no way of passing through Austria without being arrested, and probably no intention of even attempting the journey.
Both the Ottomanist segment of the Phanariotes and the Moldavian boyardom violently rejected Ypsiliantis and Soutzos; the latter was excommunicated by the Ottoman Greek synod. Prince Michael, who had unsuccessfully asked for Moldavia to be remade into a Russian protectorate, handed in his resignation on 29 March (New Style: 4 April); he then asked the Russian consul, Andrey Pizani, to protect him and his family—this request was granted. On the night of 11 April, the Soutzoses evacuated Moldavia, settling in Russian Bessarabia. They lived in Kishinev, the gubernial capital, bunking with the Bessarabians Bogdan and Petrache Mavrogheni, in whose home they met Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. The Princess also met and befriended French scholar Jean Alexandre Buchon, who lived at Ovidiopol, and who later dedicated her his Chronique de la conquête de Constantinople. As Bouchon notes therein, he often discussed the history of Greece with his Phanariote host.
Greek naturalization
During the mid-1820s, a Greek Republic was consolidating in the Ottoman-liberated areas. According to Buchon, Roxani was fully supportive of this polity and its egalitarian agenda, since: Mieux être servante dans la Grèce libre que princesse dans la Grèce esclave ("Better to be a servant in Greece liberated than a princess in Greece enslaved"). The Greek executive leader, Ioannis Kapodistrias, explained in 1829 that the former Prince was regarded with suspicion in the new country: "they don't even view him as a Greek. Perhaps later they will accept him." In June 1828, Michael, described in Le Figaro as "Moldavia's last Greek hospodar", was in Geneva, where he enlisted three of his sons at Rodolphe Töpffer's Lyceum. He obtained several letters of recommendation: one from Alphonse de Lamartine, the celebrated French poet, and his wife Elisa, another from Ignatios Babalos, the exiled former Metropolitan of Ungro-Wallachia, and several from the Swiss banker Jean-Gabriel Eynard. Eynard also proposed that Soutzos take over as the Greek ambassador to Bourbon France. In his thank-you letters, Michael describes his own destitute condition, which meant living in the Plainpalais, a working-class area, alongside his two parents, his daughters, and his youngest boy, Konstantinos. In July–August, Roxani vacationed alone in Turin, the Sardinian capital, where she was known as: "Princess Soutzo Rosandre, Russian, arriving in from Florence".
In November 1829, Michael arrived in France, still in his private capacity (though backed by Eynard). He was received by the King of France, Charles X, as well as by the Dauphin Louis. The other Soutzoses continued to live on Swiss territory to April 1830, when Charles offered to provide for the education of Michael's first two sons. Michael moved permanently to Paris around 18 April, with the press calling him a diplomatic envoy of the new Greek state; this status was only acknowledged by Kapodistria in late June. His last activity in Switzerland was his attempt to contact Leopold of Saxe-Cobourg, who was visiting Geneva, and whom Greeks politicians intended to appoint as their king. Roxani and her children joined him on his new mission in May, when they registered in Paris at the Hôtel de Bruxelles; two months after their arrival, France went through a liberal revolution which toppled Charles X and created the July Monarchy. At some point during the following decade, the entire family posed for a portrait by Dupré, this time in their Western costume. One of Kapodistrias' letters to Eynard shows that, in November 1830, Soutzos and his "large family" were still struggling financially: "You plead that we grant him 36,000 francs each year, by act of government. [Yet] there is not one French-speaking Greek who wouldn't fancy himself capable of being our diplomatic agent in Paris. There is not one Greek who doesn't detest those Phanariote Greeks, and from the very bottom of his heart."