His son NICHOLAS MAVROCORDATO (1670-1730) was grand dragoman to the Divan (1697), and in 1708 was appointed hospodar (prince) of Moldavia. Deposed, owing to the sultan's suspicions, in favour of Demetrius Cantacuzene, he was restored in 1711, and soon afterwards became hospodar of Walachia. In 1716 he was deposed by the Austrians, but was restored after the peace of Passarowitz. He was the first Greek set to rule the Danubian principalities, and was responsible for establishing the system which for a hundred years was to make the name of Greek hateful to the Rumanians. He introduced Greek manners, the Greek language and Greek costume, and set up a splendid court on the Byzantine model. For the rest he was a man of enlightenment, founded libraries and was himself the author of a curious work entitled [Greek: Peri kathêkontôn] (Bucharest, 1719). He was succeeded as grand dragoman (1709) by his son John (Ioannes), who was for a short while hospodar of Moldavia, and died in 1720. Nicholas Mavrocordato was succeeded as prince of Walachia in 1730 by his son Constantine. He was deprived in the same year, but again ruled the principality from 1735 to 1741 and from 1744 to 1748; he was prince of Moldavia from 1741 to 1744 and from 1748 to 1749. His rule was distinguished by numerous tentative reforms in the fiscal and administrative systems. He was wounded and taken prisoner in the affair of Galati during the Russo-Turkish War, on the 5th of November 1769, and died in captivity. PRINCE ALEXANDER MAVROCORDATO (1791-1865), Greek statesman, a descendant of the hospodars, was born at Constantinople on the 11th of February 1791. In 1812 he went to the court of his uncle Ioannes Caradja, hospodar of Walachia, with whom he passed into exile in Russia and Italy (1817). He was a member of the Hetairia Philike and was among the Phanariot Greeks who hastened to the Morea on the outbreak of the War of Independence in 1821. He was active in endeavouring to establish a regular government, and in January 1822 presided over the first Greek national assembly at Epidaurus. He commanded the advance of the Greeks into western Hellas the same year, and suffered a defeat at Peta on the 16th of July, but retrieved this disaster somewhat by his successful resistance to the first siege of Missolonghi (Nov. 1822 to Jan. 1823). His English sympathies brought him, in the subsequent strife of factions, into opposition to the "Russian" party headed by Demetrius Ypsilanti and Kolokotrones; and though he held the portfolio of foreign affairs for a short while under the presidency of Petrobey (Petros Mavromichales), he was compelled to withdraw from affairs until February 1825, when he again became a secretary of state. The landing of Ibrahim Pasha followed, and Mavrocordato again joined the army, only escaping capture in the disaster at Sphagia (Spakteria), on the 9th of May 1815, by swimming to Navarino. After the fall of Missolonghi (April 22, 1826)