Ipsilanti first attempted to raise the people of Wallachia and Moldavia against
the sultan to divert the Ottomans from the revolution he was preparing in Greece.
Leading a force of Greeks from Russia, he crossed the Pruth into Moldavia
(March 6, 1821) and began to march toward Jassy. But what misrule existed in
the Principalities had been inflicted by his own Phanariote relatives rather than by
the Ottomans, and there was little local inclination to join him, even on the part of
Tudor Vladimirescu, a Wallachian peasant then beginning his own peasant
revolt against the nobles. Alexander I was so angry when he heard the news that
he dismissed Ipsilanti from the army, refused to send any help, and even allowed
the sultan to send troops into Moldavia to meet the attack. Ipsilanti's force was
routed (June 7, 1812), and he had to flee to Hungary while his followers scattered.
The abortive move had no effect in Greece, but it did stimulate a national movement
in the Principalities that was to lead ultimately to an end of Phanariote
domination and the establishment of Rumanian union and independence.
In the meantime, the Philiki Hetairia had been organizing cells in Greece with
much more success and with some help from the Orthodox millet leaders, who
hoped to use it as a lever against the Phanariotes. Prior to 1820 their main obstacle
had been Ali Pa§a of Janina, the old notable who had been extending his power in