Cezar or Cesar Bolliac, also known as Boliac, Boliacu, Boliak and Boleac (transitional Cyrillic: ЧeсарȢ БoliaкȢ; 23 or 25 March 1813 – 25 February 1881), was a Wallachian and Romanian writer, scholar, and political figure. Although born to non-Romanian parents, he joined the local aristocracy, or boyardom, through adoption into the Pereț family. He was briefly a cadet in the Wallachian military forces, but harbored resentment toward the Russian Empire, which had brought Wallachia into its sphere of influence. Abandoning a military career, he took up writing and publishing and, for a time, edited a literary magazine called Curiosul, which bridged neoclassicism and romanticism. Like other Romanian liberals and Freemasons, Bolliac opposed the Russian constitutional arrangement known as the Regulamentul Organic, viewing it as a remnant of feudalism. He was therefore implicated in the anti-Russian conspiracy of 1840 and was detained on orders from Prince Alexandru II Ghica. He was ultimately released through the intervention of other members of the Ghica family, who remained his friends and protectors. Upon his return, Bolliac continued to challenge censorship, inventing a style of social poetry that favored the exploited peasantry and expressed sympathy for the Romani underclass, which was enslaved by the boyars. He moved away from liberalism toward utopian socialism and then, briefly, toward a variant of communism; he combined these views with Romanian nationalism, shifting it from romantic to left-wing variants. Reaching out to fellow Romanian nationalists in Moldavia and throughout the Austrian Empire, he became involved in researching the origins of the Romanians, performing his first archeological digs along the Danube and in the Southern Carpathians. The landscape also provided him with inspiration for romantic elegies, which endure as some of his best works as a poet. Bolliac became an increasingly sarcastic critic of Westernization, earning praise for his journalistic wit, and a rediscoverer of Romanian folklore. He became convinced that the Romanians were primarily descendants of the Dacians, a romantic and post-romantic ideology later taken up by Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu and transformed into Dacianism. Under Prince Gheorghe Bibescu, who embraced nationalism, Bolliac served as a poet laureate and a public prosecutor. This did not prevent him from participating in the liberal conspiracy that ultimately became the Wallachian revolution of 1848. He entered the provisional government that toppled Bibescu, also serving the cause as a journalist and propagandist. Involved on the abolitionist side of revolutionary politics, he allegedly embezzled the financial contributions that formerly enslaves people owed upon their release. In late 1848, the Ottoman Empire reasserted its control over Wallachia, arresting the rebels. Bolliac was deported with several colleagues to Orsova, from which they either escaped or were allowed to leave. He sought refuge among the Romanians of Austrian Transylvania; well into 1849, he supported forming a revolutionary alliance with the breakaway Hungarian State and, alongside his colleague Nicolae Bălcescu, approved of the Hungarian–Romanian pacification act. He fled the Russian invasion and reached Istanbul; once there, he came to be distrusted by both Romanian and Hungarian exiles—regarded as a fanatic by the former, and accused by the latter of having stolen diamonds from the Zichy family coffers. Evading prosecution by the Ottomans and the Austrians, Bolliac spent the years 1850–1857 in Paris; there, he was converted to the cause of Moldo–Wallachian unionism as a preliminary step toward establishing a Greater Romanian, or "Dacian", state. He popularized this cause to an international audience during the Crimean War, returning to Wallachia shortly after the war had ended. He was involved in the creation of the United Principalities in 1859, proposing that Moldavia's Alexandru Ioan Cuza be selected as Domnitor. Bolliac also endorsed the more radical points on Cuza's agenda, including land reform, and, as head of the National Archives, collected documents that facilitated the secularization of monastery estates. He opposed both Cuza's other political stances, to the point of being imprisoned for lèse-majesté, and the "monstrous coalition" that formed against the Domnitor. He spent most of the 1860s involved in political quarrels, often pursued through his newspaper, Trompeta Carpaților. Discarding socialism in favor of economic nationalism, Bolliac also embraced violent antisemitism. He initially opposed the foreign-born ruler Carol of Hohenzollern, but later incorporated the monarchy into his political vision, drawing inspiration from Bonapartism. Though he made important discoveries at Zimnicea and elsewhere, he came to be widely ridiculed for his drift into pseudoarchaeology, and also publicly disgraced, though never prosecuted, as an alleged child sexual abuser. He died after a long struggle with paralysis, leaving a tarnished legacy. Although later regarded as a hero by the communist regime, particularly in the 1950s, this reassessment rested largely on his perceived compatibility with Marxism.
Biography
Early life Bolliac was born in Bucharest, the Wallachian capital, on 23 or 25 March 1813. At the time, and for another four decades, Romanian-speaking Wallachia was governed as an autonomous principality within the Ottoman Empire. Cezar's mother was Zinca Kalamogdartis, and his father was a physician and political adventurer, Anton Poleac, Boliaco or Bogliaco. Little is known about Anton, though he is tentatively identified as a member of Mikhail Kutuzov's retinue, present in Wallachia during the Russian invasion of 1812. He is widely believed to have had Italian roots, but has also been described as Jewish. Tradition holds that he was born in Salonika, though, as researcher Dumitru Popovici argues, this does not imply that he ever belonged to the Greek community. Researcher George Vlad attributed such origins to Zinca, describing her as "a Greek lady, and apparently a beautiful one, hence her two or three marriages". Anton was absent from his son's life after 1813, having "mysteriously disappeared" from all public records. Cezar was raised for a while by an elderly woman, possibly his maternal grandmother, who sponsored his education at the Greek school of Boteanului mahala in what was then a Hellenized, Phanariote-ruled Bucharest. The young boy was later effectively adopted by Stolnic Petrache Pereț (or Peretz), who married Zinca. Pereț's family belonged to the local aristocracy, or boyardom, but had only recently been promoted into its ranks around 1829, having acquired land at Stoenești in Vlașca and townhouses in Giurgiu. By Bolliac's own account, he was subsequently inducted into the upper class and afforded some political and judicial privileges. When in Bucharest, he lived in a large townhouse on Podul Mogoșoaiei, near the area currently known as Revolution Square. Bolliac retained a more traumatic memory of his encounter with slavery, which by that time affected the bulk of Wallachia's Romani population. Pereț owned several house slaves, a situation that conflicted with the boy's developing humanitarian ideals; on one occasion, with his adoptive parents absent, he allowed the slaves to experience a full day of freedom at his own expense. Bolliac attended the Saint Sava College, where his teachers included Ion Heliade Rădulescu, who would later become a conservative political opponent. During this period, Wallachia and neighboring Moldavia became dominions of Imperial Russia—governed under a new constitutional document, Regulamentul Organic. At seventeen, Bolliac joined the Wallachian military as a nominal Junker but left after a brief interval, possibly because he found the disciplined environment incompatible with his literary aspirations. While serving, he befriended several individuals who would later support radical causes, including Ioan Câmpineanu. Bolliac recalled that his first serious writing was undertaken in 1834 at Stoenești, though this claim is considered doubtful, as is his assertion that he studied in Paris between 1831 and 1833. Around the same time, he had a dispute with Zinca, after she mistreated one of the Romani slaves at Stoenești. At the time, Alexandru Ghica had been appointed Prince of Wallachia under Ottoman and Russian supervision. Initially, Bolliac benefited: he was a personal friend of Alexandru's brother, the Great Ban Mihalache Ghica, whom he always regarded as an intellectual leader and an outstanding antiquarian. Bolliac's first known writings date from 1835, when he had joined Heliade and Costache Aristia's Philharmonic Society. Published with philosophical poems in that group's literary collection, he was also credited as the author of novellas and plays, though these were not printed at that stage. He was close friends with Heliade, who would later make Bolliac into the object of a critical essay, probably the first on the history of Romanian literature; it described Bolliac as the group's "enfant terrible". In 1836, Bolliac and Constantin Gh. Filipescu founded a magazine called Curiosul ("The Inquisitive"), which carried his translations from Byron and Pushkin, as well as his militant ideas about creating a national school of drama. Curiosul featured the first ever Romanian introduction to William Shakespeare, done by Bolliac himself (he used Le Tourneur and Guizot as his sources). In its political pages, Curiosul pushed a liberal program, which caused the state censors to step in. Bolliac was denied on his attempt to publish an abolitionist piece in one of the magazine's four issues, but managed to establish links with Romanian intellectuals living outside Wallachia—Constantin Negruzzi in Moldavia, George Bariț and Timotei Cipariu in Austrian Transylvania. Sources disagree on whether the journal was ultimately banned by the Regulamentul regime or simply brought down by financial difficulties. Bolliac returned to translating in 1837, when he finished a Romanian rendition of Victor Hugo's Angelo. At the time, he had parted ways with Heliade and the Philharmonic, after a conflict between himself, as the dramaturge, and C. Aristia, as the producer. Bolliac maintained a close relationship with Câmpineanu, who represented liberal-minded boyars in the Wallachian Ordinary Assembly, and in 1836 drafted his friend's memorandum against the Regulamentul regime. Bolliac later claimed to have been arrested during the clampdown, but this remains doubtful (though he is known to have demanded that he be imprisoned alongside his friend). Late in life, he outed the Câmpineanu group, himself included, as a Masonic organization targeting Tsarist autocracy, and Câmpineanu as a "Grand Master". As reported by the French observer Jean Alexandre Vaillant, Bolliac was told by Prince Alexandru that he could only return to publishing if he made his newspaper entirely apolitical. Instead, Bolliac tested such bans by circulating various other papers and poems which progressive messages. In 1839, his house was unexpectedly searched by Captain Costache, who was acting on orders from Aga Manolache Florescu, and who reportedly confiscated all of the Bolliac papers. He was apparently spared further retribution. Employed by the Wallachian State Secretariat as a 3rd-degree functionary, he worked with August Ruof, who featured samples of his social poetry in the newspaper Pământeanul.
Prisoner and prosecutor
Bolliac was eventually implicated in Mitică Filipescu's "insurrection against the Russian protector", which possibly aimed at creating a Wallachian republic. Also dragged into the affair, Vaillant protested that Bolliac and Filipescu, as well as all other conspirators, "all of them gentlemen or sons of gentlemen", were "abandoned" by Prince Alexandru to the Russians' retribution. Bolliac suspected that he and the others had been betrayed by Heliade, finding clues of this in Heliade's fable, Căderea dracilor ("Fall of the Demons"). Arrested at Giurgiu, he was taken to the Aga's manor in Bucharest; in the prison annex, he scratched satirical rhymes into the walls. He reported having spent some nine months in jail, before being indicted for conspiracy in March 1841. Following pleas made on his behalf by Great Ban Mihalache, he was only found guilty of instigation during the final tribunal session, on 9 April. Bolliac himself had expressed remorse, informing the monarch that he was no longer obeying the "demon of literature". He was deported internally at Poiana Mărului Monastery, which made him "luckier" than the other captives: while they were directly exposed to respiratory disease, he could breathe "clean mountain air", and only had to put up with a Russian Orthodox monk reading him from the prayers of Saint Basil. He was probably released around June of the same year. In 1842, alongside brothers Ștefan and Nicolae Golescu, he traveled about the Southern Carpathians. Upon taking the Wallachian throne in late 1842, Gheorghe Bibescu revived Bolliac's career, making him a public prosecutor. The new ruler also gave an enthusiastic reception to one of Bolliac's poems, which espoused a generic nationalist-progressive goal (namely, the inauguration of a Wallachian commercial fleet). Despite being promoted to Praporcic and Serdar, Bolliac engaged on the conspiratorial side of Wallachian liberalism, joining the committee of a secret society known as Frăția ("Brotherhood"). This activity required him to reconcile with Heliade, their understanding brokered by a young radical, Nicolae Bălcescu. The latter also helped Bolliac gain traction in Moldavia, sending one of his poems to be published in Mihail Kogălniceanu's Propășirea. In 1843, Bolliac also appeared at a literary salon hosted by Anica Manu, wife of Aga Ioan Manu. His presence there unnerved the Russian consul Peter I. Rickman—who believed that the Manus were cultivating a Wallachian answer to the Carbonari. Aga Manu assured him that Bolliac and the others were only kept close so as to never pose a challenge. In March of the following year, Frăția created itself a front organization, called "Literary Association". Bolliac was a member, but Heliade was excluded, being singled out as uncollegial. Bolliac tested Bibescu's toleration by engaging with Heliade in a campaign for press freedoms; his poetry volume, also published in 1843, was heavily redacted by state censorship. It appeared with lengthy dedications to his two boyaress benefactors, Catinca Ghica (mother of the more famous Dora d'Istria) and Marițica Văcărescu. He continued to associate with the boyar elite, visiting Cleopatra Ghica-Trubestakaya and other members of the Ghica family at their estates on the Prahova Valley; vacationing for lengthy periods in Băicoi and Câmpina, he turned for a while to writing mainly love poems that appealed to female sensibilities. It was possibly around that time that Bolliac visited the salt mines in Telega, which were staffed by imprisoned criminals or political suspects, and which inspired him openly support prison reform. He also took baths in Transylvania, at Vâlcele (Előpatak), where he met and befriended the local poet Andrei Mureșanu. He and Bălcescu returned to the Bucegi Mountains in 1845, climbing up the Caraiman Peak. As a traveler, Bolliac began a research into Romanian folklore: before 1847, he discovered, and arranged for print, a version of the Meșterul Manole story, which later came to be seen as a Romanian foundational myth. He was thus the first author to seek inspiration in that legend, ahead of N. D. Popescu-Popnedea. Also then, Bolliac discovered his passion for archeology and numismatics. His education in these fields was handled by an older aficionado, General Nicolae Mavros. Together with his stepbrothers, and with friends such as Dimitrie Bolintineanu and August Treboniu Laurian, Bolliac began exploratory digs along the Danube, and in the hilly area between the Olt and the Prahova. During his traversing of Muscel County in 1845, he stopped at Jidava, recording its original name of Jidova (modified in later works by Constantin D. Aricescu, who artificially incorporated a Dacian particle). Additionally, Bolliac's team answered calls made by Kogălniceanu, who wanted to establish an inventory and collection of Danube-area inscriptions. The effort was weakened when Bolliac and Laurian (described in some context as the actual leader of the expedition) clashed with each other in a publicized polemic. The various findings were detailed as a travelogue, first serialized by Curierul Românesc. In July 1845, Bolliac and his teammates uncovered traces of a settlement outside Zimnicea, which they originally regarded as a Roman outpost, but later proved itself as one of the most important sites attesting to the material culture of the Getae. Though theirs was long regarded as the first archeological expedition in Romania, it was in fact predated by Gheorghe Săulescu's work in Moldavia, whose results had been communicated in 1835. Bolliac's introduction to utopian socialism took place in or around 1840, when he revealed himself as a follower of Henri de Saint-Simon. Writing for Vestitorul Românesc newspaper in 1844, Bolliac took up social criticism in favor of "fashion"—embedded within was his praise of capitalism as a social equalizer, itself a tenet of Saint-Simonism. He also wrote an epic poem about Tudor Vladimirescu, leader of an ill-fated social revolution in 1821, but did not publish it until 1857 (having by then re-written it in French). His changing political views were expressed in Bariț's Transylvanian journal, Foaie pentru Minte, Inimă și Literatură. In 1844, it featured his praise of the Moldavian Prince, Mihail Sturdza, who had opted to manumit the Romanies owned by the local metropolis. He urged other Romanians to follow Sturdza's example, assuring them that they would be recognized through the ages as "apostles of the heavenly mission, of brotherhood and of liberty." As other texts of this series show, Bolliac was turning toward a post-utopian revolutionary socialism, which viewed class conflict as a historical reality. His position became extreme following his readings from Louis Blanc and Joseph Proudhon, veering into atheism and communism—he was at times explicit in his calls to abolish religion, family, and private property. His agenda came to include gender equality, and he is therefore described by critic Lidia Bote as the "first Romanian feminist". His positioning was at odds with the moderate politics favored by Laurian, Bariț, and other Transylvanians. Writing for Curierul Românesc in 1846, Bolliac stated his belief that "Austrian Romanians" had been enslaved by their "system of government", whereas Wallachians were generally more freedom-focused.
Revolution and aftermath
Though known to his peers as a republican, Bolliac was otherwise still close to Bibescu, and, also in 1845, wrote the lyrics to a cantata honoring his liege. This piece, or another one also dedicated to Bibescu, was sung at Saint Sava gatherings, under headmaster Petrache Poenaru—the latter was honored with his own musical piece, itself held to have been written by Bolliac. In November 1846, the young author married Aristia Izvoranca, daughter of Paharnic Alecu Izvoranu (died 1857), with Mavros officiating as their godfather. She brought her ownership of an estate in Glina, as well as 1,000 Thaler; a daughter was born to the couple as their only child, but she died in childhood or infancy. For unknown reasons, the Bolliacs did not reside on any of the Pereț properties, but had moved into Cezar's native neighborhood, at Boteanului. Bolliac emerged as a prominent figure during the Wallachian revolution of 1848: in May, he joined a revolutionary committee that also comprised Heliade, Bălcescu, Ion Brătianu, C. A. Rosetti, the Golescu brothers, and various others. He was personally tasked with agitating among the Bucharest tanners, those living in the outer quarters, and the youth. In June, Bibescu, having fought back against the crowds, narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. The shooters included Bolliac's stepbrother, Grigore Peretz. Bibescu fled the country, and a provisional government took over. Bolliac announced these events from the princely palace balcony, where he also read from a new constitution. Bolliac and Bălcescu were secretaries of the new executive body from 21 June. On 24 June, government managed to defeat a reactionary uprising by Ioan Odobescu, with Bolliac leading the counter-charge. Immediately after, he was appointed governor, or Vornic, of Bucharest. From that position, he exercised direct control over the guilds, which were the revolution's main backers. He also presided upon the City Council, alongside the Jewish financiers Solomon I. Halfon and Manoah Hillel. On 3 August, he was inducted by a commission on school reform, under minister Heliade. Three days later, he joined a panel that prepared elections for a Wallachian constitutional assembly. Bolliac soon formed and presided upon his own political party, called either Clubul Regenerației ("Regenerative Club") or Clubul Român ("Romanian Club"). He engaged in revolutionary propaganda as editor of Popolul Suveran newspaper, which hosted his own political poetry. Moreover, Bolliac spoke to crowds of Bucharesters gathered at "Liberty Field". It was here that, on 19 August, he proposed a national pantheon of statues, with depictions of Vladimirescu, Michael the Brave, and Gheorghe Lazăr. In July, the provisional government had also assigned him to a commission of abolitionists, which was supposed to manumit the Romanies. He was a public face of this effort, alongside priest Iosafat Snagoveanu—both of them were unusually "swarthy", leading some of the Romanies to regard them as "our people." The was controversial: Bolliac collected sums which the Romanies paid in exchange for the freedom, but apparently never returned the funds. As noted by Bolliac's conservative opponent, Grigore Lăcusteanu: "This money has been taken and then wasted by one of the vagabonds, namely Cezar Bolliac." Historian George Potra reports that Bolliac was only marginally involved with the commission. Busy as a Vornic, he only signed Romani-related papers for a few days after his appointment. Upon surviving an assassination attempt by "reactionary aristocrats" on 24 August, Bolliac grew more bitter, and demanded that the revolutionary conquests be defended by military force. On 6 September, he and C. Aristia spoke at a rally during which copies of Regulamentul Organic were publicly burned. He backtracked in at least one article for Popolul Suveran, asking the Imperial Russian Army, already present in Moldavia, not to invade Bucharest. In September 1848, an Ottoman intervention ended the Wallachian revolutionary experiment, and its enablers were forced out of the country, as hostages of the Sublime Porte; Fuad Pasha personally handled the clampdown, mandating that Bolliac and the others be moved to a prison camp in Cotroceni, then sailed up the Danube under escort. As part of a transport ultimately bound for Bosnia Eyalet, they were taken in harsh conditions to Svishtov, then to Vidin, and finally to Fetislam. On 15 September, they were at Orschowa, on Austria's Banat Military Frontier.
In Transylvania and Hungary According to popular legend, revolutionary sympathizers Maria Rosetti and Constantin Daniel Rosenthal, who had followed the ship, was able to drug the Ottoman guards in charge of the convoy. This allowed Maria's husband, C. A. Rosetti, to escape from the convoy in wagons, alongside several other inmates: Bolliac, N. Bălcescu, Bolintineanu, Brătianu, and the Golescus. Another account suggests that they were allowed to leave outside the Iron Gates, which they crossed by foot, with some switching over to a ship of the Austrian Lloyd. Bolliac entered Transylvania, now disputed between various revolutionary movements; he settled among the Romanian-speaking community of Brașov. His wife remained in Wallachia, where she was arrested and humiliated by the post-revolutionary regime. She eventually joined Cezar in his place of exile, where he had launched the newspaper Espatriatul ("The Expatriate"), with Snagoveanu and Costache Bălcescu as co-editors. Its first issue, appearing on 25 March, proclaimed that all revolutionaries had one single cause, and that the social war was opposing "peoples to dynasties". Among the Wallachian revolutionary exiles (or căuzași), Bolliac was regarded as a dangerous extremist—a reputation which he shared with Nicolae Bălcescu and Ion Ionescu de la Brad. He and Bălcescu were also rendered eccentric by their take on Hungarian–Romanian relations, which had been strained by a latent conflict over Transylvania. Whereas most Wallachian liberals had come to fear and resent the Hungarian revolution, which had repressed Romanian activities in Transylvania, Bălcescu and Bolliac still believed that they could mediate a truce between the two peoples-in-arms, followed by a "united front" against the reactionaries. The newly established Hungarian State, represented locally by Józef Bem, was pleased with the editorial line at Espatriatul, and especially with its proposing a truce between Bem and the Romanian Transylvanian guerilla commander, Avram Iancu. The newspaper was therefore allowed to remain in print, unlike Bariț's Foaie. For his part, Bolliac hoped that Bem would cross into Wallachia to rekindle the revolution there, and composed a march in his honor—also indicating that Bem was his favorite among the would-be rulers of a Romanian state. The Romanian Eastern Catholic priest Ioan Munteanu, who was offered a job at Espatriatul, would not accept it; despite his confessed respect for Bolliac, he regarded the enterprise as a tool for Magyarization. In his pseudonymous correspondence of that period, N. Bălcescu mocked his colleague for being too subservient to "the Magyars, with whom he has formed some pact". According to Bălcescu, Bolliac had always had trouble selling off his "bad and numerous works", but had found himself assisted by Bem, since Romanian communities were forced, under pain of death, to buy Espatriatul subscriptions. Overall, the publication had a "minuscule" readership. On 14 June, just ahead of a Russian invasion in support of Austrian interests, Bolliac fled to the Hungarian capital of Pest. Once there, he relaunched Espatriatul as Amicul Poporului ("Friend of the People"), now targeting Romanians in Hungary. Bolliac was the radicals' emissary in Pest—on 22 June, he was joined there by Bălcescu, discussing an inter-communal detente with Hungary's leader, Lajos Kossuth. Bălcescu was held up by Kázmér Batthyány, who was Kossuth's Foreign Minister, and who discreetly opposed the project. As a result, Bolliac was "coached" by Bălcescu, and had to do most of the work. Together, the two Wallachians persuaded their host to move away from his advocacy of a unitary state, and closer to ethnic federalism. In July, Bolliac relocated to Debrecen, where he obtained Bem's support for the enrollment of Wallachians in the Hungarian Defense Army. On 14 July 1849, the "Act of Pacification between Magyars and Romanians" was signed at Szeged, with Bolliac and Bălcescu listed as representing the Romanians in general. A discovery of the original text in 1988 shows that it was not in fact signed by Bolliac, who was not yet in that city. His signature had been forged by Bălcescu. Immediately after, the two Wallachians, granted spending money and safe passage by Kossuth, left for Cluj, then for Câmpeni, where they met with Iancu. The latter agreed to a ceasefire, but not to a full peace—being aware that Kossuth did not stand a chance against the Russians and the Austrians. Upon reaching Szeged, Bolliac was asked by Kossuth to contact Omar Pasha, who was leading the Ottoman forces occupying Wallachia, and obtain his neutrality in the Hungarian–Russian war. This mission, which required his return to Orschowa, was funded with assets confiscated from the pro-Austrian landowner Jenő Zichy. Later historiography informs that this conditional sponsorship was handed to him as a set of diamond buttons. Bolliac picked the items up at Radna, and apparently used them in covering his own expenses. All of Hungary's self-preservation efforts were nullified on 13 August, when the Hungarians surrendered, leaving Transylvania to resume its existence as an Austrian province. By his own account, Bolliac made frantic efforts to rejoin Bem, but was cut off by the Russian advances, and eventually sought refuge in Serbia. Records consulted by the Hungarian scholar István Hajnal contrarily show that Bolliac was in Orschowa with Kossuth, who had asked for the diamonds to be returned, in order to finance his own efforts abroad. The encounter was tense: "Bolliac [gave] Kossuth a gold spur of lesser value, but he said that the rest, the expensive diamonds, had been lost." According to one account, it was Bolliac, rather than Kossuth, who buried the Holy Crown of Hungary, for safekeeping, somewhere outside Orschowa (he was subsequently "accused of having broken off the crown's precious stones and using them for his own purposes"). He met Bălcescu one final time, in Karansebesch, and was asked by the latter to supervise development in Wallachia from across the border, in Ottoman Bulgaria. Taking over as Prince of Wallachia, Barbu Dimitrie Știrbei noted with satisfaction that Bolliac had only passed through Ruschuk, where just "twelve of the most insignificant [rebels]" still resided in January 1850.
In Istanbul and Paris
Bolliac had traveled farther south in the Ottoman Empire, moving between Rumelihisarı and Bursa, and being called up for a formal inquiry at Istanbul (where his wife, who had been stranded in Transylvania, finally joined him on 24 December 1849). He reunited with a growing community of Wallachian exiles, giving them news about Bălcescu's involvement in Transylvanian affairs. While walking about the Grand Bazaar, he discovered a manuscript copy of Nikolai Spathari's Travels, which he purchased (and much later donated to the National Library of Romania). Bolliac was twice arrested by the Ottoman authorities, who were acting on Bem's complaint, namely that he had never returned the diamonds. The Zichy family also issued complaints against him; he was allegedly released only because he promised to pay off the debt, and because Âli Pasha vouched for him. In tandem, the Austrian military tribunal in Hermannstadt began an investigation into Bolliac's "intimate rapport with the Hungarian insurgents", and had caught news, from one informant in Râmnicu Vâlcea, that he had reached Istanbul. Upon his release, Bolliac was living with other Wallachian exiles, including Ion Ghica, in supervised conditions at Boyacıköy. He reportedly declared himself a victim of heat stroke, claiming that it had nearly killed him, in order to move with his wife to Pera. In January 1850, he met one of Kossuth's friends, Major Boekh, at Bebek, asking him and the other emigrants to persuade Bem not to seek his prosecution in the diamonds affair. Around that time, he went to Shumen, where Kossuth was living under imposed domicile. As noted by Hajnal, he now supported the Hungarian project for a Danubian Confederation, and, against Ghica's objections, also convinced Bălcescu of its usefulness. During early August, Bolliac was observed by Ghica making a "great fuss" about the possibility that the Ottomans could back an anti-Russian revolutionary coup in Wallachia. Ghica doubted his colleague's enthusiasm in his own letters to Bălcescu, noting in particular that projects to form a Wallachian revolutionary army, under Gheorghe Magheru or Christian Tell, were especially naive or dangerous; according to Ghica, Bolliac was also suspicious for having mysteriously shed his outstanding poverty, having paid off all of his and his wife's debts. By mid-1850, Prince Știrbei and his ministers had volunteered to collaborate with the Austrian Empire in preventing the more "incorrigible" radicals, Bolliac included, from ever returning to Wallachia. Continuously threatened with prosecution, Bolliac decided to flee the Ottoman realm. As recounted by Ghica, he had already broke his interdiction by entering Pera, whence he sailed out clandestinely using the false name "Timoleon Paleologu"—while still claiming that he was aiming for Wallachia, in order to reignite the revolution there. In fact, he entered the Kingdom of Greece, reaching Athens by 20 August; from there, he sent money to his wife, who had tried to leave Ottoman territory on her own, without settling other debts she had incurred at Pera. As Ghica notes, the Bolliacs left behind them the "worst reputation", harming that of the expatriates as a whole. Cezar was eventually granted a British passport (as "Paleologu"), entering the Crown Colony of Malta on 21 September. He sailed for Republican France, arriving at Paris during mid-October 1850. From Paris, Bolliac embraced the new agenda of revolutionary factions from Wallachia and Moldavia, namely the unification of the two principalities. He saw this as a preliminary step toward the creation of an independent Greater Romanian state, stretching into Transylvania. In one of his period texts, he argued that all it took was for some hundreds of Wallachians to instigate a guerrilla war in Austrian-held territories; he also theorized that doing so would ultimately also cause a revolution in all Romanian territories, leading for Romania's emergence as an egalitarian polity. In February 1851, he joined a quasi-party of the Romanian emigrants, called Junimea Română ("Romanian Youth") and modeled on Young Italy. He had planned to launch a new edition of Popolul Suveran, as one of the ambitious literary projects that were regarded with some amusement by Bălcescu. Around then, Bolliac joined the left-liberal circle formed by C. A. Rosetti, and contributed to Rosetti's Paris-based magazine, Republica Română ("The Romanian Republic"). It was here that he published his in-depth critique of Regulamentul as a remnant of feudalism. The Bolliacs and that branch of the Rosetti family became very close. As recounted by Rosetti's son Vintilă, Aristia "looked after all the exiles when they fell ill", while Cezar, "the great gastronome", cooked for them; in 1852, as the Rosetti children got measles, they took one of the healthy girls into their own home—she was looked after by Cezar, when his wife had also contracted the disease. In 1853, Rosetti Sr published Bolliac's historicist essay, Unitatea României ("Romania's Unity"), which presented a corpus of evidence for the nationalist claim. Bolliac mounted a campaign of "intense propaganda" for this unionist cause, with articles as well as poems, and sent pleas to various international leaders, beginning with Louis Napoleon in 1852. The latter agreed to receive him for a three-hour meeting. In Wallachia, his non-political poetry was only gaining in popularity, after being set to music by Anton Pann. However, Ghica's dislike for Bolliac was by then mirrored by various members of the revolutionary exile, including the Golescu family as a whole: in June 1853, Alexandru Golescu-Albu told his cousins that they should never have cultivated Bolliac, a "gangrene and a shame". In 1856, as unionism was intensifying, Bolliac offered more arguments for the cause with another essay, published by Stéoa Dunărei, tracing cultural unity back to the Dacians. In 1857, he issued a "topography" of Romania, intended as the first of an eight-volume encyclopedic study. Here and in other brochures, he experimented as a heraldist, combining the Wallachian, Moldavian and Transylvanian arms into a pan-Romanian symbol. He changed the old tinctures of each field to match the Romanian tricolor.
Bolliac presented his historical essays, including a topographic map that was said to be of his own design, to European chancelleries, raising awareness about "Romania", or "Moldo-Wallachia", as distinct from "Turkey-in-Europe". The geographical space he defined as a homeland held the Tisza valley, the Banat to Pančevo, as well as all of Bessarabia and some of Podolia. The map was shown to have been almost entirely copied from one done by Jean Léon Sanis of the Collège Sainte-Barbe, who took Bolliac to court and won 300 French francs in damages. In reviewing his own work, Bolliac declared his satisfaction at having ensured that "my motherland will become known to the world of science". However, as historian Nicolae Iorga argues, he presented a challenge to later scholarship: since "nobody [in Europe] had any precise ideas about Romania", he was free to add his own confabulations.
In the 1859 union The exiled Bolliac was also becoming an influence on a new generation of nationalists who were studying in Paris, including the Wallachian Alexandru Odobescu and the Moldavian V. A. Urechia. The latter was attracted into a subversive network, smuggling revolutionary literature back into the two principalities. As he reported decades later, he could take select manuscripts by all of the căuzași "excepting Cezar Bolliac", since the latter was widely disliked by the community of exiles. He was still viewed as a suspect in Bucharest, though Prince Știrbei did not accept Austrian demands to have Bolliac's assets seized, objecting that there had yet been no due process. In February 1855, the same Știrbei had issued a secret list of căuzași who were barred from ever entering Wallachia; Bolliac was mentioned by name, as were his stepbrothers. In 1857, Bolliac began publishing his own left-nationalist paper, Buciumul (named after a folk musical instrument), putting out its first series from Paris. In this incarnation, it had a three-pronged agenda of unification, increased autonomy, and rule by a "foreign prince". Bolliac finally returned to his homeland in July 1857, and was as such among the last expatriates to be allowed reentry. This was after the Crimean War had ended the Regulamentul, placing the two countries under an international mandate (though still as Ottoman subjects). Like the other returnees, he had promised not to engage in conspiratorial activity against the Porte. He immediately joined Rosetti's new literary and political club, set up in Bucharest; its junior members included N. T. Orășanu. In the legislative elections in 1857, which sent delegates to the ad-hoc Divan, he positioned himself on the left, seeing the unionist movement in Wallachia as infiltrated by "reactionaries". The catch-all unionist camp, or "National Party", considered making him its candidate for the landowners' college in Ilfov County, but ended up preferring a less divisive public figure. In his effort to persuade potential backers, Bolliac had stated his respect for property, family and religion; his adversaries, meanwhile, tried to prevent him from even qualifying as an elector, by bringing up the Zichy affair. The resulting unionist-majority Divan awarded Bolliac recognition, making him editor of its newspaper of record. In tandem, he was co-editor of the leading nationalist magazine, România, contributed to Rosetti's Românul, and published a selection of his own poetry—as well as Mozaicul social ("The Social Mosaic"), being his definitive essay on stratification under Regulamentul Organic. In an 1858 text called Despre daci ("On the Dacians"), he stated his belief that the origin of the Romanians was mostly tied to Dacia rather than to the Roman Empire. He also told of Dacians as a powerful and literate race, voicing his belief that a Dacian alphabet would eventually be discovered. He argued therein that the Romanian mission in archeology was