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. Peret'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 came under
Russian influence as dominions governed by a constitutional arrangement known as the
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 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. 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
Agas 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 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. of
Greater Romania, ruled to have been plagiarized from Jean Léon Sanis 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 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 to provide "exact ideas on who the Dacians were." Like the younger
Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, Bolliac strongly believed that Dacian religion was quasi-Christian, thus accounting for the solidification of
Christianity in Romania. During 1858, Wallachia was ruled by a triumvirate of conservative regents, or
Caimacami. Bolliac, who had resumed his archeological digs along the Danube (at
Rușii,
Turnu Măgurele, and possibly also Zimnicea), was singled out for soft persecution, and prevented from continuing with his work. Âli Pasha, who had reemerged as
Grand Vizier, asked the
Caimacami to also seize all of Bolliac's assets, and have them assigned to the Austrians. Rosetti and
Românul endorsed Bolliac when he sought to be voted in as a member of the
Elective Assembly, tasked with selecting a new prince; he presented himself in "13 vacant [electoral] colleges". In September, the two radical journalists found common ground with Heliade,
Vasile Boerescu and
Petre Ispirescu, establishing the Association of Printers, which functioned as a
trade union. In that context, the Nationals grouped all their forces around
Alexandru Ioan Cuza, a Moldavian colonel who had won the
princely election in that country. Bolliac was reportedly the one who noted that Cuza could qualify for running in Wallachia during January 1859, earning support from the other Nationals, beginning with
Barbu Vlădoianu. While still not a registered elector, he managed to prevent Heliade (now perceived by the Nationals as an
Ottomanist enemy) from being sent to the Divan. Heliade now openly resented his former disciple, mocking him as
Sarsailă ("
Old Nick"). He depicted his former associate as an eternal demagogue with mental issues, additionally suggesting that
Sarsailă was a foreign agent. The rise of a unionist majority resulted in Cuza being proclaimed as
Domnitor of the
United Principalities—known colloquially, and later officially, as "Romania". Bolliac remained active on the political scene: in February 1859, he declared himself elated not just Cuza had been elected, but also that his arrival had prevented rule by a "foreign prince". Unlike Bolliac, many on the unionist right, including Cuza himself, still regarded the selection of a foreign aristocrat as optimal for the
national interest.
For and against Cuza In March 1859, Bolliac was putting out a newspaper (known in French sources as
Le Soldat). His former friend
Ștefan Golescu, who had read a few samples, noted that they "reek[ed] of communism", and that Bolliac had "lost his mind" to agitate for such causes during a delicate period. As the Nationals divided themselves into "White" and "Red" groups, respectively standing for conservatism and liberalism, Bolliac spoke out in favor of the latter, and in particular against ongoing limitations on political freedom. He wrote in support of
press freedoms, demanded
freedom of assembly, and argued that landowners could not be prevented from freeing
sharecroppers of their remaining bonds—since doing so was a function of
property rights. He was unusually vocal in defending the latter set of rights, viewing property as the "basis and sustenance of families". Bolliac regarded "moderate" as a term of insult, seeing it as a euphemism for allies of the reactionary right. He also continued to signal his own relative moderation, and, in his 1859 articles for
Românul, attacked socialism in all its forms, declaring that the
forty-eighters had had no vision other than patriotism. One such piece shows that he was only familiarized with
utopian socialism and
mutualism (both of which he now rejected), having no awareness of newer currents such as
Marxism. Overall, Bolliac argued that the old political class had been compromised by its opposition to the union, leaving it to either embrace reform or be purged from political offices. In 1860, Bolliac himself began serving as a magistrate for Bucharest's
appellate court. He published an influential album of Romanian archeology, historical numismatics, and heraldry, and involved himself in controversies over local symbols (in particular the arms of
Iași city). At this stage, Bolliac grew highly dismissive of an amateur historian,
Dimitrie Papazoglu, with whom he competed for the public's affection. He also maintained a focus on discussing the creation of a
Romanian Army, and in November 1860 called for it to be created within a "new [military] system", as a
Landwehr. He then campaigned for the mass incorporation of local peasants, of trained occupational groups such as
forest wardens, and of Transylvanian migrants. He collaborated with
Magyar Közlöny, a left-wing newspaper of the
Hungarian Romanians, urging them to support the
Italian unification. A widower since April 1860, Bolliac buried Aristia at a designated family plot in
Bellu cemetery (this being one of the first attested burials in that location). He then decided to sell off his the Glina estate, and had his assets tied up in investments—setting a personal example toward the creation of a Romanian capitalist class. Before 1861, he repeatedly tried to get himself elected into either the
Assembly of Deputies or the
General Council of Bucharest, put up as a candidate by
România newspaper. Bolliac won a deputy seat in the
parliamentary elections of 1860, but his colleagues invalidated the results before he could be sworn in. This affair became a national scandal after Brătianu handed in his resignation from the cabinet, accusing Austria of having interfered to obtain Bolliac's removal. During the "heated debates" on 5 June,
Dimitrie Ghica, chairman of the Wallachian assembly, sided with the right-wing, supporting nullification of Bolliac's mandate; the Zichy affair, and the Austrian complaints regarding Bolliac, were again brought up against him. He managed to get a councilor's seat (also in 1860), having won additional backing from the left, which now labeled itself "National Party". The political class as a whole was marginalizing Bolliac—objecting to his perceived radicalism, as well exposing his role in the Zichy affair. In articles he penned for
România, and for papers put out by Bolintineanu and I. G. Valentineanu, he now supported democratization and
electoral reform, while leading a protest movement that petitioned Cuza to extend voting rights. On 11 June 1861, he appeared at the "Liberty Field" during a festive anniversary of the 1848 events. While there, he committed himself to supporting
universal suffrage, intending to petition Cuza regarding its enactment. The document was eventually drafted by him, and signed by 400,000 citizens—being regarded by his supporters as "really a plebiscite." He was still a city councilor in October 1861, when he approved of a campaign to mass poison the
endemic street dogs. He resigned just days after, together with all his colleagues. Theirs was a protest against D. Ghica, who, as government head of Wallachia and organizer of its "White" caucus, had denied Bucharest some forms of financing. Bolliac returned as a National Party candidate in the
legislative elections of late 1861. " as
asses in lion skins; from an 1864 cartoon in
Umoristul, republished by
Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu's
Aghiuță Bolliac was hotly opposed to the first
Prime Minister of Romania, the conservative
Barbu Catargiu. Bolintineanu and the liberal activist
Eugeniu Carada both claimed that Bolliac had suggested physically liquidating Catargiu, for being an obstacle to Cuza's reformist agenda—since Catargiu was assassinated in June 1862, the remark was cited as proof of Cuza's involvement. From December, Bolliac began publishing a new series of
Buciumul. It was for a while roughly similar to
Românul, including in its praise of Russian radicals such as
Alexander Herzen. The period also saw the emergence of a liberal–conservative alliance against the increasingly isolated Cuza. Bolliac himself labeled it a "
monstrous coalition", and the name stuck. His position was now in favor of
centrism, with a total rejection of radical liberalism. The writer was also mounting Romania's first press campaign, exposing the Greek monasteries of
Mount Athos and
Sinai, as well as the
Ecumenical Patriarchate, for owning vasts amounts of land in Romania, and calling for all such property to be
nationalized and redistributed. In addition to endorsing union between the Romanian polities north of the Danube, he now campaigned on behalf of the
Aromanians, who were seeking cultural autonomy in the
Ottoman Balkans. In the early 1860s, he met
Archimandrite Averchie, sent in by the monks of Athos to negotiate on their behalf. In a private moment of nationalist effusion, Averchie informed him that:
Și eu hiu armãn! ("I too am an Aromanian!"). Bolliac also played host in Bucharest to
Dimitri Atanasescu, the Aromanian tailor and political activist, who was taught standardized Romanian by Bolliac's nephews.
Establishing Trompeta Bolliac's centrism still included the advancement of radical goals such as
land reform and universal suffrage, and he saw Cuza as moving in the same direction. One consular report of that time locates him among the extreme liberals, alongside Bolintineanu and
Christian Tell, since he proposed redistributing boyar land among the peasants, without any compensation to the boyars themselves. Bolliac endorsed the
Domnitor when the latter advanced and cemented the land reform, but became extremely critical of other segments of the Cuzist agenda. An article he published in
Românul featured accusations against the Romanian political class, challenged over not having done much to advance the monasteries issue. Prosecutor
Nicolae Moret Blaremberg read these as an act of
lèse-majesté "against the person of
Domnitor", taking Bolliac to court in January 1863. Bolliac ultimately served eight months in prison, beginning in February 1863. Upon his return, he signed his name to a political manifesto of the Macedo-Romanian Committee, which voiced the claim that Aromanians were a branch of the Romanian people; this presented a challenge Cuza's foreign policy, which had emphasized
friendship with Greece over the Aromanians' anti-Greek mobilization. He was protected by Catargiu's replacement,
Nicolae Kretzulescu (whom he regarded as his good friend), but suffered renewed persecution from October 1863, when
Mihail Kogălniceanu formed a new cabinet. In a letter to Cuza, he complained that he had been labeled an unreliable turncoat, precisely because of his conditional support for the
Domnitor (and also because
Buciumul took in a state subsidy, which Bolliac now renounced). In January 1864, Kogălniceanu was formally accused by Bolliac of supporting the "monstrous coalition", and was forced to issue a rebuttal. Over the following months, Bolliac and
Buciumul became alarmed about the new class of
Jewish immigrants to Romania, rejecting their
emancipation and
assimilation, and debating over the issue with the
Qahal. Now supported by Hasdeu (who debuted as a novelist in
Buciumuls
feuilleton of 1864), he pushed for more extensive democratic reforms, including universal suffrage; as Hasdeu notes, he managed to expose Rosetti as a hypocrite, who talked about such goals without ever backing concrete measures to achieve them. On 2 May 1864, Cuza dissolved the Assembly and began an authoritarian phase of his reign;
Buciumul was somewhat critical of such moves (since the Assembly had been too "oligarchic"), and only fully complied with Cuza's guidelines after a formal warning. Bolliac was still rewarded for his scholarship, serving as head of the
National Archives from 7 August. He used his time there to collect all documents pertaining to the monasteries issue, which were to be used in the diplomatic exchanges between Romania and the Porte (which represented Sinai and Athos in the recurring dispute). He also donated six volumes of "extremely valuable" documents from his private collection. Upon the takeover of monastery land, he obtained that the Archives be moved into buildings originally owned by the monks of
Mihai Vodă. He launched the institution's specialized journal,
Revista Arhivelor, but only managed to produce four issues, all in a
folio format. Bolliac returned with a critique of the
November elections, arguing that Cuza had merely "parodied" universal suffrage, and had broken his own laws in the process. On 6 December, Kogălniceanu banned
Buciumul under that name. The paper reemerged in March 1865 as
Trompeta Carpaților ("Trumpet of the Carpathians"). It endured in journalistic history for occasionally using red-colored paper with golden letters, In the summer of 1865, Bolliac resumed his archaeologic excursions (which now consumed a large portion of his time), also donating the antiquities and coins he had collected to the newly established Romanian National Museum. In October, he sold his printing press, and invested 134,000
lei in an all-Romanian company that ran the tobacco monopoly; reconciling with Cuza, he proposed that the regime embrace
protectionism and
economic nationalism. Rosetti became angered with his former friend, and never again mentioned his name in print until 1881. The Rosetti children were also told by their father that they were not to approach the man whom they had previously known as
nenea ("uncle"). They were "taken to see him" secretly after a couple of years had passed, upon which "he kissed us and fed us candy and biscuits." In public, Bolliac now endorsed the coup; just one day after Cuza had been forced to abdicate, he published in
Trompeta a piece that openly mocked him—one described by Iorga as displaying "the cheekiness [...] that one finds in the pettiest of servants, when they're out looking for a new master". He presented himself in elections for a deputy seat during the
general election of April 1866. His constituency of choice was the peasants' college in
Vlașca, where he had backing from his Pereț relatives; he was a perennial candidate, sometimes elected, and sometimes defeated (reportedly, only when governments intervened against him). Before splitting up into competing factions, the "monstrous coalition" passed through the main goals on its agenda, including the adoption of
a moderate-liberal constitution and the selection of a foreign-born
Domnitor. Bolliac declared himself against the solution, "in both shape and content", and was especially opposed to
Carol of Hohenzollern, who was
confirmed through a plebiscite. He had a personal stake in the matter, since he believed that a non-Romanian ruler would liberalize the Romanian market and allow in
venture capitalists from abroad—after his tobacco company had floundered, he was trying to reinvest his money in
Romanian oil. He now found himself allied to Heliade and his
Legalitatea circle, who regarded Carol's arrival as the imposition of a foreign yoke on Romania. For his part, Bolliac returned to Cuzism, praising the exiled former ruler as a "great captain" who had crushed the "oligarchic class", while depicting Carol as a nonentity. Bolliac was a member of the Assembly in 1866–1867, involved alongside Kogălniceanu on a panel that designed the
coat of arms of Romania—a work that, once complete, reflected influences from his earlier designs. In June 1866, he had lost his position at the Archives. Though formally dismissed by Carol's princely decree, he was widely seen as a victim of a vengeful Rosetti, since the latter was then serving as
Minister of Education.
Antisemite and dissenter fighting each over the deputy seat for
Vlașca, after the
elections of 1867 (January 1868 cartoon in
Ghimpele) After Carol's enthronement,
Trompeta resumed its antisemitic agitation, including against measures proposed by "Red" cabinets to removed religious barriers on citizenship. In June 1866, it successfully pressured the "Reds" to withdraw backing for any such proposals, and also instigated an antisemitic riot in Bucharest. This involvement was boasted by Bolliac, who now characterized Premier Brătianu as a "brother of the Jews"; he was also opposed, again, to the
Românul group, which had depicted the rioters as "enemies of the motherland" (whereas to Bolliac they were "the flower of Bucharest's populace"). leaving Bolintineanu to manage the paper, Bolliac went on extended visits to those areas. Also then, he mounted a campaign warning Russia not to intervene in the crisis, suggesting that Romanians would rise up in arms to defend the country. This stirred the curiosity of a Russian visitor,
Grigory Danilevsky, who was told by one informer that Bolliac, "Kossuth's former aide-de-camp", had stolen jewels from the
Holy Crown of Hungary. As an expert on things Dacian, Bolliac was met with competition from Hasdeu, who held his own conferences on the subject. In September 1866,
Trompeta falsely claimed that Hasdeu had described the Dacians as
Slavs, and that he himself was an agent of
Pan-Slavism. Ahead of the
repeat elections of November 1866, Bolliac registered himself as a candidate in Bucharest's third college. He shared a "centrist" list with Heliade and
I. C. Massim, declaring his support for national development—and restating his opposition
străinism ("foreign-ism"). He was afterwards dragged into a conflict with the "White" Minister of Education,
Ion Strat, who was pushing sweeping
austerity reforms. In that context, he and Rosetti, alongside friends such as Urechia and
Theodor Aman, established the "Society of Educating the Romanian People", which played a part in obtaining Strat's eventual ouster. In 1867, while his archeological collection was being showcased at the
World's Fair in Paris, He spent the final portion of the year campaigning for
another parliamentary election, allegedly by
treating his would-be peasant voters in Vlașca. Both he and his competitor,
Grigore Serrurie, were said to have engaged in ballot stuffing, which resulted in Vlașca having more votes than it had voters. The Assembly decided to award that seat to Serrurie. Bolliac heckled the procedures, being consequently escorted out of the hall. He lodged in a formal protest, which a majority of deputies agreed to review. Bolliac ran in by-elections during 1868, being reportedly faced with stiff opposition from the "lowest-ranking of the Reds". Occupied with a course in numismatics, which he provided for the newly established
University of Bucharest beginning in 1868, By then, he had met a formidable foe in
Junimea, an alliance of largely monarchist and conservative youths who had proceeded to reassess, and often to deride, the cultural and social contribution of forty-eighters. As early as 1867, he sparred with the
Junimist magazine
Convorbiri Literare over social poetry, to which his adversaries preferred
aestheticism and authenticity. One of his replies claimed to expose
Titu Maiorescu, the
Junimist leader, for his hypocritical positioning—against social art, but nonetheless political. Those years witnessed tensions between Bolliac and Odobescu, after the former spuriously accused the latter of having sold off the
Pietroasele Treasure, a Romanian national asset, to the
South Kensington Museum. Bolliac himself continued to receive praise as a scholar, and in June 1869, much to Ion Ghica's displeasure, replaced his deceased godfather, Mavros, as head of the Bucharest Archeological Committee. In that context, he was an occasional, but influential, art critic, chronicling exhibits curated by Aman. Through the latter, he also discovered the young painter
Nicolae Grigorescu, an
impressionist, complaining that the works he exhibited looked "unfinished". Bolliac was personally welcomed by
Ponton d'Amécourt into the
Société française de numismatique during November 1869. He was additionally inducted by the Romanian Geographical Society and several other learned societies, while serving as a government inspector of the Romanian museums. In mid-1869, he had camped out at
Vădastra, having correctly identified it as a site of interest for research into
the Neolithic; here and at nearby
Romula,
Celei and
Bucovăț, he discovered additional troves of
Roman currency. Also then, and again in 1871–1872, Bolliac was Zimnicea, having by then grown convinced that he had uncovered the "apex of Dacian civilization in matters of ceramics". It was at this stage that he dug up the
ustrinum, alongside several
urns with human remains, as well as an outstanding
pithos (which he kept in his own collection). He and Odobescu explored the Dacian site at
Tinosu, after repeated failed attempts to uncover
Zalmoxian sites in the
Bucegi Mountains. With the latter expedition, he explored the "Cave with Pots" at the source of the
Ialomița, thus becoming Romania's first attested
speleologist. For the remainder of his life, Bolliac struggled financially: he lost money in the oil business, and in 1870 divested, becoming instead one of the founders of an insurance company called
Dacia. His belief in economic nationalism, manifested primarily as
economic antisemitism, was a mainstay of
Trompetas editorial line. He was incensed by renewed calls to emancipate the Jews, and sometimes encouraged outright violence against them. In 1868, he also attacked Hasdeu for his "history of religious tolerance", in which Hasdeu had argued that the Romanians had traditionally been welcoming of, and all too lenient towards, the Jewish diaspora. In Bolliac's view, such claims risked demonstrating to Jews that they were an ancient presence in Romania. In January 1870, he declared that the
Golescu-Albu cabinet had betrayed the Romanians by "insisting that Jews remain the masters of Romanian trade, Romanian industry, and the entire Romanian state". As deputy, Bolliac sounded alarms about the peasants' destitution, noting that they were starving in order to meet financial quotas imposed on them as compensation for the land they had received from Cuza. He now shied away from proposing radical reforms in agriculture, endorsing instead systems of
credit unions that would elevate some of the peasantry into a rural bourgeoisie. In the new climate inaugurated by the
reconciliation of Austrians and Hungarians, and the establishment of
Austria-Hungary, Bolliac revised some of his earlier stances. After an incident at
Tofalău, which had seen the eviction of Romanian Transylvanians from a Hungarian-owned estate,
Trompeta commented on the Magyars as an "exotic" Asiatic race, which was testing the patience of its European subjects. He had an extensive polemic with a Transylvanian lawyer,
Alexandru Papiu Ilarian, whom he accused of being a Hungarian by birth, going as far as to suggest that his enemy's real surname was "Paponyi".
Disrepute and alleged child-rape Bolliac took the peasants' college seat at Vlașca during the
election of May 1870. He ran in the
concurrent local elections, becoming a councilor for the
plasă of
Câlniștea. Other candidates protested by means of
Românul, noting that one of Bolliac's half-brothers was running Vlașca as a
prefect, and that Bolliac had never registered himself as a local taxpayer. He was sent to the Assembly after
elections in mid-1871, during the "
Strousberg Affair"—a bankrupt investment into a private network of railways. Sitting in the opposition to "White" governments, he supported
George D. Vernescu's motion to withdraw funding for the railways project. In November 1871,
Alecu D. Holban staged a congress of the liberal-minded press in Iași, hoping to generate momentum for the creation of a unified party of the left. Bolliac was among the main guests. Though he sought his readers among the antisemitic middle classes, he failed to impress any section of the public, and, by 1874, his daily newspaper was effectively a weekly; it was reportedly circulated in no more than 600 copies per issue. It still had a niche appeal due to its scholarly content, with "page upon page of illustrations". Like
Buciumul,
Trompeta also hosted historical documents found and preserved by its editor, including a version of
Genealogia Cantacuzinilor (which Bolliac mistakenly credited to a scribe, Ștefan Logofătul), first-hand records kept by
Pârvu Cantacuzino (in reference to the
Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774), and Nicolae Ruset's description of the
Mavrokordatos family. In the 1872 legislature, Bolliac protested against the ambiguity that still existed in the official nomenclature, insisting that Romania should not have continued to accept being labelled as merely the "United Principalities". He employed some of his time in the Assembly to protest the "calumnies proffered by Jews, namely that he was now their partisan." In that context, he also claimed that the leading
Junimist paper,
Timpul, was a voice of Jewish interests, printed in "Jewish". He used his prestige and his position as deputy to demand assistance for his friend Bolintineanu, who was consumed by disease, and whom he regarded as a
national poet; having reconciled with the dying Heliade, he appeared as a
pallbearer at his funeral, in April 1872. The "Whites" held on to power in the early 1870s, when
Lascăr Catargiu was their Prime Minister, and
Gheorghe Costaforu in charge of the education department. Bolliac annoyed them with his advocacy of extensive land reform, and was stripped of state funding for his archeological expeditions; he returned to Zimnicea in 1872, covering his own expenses. This formed part of a larger expedition along the Danube, between
Tulcea and the
Iron Gates, with a stopover in
the eponymous Ottoman province, at
Nikopol. In tandem, he joined Aman, Odobescu, Grigorescu and
Constantin Stăncescu in setting up a society called "Friends of the Fine Arts". By 1873, he owned to his name a large collection of paintings and drawings, which included identifiable works by artists from
Albrecht Dürer to
Morel-Fatio. He had inherited some of these from the Ghicas, and had bought others at auction in Transylvania; the descriptions allowed Bolliac's rivals at
Poporul newspaper to speculate that most of the works were "cheap copies". According to number of records, including a February 1873 letter from C. Radovici, Bolliac had come to be regarded as a
child sexual abuser, with
Trompeta becoming a "laughing stock". Radovici reports on claims that Bolliac had
groomed and then vaginally raped a 10-year old fatherless girl, whom he had adopted into his home. As noted by historian Eugen Ciurtin, the scandal never resulted in prosecution, and was entirely buried by his biographers. Ciurtin corroborates the incident with a note that Bolliac had sent in January 1873 to his friend Tell, who was by then the Minister of Education. Here, the aging author pleads with Tell not to allow "me and my old age to be soiled in infamy"; Ciurtin also notes lyrics by Bolliac, which praise the physical attributes of
preadolescent girls. He sent artifacts to be exhibited in
Vienna, where some where sold off to private collectors, His reputation as a founding-figure in archeology suffered massively when he was mocked by his younger friend, Odobescu. He focused on Bolliac's claim that Dacians were ritualistic users of
cannabis and
opium—smoking them in early versions of the "Romanian pipe". In attacking this concept, Odobescu implied that Bolliac was imaginative to the point of hallucinating, and as such the only one in the story who could be said to be smoking something. Some fragments of this rebuttal also refer to Bolliac's "ravenous desires"—read by Ciurtin as likely allusions to Bolliac's
pedophilia. In 2010, anthropologist
Andrei Oișteanu observed that Bolliac was at least partly correct in his discussion of cannabis use among the Romanians, with "hemp", or
Cannabis sativa, being recommended in
traditional medicine.
Ruin, disability, and death Also in 1873, Bolliac tried was among the legislators who sponsored amendments to Catargiu's law on press freedom. While accepting the introduction of penalties for offending journalists, they tried to prevent the state from disclosing the names of unsigned or pseudonymous contributors. He was reconfirmed as a deputy during the
1874 race, this time by a constituency in Bucharest. He then focused on obtaining funds for the
St. Nicholas Church of
Șcheii Brașovului, which ran a network of Romanian schools in Austria-Hungary. In October 1874, he visited the Romanian communities abroad, stopping in
Budapest,
Oradea,
Cluj,
Blaj,
Sibiu, and finally
Rășinari. From November, he began serving with
Alexandru B. Știrbei on the Assembly's Committee on Naturalization. Bolliac had additional contributions as a heraldist to
Michael the Brave's monument, which was finally erected in
Bucharest's University Square—namely, he designed an unusual version of the Transylvanian arms, which was recreated as a plate and attached to the pedestal. He was again publicly ridiculed in Bucharest, having reportedly spent 30,000
French francs on a forgery ring—while made of solid gold, it had been fashioned by Ottoman dealers to seem like it had been issued by
Severus Alexander in the 3rd century. In covering news of this embarrassment,
Curierul paper additionally inquired: "Where did you get the money, Mr Boliac?" In June, Carol's wife,
Elisabeth of Wied, took her mother
Marie of Nassau, on a tour of Bucharest, which included a stop at Bolliac's "collection of antiquities". By then, the writer was facing bankruptcy, resulting in his decision to sell his remaining objects, including his entire collection of contemporary paintings. Reconfirmed after
elections in April 1875, exactly a year later Bolliac entered a slim parliamentary majority supporting the right-leaning
Florescu cabinet. He endorsed the
Second Epureanu cabinet, prompting allegations that he was "paid directly by government." Bolliac was also outspoken in his opposition to the
National Liberal Party, which had fused together the "Red" movements, and which formed a
national cabinet in July 1876. He warned that the new establishment, now encouraged by Russia, was busy fabricating pretexts for a war with the Ottoman Empire. Adversaries such as the young author
Ion Luca Caragiale identified and ridiculed him as a
Bonapartist. In his final articles for
Trompeta, Bolliac endorsed "
progressive conservatism" and D. Ghica against both Rosetti's "far-left" and Catargiu's "far-right". He regarded
Romanian Orthodoxy as a state religion, and did not want Romania turned into a republic, while resenting Catargiu's blanket opposition to social reform. He also changed his stance on the Hungarian issue, distancing himself from nationalist activists such as
Sigismund Borlea, and confiding that "he desires peace between the Hungarian and Romanian people, from the bottom of his heart". However, he still supported the emancipation of local Transylvanian Romanians, arguing that the
abolished principality should have been revived. On 22 January 1877, Bolliac was struck by what physicians of that era called a "
cerebral congestion", leading to paralysis. According to historian
Andrei Pippidi, this was the culmination of a neurological decline, also observed in his contemporaries Heliade and Bolintineanu, "to a large degree the victims of historical circumstances." Memoirist
D. Teleor likewise recounts that the scholar had entered a terminal physical decline, unusually visible to eyewitnesses when his white hair turned yellow. He had to cease publication of
Trompeta; no longer speak or write, he was reduced to a "larval" existence, and confined to an armchair. "His journalistic disciples" purchased him a
baby pram, which a servant used to push him around in. Bolliac was ignored by the general public, and allegedly mistreated. Eyewitness reports suggest that he was beaten up regularly by his handlers, while on his daily outings to
Grădina Icoanei (located a short distance from his house on Rotarilor Street). His condition only improved when his estranged disciple, N. A. Bassarabescu, drew attention to his plight. He lived to witness the
Romanian War of Independence, which severed the country's links with the Ottoman Empire. At the time, Romania was aligned with Russia in the larger
Russo-Turkish War, and had the
Imperial Russian Army returning on its soil. In July 1877, a "Mr Baranovsky" offered to purchase the Zimnicea artifacts from the disabled researcher, intending to present them as a gift to
Emperor Alexander II. Bolliac was reportedly upset by these developments, since he wanted the Romanian state to buy these; "through signs, in those moments when he is free from pain, he reveals that he wants to be left his discoveries, and then he allows himself to be carried into the hall where he has stored [these] up". Urechia recalls that, in late 1880, his disabled friend was traveling around Bucharest in a
hansom cab, assisted by a "boy". He still could not speak, due to what Urechia describes as a "paralysis of the tongue", but used signs to communicate. Teleor chanced upon him the following year, noting that he seemed to be hallucinating, and reliving his past as a revolutionary. He would only emerge from this state when pelted with stones by "brats and children". He died there on 25 February 1881, just months before Carol had established a
Kingdom of Romania. The Assembly financed his funeral, and Rosetti contributed an epitaph—declaring that Bolliac fully deserved to be honored by his nation. A service was held at Sărindar Church on 28 February, after which his body was buried at Bellu, with military honors. As Popovici notes, his nationalist convictions had mattered little to the press of the day, with one obituary describing his main attribute as having been his foundational role in the
Romanian Freemasonry. Though he left no direct heirs, he had left the remnants of his art collection to a nephew, the zoologist and politician
Ștefan Sihleanu. ==Literary work==