Nicolae Vogoride

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Prince (Knyaz or Bey) Nicolae Vogoride (-Romanian version; Bulgarian: Никола or Николай Богориди, Nikola or Nikolay Bogoridi; Greek: Νικόλαος Βογορίδης, Nikolaos Vogoridis; Turkish: Nikolaki Bey; 1820-April 23, 1863) was the Ottoman-nominated caimacam (governor) of Moldavia (1857-1858) following the Crimean War. He was the son of Stefan Bogoridi, an ethnic Bulgarian Ottoman high official who also served as Moldavia's caimacam in 1820-1821, and brother of Alexander Bogoridi.

Born in Iaşi, Vogoride married into the wealthy Conachi family (1846), and sometimes thereafter used the name Nicolae Conachi-Vogoride. In 1856, as Prince Grigore Alexandru Ghica was removed by the Treaty of Paris, although Moldavia remained technically under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire; Vogoride was appointed as finance minister under the new government of caimacam Teodor Balş. When Balş died on March 1, 1857, Vogoride replaced him. He showed himself to be an ultra-conservative, and was against the union of Moldavia with Wallachia (the other Danubian Principality — the union project was advanced by the Romanian liberals who had taken part in the 1848 Moldavian revolution and, returning from exile, were organizing themselves as Partida Naţională.

The Treaty of Paris also required elections for the Moldavian Assembly, to be supervised by the Ottoman ambassadors of the signing parties. When these were held on July 19 of that year, Vogoride rigged the election lists to insure a conservative majority with a strong Ottoman bias. When Sultan Abdülmecid, with the assurances of Imperial Austria, did not void the election, Moldavia's other overseers (French Empire, Imperial Russia, Prussia and the Kingdom of Sardinia) broke diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire on August 4; by August 9, a compromise had been reached, the first election was annulled, and a new one was held on September 22. Not unsurprisingly, the majority of those elected were in favor of the union of the two principalities.