Holding sway over a Russophile faction within the Wallachian boyardom, he briefly served as an officer in Russia's Imperial Army during the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774.

Helping Pyotr Rumyantsev and Nazary Alexandrovych Karazin in their occupation of Bucharest, the Cantacuzinos also arrested Grigore III Ghica; in the aftermath, Pârvu served as civilian governor of Wallachia.

[4] Drăghici, his brother Șerban, and their father, Constantin I Cantacuzino had been involved in various schemes during the 1650s and '60s, culminating in open conflict with Prince Grigore I Ghica.

The Cantacuzino brothers' political ascendancy came at the height of a Phanariote regime, when Princes were directly appointed by, and subservient to, the Sublime Porte—deepening the Ottoman vassalage that Wallachia and Moldavia had accepted in the previous centuries.

Appointed Serdar in April 1737, he signed his name to Vornic Preda Drăgănescu's memorandum which requested from Anna Ioannovna, Empress of All Russia, pleading with her to "liberate us [...] by any means".

[11] The widower was favored during Mavrocordatos' fourth reign, in 1744–1748, when, alongside the Phanariote Ștefanachi Cremidi and a number of local boyars, he began a lucrative activity in collecting the tax on sheep.

[23] Moving from Moldavia to Wallachia in 1753, Prince Constantin Racoviță took the Cantacuzino brothers with him to Bucharest, and reinstated Pârvu as a Paharnic in 1753, and advancing Mihai (married into the Văcărescu family) as his trusted treasurer, or Vistier.

In October of that year, he and his relative, the Medelnicer Toma Cantacuzino, exchanged property in Bucharest, making Pârvu owner of the "parental homes" in Șerban-Vodă mahala—located outside Lipscani, and named after their shared ancestor, the Prince Șerban.

As a show of his munificence, he welcomed both Pârvu and Mihai in Istanbul, where the two assured him that they would help him increase fiscal revenues; in exchange for this pledge, they obtained that Stavrachi be hanged.

This abuse caused another burghers' revolt in Bucharest, prompting Sultan Mustafa III to intervene; Prince Ștefan hurried to release Mihai and the others, but was still garrotted for his insubordination.

[31] Under his successor Alexandru Ghica, Pârvu went on to serve command offices in the military, as Oltenian Ban,[31] and was also curator of Pantelimon Hospital, alongside Badea Știrbei.

[37] Another immediate task was to channel a constant flow of Wallachian volunteers to enforce the Russian flank from incursions by the Budjak Horde and Silistra Eyalet.

[40] Karazin presented the Cantacuzinos with a manifesto by Empress Catherine the Great, promising to free the Danubian Principalities and the Balkans from the "barbarians' domination".

[43] These, alongside boyars who embraced the cause of "Holy Rus", numbered in the thousands—according to Djuvara, some 12,000 men from Wallachia and Moldavia migrated to Russia and joined the imperial army.

Following its acts of violence against Bucharest civilians, and aware that the Turkish garrison was undermanned, Pârvu created his own volunteer army of Romanians and Arnavutlar (Albanians), joined by some of Karazin's Zaporozhian Cossacks; in the early hours of November 16, these troops ambushed the Ottomans and arrested Prince Grigore.

[49] A competing account appears in the anonymous rhyming chronicle Răzmerița la intrarea rușilor, which, according to scholar Dan Simonescu, was very likely written by someone from Răducanu's entourage.

Văcărescu, the alleged author of a patriotic hymn used by Russia to recruit among the Wallachians,[58] was subsequently dispatched to Buzău County, but used the opportunity to cross the border into neutral Transylvania.

The episode (seen by Simonescu as entirely fabricated) ends with Pârvu's alleviating speech, which reminds them that the revolt was justified by the Romanians' national humiliation under the Phanariote ascendancy, when they had come to "serve" the Greeks.

Simonescu notes that such verse is written as an indirect justification for Răducanu: critical of his brothers' lack of military acumen, as much he endorsed their anti-Greek agenda, he did not yet join the revolt in these earliest stages.

[66] Placed in command of a small Russian detachment and a unit of Verzișori or Egheri (Wallachian Jäger),[67] Pârvu Cantacuzino promised to relieve them.

[79] He was consequently involved in the treaty negotiations, addressing a memorandum in which he outlined the Wallachian grievances and demanded the preservation of autonomy from Ottoman rule, claiming that it had been codified by medieval Capitulations.

[80] The resulting treaty gave Russia sweeping powers of intervention in Wallachian public life, and also offered a general amnesty to Russian favorites, who were allowed to preserve their mobile wealth but had to leave the country.

[86] In May 1776, she transferred ownership of her father's Bucharest house and the eponymous chapel to the Wallachian Church; local Metropolitans probably used the former building as a private residence, into the 1790s.

[88] In some records, Răducanu appears as having died serving in the war;[89] other sources note his fleeing to the Russian side, and then with his brother to Russia, where he became a Polkovnik.

[85][92] The cause of "Holy Rus" was still represented in Wallachia by a former 1769 volunteer of Aromanian descent, Dimitrie Varlam,[93] and by Pârvu's returning nephews, Ioan and Nicolae.

[94] Nevertheless, Djuvara notes, Russophile enthusiasm in Wallachia declined steadily, especially following the renewed occupation of 1787, making the Russian party "weakest" among all boyar factions by 1800.

[95] Of Pârvu's nephews, Ioan endorsed the Austrian occupation of 1789;[96] he also flirted with republicanism, circulating a reform project giving executive powers to the Boyar Council.

[98] According to scholar Constantin Rezachevici, Pârvu's killing and burial custom can be used as clues in tracing the tomb of a 15th-century Prince, Vlad the Impaler, which may also have been located at Comana.

[102] Some variants shed a sympathetic light on the Ban, who is depicted as having died "so as to render us free of the Turkish slavery" (să ne izbăvească din robia cea turcească).

[104] Pârvu Cantacuzino's attributed work of historiography survives only in a manuscript copy by Naum Râmniceanu, which belonged to Transylvanian intellectual Timotei Cipariu.