Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 4, 2025
At the period when I was in Moscow the wealthiest resident of the town, and perhaps of all Russia, was Prince Bezborodko. He could have raised, it is said, an army of 30,000 men on his estate, so many peasants did he own, these people, as everybody knows, being considered as part of the soil in Russia.
Bezborodko began elaborate excuses, but she stopped him with compliments, and the next day made him Privy Councillor. Another Russian, whose memory was as marvellous as Prince Bezborodko's, was Count Buturlin, whom I knew quite well at Moscow, where, by the way, we lived so far apart that whenever I supped with Countess Buturlin I was obliged to go two miles.
Prince Bezborodko was a man of high ability. He was employed in the reign of Catherine II. and of Paul, first as secretary to the cabinet, and then, in 1780, as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. In his desire to avoid the countless appeals by which he was besieged, he made himself as inaccessible as possible. Women sometimes followed him into his carriage.
Long after serfage had been legalised in that region by Catherine II., the great proprietors, such as Rumyantsef, Razumofski, Bezborodko, continued to attract to their estates the peasants of the smaller proprietors. See the article of Pogodin in the Russkaya Beseda, 1858, No. 4, p. 154. Towards the free Communes the Tsar had to act in the same way for similar reasons.
Bezborodko, not the least bit in the world dismayed, drew a sheet of paper out of his portfolio, and without a moment's hesitation improvised the whole thing from beginning to end. Catherine was so well pleased with this presentment that she took the paper from him to look at it. Her surprise may be imagined at the sight of a sheet that was quite blank!
Word Of The Day
Others Looking