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A German girl, maid-of-honor to the wife of Alexis, defines it in the following way: "Brandy, blood, coarseness. It is hard to say which is most prominent, perhaps it is coarseness." The boyards she describes as: "Impudent savages, baptized bears, who only make themselves more ridiculous when they try to ape the Europeans." Russian noblemen.
Jews, Mohammedans, Catholics, and Greeks all sought to win him, and Vladimir began seriously to consider the question of changing his religion. He appointed a commission, consisting of ten boyards, and ordered them to examine into the comparative merits of the different religions, and to report to him. When their report was made, Vladimir weighed the matter carefully.
A sudden change took place with the accession of Prince Carol; a Hohenzollern prince related to the King of Prussia and to Napoleon III could not be treated like one of the native boyards.
Various civil offices were created at court, either necessitated by the extension of the relations of the country or intended to satisfy some favourite of the prince. Sources of social position and great material benefit, these offices were coveted greedily by the boyards, and those who obtained none could only hope to cheat fortune by doing their best to undermine the position of the prince.
Ivan was so great a coward that he dared not trust the affection and loyalty of even his own favorite child, and in a fit of mingled fear and rage he beat the young man to death with his iron staff, saying, "Rebel, you are leagued with the boyards in a conspiracy to dethrone me." Remorse seized upon him at once, and his sufferings and his fears of retribution were terrible.
Her silks and satins, her jewellery and her carriage, had vanished. There are no more Russian Princes, no more Boyards, no more Milords to minister to her extravagances.
Vladimirescu was assassinated at the instigation of the Greeks; the latter were completely checked by the Turks, who, grown suspicious after the Greek rising and confronted with the energetic attitude of the Rumanian nobility, consented in 1822 to the nomination of two native boyards, Jonitza Sturdza and Gregory Ghica, recommended by their countrymen, as princes of Moldavia and Wallachia.
The czar, too, made no secret of his attachment to the Catholic faith; and while by so doing he irritated the clergy, he provoked the boyards by his haughty patronage, and disgusted the common people by his cruelty and lewdness. At last the murmurs grew so loud and threatening, that some means had to be devised to quiet the popular discontent, and Dimitri had recourse to a strange stratagem.
While the boyards found an increasing attraction in politics, a new class of middlemen came into existence, renting the land from the boyards for periods varying generally from three to five years. Owing to the resultant competition, rents increased considerably, while conservative methods of cultivation kept production stationary.
It was the birthplace of the Tsar Michael Theodorovitch, founder of the now reigning family, and also of his father Theodore Nikitisch, who became patriarch under the name of Philaret. In its restored state the Romanoff House is still perhaps the most remarkable ancient building existing in Russia as a perfect specimen of the old dwelling-houses of the boyards.
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