Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/72

 rather to renounce their religion. An exceedingly powerful class, they continued to thrive, to the great disadvantage of the peasantry. The new regime employed this rich and proud aristocracy of beys with Slavonic names and of indigenous origins as one of its principal supports.

Very different however was the situation in the two Roumanian Principalities which, with the sole exception of the strongholds on the left bank of the Danube, were never conquered, occupied or ruled by the Turk. Here the prince was the overlord, redeeming by the promise of tribute and presents to Constantinople his sovereign rights in their integrity. All his nobility, of ancient lineage, formed by the aristocratic refugees from the countries under the Turkish yoke or by rewards for military services, remained round him, often assisting to rule and giving direction to state policy.

The peasants were certainly originally free. The state of Wallachia was formed by the union of peasant « judicatures » and, notwithstanding the splendid ornaments of purple and gold recently unearthed from the tomb of Bassarab, the creator of Wallachian unity, he was no crowned baron reigning over disarmed slaves. The peasant enjoyed liberty, and riches were possible to him, but in land and cattle, not in money. As the Turkish tribute had to be paid in money, the prince was forced to demand aspers from his subjects, while the peasant in his turn, possessing none, was constrained to sell his property or, more often, to dispose of his share in the common property (which was divided as with the Germans according to his degree and his duties to his family). So, because the soil without the worker was of little value, in 1595 the boyards, employing the strictures placed upon them by their overlord, first in revolt against the Turk and then threatened by him, introduced into Wallachia the Hungarian system