into his dominions.  The most important step taken by him was to suppress the guards of the native boyards, which made them as dangerous to the ruler as the retainers of our barons had been to the Crown until they were suppressed by the Act of Henry VII.[154] He established new tribunals and disbanded the militia.  His successor, Constantine (about 1731), was superior in his views and aspirations to almost any of the princes who had ruled over Wallachia.  He abolished the old form of slavery, but unfortunately political considerations still caused the retention of the peasantry in servitude; for, in order to weaken the native boyards, a large number of serfs, it is said 60,000 in all, were transferred as labourers from their old masters to the Crown, and to the newly created Greek boyards.  Whilst their bodies were nominally freed, these poor creatures were required to render such an amount of feudal service to their new masters, that their wretched condition was rather aggravated than improved.  The Greek or Phanariote boyards who were created, found it politic to intermarry with the native boyard families in order to improve their position in the land of their adoption, and the servile Wallachian nobles deemed it to their interest to encourage such alliances; indeed it was necessary to save themselves from extinction.  New officers of State were appointed in the supposed interests of the Porte, but, as we shall see presently, the ruling prince, or, as the reader will find him called, voivode or hospodar,[155] managed to turn these changes to account and make them serve for his own aggrandisement.

The new hospodar was always appointed by the Porte with great ceremony.  ‘The kukka or military crest,’ says Wilkinson, ’is put on their heads by the Muzhur Aga; the robe of honour is put on them by the Vizir himself.  They are honoured with standards and military music, and take the oath of allegiance in the presence of the Sultan, to whom they are introduced with the ceremonies usual at a public audience.’[156] They were appointed by ‘Beratt,’ an imperial diploma, of which Wilkinson gives a formula, and wherein the Sultan commands the Wallachian and Moldavian peoples to acknowledge and obey the bearers of it, as the sole depositaries of the sovereign authority.  As soon as the prince was appointed, he at once sent an avant-courrier, a Kaimakam, to make preparations for his arrival; and this one, who was practically the chief of the State for a period of two months, generally managed, whilst he was carrying out his mission, to do a little profitable business on his own account.  The prince followed in great state, accompanied by a number of dependants and hangers-on who had succeeded, by means of presents or otherwise, in ingratiating themselves in his favour.  The bribes, flatteries, and meanness of which these sycophants were guilty, either before the departure of the prince from Constantinople or after his arrival in Bucarest (which had been the