revolutionary manifesto, describing the "tyrannical tortures" of peasants on his leased estates. Alecsandri also claimed that Sturdza's Arnauts had ransacked boyar homes, stolen precious clocks owned by Georgios Kantakouzinos, and mistreatead prisoners. Overall, Prince Mihail sought to maintain a political course that would allow reform without resulting in a Russian punitive invasion. He was himself expelled from the country due to a Russian veto, which some, including Stokera, believed was possibly prompted by Grigore's "bad behavior". In 1849 he was living at the Bogoridis' hôtel particulier in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. Around that time, Dimitrie signaled his definitive retirement from public life, settling in Dieppe. He had married a distant relative, Catrina Sturdza, with whom he established a family branch in France. An absentee landlord over large estates in Moldavia, he relied on the Jewish entrepreneur Mochi Fischer to handle his affairs, a matter which contributed to peasant strife over the next 60 years. Grigore's own lease on the village of Borca, part of the Slatina Monastery lands, was highly controversial after Moldavian Poles, who acted as his proxies, pushed locals into debt servitude. Immediately after his father's ouster, the peasants stopped making payments and issued formal complains. The matter was investigated by Lascăr Catargiu, at the time the civil inspector (Ispravnic), who found that Sturdza had indeed disregarded law and custom. By the time of the revolution, Beizadea Grigore had focused on his military career, and held a general's rank in the Moldavian militia. Building on his personal friendship with Reşid Pasha at the peak of Tanzimat reforms, he transferred to a Colonel's posting in the Ottoman army in 1852. As Muklis Pasha (also Muhlis Basha and other variants), Sturdza was assigned to the Turkish Cossack cavalry in December 1853, some two months into the Crimean War. This unit was also set up to include Wallachian revolutionary deportees, to whom the Porte had granted partial amnesty. Sturdza fought with distinction in Wallachia, beginning with the Battle of Oltenița; he was then involved in the engagements at Cetate, displaying "rather insane courage" as a mounted sniper, who took aim at enemy officers while fired upon by the Russian artillery. He also ignored his superiors' orders and, in August 1854, made a trip to Russian-abandoned Bucharest, where he found his wife's home "almost spared of bullets and robbers." During Sturdza's service under the Ottoman flag, Moldavia had come under Russian