Austrian Empire. Other obituaries and biographies suggest that Sturdza was born at Iași, the Moldavian capital city. Grigore's parents were Mihail and his first wife, Elisabeta "Săftica" Paladi, who descended from the Rosetti family. Her relative, the politician-historian Radu Rosetti, claims that the marriage was forced, noting that Mihail was "ugly-faced, ruddy-haired, short in stature, bowlegged [and] surly". Through Săftica and through his paternal grandmother Maria (a Callimachi), Grigore was partly Greek; his great-grandfather was a Phanariote, Gregory Callimachi, who served as Moldavian Prince in the 1760s. By 1820, both countries were beginning their emancipation from Ottoman vassalage. A relative, Ioan "Ioniță" Sturdza, was being recognized by the Sublime Porte as the reigning Prince of Moldavia, putting an end to a century of Phanariote reigns. Unusually, he met most opposition from the "seven pillars of Moldavia, all of them great boyars"—a group which included Grigorașcu Sturdza. In February 1823, Grigorașcu and Maria's son Mihail was the first Moldavian to call himself a man of "conservative principles". The Sturdza ascendancy was interrupted by the Russo-Turkish War of 1828, during which Prince Ioan was captured by the Imperial Russian Army. The war ended with an increase of Russian influence over Wallachia and Moldavia, codified into the constitutional act, Regulamentul Organic. In April 1834, Mihail was selected for the Moldavian throne, beginning a reign which lasted to June 1849; during that interval, Grigore was to be referred to as Beizadea—an informal title bestowed upon sons of the Hospodar. However, his mother was no longer included in the princely family: in order to gain the trust of Ottoman Foreign Minister Mustafa Reşid Pasha, Mihail divorced Săftica and married Stefan Bogoridi's daughter, Smaranda. From this marriage, Grigore had two stepbrothers, both named Mihail—the first one died in 1846, the second one, born in 1848, only survived to 1863; a stepsister, Maria (1848–1905), went on to marry Konstantin Aleksandrovich, son of the Russian statesman Alexander Gorchakov. Grigore began service in the Moldavian princely militia in August 1834, when he became a cavalry cadet. He was much impressed by the experience, which shaped his lifelong belief in militarism. Around coronation time, he and his elder brother Dimitrie were being tutored at Miroslava school by a Professor Victor de Lincourt. In September 1834, their father sent them to study in the Kingdom of France—alongside Mihail Kogălniceanu and other young boyars, and with Lincourt as a chaperon, they were