Ruler: Voievod Stephen II ‘the Great’ of the House of Musat,
succeeded 1457.
In 1359, Bogdan I, a vassal of King Louis of Hungary, crossed the
mountains to the east and created a new state that his descendants still rule a
century later. The Moldavian title for their ruler is ‘Voievod’,
which in English means ‘Prince’. Having created the state, Bogdan
repelled an invasion from
A rival deposed
Peter’s son, Roman, (1393-1399), but Peter’s son Alexander I ‘the Good’ took
the throne in 1400 and reigned for a long period of peace and prosperity,
sending archers to assist King Vladislaw Jagiello of Poland against the Teutonic Knights at Grünwald and Marienburg.
Alexander had five
sons: Stephen, Alexander, Ilie, Peter-Aron and Bogdan. As in
Anglo-Saxon tradition, the ruler is elected from among the sons of the
deceased prince but there is no law of succession so, after their father’s
death in 1432, the brothers killed each other in decades of fratricidal frenzy.
In 1448, Peter II became the vassal of John Hunyadi.
In 1451, Peter-Aron killed his half-brother Bogdan II at a banquet. Meanwhile, the Tartars of the Bug
raided the country every two years and the Turks under Murad
II (1421-1451) reached the southern border of
But in 1457,
Stephen, son of Bogdan II, defeated Peter-Aron at Doljesti and won the
crown. The boyars rallied to his cause and he hunted down and killed the few
that still supported his exiled uncle. Stephen has made an auspicious start:
already he is called ‘The Great’; he has consolidated his power by a treaty
with Casimir of Poland; commercial treaties with
Transylvanian cities insure a ready supply of firearms for his army making it
the best in the area and he is building a girdle of castles along the eastern
frontier on the river Nistru. From north to south: Hotin, Soroca, Orhei and Tighina are an
effective guard against tartar raids.
As for relations
to
[Thanks to Dan Minculescu.]