Early modern Romania

The three outstanding princes – the Calvinist Stephen Bocskai, Gabriel Bethlen, and George I Rákóczi – expanded their countries and defended the liberties of the Estates in Royal Hungary against the Habsburgs in the first half of the 17th century.

During this period the lands inhabited by Romanians were characterised by the slow disappearance of the feudal system,[dubious – discuss] by the leadership of some rulers like Dimitrie Cantemir in Moldavia, Constantin Brâncoveanu in Wallachia, Gabriel Bethlen in Transylvania, the Phanariot Epoch, and the appearance of the Russian Empire as a political and military influence.

[9][10] Royal councils – which consisted of the logofăt, the vornic, and other high officials – assisted the monarchs, but the princes could also discuss the most important matters at the assembly of the Orthodox clergy, the boyars and the army.

[21] On 16 September 1437 the Transylvanian noblemen and the heads of the Saxon and Székely communities concluded an alliance – the Union of the Three Nations – against the Hungarian and Romanian peasants who had risen up in open rebellion.

[30] Although neither Wallachia nor Moldavia were integrated into the Dar al-Islam, or "The Domain of Islam", the influence of the Ottoman Empire increased and the princes were prohibited to conclude treaties with foreign powers.

In consequence, taxes, excise, bridge and road tolls yield but little, the mines are deserted, there are no hands to work.An Italian imperial commander, Giacomo Belgiojoso, accused a wealthy Calvinist landowner, Stephen Bocskay, of treachery and ordered the forfeiture of his estates in Crişana in October 1604.

[79] For instance, the population decreased with about 80% in the lowland villages and with about 45% in the mountains in Solnocul de Mijloc and Dăbâca Counties during the wars; the two most important Saxon centers, Sibiu and Brașov, lost more than 75% of their burghers.

[91][92] He introduced a mercantilist economic policy, encouraging the immigration of Jews and Baptist craftsmen from the Holy Roman Empire, creating state monopolies and promoting export.

[94] Bethlen set up the first academy in Transylvania, promoted the building of schools and his subjects' studies abroad (especially in England), and punished those landowners who denied an education to children of serfs.

[118] In the next years, princes supported by the Ottomans – Francis Rhédey, Ákos Barcsay, and Michael I Apafi – and their opponents – George II Rákóczi and John Kemény – fought against each other.

[119] During this period the Ottomans captured Ineu, Lugoj, Caransebeș, and Oradea, and destroyed Alba Iulia, the capital of the principality, and Crimean Tatars plundered the Székely Land.

[129] Upon Pope Innocent XI's initiative, Leopold I, John III Sobieski, King of Poland, and the Republic of Venice formed the Holy League against the Ottoman Empire in early next year.

[132] Although the Diet refused to confirm the agreement, Apafi allowed the imperial troops to winter in Transylvania after a series of victories of the united army of the Holy League in autumn 1687.

[148] On 19 July 1631 the rebellious boyars, who were supported by George I Rákóczi,[146] forced Leon Tomșa to expel all Greeks who had not married a local woman and did not held landed property in Wallachia.

[157] Their united army routed the rebels on the Teleajen River on 26 June, but smaller groups of the dismissed soldiers continued to fight until their leader, Hrizea of Bogdănei, was killed in 1657.

[172] After imperial troops took control of Transylvania in 1688, Cantacuzino was willing to accept Leopold I's suzerainty in exchange for the Banat and the acknowledgement of his descendants' hereditary rule in Wallachia, but his offers were refused.

[121] Although centuries of continued attacks and raids from Turks, Tatars, Poles, Hungarians, and Cossacks, had crippled Moldavia and Wallachia and caused economical and human losses, the two countries were relatively adapted to this type of warfare.

Charles XII of Sweden, after his defeat in 1709 at the Battle of Lesnaya, sought refuge in Tighina, a border fort of the Turkish vassal state of Moldavia, guarded by Ottoman troops.

The treaty stipulated that Russian armies would abandon Moldavia immediately, renounce its sovereignty over the Cossacks, destroy the fortresses erected along the frontier, and restore Otchakov to the Porte.

Under the Turks, Bessarabia and Transnistria witnessed a constant immigration from Poland and Ukraine, of Ukrainian speaking landless peasants, largely fugitives from the severe serfdom that prevailed there, to the districts of Hotin and Chişinău.

When Field Marshal Burkhard Christoph von Münnich entered Iaşi, the capital of Moldavia, Moldavian auxiliary troops on Turkish service changed side and joined the Russians.

Under the Phanariots, Moldavia was the first state in Eastern Europe to abolish serfdom, when Constantine Mavrocordatos, summoned the boyars in 1749 to a great council in the church of the Three Hierarchs in Iași.

Although an imperial decree reaffirmed the privileges of Transylvania's nobles and the status of its four "recognized" religions, Vienna assumed direct control of the region and the emperor planned annexation.

[190] In 1711, having suppressed an eight-year rebellion of Hungarian nobles and serfs, the Austrian empire consolidated its hold on Transylvania, and within several decades the Greek-Catholic Church proved a seminal force in the rise of Romanian nationalism.

[190] The Romanians' struggle for equality in Transylvania found its first formidable advocate in a Greek-Catholic bishop, Inocenţiu Micu-Klein, who, with imperial backing, became a baron and a member of the Transylvanian Diet.

He brought the empire under strict central control, launched an education program, and instituted religious tolerance, including full civil rights for Orthodox Christians.

In 1784, Transylvanian serfs under Horea, Cloşca and Crişan, convinced they had the Emperor's support, rebelled against their feudal masters, sacked castles and manor houses, and murdered about 100 nobles.

Joseph ordered the revolt repressed, but granted amnesty to all participants except their leaders, whom the nobles tortured and put to death in front of peasants brought to witness the execution.

Joseph, aiming to strike at the rebellion's root causes, emancipated the serfs, annulled Transylvania's constitution, dissolved the Union of Three Nations, and decreed German as the official language of the empire.

[191] Leopold's successor, Francis I (1792–1835), whose almost abnormal aversion to change and fear of revolution brought his empire four decades of political stagnation, virtually ignored Transylvania's constitution and refused to convoke the Transylvanian Diet for twenty-three years.