Founding of Moldavia
Immediately after the death of Sas, before his son Balc was able to consolidate his reign, the area was invaded by Bogdan I, another Vlach voivode from Maramureș who had fallen out with the Hungarian king.
Bogdan crossed the Carpathians in 1359, defeated Balc and the subsequent Hungarian armies, ending the reign of the House of Dragoș, and establishing the independence of the Principality of Moldavia.
The neighboring Principality of Galicia and Kingdom of Hungary started to expand their authority over parts of the territory from around 1150, but the Golden Horde—a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate—took control of the lands east of the Carpathians in the 1240s.
The circulation of Hungarian and Bohemian coins shows that there were also close economic contacts between the basin of the Moldova and Central Europe in the early 14th century.
Even in the context of dependence on conquerors, the Vlachs formed unions of territorial communities or agrarian communes, called "țări" (from the Latin terra – land) throughout Moldavia.
[8] After the arrival of the Magyars to the Pontic steppes north of the Black Sea in the 830s, the local inhabitants fortified their settlements with palisades and deep moats along the Dniester in the 9th century.
[13][failed verification][neutrality is disputed] Victor Spinei wrote that a runestone which was set up around 1050 contains the earliest reference to Romanians living east of the Carpathians.
[14] A competing group, the Magyars, left the Pontic steppes for the Carpathian Basin after a coalition of the Pechenegs and the Bulgarians defeated them at the end of the 9th century.
[18] Soviet historiography, with a few exceptions, denied the presence of a Romanian indigenous element in Moldavia during the 10th to 13th centuries, suggesting that they came to these lands from Transylvania, particularly from Maramureș, following voievode Dragoș.
Authors of this theory, such as V. Zelenciuk and L. Polevoi, claim that written sources from the 13th-14th centuries sometimes referred to the territory between the Dniester and Prut rivers as Rosovlahia or Moldoslavia.
[20] Anthropologist Henry H. Stahl, by examining medieval documents up until 1449, found that they mention a total of 755 Moldavian settlements, out of which 607 predate the establishment of the principality of Moldavia by Dragoș, suggesting there was a large indigenous Romanian population.
Polevoi does not explain how he made the calculations for each particular village, but they do not follow the author's own formula, which indicates that numbers are entirely arbitrary, adjusted to a preconceived idea.
[25] According to Ukrainian historian N. Kotlear, the borders of Principality of Halicz did not extend southward beyond the cities and castles of Vasilev, Onut, Bakota, Ușița, Kalius, Kucelmin, located on the upper course of the Dniester River.
[38] The local inhabitants used high quality ceramics (amphorae-like vessels, pitchers, mugs, jars and pots), similar to those found in other parts of the Golden Horde.
[43] Weapons and harness pieces from the 13th and 14th centuries that have been found together with agricultural tools at Vatra Moldoviței, Coșna and Cozănești shows the existence of either local elites or armed peasant groups between the Carpathians and the upper courses of the Siret.
[46] In that year, Charles I of Hungary granted the "land Zurduky" (now Strâmtura in Romania) in the "district of Maramureș" to a Vlach noble, Stanislau.
[47] According to the Moldo-Russian Chronicle, which was preserved in a Russian annals completed in 1505, King Vladislav of Hungary sent envoys to invite the "Old-Romans and the Romanians" to fight against the Mongols and afterwards he rewarded the "Old Romans" with lands in Maramureș.
[48][49] Historians Ionel Cândea and Dumitru Țeicu identify this event with the battle of Hód Lake (1280), Cuman opponents being substituted in the chronicle by tartars.
The minting of Mongol coins continued in Orheiul Vechi until 1367 or 1368, showing that a "late Tatar state" survived in the southern region between the Prut and the Dniester.
[66][67][68] One theory by Stefan Andreescu suggests that the Land of Maramureș was one of the "Romanias" where Eastern Romance ethnic groups (known as Vlachs in the Middle Ages) had survived the Great Migrations.
[69] A concurrent theory by István Vásáry suggests that the Vlachs of Maramureș came from Great Vlachia (in present-day Greece) in the second half of the 13th century.
They chose an intelligent man named Dragoș of their number and appointed him to be their lord and voivode, and thus the country of Moldavia was founded by the will of God.
[89] Historian Pál Engel dates Bogdan's arrival as 1359, taking advantage of the power vacuum that followed the death of Berdi Beg, Khan of the Golden Horde.
[90] According to Carciumaru, a lasting conflict between King Louis I of Hungary and Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor and the Lithuanians' victory over the Tatars in the Battle of Blue Waters in the early 1360s, enabled Bogdan to come to Moldavia and expel Balc in 1363.
[90][92] John of Küküllő wrote that Bogdan "was often battled against" by the army of Louis, but the "number of Vlachs inhabiting that land increased, transforming it into a country".
[101] However, the 15th-century Lithuanian-Ruthenian Chronicle wrote that the Vlachs elected George Koriatovich—who was a nephew of Algirdas, Grand Prince of Lithuania, and ruled in Podolia under Polish suzerainty[102]—to be voivode, but later poisoned him.
[92] Upon Peter's request, Anton, the Orthodox Metropolitan of Halych, ordained two bishops for Moldova, one of them being Joseph Mușat, who was related to the voivode.
[111] His successor, Roman I Mușat, styled himself "By the grace of God the Almighty, Voivode of Moldavia and her to the entire Vlach country from the mountains to the shores of the sea" on 30 March 1392.
[110] Some historians such as Gheorghe Brătianu, Ștefan Purice, Aurelian Sacerdoțeanu and Dragoș Moldovanu argue that the first major Romanian state in Moldavia was the voivodship at the border with Galicia in the Suceava area, which also included Țara Șipenițului [ro].
Wallachia Minor eventually merged with the Principality of Moldavia when Bogdan I married his son Lațcu with Anna of Siret who belonged to this local voievodal family.
