Military history of Romania

During antiquity, the territory of modern Romania was the scene of sporadic wars between the native Dacian tribes and various invaders (Persians, Macedonians, Celts or Romans).

For 1000 years, numerous migrating people including the Goths, Huns, Gepids, Avars, Slavs, Bulgars, Magyars, Cumans, Greeks, Romans, and Mongols overran the territory of modern Romania.

John Hunyadi, Voivode of Transylvania and regent of Hungary managed to halt the Turkish advance into Central Europe and secured a major victory at the Battle of Belgrade in 1456.

Stephen the Great of Moldavia, Mircea the Elder and Vlad the Impaler of Wallachia also successfully fought off the Turks and distracted them from the strategically more important objectives in the Mediterranean and the Balkans.

The participation on the Allied (Entente) side during World War I triggered the unification of the remaining Romanian inhabited territories with the kingdom, thus forming Greater Romania.

The revolution of 1989 ended Communism and the geopolitical mutations in the region after the collapse of the Soviet Union paved the way for European integration economically, politically, and militarily.

Lysimachus, one of the successors of Alexander, who ruled over Thrace, Asia Minor and Macedonia tried to conquer territories north of the Danube, but was defeated and taken prisoner by the Getae king Dromichaetes.

Burebista sided with the inhabitants of the Greek cities on the Western coast of the Black Sea when they were occupied by Varro Lucullus, the proconsul of the province of Macedonia during the Second Mithridatic War (74 BC–72 BC).

The Getae defeated the Roman army of Gaius Antonius Hybrida near Histria and continued their incursions in the region, taking the Celtic settlement of Aliobrix (Cartal, Ukraine), Tyras and Odessos and destroying Olbia.

In 48 BC, the Dacian king sided with Pompey during his struggle against Julius Caesar in the Roman civil war but failed to supply him with troops in time for the Battle of Pharsalus.

A strong offensive was carried in 87 when five or six legions commanded by general Cornelius Fuscus crossed the Danube and continued northwards to the Dacian capital of Sarmizegetusa.

After several skirmishes, an assault against the capital Sarmisegetusa took place in 106 with the participation of the legions II Adiutrix, IV Flavia Felix and a cavalry detachment (vexillatio) from Legio VI Ferrata.

Emperor Aurelian (270–275), confronted with the secession of Gaul and Hispania from the empire, the advance of the Sassanids in Asia and the devastations that the Carpians and the Goths had done to Moesia and Illyria, abandoned the province and withdrew the troops and administration, fixing the Roman frontier on the Danube.

[3][5][6][7] During the Early Middle Ages, the Northern Balkan Peninsula became a conduit for invading tribes who targeted richer lands further west and south.

Emperor John proceeded to lay siege to Dorostolon, which resisted for sixty five days until Sviatoslav agreed to sign a peace treaty with the Byzantine Empire, whereby he renounced his claims on Bulgaria and the city of Chersonesos in Crimea.

Güyük sacked Sibiu, Cisnadie, Alba Iulia, Bistriţa, Cluj-Napoca, Oradea as well as the Hungarian king's silver mine at Rodna.

The lands east and south of the Carpathians fell under Mongol occupation after 1241, until the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia emerged in the 14th century as Hungarian vassals.

At Nicopolis, the Wallachian force of 10.000 men formed the left wing of the crusader army and, having witnessed the disastrous attacks made by the western knights and the surrender of Sigismund, escaped the massacre that followed.

The Turkish sultan Murad II, faced with revolts in Albania and the Peloponnese, negotiated with the crusaders, signing a ten-year truce at Edirne in 1444 that recognized Serbian independence and formally released Wallachia from Ottoman vassalage.

In 1444 Pope Eugenius urged the crusade's renewal, and Hunyadi marched eastward along the southern bank of the Danube, through northern Bulgaria, toward the Black Sea.

The crusaders, joined by troops sent by Skanderbeg and Voivode Vladislav II of Wallachia (1447–56), Hunyadi's Wallachian vassal met the Ottoman army in October 1448 at Kosovo Polje but were defeated.

The most important of these attacks took place on the night of 16–17 June, when Vlad and some of his men allegedly entered the main Turkish camp (wearing Ottoman disguises) and attempted to assassinate Mehmed.

An exceptional military commander and organizer, Stephen captured the Danube commercial city of Chilia from Wallachia in 1465 and defeated a Hungarian invasion of his state in 1467 at the Battle of Baia.

As his successes both on the battlefield and in imposing his authority within Moldavia grew, Stephen ceased paying the annual tribute to the Ottomans, and his relationship with Mehmed II deteriorated.

Mehmed personally led an invasion of Moldavia in 1476, and his forces plundered the country up to Suceava, Stephen's capital, winning the Battle of Valea Alba on the way.

However, all of Stephen's fortresses held fast, and a lack of provisions and an outbreak of cholera among the Ottoman troops forced Mehmed to retire, and Stefan went on the counteroffensive.

With Hungarian help, he pushed forth into Wallachia in 1476, reinstalled Vlad the Impaler on the Wallachian throne, and spent the next nine years fighting a heroic border war with the Ottomans.

Stefan's efforts were the primary reason that the two Romanian Principalities maintained their independence and did not suffer the fate of the other Ottoman vassal states south of the Danube.

During the last years of his rule, Stephen defeated a Polish invasion at Codrii Cosminului in 1497 and, by the time of his death, Moldavia was de facto independent.

Fought as a part of the larger Russo-Turkish War, the conflict saw the Principality of Romania, at the time a nominal vassal of the Ottoman Empire, gain its independence from the Sublime Porte.