consented to postpone the question of suzerainship in Moldavia. Should, however the Turks invade the country, the Polish and Hungarian forces were to unite in expelling them, the voivode was to be deposed, and the Moldavian territories divided between the allies. During the first half of the 15th century Polish influence was preponderant, and it was customary for the voivodes of Moldavia to do homage to the king of Poland at his cities of Kameniec or Snyatin.
In 1456 the voivode Peter, alarmed at the progress of the Turks, who were now dominant in Servia and Walachia, offered Stephen the Great. the sultan Mahomet II. a yearly tribute of 2000 ducats. On his deposition, however, in 1457 by Stephen, known as “the Great,” Moldavia became a power formidable alike to Turk, Pole and Hungarian. Throughout the long reign of this voivode, which lasted forty-six years, from 1458 to 1504, his courage and resources never failed. In the early part of his reign he appears, in agreement with the Turkish sultan and the king of Poland, turning out the Hungarian vassal, the ferocious Vlad, from the Walachian throne, and annexing the coast cities of Kilia and Cetatea Alba or Byelgorod, the Turkish Akkerman. These cities he refused to cede to the sultan, and, about this period, he entered into negotiations with Venice and the shah of Persia, in the vain hope of organizing a world-wide coalition against the Turks. In the autumn of 1474 the sultan Mahomet entered Moldavia at the head of an army estimated by the Polish historian Dlugosz at 120,000 men. The voivode Stephen withdrew into the interior at the approach of this overwhelming host, but on the 17th of January 1475, turned to bay at Rahova (Podul Inalt, near Vaslui) and gained a complete victory over the Turks. Four pashas were among the slain; over a hundred banners fell into the Moldavian hands; and only a few survivors succeeded in reaching the Danube. In 1476 Mahomet again invaded Moldavia, but, though successful in the open field, the Turks were sorely harassed by Stephen's guerilla onslaughts, and, being thinned by pestilence, were again constrained to retire. In 1484 the same tactics proved successful against an invasion of Bayezid II. Three years later a Polish invasion of Moldavia under John Albert with 80,000 men ended in disaster, and shortly afterwards the voivode Stephen, aided by a Turkish and Tatar contingent, laid waste the Polish territories to the upper waters of the Vistula, and succeeded in annexing for a time the Polish province of Pokutia, between the Carpathians and the Dniester.
Exclusive of this temporary acquisition, the Moldavian territory at this period extended from the river Milcovu, which formed Moldavia circa 1500. the boundary of Walachia, to the Dniester. It included the Carpathian region of Bukovina, literally “the beechwood,” where lay Sereth and Suciava (Suczawa), the earliest residences of the voivodes, the maritime district of Budzak (the later Bessarabia), with Kilia, Byelgorod and the left bank of the lower Danube from Galatz to the Sulina mouth. The government, civil and ecclesiastical, was practically the same as that described in the case of Walachia, the officials bearing for the most part Slavonic titles derived from the practice of the Bulgaro-Vlachian tsardom. The church was Orthodox Oriental, and depended from the patriarch of Ochrida. In official documents the language used was Slavonic, the style of a Moldavian ruler being Nachalnik i Voievoda Moldovlasi, prince and duke (= Ger. Fürst and Herzog) of the Moldovlachs. The election of the voivodes, though in the hands of the boiars, was strictly regulated by hereditary principles, and Cantemir describes the extinction of the house of Dragosh in the 16th century as one of the unsettling causes that most contributed to the ruin of the country. The Moldavian army was reckoned 40,000 strong, and the cavalry were especially formidable. Verantius of Sebenico, an eye-witness of the state of Moldavia at the beginning of the 16th century, mentions three towns of the interior provided with stone walls—Suciava, Chotim (Khotin) and Ncamtzu; the people were barbarous, but more warlike than the Walachians and more tenacious of their national costume, punishing with death any who adopted the Turkish.
In 1504 Stephen the Great died, and was succeeded by his son, Bogdan III. “the One-eyed.” At feud with Poland about Moldavia tributary to the Turks. Pokutia, despairing of efficacious support from hard-pressed Hungary, the new voivode saw no hope of safety except in a dependent alliance with the advancing Ottoman power, which already hemmed Moldavia in on the Walachian and Crimean sides. In 1513 he agreed to pay an annual tribute to the sultan Selim in return for the sultan's guarantee to preserve the national constitution and religion of Moldavia, to which country the Turks now gave the name of Kara Bogdan, from their first vassal. The terms of Moldavian submission were further regulated by a firman signed by the sultan Suleiman at Budapest in 1529 by which the yearly present or backshish, as the tribute was euphoniously called, was fixed at 4000 ducats, 40 horses and 25 falcons, and the voivode was bound at need to supply the Turkish army with a contingent of 1000 men. The Turks pursued much the same policy as in Walachia. The tribute was gradually increased. A hold was obtained on the country by the occupation of various fortresses on Moldavian soil with the surrounding territory—in 1538 Cetatea Alba, in 1592 Bender, in 1702 Chotim (Khotin). Already by the middle of the 16th century the yoke was so heavy that the voivode Elias (1546-51) became Mahommedan to avoid the sultan's anger.
At this period occurs a curious interlude in Moldavian history. In 1561 the adventurer and impostor Jacob Basilicus succeeded Jacob Basilicus. with Hungarian help in turning out the voivode Alexander Lapusheanu (1552-61 and 1563-68) and seizing on the reins of government. A Greek by birth, adopted son of Jacob Heraklides, despot of Paros, Samos and other Aegean islands, acquainted with Greek and Latin literature, and master of most European languages; appearing alternately as a student of astronomy at Wittenberg, whither he had been invited by Count Mansfeld, as a correspondent of Melanchthon, and as a writer of historical works which he dedicated to Philip II. of Spain, Basilicus, finding that his Aegean sovereignty was of little practical value beyond the crowning of poet laureates, fixed his roving ambition on a more substantial dominion. He published an astounding pedigree, in which, starting from “Hercules Triptolemus,” he wound his way through the royal Servian line to the kinship of Moldavian voivodes, and, having won the emperor Ferdinand to his financial and military support, succeeded, though at the head of only 1600 cavalry, in routing by a bold dash the vastly superior forces of the voivode, and even in purchasing the Turkish confirmation of his usurped title. He assumed the style of Βασιλεύς Μολδαβίας, and eluded the Turkish stipulation that he should dismiss his foreign guards. In Moldavia he appeared as a moral reformer, endeavouring to put down the prevalent vices of bigamy and divorce. He erected a school, placed it under a German master, and collected children from every part of the country to be maintained and educated at his expense. He also busied himself with the collection of a library. But his taxes—a ducat for each family—were considered heavy; his orthodoxy was suspected, his foreign counsellors detested. In 1563 the people rose, massacred the Hungarian guards, the foreign settlers, and finally Jacob himself.
The expelled voivode Alexander was now restored by the Porte, the schools were destroyed, and the country relapsed into its normal state of barbarism under Bogdan IV. (1568-72). Bogdan's successor, John the Terrible (1572-74), was provoked by the Porte's demand for 120,000 ducats as tribute instead of 60,000 as heretofore to rise against the oppressor; but after gaining three victories he was finally defeated and slain (1574), and the country was left more than ever at the mercy of the Ottoman. Voivodes were now created and deposed in rapid succession by the Divan, but the victories of Michael the Brave in Walachia infused a more independent spirit into the Moldavians. The Moldavian dominion was now disputed by the Transylvanians and Poles, but in 1600 Michael succeeded in annexing it to his “Great Dacian” realm. On Michael's murder the Poles under Zamoyski again
