Principality of Moldavia

The Principality of Moldavia was the Romanian east from 1346 to 1859, the land between the Carpathians and the Dniester. Dragoș, a Vlach voivode out of Maramureș, rode over the mountains on a hunt for the aurochs, so the chronicles say, and about 1349 his march stopped obeying Hungary. Bogdan, the second founder, secured the independence Dragoș had implied. The crown jewel was Stephen the Great, reigning forty seven years from 1457: he beat the Hungarians at Baia, the Poles at the Cosmin Forest, and the Ottomans at Vaslui in 1475 in Christendom's greatest victory over the Turks that century, losing only to a foolhardy invasion of Wallachia's politics. He built a church for every battle and sleeps at Putna. After him the Porte tightened the leash: tribute, then garrisons, then in the eighteenth century Phanariot Greeks appointed from Constantinople, who milked the land for the Sultan's wars with Russia. Michael the Brave briefly joined all three Romanian lands in 1600; Russia's protectorate after 1829 brought roads and quarantines and Russian tutelage. In January 1859 both Moldavia and Wallachia elected the same man, Alexandru Ioan Cuza: the double election made one Romania from two principalities, and the principality that Dragoș had hunted into being walked into the modern age.