|
Romania The Ottoman Invasions
In the fourteenth century, the Ottoman Turks expanded
their
empire from Anatolia to the Balkans. They crossed the
Bosporus in
1352 and crushed the Serbs at Kosovo Polje, in the south
of modern-
day Yugoslavia, in 1389. Tradition holds that Walachia's
Prince
Mircea the Old (1386-1418) sent his forces to Kosovo to
fight
beside the Serbs; soon after the battle Sultan Bayezid
marched on
Walachia and imprisoned Mircea until he pledged to pay
tribute.
After a failed attempt to break the sultan's grip, Mircea
fled to
Transylvania and enlisted his forces in a crusade called
by
Hungary's King Sigismund. The campaign ended miserably:
the Turks
routed Sigismund's forces in 1396 at Nicopolis in
present-day
Bulgaria, and Mircea and his men were lucky to escape
across the
Danube. In 1402 Walachia gained a respite from Ottoman
pressure as
the Mongol leader Tamerlane attacked the Ottomans from the
east,
killed the sultan, and sparked a civil war. When peace
returned,
the Ottomans renewed their assault on the Balkans. In 1417
Mircea
capitulated to Sultan Mehmed I and agreed to pay an annual
tribute
and surrender territory; in return the sultan allowed
Walachia to
remain a principality and to retain the Eastern Orthodox
faith.
After Mircea's death in 1418, Walachia and Moldavia
slid into
decline. Succession struggles, Polish and Hungarian
intrigues, and
corruption produced a parade of eleven princes in
twenty-five years
and weakened the principalities as the Ottoman threat
waxed. In
1444 the Ottomans routed European forces at Varna in
contemporary
Bulgaria. When Constantinople succumbed in 1453, the
Ottomans cut
off Genoese and Venetian galleys from Black Sea ports,
trade
ceased, and the Romanian principalities' isolation
deepened. At
this time of near desperation, a Magyarized Romanian from
Transylvania, János Hunyadi, became regent of Hungary.
Hunyadi, a
hero of the Ottoman wars, mobilized Hungary against the
Turks,
equipping a mercenary army funded by the first tax ever
levied on
Hungary's nobles. He scored a resounding victory over the
Turks
before Belgrade in 1456, but died of plague soon after the
battle.
In one of his final acts, Hunyadi installed Vlad Tepes
(1456-62) on Walachia's throne. Vlad took abnormal
pleasure in
inflicting torture and watching his victims writhe in
agony. He
also hated the Turks and defied the sultan by refusing to
pay
tribute. In 1461 Hamsa Pasha tried to lure Vlad into a
trap, but
the Walachian prince discovered the deception, captured
Hamsa and
his men, impaled them on wooden stakes, and abandoned
them. Sultan
Mohammed later invaded Walachia and drove Vlad into exile
in
Hungary. Although Vlad eventually returned to Walachia, he
died
shortly thereafter, and Walachia's resistance to the
Ottomans
softened.
Moldavia and its prince, Stephen the Great (1457-1504),
were
the principalities' last hope of repelling the Ottoman
threat.
Stephen drew on Moldavia's peasantry to raise a 55,000-man
army and
repelled the invading forces of Hungary's King Mátyás
Corvinus in
a daring night attack. Stephen's army invaded Walachia in
1471 and
defeated the Turks when they retaliated in 1473 and 1474.
After
these victories, Stephen implored Pope Sixtus IV to forge
a
Christian alliance against the Turks. The pope replied
with a
letter naming Stephen an "Athlete of Christ," but he did
not heed
Stephen's calls for Christian unity. During the last
decades of
Stephen's reign, the Turks increased the pressure on
Moldavia. They
captured key Black Sea ports in 1484 and burned Moldavia's
capital,
Suceava, in 1485. Stephen rebounded with a victory in 1486
but
thereafter confined his efforts to secure Moldavia's
independence
to the diplomatic arena. Frustrated by vain attempts to
unite the
West against the Turks, Stephen, on his deathbed,
reportedly told
his son to submit to the Turks if they offered an
honorable
suzerainty. Succession struggles weakened Moldavia after
his death.
In 1514 greedy nobles and an ill-planned crusade
sparked a
widespread peasant revolt in Hungary and Transylvania.
Well-armed
peasants under György Dózsa sacked estates across the
country.
Despite strength of numbers, however, the peasants were
disorganized and suffered a decisive defeat at Timisoara.
Dózsa and
the other rebel leaders were tortured and executed. After
the
revolt, the Hungarian nobles enacted laws that condemned
the serfs
to eternal bondage and increased their work obligations.
With the
serfs and nobles deeply alienated from each other and
jealous
magnates challenging the king's power, Hungary was
vulnerable to
outside aggression. The Ottomans stormed Belgrade in 1521,
routed
a feeble Hungarian army at Mohács in 1526, and conquered
Buda in
1541. They installed a pasha to rule over central Hungary;
Transylvania became an autonomous principality under
Ottoman
suzerainty; and the Habsburgs assumed control over
fragments of
northern and western Hungary.
After Buda's fall, Transylvania, though a vassal state
of the
Sublime Porte
(as the Ottoman government was called, see Glossary),
entered a period of broad autonomy. As a vassal,
Transylvania paid
the Porte an annual tribute and provided military
assistance; in
return, the Ottomans pledged to protect Transylvania from
external
threat. Native princes governed Transylvania from 1540 to
1690.
Transylvania's powerful, mostly Hungarian, ruling
families, whose
position ironically strengthened with Hungary's fall,
normally
chose the prince, subject to the Porte's confirmation; in
some
cases, however, the Turks appointed the prince outright.
The
Transylvanian Diet became a parliament, and the nobles
revived the
Union of Three Nations, which still excluded the Romanians
from
political power. Princes took pains to separate
Transylvania's
Romanians from those in Walachia and Moldavia and forbade
Eastern
Orthodox priests to enter Transylvania from Walachia.
The Protestant Reformation spread rapidly in
Transylvania after
Hungary's collapse, and the region became one of Europe's
Protestant strongholds. Transylvania's Germans adopted
Lutheranism,
and many Hungarians converted to Calvinism. However, the
Protestants, who printed and distributed catechisms in the
Romanian
language, failed to lure many Romanians from Orthodoxy. In
1571 the
Transylvanian Diet approved a law guaranteeing freedom of
worship
and equal rights for Transylvania's four "received"
religions:
Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, and Unitarian. The
law was one
of the first of its kind in Europe, but the religious
equality it
proclaimed was limited. Orthodox Romanians, for example,
were free
to worship, but their church was not recognized as a
received
religion.
Once the Ottomans conquered Buda, Walachia and Moldavia
lost
all but the veneer of independence and the Porte exacted
heavy
tribute. The Turks chose Walachian and Moldavian princes
from among
the sons of noble hostages or refugees at Constantinople.
Few
princes died a natural death, but they lived enthroned
amid great
luxury. Although the Porte forbade Turks to own land or
build
mosques in the principalities, the princes allowed Greek
and
Turkish merchants and usurers to exploit the
principalities'
riches. The Greeks, jealously protecting their privileges,
smothered the developing Romanian middle class.
The Romanians' final hero before the Turks and Greeks
closed
their stranglehold on the principalities was Walachia's
Michael the
Brave (1593-1601). Michael bribed his way at the Porte to
become
prince. Once enthroned, however, he rounded up
extortionist Turkish
lenders, locked them in a building, and burned it to the
ground.
His forces then overran several key Turkish fortresses.
Michael's
ultimate goal was complete independence, but in 1598 he
pledged
fealty to Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. A year later,
Michael
captured Transylvania, and his victory incited
Transylvania's
Romanian peasants to rebel. Michael, however, more
interested in
endearing himself to Transylvania's nobles than in
supporting
defiant serfs, suppressed the rebels and swore to uphold
the Union
of Three Nations. Despite the prince's pledge, the nobles
still
distrusted him. Then in 1600 Michael conquered Moldavia.
For the
first time a single Romanian prince ruled over all
Romanians, and
the Romanian people sensed the first stirring of a
national
identity. Michael's success startled Rudolf. The emperor
incited
Transylvania's nobles to revolt against the prince, and
Poland
simultaneously overran Moldavia. Michael consolidated his
forces in
Walachia, apologized to Rudolf, and agreed to join
Rudolf's
general, Giörgio Basta, in a campaign to regain
Transylvania from
recalcitrant Hungarian nobles. After their victory,
however, Basta
executed Michael for alleged treachery. Michael the Brave
grew more
impressive in legend than in life, and his short-lived
unification
of the Romanian lands later inspired the Romanians to
struggle for
cultural and political unity.
In Transylvania Basta's army persecuted Protestants and
illegally expropriated their estates until Stephen Bocskay
(1605-07), a former Habsburg supporter, mustered an army
that
expelled the imperial forces. In 1606 Bocskay concluded
treaties
with the Habsburgs and the Turks that secured his position
as
prince of Transylvania, guaranteed religious freedom, and
broadened
Transylvania's independence. After Bocskay's death and the
reign of
the tyrant Gabriel Báthory (1607-13), the Porte compelled
the
Transylvanians to accept Gábor Bethlen (1613-29) as
prince.
Transylvania experienced a golden age under Bethlen's
enlightened
despotism. He promoted agriculture, trade, and industry,
sank new
mines, sent students abroad to Protestant universities,
and
prohibited landlords from denying an education to children
of
serfs. After Bethlen died, however, the Transylvanian Diet
abolished most of his reforms. Soon György Rákóczi I
(1630-40)
became prince. Rákóczi, like Bethlen, sent Transylvanian
forces to
fight with the Protestants in the Thirty Years' War; and
Transylvania gained mention as a sovereign state in the
Peace of
Westphalia. Transylvania's golden age ended after György
Rákóczi II
(1648-60) launched an ill-fated attack on Poland without
the prior
approval of the Porte or Transylvania's Diet. A Turkish
and Tatar
army routed Rákóczi's forces and seized Transylvania. For
the
remainder of its independence, Transylvania suffered a
series of
feckless and distracted leaders, and throughout the
seventeenth
century Transylvania's Romanian peasants lingered in
poverty and
ignorance.
During Michael the Brave's brief tenure and the early
years of
Turkish suzerainty, the distribution of land in Walachia
and
Moldavia changed dramatically. Over the years, Walachian
and
Moldavian princes made land grants to loyal boyars in
exchange for
military service so that by the seventeenth century hardly
any land
was left. Boyars in search of wealth began encroaching on
peasant
land and their military allegiance to the prince weakened.
As a
result, serfdom spread, successful boyars became more
courtiers
than warriors, and an intermediary class of impoverished
lesser
nobles developed. Would-be princes were forced to raise
enormous
sums to bribe their way to power, and peasant life grew
more
miserable as taxes and exactions increased. Any prince
wishing to
improve the peasants' lot risked a financial shortfall
that could
enable rivals to out-bribe him at the Porte and usurp his
position.
In 1632 Matei Basarab (1632-54) became the last of
Walachia's
predominant family to take the throne; two years later,
Vasile Lupu
(1634-53), a man of Albanian descent, became prince of
Moldavia.
The jealousies and ambitions of Matei and Vasile sapped
the
strength of both principalities at a time when the Porte's
power
began to wane. Coveting the richer Walachian throne,
Vasile
attacked Matei, but the latter's forces routed the
Moldavians, and
a group of Moldavian boyars ousted Vasile. Both Matei and
Vasile
were enlightened rulers, who provided liberal endowments
to
religion and the arts, established printing presses, and
published
religious books and legal codes.
Data as of July 1989
|
