Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/31

Rh ROU MANIA 19 hen who were now dominant in Servia and Walachia, offered Sultan Mahomet a yearly tribute of 2000 ducats. On his deposition, how- it, ever, in 1458 by Stephen, known as " the Great," Moldavia became a power formidable alike to Turk, Pole, and Hungarian. Through- out the long reign of this voivode, which lasted forty-six years, from 1458 to 1504, his courage and resources never failed him. 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 Bielogorod, the Turkish Akiernmn. In the autumn of 1474 the sultan Mahomet entered Moldavia at the head of an army estimated by the Polish historian Dlugoss at 120,000 men. Voivode Stephen withdrew into the interior at the approach of this overwhelming host, but on January 17, 1475, turned at bay on the banks of Lake Rakovietz 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 entered Moldavia, thirsting for vengeance, 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 Bajazet. 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 that lay between the Car- pathians and the Dniester, iavia Exclusive of this temporary acquisition, the Moldavian territory L500. at this period extended from the river Milcov, which formed the boundary of Walachia, to the Dniester. It included the Carpathian region of the Bukovina, literally " the beechwood," where lay Sereth and Suciava, the earliest residences of the voivodes, the maritime district of Budzak (the later Bessarabia), with Kilia and Bielogorod, 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 czardom. The church was Orthodox Oriental, and depended from the patriarch of Ohrida. In official documents the language used was the old Slovene, the style of a Moldavian ruler being Natchalnik i Voievoda Afoldovlasi, prince andjluke {= Germ. "Fiirst" 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 de- scribes 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 arm was 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, and Njamtz ; the people were barbarous, but more warlike than the Walachians and more tena- cious of their national costume, punishing with death any who adopted the Turkish, davia In 1504 Stephen the Great died, and was succeeded by his son, utary Bogdan "the One-eyed." At feud with Poland about Pokutia, he despairing of efficacious support from hard-pressed Hungary, the ks. 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 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 sub- mission were further regulated by a firman signed by Sultan Suleiman at Buda in 1529 by which the yearly present or "back- shish," as the tribute was euphoniously called, was fixed at 4000 ducats, 40 horses, an<^25 falcons, and the voivode was bound at need to supply the Turkish army with a contingent of a thousand 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 strongholds on Moldavian soil with the surrounding territory, in 1538 Cetatea Alba (Akierman), in 1592 Bender, in 1702 Chotim (Khotin). Already by the middle of the 16th century the yoke was so heavy that the voivode Elias (1546-1551) became Mohammedan to avoid the sultan's anger. At this period occurs a curious interlude in Moldavian history, jostor In 1561 the adventurer and impostor Jacob Basilicus succeeded with Hungarian help in turning out the voivode Alexander and ob silicus. seizing on the reins of government. A Greek by birth, adopted son of Jacob Heraklides, despot of Paros, Samos, and other ^Egean 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 ^Egean sovereignty in partibus was of little practical value beyond the crowning of poet laureates, fixed his roving ambi- tion 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 and Albert Lasky 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 Boo-zAeus MoSa/3ias, 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 preva- lent 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. His successor Ivonia 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, and in 1600 Michael succeeded in annexing it to his "Great Dacian" realm. On Michael's murder the Poles under Zamoyski again asserted their supremacy, but in 1618 the Porte once more recovered its dominion and set up successively two creatures of its own as voivodes Gratiani, an Italian who had been court jeweller, and a Greek custom-house official, Alexander. As in Walachia at a somewhat later date the Fanariote regime The seemed now thoroughly established in Moldavia, and it became the Fanariote rule that every three } T ears the voivode should procure his confirma- regime, tion by a large backshish, and every year by a smaller one. The prince Vasilje Lupul, however, an Albanian, who succeeded in 1634, showed great abilities, and for twenty years succeeded in maintaining his position on the Moldavian throne. He introduced several internal reforms, codified the written and unwritten laws of the country, established a printing press, Greek monastic schools, and also a Latin school. He brought the Moldavian Church into more direct relation with the patriarch of Constantinople, but also showed considerable favour to the Latins, allowing them to erect churches at Suciava, Jassy, and Galatz. During the wars between Sobieski and the Turks Moldavia found itself between hammer and anvil, and suffered frightfully moreover from Tatar devastations. The voivode Duka was forced like his Walachian contemporary to supply a contingent for the siege of Vienna in 1683. After Sobieski's death in 1696, the hopes of Moldavia turned to the advancing Muscovite power. In 1711 the voivode Demetriu Cantemir, rendered desperate by the Turkish Demetriu exactions, concluded an agreement with the czar Peter by which Cantemir. Moldavia was to become a protected and vassal state of Russia, with the enjoyment of its traditional liberties, the voivodeship to be hereditary in the family of Cantemir. On the approach of the Russian army the prince issued a proclamation containing the terms of the Russian protectorate and calling on the boiars and people to aid their Orthodox deliverers. But the iron had entered into the people's soul. The long Turkish terrorism had done its work, and at the approach of a Turkish and Tatar host the greater part of the Moldavians deserted their voivode. The Russian campaign was unsuccessful, and all that Czar Peter could offer Cantemir and the boiars who had stood by him was an asylum on Russian soil. In his Russian exile Cantemir composed in a fair Latin style Cante- his Descriptio Moldavise, the counterpart so far as Moldavia is mir's concerned to Del Chiaro's contemporary description of Walachia. descrip- The capital of the country was now Jassy, to which city Stephen the tion of Great had transferred his court from Suciava, the earlier residence Moldavia, of the voivodes. It had at this time forty churches some of stone, some of wood. Fifty years before it had contained 12,000 houses, but Tatar devastations had reduced it to a third of its former size. The most important commercial emporium was the Danubian port of Galatz, which was frequented by vessels from the whole of the Levant from Trebizond to Barbary. The cargoes which they here took in consisted of Moldavian timber (oak, deal, and cornel), grain, butter, honey and wax, salt, and nitre ; Kilia at the north mouth of the Danube was also frequented by trading vessels, including Venetian and Ragusan. Moldavian wine was exported to Poland, Russia. Transylvania, and Hungary ; that of Cotnar was