Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/133



In the middle of the 12th century, the groups of the right bank of the river Olt, under the shelter of the Hungarian stronghold of Severing lived separately, on this river and the neighbouring river Jiiu. The left bank was occupied by a mightier state, the capital of which was Argeș. Here the Prince borrowed the externals of his-kingly neighbours in Transylvania as symbols of his rank and this voevode wore garments of purple and coronet of pearls and gold belts, as found in the grave of Ba-sarab, Prince of Argeș. This is the third organisation for a nation which, here and in the Balkans, from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, began to prepare itself for a historical mission, to be curtailed only by the Turkish invasion. A fourth form, the Hungarian province ruled by a voevode appointed by the king, was set up in the new Roumanian province of Moldavia, which was later colonized and ruled by a small group of Roumanian warriors imported from the Hungarian shire of Maramureș.

In a certain number of years a single form remained for all free Roumanian groupings, notwithstanding that two dynasties maintained the two-fold existence of the principalities of Roumania: Wallachia, which stood as a unity for the « Roumanian territory » and that on the: banks of the river Moldova, known as «the Roumanian country of Moldavia ». The popular authority of the judges and dukes, the new settlement of knights, the necessary imitation of the Byzantine Empire melted before a new conception of the State. The Prince was the master of the territory and of his- subjects; this was Byzantine; but he submitted to the guidance of and accepted the guarantees of the nobles (boyards) who were all knights in the feudal sense and ever-ready for battle; this was Angevin and: came from Hungary. Before his «majesty» the least of the peasants could present himself: with complaints