Stephen the Great

Stephen III, known as Stephen the Great, ruled the principality of Moldavia for 47 years, from 1457 to 1504. Squeezed between the Ottoman Empire, Poland and Hungary, he kept his small state largely self-governing through a mix of hard fighting and shifting alliances, and his victory at Vaslui in 1475 made him famous across Christian Europe. Today he is a national hero in both Romania and Moldova, and a saint of the Romanian Orthodox Church.

Stephen was a grandson of Alexander the Good, an earlier prince of Moldavia, and was born sometime between 1433 and 1440. His father, Bogdan II, took the throne in 1449 and named Stephen co-ruler, but was murdered in 1451 by a rival relative, Peter Aaron. Stephen fled, spending the following years in Hungary and Wallachia, where his cousin Vlad the Impaler took power in 1456. With Vlad's help Stephen invaded Moldavia in the spring of 1457 with some 6,000 men, defeated Peter Aaron at Doljești and Orbic, and became prince in April.

Early in his reign Stephen made peace with Poland, accepting King Casimir IV as overlord in 1459, so that he could pursue his main goal: the Danube port of Chilia, held by Hungary. He was wounded in the leg during a failed siege in 1462, an injury that troubled him for the rest of his life, but he took the town in January 1465. When Matthias Corvinus of Hungary invaded in 1467, Stephen beat him at Baia, where the king himself was wounded. In 1470 Peter Aaron tried again and was captured and executed along with the boyars who backed him. Stephen also repaired and built fortresses along his borders which also strengthened central administration.

In 1473 Stephen stopped paying tribute to the Ottomans and tried to install friendly princes in neighbouring Wallachia, though each soon submitted to the sultan. An Ottoman army, reported at around 120,000 men, invaded Moldavia, and in January 1475 Stephen, heavily outnumbered, met it near Vaslui and routed it, using hidden buglers to throw the enemy into panic. The historian Alexander Mikaberidze ranks it among the biggest European victories over the Ottomans. Pope Sixtus IV praised him as a true champion of the Christian faith, but no material help came. In 1476 Mehmed II led an invasion in person and defeated Stephen at Valea Albă, but failed to take his fortresses and was forced out by shortages and disease.

In 1484 Sultan Bayezid II took Chilia and his Crimean Tatar vassal took Cetatea Albă, cutting Moldavia off from Black Sea trade. Stephen sought Polish help, swearing fealty to Casimir in 1485, and from 1486 again paid yearly tribute to the sultan. When Poland made peace with the Ottomans in 1489 without his consent, he turned to Hungary. In 1497 the Polish king John Albert invaded Moldavia, and Stephen, aided by Hungarian and Ottoman allies, defeated him in the Cosmin Forest. Only in 1503 did he formally accept the loss of the two ports.

In the more peaceful decades after 1487 Stephen built more than a dozen stone churches and supported monasteries such as Voroneț, founded in 1488. Their blend of Byzantine, Gothic and local features, with painted walls, created a distinctive Moldavian style. He also sponsored chronicles of the principality, written in Church Slavonic.

In his last years his son Bogdan III shared in government, and on his deathbed Stephen advised him to keep paying the Ottoman tribute. He died on 2 July 1504 and was buried at Putna Monastery, which he had founded to celebrate the capture of Chilia. From the 19th century he became a central figure of Romanian national feeling, and in 1992 the Romanian Orthodox Church declared him a saint.

Our 1500 map shows Moldavia between the Ottoman Empire, Poland and Hungary at the end of Stephen's reign; the 1400 map shows the region before his time.