The Asian and Balkan Background of Draculia’s Wallachian Restoration (1473-1474)

Abstract

Roughly a week before Ali Mihaloğlu, bey of Vidin and Smederevo, raided Oradea (February 7-8, 1474), the royal link between Hungary proper and the Voivodate of Transylvania, the Commune of Ragusa, equally vassal to Ottoman sultan Mehmed II and to Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, informed the Venetian doge, Nicolò Marcello, her Adriatic neighbour, about the most recent developments at the Porte, as well as both at the Porte’s Asian and European borders (January 31, 1474). From the latest news on Usun Hassan, still viewed by some as Christendom’s main anti-Ottoman hope (in spite of the crippling losses he had suffered in August 1473), Ragusa moved on – in her message to Venice (earlier Usun’s main supporter) – to the combats in Vlachia Maior (Wallachia proper), recently invaded by Stephen III the Great of Moldavia (November 8-30, 1473). The information had likewise been provided by the Ragusan envoys to the Porte, who had just returned to the Adriatic, after departing from Constantinople (Istanbul) on December 28, 1473. With Venice waging an increasingly desperate war against Mehmed II (for ten years and counting), the task of conveying Ottoman inside information was very delicate for tribute paying Ragusa.The Ragusan message is the only extant known source to state that Stephen III the Great had won Wallachia from Radu III the Handsome for the benefit of Vlad III the Impaller. The rest of the known sources (however chronicles, not documents) claim that Stephen enthroned Basarab III Laiotă as ruler of Wallachia (Laiotă was his Wallachian ruler of choice until autumn 1474).Ragusa’s Venetian message bluntly contradicts the known contemporary data on Stephen III’s intervention in Wallachia in November 1473 and on the subsequent events, data preserved only in the chronicles of Stephen III (chiefly in the Moldavian-German Chronicle intended for Habsburg subjects, around 1499-1500) and in the writings of Jan Długosz (notoriously hostile towards the Hunyadis).