Domnul Moldovei și Marele Turc – ultima bătălie a campaniei din 1462
The Prince of Moldavia and the Grand Turk – the Last Battle of the 1462 Campaign

Summary/Abstract: The study tries to put in a new equation the sources referring to the Ottoman-Romanian War of 1461–1462, also using well-known cryptologist Blaise de Vigenère’s old French translation of Laonikos Chalcocondylos (1577). The result is a different reconstruction of Sultan Mehmed II’s army campaign in Wallachia, correcting the date of Vlad the Impaler’s night attack on the Turkish camp and highlighting the modification of the Ottoman campaign plan: the conquest of Wallachia was reduced to that of Chilia-Lycostomo. Emphasizing the sources, we can discern the significance of the final confrontation (the fourth battle, between June 23 and 29, 1462), which provoked a hasty withdrawal of the sultan’s army from Wallachia. The so-called Moldavian-Ottoman collaboration in the siege of the fortress Chilia-Lykostomo is reduced to the proportions of an incursion of the Prince of Moldavia, imposed by his vassal obligations to Poland and tributary to the Grand Turk. The final cooperation between the princes of Moldavia and Wallachia lays the foundation of Stephen the Great’s political program for the Romanian unitary resistance. Based on the national identity of the “Two Wallachias”, its goal was to prevent the expansion of the Ottoman Empire and to defend free navigation on the Black Sea.

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