Diaconescu, Marius (szerk.): Mediaevalia Transilvanica 1998 (2. évfolyam, 1. szám)
Relaţii internaţionale
The Political Relations between Wallachia and Hungary 41 corresponding to this stage of the expansion is circumscribed to the region lying within the arch of the Carpathian Mountains towards the Danube. At the same time, military campaigns were recorded in the Severin region too; they were interdependent with the missionary ones, attempting at the population conversion to Catholicism, the same as in the Eastern region of the South-Carpathian territories. The Diploma of the Knights Hospitalers in 1247 includes different degrees of exerting the Hungarian suzerainty south of the Carpathians after the great Mongolian invasion. During the second half of the century the attempt of a Romanian voivode to unify the territories and escape from the king's domination, taking advantage of the internal crisis in Hungary, was rapidly annihilated by means of force. In the 13th century, the Hungarian suzerainty over some Southern Carpathian territories was exerted by acknowledging the king as suzerain, paying a tribute and by mutual military support. At the beginning of the 14th century, another Romanian voivode took profit of the internal crisis in Hungary and unified the South-Carpathian territories, making up one country, Wallachia. The new Anjou king, Carol Robert, considered himself the rightful suzerain of the new state, created by the unification of the old state-territorial formations, which had been under the Arpadian domination, from which the king had taken over the Hungarian throne. Basarab refused to pledge obedience, which brought a military campaign in 1330, concluded with the defeat of the Hungarian army and the acceptance of the statu quo. Only in 1344, in a context, which cannot be cleared up, the voivode associated in reigning, Nicholas Alexander pledged vassality to the new king, Louis. The Romanian voivode’s last years of ruling were marked by new tendencies towards independence for which the king did not succeed in taking effective punishing measures. Only in the 1365 years, the king, who still claimed his suzerain rights, in a classical Western formula, could, using the military pressure, obtain the obedience of the Romanian voivode. The acceptance of the Hungarian king's suzerainty was temporary and depended on the military pressure also present in the international context. Regaining the independence drew punishing military campaigns along with it, which, at least in 1368, ended with the Romanian voivode's victory. His implication in the problems of the Bulgarian Czardom of Vidin, as well as the military success, re-established, on a new basis, the vassality relationships. The Romanian voivode received the duchy of Făgăraş in the south of Transylvania. The second rebellion of the voivode was favoured by the appearance of a new power factor in the region, the Turks. Generally, after 1374, for two decades, the Romanian rulers, taking advantage of a favourable foreign context as well as of the internal crisis in Hungary, manifested their independence reported to the suzerainty claims of the Hungarian kings. This was also a temporary situation. The presence of the Anjou arms on the Romanian coins confirms the statute of vassality the Romanian voivodes had to the Hungarian kings. The Romanian rulers' vassality to the Hungarian kings was temporary, and marked by a series of military conflicts. The Romanian voivodes permanently tried
