Din nou despre haraciul Moldovei și al Țării Românești la mijlocul secolului al XV-lea (1453/4 și 1458-1461)
Revisiting the Question of the Ottoman Tribute in the Mid-15th- Century Moldavia and Wallachia (1453/4 and 1458–1461)

Summary/Abstract: The first part of the article examines the date of the initial tribute (haraci) paid by Moldavia to Sultan Mehmed II after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Drawing on contemporary sources, the author proposes that Alexăndrel, the ruler of Moldavia, was the first to pay tribute in spring 1454, rather than Voivode Petru Aron in 1455–56, as widely accepted in Romanian historiography. This action was largely influenced by Moldavia’s suzerain, King Casimir IV of Poland, who was then engaged in war against the Teutonic Order (1454–1466) and sought to avoid fighting on two fronts. The diplomat who negotiated both treaties (in 1453–1454 and 1455–56) was Mihu, the Moldavian great logothete, a protégé of the Polish monarch. In both cases, he received safe-conducts for himself and his family in the event that he was compelled into exile for mediating the Ottoman tribute.The second part describes the circumstances in which Vlad the Impaler, ruler of Wallachia, stopped paying tribute between 1459 and 1461 without provoking a hostile reaction from Mehmed II. Contemporary sources mention a raiding expedition in the summer of 1458 by Grand Vizier Mahmud Pasha Angelović in the border region between Wallachia and the Hungarian Banat. During this event, Vlad the Impaler intervened and defeated the invaders, and subsequently decided to cease paying tribute (which he had personally delivered to the Porte since 1456) for three years. As a vassal of King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (1458–1490), the Wallachian voivode was almost certainly part of the secret peace treaty concluded that same year between his suzerain and Mehmed II. The young king faced opposition from the powerful Hungarian nobility and Emperor Frederick III of Habsburg, who had also been elected King of Hungary. Similar to the situation in Poland in 1454, Hungary’s king sought to avoid a two-front war, thereby allowing Mehmed II to complete his conquest of Serbia and the remaining parts of the Byzantine Empire in the Balkans and along the Black Sea coast. He even managed to launch a campaign into Wallachia in 1462 against Vlad the Impaler without provoking open hostilities between Hungary and the Ottoman Empire — hostilities that only resumed in 1463 when Matthias Corvinus signed the Treaty of Wiener Neustadt with Frederick III.

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