Alexander the Good
Alexander the Good was prince of Moldavia for thirty-two years, the longest and quietest reign in the principality's first century, in which he gave the state its bishoprics, its trade route from Poland to the Black Sea, its first charters to the merchants of Lwow, its courts and boyar council and border fortresses. His foreign policy was to do homage to Poland while marrying into Lithuania and keeping the Hungarians and the Turks at bay. His grandson Stephen inherited a country rather than a frontier. He was a son of Roman I and came to the throne in April 1400 with the help of the prince of Wallachia, Mircea the Old, in the confusion after the Poles and Hungarians had each tried to install a candidate. His first act was to go to Kamieniec and swear fealty to Wladyslaw Jagiello of Poland, which he renewed three times and honoured by sending Moldavian cavalry to Grunwald in 1410 and to Marienburg in 1422 against the Teutonic Knights. The Polish connection made Moldavia the road from Lwow to the Black Sea ports of Cetatea Alba and Chilia. The privilege of 1408 fixing the customs the Lwow merchants paid at each town is the first document of Moldavian commerce and the fullest picture of the country's towns. He settled the quarrel with Constantinople that had kept Moldavia without a recognised metropolitan, and the see of Suceava was confirmed in 1401, with bishoprics at Roman and Radauti. He founded the monastery of Bistrita where he was buried. He took in Hussites from Bohemia and Armenians from the Crimea, gave the Catholics a bishop at Baia, and kept an Orthodox court. The Hungarians pressed him for Chilia, which commanded the Danube mouth, and Sigismund and Jagiello agreed at Lublau in 1412 to partition Moldavia if he failed in his duty against the Turks, which he did not; the Ottomans attacked Cetatea Alba in 1420 and were beaten off. He died on the first day of 1432, and the succession war among his sons that followed lasted, with interruptions, until Stephen.
- Nationality: Moldavian
- Roles: prince, monarch
