Stephen the Great
Stephen the Great ruled Moldavia for forty-seven years and fought the Ottoman Empire to a standstill. Born around 1433, the son of Bogdan II, he took the throne in 1457 with Wallachian help after his father was murdered by a rival, and spent his reign among powers all larger than his principality — the Ottomans, Poland, Hungary and the Tatars. He fought some three dozen battles and is said to have lost two. His method was to fight in his own country. He withdrew before larger armies, burned the crops and poisoned the wells behind him, and struck when hunger and terrain had done the work. At Vaslui in January 1475 he destroyed a very large Ottoman army under Suleiman Pasha in marshy ground in fog, and Pope Sixtus IV called him an athlete of Christ. Mehmed II came in person the following year with a far greater force and beat him at Valea Albă, and then had to withdraw for want of supply and because plague had broken out. He also fought Hungary, beating Matthias Corvinus at Baia in 1467, and Poland, destroying John Albert's army in the Cosmin Forest in 1497. He accepted tribute to the Sultan in 1489 while keeping Moldavia's internal autonomy, which is the settlement that preserved the state. He founded or rebuilt some forty churches and monasteries, several of them the painted monasteries of Bukovina, and endowed Mount Athos. He died in 1504, and was canonised by the Romanian Orthodox Church in 1992. Moldavia kept its autonomy under Ottoman suzerainty for three centuries afterwards.
- Lived: 1433 CE – 1504 CE
- Nationality: Moldavian
- Roles: prince, ruler, head_of_state, general
