What happened at the Battle of Valea Albă?
In the summer of 1476 Sultan Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, invaded Moldavia in person to avenge the Ottoman defeat at Vaslui the year before. Prince Stephen the Great, left without help from Poland or Hungary, waited for him with a small army in a fortified camp at Valea Albă, near Războieni. On 25 July Stephen attacked the Ottoman vanguard; on 26 July the Ottomans stormed the camp, and the sultan led the janissaries in himself. Stephen had to abandon the camp, but he saved most of his army, and his fortresses held out until the Ottomans withdrew.1
In 1475 Stephen III of Moldavia, later called Stephen the Great, had destroyed an Ottoman army at Vaslui. The Enciclopedia României writes that Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, could not leave such a disaster unpunished, and in 1476 he took command of the campaign against Moldavia himself.2
The danger had grown on Moldavia's eastern border too. Doxologia, the portal of the Romanian Orthodox Metropolis of Moldavia, notes that in June 1475 the Ottomans took the Genoese city of Caffa in the Crimea and made the Crimean Khanate their vassal, so that the Tatars became a permanent threat; at the end of that year they also took Mangop, home of Stephen's wife Maria, which he had helped defend with 300 soldiers. In July 1475 Stephen accepted the suzerainty of King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, who promised to help him against the Ottomans.3
The sultan's army
Mehmed left Adrianople on 13 May 1476, and his army crossed the Danube in June and marched up the valley of the Siret towards Suceava, Stephen's capital. Its size is uncertain. The Enciclopedia României cites contemporary estimates of 90,000 to 150,000 men, plus 10,000 to 12,000 Wallachians supplied by Basarab Laiotă, the prince of Wallachia, who had gone over to the Ottomans; Doxologia gives 150,000. At the same time the sultan ordered the Crimean Tatars to raid Moldavia, to split its defense.4
Stephen strengthened his fortresses, sent part of his army against the Tatars and drove them out of the country, and laid waste to the land in the Ottomans' path, evacuating people and goods to deprive the invaders of supplies. No help came from Poland or Hungary. The Enciclopedia României puts the army he could set against the sultan at about 12,000 men; Doxologia says 20,000.5
The camp at Valea Albă
Stephen chose his ground on a high plateau in the valley of the Pârâul Alb, the White Stream, a tributary of the Moldova river. He fortified it with ditches, palisades and carts chained together in the Hussite manner. On 25 July he struck first, attacking the Ottoman vanguard under the beylerbey of Rumelia, Süleyman Hadım Pasha, the same commander he had beaten at Vaslui, and inflicted heavy losses. Then the Ottoman cavalry, the sipahis, came up, and Stephen pulled back into his camp under the cover of his guns.6 › Battle of Německý Brod, 1422
On 26 July, after an artillery duel, the Ottomans sent in their azap infantry. It was thrown back with heavy losses. Mehmed then committed the janissaries, the elite of his army, and led the decisive attack himself. After a bitter defense, overwhelmed by numbers, Stephen abandoned the camp and withdrew through the forest.7
The White Valley
How many Moldavians died is disputed. The seventeenth-century chronicler Grigore Ureche wrote that so many fell that their bodies whitened the field, and that many great boyars and brave men perished; it is an image often linked to the name Valea Albă, the White Valley. Other Christian sources, which the Enciclopedia României calls subjective, give far smaller figures: the Polish chronicler Jan Długosz speaks of more than 200 dead, and the Italian Giovanni Maria Angiolello of about 200 killed and 800 captured. The encyclopedia concludes, from what followed, that Stephen saved most of his army and regrouped it while he waited for help from Hungary.8
A victory that won nothing
The Ottomans plundered the country, but the fortresses held. Doxologia names the defenders: Suceava under Stephen's brother-in-law Șendrea, Hotin under Vlaicu, and Neamț under the hetman Arbore. Short of supplies and harassed by Stephen's rebuilt army, the Ottomans began to withdraw towards the end of August, pursued by the Moldavians and by Transylvanian troops who had arrived too late for the battle.9
In early November Stephen and the voivode of Transylvania marched into Wallachia and put Vlad III, the Impaler, back on its throne, though he lasted barely two months. Moldavia had been devastated by Ottoman and Tatar raids. Stephen kept trying to hold together an alliance against the Ottomans, without success, and around 1479 or 1480 he agreed again to pay tribute to the sultan.10
Notes
A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.
- Enciclopedia României, “Bătălia de la Războieni”; Doxologia, “Lupta de la Războieni”. ↩
- Enciclopedia României, “Bătălia de la Războieni”. ↩
- Doxologia, “Lupta de la Războieni”. ↩
- Enciclopedia României, “Bătălia de la Războieni”; Doxologia, “Lupta de la Războieni”. ↩
- Enciclopedia României, “Bătălia de la Războieni”; Doxologia, “Lupta de la Războieni”. ↩
- Enciclopedia României, “Bătălia de la Războieni”; Doxologia, “Lupta de la Războieni”. ↩
- Enciclopedia României, “Bătălia de la Războieni”; Doxologia, “Lupta de la Războieni”. ↩
- Enciclopedia României, “Bătălia de la Războieni”. ↩
- Doxologia, “Lupta de la Războieni”; Enciclopedia României, “Bătălia de la Războieni”. ↩
- Enciclopedia României, “Bătălia de la Războieni”. ↩
Sources
- Enciclopedia României, “Bătălia de la Războieni”
- Doxologia (Mitropolia Moldovei și Bucovinei), “Lupta de la Războieni”
