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Old 13th May 2010, 12:58 AM   #49
Lucian
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Join Date: May 2010
Posts: 2
Lightbulb The "peacefull" Romanians

Hi to all of you,
it looks like now we are two Romanians on this.
I have seen that you had a lot of comments and also shared a lot of information.
History it is one of my hobbies for the last 25 years.
I just want to make a few points here.
The Cumans (especially the Black Cumans) were having some impact in Wallachia. Negru Voda (Negru means Black and voda is a shorter form of the voievod), one of the first known rullers in Wallachia is coming from the area of the Fagaras which it is a known area where many Black Cuman settled and as you can see in the map, some villages still keep some interesting names like Comanestii and Voievodenii.

The Cuman contribution to the establishment of the Wallachian state it is a topic extremely debated between the historians even today (during the communism era it was a taboo subject). In the battle of Posada between Basarab's Wallachian army and Charles's Hungarian army appear a ... recurved bow or Tartars bow as it is known in Wallachia. Also the Byzantine chronicler Laonic Chalcocondyl is mentioning that the shields of the Valachians were similar to the shields of Tartars.

Also, regarding the armors used in Wallachia. I think we can say it was a mix, but Wallachia and Moldavia were excellent customers for the ringmails sold by Venice (Italy). Mircea the Old it is known that he inherited an army of 10000 knights in ringmails made in Venice. Those knights were also mentioned during a jousting in Buda 1412. Two things to be highlighted here:
1) The size of the professional army is huge compared with the size of the country.
2) We are talking about knights here, which means a specific and very expensive warrior of the Middle Age. Something it is not right here with image of the peasants army!
As you probably have seen already, in Romania the best place to see something like armors is only on the gravestones or churches frescoes.
For Mircea the Old era (XIV century) weaponry, we must check the church made in his day, the church of the Cozia Monastery, where we can see the ringmails and a lot of spades.





Regarding the passivity and the peace loving Wallachians/Moldavians that would be correct if we refer to it starting only with 1711 in Moldavia and 1716 in Wallachia when are imposed leaders of foreign nationality (Greeks) named Fanariot. Their first action was to make a law forbidding the weapons for all people. Till than the situation was totally different because both voievodes in Moldavia and Wallachia were known for asking that all people (at least the free ones, so forget about Gypsy warriors because they were slaves) to have weapons.
Stephen the Great provided a list of equipment what the people should have when are called under arms (Polish chronicler: saber, bow and arrows) and Vlad the Impaler (Dracula) had impaled (what would you expect?) one of his soldiers because of the poor status of his shield and sword.
A good idea of the sword type used by Wallachians it is given by the old names for some administrative functions and by ... Polish chroniclers.
Mare Spatar (Grand Spade Bearer) : majority of Romanians do not know today but "spata" is the archaic form of "spada" = spade (in german would be spatha). So the nobility was using spades (remember the frescoes from Cozia).
Unfortunately not too many people can speak Romanian because this study could be interesting regarding the evolution of the weapons name during the centuries.
Later, http://www.scribd.com/doc/29788274/P...cu-Elena-Roman LINK
And finally, in the following link you may see some of the Moldavian weapons used during the Stephen the Great. Also a sabre from the XVth century in Fig3 unearthed near Suceava.
LINK
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