The Founding of Wallachia: Basarab I and the Battle of Posada

Wallachia, also called Muntenia, appeared as a unified state at the beginning of the 14th century, through the union of the political formations between the Carpathians and the Danube. The process took place under a voivode of the Basarab family, Basarab I, documented between about 1310 and 1352. The origin of the name is disputed: some argue that it comes from the Cuman language (Basar-aba, “father-ruler”), others consider it a Romanian name. Its early residences were Câmpulung and Curtea de Argeș, in the sub-Carpathian region.

Basarab I was at first a vassal of the King of Hungary, Charles Robert of Anjou, but sought to strengthen his autonomy. The conflict broke out when Basarab occupied the Banat of Severin, a region held by the Hungarian crown. In 1330, Charles Robert launched a campaign against him, claiming that he wished to punish “the schismatic Vlach.” The king captured the fortress of Severin and tried to return toward Transylvania, which led to an episode that became famous in Romanian history, Basarab’s victory in the passes of the Carpathians.

The Battle of Posada was fought between 9 and 12 November 1330, in a mountainous area whose exact location is still debated, probably near Curtea de Argeș or in the Jiu gorge. The Hungarian army, tired and out of provisions, was caught in a narrow pass. The Romanians attacked from the heights, hurling arrows and stones. The king escaped only by dressing in the clothes of a soldier, as the Illuminated Chronicle of Vienna records. The victory secured Wallachia’s independence from the Hungarian crown.

Basarab’s son, Nicholas Alexander (1352–1364), consolidated the state and founded the Metropolitanate of Ungro-Wallachia, recognized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1359. This secured Wallachia’s ecclesiastical legitimacy within the Orthodox Church. There followed Vladislav Vlaicu (1364–1377), who minted coins and styled himself “great voivode and lord of Ungro-Wallachia,” and then Radu I (1377–1383). During the reigns of Dan I and Mircea the Elder, the state reached a high level of organization, with an administrative apparatus led by the great boyars.

The institutions of the state took shape in this era: the prince, with almost absolute power, was assisted by the princely Council, made up of boyars holding offices such as logothete, vornic, treasurer or sword-bearer. The seat of government moved from Câmpulung to Curtea de Argeș, then to Târgoviște and, later, to Bucharest. Wallachia was a frontier state, a buffer between the Kingdom of Hungary and the rising Ottoman Empire. The victory of Posada remains in the collective memory the symbol of the assertion of Romanian statehood in the face of a power at its height.