Who paid for medieval Moldavia?

Chapter

1261 – 1359

Nymphaeum

1261

Caffa founded

1275

Caffa falls

1475

In 1261 the Treaty of Nymphaeum gave Genoa the run of the Black Sea, and the Genoese built an empire of counting-houses: Caffa on the Crimean coast from 1275, a Danube factory at Vicina, an exclave at Maurocastro – a Tatar city, but ruled by the Genoese.

Caffa grew into the largest city in Crimea and Genoa's main Black Sea naval base. Furs and wax came down from Rus', grain, leather, fish and salt from the steppes, spices, incense and silks from the Orient – and slaves, Tatar captives, a growing commodity. At Vicina the Genoese bought cereals, wax, fish and hides, and sold Lombard cloth, linen and spices.

The Bavarian Schiltberger, escaping captivity, saw Caffa at its height: a city by the Black Sea, ringed by two walls, with six thousand houses of Italians, Greeks and Armenians inside one of them. The road that fed it ran west, through the lands that would become Moldavia.

A city called Kaffa, which lies by the Black Sea, and is surrounded by two walls. Within one wall are six thousand houses, in which are Italians, Greeks, and Armenians; it is a chief city on the Black Sea...

Johann Schiltberger, The Bondage and Travels of Johann Schiltberger (Telfer transl., Hakluyt, 1879), ch. 36

Meanwhile Vicina, once the most flourishing Danube port of the Genoese, is lost: its exact site is still debated.

Chapter

1359 – 1457

The privilege

October 1408

Suceava tolls

silk and pepper

Cetatea Albă defended

1420

Moldavia hardened into a principality in 1359, when Bogdan I seized the Hungarian border march founded under Dragoș after the Tatars' defeat of 1345. The princes saw at once what crossed their land: in October 1408 Alexander the Good granted the merchants of Lviv regulated free trade across Moldavia, with fixed customs posts from Cernăuți to Cetatea Albă.

The 1408 deeds name Baia, Roman and Bacău among the road's towns; Iași itself is first mentioned in an official document here, in Alexander's grant. Suceava became the main toll centre for silk and pepper, with a Lviv merchants' warehouse confirmed in 1456 and 1460 – and the prince strengthened the ports and the forts guarding the Poland road.

Travellers walked it both ways. Schiltberger came home in 1427 by Kilia, the White City, Suceava, Lviv and Kraków; ten years later the Castilian Pero Tafur stood in Kaffa's slave market, where sellers stripped men and women to the skin and walked them up and down – and bought three slaves himself. In 1420 the Moldavians beat off the first Ottoman attack on Cetatea Albă.

I separated from my companions and joined some merchants, and went with them to a city called in German the White City [Cetatea Albă], then to Sedschoff [Suceava], Limburgch [Lviv], Krackow.

Johann Schiltberger (Telfer transl., 1879), ch. 67; identifications added

In this city they sell more slaves, both male and female, than anywhere else in the world... The sellers make the slaves strip to the skin, males as well as females... and make them walk up and down to show whether they have any bodily defect.

Pero Tafur, Travels and Adventures 1435–1439 (Letts transl., 1926), ch. XVI

Meanwhile Bacău is first attested in the 1408 privilege itself.

Chapter

1457 – 1486

Chilia taken

24–26 January 1465

Lipnic

20 August 1470

The ports lost

1484

Under Stephen the Great the road became a battlefield. He failed before Chilia in 1462, wounded in the attempt, and took it on 24–26 January 1465 from the Hungarians; in 1470 he crushed a Tatar raid at Lipnic, freeing its captives; in 1472 he privileged the Saxon merchants of Brașov – and in 1473 he stopped the tribute.

The answer came in 1484. Bayezid II struck the two port-forts: his fleet found the Danube channel above Chilia impassable and the cannon were dragged through mud, but after days of bombardment Chilia surrendered in July; the guns went on by sea to Cetatea Albă, which fell in August despite its Polish and German mercenaries. Hadim Ali Pasha raided as far as Suceava to cover the withdrawal.

Stephen fought on – winning at Cătlăbuga in November 1485 and at Șcheia in March 1486 – but the forts stayed lost, and the treaty of 1486 confirmed them Ottoman, with tribute resumed and Moldavian autonomy preserved. The Genoese age on this shore was over; Caffa itself had fallen in 1475.

Meanwhile The 1486 treaty kept Moldavia autonomous – minus its two ports.

Chapter

1486 – 1940

Akkerman register

1505

Towers standing

26

The museum

1940

The road did not die with the forts. The Ottoman registers of Caffa (1492) and Akkerman (1505) show shipping and duties continuing, and the Moldavian road – ports, Iași, Suceava, Lviv – stayed the land link of the sea trade, now under new masters.

The stones stayed too. The fortress stands at Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi on the Dniester estuary, 26 towers still up, on UNESCO's tentative list as Tyras–Bilhorod, 'on the way from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea'. The town museum, opened in November 1940, covers the Greek layers to the modern ones.

The road's trace runs through Moldavia's towns – Baia, Roman, Bacău, Iași, first named in its charters – and through its maps: Cantemir's 1771 Tabula marks Suceava and Ackerman on the same line the Lviv merchants walked.

Meanwhile The fortress's wartime visiting status could not be verified.