Michael the Brave and the union of 1600: how long it lasted, day by day

1593–1595

September 1593: a Wallachian nobleman of about 35 receives the standard and sword of rule from the sultan. He has paid for them with borrowed money.

Mihai Pătrașcu had risen through Wallachia's offices under the wing of his uncle Iane, the great ban: junior ban of Mehedinți from about 1586, great stolnic (steward) from 1589, then great ban. In May 1593 he fell out with the prince, Alexandru the Bad, and fled to Transylvania and then to Constantinople. There a wealthy Greek patron, Andronikos Kantakouzenos, and England's ambassador, Edward Barton, backed him. The throne was bought, as usual, with money: 200,000 florins according to the 1911 Britannica, 400,000 according to Bălcescu, borrowed at ruinous interest from Turkish, Greek and Jewish lenders.

The debts pushed him to war. On 13 November 1594 Michael had his creditors killed, and the Turks in the country, soldiers and traders, were massacred at a given signal. Then he joined the Holy League, Pope Clement VIII's Christian alliance. The help came at a price: on 20 May 1595, at Alba Iulia, his boyars (the landed nobility) signed a treaty that put the country under the suzerainty of Sigismund Báthory, prince of Transylvania. Michael stayed on as a kind of deputy, with a council of 12 boyars beside him.

In August 1595 Sinan Pasha crossed the Danube with a far larger army. On 13/23 August, in the marshes of Călugăreni, Michael beat him, but had too few men to hold the field: he withdrew into the mountains at Stoienești, and Sinan entered Bucharest and declared the country a pashalik, an Ottoman province. In October Sigismund arrived with his army, commanded by István Bocskai: nearly 40,000 men according to the Hungarian Academy's history of Transylvania, at most 23,000 according to the Romanian historian P. P. Panaitescu. Together with Michael they retook Târgoviște on 18 October and Giurgiu on 30 October, and drove the Ottoman garrisons out of the country.

The war dragged on for a few more years. On 9 June 1598 Michael placed himself under Emperor Rudolf II, who undertook to pay for 5,000 mercenaries. Then, short of money and allies, he made peace with the Ottomans in 1598, according to the Hungarian Academy's history of Transylvania. On 26 June 1599 he and his boyars even swore loyalty to Transylvania's new prince, Cardinal Andrew Báthory, whom he was preparing to attack.

1599

October 1599, the Buzău pass: the army crosses the Carpathians without firing a shot, and the Székelys, promised release from serfdom, join it on the road. At Șelimbăr, below Sibiu, the cardinal's army waits.

Transylvania had a new prince, Cardinal Andrew Báthory, who was dealing with the emperor, Poland and the Ottomans all at once. Michael crossed the Carpathians by the Buzău pass, quickly and unopposed, and won over the Székelys, the Hungarian-speaking frontier people of eastern Transylvania, by promising them freedom from serfdom. By way of Prejmer, Codlea and Șercaia he came down towards Sibiu with more than 20,000 men: Wallachians, Székelys, Poles, Cossacks and Serbs.

On 18/28 October 1599, at Șelimbăr, he crushed the cardinal's army. Andrew Báthory fled towards Poland, but Székelys caught and killed him on 3 November. His head was brought to Michael, who buried him with full pomp at Alba Iulia.

By then, on 1 November, Michael had already entered Alba Iulia, Transylvania's capital. At the end of the month the Transylvanian diet swore loyalty to Emperor Rudolf and to Michael as the emperor's governor. It was the first time the Transylvanian state had a Romanian ruler, notes the history of Transylvania written at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Michael asked for more: the title of prince, to pass to his son, and the Partium, the western lands with the fortresses of Oradea, Satu Mare and Hust, held by imperial troops. He never got them.

1600

May 1600, the Trotuș valley: the army climbs by untrodden paths and falls on Moldavia ahead of the news of its coming.

In the spring of 1600 Michael struck Moldavia, the principality east of the Carpathians, saying he would avenge its former prince, Ștefan Răzvan. Bălcescu writes, following earlier authors, that the army passed 50,000 men and marched in two columns, by the Trotuș and by Focșani; Panaitescu, after a Polish commander's report, puts it at 17,000. On 1 May it camped at Prejmer, and in mid-May it crossed the mountains by the Trotuș valley. Moldavia's prince, Ieremia Movilă, and Sigismund Báthory were at a wedding at Trotuș when they heard. They fled as far as Hotin.

On the way, 15,000 Moldavians went over to him, 'putting their caps on the points of their lances', Bălcescu writes. The fortress of Hotin, where the fugitives had shut themselves in, held out: after three days of siege Michael gave up, lacking guns big enough. The rest of the country was his. On 1 June he was at Iași, the capital, where the boyars swore loyalty to him.

On 1 June 1600 Michael held all three lands. He had a new seal cut with their three coats of arms and styled himself 'prince of Wallachia, voivode of Transylvania and of all the land of Moldavia'. He left Moldavia to Marcu, son of the former Wallachian prince Petru Cercel, with Preda Buzescu beside him. The emperor asked him to give up Transylvania. Michael sent envoys to ask that it be left to him, since he had won it 'with the sword and with so much sweat, toil and blood'. On 20 July he opened the diet at Alba Iulia and made it swear loyalty to him again.

1600–1601

18 September 1600, Mirăslău: his own guns, fallen into enemy hands, fire on his ranks. Michael swims the Mureș river on horseback and flees towards Făgăraș.

Transylvania's nobles rose against him and joined Basta's army. At Mirăslău, on 18 September 1600, they crushed him. His artillery was captured and turned on the Wallachian line. Michael escaped across the Mureș on a stallion he had been given, which afterwards, Bălcescu writes, he 'kissed and then let go free on the plain'. In Moldavia everything was already falling apart: the Polish army of Chancellor Jan Zamoyski had crossed the Dniester on 4 September to restore Ieremia Movilă, and Suceava surrendered at the end of the month.

Zamoyski then followed him into Wallachia. After fights at Năieni and Ceptura, Michael was beaten at Bucov, on the Teleajen, on 20 October, and Simion Movilă, Ieremia's brother, was made prince. Michael fought on for a month in Oltenia, western Wallachia; his last battle was at Curtea de Argeș on 25 November. Then he left the country. He held no crown at all.

He went to Vienna and Prague. On 1 March 1601 Emperor Rudolf II received him and gave him money for a new army: 100,000 thalers, according to the historian P. P. Panaitescu. In Wallachia the Buzescu brothers rose for him and drove out Simion Movilă on 3 July 1601. Michael was proclaimed prince again, but never made it back. On 3 August, alongside Basta, he beat Sigismund Báthory, who had returned to Transylvania, at Guruslău.

On the morning of 9/19 August 1601, in the camp near Turda, Basta's Walloon soldiers came to arrest him and killed him. Basta wrote to the emperor that he had ordered the arrest and, if Michael resisted, his death. Whether the court in Prague approved is still disputed by historians.