Stephen is hoping to gain support from the West, and more specifically from the Pope.
Fearing a new Ottoman invasion, he swears fealty to Matthias Corvinus of the Hungarian Kingdom on August 15, 1474.
However, the help that he receives is modest in numbers.
Matthias sends eighteen hundred Hungarians under the command of Blaise Magyar, while Casimir IV of Poland sends two thousand horsemen.
Stephen recruits five thousand Székely soldiers.
The Moldavian army consists of twenty cannon; light cavalry (Călăraşi); elite, heavy cavalry—named Viteji, Curteni, and Boyars—and professional foot soldiers.
The army reaches a strength of up to forty thousand, of whom ten thousand to fifteen thousand comprise the standing army.
The remainder consists of thirty thousand peasants armed with maces, bows, and other homemade weapons.
They are recruited into Oastea Mare (the Great Army), into which all able-bodied free men over the age of fourteen are conscripted.
The invading army enters Moldavia in December 1474.
In order to fatigue the Ottomans, Stephen had instituted a policy of scorched earth and poisoned waters.
Troops who specialize in setting ambushes harass the advancing Ottomans.
The population and livestock are evacuated to the north of the country into the mountains.
