Walachia and Moldavia steadily gain strength in the fourteenth century, a peaceful and prosperous time throughout southeastern Europe.

Prince Basarab I of Walachia (ca. 1330-52), despite defeating King Charles Robert in 1330, has to acknowledge Hungary's sovereignty.

The Eastern Orthodox patriarch in Constantinople, however, establishes an ecclesiastical seat in Walachia and appoints a metropolitan.

The church's recognition confirms Walachia's status as a principality, and Walachia frees itself from Hungarian sovereignty in 1380.

Cuman domination over Wallachia had ended in 1241 during the Mongol invasion of Europe.

A direct Mongol rule over Wallachia is not attested, but it remains probable.

Part of Wallachia had probably been briefly disputed by the Hungarian Kingdom and Bulgarians in the following period, but it appears that the severe weakening of Hungarian authority during the Mongol attacks has contributed to the establishment of the new and stronger polities attested in Wallachia for the following decades.

Bulgaria has gradually lost control and traditional significant political influence over Wallachia, where the power of the regional nobles has grown stronger.

(Local principalities will subsequently be established.)

The principality of Wallachia had been established in the eastern Balkans at the end of the thirteenth century.

Prior to the consolidation of a Wallachian state, its plains had been held by various migrating peoples, the last of them being the Pechenegs (around 900-1100) and Cumans, who had vanquished the Pechenegs through an alliance with Constantinople, the decisive battle being the Battle of Levounion.

The territories of eastern Wallachia and southern Moldavia had then been part of Cumania for more than one hundred and fifty years, the political power in the region being held by the various Cuman tribal chiefs.

The Cumans had begun to lose power in the region with the Hungarian expansion and especially during the 1241-1242 Mongol invasion of Europe, after which many of them had fled to Hungary.

The earliest document where the Romanians are reported to live in the region is the Kievan Primary Chronicle (1113) of Nestor, which mentions the Vlachs as fighting the Hungarians.

The next reference to Romanians is from Transylvania and dates from 1222, being a letter written by Andrew II of Hungary who had donated the land of Burzenland and gave privileges to the Teutonic Knights.

The area mentioned as being the Vlachs' is probably Făgăraş, one of the the traditional Romanian areas of Transylvania, for some time being ruled by Wallachian voivodes.

Just two years later, a 1242 document grants the Teutonic Knights the right to make use of the forest of the Vlachs and Pechenegs.

Oltenia, unlike Muntenia, was never part of Cumania, Cuman influence in this region being minimal.

The Banate of Severin had been founded in the 1230s as a territory of Hungary, the first ban, Luke, being mentioned in 1233.

In 1247, King Béla IV of Hungary had allowed the Knights Hospitaller to settle in Severin to defend the Hungarian borders against the invaders.

A diploma had given them Severin and other possessions pertaining to it, including the "knyazates of John and Farkas", but excluding the voivodate of Litovoi, which was to be left to the Vlachs who were holding it.

They had been allowed also to use the land beyond the Olt River ("Cumania"), with the exception of the Vlach voivodate of Seneslau, which had similar rights as Litovoi.

The Knights Hospitallers probably failed in their mission, as only a few years later, they disappeared from the region.

In the meantime, Litovoi had increased his power, rebelling in 1272 against the Hungarian King Ladislaus IV wanting to gain the territory of the Banate of Severin, an important strategic point.

The king had sent George, son of Simon, to fight against Litovoi, killing him in battle and capturing his brother, Bărbat, bringing him to the royal court.

Bărbat became Litovoi's successor, ruling his voivodate between 1285 and 1288.

The continuing weakening of the Hungarian state by further Mongol invasions and the fall of the Árpád dynasty in 1301 has opened the way for the unification of Wallachian polities, and to independence from Hungarian rule.

A number of small Slavic-Romanian duchies, or voivodates, to the south of Transylvania have by 1330 coalesced into the independent Romanian principality of Wallachia.

Basarab, the powerful local ban (voivode) of Wallachia (reigned about 1330 to 1352), despite defeating King Charles in 1330, has to acknowledge Hungary's sovereignty.

The Eastern Orthodox patriarch in Constantinople, however, establishes an ecclesiastical seat in Wallachia and appoints a metropolitan.

The church's recognition confirms Wallachia's status as a principality.

The princes of both Walachia and Moldavia hold almost absolute power; only the prince has the power to grant land and confer noble rank.

Assemblies of nobles, or boyars, and higher clergy elect princes for life, and the absence of a succession law creates a fertile environment for intrigue.

From the fourteenth century to the seventeenth century, the principalities' histories are replete with overthrows of princes by rival factions often supported by foreigners.

The boyars are exempt from taxation except for levies on the main sources of agricultural wealth.

Although the peasants have to pay a portion of their output in kind to the local nobles, they are never, despite their inferior position, deprived of the right to own property or resettle.

The Ottoman Turks expand their empire from Anatolia to the Balkans in the fourteenth century.

They had crossed the Bosporus in 1352 and crushed the Serbs at Kosovo Polje, in the south of modern-day Kosovo, in 1389.

Tradition holds that Walachia' s Prince Mircea the Old (1386-1418) sent his forces to Kosovo to fight beside the Serbs; soon after the battle Sultan Bayezid marched on Walachia and imprisoned Mircea until he pledged to pay tribute.

After a failed attempt to break the sultan's grip, Mircea had fled to Transylvania and enlisted his forces in a crusade called by Hungary's King Sigismund.

The campaign ends miserably: the Turks rout Sigismund's forces in 1396 at Nicopolis in present-day Bulgaria, and Mircea and his men are lucky to escape across the Danube.

In 1402 Walachia gains a respite from Ottoman pressure as the Mongol leader Tamerlane attacks the Ottomans from the east, kills the sultan, and sparks a civil war.

When peace returns, the Ottomans renew their assault on the Balkans.

In 1417 Mircea capitulates to Sultan Mehmed I and agrees to pay an annual tribute and surrender territory; in return the sultan allows Walachia to remain a principality and to retain the Eastern Orthodox faith.