274 chapter four
the commander had conquered “the castle of Guren in Bulgaria, whence
the men of the Despot or the duke at tarnovo,” Michael Shishman, had
often raided the hungarian borderlands.536 this was far too tenuous and
isolated a foothold however to serve as a hungarian strategic bridgehead
on the Southern bank of the Danube which might support angevin inter-
ests on the Balkan peninsula.
charles I’s attempts to recover lands lost to the Wallachian principality
met with even less success. Documents dating from the period when the
king was officially at peace with the voyvode reveal tensions explicable
by the unusually contentious nature of the romanian-hungarian dispute.
from the very start, there was very little real chance of reconciling charles
I’s desire to reconstitute a hungarian ‘domain’ South of the carpathians
with the new political reality in lands that made up a unitary state under
a single ‘Grand voyvode.’537 the angevin monarch refrained from deci-
sive action against the ruler who had ‘usurped’ the rights of St Stephen’s
crown in lands between the carpathian and the Danube, since he was
well aware that the romanian principality now made up part of a power
bloc which the hungarian state could provoke only at its extreme peril.
charles I’s dealings with Basarab show that he had taken note of this real-
ity when he made peace with the romanian lord, concluded in 1324 at the
latest, but also when he made war against him in 1330.
In July 1324 the king rewarded magister Martin, son of Bugar, count
of Sălaj [= Szilágyi], for a series of services, the last in the list being “car-
rying messages [.. .] many times over to our voyvode in the Wallachian
principality”538 suggesting that the accord was concluded as the result of
repeated and (presumably) wearisome negotiations sometime not long
before the royal diploma was issued, thus at the earliest a few months
before July 1324. further, the treaty should be placed in the context of efforts
made in the summer of that year to solve transylvania’s difficult internal
and external problems. charles I carried out military operations from June
to august to put down a Saxon revolt,539 and at the same time sought a
comprehensive settlement of relations with his troublesome neighbours
over the mountains. the final stage of negotiations with Basarab most
536 Ibid.
537 papacostea, Românii, p. 169.
538 DRH D, I, pp. 36–37.
539 Documente/hurmuzaki, I/1, pp. 392–393, UGDS, I, pp. 385–386, Iosipescu, “românii,”
p. 70.