The nature of their terrain inevitably resulted in the Roumanians relying heavily on skirmishing tactics, harassing the enemy on the march and thereby luring him onto a battlefield of their own choosing. This was usually especially chosen for its defensive characteristics, which were specifically intended to restrict the enemy’s use of cavalry or superior numbers to advantage — the Battle of Posada, for instance, was fought in a narrow mountain pass where the Hungarians could not deploy their forces, while Doukas describes how in the face of a Turkish invasion the Wallachians deployed their troops ‘along mountain defiles and in wooded areas’, leaving the plains deserted. Similarly, at Vaslui and Valea Alba respectively the Moldavians drew up on marshy ground and in woodlands. In addition, in both these latter instances the Moldavians actually fought from prepared defensive positions, behind ditches and ramparts defended with artillery, a practice which was fairly certainly copied from the Ottomans. The Wallachians, however, seem to have continued to favour hit-and-run tactics, even at night, to such an extent that Konstantin Mihailovic, who accompanied Mehmed IPs invading army in 1462, admitted that the Turks ‘were greatly afraid’ and every night surrounded their camp with ditches. It was probably because of their dependence on such raiding tactics that the Wallachians made less use of artillery than their Moldavian neighbours; nevertheless, Mihailovic reports that at Mehmed’s crossing of the Danube cannon fire from Wallachian gun emplacements killed as many as 250 Janissaries, and the sultan was obliged to lay down covering fire from his own 120 guns so that the ’azabs could cross to the Janissaries’ support.
Drawn up in formal array, Roumanian infantry generally preceded cavalry in the normal way, most of them missile-armed (principally archers). The Moldavians tended to keep back the majority of their cavalry as a reserve, often concealed to one side, and loosed them in a decisive charge when the enemy had been appropriately worn down by skirmishing. A battlefield success was normally followed by a particularly ruthless cavalry pursuit.
It should be noted in closing that under Dracula pyschological warfare was also employed, his bloody executions by impalement of all his enemies, Wallachian and Ottoman alike, spreading such fear among the Turks that he thereby gained a morale ascendancy that remained unshaken right up to the time of his death. Indeed, when Mehmed II arrived before the Wallachian capital of Targoviste — abandoned and burnt by the retreating Wallachians themselves — he was so stunned to be confronted by the impaled, rotting bodies of executed Turkish prisoners that he is supposed to have said ‘What can we do against a man like this?’, and subsequently abandoned the campaign. Doukas actually says that Mehmed was thereafter ‘terrified of the night’.
Albanian tactics appear to have been identical to those of the Roumanians, and especially the Wallachians, including a heavy dependence on harassment and skirmishing. Once again, this was dictated by the mountainous nature of the terrain, Kritovoulos describing Albania as ‘protected on all sides by great abysses and deep forests and steep and precipitous places.’ In particular the Albanians were noted for their abilities in the defence of mountain passes, which Kritovoulos tells us they guarded ‘with strong garrisons’. Their successors, the stradiots, were frequently employed in this role by both the Venetians and the Byzantines of the Morea.
World History
