Battle of Vaslui

Overview

The Battle of Vaslui was a battle that was fought on 10 January 1475, between Stephen III of Moldavia and the Ottoman governor of Rumelia, Hadım Suleiman Pasha. The battle took place at Podul Înalt, near the town of Vaslui, in Moldavia. The Ottoman troops numbered up to 30,000 or 120,000, facing about 40,000 Moldavian troops, plus smaller numbers of allied and mercenary troops.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Significance

The Battle of Vaslui, fought at Podul Înalt near the town of Vaslui on 10 January 1475, pitted Stephen III of Moldavia against the Ottoman governor of Rumelia, Hadım Suleiman Pasha, during the broader Ottoman–Hungarian Wars. The Moldavian force of up to 40,000, supplemented by allied and mercenary contingents, faced an Ottoman army whose size the sources place anywhere between 30,000 and 120,000. Moldavian casualties stood at approximately 5,000 against Ottoman losses estimated between 40,000 and 100,000, figures that indicate a severe Ottoman defeat regardless of where within those ranges the true numbers fell. The outcome temporarily checked Ottoman expansion into Moldavia and demonstrated that a regional power of Moldavia's scale could inflict catastrophic losses on Ottoman forces in the field. Within the Ottoman–Hungarian Wars, the battle represented one of the more significant Christian defensive successes of the period, though the wide variance in recorded figures makes precise assessment of its operational consequences difficult.

Forces & casualties

Commanders (3)