Balc, also Bâlc and Balk, was, according to many historians (e.g., Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol

Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol

Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol was a Romanian scholar, economist, philosopher, historian, professor, sociologist, and author. Among his many major accomplishments, he is credited with being the Romanian historian credited with authoring the first major synthesis of the history of the Romanian...

, Ştefan Pascu), the third voivode of Moldavia

Moldavia

Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...

 (c. 1359/1364), but the sequence of the voivodes listed in the Slavo-Romanian chronicles does not refer to him. He was the son of Sas

Sas of Moldavia

Sas was, according to the Slavo-Romanian chronicles, the second voivode of Moldavia . He followed Dragoş who had been sent to Moldavia as a representative of the king of Hungary...

, the second voivode of Moldavia.

Although Balc was the legitimate pretender to the throne, Bogdan

Bogdan I of Moldavia

Bogdan I the Founder was the third or fourth voivode of Moldavia . He and his successors established the independence of Moldavia, freeing the territory east of the Carpathian Mountains of Hungarian and Tatar domination....

, who had been voivode in Maramureş

Maramures

Maramureș may refer to the following:*Maramureș, a geographical, historical, and ethno-cultural region in present-day Romania and Ukraine, that occupies the Maramureș Depression and Maramureș Mountains, a mountain range in North East Carpathians...

, crossed the Carpathian Mountains

Carpathian Mountains

The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc roughly long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the second-longest mountain range in Europe...

 into Moldavia possibly immediately after the death of Sas, before Balc was able to consolidate his reign. In Moldavia, Bogdan joined local forces opposed to the Hungarian monarchy

Kingdom of Hungary

The Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders...

.

Balc fought valiantly at the head of his men, but he was severely wounded and lost several members of his family and retinue. Following his defeat, Balc fled Moldavia for Hungary.

According to a diploma issued on February 2, 1365, King Louis I of Hungary (1342–1382) gave Cuhea and other possessions in Maramureş to Balc and his brothers for their faith towards their sovereign and particularly for their devoted behavior in Moldavia. The domains around Cuhea had belonged to Bogdan, but the king had confiscated them in order to compensate Balc and his brothers for the loss of the state east of the Carpathians.

Later, Balc became the head of Szatmár (Sătmar), Ugocsa and Máramaros (Maramureş) counties in the Kingdom of Hungary, and he was also invested with the title of Count of the Székelys.

Sources

• Engel, Pál: Magyarország világi archontológiája (1301-1457) /The Temporal Archontology of Hungary (1301–1457)/; História - MTA Történettudományi Intézete, 1996, Budapest; ISBN 963-8312-43-2.
• Spinei, Victor: Moldavia in the 11th-14th Centuries; Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste Româna, 1986, Bucharest
• Treptow, Kurt W. – Popa, Marcel: Historical Dictionary of Romania (the list ‘Rulers of Romania – Moldavia’); The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1996, Lanham (Maryland, US) & Folkestone (UK); ISBN 0-8108-3179-1
• Vásáry, István: Cumans and Tatars: Oriental Military in the Pre-Ottoman Balkans, 1185-1365; Cambridge University Press, 2005, Cambridge; ISBN 0-521-83756-1