Different Stephen.

Without him, Moldova would've been turned into an Ottoman province, no Romanian province was a part of the Ottoman Empire per se

So why wasn't Valachia made an eyalet. The reality is that the Ottoman empire never tried to do that, it would basically get no advantage of doing it.

Plus with Moldova, they had a buffer state between them and the Polish empire.

The Ottoman empire wanted western expansion (bulgaria - Serbia - Hungarian empire) not nothern expansion.

Nobody denies the Polish and Hungarian help - mostly Szeklers since they were obviously closer - in school here. It's a known fact for anyone who learn the lesson about this battle.

True. The numbers mentioned by OP and the unimportance of foreign help is a nationalist reminiscence since at least communism. It is nice to inflate the numbers because the victory looks more impressive. As for the foreign troops... well, thus we can complain that the west never helped us (so why should we try to join them today) and the victory was 100% Romanian( even though they were Moldavians and did not had modern national conscience)

No idea who came up with the 40000 vs 30000 numbers but they're false. The Ottomans had 30k cavalry alone + 20k bulgarian peasants + 5k timariots and tatars, we know this for a fact. We also know for a fact that the jenissaries outnumbered the others, that the total number of dead and captured on the Ottoman side was around 45000 and at least a third of the army survived and was used as the core of the 150k strong army that invaded the following year.

The real numbers were 40-45k Moldavians, of which 10k were professional soldiers vs 80-90k Ottomans, oh which at least 55k were professional soldiers.

Furthermore there were no 7000 Hungarians. Matthias Corvinus promised 20k professional soldiers, and sent only 1800 light infantry (he raised money for the 20k and just kept it). There were also 2000 Poles, out of the 12000 that were promised, and 5000 Szekely volunteers that Stephen recruited personally. While today szekelys are hungarians, there was a massive distinction between magyar and szekely at the time (see Unium Trium Natiorum signed 100 year earlier which lists them as a distinct nation altogether).

I think that's a bit exaggerated. You're telling me Moldavia assembled a bigger army of peasants than Ottomans could. I don't believe in 120k ottomans getting beaten but 60 000 could be more accurate, considering the fact there was also a Wallachian army that didn't fight. Besides, no one is denying the presence of foreign troops, Stephen was a vassal to literally every neighbouring country

Yep, our entire history has been re-written during communism to have our wins be impossible feats of never-before-seen achievement. And outside help has always been pushed to the side or outright erased.

I never, in my life, trusted Romanian retelling of history. School was extraordinarily disapointing for me. My father had always taught me about communism and our recent history. School never did.

It was never hidden at all. We did have some acient histroy, but the second we entered medieval era when we could actually call something "Romania" or "Proto-Romania", it all became bullshit. And once aproaching recent history it became "nothing happened. All's good. Please ignore the mass graves."

EDIT

It was never hidden at all.

Very poor wording and relaying of thoughts on my parts. I never felt like the romanian school system was hiding how biased they were. There's an expression "juca cu cartile pe fata." English would probably be somehting like "Playing with the cards on the table", aka playing poker and exposing your cards. They were blatant about their attempt at manupulation.

But I think it was only obvious to me, because dad knew what to teach me, and he did it at the right time.

Not letting them rolling over Europe might have been pretty important.

I honestly feel that most battles involving Ottomans and South-Eastern Europe are severely inflated by their importance at "saving Europe" from the Ottoman threat. Especially considering that most of these countries ultimately ended up being conquered by the Ottomans anyway.

It's like every battles are painted like a Vienna, I get that for national reasons every country will hype up their battles and their importance, but all things considered I doubt Modolva was that important.

1. Europe was never united until recently (even that is debatable)

2. Russia is a decaying power that relies on it's overbloated military and natural gas, while Turkey is nothing more than a regional power that is currently in financial crisis and in no way a threat to Europe.

How is Turkey "stronger" because of some disunity in Europe? Explain

It's not really that typical. And the whole composition is almost the same. Banners in the back, fallen rider on the right, riders on the hill on the right background...