Wallachia

The nation was now divided into two tribes.

The Visigoths, whose tribal name was the Thervings, lay more to the south, in what are now the countries of Moldavia, Wallachia, and southern Hungary.

The Ostrogoths, or tribe of the Gruthungs, lay more to the north and east, in Bessarabia, Transylvania, and the Dniester Valley.

But a totally unexpected series of events were now to show how prescient Constantine had been in rearing his great fortress capital to serve as the central place of arms of the Balkan Peninsula.

The Ostrogoths made a desperate attempt to defend the line of the Dniester against the oncoming savages, men with faces that can hardly be called faces, rather shapeless black collops of flesh with little points instead of eyes, little in stature, but lithe and active, skillful in riding, broad-shouldered, good at the bow, stiff-necked and proud, hiding under a barely human form the ferocity of the wild beast.

But the enemy whom the Gothic historian describes in these uninviting terms was too strong for the Teutons of the East.

The Ostrogoths were crushed and compelled to become vassals of the Huns, save a remnant who fought their way southward to the Wallachian shore, near the marshes of the delta of the Danube.

Then the Huns fell on the Visigoths.

While the religious parties were fighting their quarrels, Sigismund II had obtained important diplomatic and military successes, which make his reign one of the most memorable in Polish annals.

He won brilliant victories over the Hospodar of Wallachia and forced him to surrender considerable parts of his territory.

His conquests in Livonia on the Baltic Sea were far more valuable.

The Teutonic Order at the beginning of the sixteenth century held the former possessions of the Order of the Sword, Livonia, Estonia, and Courland, which it entrusted to the administration of a special commander.

Crews called the airplane the Flying Coffin and the Liberator, though they didn't always say it affectionately, and tidal wave was going to take it down to 200 feet over one of the most heavily defended targets in occupied Europe.

The objective was the Ploesti Oil Complex, a cluster of refineries spread across the Wallachian plain north of Bucharest.

In 1943, Ploesti was producing somewhere between a quarter and a third of all the refined petroleum products the Axis powers were burning, depending on whose estimate you use.

aviation fuel, diesel, lubricants.

One went into the sea shortly after takeoff.

So the number that actually pressed into the Balkans was somewhere around 164. already short of what the planners had put on paper.

Then, over the Wallachian plain, something went wrong.

At a key navigation checkpoint, a rail junction the lead navigators were using as their initial turn point, there was confusion in the lead element.

While the religious parties were fighting their quarrels, Sigismund II had obtained important diplomatic and military successes, which make his reign one of the most memorable in Polish annals.

He won brilliant victories over the Hospodar of Wallachia and forced him to surrender considerable parts of his territory.

His conquests in Livonia on the Baltic Sea were far more valuable.

The Teutonic Order, at the beginning of the 16th century, held the former possessions of the Order of the Sword, Livonia, Estonia, and Courland, which it entrusted to the administration of a special commander.

While the religious parties were fighting their quarrels, Sigismund II had obtained important diplomatic and military successes which make his reign one of the most memorable in Polish annals.

He won brilliant victories over the Hospodar of Wallachia and forced him to surrender considerable parts of his territory.

His conquests in Livonia on the Baltic Sea were far more valuable.

The Teutonic Order at the beginning of the 16th century held the former possessions of the Order of the Sword, Livonia, Estonia, and Courland, which it entrusted to the administration of a special commander.