, Vasile Lupu, and Dimitrie Cantemir in Moldavia; Matei Basarab, Vlad III the Impaler, and Constantin Brâncoveanu in Wallachia; and John Hunyadi (Ioannes Corvinus) and Gabriel Bethlen in Transylvania.
In 1600, the principalities of Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania were simultaneously headed by the Wallachian prince Michael the Brave (Mihai Viteazul), but the chance for a unity dissolved after Mihai was assassinated only one year later. After his death, as vassal tributary states, Moldavia and Wallachia had complete internal autonomy and external independence, which were finally lost in the 18th century. In 1699, Transylvania became a territory of the Habsburgs' Austrian empire following the Austrian victory over the Turks in the Great Turkish War. The Habsburgs in turn expanded their empire in 1718 to include an important part of Wallachia, called Oltenia (which was returned only in 1739), and in 1775 over the north-western part of Moldavia, later called Bukovina. The eastern half of the Moldavian principality (called Bessarabia) was occupied in 1812 by Russia.
Independence and monarchy
During the period of Austro-Hungarian rule in Transylvania and Ottoman suzerainty over Wallachia and Moldavia, most Romanians were in the situation of being second-class citizens or even non-citizens in a territory where they formed the majority of the population. In some Transylvanian cities, such as Brașov or Timişoara, Romanians were not even allowed to reside within the city walls.
Following the Wallachian uprising of 1821, more uprisings followed in 1848 in Wallachia as well as Moldavia. The flag adopted for Wallachia by the revolutionaries was a blue-yellow-red tricolour (with blue above, in line with the meaning “Liberty, Justice, Fraternity”), while Romanian students in Paris hailed the new government with the same flag “as a symbol of union between Moldavians and Muntenians”. This flag would later become the adopted as the
