The principality of Lithuania was not the only new state which established itself in the area to which the ambitions of Poland and Hungary might well be attracted. In the first half of the fourteenth century there also appeared the Romanian principality of Wallachia. The Romanians, or as they were then called, the Vlach people, were in 1300 already settled in considerable numbers in Transylvania as well as in the south-west part of the present-day Carpathians and the lower Danube. Few historical controversies have consumed more paper and ink with less ensuing agressment than that of when and how the Vlachs came to be living in these areas. At any rate, their presence in Transylvania as settlers, borderguards and free shepherds is recorded from the mid-thirteenth century onwards. The study of names suggests that they spoke a Romance language; many of them seem to have been Christianized in the Orthodox observance. After the retreat of the Mongols and the decline of the Cuman domination of the area south of the Carpathian mountains, during the anarchic period of Hungarian history and the disintegration of the Bulgarian state between 1270 and 1310, there appeared in Wallachia a Romanian principality. Its legendary founder was Radu the Black; in fact the creator of the principality of Wallachia was a chief with the Cuman name of Basaraba (Bassarab). He first appears about 1312 with his seat of government in the foothills of the Carpathians at Arges, on the Danubian tributary of that name.