A princely standard was first attested under the rule of PrinceStephen the Great, depicting an or aurochs/wisent head, flanked by stylised figures of the Sun and crescent Moon set against a gules background; its obverse displayed the figure of Saint George slaying the Dragon. The depiction of the Battle of Baia in Johannes de Thurocz's Chronicle shows Moldavian troops carrying a pennant with the aurochshead onpales of unspecified colour. In 1574, Moldavian delegates to the coronation of Henry III of Poland are attested to have carried a blue banner with the aurochs head. Moldavia's fall under Ottoman Empire control, a process which was accelerated during the 16th century, saw a decline in flag usage; as princes became appointees of the Sultans, the usage of a sanjak as a mark of authority became widespread. In the coat of arms, the aurochs was initially a crest over a helmet and partyper paleescutcheon, charged with either fleur-de-lis dexter and bars sinister or the Patriarchal cross dexter and fleur-de-lis sinister. In time reduced to the simple depiction of an aurochs head on escutcheon, it was featured alongside the arms of Wallachia and Transylvania on Michael the Brave's seal, as well as only alongside Wallachia's on various symbols favored by rulers such as Radu Mihnea and several Phanariotes. The prevalent gules and or display was replaced, towards the beginning of the 19th century, by variations on a red-blue theme. As such, when the Treaty of Adrianople allowed Wallachia and Moldavia a measure of sovereignty, Sultan Mahmud II awarded Moldavia a red over blue pennant to be used by its military, and Wallachia a yellow over blue one; Moldavia's pennant was similar to the version given recognition by Austria-Hungary as the Landesfarben of Bukovina. During the Organic Statute rule of Mihail Sturdza, the pennant was replaced by a war flag/naval ensign and a civil ensign with a blue field and a red canton standing for Ottoman suzerainty. Grigore Alexandru Ghica was to include the color yellow, already present in the pan-Romanian horizontal tricolour favored by the 1848 revolutionaries, in the war flag's pattern. In 1858, the aurochs became the central theme of the most valuable stamp in Romanian postal history, the Cap de Bour. The aurochs head and Wallachia's eagle were included as emblems on the tricolour adopted by Alexandru Ioan Cuza after the union of the Danubian Principalities in 1859; the arms of Moldavia are nowadays represented in the coat of arms of Romania, as well as in that of the short-lived Moldavian Democratic Republic and present-day Moldova.
