Vlad Tepes was born approximately in 1429 or 1431 (the exact date of birth, as well as death, is unknown to historians). He came from the Basarab family. His father, Vlad II Dracul, was a Wallachian ruler and ruled over an area in present-day Romania. The mother of the child was the Moldavian princess Vasilika.
Family and famous nickname
Vlad III Tepes spent the first seven years of his life in the Transylvanian city of Sighisoara. There was a mint in his family's house. It minted gold coins, which depicted a dragon. For this, Vlad's father (and later himself) received the nickname "Dracul". In addition, he was enrolled as a knight in the Order of the Dragon, created by the Hungarian king Sigismund I. In his youth, the son was also called "Dracula", but later this form changed to the more well-known - "Dracula". The word itself belongs to the Romanian language. It can also be translated as "devil".
In 1436, Vlad's father became the ruler of Wallachia and moved the family to the then capital of the principality, Targovishte. Soon the boy had a younger brother - Radu Handsome. Then the mother died, and the father married a second time. In this marriage, another brother of Dracula, Vlad Monk, was born.
Childhood
In 1442, Vlad III Tepes was on the run. His father quarreled with the Hungarian ruler Janos Hunyadi. The influential monarch decided to place his protege Basarab II on the Wallachian throne. Realizing the limitations of his own forces, Dracula's parent went to Turkey, where he was going to ask for help from the powerful Sultan Murat II. It was then that his family fled the capital so as not to fall into the hands of Hungarian supporters.
Several months have passed. The spring of 1443 came. Vlad II agreed with the Turkish Sultan and returned to his homeland with a powerful Ottoman army. This army displaced Basarab. The Hungarian ruler did not even resist this coup. He was preparing for the upcoming Crusade against the Turks and rightly believed that it was necessary to deal with Wallachia only after defeating his main opponent.
The Hunyadi War ended with the Battle of Varna. The Hungarians suffered a crushing defeat in it, King Vladislav was killed, and Janos himself fled ingloriously from the battlefield. Peace negotiations followed. The Turks, as winners, could impose their demands. The political situation has changed dramatically, and Dracula's father decided to go over to the Sultan. Murat agreed to become the patron of the Wallachian ruler, however, in order to make sure of his loyalty, he demanded that valuable hostages be sent to Turkey. They were chosen as 14-year-old Vlad Dracula and 6-year-old Radu.
Ottoman life
Dracula spent four years in Turkey (1444-1448). It is traditionally believed that it was during this period that his character underwent irreversible changes. Returning to his homeland, Vlad Dracula became a completely different person. But what could have caused these changes? The opinions of the biographers of the Wallachian ruler were divided on this score.
Some historians claim that Dracula was forced to convert to Islam in Turkey. Torture could indeed have a negative impact on the psyche, but there is not a single piece of evidence about them in credible sources. It is also assumed that Tepes experienced severe stress due to the harassment of the heir to the Ottoman throne, Mehmed, towards his brother Radu. The historian of Greek origin Laonicus Chalkokondil wrote about this connection. However, according to the source, these events took place in the early 1450s, when Dracula had already returned home.
Even if the first two hypotheses are true, Vlad III Tepes really changed after he found out about the murder of his own father. The ruler of Wallachia died in the struggle against the Hungarian king. By sending his sons to Turkey, he hoped that peace would finally come to his country. But in fact, the flywheel of the war between Christians and Muslims was only spinning. In 1444, the Hungarians again went on a crusade against the Turks and were again defeated. Then Janos Hunyadi attacked Wallachia. Dracula's father was executed (he was cut off his head), and in his place the ruler of Hungary planted another of his henchmen - Vladislav II. Vlad's older brother was dealt with even more cruelly (he was buried alive).
Soon the news of what had happened reached Turkey. The Sultan gathered a formidable army and defeated the Hungarians in the Battle of Kosovo. The Ottomans contributed to the fact that in 1448 Vlad III Tepes returned to his homeland and became a Wallachian prince. As a token of mercy, the Sultan gave Dracula horses, money, magnificent clothes and other gifts. Radu stayed at the Turkish court.
Brief reign and exile
Dracula's first Wallachian reign lasted only two months. During this time, he only managed to begin an investigation into the circumstances of the murder of his relatives. The Romanian prince learned that his father was betrayed by his own boyars, who at the decisive moment went over to the Hungarians, for which the new government showered them with various favors.
In December 1448, Dracula had to leave the capital of Wallachia, Targovishte. Recovering from defeat, Hunyadi announced a campaign against Tepes. The ruler's army was too weak to successfully resist the Hungarians. Having soberly assessed the situation, Dracula fled to Moldova.
This small country, like Wallachia, was ruled by its princes. The rulers of Moldavia, who did not have significant forces, were forced to agree to Polish or Hungarian influence. Two neighboring states fought each other for the right to be overlords of a small principality. When Dracula settled in Moldova, the Polish party was in power there, which guaranteed his safety. The overthrown ruler of Wallachia remained in the neighboring principality, until in 1455 a supporter of the Hungarians and Janos Hunyadi Peter Aron established himself on the throne.
Return to power
Fearing to be betrayed by his sworn enemy, Dracula left for Transylvania. There he began to gather the people's militia in order to retake the Wallachian throne (on which the protege of the Hungarians Vladislav was again at that time).
In 1453, the Turks captured the Byzantine capital of Constantinople. The fall of Tsargrad again aggravated the conflict between the Christians and the Ottomans. Catholic monks appeared in Transylvania, who began to recruit volunteers for a new crusade against the infidels. Everyone except the Orthodox was taken to the holy war (they, in turn, went to the army to Tepes).
Dracula in Transylvania hoped that the Wallachian prince Vladislav would also go to liberate Constantinople, which would make his task easier. However, this did not happen. Vladislav was afraid of the appearance of the Transylvanian militia on his borders and remained in Targovishte. Then Dracula sent spies to the Wallachian boyars. Some of them agreed to support the applicant and help him with the coup d'état. In August 1456, Vladislav was killed, and Tepes was proclaimed ruler of Wallachia for the second time.
Shortly before that, the Turks again declared war on Hungary and laid siege to Belgrade, which belonged to it. The fortress was saved. The crusade, which was supposed to end with the liberation of Constantinople, turned towards Belgrade. And although the Turks were stopped, a plague broke out in the Christian army. Nine days before Dracula came to power in Wallachia, his opponent Janos Hunyadi, who was in Belgrade, died of this terrible disease.
prince and nobility
The new reign of Vlad in Wallachia began with the execution of the boyars responsible for the death of his brother and father. The aristocrats were invited to a feast timed to coincide with the Easter holiday. There they were sentenced to death.
According to legend, right during the solemn feast, Dracula asked the boyars sitting at the same table with him how many Wallachian rulers they caught alive. None of the guests could name less than seven names. The question was ominous and symbolic. The incredible turnover of rulers in Wallachia spoke of only one thing: the nobility here is ready to betray their prince at any moment. Dracula couldn't let that happen. He took the throne quite recently, his position was still precarious. To gain a foothold at the helm of power and demonstrate his determination, he carried out demonstrative executions.
Although the ruler was unpleasant to know, he could not get rid of her completely. Under Tepes, there was a council of 12 people. Every year the ruler tried to update the composition of this body as much as possible in order to include enough people loyal to himself.
Dracula's domain
The primary task of Vlad on the throne was to deal with the taxation system. Wallachia paid tribute to Turkey and the authorities needed a stable income. The problem was that after Dracula's accession to the throne, the chief treasurer of the principality fled from Wallachia to Transylvania. He took with him a register - a collection where all data on taxes, taxes, villages and cities of the state were entered. Because of this loss, the principality experienced financial problems at first. The next treasurer was found only in 1458. The new cadastre needed to restore the tax system took three years to prepare.
On the territory belonging to Dracula there were 2100 villages and 17 more cities. There was no census at that time. Nevertheless, historians, with the help of secondary data, managed to restore the approximate number of subjects of the prince. The population of Wallachia was about 300 thousand people. The number is modest, but medieval Europe there was practically no demographic growth. Regular epidemics interfered, and the century of Dracula was especially rich in bloody events.
The largest cities of Tepes were Targovishte, Campulung and Curtea de Arges. They were the actual capitals - the princely courts were located there. The Wallachian ruler also owned the profitable Danube ports that controlled the trade of Europe and the Black Sea (Kilia, Braila).
As mentioned above, Dracula's treasury was replenished mainly through taxes. Wallachia was rich in cattle, grain, salt, fish, wineries. In the dense forests that occupied half the territory of this country, a lot of game lived. From the east, spices rare for the rest of Europe (saffron, pepper), fabrics, cotton and silk were delivered here.
Foreign policy
In 1457, the Wallachian army went to war with the Transylvanian city of Sibiu. The initiator of the campaign was Vlad III Tepes. The history of the campaign is obscure. Dracula accused the inhabitants of the city of helping Hunyadi and quarreling him with his younger brother Vlad the Monk. Leaving the lands of Sibiu, the Wallachian ruler went to Moldavia. There he helped to ascend the throne to his longtime comrade Stefan, who supported Dracula during his exile.
All this time, the Hungarians did not stop their attempts to re-subjugate the Romanian provinces. They supported a challenger named Dan. This rival of Dracula settled in the Transylvanian city of Brasov. Soon Wallachian merchants were detained there, and their goods were confiscated. In Dan's letters, for the first time, there are mentions that Dracula liked to resort to cruel torture impalement It was from her that he got his nickname Tepes. From Romanian, this word can be translated as "kolschik".
The conflict between Dan and Dracula escalated in 1460. In April, the armies of the two rulers met in a bloody battle. The Wallachian ruler won a landslide victory. As a warning to the enemies, he ordered to impale already dead enemy soldiers. In July, Dracula took control of the important city of Fagaras, which had previously been occupied by Dan's supporters.
In autumn, an embassy from Brasov arrived in Wallachia. He was received by Vlad III Tepes himself. The prince's castle became the place where a new peace treaty was signed. The document applied not only to the people of Brasov, but also to all the Saxons living in Transylvania. The prisoners on both sides were released. Dracula promised to join an alliance against the Turks, who threatened the possessions of Hungary.
War with the Ottomans
Since Romania was his homeland, Dracula was Orthodox. He actively supported the church, gave her money and defended her interests in every possible way. At the expense of the prince, a new monastery of Komana was built near Giurgiu, as well as a temple in Tyrgshor. Tepes also gave money to the Greek Church. He donated to Athos and other Orthodox monasteries in the country occupied by the Turks.
Vlad III Tepes, whose biography during the second reign was so closely connected with the church, could not help but fall under the influence of Christian hierarchs who urged the authorities in any European country to fight against the Turks. The first sign of a new anti-Ottoman course was an agreement with the Transylvanian cities. Gradually, Dracula was more and more inclined towards the need for war with the infidels. The Wallachian Metropolitan Macarius diligently prompted him to this idea.
It was impossible to fight the Sultan with the forces of one professional army. Poor Romania simply did not have enough people to equip an army as colossal as it was considered by the Turks. That is why Tepes armed the townspeople and peasants, creating a whole people's militia. Dracula in Moldova managed to get acquainted with a similar system of defense of the country.
In 1461, the Wallachian ruler decided that he had enough resources to talk with the Sultan on an equal footing. He refused to pay tribute to the Ottomans and began to prepare for an invasion. The invasion really took place in 1462. An army of up to 120 thousand people, led by Mehmed II, entered Wallachia.
Dracula did not allow the Turks to carry out the war according to his scenario. He organized a partisan struggle. Wallachian detachments attacked the Ottoman army in small detachments - at night and suddenly. This strategy cost the Turks 15,000 lives. Moreover, Tepes fought according to the tactics of scorched earth. His partisans destroyed any infrastructure that could be useful to the interventionists in a foreign land. The executions so beloved by Dracula were not forgotten either - impalement became a terrible dream for the Turks. As a result, the Sultan had to retire from Wallachia with nothing.
Doom
In 1462, shortly after the end of the war with the Ottoman Empire, Dracula was betrayed by the Hungarians, who deprived him of the throne and put his neighbor in prison for twelve whole years. Formally, Tepes ended up in prison on charges of collaborating with the Ottomans.
After his release, when it was already 1475, he, left without power, began to serve in the Hungarian army, where he held the post of royal captain. In this capacity, Vlad took part in the siege of the Turkish bastion Shabats.
In the summer of 1476, the war with the Ottomans moved to Moldavia. Stephen the Great continued to rule there, whose friend was Dracula. The year of birth of Tepes fell on a troubled time, when events of a huge scale took place at the junction of Europe and Asia. Therefore, even if he wanted to return to peaceful life he would not have been able to do so.
When Moldova was saved from the Turks, Stefan of Moldavia helped Dracula to reassert himself on the Wallachian throne. In Targovishte and Bucharest, the pro-Ottoman Layot Basarab ruled at that time. In November 1476, Moldavian troops captured the key cities of Wallachia. Dracula was proclaimed the prince of this unfortunate country for the third time.
Soon Stephen's troops left Wallachia. Tepes had a small army left. He died in December 1476, just a month after the assertion of his power. The circumstances of death, like the grave of Dracula, are not known for certain. According to one version, he was killed by a servant bribed by the Turks, according to another, the prince died in battle against the same Turks.
Bad reputation
Today Vlad Dracula is much more famous than historical facts of his life, but by the mythical image that developed around his personality after the death of the prince. We are talking, of course, about the famous Transylvanian vampire, who took the name of the Wallachian ruler.
But how did this character come about? The most incredible rumors circulated about the real Dracula during his lifetime. In Vienna, in 1463, a pamphlet was written and published about him, in which Tepes was described as a bloodthirsty maniac (the facts about executions by impalement and other evidence of numerous Romanian wars were used). The same collection included the poem "About the Villain", written by Michael Behaim. The work insisted that Tepes was a tyrant. The executions of girls and children were mentioned. Vlad III Tepes himself, married to Ilona Siladya, had three sons: Mikhail, Vlad and Mikhnya.
In 1480 The Tale of Dracula the Governor appeared. It was written in Russian by the clerk Fyodor Kuritsyn, who worked in the embassy office under Ivan III. He visited Hungary, where he was on an official visit to King Matthias Corvinus to conclude an alliance against Poland and Lithuania. In Transylvania, Kuritsyn collected several stories about Dracula, which he later used as the basis of his novel. The work of the Russian clerk differed from the Austrian pamphlet, although there are scenes of cruelty in it. However, the image of Dracula received real worldwide fame much later - at the end of the 19th century.
Stoker's image
Today, only Romania itself seems to know about this: Dracula was not a vampire or a count, but the ruler of Wallachia in the 15th century. For most of the inhabitants around the globe, his name is associated only with the undead. The idea that Vlad III the Impaler drank blood was popularized by the Irish writer Bram Stoker (1847 - 1912). With his novel Dracula, he transformed the historical character into the category of a mythical creature and a popular hero of popular culture.
The image of a vampire, one way or another, is in every pagan culture and religion. In general, it can be called a "living corpse" - a dead creature that maintains its life by drinking the blood of its victims. For example, among the ancient Slavs, a ghoul was considered a similar creature. Stoker was fond of mysticism and decided to use the notoriety of the real Dracula for his vampire novel. The writer also called him Nosferatu. In 1922, this word was placed in the title of Friedrich Murnau's landmark horror film.
The image of Dracula has become a classic for the entire world cinema and the horror genre. Throughout the 20th century, the industry returned again and again to Stoker's story of the Transylvanian count (according to the Guinness Book of Records, 155 feature films were made). At the same time, there are only a dozen tapes dedicated to Tepes, who lived in the 15th century.
Vlad Tepes or Count Dracula...There was a governor in the Muntian land, a Christian of the Greek faith, his name in Wallachian is Dracula, and in our opinion - the Devil. He was so cruel and wise that, what was his name, such was his life ...
Fedor Kuritsyn, "The Tale of Dracula Governor"
“Along with great cruelty, Vlad Dracula possessed great valor. Such was his courage that in 1462 he crossed the Danuba and made a horse raid at night on the camp of Sultan Mehmed II himself with an army about to invade Wallachia ... Dracula defeated several thousand Turkish soldiers, and the Sultan himself almost lost his life ... The glory of Dracula survived his mysterious death and strange funeral in 1476 and faded, it seems, only in the rays of the European Enlightenment. (Gelling. "History of Central Europe")
For nearly six centuries, Vlad the Impaler has been shadowed by the sinister shadow of his intimidating reputation. It seems that we are talking about actually a fiend of hell. A bloodthirsty vampire, "horror flying on the wings of the night", a despot impaling for the slightest offense, and so on and so forth. Vlad Tepes has turned into a monster in the mass consciousness, which has never been equal.
Or maybe it was a figure common for that era, of course, possessing outstanding personal qualities, among which demonstrative cruelty occupied by no means the last place? Horror films are made about Dracula and blood-curdling books are written. There are still disputes about the personality of the Wallachian ruler, regular attempts are being made to find out the relationship between myth and reality, truth and fiction in the descriptions of this person. However, when trying to understand the events that are almost six centuries away from us, sometimes unconsciously, and sometimes intentionally, new myths are created around the image of this person.
So what was he really like and why was he chosen to be the “main vampire” of history? Who was the one who for millions of readers and moviegoers became the embodiment of vampirism? At home, in Romania, he is usually considered the champion of "cruel justice", the savior and defender of the fatherland. One of the researchers formulated this strange antithesis as follows: "The notorious Dracula, a Wallachian sadist and patriot."
But ambiguities begin immediately, as soon as we try to reproduce the full name, title and nickname of our hero. Some sources confidently call the Wallachian ruler Vlad III, while others - no less confidently - Vlad IV. And we are not talking about father and son (the serial number of the father, also Vlad, varies accordingly), but about the same person. Of course, given the antiquity of years, such discrepancies are not surprising ... But, on the other hand, no one gets confused in the numbers of much more numerous Louis!
The year of his birth, let alone the date, is not exactly known. Vlad the Impaler Dracula was most likely born in 1430 or 1431 (some people even say 1428 or 1429), when his father, Vlad Dracul, a pretender to the Wallachian throne, supported by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg, was in Sighisoara, a Transylvanian city near the border with Wallachia.
In popular literature, the birth of Vlad is often associated with the moment his father entered the Order of the Dragon, where he was received on February 8, 1431 by Emperor Sigismund, who then also occupied the Hungarian throne. However, in fact, this is just a coincidence, but rather an attempt to invent such a coincidence. There are a lot of such fictional, and sometimes real coincidences in the biography of Vlad Tepes. They should be treated with great care.
The father of Vlad III, the ruler of Wallachia Vlad II (or, according to some documents, still III), being in his youth at the court of the German emperor, really entered the Order of the Dragon, we accept the order was exceptionally respectable - its members were obliged to imitate St. George in his indomitable struggle with evil spirits, which was then associated with the hordes of the Turks, crawling into Europe from the southeast.
It was thanks to his entry into the Order of the Dragon that Tepes' father received the nickname Dracul (Dragon), which later passed by inheritance to his son. So called not only Vlad, but also his brothers Mircho and Radu. Therefore, it is not clear whether such a name was associated with the idea of evil spirits, or even rather the other way around. As a constant reminder of this vow, the knights wore the image of a dragon killed by George and hanging with outstretched wings and a broken back on the cross. But Vlad II obviously overdid it: he not only appeared with the sign of the order in front of his subjects, but also minted the dragon on his coins, even depicted churches under construction on the walls. In the eyes of the people, he, exactly the opposite, became a dragon worshiper and therefore acquired the nickname Vlad Dracul (Dragon). The author of the Russian “Tale of Dracula the Governor” writes directly: “in the name of Dracula in the Vlashesky language, and in ours - the Devil. Toliko is wicked, as by his name, so is his life.
It is known that this nickname was used by foreign rulers in the official title of Tepes when he was the ruler of Wallachia. Tepes usually signed "Vlad, son of Vlad" with a listing of all titles and possessions, but two letters signed "Vlad Dracula" are also known. It is clear that he bore this name with pride and did not consider it offensive.
The nickname Tepes (Tepesh, Tepes or Tepez - Romanian transcription allows options), which has such a terrible meaning (in Romanian "Impeller", "Piercer", "Impaler"), was not known during his lifetime. Most likely, it was used by the Turks even before his death. Of course, in the Turkish sound - "Kazykly". However, it seems that our hero did not object at all to such a name. After the death of the ruler, it was translated from Turkish and began to be used by everyone, under which he went down in history. There is also a portrait preserved in the Tyrolean castle of Ambras. Of course, Dracula was hardly exactly the way the medieval artist portrayed him. Contemporaries admitted that Vlad, unlike his brother Radu, nicknamed the Handsome, did not shine with beauty at all. But he was physically very strong man, an excellent rider and swimmer.
But whether he was a pathological sadist or an uncompromising hero who had no right to pity - opinions differed then and continue to diverge now. First, let's look at history. The Principality of Wallachia in those days was that very small state, which, as the wise Lord Bolingbroke from The Glass of Water noted, gets any chances if two large ones claim its territory at once. In this case, the interests of Catholic Hungary, advancing on Orthodoxy, and the Muslim Porte, claiming world domination, converged on Wallachia. Wallachia was an area sandwiched between Turkish possessions from the south (especially after 1453, when Byzantium crushed by the Turks fell) and Hungary from the north.
In addition, rich Transylvania (or Semigradje), which belonged to Hungary, was hiding behind small Wallachia, where crafts developed rapidly, a branch of the Great Silk Road passed, self-governing cities founded by the Saxons grew. Semigrad merchants were interested in the peaceful coexistence of Wallachia with the aggressor Turks. Transylvania was a kind of buffer territory between the Hungarian and Wallachian lands.
The peculiarity of the geopolitical position of Wallachia, as well as religious specificity (the confession of Orthodoxy by the people and sovereigns) contrasted it with both Muslim Turkey and the Catholic West. This led to the extreme inconsistency of military policy. The rulers either went along with the Hungarians against the Turks, or let the Turkish armies into Hungarian Transylvania. The Wallachian rulers more or less successfully used the struggle of the superpowers for their own purposes, enlisting the support of one of them, so that the next palace coup overthrow the protégé of another. It was in this way that Vlad Sr. (father) ascended the throne, with the help of the Hungarian king, overthrowing his cousin. However, Turkish pressure increased, and the alliance with Hungary did little. Vlad the elder recognized the vassal dependence of Wallachia on the Porte.
Such coexistence was achieved according to the scenario traditional for that time: the princes sent their sons to the court of the Turkish Sultan as hostages, who were treated well, but in the event of a rebellion in a vassal state, they were immediately executed. The sons of the Wallachian ruler became such a guarantor of obedience: Radu the Handsome and Vlad, who would earn his far from innocent nickname later. Meanwhile, Vlad Sr. continued to maneuver between two fires, but in the end he was killed, along with his son Mircho, either by the Hungarians, or by his own boyars.
In addition, speaking of the horrors that are inextricably linked with the name of Dracula, one should remember the state of the country and the system of power that existed there. Sovereigns were elected to the throne from the same clan, but the choice was not determined by any specific principles of succession to the throne. Everything was decided exclusively by the alignment of forces in the circles of the Wallachian boyars. Since any of the members of the dynasty could have many both legitimate and illegitimate children, any of whom became a contender for the throne (it would have been one of the boyars to put him on it!), The consequence of this was a fantastic leapfrog of rulers. A "normal" transfer of power from father to son was rare. It is clear that when the presumptuous ruler sought to consolidate his powers, terror was put on the agenda, and both the relatives of the ruler and the all-powerful boyars turned out to be its object.
Terrorist, so to speak, reigns were both before and after Vlad III. Why, then, did what happened under him enter into oral traditions and literature as having surpassed everything conceivable and unthinkable, having gone beyond the limits of the most cruel expediency? The deeds of this ruler, widely disseminated in the written works of the 15th century, really chill the blood.
The very life of Vlad (in the Romanian legends, he is the governor Tepes) seems to be an incessant transition from one extreme situation to another. At the age of thirteen, he was present at the defeat of the Wallachian, Hungarian and Slavonian troops by the Turks in the battle of Varna, then - the years of his stay in Turkey as a hostage issued by his father (then he learned Turkish language). At the age of seventeen, Vlad learns about the murder of his father and older brother by the boyars from the "Hungarian" party. The Turks free him and put him on the throne.
From Turkish captivity, Vlad returned to his homeland a complete pessimist, a fatalist, and with the full conviction that the only driving forces of politics are the force or the threat of its application. He did not last long on the throne for the first time: the Hungarians threw off the Turkish protege and put their own on the throne. Vlad was forced to seek asylum from the allies in Moldova. However, four more years pass, and during the next (already Moldovan) turmoil, the ruler of this country, a supporter of Vlad, who hospitably received him in Moldova, perishes. A new escape - this time to the Hungarians, the true culprits of the death of Dracula's father and brother, and four years of stay in Transylvania, at the Wallachian borders, greedy waiting in the wings.
In 1456, the situation finally developed favorably for the fugitive ruler. Once again, Dracula takes the throne with the help of the Wallachian boyars and the Hungarian king, dissatisfied with his previous protégé. Thus began the reign of Vlad Tepes in Wallachia, during which he became the hero of legends and performed most of his deeds, which still cause the most controversial assessments.
In the fourth year of his reign, Dracula immediately stops paying tribute to the Turks and gets involved in a bloody and unequal war with the Sultan's Porte. For the successful conduct of any war, and even more so with such a formidable opponent, it was necessary to strengthen their power and restore order in their own state. Tepes set about implementing this program in his usual style.
The first thing, according to historical chronicle, Vlad did, having established himself in the then capital of Wallachia, the city of Targovishte, found out the circumstances of the death of his brother Mircho and punished the perpetrators. He ordered to open the grave of his brother and made sure that, firstly, he was blinded, and secondly, he turned over in his coffin, which proved the fact of being buried alive. According to the chronicle, Easter was just being celebrated in the city and all the inhabitants dressed up in the best clothes. Seeing malicious hypocrisy in such behavior, Tepes ordered that all the inhabitants be put in chains and sent to hard labor to restore one of the castles intended for him. There they had to work until the ceremonial clothes turned into tatters.
The story sounds psychologically quite reliable, and the document in which it is contained seems to be trustworthy. This is not a pamphlet written by Vlad's enemies, but a solid work compiled by an impassive chronicler, and almost simultaneously with the events taking place.
However, let us ask ourselves the question: is it possible to believe this story described in the chronicle? Power in Wallachia was seized by Vlad on August 22, 1456, after the massacre of a rival, whose death occurred on August 20. What does Easter have to do with it, because it was going towards autumn? More plausible is the assumption that these events refer to the first accession of Vlad to the throne in 1448, immediately after the death of his brother. However, then he ruled for only two autumn months - from October to early December, that is, no Easter holiday couldn't be either. It turns out that we are dealing with a legend that somehow distorted reality and linked together different incidents that were initially unrelated to each other. Although, perhaps, some of the details that fell into the chronicle correspond to reality. For example, the episode with the opening of Mircho's grave. Such an event could actually happen, and as early as 1448, when Tepes became ruler for the first time.
What is certainly confirmed by the mentioned chronicle is the fact that the legends about the reign of Vlad Tepes began to take shape almost immediately with the beginning of this reign. By the way, although all these stories contained a description of the various cruelties committed by Vlad, their general tone was rather enthusiastic. They all agreed that Tepes in as soon as possible brought order to the country and achieved its prosperity. However, the means that he used in this case are far from being so unanimously enthusiastic in our time.
Since the second accession of Dracula, something unimaginable has been happening in the country. By the beginning of his reign, there were about 500 thousand people under his rule (including those adjacent to Wallachia and controlled areas of Transylvania). For six years (1456-1462), not counting the victims of the war, over 100 thousand were destroyed by Dracula's personal order. Is it possible that a ruler, even a medieval one, would destroy a fifth of his subjects like this for a great life? Even if in some cases it is possible to try to bring terror to some rational basis (intimidation of the opposition, tougher discipline, etc.), the numbers still raise new questions.
The origin of the legends about Dracula requires explanation. Firstly, the activities of Vlad Tepes were depicted in a dozen books - first handwritten, and after the invention made by Gutenberg and printed, created mainly in Germany and in some other European countries. All of them are similar, so, apparently, they rely on some one common source. The most important sources in this case are the poem by M. Beheim (a German who lived at the court of the Hungarian king Matthias Korvin in the 1460s), as well as German pamphlets distributed under the title “On a Great Monster” at the end of the same century.
Another group of collections of legends is represented by manuscripts in Russian. They are close to each other, similar to the German books, but in some ways they differ from them. This is an old Russian story about Dracula, written in the 1480s, after the Russian embassy of Ivan III visited Wallachia.
There is also a third source - oral traditions that still exist in Romania - both directly recorded among the people and processed by the famous storyteller P. Ispirescu in the 19th century. They are colorful, but controversial as a support for the search for truth. The fairy-tale element that has accumulated in them over several centuries of oral transmission is too great.
The source to which the German manuscripts go back is clearly written by the enemies of Tepes and depicts him and his activities in the most black colors. With Russian documents it is more difficult. Without abandoning the depiction of Vlad's cruelties, they try to find more noble explanations for them and put emphasis in such a way that the same actions look more logical and not so gloomy in the circumstances.
Here are some of the stories written by an unknown German author:
- There is a known case when Tepes summoned about 500 boyars and asked them how many rulers each of them remembers. It turned out that even the youngest of them remembers at least 7 reigns. Tepes' answer was an attempt to put an end to this order - all the boyars were impaled and dug around the chambers of Tepes in his capital Targovishte.
- The following story is also given: a foreign merchant who came to Wallachia was robbed. He files a complaint with Tepes. While they are catching and impaling the thief, on the orders of Tepes, the merchant is thrown a purse, in which there is one coin more than it was. The merchant, having discovered a surplus, immediately informs Tepes. He laughs and says: “Well done, I wouldn’t say - you should sit on a stake next to the thief.”
- Tepes discovers that there are many beggars in the country. He convenes them, feeds them to their heart's content and addresses the question: “Do they not want to get rid of earthly suffering forever?” On a positive answer, Tepes closes the doors and windows and burns all those gathered alive.
- There is a story about a mistress who tries to deceive Tepes by talking about her pregnancy. Tepes warns her that she does not tolerate lies, but she continues to insist on her own, then Tepes rips open her stomach and shouts: “I told you that I don’t like lies!”
- A case is also described when Dracula asked two wandering monks what the people say about his reign. One of the monks replied that the population of Wallachia scolded him as a cruel villain, and the other said that everyone praised him as a liberator from the threat of the Turks and a wise politician. In fact, both one and the other testimonies were fair in their own way. And the legend, in turn, has two endings. In the German "version", Dracula executed the former for not liking his speech. In the Russian version of the legend, the ruler left the first monk alive, and executed the second for lying.
- One of the creepiest and least credible pieces of evidence in this document is that Dracula liked to have breakfast at the site of an execution or the site of a recent battle. He ordered to bring him a table and food, sat down and ate among the dead and dying on the stakes of people.
- According to the testimony of an old Russian story, Tepes ordered to cut out the genitals of unfaithful wives and widows who violate the rules of chastity and rip off their skin, exposing the bodies to the point of decomposition of the body and eating it by birds, or do the same, but first pierce them with a poker from the crotch to mouth
- There is also a legend that there was a bowl at the fountain in the capital of Wallachia, made of gold; everyone could go up to her and drink water, but no one dared to steal her.
- Once Italian ambassadors came to Tepes (option - Turkish). They took off their hats, and under their hats they have little caps. And they had a custom: they should not take off these hats (turban) in front of anyone, even in front of their emperor (sultan?). And Tepes ordered his people to nail the hats (turban) to the ambassadors directly to their heads.
- At that time, cucumbers were grown as a delicacy and one day the head gardener missed a few pieces. Everyone who had anything to do with the garden was summoned to Vlad and, on his orders, the executioner began to rip their bellies open. On the fifth person, he stopped because he found the remains of cucumbers. The culprit was immediately beheaded, while others were allowed to survive.
Chronological table of the biography of Vlad III Dracula-Tepes
|
EVENT |
|
| 1431 |
the birth of Vlad III Dracula-Tepes, the father of Tepes - Vlad II Dracul enters the Order of the Dragon, founded in 1387 by the Hungarian king Sigismund of Luxembourg. |
| 1436 |
Vlad II Dracul ascends the throne of Wallachia. Presumably, in the same year - the birth of Radu cel Furmos (sometimes transcribed as "Furmosh" - "The most beautiful") |
| 1437-1438 |
Vlad II Dracul enters into a forced alliance with Mohammed II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Wallachia acquires the status of "mumtaz eyyaleti" - a privileged province within the Ottoman Empire |
| 1438 |
the Ottoman army, which includes Serbian troops, makes a predatory campaign in Wallachia. Vlad II Dracul is forced to accompany them. |
| 1442 |
the sultan, doubting the loyalty of Vlad II Dracul, accompanied by Vlad III Dracula the Impaler and Radu cel Furmos to Adrianople. |
| 1443 |
Vlad II Dracul leaves Adrianople, leaving Rada and Vlad as hostages, who are transferred to the Egriguez fortress a few months later. |
| 1444 |
through the fault of Vladislav I, king of the Hungarians, Bohemians and Croatians, the Battle of Varna (Varna Crusade) was lost. The death of Vladislav I. Janos Hunyadi Korvin flees from the battlefield. Almost immediately follows his arrest by Vlad II Dracul. |
| 1445 |
a new campaign in South Wallachia led by Vlad II Dracul. Wallachia regains the Danube fortresses conquered by the Turks. Ladislaus V ascends the throne of Hungary, Postumus |
| 1445-1447 |
Janos Hunyadi Corvin goes free, in a difficult political struggle he achieves the title of regent of Hungary under the juvenile Ladislav Postum. |
| 1448 (summer) |
by direct order Janos Hunyadi Corvina Vlad II Dracul executed |
| 1448 (October) |
Mohammed II releases Vlad III Dracula the Impaler to freedom so that he takes the throne of Wallachia. Radu cel Furmos remains hostage. The battle of Kosovo is lost. |
| 1448 (December) |
Janos Hunyadi Korvin returns to Wallachia, deposes Vlad III Dracula on the Wallachian throne, returns to Hungary, leaving Vladislav Daneshti II as governor. Vlad III Dracula-Tepes flees to Moldova under the auspices of Bogdan Moldavsky, where he meets Stefan than Mare. |
| 1449-1451 |
Vlad III Dracula Tepes takes part in the military operations of Moldova against Poland |
| 1451 |
the death of Bogdan Moldavsky, Vlad III Dracula-Tepes and Stefan than Mare move to Transylvania under the protection Janos Hunyadi Corvina |
| 1453 |
the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, the fall of the Byzantine Empire. |
| 1456 (July 21-22) |
Vlad III Dracula the Impaler, along with Janos Hunyadi, takes part in the Battle of Belgrade, in which the Ottoman army is defeated, which stops the advance of the Turks to the west. |
| 1456 (8 (?) August) |
death from the plague of Janos, the Hungarian throne passes to Ladislav Postum. |
| 1456 (20 August) |
death of Vladislav II Daneshti at the hands of Vlad III Dracula the Impaler. |
| 1456 (22 August) |
the Wallachian throne, with the support of Ladislaus Postum, passes to Vlad III Dracula the Impaler. |
| 1456-1457 |
Vlad III Dracula-Tepes seizes Transylvania, begins repressions against Transylvanian merchants-colonists. |
| 1457 |
Vlad III Dracula-Tepes helps Stefan than Mare take the throne of Moldova. |
| 1457 |
The throne of Hungary passes to Matthias Hunyadi Corvinus, who receives a large amount from the pope to organize a crusade. |
| 1457-1459 |
Vlad gradually stops paying tribute to the Sultan, local clashes with the beys are increasingly breaking out on the borders of Wallachia. However, the formal vassalage of Wallachia in relation to the Ottoman Empire still remains. |
| 1460 |
Muhammad demands tribute. Vlad responds. The Sultan increases the amount of tribute. |
| 1461 (winter) |
Muhammad invites Vlad III Dracula the Impaler to negotiate border issues in one of the southern Wallachian fortresses - Giurgiu. Vlad refuses, offering a meeting on a neutral, open territory, the Turks agree. Yunus Bey is sent for negotiations, military support is provided by the commandant of the Nikopol fortress, Hamza Pasha, with a 4,000-strong army. Not a single person returns from the negotiations to Turkey - having surrounded the Turks, Vlad III Dracula-Tepes with a 3,000-strong army defeats them. |
| 1461 (winter-spring) |
blitzkrieg on the border fortresses captured by the Turks. Vlad III Dracula-Tepes, among others, captures such large, strategically important objects as Novigrad, Turtukay. General number killed according to the results of the blitzkrieg: Giurgiu - 6414, Novigrad - 384, Turtukay - 630. Total: 23809. Of those killed, half were Ottomans, half were Albanians. |
| 1461 (summer(?)) |
Vlad III Dracula-Tepes marries cousin Matthias Corvin (various options - Lydia, Matilda, Elena). |
| 1462 (spring) |
Muhammad sends a punitive expedition of 30,000 men led by Mahmud Pasha. Of these, 12 thousand remain in the border fortresses, the rest cross the Danube and begin a predatory campaign. When the Ottoman army returns from the raid, Vlad III Dracula-Tepes strikes with the forces of his personal army, killing 10 thousand Turks, freeing the captured garrisons and prisoners. |
| 1462 (summer) |
Mohammed with 250,000 army is sent on a punitive expedition. He is accompanied by Radu cel Furmos. Vlad III Dracula-Tepes announces general mobilization. Of the allies, only Stefan cel Mare and Matthias Corvin respond. Wallachians use scorched earth tactics. The transportation of products for the Ottoman army along the Danube is blocked by the Kiliya fortress, which formally belongs to Matthias Korvin. The ratio of forces: 32 thousand (of which 7 thousand are a personal army) - Vlad III Dracula-Tepes, 250 thousand - Mohammed. The flying detachment of Vlad III Dracula-Tepes, gradually exhausting the enemy, inflicts pinpoint strikes on the Ottomans. |
| 1462 (17 June) |
the famous "night attack" of Tepes: the invasion of the personal army of Vlad III Dracula into the camp of the Ottomans on the outskirts of Targovishte. Result: 30 (35?) thousand Ottomans were killed, the sultan miraculously survives; from Vlad III Dracula-Tepes - 1 thousand captured, Vlad was slightly wounded in the head. |
| 1462 (late June) |
the army of the Ottomans goes to Targovishte, where they come across a forest of stakes with "missing" Turks, among them - Hamza Pasha, Yunus Bey. The Sultan turns the army back: on the borders with Hungary, the army of Matthias is on duty, the fleet of Stefan cel Mare approaches Chilia, finally cutting off the possibility of delivering products. Vlad III Dracula Tepes sends a detachment to Chilia (the fortress belongs to Hungary, and Stefan represents Poland), Stefan retreats. After that, Vlad III Dracula-Tepes strikes another blow at the outgoing Ottoman army, breaks the vanguard, but, having collided with the main forces, retreats. Departing, Mohammed leaves Rada behind the Danube. |
| 1461 (presumably) |
the birth of Mihni (Michal) cel Reu (another version of the transcription "chel Rau" - "Evil") - the eldest son of Vlad. |
| 1462 (autumn-winter |
The Wallachian boyars form an alliance with Radu against Vlad III Dracula the Impaler. Radu is gradually pushing Vlad to the north. After the betrayal of the boyars, Vlad is forced to retreat to Transylvania, where he arranges a meeting with Matthias Corvinus, who still holds an army on the borders. Negotiations took place, however, on the way back to Mutenia, Vlad, on the personal orders of Matthias Korvin, was captured by the Czech mercenary Jan Zhiskra. Before the European anti-Turkish coalition, Matthias is justified by false letters in which Vlad III Dracula-Tepes allegedly promises the Sultan his help in capturing Hungary and Transylvania. The throne of Wallachia is occupied by Radu cel Furmos. |
| 1463 |
Vlad is imprisoned in the fortress of Pest. |
| 1464 |
Vlad III Dracula the Impaler is transferred to the Vyshegrad fortress. |
| 1464-1475 (according to some sources: 1464-1468) |
Vlad III Dracula-Tepes spends in captivity in Visegrad, in the tower of Solomon, along with his wife. In the fortress, two of his sons are born: Vlad and another (the name is not known, presumably Mircea). |
| 1475 (according to some sources - 1468) |
Vlad III Dracula-Tepes was transferred under house arrest to Pest, where the strictness of supervision over the captive is gradually reduced, to the point that the latter is allowed to the Hungarian court, he is allowed to carry weapons within the house and meet with foreign ambassadors. |
| 1475 |
the throne of Wallachia is occupied by Lajos (Layota) Bessarab (Bessarab Batrin?) |
| 1475 (January) |
Vlad was released at the insistence of Stefan cel Mare. Vlad III Dracula-Tepes again joins the anti-Turkish struggle. Under his command, the Hungarian troops took the fortress of Šabac in Serbia. |
| 1475 (winter-spring) |
Vlad III Dracula-Tepes, together with Stefan Bathory (Batory), is fighting in Serbia. More and more supporters of Vlad III Dracula-Tepes appear, supporting his right to the Wallachian throne. Matthias Korvin equally supports Vlad III Dracula the Impaler and the second contender - Lajos (Laitoy) Bessarab. |
| 1476 (summer-autumn) |
The Sultan makes an attempt to march against Hungary. Vlad III Dracula the Impaler and Stefan Bathory lead the Hungarian-Wallachian army. Stefan cel Mare joins them. The Turkish army was partially defeated by the combined forces. |
| 1476 (November 26) |
Vlad III Dracula-Tepes, with the support of Stefan cel Mare, defeats Lajos Bessarab and wins the Wallachian throne for the third time. Stefan cel Mare returns to Moldova, leaving Vlad a detachment of 200 people for personal protection. |
| 1476 (December) |
Vlad III Dracula-Tepes continues military operations on his own and pushes the Turks to the south |
| 1477 (January) |
Vlad III Dracula the Impaler dies in battle |
Who would have thought that cruel tyrant could have some feelings for the opposite sex. His personal life is shrouded in myths and dark secrets. Like the version that Count Dracula was a vampire, his love affairs remain a controversial issue.
However, there are many legends about the relationship of Tepes with girls. One of which says that Vlad had a mistress, who also could not escape the cruelty of her lover. One day, the girl, finding her count in a bad mood, decided to please him by saying that she was expecting a baby. Dracula did not believe her and, moreover, accusing her of lying, ripped open her stomach with a dagger.
But, nevertheless, there is another legend that tells that Count Dracula still had strong feelings for a female representative. It happened when Vlad Tepes was still very young. Once, in Hungary, he met a runaway Romanian boyar and met his daughter Lydia. The count managed to dissuade the girl from the desire to go to the monastery and took her as his wife. But it was precisely this love and passion for Lydia that became the most painful test in Dracula's life. The legend says that the girl, believing the false denunciation that her count died in battle with the Turks, threw herself from the tower.
Everything we know about Dracula comes from his opponents. And everyone carefully uses their testimonies, point-blank not seeing documents with the opposite sign of dirty tricks (for example, the poem "Gypsyada" by J. Budai-Delyan of the late XVIII - early XIX centuries, telling about how Dracula fought the vampires; or the legend of his meeting with God, from whom he tried to find out the location of his father's grave in order to erect a temple on this place; or, finally, letters signed by Dracula's hand). And in the latter, by the way, he: a) gave land to the peasants, b) granted privileges to monasteries, c) defended the observance of church burial rites for executed criminals (which means that he certainly could not impale Christians); d) founded churches and monasteries, as well as Bucharest itself.
Everyone is persistently looking for materials about Dracula in Turkey, England, France, i.e. exclusively from his opponents, but this fact does not bother her. This number includes:
- "The Tale of Dracula" (16th century), where he is called the one who sold his soul to the devil, without mentioning, however, that he drank human blood;
- Turkish chronicles, sparing no colors to describe the cruelty and courage of the "Kazykly" (Impaler) that terrified the enemies,
- a novel by Bram Stoker, who was a member of the Golden Dawn occult order (he practiced black magic);
- "memories" of the Hungarian king Matthias Korvin, who twice betrayed Dracula;
- a lot of first-printed brochures under the title "On a Great Monster" replicated at his behest.
The main source was presented by Corwin in 1462, during Dracula's stay in prison, an anonymous denunciation, which reported on the bloody adventures of the "great monster": tens of thousands of tortured civilians, burned alive beggars, impaled monks and how Dracula ordered caps to be nailed to the heads of foreign ambassadors. From what dusty closets the king extracted it, it remains unclear. But the denunciation helped him a lot to keep the stubborn vassal in prison for several more months, until the new pontiff Sixtus IV intervened: Vlad, famous for his courage and incorruptibility, he needed to organize a new crusade against the Turks.
It was this document that formed the basis of numerous pamphlets and legends about Dracula, which some authors quote with voluptuousness: “In the year from the birth of our Lord 1456, Dracula did things terrifying and amazing. Appointed ruler of Wallachia, he ordered to burn four hundred young men who arrived in his lands in order to learn the language. At his command, a large family was put on stakes, and he ordered many of his subjects to be dug into the ground to the navel and then shot at. Others were fried and skinned” (texts of the Nuremberg pamphlets).
Surprisingly, besides this denunciation, there is no other evidence of the massacres of civilians in Transylvania in the 50s of the 15th century.
But let us leave on the conscience of historians the vicissitudes of ancient years. In the end, if there were no Romanian chronicles and documents left, archaeologists could dig in the ground. After all, it is impossible to imagine that the destruction of tens of thousands of people over several years, strangely not noticed by the Europeans and therefore not reflected in their chronicles and diplomatic correspondence, did not leave any material traces, that is, bones (the victims were not fashioned from jelly) !
And we will try to think about what the prince annoyed European historians at a time when, according to Lord Helling, “terrible cruelty was a very common feature of the nobility”? To begin with, let's remember that in the 15th century, inquisitorial bonfires were blazing with might and main, wars were more common than arable farming, which is why hunger knocked on the gates of European cities more than once. Crusaders of various stripes did not give up their attempts to forcefully convert "infidels" into their faith (or rather, slavery).
Well, impaling Turks, Poles, Bulgarians on a stake was a more common activity than planting kids on a pot.
Based on logic, the sovereign of the small mountain country, even possessing exorbitant cruelty, was severely limited in funds - and there were not enough subjects, and it was easier to hide among the forests, and the fight against the Turks absorbed all the forces and resources - where else to try yourself?
The absence of court scribes called to praise their ruler, which every self-respecting pimple had, of course, was a big blunder of the prince. And the enemies tried to take advantage of it. And not far off descendants, on the basis of enemy slanders, created a chilling picture: in the very center of Europe, secretly from the European sovereigns (so that they never found out about anything), but clearly for the Turks, the semi-legitimate Prince Vlad, who twice regained himself and lost the throne , brought down the people by tens of thousands of people a year only because his soul demanded it.
At first, Dracula was called a vampire fighter, because of his joint struggle with the Roman emperor Sigismund Luxembourg against the Hussites, whose white banner depicted a chalice full of blood. Most lay people, far from the subtleties of theological conflicts, understood the Hussist symbol literally - as black magic. When Vlad, in order to get out of the Hungarian dungeon, was forced to change his faith to the Catholic, in the eyes of the population he automatically moved to the opposite camp - that is, those same Czech vampires that he had previously fought.
Religious apostasy in Romanian folklore has always meant selling one's soul to the devil. Communion in this case became the offering of the devil to his faithful servant in the form of human blood. Therefore, immediately after the change of faith, the first legends about Dracula as a vampire developed. And when he died (in early 1477), he was killed in accordance with the rituals recommended against vampires - they pierced the chest with a spear and cut off his head, which was sent to Istanbul, where it was exhibited in the city center for public viewing. The body was buried in a monastery located in the family domain of Vlad. When archaeologists opened the tomb centuries later, they found nothing but rubbish and donkey bones. But in another tomb, nearby, were the remains of a decapitated man.
Naturally, the creators of the myths about the Wallachian prince have other explanations in their arsenal.
According to another version, Dracula learns about some oriental method that guarantees life after death, and provides himself with a lair in advance. This method, as old as the world, suggested that in order to maintain the body in a state of non-dying, you need to drink fresh blood, and spend your days in a special crypt.
According to Stoker's version, Dracula received his distinctiveness as part of the Secret Knowledge in a certain "Sholomanch" (Solomon's school), where the devil himself was the mentor, who once every hundred years "chooses a student for himself and puts him on the Dragon."
So Vlad Tepes became mystical creature, who slept during the day in a coffin hidden under the old church, committed murders at night, granting eternal life to the elect as vampires, and along the way accumulated knowledge, subsequently counting on a real resurrection in the flesh.
Certainly the prince was seriously suffering from one of the blood diseases. In royal dynasties that married between a narrow circle of relatives, such genetic disorders were not unusual. Their frequency in the countries of the European southwest, bordered by mountains and Turks, was even higher. Hence the irritability characteristic of the prince and the frightening strangeness of his appearance. It is not surprising that the fear of falling into a lethargic sleep at any moment forced him to build a special tomb for himself, from which one could easily get out and at the same time rather disguised.
Fearing his imaginary death, the Sultan ordered to cut off the head of the prostrate. As for the unnatural bulge of huge eyes, it could indicate some kind of endocrine disease. It is possible that these diseases developed in Dracula after the Turkish captivity and the subsequent 10-year stay in the Hungarian dungeon. In a word, the riddles in his case are a wagon and a small cart.
The death of Vlad Dracula at the end of 1476 is shrouded in mystery. There are several versions of the tragedy: according to one of them, the prince was “by mistake” killed by his own soldiers during the battle with the Turks, according to another, the killers were people sent by Basarab Layota. But what really happened? The key to solving the crime lies in the very grave of Dracula, located in front of the altar of the monastery church of Snagov. When we see this grave, the question arises, how could a Catholic be buried in an Orthodox church, and even in such an honorable place at the royal gates? The explanation of this seemingly contradictory fact will allow us to reconstruct the circumstances of Dracula's death.
It is known that Vlad was killed not far from Bucharest in a forest near Lake Snagov. In winter, the monastery located on the island becomes practically inaccessible and only very important reasons could induce the prince to go there at the end of December 1476. Recall that the main condition for the release of Dracula from the Hungarian dungeons was a change of faith, otherwise he would face death in prison. The prince was forced to convert to Catholicism, but at the first opportunity he hastened to return to the fold Orthodox Church. It can be assumed that Dracula fell into a death trap set up by Layota and the Turks, returning from the monastery after re-baptism.
Vlad Dracula is dead. He was supposed to go down in history as an implacable fighter against the Ottoman invaders, a defender of his people and the Orthodox Church, but the bad rumor gradually turned him into a bloodthirsty monster. After the death of Dracula, Matthias did not stop discrediting him, and the advent of printing made his task much easier. By the end of the 15th century, a lot of the same type of German pamphlets "On a Great Monster" appeared, retelling the content of the infamous denunciation of 1462, which we have already talked about earlier.
But this posthumous blow was not the last. Four centuries after the death of Dracula, in 1897, a novel by Bram Stoker was published, on the pages of which Vlad appeared as a disgusting vampire cursed by God and people. What prompted the author of the mystical novelist Stoker, who did not enjoy much success, to make Dracula the hero of his work? His choice was not accidental. "Turn" the prince of Wallachia into a vampire Stoker was advised by a professor at the University of Budapest Arminius Vamberi, known not only as a scientist, but also as an ardent Hungarian nationalist. The campaign to denigrate Dracula, started by King Matthias, continued...
For those who know Stoker's work based on the film version of F. Coppola, the novel may seem overlong and boring, and the role of the most bloodthirsty count is secondary. The book was not a huge success. The opinion of critics was unanimous: another gothic horror story. But it was what they call a time bomb that exploded when it caught the eye of director Francis Ford Coppola. She really penetrated him, and he squeezed everything he could out of the mystical story. The character created by the novelist does not at all resemble the real Dracula, however, some very small fragments of the novel suggest that Stoker knew the prince's biography very well. "Later, when I had to atone for the great shame of my people - the shame of Kosovo - when the banners of the Wallachians and the Magyars disappeared behind the crescent, who, if not one of my ancestors, crossed the Danube and defeated the Turks on their land? That was really Dracula! What a grief, when his unworthy sibling sold his people into slavery to the Turks, branding them with eternal disgrace," the earl told the story of his kind to Jonathan Harker.
After reading these lines from the novel, the question arises why Stoker, who knew very well that Dracula devoted his whole life to protecting the Christian church and fighting the Ottoman Empire, endowed the hero of his novel with demonic features? Why was Bram Stoker's Dracula afraid of the cross and cursed by God? What is it: an unsuccessful fantasy of the author or a deliberate distortion of facts?
Bram Stoker knew about vampires not only from folklore sources - this topic was well known to him and real life. Stoker was a member of the "Golden Dawn" - an occult organization created specifically for practicing black magic, in particular, practicing rituals associated with the use of human blood. Suffice it to say that the Golden Dawn at one time included such a sinister figure as Aleister Crowley, who called himself the "beast 666", and the head of the order and his wife were accused of real vampirism - the couple tried to drink the blood of a gullible neophyte who wanted to join secrets of the Golden Dawn.
The evil irony is this: we are judging a fearless knight who dedicated his life to defending the Christian church based on a novel created by a man who was engaged in black magic and the occult. In the minds of millions of our contemporaries, Vlad Dracula became a vampire, and this opinion cannot be changed, no matter what facts are given to justify it. Such is life, and Dracula is just one of an endless series of heroes slandered and betrayed by ungrateful descendants.
Your Majesty! In previous letters, I informed Your Majesty how the Turks, the most ardent enemies of Christianity, sent important envoys to us with a proposal to break the peace and break the friendly ties concluded between us and Your Majesty, cancel the wedding celebration and join them in order to go to Turkish Port, to the royal court; and if we do not renounce peace, friendly relations and participation in the wedding of Your Majesty, then the Turks will stop peaceful relations with us. Also, they sent a prominent adviser to the Turkish Sultan, namely Hamza Bey from Nikopol, to resolve the issue with the Danube border, because if this Hamza Bey could lead us in any way, whether by cunning, under honestly, or otherwise deceptively in Porto, it would be good, and if he could not, then he would find a way to find us and deliver us captured.
But, by the grace of God, while we were heading to that border, I learned about their cunning and treachery, and we were the ones who laid a hand on this Hamza Bey, in Turkish possessions, near the fortress called Giurgiu. When the Turks opened the fortress at the request of our people, expecting their people to come in, ours - mixed with theirs - entered the fortress and captured it, after which they set it on fire<…>
... Your Majesty, know that this time we did it to the detriment of them, who all encouraged us with their efforts to abandon Christianity and join their faith. So know, Your Majesty, that we have terminated peaceful relations with them, not for some personal benefit, but for the sake of Your Majesty, the holy crown of Your Majesty, the preservation of the entire Christian world and the strengthening of Catholicism.
Seeing what we had done, they abandoned all the quarrels and claims they had hitherto - both in regard to the possessions and the holy crown of Your Majesty, and in all other places - and turned all their fury against us. With the onset of spring, when the weather clears up, they hatch hostile plans to pounce on us with all their might. But, they do not have the means of crossing, since all the crossings on the Danube, except for the one near Vidin, I ordered to devastate, burn and destroy. At the Vidin crossing, they know that they cannot bring us significant harm, and therefore they intend to bring ships from Constantinople and Gallipoli by sea, directly to the Danube.
Thus, Gracious Sovereign, if it is Your Majesty’s intention to fight with them, recruit an army from all over the country, both from cavalrymen and infantrymen, bring them through the mountains to our country and deign to fight the Turks here. And if Your Majesty does not want to appear in person, then the whole army came to the Transylvanian possessions of Your Majesty, even before the feast of St. Gregory. If, however, it is not in Your Majesty's plans to send the entire army, then as many warriors as you wish came, at least from Transylvania and the Szekely region. Well, if you intend to send us help, Your Majesty, then please do not hesitate and tell us your plans directly. This time I ask you not to detain our person who will deliver the letter to Your Majesty, but to send it back immediately. Because in no way do we want to leave what we started in the middle of the path, but to bring it to the end. For if the Lord Almighty listens to the prayers and requests of all Christians and deigns to turn his ear to the prayers of those who suffer in His name, and thus give us victory over the pagans and enemies of Christianity, this will be the highest honor, benefit, and spiritual help to Your majesty, and true Christianity; because we do not want to run away from their barbarism, but, on the contrary, to fight them in any way. And if we come - God forbid! - to a bad end, and our small country will disappear. Your Majesty will also not get any benefit and relief from this, for this will cause damage to the entire Christian world. I will add that everything that our man, Radu Pharma (Grammatik), tells Your Grace, can be trusted in the same way as if we were talking with Your Majesty face to face ...
And let's talk about this most interesting character during his lifetime, who became a legend and earned the nickname "horror of the Ottomans" among the people. And at the same time we will try to separate, so to speak, "the wheat from the chaff." He became the prince (ruler) of Wallachia three times, spent 12 years in prison, hid from enemies many times, was a living "collateral" for the Turks, eradicated crime in his principality and was the only opponent of the Ottoman warriors who instilled fear in them, bordering on panic alone. appearance on the battlefield.
Exact date of birth Vlad III Basaraba, which is exactly what his real name sounds like, is unknown. Between 1429 and 1431 in the city of Sighisoara, a son was born in the family of Prince Vlad II Dracula and the Moldavian princess Vasiliki. In general, the ruler of Wallachia had four sons: the eldest Mircea, the middle ones Vlad and Radu, and the youngest - also Vlad (the son of the second wife of Prince Vlad II - Koltsuna, later Vlad IV the Monk). Fate will not be favorable to the first three of them. Mircea will be buried alive by the Wallachian boyars in Targovishte. Radu will become the favorite of the Turkish Sultan Mehmed II, and Vlad will bring his family the bad reputation of a cannibal. And only Vlad IV the Monk will still live his life more or less calmly. The family crest was a dragon. It was in the year of Vlad's birth that his father joined the Order of the Dragon, whose members swore on blood to protect Christians from the Muslim Turks. It is from his father that Vlad III will inherit his family nickname - Dracula. In his youth, Vlad III was called Dracul (Rom. Dracul, that is, "dragon"), inheriting his father's nickname without any changes. However, later (in the 1470s) he began to indicate his nickname with the letter “a” at the end, since by that time it had become most famous in this form.
Dracula's childhood passed here in this house, which has been preserved in the city of Sighisoara in Transylvania to this day, at st. Zhestyanshchikov, 5. The only thing that, over the past 500 years, the Transylvania region itself has changed its state affiliation, in the 15th century it belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary, but now it, the city of Segisoara and the house in which Dracula lived with his father, mother and older brother, are located on territory of Romania. 
The family of the future ruler of Wallachia lived in Segisoara until 1436. In the summer of 1436, Dracula's father took the Wallachian throne and, no later than the autumn of that year, moved the family from Sighisoara to Targovishte, where the capital of Wallachia was located at that time. According to all sources, Vlad III received an excellent education in the Byzantine style for those times. However, he did not manage to complete his education in full, because politics intervened. In the spring of 1442, Dracula's father quarreled with Janos Hunyadi, who at that time was the de facto ruler of Hungary, as a result of which Janos decided to install another ruler in Wallachia - Basarab II.
In the summer of 1442, Dracula's father went to Turkey to Sultan Murat II to ask for help, but he was forced to stay there for 8 months. At this time, Basarab II established himself in Wallachia, and Dracula and the rest of his family were hiding. In the spring of 1443, Dracula's father returned from Turkey along with the Turkish army and deposed Basarab II. Janos Hunyadi did not interfere with this, as he was preparing for a crusade against the Turks. The campaign began on July 22, 1443 and lasted until January 1444. In the spring of 1444, negotiations began on a truce between Janos Hunyadi and the Sultan. Dracula's father joined the negotiations, during which Janos agreed that Wallachia could remain under Turkish influence. At the same time, the sultan, wanting to be sure of the devotion of the "Wallachian governor", insisted on a "pledge" (amanat in Turkish). The word "pledge" meant that the sons of the "governor" should come to the Turkish court - that is, Dracula, who at that time was about 14 years old, and his brother Radu, who was about 6 years old. Negotiations with Dracula's father ended on June 12, 1444 of the year. Dracula and his brother Radu went to Turkey no later than the end of July 1444.
Modern researchers agree on one thing: it was in Turkey that Vlad received some kind of psychological trauma that forever made him the one who is remembered with horror and delight throughout Romania. There are several versions of what happened:
1. The future ruler of Wallachia was tortured by the Turks to convert to Islam.
2. As if Vlad's younger brother, Radu, was seduced by the heir to the Turkish throne, Mehmed, making him his favorite lover. In particular, a medieval author writes about this - the Greek historian Laonik Chalkokondil. However, according to him, this episode belongs to more late period 1450s.
3. The brutal murder of his father and elder brother in December 1446. The death occurred as a result of a coup d'état carried out by the Wallachian boyars, with the support of the Hungarians. Hunyadi's henchman, Vladislav II, ascended the throne of Wallachia. Dracula's father, on the orders of the Hungarian commander, was beheaded, and Dracula's older brother was buried alive.
4. Well, the most common - the customs at the Sultan's palace were so "simple" that under their influence later Vlad showed his sadistic inclinations. For example, according to legend, Vlad and his younger brother witnessed (they were specially brought) an "investigation" of the theft of a rare vegetable (perhaps a cucumber!) In the Sultan's greenhouse. Each of the 12 gardeners who had access to the greenhouse at one time or another that day had their stomach torn open, and the seventh in a row found what they were looking for. Those who have not been ripped open are lucky, those who have already been ripped open, "graciously allowed to survive", but the criminal who ate the fruit was still alive on a stake.
In the autumn of 1448, Dracula, together with the Turkish troops lent by the Sultan, entered the Wallachian capital - Targovishte. When exactly this happened is not known exactly, but there is a letter from Dracula dated October 31, where he signs himself as "voivode of Wallachia." Immediately upon accession to the throne, Dracula begins an investigation into the events related to the death of his father and brother. During the investigation, he learns that at least 7 boyars who served his father participated in the conspiracy and supported Prince Vladislav, for which they received various favors.
Meanwhile, Janos Hunyadi and Vladislav, who had lost the battle of Kosovo, arrived in Transylvania. On November 10, 1448, Janos Hunyadi, while in Sighisoara, announced that he was starting a military campaign against Dracula, calling him an "illegal" ruler. On November 23, Janos was already in Brasov, from where he moved with the army to Wallachia. On December 4, he entered Targovishte, but Dracula had already fled by that time.
From 1448 to 1455, Vlad Dracula lives in exile at the court of the Moldavian sovereigns. In 1456, Dracula was in Transylvania, where he gathered an army of volunteers to go to Wallachia and take the throne again. At this time (since February 1456) a delegation of Franciscan monks headed by Giovanni da Capistrano was in Transylvania, who also gathered a volunteer army to liberate Constantinople, captured by the Turks in 1453. The Franciscans did not take the Orthodox on a campaign, which was used by Dracula, attracting the rejected militias to their ranks. In April 1456, a rumor spread throughout Hungary that a Turkish army led by Sultan Mehmed was approaching the southern borders of the state. On July 3, 1456, in a letter addressed to the "Saxons of Transylvania", Janos Hunyadi announced that he had appointed Dracula "defender of the Transylvanian regions." After that, Janos, together with his troops, departed for Belgrade, already almost surrounded by the Turkish army. Belgrade was also followed by a militia assembled by the Franciscan monk Giovanni da Capistrano, which was originally supposed to go to Constantinople, and Dracula's army stopped on the border of Transylvania with Wallachia. The Wallachian prince Vladislav II, fearing that in his absence Dracula could take the throne, did not go in defense of Belgrade.
On July 22, 1456, the Turkish army retreated from the Belgrade fortress, and in early August, Dracula's army moved to Wallachia. The Wallachian boyar Mane Udrische helped Dracula to gain power, who had already gone over to his side and persuaded several other boyars from the princely council under Vladislav to do the same. On August 20, Vladislav was killed, and Dracula became a Wallachian prince for the second time. 9 days before (August 11) in Belgrade, Dracula's longtime enemy and murderer of his father, Janos Hunyadi, died of the plague.
In his family castle Targovishte, Vlad avenged the death of his father and older brother. According to legend, he invited the boyars to a feast in honor of Easter (500 people), and then ordered to stab (as options, poison or impale) all of them to one. It is believed that it is with this execution that the bloody procession of the great tyrant Vlad Dracula begins. So the legends tell, but the chronicles convince by another - at the feast, Dracula only scared the boyars, and got rid of only those whom he suspected of treason. During the first years of his reign, he executed 11 boyars who were preparing a coup against him. Having avoided a real threat, Dracula began to restore order in the country. He issued new laws. For thefts, murders and violence of criminals, only one punishment awaited - death. When public executions began in the country, people realized that their ruler was not joking.
In this regard, true equality before the law reigned in the principality of Wallachia: no matter who you were, a boyar with a three-hundred-year-old pedigree, or a rootless beggar, death awaited you for any crime or disobedience to the dragon prince. Often long and painful. The legend claims that in this way he destroyed all the beggars and those who did not want to work. There is an opinion that gradually he deliberately made people afraid of himself. He even selected scary stories about his cruelty. But, what is most strange, the common people LOVED their "dragon".
A contemporary describes the Vlachs as a very thieving and impudent people. Imagine his surprise when, a year after the beginning of the reign of Vlad Dracula, it was possible to throw a gold coin on the street and come tomorrow to find it lying in the same place.
Also widely known is the episode with the Turkish ambassadors, described by the Russian ambassador to Hungary Fyodor Kuritsyn in 1484 in The Tale of Dracula Voevoda:
"I came to him once from the Turkish poklisarium<послы>, and when you go up to him and bow down according to your custom, and cap<шапок, фесок>I didn’t take off my 3 chapters. He asks them: “What for the sake of tacos do you do a great favor to the sovereign and such a shame do you do to me?” They answered: “This is our custom, sovereign, and our land has.” He told them: “And I want to confirm your law, but stand strong,” and commanded them to nail caps to their heads with a small iron nail and let them go, rivers to them: “Go tell your sovereign, he has learned to endure that shame from you, we but not with skill, let him not send his custom to other sovereigns who do not want to have it, but let him keep it with him.
In 1461, Vlad Dracula refused to pay tribute to Sultan Mehmed. The Ottomans did not forgive this, and in the same spring, a 250,000-strong army of Turks invaded Wallachia (according to modern data, it was still smaller "only" 100-120 thousand). However, Dracula did not give up and launched a real and merciless attack against the conquerors. guerrilla war. He armed everyone. In his 30,000-strong army, peasants and nobles, monks and beggars fought together, even women and children from the age of 10 participated in battles with the Turks. On July 17, 1461, as a result of the famous "night attack", Vlad's army defeated and forced the huge army of Mehmed II to retreat. Turkish prisoners captured in this battle from 2000 to 4000 thousand people were put on stakes. Moreover, senior commanders on stakes with gold tips, officers on stakes with silver tips, but ordinary soldiers had to be content with an ordinary tree. Even by Turkish standards, such a massacre was a little too much. It was then that Vlad got his Ottoman nickname - Kazykly (tur. Kazıklı from the word Tur. kazık [kazyk] - "count"). That is, in the translation "kolschik", or "stalker". Later, it was this nickname that was simply translated into Romanian literally - Tepes (Rom. Țepeș). If we summarize the most famous names and nicknames of Vlad, we get: Vlad III the Dragon Impaler. Sounds like it?
In the same 1461, due to the betrayal of the Hungarian monarch Matthias Korvin, Dracula was forced to flee to Hungary, where he was later taken into custody on false charges of collaborating with the Turks and spent 12 years in prison.
In 1475, Vlad III Dracula was released from a Hungarian prison and again began to participate in campaigns against the Turks. In November 1475, as part of the Hungarian army (as one of the commanders of King Matthias, "royal captain"), he went to Serbia, where from January to February 1476 he participated in the siege of the Turkish fortress of Šabac. In February 1476, he took part in the war against the Turks in Bosnia, and in the summer of 1476, together with another "royal captain" Stefan Bathory, he helped the Moldavian prince Stefan the Great defend himself from the Turks.
In November 1476, Vlad Dracula, with the help of Stefan Bathory and Stefan the Great, overthrew the pro-Turkish Wallachian prince Layota Basarab. On November 8, 1476, Targovishte was taken. On November 16, Bucharest was taken. On November 26, the general meeting of the noble people of Wallachia elected Dracula as their prince.
Then the troops of Stefan Bathory and Stefan the Great left Wallachia, and only those soldiers who were directly subordinate to him (about 4,000 people) remained with Vlad Dracula. Shortly after this, Vlad was treacherously murdered on the initiative of Layota Basarab, but the sources differ in the stories about the method of murder and the direct perpetrators.
Medieval chroniclers Jakob Unrest and Jan Długosz believe that he was killed by his servant, who was bribed by the Turks. The author of The Tale of Dracula Governor Fyodor Kuritsyn believes that Vlad Dracula was killed during the battle with the Turks.
Also preserved is the testimony of the Moldavian prince Stefan, who helped Vlad take the Wallachian throne:
"And I immediately gathered the warriors, and when they came, I joined with one of the royal captains, and, united, we brought the said Drahulu to power. And he, when he came to power, asked us to leave our people to him as guards, because he did not trust the Vlachs too much, and I left him 200 of my people. And when I did this, we (with the royal captain) withdrew. And almost immediately that traitor Basarab returned and, having overtaken Drahula, who was left without us, killed him, and all my people were also killed, with the exception of 10."
The basis of all future legends about the unprecedented bloodthirstiness of the ruler was a document compiled by an unknown author (presumably on the orders of the Hungarian king) and published in 1463 in Germany. It is there that for the first time there are any descriptions of the executions and tortures of Dracula, as well as all the stories of his atrocities.
From a historical point of view, the reason to doubt the accuracy of the information presented in this document is extremely high. In addition to the obvious interest of the Hungarian throne in replicating this document (the desire to hide the fact of the theft by the king of Hungary of a large amount allocated by the papal throne for the crusade), no earlier references to any of these “pseudo-folklore” stories were found.
A list of the atrocities of Vlad Dracula the Impaler in this anonymous document:
There is a known case when Tepes summoned about 500 boyars and asked them how many rulers each of them remembers. It turned out that even the youngest of them remembers at least 7 reigns. Tepes' answer was an attempt to put an end to such an order - all the boyars were impaled and dug around the chambers of Tepes in his capital Targovishte;
The following story is also given: a foreign merchant who came to Wallachia was robbed. He files a complaint with Tepes. While they are catching and impaling the thief, on the orders of Tepes, the merchant is thrown a purse, in which there is one coin more than it was. The merchant, having discovered a surplus, immediately informs Tepes. He laughs and says: “Well done, I wouldn’t say - you should sit on a stake next to the thief”;
Tepes discovers that there are many beggars in the country. He convenes them, feeds them to their heart's content and addresses the question: “Don't you want to get rid of earthly suffering forever?” On a positive answer, Tepes closes the doors and windows and burns all those gathered alive;
There is a story about a mistress who tries to deceive Tepes by talking about her pregnancy. Tepes warns her that she does not tolerate lies, but she continues to insist on her own, then Tepes rips open her stomach and shouts: “I told you that I don’t like lies!”;
A case is also described when Dracula asked two wandering monks what the people say about his reign. One of the monks replied that the population of Wallachia scolded him as a cruel villain, and the other said that everyone praised him as a liberator from the threat of the Turks and a wise politician. In fact, both one and the other testimonies were fair in their own way. And the legend, in turn, has two endings. In the German "version", Dracula executed the former for not liking his speech. In the Russian version of the legend, the ruler left the first monk alive, and executed the second for lying;
One of the creepiest and least credible pieces of evidence in this document is that Dracula liked to have breakfast at the site of an execution or the site of a recent battle. He ordered to bring him a table and food, sat down and ate among the dead and dying on the stakes of people. There is also an addition to this story, which says that the servant who served Vlad food could not stand the smell of decay and, clutching his throat with his hands, dropped the tray right in front of him. Vlad asked why he did it. “No strength to endure, a terrible stench,” the unfortunate man replied. And Vlad immediately ordered to put him on a stake, which was several meters longer than the others, after which he shouted to the still living servant: “You see! Now you are above everyone, and the stench does not reach you”;
According to an old Russian story, Tepes ordered to cut out the genitals of unfaithful wives and widows who violate the rules of chastity, and rip off their skin, exposing the bodies to the point of decomposing the body and eating it by birds, or do the same, but after piercing them with a poker from the crotch to the mouth;
Those who came to him demanding recognition of vassalage to the ambassadors Ottoman Empire Dracula asked the question: "Why didn't they take off their hats in front of the Orthodox ruler." Hearing the answer that they would bare their heads only in front of the Sultan, Vlad ordered the turbans to be nailed to their heads.
Just illustrations for this "document" from 1463
However, modern historians deny most of these horror films, considering them fiction. Although Tepes impaled people in the hundreds, and the Turks (whom he apparently did not consider to be people) even in the thousands. And the "honesty" of his subjects was bought with the lives of 15% of the population of Wallachia. He was simultaneously feared to the point of fainting, hated, idolized and loved. Few of the medieval rulers evoked such conflicting emotions in those around them.
And another, and more famous "life" of Vlad Tepes Dracula began in the first quarter of the 20th century, after the appearance of Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula".
According to legend, the ruler of Wallachia, Vlad III Basarab Dracula, nicknamed Tepes, is buried either here: in the Komana monastery, founded by Vlad 15 years before. 
Or in the Church of the Annunciation in Snagov. 
In 1386, in Sighisoara, a small town located in Transylvania, a man was born who left an indelible mark on history. Vlad Tepes, better known as Count Dracula, a descendant of the ruler of Wallachia, Basarab the Great, became famous not so much for his talent as a commander, but for his gloomy cruelty, unprecedented even for.
Vlad III, about whom there were numerous bloody legends, became the prototype of one of the main characters in Bram Stoker's novel - he is known as Count Dracula, whose biography is to some extent similar to the fate of Tepes.
It cannot be said that his youth was easy and cloudless, which would be quite predictable for a real prince of the blood - the future ruler of Wallachia. At the age of twelve, Vlad III, together with his younger brother, was sent as hostages to the Turkish Sultan, where he is kept until the age of 17, which in all likelihood negatively affected his psyche.
At the age of 17, after his release, Vlad Tepes, whose biography has since become very changeable, with the help of the Turks, seizes power for the first time and reigns in Wallachia under the name of Vlad III. The Middle Ages were distinguished by numerous wars, and the young ruler failed to hold the throne for a long time - the protege of Janos Hunyadi, the ruler of Hungary, overthrew him. But he shows excessive independence, loses the patronage of his Hungarian overlord, and Vlad Tepes regains the throne with the support of Hunyadi himself.
Of course, such a turn of events did not suit Turkey, and in 1461 a war began, in which Vlad III fully showed his talent as a commander. But, despite all his courage and cruelty (and by that time there were numerous bloody legends about him), Tepes is defeated - mainly because the Turkish army greatly outnumbers his troops. Vlad III abandons the defeated army and wants to take refuge in the possessions of the Hungarian king, but he accuses the former ally of conspiring with the Turks, and puts him in prison.
Vlad III is released more than 10 years later, and he even manages to re-capture the capital of Wallachia, but after a while Vlad Tepes, whose biography is associated with many deaths, dies under mysterious circumstances ... Not otherwise, someone has in store for him aspen stake :) The life of Tepes ended in 1476.
Bloody legends or terrible reality?
It should be noted that the character of Bram Stoker - Count Dracula, whose biography is very mysterious, is only a weak likeness of his prototype. Vlad Tepes embodies all the atrocities of the Middle Ages - from the dungeons of the Spanish Inquisition to sophisticated Turkish torture.
Contemporaries feared him no less than even if a small part of the bloody legends folded about him is true, then Vlad III earned the right to be called a vampire, because in order to be him it is not necessary to drink blood - it is enough to shed it abundantly ...
Vlad the Impaler staged the most grandiose massacre in 1460 - then in one of the cities of Transylvania about 30,000 people were impaled at the same time. This massacre took place on the feast of St. Bartholomew. Over this holiday, apparently - it is enough to recall the confrontation between Catholics and Huguenots in France and the famous Bartholomew's Night.
There is also a legend about one of Tepes' mistresses, who tried to deceive him by announcing her pregnancy. It remains only to be surprised at the courage of the woman who continued to insist on her own, after Vlad warns her that he does not tolerate lies. The finale of the story is tragic - Tepes rips open her stomach and shouts "I warned you that I don't like lies!"
Count Dracula, whose biography gave rise to numerous bloody legends, did not complain about the lack of imagination, his methods of dealing with enemies were varied - chopping heads, boiling, burning, skinning or ripping open stomachs was common for Vlad Tepes. But to all of the above, the ruler preferred to impale those who were objectionable, thanks to which he got his nickname - Tepes - "spear-maker". But the perverted methods of reprisal were due not only to the sadistic inclinations of the ruler, such executions also pursued other goals. For example, there is a legend that a bowl made of gold stood at the fountain in the very center of the capital of Wallachia. Anyone could drink from it, but no one dared to steal the cup - the subjects knew that Tepes dealt with thieves especially cruelly.
Sometimes the count liked to joke...
Vlad Tepes also had a semblance of a sense of humor. Just as he loved hoaxes - he drank smoking mulled wine in the cold, which scared his courtiers to death, who believed that the ruler was drinking warm human blood ...
Count Dracula, whose biography inspired Bram Stoker, gave rise to not only bloody legends. The ruler was no stranger to some justice. One day, a passing merchant complained to Tepes that his van was robbed at night, and a significant amount of gold was missing. Naturally, Vlad Tepes could not tolerate such impudence - theft was punished very severely, and all forces were thrown into the search for the criminal, whom they discovered overnight.
The stolen gold was thrown to the merchant, and one extra coin was placed with him. What happened to the thief, I think is understandable, given the habits of Dracula. In the morning the merchant came to thank the ruler - he said that the thieves not only returned all the gold, but even tossed one extra coin. Tepes smiled grimly and said that if the merchant had kept silent about this coin, he would have sat on a stake next to the thief. One must think that after such a statement, the merchant hastened to leave the hospitable Wallachia.
Many bloody legends about Dracula tell that Vlad the Impaler had a habit of eating breakfast among the dead and dying people impaled on stakes. These stakes differed in both colors and geometric shapes- by these signs it was always possible to distinguish a commoner from a noble nobleman (the nobles were planted a little higher). It was not enough for Dracula to simply deal with the objectionable, he carefully monitored that the stakes were not sharpened, which would lead to profuse blood loss and quick death. And a blunt stake provided his victim with excruciating agony, which could last for 4 to 5 days.
Vlad Tepes, whose biography is diverse, sought to show everyone his independence. Once, messengers from the Turkish Sultan arrived at the court. The unlucky Turks completely refused to take off their hats (faith does not allow or something). The enraged ruler ordered his subjects to nail turbans to the heads of the Turks, which was immediately executed. However, small nails were used for this procedure.
How bloody legends about vampires appeared
Aspen stake, a bunch of garlic and, of course, 
crucifixion - what movie about vampires does without this paraphernalia? Sunlight is also positioned as a good means of dealing with evil spirits, but few people thought about why.
The origins for the creation, as well as their fear of sunlight, was one mysterious disease of the Middle Ages. It manifested itself in the fact that a person could not bear direct sun rays, from the impact of which the skin was covered with age spots, which caused quite severe pain.
The disease was called "porphyria" - the body of a person affected by this disease is not able to independently produce red blood cells. The disease is rare, and in those days representatives of the aristocracy were subject to it - this is where the thread stretches to Count Dracula (who, by the way, did not suffer from porphyria). In order not to experience pain, a person was forced to appear on the street only at night or eat raw meat in order to restore the blood balance of the body.
Another source attributes the rise of vampire legends to a certain medieval aristocrat who believed that her youth would be preserved forever if she took regular baths filled with the blood of young girls. These girls were taken to her castle and killed. This continued until one victim managed to escape and tell the ruler of those lands about what was happening in the gloomy castle. The Countess was imprisoned in her apartments, and doomed to starvation.
By the way, in the Middle Ages there was a belief that the one who drinks young blood restores his strength and prolongs his life. Who knows how many representatives of the aristocracy of those times resorted to this method of rejuvenation? They had plenty of options...
admin this clip will surely be in the subject ... especially if you like the group ARIA
There was a governor in the Muntian land, a Christian of the Greek faith, his name in Wallachian is Dracula, and in our opinion - the Devil. He was so cruel and wise that whatever his name was, such was his life...
Fedor Kuritsyn, "The Tale of Dracula Governor"
He drank the blood of his enemies and loved to dine among his thousands of impaled victims. He cut out women's breasts, skinned people alive, pierced their bellies, and nailed hats to their heads. The most important and bloody monster is the Prince of Darkness. The one whose name means "son of the Devil" in Romanian. The one who loves cinema so much and who today has thousands of fans. The mysterious tyrant of the Middle Ages - Vlad Tepes Dracula. This is what our contemporaries think.
He died five centuries ago and then he was buried with honors, called the most just ruler, honest and noble. People could not hold back their tears because they knew he gave his life to protect them. Vlad Dracula built churches and monasteries, founded the capital of Romania Bucharest and saved Europe from the Turkish invasion. He was a defender of the Orthodox faith, but died a Catholic. He was a brilliant commander, but went down in history under a terrible nickname - Tepes, i.e. "impaling". He is credited with tens of thousands of executions. Who was he really? Why did he acquire such fame? And when did the building of the reputation of a man who is still considered a national hero in Romania begin?
In the 15th century the prince Vlad III Dracula was the ruler or ruler of the small country of Wallachia, located in the center of Europe on the territory of modern Romania. Even during his reign, rumors spread throughout Europe about the extreme cruelty of Dracula. and after his sudden death, he was generally declared a servant of the Devil. Below is one of the medieval engravings, where Vlad quietly dine among thousands of impaled people.
Perhaps this excitement would have passed with time, but soon after the death of Dracula, an ambassador from the Russian Tsar Ivan III arrived in Romania Fedor Kuritsyn . He heard about the deeds of the prince and brought back from this journey his heartbreaking story - "The Tale of Dracula". In Russia, the book was immediately banned - Kuritsyn admired the actions of the prince too much. But one day the legend fell into the hands of a minor Ivan IV the Terrible . For the young king, this book became a guide to government. He carefully studied the methods of execution according to the method of Dracula and over time surpassed him. Began to combine flaying with burning; impaled and at the same time cut out pieces of meat from the unfortunate; boiled the victims in oil, set fire to them and tore them by the legs.
All tyrants are the same. Something makes everyone be cruel: the situation in the country, conspiracies, opposition, a difficult childhood, or innate insensitivity and cruelty. But why did Dracula stand out so much that he was proclaimed Prince of Darkness No. 1? Did he really drink blood? It's all the Irish writer's fault Bram Stoker . He lived in the 19th century and wrote horror novels, but none of them brought him success until he decided to write a novel about vampires. It was in the 19th century that everyone believed that ghouls exist. It's not just characters folk tales. They live somewhere in the unknown and terrible forests of Eastern Europe, among the Serbs, Czechs and Russians. Stoker heard about Vlad the Impaler Dracula from his friend, a Hungarian scientist, who told about the forgotten tyrant and gave medieval books about the monster. In gratitude, Stoker made this scientist a vampire fighter and introduced him into the book under the name Van Helsing . In Stoker's novel, a vampire count lives in a Transylvanian castle who bites through the necks of his guests, drinks their blood, and turns them into zombie slaves. He sleeps in a coffin, he has red elongated fangs, a deformed spine and, most importantly, he is very afraid of sunlight. Naturally, Stoker changed and invented a lot. And Dracula was not a count, but a prince. And he did not live in Transylvania, but in Wallachia. and slept not in a coffin, but on an ordinary bed.
Disease or vampirism?
Regarding Dracula's appearance and photophobia, Stoker described the symptoms of a real illness, unknown at the time. Such people really have long fangs, they cannot be in the sun, because the skin becomes blistered, their skeleton is deformed and they become very scary. All of these are sick porphyria. It occurs very rarely when a person's metabolic process in the blood is disturbed. Doctors managed to determine porphyria not so long ago - in 1963. Patients with porphyria, of course, did not drink blood, but because of their ugly appearance they were feared and often called the living dead. Of course, such clinical features leave an imprint on the psyche. Thus, a person who is afraid of daylight and has anatomical defects begins to acquire a certain halo of mystery. Perhaps Stoker saw in his life a patient with porphyria. His appearance impressed the writer so much that he endowed her with his hero, the bloodsucker Dracula. And what did the real Prince of Wallachia look like?
Appearance of Vlad Dracula
A lifetime portrait of Dracula and its description have come down to us: "He was a short, densely built, broad-shouldered man. The features are rough. The skin is delicate. He had an aquiline nose, wide nostrils, very long eyelashes, wide eyebrows and a long mustache." Nothing to suggest porphyria. So appearance literary Dracula has nothing to do with the appearance of the prototype. Moreover, there is no information in any historical source that Dracula drank blood. Other atrocities were attributed to him, but he was not seen in vampirism.
The tradition of drinking the blood of their enemies existed among the Kurds, Japanese samurai and the Papuans of New Guinea. It has nothing to do with pleasure, but with conviction. Drinking the blood of your enemy, you get his strength and youth. Eating the heart - you seize his courage. These traditions were unknown to medieval Romanians. But Stoker knew very well about them in the 19th century, who had been interested in the memoirs of famous European travelers all his life. So the writer's fantasy, in addition to a frightening appearance, endowed the Romanian prince with love for fresh blood. and behind these horrors one can no longer see the image of the real Dracula, the one whom the Romanians still consider a national hero. and they were so offended by Bram Stoker that they even banned the novel Dracula. Ceausescu declared that the novel dishonors the honorable name of the illustrious son of the Romanian people, Vlad Dracula. But why was one tyrant so protective of another? What was good about Vlad Tepes and his crimes? And why do Romanians love Dracula so much?
In the Middle Ages, Wallachia was a small principality adjacent to Transylvania, and today it is part of Romania. Mountains and dense fog hiding small towns. It seems that the Romanians there and now are afraid of vampires, but they do not know what it is. In their fairy tales, no one drinks blood. Such characters in folk representations never existed. Then it is not at all clear where the legend of the bloody Dracula came from.
Childhood and youth of Vlad Dracula
In 1431 in the city of Sighisoara in the family of the prince Vlad II Dracula and Moldavian princess Vasiliki a son was born. In general, the ruler of Wallachia had four sons: the eldest Mircea , average Vlad And Radu and the youngest - also Vlad (son of the second wife of Prince Vlad II - Koltsuny , subsequently Vlad IV Monk ). Fate will not be favorable to the first three of them. Mircea will be buried alive by the Wallachian boyars in Targovishte. Radu will become the favorite of the Turkish Sultan Mehmed II , and Vlad will bring his family the bad reputation of a cannibal. Vlad IV The monk will live his life more or less calmly. The family crest was a dragon. It was in the year of Vlad's birth that his father joined the Order of the Dragon, whose members swore on blood to protect Christians from the Muslim Turks. They wore long black cloaks. By the way, the bloody prince Dracula will wear the same.
Over time, details of his birth appear in the legends about Prince Dracula. Allegedly, when the baby was born, one of the icons in the room wept blood. It was the birth of the Antichrist. In addition, two comets appeared in the sky at once, which was also not a good omen. Such stories are often invented after the birth of many prominent people.
In the 15th century, the Turks took over the country. Sultan Murad II demands to pay tribute - to send boys and animals to Turkey. It is impossible to argue with the Turks, they have just captured Constantinople and have become a threat to the whole world. Gradually, the small countries of Eastern Europe came under their rule. From the Balkans, the Turks went to Romania and Wallachia had to become a Turkish province. The prince fought back as best he could, secretly joined the knightly order of the Dragon, and played a double game with the sultan. He taught his sons that the main thing is freedom.
But one day the sultan revealed his secret plan and summoned the prince and his sons to him and accused him of treason. And in order for the prince to serve him faithfully, he took his two sons as hostages: Vlad and Rada. If their father had rebelled against the Turks, the boys would have simply been killed. However, there were some advantages to this conclusion. Education in Turkey at that time was considered one of the best. Only there Vlad could learn martial arts and military strategy to counter this empire. It had to be studied from the inside. That's what Vlad's father would have wanted. Several years passed and all this time the brothers were together. Vlad supported the younger Rada, took care of him. Together they dreamed that they would run away home and, together with their father and older brother, take revenge on the Turks.
But it happened differently. Wallachia had many enemies: Hungarian neighbors who wanted to take away her lands; the boyars, who wanted to put their protege on the throne, and the Turks, who established their own rules. Chaos reigned in the country. The Romanians gradually converted to Islam. And Dracula Sr. fought as best he could for the preservation of his rights and religion. But one day his captured sons found out - their father was killed. His older brother Mircea also died with him. The boyars elevated their candidate to the throne. Now it turned out that the fourteen-year-old Vlad Dracula became the heir to the throne. An heir who had nothing - no power, no freedom. He cherished in his soul hatred for the Turks and revenge for the death of his relatives. In his hatred, he did not notice how the irreparable happened - his younger brother liked the heir of Sultan Mehmed. Known for his perverse predilection for boys, he took the weak Radu into his harem and made him a favorite. Vlad choked with hatred. Through the prison bars, he saw the Turks executing Christians - how they sharpen smooth sticks with a diameter of about 25 cm and impale people on them. The unfortunate died for 12 hours, because the stake gradually passed through the whole body, pierced the internal organs and passed through the mouth. Then Vlad decided to learn the language, techniques and customs of the Turks, and when the time comes, to kill them, in their own favorite way. so another six years passed in hatred and sadness.
Once, Vlad was brought to the Sultan and he said: "Come back home. Sit on the throne of your father and serve me more honestly than he served." Returning, Vlad saw his country in ruins. Boyar strife and the struggle for power gave rise to chaos. Theft, lynching and lawlessness flourished. Part of the population became turkish and converted to Islam. Neighboring Transylvania threatened war. It was then that Vlad Dracula made three oaths to himself: to avenge the death of his father and older brother, save his younger brother Rada from captivity and free the country from the Turks. He will not pay tribute, will not give boys to numerous Janissary barracks, because he is not a puppet, he is Vlad Dracula. The one whose name will become a nightmare for the Sultan. Personal life For four years, Vlad conscientiously paid tribute to the Turks, sent humble letters to the Sultan, assured of his loyalty. At the same time, he secretly formed his army.
Continuing the work of his father, he began to establish ties with his neighbors. He made friends with the king of Hungary and at his court found what he never had - a friend and love. The successor of the Hungarian king became a friend Matthias Korvin and love is beautiful Lydia , the daughter of a Romanian boyar - a quiet, submissive and beautiful girl. She was going to be the bride of the Lord, to spend her life in a convent. But a chance meeting with Vlad Dracula turned her life upside down. The prince, in love, begged on his knees to refuse to be tonsured, and Lydia agreed to become his wife. This decision will make her unhappy and make her die young. They were married in a small Hungarian church. Vlad was happy. For the first time in his life, he wanted not to fight, but to enjoy quiet family joys.
Internal and foreign policy Vlad Dracula
But Vlad understood that life under the rule of the Turks could not last forever. All this time he lived in captivity of his nightmares, and woke up from his own scream. In a dream he saw his dead father. He was lowered into the grave alive. I saw a little brother who was still at the mercy of the Turkish sultan. The dead called for revenge, while the living waited for his return. And Vlad finally made up his mind. The bloody revenge of Vlad Dracula. At this time, the Pope tried to organize a new crusade against the Turks, but only Wallachia and Hungary agreed to fight. Other countries feared the sultan's revenge. Vlad Dracula was so delighted with the opportunity to get rid of Turkish dependence that he refused to pay tribute to the Sultan. It was a challenge, but the sultan, busy with the war with Greece, decided to postpone the punishment of the impudent Dracula. Vlad understood that before the war it was necessary to strengthen his power. There was little time, so the prince did not choose the methods.
To begin with, he tried to stop the boyar strife that was tearing apart his small country. In his family castle Targovishte, Vlad avenged the death of his father and older brother. According to legend, he invited the boyars to a feast, and then ordered them all to be stabbed to death. It is believed that it is with this execution that the bloody procession of the great tyrant Vlad Dracula begins. So the legends tell, but the chronicles convince in a different way - at the feast, Dracula only scared the boyars, and only got rid of those whom he suspected of treason. During the first years of his reign, he executed 11 boyars who were preparing a coup against him. Having avoided a real threat, Dracula began to restore order in the country. He issued new laws. For theft, murder and violence, criminals were expected to be executed - they were supposed to be burned at the stake. When public executions began in the country, people realized that their ruler was not joking.
Vlad Tepes quickly became famous as a just ruler. In his time, money could be left right on the street and no one would dare to steal it, because everyone knew that the punishment would be terrible. There was not a single thief in the country. For Vlad, it didn’t matter if a nobleman, a boyar or an ordinary beggar committed a crime. The decision for all was one-execution. The legend claims that in this way he destroyed all the beggars and those who did not want to work. gradually he deliberately made people afraid of himself. He even selected scary stories about his cruelty. He believed that only in this way would he make himself respected and prepare the people for a difficult war with the Turks. In each city, Vlad left a golden goblet at the main well so that anyone could drink water. People were so afraid and respected their ruler that no one dared to steal this cup. Some of his reforms healed the economy of Wallachia in record time. Under Dracula, even hominy was boiled in milk, since milk was cheaper than water. He gave the green light to local merchants, and imposed a heavy duty on foreign merchants. And when the merchants of neighboring Transylvania tried to rebel, he staged a demonstrative execution. In front of the entire merchant community, he ordered to impale ten merchants who violated his law. But he was not forgiven for this. Vlad punished the Saxons near Brasov, after which they began to write terrible stories about him. The Saxons portrayed Dracula as a terrible, bloody and cruel ruler. To them, he was a monster. Thus began the creation of the image of the Devil. The merchants decided to take revenge and spread gossip that Dracula is the Devil who destroys his people, that he burns entire cities, impales even babies, burns women's breasts, and then feasts among the corpses. Later, other terrible inventions were added to these fantasies.
Once Dracula arranged a dinner and invited the beggars to his place. When the guests had eaten, the prince asked if they always wanted to be so full and happy. The guests nodded happily. Then Vlad went out, and the servants locked and set fire to the house from all sides. Nobody survived. The same thing happened with the Turkish ambassadors. They came to the prince for negotiations, but refused to take off their turbans as a sign of respect. Then Dracula ordered to nail these turbans to the embassy's heads with nails. There is only part of the truth in these stories. The beggars in the country really disappeared, but no one burned them at a feast. They were punished, and those who refused to work were burned. And no one nailed turbans to the heads of ambassadors. Dracula knew Turkish customs too well. Since there was no chronicler at Dracula's court, there is too little information about him. The only "reliable" document was a pamphlet written by Saxon merchants. In it, he is naturally presented in the most negative light. But for the Romanian people, he is a hero and a just ruler who never killed innocent people.
Thus, in four years, Dracula completely changed the situation in his country. He founded the future capital - Bucharest, began the construction of new castles and fortresses and continued not to pay tribute to the Sultan, realizing that they would soon want to punish him. But when Vlad turned to his allies in Hungary and Moldova for support, they refused to help him. Friend and king of Hungary Matthias Corvinus has already spent the money allocated to him by the Pope for the crusade. Therefore, he was forced to support Dracula, but he did it in a very cunning way - he equipped the army and ordered him to stay on the border with Wallachia and wait. the angry sultan gathered 250 thousand soldiers and put them on Wallachia. Vlad was in despair, because he had only 30 thousand soldiers. Then he decided to retreat and wage a guerrilla war. His warriors only attacked at night, howling like wolves. The Turks were terrified, they thought they were fighting werewolves. This is exactly what Prince Dracula wanted. His army quickly appeared, killed and also quickly disappeared. The Turks found nothing in Wallachia, not even horse food. The water in the wells was poisoned. The Turks drank and died. In addition, ambushes awaited them in all mountain gorges and forests.
The "scorched earth" tactics worked - the huge army of the Turks was melting before our eyes. Everyone volunteered to join Dracula's army. even 12-year-old boys and women were accepted into the army. And in 1462, one of the most famous and daring attacks of this war took place. Vlad dressed his soldiers in Turkish clothes and attacked the headquarters of the Sultan at night. The panic began. No one knew who was attacking them and from where. The frightened Turks cut each other down. The Sultan was not killed only by mistake - he was confused with the vizier. That night, Dracula's small army massacred 30,000 Turks. And the next day, the Sultan discovered a forest of impaled Turkish soldiers - 4,000 dead. So Vlad surpassed his teachers in cruelty. The conqueror of Constantinople, the great and invincible sultan, after what he saw said: "I will not conquer a country ruled by such a bloodthirsty and great warrior" and simply retreated. King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary credited this victory to himself. Allegedly, it was he who led Dracula in the war. O sent a letter to the Pope - reported that the money was not spent in vain.
Now all of Europe glorified Dracula and Corwin as heroes. Offended by Dracula, the Hungarian king said that he could not help him. I just didn't have time to raise an army. And Vlad believed a friend. He had only to finish off the retreating Turkish troops. Once, during a regular fight with the Turks, Dracula suddenly ran into the commander of the Turkish detachment in battle. A battle ensued, and when Vlad removed the helmet from the Turk with a blow, he saw his brother Radu. He realized that his brother had become a traitor and a loyal servant of the Sultan. Vlad wanted to kill him, but his brother shouted that Vlad owed him. It was he who begged the Sultan to grant him freedom and the throne. Having killed hundreds of enemies, Dracula could not kill a single one. This mistake will cost him his life.
Betrayal
Soon he learned that Rada was supported by the boyars and made a new pretender to the throne. A rebellion broke out against the prince. The boyars concluded a secret treaty with the Turks. and they launched a new offensive against the country. It was a trap - Vlad's small army could not fight on two fronts. He had to give up positions and retreat to the mountains, and keep the last defense high in the mountains - in his impregnable fortress Poenari . It was here that Dracula's hopes to free his country were buried. Here, his army held the Turkish siege for several months, and here he managed to transport his wife, saving the boyars from possible revenge. The Turks still surrounded the fortress. With the last of his strength, Vlad fled to the tower with a secret exit, where the unfortunate Lydia was waiting for him. But Vlad did not have time - the Turks had already made a hole in the wall of the tower. Lydia preferred death to Turkish bullying and jumped from the tower into the river. For a woman of that time, being captured by the Turks was worse than suicide. She died defending her honor. It is said that Dracula sold his soul to Satan after the death of Lydia. Dracula fled from the fortress, but his life stopped - his wife died, his brother renounced, his allies betrayed him. All he had left was revenge. The Turks, led by Radu, captured Wallachia. Meanwhile, the king of Hungary had to answer for the failure of the campaign before the Pope. And he found the culprit...
Vlad, hoping for his support, came to Buda, but he was seized. Corwin threw accusations of treason against him, allegedly he agreed with the Turkish Sultan to capture Hungary. Dracula was imprisoned and brutally tortured to force him to confess to "treason". He pleaded not guilty to nothing. so he spent ten whole years in a Hungarian prison. So best friend The Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus shamelessly betrayed Dracula, slandered, forged letters to the Sultan, ordered the creation of documents about the cruel crimes of the prince. And the reason for betrayal is as old as the world - money. Royal life required royal expenses and Matthias appropriated the money allocated by the Pope for the crusade, and decided to shift the blame for the failure of the campaign to Vlad Dracula, part-time his best friend.
In order to convince the Pope that the prince is capable of treason, he called the offended merchants from Transylvania (the very ones whom Dracula once punished for lying). Now they could take revenge and created an anonymous pamphlet in 1463, which described the inhuman atrocities of Dracula and tens of thousands of tortured civilians. so in Europe they learned about the bloody monster Dracula. While he was in prison, terrible stories about his cruelty spread throughout the world.
Five centuries have passed, and after the success of Bram Stoker's book, cinema became interested in Dracula. The first silent horror story about Dracula "Nosferatu - a symphony of horror" saw the world. It was from her that the bloody procession of the movie vampire Dracula began. Over the past 80 years, more than 200 films have been made about the main vampire of the world. From the iconic painting by Francis Ford Coppola to the ironic painting with Leslie Nielsen in leading role. All this time, the Romanians have not heard anything about Dracula the vampire. Films and books simply did not fall behind the Iron Curtain. Only in 1992 did they learn in Romania - their Vlad Dracula for the entire Western world is the Prince of Darkness and a symbol of evil.
Castle of Vlad Dracula
Thanks to Stoker's book, Romania became known to the whole world and tourism began to develop in the country. Today, thousands of tourists seek to see the castle of Count Dracula. However, there are many such castles throughout Romania, and Dracula simply did not see most of them - they were built after his death. For example, Bran Castle is considered the true residence of the prince, but he never visited there either. We can definitely say that Dracula visited only the fortress of Poenari and the ancient city of Sighisoara, where, in fact, he was born. But the Romanian guides naturally do not talk about this. By the way, the house where Dracula was born is now a restaurant with a vampire theme. Is it worth the slandered name of the national hero, only money will answer.
Last offspring of Dracula
A direct descendant of Vlad Dracula now lives in the center of Bucharest - Constantin Bolacianu-Stolnic . The uniqueness of the situation lies in the fact that he is already 90 years old, and he has no children. so he is the last of Dracula's lineage. Constantin Bolacianu-Stolnich is a neuropsychologist, anthropologist and geneticist. The old professor is descended from the older brother of Vlad Tepes - Mircea. He knows everything about his legendary ancestor Dracula. And he tells people what Vlad really was - a man who fought for the independence of his country, but, unfortunately, fell victim to political intrigues. He is a hero national hero. And not only in official history, but also in folk legends. It is not known what the history of Europe would have been if the Turks had conquered it. And the fact that they did not do this is the merit of Tepes. He was a strong personality. He was well educated, as he received the best education at that time - Turkish. He was a good warrior and one of the few who could resist Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople. The last descendant of Dracula has already come to terms with the fact that they made a gold mine out of his ancestor. But the secret of the last months of the prince's life is still trying to unravel.
The last years of the life and death of Vlad Dracula
Vlad spent 12 years of imprisonment in the prisons of Buda and Pest. In the meantime, the Pope of Rome has changed, the Turks have become more active again. Europe faced the threat of Turkish invasion. In his native Wallachia, the traitor brother Radu III the Handsome and, of course, the Turks ruled. There are suggestions that Radu converted to Islam. Therefore, the new Pope Pius II was afraid that the country might become completely Muslim. Then he remembered the captive Dracula. Who, no matter how he should fight for his country?
So after 12 years, his imprisonment ended. The Hungarian king Matthias Corvin released him so that he drove the Turks away and again ruled Wallachia. At the same time, he set two conditions for him: 1) he would marry his relative Ilona so that Corvin would not suspect him of treason; 2) accept Catholicism in order to prove his honesty to the Pope. Vlad will dutifully accept all the conditions - he married a second time and became an apostate. All in order to return and fulfill his third oath - to liberate the country. When he made his last campaign against the Turks he was 45 years old. His wife managed to give birth to two sons to him, and the king of Hungary finally fulfilled his promise - he gave him an army. With battles, Vlad ascended the throne for the third time. But at home, an unpleasant surprise awaited him - now everyone was scared to death of him, even his own servants. He renounced his faith. Behind him they whispered: a sorcerer, a devil, an apostate. In addition, Wallachia was again weakened by civil strife. Dracula again fought with the Turks and the victory was his. One day in 1462, in battle, he suddenly felt a terrible blow to his back. He was killed by his own boyars, treacherously, in battle...
Then, before burial, superstitious people plunged a stake into the chest of the prince and cut off his head. So then they did with the traitors of the faith. Vlad Dracula was buried by the monks Snagovsky monastery. But a few years later, the grave was opened and only garbage and animal bones were found in it. The panic began. Gossip has gone that Vlad Dracula is alive. No one knew that his grave was securely hidden under a slab in front of the entrance to the same church. Someone reburied the body on purpose so that the parishioners would trample on the ashes of Dracula. According to ancient Orthodox custom, this meant that by such humiliation the deceased atones for his earthly guilt.
Many centuries have passed and now for Romania the prince has again become a hero. time put everything in its place. People realized too late the role that Dracula played in the liberation of the country Today in Romania there is a popular song: "Where are you, Tepes, our god? Come back and send all the rulers of Romania to hell..."
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Tags: Reply With quote To quote padDracula. A real vampire from Transylvania Tuesday, January 14, 2020 04:06 PM ()
Dracula ... In the minds of millions of people, this name is associated with the image of the legendary vampire from the gloomy and mysterious country of Transylvania - during the day he pretends to be a lifeless body, and at night he goes on the trail of murders, terrifying entire generations of residents and ... spectators, as well as readers since 1897 of the year. It was in that year that he became the protagonist of Bram Stoker's wildly successful horror novel.
But far fewer people know that the name of the immortal Stoker character is borrowed from the real Dracula, who lived in the real Transylvania four centuries before. And although that Dracula was not at all a bloodsucker in the truest sense of the word, he acquired for himself no less terrible fame as a bloody tyrant, whose cruelty became the eternal and, perhaps, the most striking example of sadism.
The real Dracula was born in 1430 or 1431 in the ancient Transylvanian town of Sighisoara and was the second son of Vlad II, Prince of Wallachia. Having inherited the power of his father, he became Vlad III, although he was better known as Vlad the Impaler, that is, the Impaler. His father's name was Dracul - "the devil" - perhaps because he was a fearless fighter, or because - and this is most likely - that he was a member of the Catholic sect of the order of the dragon, and in those areas the dragon was synonymous with the devil. In any case, Vlad III called himself Dracul oh, the son of Dracul.
He was a brave warrior, but sometimes it was difficult to understand whose side he took in one or another battle between Eastern and Western religions, churches and cultures, mixed in the principality subject to him. Either he leaned towards the Turks, then towards the Hungarians, he switched from the Roman Catholic Church to the Orthodox, fought under the banner of Islam on the side of the Ottomans. In the political chaos of that era, he never stood firmly on his feet. Three times he lost and regained Wallachia - a part of Southern Romania, including the regions of Transylvania.
Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. Born from the imagination of the author in 1897, the vampire count still roams the world in films, novels and plays.
He first appeared on the Wallachian throne in 1443, on which the Turks put him, after his father and elder brother fell at the hands of Hungarian mercenaries. Frightened by the Turks, who at one time patronized him, he fled, but returned to the throne in 14S6, already with Hungarian support. The next six years of his reign were marked by atrocities. In those days, torture and murder of political opponents were commonplace - the XIV - XV centuries were imprinted in history as an era of unheard-of atrocities and crimes. But Vlad's antics, which later became an example for Ivan the Terrible, broke records even of those years. The number of his victims is incalculable. According to one legend, he ambushed a detachment of Turks, whom he was supposed to meet peacefully for negotiations, inviting them to the city of Tirgovishte, took off their clothes, put them on stakes and burned them alive.
His victims were not only enemies, but also his own subjects - to know and ordinary peasants, as well as random travelers. Suspecting everyone indiscriminately, he executed innocent people. So, his soldiers discovered and burned a group of merchants crossing his lands. They did not forget to kill even the drivers. On another occasion, for the same reasons, he gathered together 400 foreign students, mostly boys, who studied the language and customs in Wallachia, drove them into one room, locked and set fire to the house.
He usually impaled his victims on stakes. But this seemed not enough to him, and the sadist came up with all sorts of other ways of killing the victims - he pierced them with stakes in front, behind, on the side, through the chest, stomach, navel, groin. He strung them on stakes through his mouth, upside down; came up with ways to make a person suffer longer. Invented different types of death for people of different ages, genders and positions. For this purpose he prepared special stakes in the form geometric shapes especially liked the curved ones. For some unknown reason, he executed the population of the entire village, placing stakes of various lengths in a circle on a hillside, placing the headman and other representatives of local authorities from above so that they could take a last look at their former possessions with a blurred look.
He decorated the general picture of executions with torn nails, heads, ears and genitals. Those who lacked stakes were strangled, boiled in oil, or blinded. He took particular pleasure when the victims "danced and writhed on their stakes." Watching their torment, he would say: “Oh, what wonderful moments they experience!”
Thanks to the recent invention of the printing press, stories of Dracula's "arts" were spreading throughout Europe during his lifetime. He became a favorite character of pamphleteers, whose writings were popular in many countries. As the forerunners of future illustrated magazines, these publications placed on the title pages appeals to terrified readers such as: “The nightmare story of a monster and tormentor named Dracula, who distinguished himself by such acts hostile to Christianity as impaling people, chopping them to pieces, boiling women and children alive, as well as cannibalism.” The public bought and read such little books, thrilled with fear and curiosity at the same time, and at the same time forgetting that their native inquisition was much more terrible actions ...
So Dracula became the first international media character.
But, despite his crimes, in his homeland, in Romanian folklore, he remained a heroic figure who drove out the invaders. The Germans, in the books they published, emphasized the cruelty and sadism of Dracula, since among his Transylvanian victims there were many immigrants from Germany. But many chilling scenes were also drawn from other sources - Russian testimonies, the memoirs of Pope Pius II (his legate in Hungary met Dracula), Romanian ballads and legends that only confirmed and multiplied German examples.
One of the most memorable atrocities of Dracula took place on April 2, 1459 in Brasov and was the result of a long dispute between Vlad and local merchants. At the end of the day, the prince's detachments began to drive the people to the hill near the chapel on the outskirts of the city. In total, about 20 thousand people gathered, mainly representatives of the local nobility. They watched in horror as the soldiers burned their houses, and then the traditional stakes began.
Toward night, the hillside turned into a forest of stakes, through which streams of blood flowed and the heads of those who could not find a place on the points rolled. During the execution, one local boyar, as they say, shuddered from the terrible smell and sight of blood. And Dracula, who had a peculiar sense of humor, ordered to put the unfortunate man on the highest stake so that he would be less bothered by unpleasant odors. The prince himself was not embarrassed either by the sight itself or by the stench. According to legend, he calmly dined near the dead and dying in agony of fellow citizens.
Nor could he be accused of preferring one class or another. Once he gathered the boyars of the whole region and began to ask them who lived under whose rule. They did not suspect that Dracula set out to avenge the brutal murder of his brother and father and tried to find out which of the boyars could have been present at their death. As a result, more than 500 people were put on stakes and died a terrible death near his palace.
On another occasion, he invited poor residents to his palace, invited them to undress, and treated them to dinner. When they relaxed, all the doors suddenly slammed shut and the house immediately caught fire. different angles. “I did this in order to eradicate poverty in my state forever, so that no one else would suffer,” the prince declared with cynical humor.
Women were a special target for this monster. The story tells that one day Dracula met a poorly dressed peasant. “Your wife is clearly not worthy of you,” he said. And although the peasant tried to assure the prince that his wife was quite satisfied with him, he ordered her to be put on a stake, and the widower to pick up a new woman.
Unfaithful wives, girls who lost their virginity early, and widows who broke mourning were punished immediately. Their genitals were cut out, skinned alive and put on public display.
One of the legends has brought to our days the case of one of his mistresses, who also did not manage to escape death. Finding the master in a grumpy state, she tried to return him to a good mood, telling him that she was pregnant. Dracula accused her of lying. Wanting to prove that she was deceiving him, he drew his sword and cut open her stomach. The legend does not say whether he was right in his guess.
The insidious disposition of Dracula also manifested itself when the ambassadors of the Turkish Sultan arrived at him, but did not take off their turbans when they bowed. Dracula asked why they didn't show him respect. “This is the custom of our country,” they replied. To this, the count said that he supported this custom, and ordered their turbans to be nailed to their heads with nails.
No one knows how many people executed or tortured different ways this tyrant. The papal legate, Bishop Erlau, who had no reason to exaggerate, reports that Dracula doomed 100,000 people to death, but other sources suggest that this number is too low.
"The Tale of Dracula the Governor" ... In the "History of the Russian State" N. M. Karamzin called this story "the first Russian historical novel." Her manuscript ends with the name of the scribe - this is the monk of the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery Euphrosyn. But who is the author? It is known that in 1482 Ivan III sent the diplomat Fyodor Kuritsyn to Buda. According to Academician A. Kh. Vostokov, “it is quite likely that the composition of this story can be attributed either to Kuritsyn himself, or to someone from his retinue who heard the descriptions of what happened by his eyewitness.”
Here summary"Tales" in the transfer of N. M. Karamzin.
There was a governor in the Muntian land, a Christian of the Greek faith, his name in Wallachian is Dracula, and in our opinion - the Devil. He was so cruel and wise that whatever his name was, such was his life.
One day, ambassadors from the Turkish king came to him and, entering, bowed according to their custom, but did not remove their caps from their heads. He asked them: “Why did they do this: they came to the great sovereign and inflicted such dishonor on me?” They answered: "This is the custom, sir, of ours and in our land." And he said to them: "And I want to confirm your law, so that they hold fast to it." And he ordered caps to be nailed to their heads with iron studs...
The king was very angry, and went to war with Dracula, and attacked him with great forces. The same, having gathered all his army, struck at the Turks at night and killed many of them. But he could not defeat the huge army with his small army and retreated. And he himself began to inspect everyone who returned with him from the battlefield: who was wounded in the chest, he paid honors to him and made him into a knight, and who in the back ordered him to be impaled ...
And the king sent an ambassador to Dracula, demanding tribute from him. Dracula gave the ambassador magnificent honors, and showed him his wealth, and said to him: “I am not only ready to pay tribute to the king, but with all my army and with all my wealth I want to go to his service, and as he commands me, so he I will serve ... ”And the king was glad, for at that time he was waging war in the east. And he immediately sent to announce to all cities and all over the earth that when Dracula went, no one would do him any harm, but, on the contrary, they would meet him with honor. Dracula, having gathered all the army, set off on his way, and the royal bailiffs accompanied him, and gave him great honors. He, having gone deep into the Turkish land for five day's marches, suddenly turned back, and began to ruin cities and villages, and captivated and killed many people, planted some Turks on stakes, cut others in two and burned them, not sparing even infants. He left nothing in his path, he turned the whole land into a desert, and took away the Christians who were there and settled in his land. And he returned home, capturing untold riches, and dismissed the royal bailiffs with honors, admonishing: “Go and tell your king about everything that you saw: as much as you could, served him. And if my service is love to him, I am ready to serve him in the same way, how much my strength will become.
He lost his throne in 1462 and, overthrown by the boyars, spent 20 years in a Hungarian fortress. Then he was released to take part in the fight against the Ottomans, and after Dracula again took possession of the Wallachian throne. And there was the last battle with the Turkish army near Bucharest. Sources describe his death in different ways. Some argue that traitors-boyars killed him. Others say that he disguised himself as a Turk and fled, but the plan failed: his companions stabbed Dracula by mistake, and his head flaunted in Istanbul for a long time, impaled on a stake. So ordered Sultan Mehmed II.
The remains of the Wallachian ruler rest in the Snagov Monastery, two dozen kilometers from Bucharest. This is one of the memorable historical places in Romania.
By the end of the 15th century, the monastery was known as one of the three largest monasteries in the country. Shortly after Dracula's death, the Church of the Annunciation collapsed. In the 17th century, the monastery experienced a new period of prosperity, becoming a recognized center of education in the southeast of Europe. One of the first printing presses in the country, Antim Ivireanu, the publisher of the Romanian translation of the Gospel, was installed in the monastery cells. Then the monastery was adapted for a prison, and by the middle of the 19th century it was empty, and the ancient buildings gradually fell into disrepair.
Here is what the Romanian writer Alexandru Odobescu wrote in 1862 in the short story A Few Hours in Snagov:
“The chipped slabs are located in different parts of the temple, but who can say over whose ashes they are erected? Only one, the largest, which lies opposite the royal doors at the altar, keeps a legend. They say that this is the tombstone of one cruel and masterful ruler Tepes, who in Snagov set up something like a torture chamber, from where the convict, who was tormented by fire and iron, was then thrown into the lake with the help of a throwing weapon. ... Metropolitan Filaret allegedly ordered that letters be cut from the stone on the grave of the despicable ruler who created such a terrible machine, and that this stone be put under eternal trampling or for the sake of saving an unfortunate soul under the feet of a priest when he comes out with holy gifts.
In the 30s of our century, the Romanian historians Dinu Rosetti and Gheorghe Florescu, who carried out archaeological excavations in Snagov, found confirmation that the remains of Vlad Tepes were in one of the burials. However, in the writings of later Romanian historians, this discovery is not only questioned, but somehow not considered indisputable.
... Fate did bring them together. Dracula rests in Snagov after completing earthly affairs in a grave behind the monastery wall, and Nicolae Ceausescu liked to be here, very close, in his palace, indulging in rest in between earthly affairs. In the evenings, a veil of twilight immediately covers Lake Snagov, the monastery standing on the island and the former country residence of the now executed and secretly buried dictator.
Previously, pleasure boats went on the lake, boat stations took tourists. But the “beloved leader”, a few years after coming to power, decided to protect himself as much as possible and banned any movement.
In winter, the icy lake freezes quickly. And on transparent ice, it seems that in one sitting, pushing off the shore, you can roll, slide to the island where Dracula sleeps. Or you might not get there - how lucky ... They say that the messengers who brought Dracula either good or bad news were also lucky in different ways: even the one who announced the victory was sometimes prepared with a spruce stake in case the ruler was not in the best mood. What to say about those who brought bad news ...
Only stones remained from the fortifications of the former monastery. The church is deserted and quiet. Although it is noticeable that someone is looking after the sad place. This is Elder Emilian Poenaru, giving thanks to the Lord every day, and has been praying here for ten years now.
Here is the door to the temple. The darkened painting on the walls is barely visible. There is a stone slab on the floor in front of the altar - no name, no dates, no words about exploits and accomplishments. As Filaret commanded, everyone who comes to the altar puts their foot on this slab...
Maybe Dracula was buried on the island so that he could not overcome the body of water at night and disturb people's memory? ..
The catastrophic earthquake of 1977 severely damaged the church and the bell tower, and destroyed the main dome. But the slab and the one under it were not awakened by the shudder of the earth. A few years ago the dome was recreated. Elder Poenaru wants to organize a museum of Vlad Tepes here, but he can’t find a companion for himself, no one stays on the island for a long time. It's like a curse hangs over him.
Romanians love hoaxes. No matter how tragic and bloody the grand spectacle played out on the streets of revolutionary Bucharest in the last days of December 1989, the victims and losses cannot obscure the culmination of that crazy action - the execution of the Ceausescu couple in one of the military garrisons in the city of Targovishte (the same one). Only many weeks later, footage of a secret burial ceremony at one of the unnamed cemeteries was shown on television. Naturally, however, that for a good bribe, the Bucharest cemetery caretakers revealed the secret to journalists and began to conduct one excursion after another to two burials located 30 steps apart and marked, like all fresh graves, with iron crosses with tablets. Here are just fictitious names inscribed on the plates.
Time passed, the crosses were removed and no new ones were installed. And two graves remained nameless - and terrible: after all, it was not just that someone's hands lowered the coffins - on TV they showed only hands - into reinforced concrete pits. The same hands covered the graves with heavy slabs, and then piled them on top of the mound.
But the Bucharest old women were not afraid of these graves, they scouted everything and brought bouquets of flowers here. And soon, as the promises of the new rulers did not come true, people of younger age were also drawn here. Also with flowers. And with candles.
A person is weak and remembers the evil of yesterday with good today. Or perhaps ordinary Christian custom draws them here. And yet - a hidden, unspoken desire to atone for the sin of the imminent and therefore seeming today doubtful trial of the ruler, who for so many years was worshiped in blindness and servility.
Trembling in the wind, creaking trunks, cemetery aspens. There will be something to cut down the stake.
