Who killed dracula. Role in modern culture

Vampires, along with zombies and werewolves, are a favorite topic of filmmakers who try to scare the viewer with horror or plunge into a romantic story, as was done in the Twilight movie with and.

Indeed, there are not enough fingers to count the number of films or literary works that tell about the fanged lover of blood. But the most important vampire remains Count Dracula - thanks to this character, canonical images of bloodsuckers appeared from the novel, living in complete darkness and preying on innocent people.

History and prototype

The Irish novelist and short story writer Bram Stoker was not the first writer to think of making the main antagonist of the vampire, because before him this pale-faced monster was described by the English literary genius of Italian origin John William Polidori, introducing readers to the story "The Vampire" (1819).

Writer Bram Stoker, creator of Count Dracula

The idea of the work of Polidori arose in the cloudy year of 1816, when he accompanied the lord on a trip to Europe. The friends stayed in Switzerland, where they met the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Since 1816 was characterized by inclement and rainy weather, Byron and John Polidori had to stay for a long time at Villa Diodati, located near the lake. On one of those cozy July evenings around the fireplace, George invited the assembled writers to compose a blood-curdling story.

Mary Shelley sketched out in a draft a story about a scientist from Geneva who recreated life from dead matter. These manuscripts were later transformed into the famous novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1831).

Lord Byron also offered his story, writing a short work about Augustus Darwell. But the novelist abandoned his idea, while his friend picked up this idea. However, after the publication of the story “Vampire”, this manuscript was signed with the name of Byron, and only then it became clear that the true creator of the book was Polidori, who turned the fanged monster into an aristocrat.

As for Bram Stoker, he began work on his work in the spring of 1890. Whether the writer read the story of an Italian colleague is difficult to say, but it is known that images of a future work once appeared before Stoker: an elderly man rising from a coffin and his beloved reaching for the old man's throat.

The writer's son used to say that the image of Dracula came to the creator in a dream: allegedly at night he dreamed of the vampire king, suggestive of fear and horror. In addition, Bram visited the Gothic Scottish castle Slane, which prompted the master of the pen to create a dark novel. The writer was also inspired by Sheridan le Fanu's novel Carmilla (1872).

The idea of Stoker's book changed in the summer of 1890, when he was resting in the town of Whitby, in the English county of North Yorkshire. There, the writer stumbled upon a local library, where legends and ballads from Eastern Europe about the terrible ruler of Wallachia, also known as Vlad Dracula, fell into his hands. This wearer of the crown became the prototype of the protagonist from Stoker's novel.

Such a colorful character as Tepes could not fail to attract the attention of the writer, because around his person there is an aura of all kinds of legends that can cause goosebumps on everyone's skin.

When Dracula was born into the world is not known for certain. Therefore, scholars assume that this happened between 1429–1430 and 1436. The born baby did not make the most pleasant impression: he had bulging black eyes, as if he had Graves' disease, and his protruding lip adorned his face.

However, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, the ruler of Wallachia was never known as handsome: people made up legends that his big cold eyes saw through the souls of people. Others said that Dracula, on the contrary, had an attractive appearance and was a colorful man with a jet-black mustache.

The nickname of Vlad III came to him from his father. The fact is that Vlad II was a member of the knightly Order of the Dragon, who fought against the infidels and atheists. In addition, Vlad's parent minted coins with the image of a fire-breathing monster and wore a special medallion with a dragon, proving his belonging to the order. In addition, from the Romanian language the word "Drac" is translated as "devil".

Dracula ruled the small principality of Wallachia with the capital Targovishte and paid tribute to the Turks. In 1446, a coup d'état was carried out by the Hungarians, as a result of which the ruler was cut off his head, and his brother Tepes was buried alive.

Scientists believe that it was these events that became the background to the formation of the character of Vlad III, who was known as almost the most cruel ruler in history. He became famous for his religious reforms, as well as campaigns against the Ottoman Empire, although the Turks helped Vlad III to temporarily win the throne after the attack of the Hungarians. There are indeed many legends about the atrocities of Tepes, so it becomes extremely difficult to distinguish fiction from truth.

The ruler of Wallachia was called by the Turks the Impaler, which means "spear-bearer", for impaling victims on a stake was Dracula's favorite execution. According to rumors, Vlad preferred rounded stakes: the victim slid under the weight of his own body, and the non-sharp end of the stake did not touch the vital organs, and thus death came to the martyrs only after a couple of days. They say that Vlad III loved to watch the agony of the unfortunate during dinner.

The corpses, pale from loss of blood, adorned the borders of Wallachia, for which they called Dracula a vampire. But there is no reliable information that Dracula drank human blood. In addition, there are other cruel moments in the biography of Tepes: he ordered the non-believers to drive nails into their heads, since they did not take off their hats before coming to the king, and he invited all the beggars to his dinner, and then locked them up and set fire to him, because he was tired of look at the begging inhabitants.

But, despite the inconsistency of nature, Vlad III was known in his homeland as a hero and genius of military thought. He could easily defeat the overwhelming army of enemies, for which they nicknamed Tepes "the son of the devil" and even believed that Dracula had sold his soul to Lucifer and used magical rituals.

Bram Stoker, inspired by a ruthless ruler, finished his novel only seven years later, all the while studying local folklore. But it is worth saying that the novel "Dracula" is not a biography of Tepes, but an independent literary work. No wonder some researchers do not identify the Wallachian owner of the crown with Dracula from the Irishman's book.

This book brought Stoker recognition and fame, but his triumph did not last long, because at that time Maria Corelli's mystical decadent novel The Sorrow of Satan (1895) was published, enjoying unprecedented popularity among bookstore regulars.

However, Bram Stoker's novel, which is a kind of "encyclopedia of vampires", gave impetus to a new trend in the world of literature, cinema and animation, because it was he who popularized the archetypal aristocratic vampire living in a dark castle. The novel about the bloodthirsty count became fundamental, and the writer himself acquired a crowd of followers.

The image of Dracula

Stoker described Dracula as a living corpse from Transylvania. The Count was a diligent man. In order to move to England, he read relevant literature, bought books and magazines, and also learned a non-native language. The vampire was going to buy an estate in London, but before that he had to find a lawyer. But lawyer Jonathan Hacker did not even suspect that the Romanian real estate buyer was not just a rich man, but a real monster who loves to eat human blood.

The hacker arrived at Dracula's castle, and the owner of the estate turned out to be very gallant, he even locked all potentially dangerous doors so that trouble would not happen to the guest, and also carried his belongings to the rooms on his own. In reality, Dracula came up with a cunning plan, hiding it under the guise of hypocrisy: the vampire wanted to give Jonathan to be torn to pieces by three fanged comrades-in-arms. For dinner, the lawyer was offered fried chicken, salad, cheese, and a bottle of old Tokay wine. Dracula refused to join the table, telling Hacker:

"I hope you'll excuse me if I don't keep you company: I've already had lunch and never have dinner."

As for appearance, Count Dracula was pale as marble, had an energetic and original face, a thin nose with strange nostrils, a high and haughty forehead and a black mustache. In addition, Dracula had fleshy hands with short fingers and long nails, as well as sharp snow-white teeth.

By the way, Stoker endowed the antagonist with remarkable strength. Van Helsing used to say that Dracula was endowed with the strength of twenty people and could get even with opponents alone.

The Count possessed supernatural abilities: he knew how to move along a vertical surface at great speed, he could control animals and turn into them, he commanded the elements and transformed into fog. There was not a single mirror in Dracula's house, for the vampire was not reflected in it.

Also, darkness reigned in his castle, as sunlight made the vampire weaker. In addition, Jonathan noticed that the owner of the castle does not cast a shadow and cannot move away from his own grave, so Dracula always keeps a handful of cemetery land with him.

actors

For the first time, the image of the hater of garlic, holy water and silver bullets was played by the Hungarian actor Paul Askonas in the silent film Dracula of the same name, which was released in 1921. But the audience will not be able to enjoy Paul's acting, since this film has been lost: only a few frames can be found on the Web.

Surviving frame from the first Count Dracula film

Further, in 1922, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's silent film Nosferatu was released. Symphony of Terror” (the names of the main characters had to be changed because the studio could not acquire the film rights). The main role of Count Orlok was played by Max Schreck. True, the filmmakers did not copy the image of the bloodsucker from Stoker's work: the owner of the castle appears before viewers bald, eared and without a mustache.

But the most memorable cinematic Dracula was the one played by American actor Bela Lugosi. The artist knew that the participation in the film based on the Irishman's novel would make him famous, so he approached his work with care and recreated the classic monstrous aristocrat, refusing to use makeup. Everything was perfect in Lugosi's performance: facial expressions, plasticity, and manner of speech. He signed a contract with Universal and played in several vampire films (his debut was Dracula (1931).

The first color film about Dracula was directed in 1967, the role of a vampire went to Ferdie Mayne. This film was seasoned with comedy and was a kind of fairy tale about vampires.

In 1970 and 1973, the actor reincarnated as the count, starring in the horror films "Count Dracula" and "Dracula's Devilish Rites" along with Peter Cushing.

In 1992, the directors tried to bring the film as close as possible to Stoker's work by filming Bram Stoker's Dracula. Vlad the Impaler also appeared in the Gothic drama: the story of the tape begins in the distant 1462, when Vlad Basarab goes to battle with the Turks. But the enemies sent false news to the castle that the ruler of Wallachia had been killed.

Thus, the wife () of the winner commits suicide. Dracula rejects God and becomes a vampire, vowing to return from the dead and avenge the death of his beloved. The main roles went to Richard E. Grant and other movie stars.

Three years later, the comedy parody film Dracula: Dead and Happy (1995) was released, in which he tried on the image of an eccentric bloodsucker and made the viewers laugh. Leslie's colleagues on the set were: Peter MacNicol, Steven Weber, Amy Yasbeck and Harvey Korman.

In 2004, the non-violent action movie "Van Helsing" was released, which tells about the vampire slayer. He played the main character, and the role of Dracula went to Richard Roxburgh. In the same year, he played the count, appearing in the thriller Blade: Trinity.

By the way, without much difficulty I could play the main character from the novel by Bram Stoker, since the actor already had the experience of reincarnation as a vampire in the movie Dark Shadows (2012). and was also lucky enough to try on the image of a frightening creature in the film based on the novel Interview with the Vampire (1994).

Films

The audience has seen more than sixty films about the vampire king, and the number of these films is constantly growing. In addition, Dracula often appears in animated films both as a cameo and in the title role, and fans of Japanese anime associate the count with Alucard from the Hellsing manga. List of the most popular films:

1922 - “Nosferatu. Symphony of Horror"
1931 - "Dracula" (Bela Lugosi)
1936 - Dracula's Daughter (Gloria Holden)
1943 - "Son of Dracula" (Lon Chaney Jr.)
1948 - "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (Bela Lugosi)
1965 - "Dracula: Prince of Darkness" (Christopher Lee)
1967 - Vampire Ball (Ferdy Maine)

1968 - "Dracula rises from the grave" (Christopher Lee)
1974 - "Blood for Dracula" (Udo Kier)
1992 - Bram Stoker's Dracula (Gary Oldman)
1995 - Dracula: Dead and Happy (Leslie Nielsen)
2004 - Van Helsing (Richard Roxburgh)
2004 Blade 3: Trinity (Dominic Purcell)
2014 - "Dracula" ()

Literature

1819 - The Vampire (John William Polidori)
1897 - Dracula (Bram Stoker)
1912 - "Vampires. From the family chronicle of Counts Dracula-Cardy" (Baron Olshevry)
1912 - "Dracula is immortal" (Dakre Stoker, Ian Holt)
2004 - "Dracula" (Matej Kazaku)

2007 - "Prince of Vampires" (Jeann Kalogridis)
2010 - The Dracula File (James Reese)
2011 - "Confession of Dracula" (Elena Artamonova)
2013 - Age of Dracula (Kim Newman)
2013 - "Dracula in Love" (Karin Essex)

Christopher Lee, who played the imposing Dracula, noted not without sadness that no one, even in a hundred years, would be able to outshine the inimitable Bela Lugosi, who during his lifetime dreamed of seeing a color adaptation. Lugosi was so popular that the fans gave the actor a ring, with which he practically never parted. Bela gave Christopher a copy of the jewelry, and a follower, to pay homage to his predecessor, appeared wearing the ring in every Dracula movie.

You can kill a vampire with garlic and a consecrated silver bullet. But also in the fight against the bloodthirsty monster, an aspen stake driven into the heart will help. However, Van Helsing argued that this method was not enough, and advised, in addition to everything, to cut off the monster's head. And so that the bloodsucker does not come out of the coffin, it is worth putting a rosehip branch there.
Vampires appeared not only in Romanian mythology: for example, the Slavic peoples invented ghouls who loved to count grains and sawdust. Every dead person buried in the wrong way could become a ghoul: in order to avoid turning a corpse into a vampire, a crucifix should be placed in the coffin and sawdust should be poured. The latter is necessary so that, upon waking up, the vampire begins to count the sawdust: the carried away monster will spend the whole night doing this and die at dawn.

Remedies against the vampire: aspen stake, cross, garlic

The cruel Prince Vlad Tepes had control over his people. The Wallachian ruler managed to eradicate theft. According to legend, there was a golden bowl near the well, and everyone could drink water. But no one dared to think about taking the precious dishes home, because being impaled is not the best death. They say that even after the death of Tepes, the cup stood in its proper place.
Bram filled the novel with innovations: for example, no one bit Dracula himself, he received his strength, being an adherent of a certain school of Solomon, where the Devil himself acted as the director.

Arriving in, we found that almost all of our ideas about such a popular Romanian character as Vlad Dracula were not at all correct. Having stayed in the country for several days, we, moreover, were convinced that even guides often "swim" in many issues related to it. Having received a couple of questions after the publication of the Romanian reports regarding all the same ambiguities in the history of Dracula, I decided to do a little research and write about what I managed to find out.

Vlad Dracula is the most controversial figure in Romanian history. According to fame, among the famous Romanians, only the dictator of the Soviet era Ceausescu can compete with him, but he is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, while Vlad is still interesting to thousands of people around the world.

There are so many blank spots, assumptions and myths in the history of Vlad that practically not a single statement about him can do without the prefixes "according to legend", "commonly considered" or "presumably". In addition, on top of the crumbs of historical truth, huge layers of fiction, artistic and not so, were layered. In general, the way an ordinary person who is not interested in the history of Romania now imagines the personality of Vlad Dracula is so far from the truth that it even ceased to resemble it. And "the true story of Dracula" is an almost unattainable concept.

So, for starters - the unquestioned facts of the biography of Vlad Dracula.

Very Short Biography.

- He was born in 1431, in the city of Sighisoara, in the family of the future ruler of Wallachia, Vlad II from the Besarabian family. He received a good education for that time.
- At the age of 12, together with his brother, he was given as a hostage to the Ottoman Empire. His brother Radu converted to Islam, but Vlad only became hardened, and then hated the Turks all his life.
- After the death of his father, Vlad III was elevated by the Turks to the throne of the ruler of Wallachia, but was quickly thrown off it with the participation of the Hungarian ruler Janusz Hunyadi. Vlad is forced to flee to Moldova and then to Hungary, where he becomes an adviser to his former enemy Janusz.
- In 1456, he again seeks the throne - already on his own, and for 6 years rules Wallachia, pursuing an aggressive anti-Ottoman policy.
- In 1462, on a false accusation of collusion with the Turks, Vlad III was arrested and placed under arrest.
- In 1474, Vlad was rehabilitated and in 1476, after the death of his brother Radu III, he again returned to the throne of Wallachia.
- His third reign lasted not much more than two months, after which he was killed by a sent assassin, and his head was sent to Turkey as proof of his death.
-Practically everything else from the biography of Vlad Dracula is disputed, has several versions or is not known at all ..

I will not try to draw up a complete historical portrait of Vlad - this is already drawing on a dissertation)). I will try, instead, simply to clarify the issues that caused us the most bewilderment and confused our guides.

Let's start with the simplest - the name.

What was Dracula's name?

Everyone knows who Count Dracula is, many remember Vlad Tepes, some guess that this is still more of a nickname than a real name. But what was his real name and what did it mean? In fact, the confusion begins even before the birth of Dracula.

His father, Vlad II, for his merits in the fight against the Turks, accepted into the knightly Order of the Dragon, receives the nickname Dracul in his homeland. If today's Romanian is asked to translate this word for you, he will 100% answer "devil, hell." But Vlad II willingly accepted this nickname, made it his family name, decorated the walls of churches with it .. This is due to the fact that at that time the Latin roots of the word Dracul in the Romanian Language were still alive. That is, the nickname Dracul was perceived as a derivative of the Latin draco and Vlad II was still a Dragon and not a Devil.

From him, Vlad III inherited the nickname Dracula or Dracula (rum. Drăculea), i.e. diminutive of Dragon, "Son of the Dragon". Subsequently, perhaps due to the reputation of Vlad Dracula, or perhaps simply because the dragon now sounds "balaur" in Romanian, an erroneous opinion arose that this nickname originally meant "Devil".

This is not the end of the matter. There is also another nickname: Vlad Tepes - Impaler. This is due to the "favorite" type of execution that Dracula practiced. He willingly impaled captured Turks and his opponents in his own kingdom. This name, which seems to many to be more "deserved", paradoxically, in fact, first appeared almost a hundred years after Vlad's death.

Well, with the name, it seems sorted out! So what's up with Vlad Dracula's reputation? Was he really such a cruel monster as is commonly believed?

The legendary brutality of Dracula.

Most of the stories that vividly describe the atrocities of Vlad III are based on several documents written by a certain German author just after the arrest of Dracula by the Hungarian king Matthias Korvin. At the same time, several pamphlets and engravings on the same topic were published, which became "bestsellers" and were distributed throughout Western Europe. Most likely, this is an example of a "political order" and "black PR" of that time. King Matthias was very interested in denigrating the name of Vlad in order to justify his decision to capture him. After all, the accusations (false) against Dracula were not very convincing: he was accused of conspiring with the Ottoman Empire, although he was widely known as a fierce opponent of the Turks. Apparently, this is how Dracula, a literary character, was born for the first time. Over time, the stories of his cruelty only became more colorful, overgrown with details and intertwined with folklore. In addition, a certain political and geographical distribution of stories about Vlad Tepes is interesting - in Western Europe, the motive of Vlad the monster, a maniac who enjoys the suffering of his victims, prevails, in Eastern Europe, Romania itself and Russia, the main motive is the motive of Vlad the harsh ruler, cruel but fair .

But it cannot be said that all evidence of the cruelty of Vlad III is fiction. Documents from the entire period of his reign, including his own letters, testify to the executions of thousands of people.
It is known that even in his youth, Vlad Dracula had an explosive, stubborn and rebellious character, which made his stay in Turkish captivity especially difficult. Subsequently, his hatred of the Turks exceeded all reasonable limits. In the war, he did not know mercy, he was not embarrassed by any means to achieve the goal. And inside the country, in the eternal confrontation with the boyars, who were constantly trying to challenge and limit his power, he showed himself to be a ruler of more than a tough temper. Perhaps that is why, during his reign, Vlad III was popular among the people and unpopular among the boyars.

No less confusing is everything related to Dracula's castle.

"Castles of Dracula".

It’s not even immediately clear where to start .. Everywhere and everywhere "Dracula's Castle" (or, even better, "Count Dracula's Castle") is called Bran Castle in Transylvania. This is wrong, as far as anything can be wrong :)

The historical Vlad Dracula did not build this castle, did not live in it, did not storm it .. Yes, in general, in fact, he had nothing to do with it. According to one version, he spent some time in this castle as a prisoner before he was sent to Hungary, but this version is pretty far-fetched, since there is a record that he was arrested in the Oratia fortress nearby, and about keeping him in Bran not a word is written anywhere.

As for the character of Bram Stoker, the literary Count Dracula, he did not live here either. More precisely, there is no evidence that Bran was the prototype of the habitat of the Transylvanian Vampire and that Stoker even knew about this castle.

Where did this legend come from? Unclear. Romanian guides suggest that the tourists themselves decided to christen this castle that way. To be honest, it's not entirely clear why. The castle does not at all resemble an ominous vampire stronghold - it is bright and joyful.

So where to look for Dracula's ancestral home? Let's go in order.
Vlad was born, as I already wrote, in the city of Sighisoara. His father's mansion there is solid enough, but it doesn't look like a castle.

During his reign, Vlad lived in the city of Targovishte, which was at that time the capital of Wallachia. It is known that he built the tower of Kindia there, but this, of course, is not a castle.

Perhaps the best candidate for the role of Dracula's castle is Poenari Castle. Built long before the birth of Vlad, it was the ancestral castle of the Bessarabians, but was abandoned and destroyed. During his reign, Vlad Dracula ordered the restoration and expansion of the castle, due to its excellent strategic position.
In addition to its historical connection to Vlad, Poenari Castle boasts a local legend that makes it even more appealing to Dracula fans.

According to legend, the Turkish army, led by Vlad's brother, Radu Bey, who converted to Islam, was preparing to besiege Poenari Castle, in which at that time Vlad Dracula's love, Justin, was located, while he himself was away. Among Radu's entourage was a former servant of Vlad, who remained faithful to the old master. He writes a note with a warning about the approach of the Turkish army, and sends it with an arrow through the window of the princely chambers of the castle. Justina, having read the note and realizing that the castle is surrounded and, in the absence of Vlad and his army, will inevitably be taken, rushes from the walls of the castle into the river flowing under the slope of the cliff on which the castle stands, preferring death to Turkish captivity. Since then, the river flowing under the walls of Poenari Castle has been called Râul Doamnei, which translates as the River of the Princess.
We see the transcription of this legend in an episode of the famous film by Francis Ford Coppola "Dracula".

The last Romanian castle associated with the name of Dracula - Corvin Castle in Hunedoara leads us to the following topic:

Hungarian captivity of Dracula.

At first glance, everything is clear and understandable. It is "historically recorded" that in 1462 Vlad III was arrested and placed in the dungeon of the Corvin castle, and in 1474 he was rehabilitated and in 1476 for the third time takes the rights of the ruler of Wallachia. Not at all doubting their words, the guides of Corvin Castle say, pointing to the eerie casemate in the basement of the castle: "The famous Vlad Dracula spent 12 years in prison here."

When I began to study this issue, I was immediately confused by another "historically recorded" fact: around 1465, Vlad married the cousin of the Hungarian king.. Hardly right in this cell?

Continuing the search on the Internet, I was able to come up with something like this picture:
In 1462, Vlad was actually arrested near the fortress of Oratia on a false charge of collusion with the Turks. For Matthias Korvin, this was a "necessary" political step: shortly before that, he received money from the Papal Throne for a crusade against the Turks, but he squandered the funds for other purposes. A "scapegoat" was urgently needed, and Vlad, losing in the war of the Ottoman Empire, and intending to ask for help from the Hungarian king, became the best candidate ..

But from Oratia, he was transported not to Corvin, but to Vysehrad, in Hungary. As a high-ranking prisoner, he was in Visegrad Castle under "house arrest" rather than in a dungeon. For the winter, he moved to the capital of Hungary, returning back in the summer. Vlad quickly won the favor of Matthias Korvin. It was not so difficult: Vlad's pro-Ottoman brother, Radu III, reigned in Wallachia, the Turks continued to press on the Hungarian and Moldavian borders, in addition, Vlad had political supporters. Dracula soon got married, further strengthening his position, had two children and, as a result, finally moved to Budapest. In general, apparently, this was the most calm and stable period of his life. And Corwin Castle seems to have no place at all in the real story of Dracula ..

Portrait of Dracula.

The only portrait made during his lifetime dates back to the time of Vlad's captivity (the original has not been preserved), which later became a model for all other existing images of him. The most popular oil portrait was made many years after Vlad's death and does not convey an exact resemblance to the original. For unknown reasons, the artist gave Vlad here the hereditary features of the Habsburgs.

But, speaking of the portrait of Dracula, I want to paint a portrait of his personality rather than his appearance.

So, what kind of portrait of Dracula's personality is formed as a result? He is by no means similar to that gloomy man-beast who spent two-thirds of his life in a cage and went mad during his short reign and was nicknamed the "Son of the Devil", which was painted for posterity by medieval "historians".

The "Son of the Dragon" is a sharp, energetic person, a talented commander, a flexible, charismatic politician, he, heading a not at all large state, resisted the onslaught of the huge Ottoman Empire all his life. Forced to take advantage of any help offered, even by the murderers of his own family, he rebuilds his war-ravaged principality. Of course, not a saint, he does not miss the opportunity to take cruel revenge on the Turks, who crippled his youth and took away his brother from him, and on enemies among the nobility of his own country, as a result of whose conspiracy his father was killed and his older brother was buried alive. He himself is betrayed again and again, by his own allies and neighbors, but he does not give up, until the last, striving for his goal, until the killer's hand manages to reach him from the back.
Such a person really deserves to become a literary character! But fate decreed otherwise.

Dracula vampire.

The legend of the "Nosferatu", Dracula Vampire, of course, was created by Brem Stoker, who wrote his own novel that has become so popular. The name of the legendary count and the ancient Wallachian prince coincide, of course, not by chance. Bram Stoker's diaries mention a book by William Wilkinson, a British diplomat in Eastern Europe, in which he could find a mention of Vlad Dracula. Also, Stoker could have learned about Romanian legends in which the walking dead are present from his friend, the Hungarian professor Armin Vamberi. This conjecture is confirmed by the fact that in the novel, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing says that the source of his information about Count Dracula is Professor Arminius. The novel also has some parallels with Vlad's real biography: his participation in the war with the Turks is emphasized, and even a brother is mentioned who betrayed him and went over to the side of the enemy.
In his book, Stoker combined Dracula's name with a motif of vampirism drawn from the gothic novels of the time and possibly Eastern European fairy tales, in which vampires, werewolves, ghosts, ghosts, and the like abound.
So Dracula became the hero of the bestseller for the second time :)

Francis Ford Coppola (or rather, his screenwriter) certainly did an excellent preparatory work before the start of filming of the film "Bram Stoker's Dracula". In addition to the excellent arrangement of the novel, we see the added elements that tie the action even more tightly to the historical landscape. Firstly, in the film we see a presentation of the already mentioned legend about the death of Vlad's wife, who even has a consonant name - Mina, and secondly, the "Order of the Dragon founded by Count Dracula" is mentioned.

Order of the Dragon.

Such an order really existed, but its founder was neither Dracula nor even his father, Vlad II, but the king of the Holy Roman Empire, Sigismund. The order had as its goal to fight the enemies of Christianity, in particular, the Ottoman Empire. Vlad's father was knighted in the Order of the Dragon for his merits in the war against the Turks, thus receiving his nickname Dracul, founding the Drăculeşti dynasty and leaving his son the name Dracula, which means "Son of the Dragon".
The symbol of the order was a dragon curled up in a ring against the background of a cross. It is said that this coat of arms was depicted on the walls of several churches in Romania by order of Vlad II, although we did not manage to see a single one during our visit.

According to some reports, Vlad Dracula, at the age of five, was also accepted into this order, although this is doubtful. The fact is that in 1436, just when Vlad Dracula was 5 years old, his father was officially deleted from the list of members of the Order of the Dragon because, having broken under the onslaught of the Ottoman Empire, he recognized the power of the Sultan over himself and was forced into as a guide, take part in the invasion of Transylvania .. However, after the death of Sigismund in 1437, the order quickly lost its influence.

Descendants of Dracula.

And in this "simple" question, not everything is as simple as it could be :) According to various sources, Vlad had two or three wives who bore him three or four sons and, possibly, a daughter. Apparently, one of the wives was not married to him and one of the sons was illegitimate, which causes confusion in the sources.
In any case, the Dracul family did not end on Vlad III. The Draculesti continued to live and rule in Wallachia until 1600, the year of the reunification of Wallachia with Transylvania and Moldavia.
And now, among his distant descendants, one can name even such famous people as Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain.

Although the descendants of Dracula are alive, there are no direct heirs of this kind. Among the Transylvanian peaks, an old man who calls himself the last descendant of the famous governor Vlad does not live in a lonely castle, and if he does, we could not find him, but maybe one of the future guests of Romania will be lucky? :)

All illustrations in this post were found on the Internet and belong to their authors.

“There was a bloodthirsty prince Dracula in the world. He put people on a stake, roasted them on coals, boiled their heads in a cauldron, skinned them alive, cut them into pieces and drank blood from them ... ”- said Abraham Van Helsing, leafing through a book about the lifetime crimes of a formidable vampire. Many people remember this episode from F. Coppola's film, based on Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula", and, perhaps, it was from this film that they learned that Dracula was not a fictional character. The famous vampire has a prototype - Prince of Wallachia Vlad Dracula (Tepes), who ruled this Romanian principality in the middle of the 15th century. Indeed, to this day this man is called the “great monster”, who overshadowed Herod and Nero with his atrocities.
Vlad Dracula. The only lifetime portrait of the prince, painted from him by an unknown artist during his imprisonment in a Hungarian prison.

Let's leave it to Stoker's conscience that he "turned" a real historical figure into a mythical monster, and try to figure out how justified the accusations of cruelty and whether Dracula committed all those atrocities that make the vampire addiction to the blood of young girls seem innocent fun.
The acts of the prince, widely disseminated by the literary works of the 15th century, really chill the blood. Stories about how Dracula loved to feast, watching the torments of impaled victims, how he burned vagabonds whom he himself invited to a feast, how he ordered nails to be hammered into the heads of foreign ambassadors who did not take off their hats, and so on, so on ... the imagination of the reader, who first learned about the atrocities of this medieval ruler, there is an image of a ferocious ruthless man with a sharp look of unkind eyes, reflecting the black essence of the villain. This image is quite consistent with the German book engravings, depicting the features of a tyrant, but the engravings appeared after the death of Vlad.
But those who happen to see a lifetime portrait of Dracula, practically unknown in Russia, will be disappointed - the person depicted on the canvas clearly “does not pull” on a bloodthirsty sadist and maniac. A small experiment showed that people who did not know who exactly was depicted on the canvas often called the "unknown" beautiful, unhappy ... Let's try and forget about the reputation of the "great monster" for a minute, look at the portrait of Dracula with an open mind. First of all, Vlad's large, suffering, beautiful eyes attract attention. In them one can notice confusion, fear, but there is not even a shadow of cruelty and anger. And the unnatural thinness of his emaciated yellowish face is also striking. Looking at the portrait, one can assume that this man suffered severe trials and hardships, that he is more of a martyr than a monster, a victim, not an executioner...

What is it: the intentional deception of the artist or such a striking discrepancy between the true portrait of Dracula and the characteristic given to him has a different explanation? Let's conduct a little investigation, referring to the "evidence" - written documents of the XV century. Do all of them, as it seems at first glance, testify against Dracula, or is it just the tip of the iceberg, the most spectacular memorable works that pushed dry, boring documents into the background? Indeed, we judge Vlad's actions by artistic, mostly German stories of that period, leaving aside the letters of the prince himself and other official documents that have survived to this day in the archives, dating back to the time of his reign. How does Vlad Dracula appear in the light of an objective historical analysis?
House in the Transylvanian city of Sighisoara, where in 1431 Dracula was born and spent the first years of his life. On the facade of the building there is a sign saying that Vlad's father, Vlad Dracul, lived here, and in one of the rooms, in which little Vlad was supposedly born, fragments of a wall painting were found during restoration. Today, the house is not a museum, but a restaurant "Dracula".

Vlad led Wallachia at the age of twenty-five, in 1456, at a very difficult time for the principality, when the Ottoman Empire expanded its possessions in the Balkans, capturing one country after another. Serbia and Bulgaria have already fallen under Turkish oppression, Constantinople fell, a direct threat hung over the Romanian principalities. The prince of small Wallachia successfully resisted the aggressor and even attacked the Turks himself, having made a trip to the territory of occupied Bulgaria in 1458. One of the goals of the campaign is to liberate and resettle in the lands of Wallachia the Bulgarian peasants who professed Orthodoxy. Europe enthusiastically welcomed the victory of Dracula, and the impulsive Italians even began to call the inhabitants of Wallachia "raguli", in honor of their fearless prince. Nevertheless, a big war with Turkey was inevitable. Wallachia prevented the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, and Sultan Mehmed II decided to overthrow the objectionable prince by military means. The throne of Wallachia was claimed by the younger brother of Dracula Radu the Beautiful, who converted to Islam and became the favorite of the Sultan. Realizing that he could not alone resist the largest Turkish army since the conquest of Constantinople, Dracula turned to his allies for help. Among them were Pope Pius II, who promised to give money for the crusade, and the young Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus, who called Vlad "beloved and faithful friend", and leaders of other Christian countries. All of them verbally supported the Wallachian prince, however, when trouble struck in the summer of 1462, Dracula was left face to face with a formidable enemy.
The situation was desperate, and Vlad did everything possible to survive in this unequal fight. He drafted into the army the entire male population of the principality from the age of twelve, used the scorched earth tactics, leaving burnt villages to the enemy, where it was impossible to replenish food supplies, waged a guerrilla war. Another weapon of the prince was the panicky horror that he inspired in the invaders. Defending his land, Dracula ruthlessly exterminated enemies, in particular, impaled the prisoners, using execution against the Turks, which was very “popular” in the Ottoman Empire itself.
Dracula's seal. The inscription in Old Church Slavonic reads: “Vlad Voevoda, by the grace of God, is the lord of the land of Ungrovlachia.”

The Turkish-Wallachian war of the summer of 1462 went down in history with the famous night attack, during which it was possible to destroy up to fifteen thousand Ottomans. The Sultan was already standing at the capital of the principality of Targovishte, when Dracula, along with seven thousand of his soldiers, penetrated into the enemy camp, intending to kill the Turkish leader and thereby stop the aggression. Vlad did not succeed in carrying out his daring plan to the end, but an unexpected night attack caused panic in the enemy camp and, as a result, very heavy losses. After the bloody night, Mehmed II left Wallachia, leaving part of the troops to Radu the Handsome, who himself had to wrest power from the hands of his older brother.
Dracula's brilliant victory over the troops of the Sultan turned out to be useless: Vlad defeated the enemy, but could not resist the "friends". The betrayal of the Moldavian Prince Stefan, cousin and friend of Dracula, who unexpectedly sided with Radu, turned out to be a turning point in the war. Dracula could not fight on two fronts and retreated to Transylvania, where the troops of another "friend" - the Hungarian king Matthias Corvin, who came to the rescue, were waiting for him.
The photograph shows what remains of Curtea Veche - a palace in Bucharest built by Dracula, from the 16th century - the official residence of the Wallachian princes. A few years ago, a bust of the founder of the capital was erected in front of the ruins of the palace. Dracula began the construction of Bucharest around 1459, intending to build a powerful fortress that blocked the way for Turkish invaders.
And then something strange happened. In the midst of negotiations, Corwin ordered the arrest of his "faithful and beloved friend", accusing him of secret correspondence with Turkey. In letters allegedly intercepted by the Hungarians, Dracula begged Mehmed II for forgiveness, offered his help in capturing Hungary and the Hungarian king himself. Most modern historians consider the letters to be a crudely fabricated forgery: they are written in a manner unusual for Dracula, the proposals put forward in them are absurd, but most importantly, the original letters, these most important pieces of evidence that decided the fate of the prince, were “lost”, and only their copies in Latin have survived. given in the "Notes" of Pius II. Signatures Dracula on them, of course, did not stand. Nevertheless, Vlad was arrested at the end of November 1462, put in chains and sent to the Hungarian capital Buda, where he was imprisoned for about twelve years without trial or investigation.

What made Matthias agree with absurd accusations and brutally crack down on his ally, who at one time helped him ascend the Hungarian throne? The reason turned out to be banal. According to the author of the "Hungarian Chronicle" Antonio Bonfini, Matthias Corvinus received forty thousand guilders from Pope Pius II for the crusade, but did not use this money for its intended purpose. In other words, the king, constantly in need of money, simply pocketed a significant amount and shifted the blame for the thwarted campaign to his vassal, who allegedly played a double game and intrigued with the Turks. However, accusations of treason against a man known in Europe for his uncompromising struggle against the Ottoman Empire, the one who almost killed and actually put to flight the conqueror of Constantinople Mehmed II, sounded quite absurd. Wanting to understand what really happened, Pius II instructed his envoy in Buda, Nicholas Modrusse, to sort out what was happening on the spot. Here is how Modrussa described the appearance of a prisoner who was in the Hungarian dungeons:
King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary. The younger son of Janos Hunyadi liked to be portrayed in the manner of a Roman emperor, with a laurel wreath on his head. He was considered the patron of science and art. During the years of Matthias' reign, the expenses of his court increased sharply, and the king was looking for ways to replenish the treasury - from increasing taxes to using money transferred by the Vatican to the crusades.

“He was not very tall, but very stocky and strong, with a cold and terrible look, a strong aquiline nose, swollen nostrils and a thin reddish face, on which very long eyelashes framed large, wide-open green eyes; thick black eyebrows made him look menacing. His face and chin were shaved, but there was a mustache, swollen temples increased the volume of his head, a bull neck tied his head to his torso, wavy black curls hung down on his broad shoulders.
Modrussa left no evidence that the prisoner of King Matthias spoke in his defense, but the description of his appearance turned out to be more eloquent than any words. The appearance of Dracula was actually terrible: a swollen, noticeably enlarged head and a bloodshot face indicated that the prince was tortured, forcing him to admit false accusations, such as signing trumped-up letters and thereby legitimizing Corvin's actions. But Vlad, who survived in his youth, even before coming to power, the horrors of Turkish captivity, courageously faced new trials. He did not incriminate himself, did not put his signature on falsified documents, and the king had to come up with other accusations that did not require a written confession of the captive.
The prince was accused of cruelty, which he allegedly showed against the Saxon population of Transylvania, which was part of the Hungarian kingdom. According to Modrussa, Matthias Korvin personally spoke about the atrocities of his vassal, and then presented an anonymous document in which he reported in detail, with German punctuality, about the bloody adventures of the “great monster”. The denunciation spoke of tens of thousands of tortured civilians and for the first time mentioned anecdotes about beggars burned alive, about monks impaled, about how Dracula ordered hats to be nailed to the heads of foreign ambassadors, and other similar stories. An unknown author compared the Wallachian prince with the tyrants of antiquity, arguing that during his reign, Wallachia resembled a “forest of those impaled”, accused Vlad of unprecedented cruelty, but at the same time did not care at all about the plausibility of his story. There are a lot of contradictions in the text of the denunciation, for example, the names of settlements given in the document, where 20-30 thousand (!) People were allegedly destroyed, still cannot be identified by historians.

Corvinesti Castle in Transylvania is the family home of the Hungarian king Matthias Corvin. The small fortress turned into a luxurious castle under the father of Matthias Janos Hunyadi (Corvin). The fate of Hunyadi himself is quite interesting. The small Wallachian nobleman made a career by participating in the Hussite wars and crusades, in which he did not disdain to plunder his allies. Over time, Hunyadi became the owner of the largest fortune and high positions in the state, was elected ruler of the Kingdom of Hungary.
What was the documentary basis for this denunciation? We know that Dracula actually made several raids into Transylvania, destroying the conspirators hiding there, among whom were pretenders to the Wallachian throne. But, despite these local military operations, the prince did not interrupt commercial relations with the Transylvanian Saxon cities of Sibiu and Brasov, which is confirmed by Dracula's business correspondence of that period. It is very important to note that, in addition to the denunciation that appeared in 1462, there is not a single earlier evidence of massacres of civilians in Transylvania in the 50s of the 15th century.
It is impossible to imagine how the destruction of tens of thousands of people, which took place regularly for several years, could go unnoticed in Europe and would not be reflected in the chronicles and diplomatic correspondence of those years. Consequently, Dracula's raids on the enclaves that belonged to Wallachia, but located on the territory of Transylvania, were considered in European countries as an internal affair of Wallachia at the time they were carried out and did not cause any public outcry. Based on these facts, it can be argued that the anonymous document that first reported the atrocities of the "great monster" was not true and turned out to be another fake fabricated by order of King Matthias following the "letter to the Sultan" in order to justify the illegal arrest of Vlad Dracula.
For Pope Pius II - and he was a close friend of the German Emperor Frederick III and because of this sympathized with the Saxon population of Transylvania - such explanations were enough. He did not interfere in the fate of a high-ranking prisoner, leaving the decision of the Hungarian king in force. But Matthias Korvin himself, feeling the precariousness of the accusations made by him, continued to discredit Dracula, who was languishing in prison, resorting, in modern terms, to the services of the "mass media". A poem by Michael Behaim, created on the basis of a denunciation, engravings depicting a cruel tyrant, “sent around the world for public viewing”, and, finally, many editions of early printed brochures (of which thirteen have come down to us) under the general title “About one great monster” - all this was supposed to form a negative attitude towards Dracula, turning him from a hero into a villain.
Illustration for the first printed brochures "On a Great Monster Called Dracula Wajda" (Lübeck, 1488; Bamberg, 1491). It is known that the German book engravings of the 15th century were conditional and did not have a portrait resemblance to the real people depicted on them. However, these engravings, which appeared after the death of the prince, are still perceived as “portraits” of Dracula to this day.
The portrait of Vlad, which has already been mentioned, was also painted during his imprisonment. Perhaps Matthias wanted to get the image of the "monster", but miscalculated - the artist's brush captured on the canvas the noble, dignified appearance of the Wallachian prince. And the rich clothes only emphasized the yellow, sickly complexion and the extreme degree of exhaustion of the prisoner, indicating the terrible conditions in which he was actually kept.

Apparently, Matthias Korvin was not going to release his captive, dooming him to a slow death in a dungeon. But fate gave Dracula the opportunity to survive another takeoff. During the reign of Radu the Beautiful, Wallachia completely submitted to Turkey, which could not but disturb the new Pope Sixtus IV. It was probably the intervention of the pontiff that changed the fate of Dracula. The Prince of Wallachia actually showed that he could withstand the Turkish threat, and therefore it was Vlad who had to lead the Christian army into battle in a new crusade. The conditions for the prince's release from prison were his conversion from the Orthodox to the Catholic faith and his marriage to his cousin Matthias Korvin. Paradoxically, the “great monster” could get freedom only by becoming related to the Hungarian king, who until recently represented Dracula as a bloodthirsty monster…
Two years after the release, in the summer of 1476, Vlad, as one of the commanders of the Hungarian army, went on a campaign; his goal was to liberate the Turkish-occupied Wallachia. The troops passed through the territory of Transylvania, and documents have been preserved that say that the townspeople of the Saxon Brasov joyfully welcomed the return of the “great monster”, which, according to the denunciation, committed unheard-of atrocities here a few years ago.
Entering Wallachia with battles, Dracula drove out the Turkish troops and on November 26, 1476 again ascended the throne of the principality. His reign turned out to be very short - the prince was surrounded by obvious and hidden enemies, and therefore the fatal denouement was inevitable. The death of Vlad at the end of December of that year is shrouded in mystery. There are several versions of what happened, but they all boil down to the fact that the prince fell victim to treason, trusting the traitors who were in his entourage. It is known that the head of Dracula was donated to the Turkish sultan, and he ordered to put it on one of the squares of Constantinople. And Romanian folklore sources report that the headless body of the prince was found by the monks of the Snagov monastery located near Bucharest and buried in a chapel built by Dracula himself near the altar.
Thus ended the short but bright life of Vlad Dracula. Why, contrary to the facts testifying that the Wallachian prince was “framed” and slandered, does the rumor continue to attribute to him atrocities that he never committed? Opponents of Dracula argue: firstly, numerous works by various authors report Vlad's cruelty, and, therefore, such a point of view cannot but be objective, and secondly, there are no chronicles in which he appears as a ruler doing pious deeds. It is easy to refute such arguments. An analysis of the works that talk about the atrocities of Dracula proves that they all either go back to a handwritten denunciation of 1462, “justifying” the arrest of the Wallachian prince, or were written by people who were at the Hungarian court during the reign of Matthias Corvin. From here, the Russian ambassador to Hungary, clerk Fyodor Kuritsyn, drew information for his story about Dracula, written around 1484.

Having penetrated into Wallachia, the widely disseminated stories about the deeds of the “great monster” were transformed into pseudo-folklore narratives, which in fact have nothing to do with the folk tales recorded by folklorists in the regions of Romania directly related to the life of Dracula. As for the Turkish chronicles, the original episodes, which do not coincide with the German works, deserve closer attention. In them, Turkish chroniclers, not sparing colors, describe the cruelty and courage of the “Kazykly” (which means Impaler), who terrified the enemies, and even partially acknowledge the fact that he put the Sultan to flight. We are well aware that the descriptions of the course of hostilities by the opposing sides cannot be impartial, but we do not dispute the fact that Vlad Dracula really dealt with the invaders who came to his land very cruelly. After analyzing the sources of the 15th century, we can confidently assert that Dracula did not commit the monstrous crimes attributed to him. He acted in accordance with the cruel laws of war, but the destruction of the aggressor on the battlefield can under no circumstances be equated with the genocide of the civilian population, in which Dracula was accused by the customer of the anonymous denunciation. The stories of the atrocities in Transylvania, for which Dracula received the reputation of the "great monster", turned out to be slander, pursuing specific selfish goals. History has developed in such a way that descendants judge Dracula by the way Vlad's actions were described by his enemies, who sought to discredit the prince - where can we talk about objectivity in such a situation ?!
As for the lack of chronicles praising Dracula, this is due to the too short period of his reign. He simply did not have time, and perhaps did not consider it necessary to acquire court chroniclers, whose duties included praising the ruler. Another thing is King Matthias, famous for his enlightenment and humanism, “with whose death justice also died,” or the Moldavian prince Stefan, who ruled for almost half a century, betrayed Dracula and impaled two thousand Romanians, but at the same time was nicknamed the Great and Holy ...

In the muddy stream of lies it is difficult to discern the truth, but, fortunately, documentary evidence has come down to us of how Vlad Dracula ruled the country. The letters signed by him have been preserved, in which he gave land to the peasants, granted privileges to monasteries, an agreement with Turkey, scrupulously and consistently defending the rights of the citizens of Wallachia. We know that Dracula insisted on the observance of church burial rites for executed criminals, and this very important fact completely refutes the claim that he impaled the inhabitants of the Romanian principalities who professed Christianity. It is known that he built churches and monasteries, founded Bucharest, fought the Turkish invaders with desperate courage, defending his people and his land. And there is also a legend about how Dracula met with God, trying to find out where his father's grave is located, in order to erect a temple on this place ...
There are two types of Dracula. We know Dracula - the national hero of Romania, a wise and brave ruler, a martyr, betrayed by friends and spent about a third of his life in prison, slandered, slandered, but not broken. However, we also know another Dracula - the hero of anecdotal stories of the 15th century, a maniac, a "great monster", and later a god-damned vampire. By the way, about vampirism: no matter what atrocities the prince was accused of by his contemporaries, there is not a single written source that says that he drank the blood of his victims. The idea of "turning" Dracula into a vampire only arose in the 19th century. A member of the occult Order of the Golden Dawn (he practiced black magic), Bram Stoker became interested in this historical figure at the suggestion of Professor Arminius Vambery, who was known not only as a scientist, but also as a Hungarian nationalist. This is how Count Dracula appeared - a literary character who gradually turned in the mass consciousness into the main vampire of all times and peoples.
The two diametrically opposed images of the Wallachian prince have nothing in common, but to answer the question of what kind of person Vlad Dracula really was, it is enough to see his portrait, look into those wise and sad eyes.
___________________
From the internet

The famous vampire has a prototype - Prince of Wallachia Vlad Dracula Tepes (Tepes - from the Romanian tepea - a stake, literally - a piercer, impaler), who ruled this Romanian principality in the middle of the 15th century. Indeed, to this day this man is called the “great monster”, who overshadowed Herod and Nero with his atrocities.

You probably already know all the details of this historical-fiction figure inside and out? Let's just summarize what is known.

But those who happen to see a lifetime portrait of Dracula, practically unknown in Russia, will be disappointed - the person depicted on the canvas clearly “does not pull” on a bloodthirsty sadist and maniac. A small experiment showed that people who did not know who exactly was depicted on the canvas often called the "unknown" beautiful, unhappy ... Let's try and forget about the reputation of the "great monster" for a minute, look at the portrait of Dracula with an open mind. First of all, Vlad's large, pained eyes attract attention. And the unnatural thinness of his emaciated yellowish face is also striking. Looking at the portrait, one can assume that this man suffered severe trials and hardships, that he is more of a martyr than an executioner...

Clickable 1800 px

The throne of Wallachia was claimed by the younger brother of Dracula Radu the Beautiful, who converted to Islam and became the favorite of the Sultan. Realizing that he could not alone resist the largest Turkish army since the conquest of Constantinople, Dracula turned to his allies for help. Among them were Pope Pius II, who promised to give money for the crusade, and the young Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus, who called Vlad "beloved and faithful friend", and leaders of other Christian countries. All of them verbally supported the Wallachian prince, however, when trouble struck in the summer of 1462, Dracula was left face to face with a formidable enemy.

The situation was desperate, and Vlad did everything possible to survive in this unequal fight. He drafted into the army the entire male population of the principality from the age of twelve, used the scorched earth tactics, leaving burnt villages to the enemy, where it was impossible to replenish food supplies, waged a guerrilla war. Another weapon of the prince was the panicky horror that he inspired in the invaders. Defending his land, Dracula ruthlessly exterminated enemies, in particular, impaled the prisoners, using execution against the Turks, which was very “popular” in the Ottoman Empire itself.

And then something strange happened. In the midst of negotiations, Corwin ordered the arrest of his "faithful and beloved friend", accusing him of secret correspondence with Turkey. In letters allegedly intercepted by the Hungarians, Dracula begged Mehmed II for forgiveness, offered his help in capturing Hungary and the Hungarian king himself. Most modern historians consider the letters a crudely fabricated forgery: they are written in a manner unusual for Dracula, the proposals put forward in them are absurd, but most importantly, the original letters, these most important pieces of evidence that decided the fate of the prince, were “lost”, and only their copies in Latin have survived. given in the "Notes" of Pius II. Signatures Dracula on them, of course, did not stand. Nevertheless, Vlad was arrested at the end of November 1462, put in chains and sent to the Hungarian capital Buda, where he was imprisoned for about twelve years without trial or investigation.

However, accusations of treason against a man known in Europe for his uncompromising struggle against the Ottoman Empire, the one who almost killed and actually put to flight the conqueror of Constantinople Mehmed II, sounded quite absurd. Wanting to understand what really happened, Pius II instructed his envoy in Buda, Nicholas Modrusse, to sort out what was happening on the spot.

King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary. The younger son of Janos Hunyadi liked to be portrayed in the manner of a Roman emperor, with a laurel wreath on his head. He was considered the patron of science and art. During Matthias' reign, the expenses of his court skyrocketed, and the king found ways to replenish the treasury - from increasing taxes to using money transferred by the Vatican to the crusades. The prince was accused of cruelty, which he allegedly showed against the Saxon population of Transylvania, which was part of the Hungarian kingdom. Matthias Korvin personally spoke about the atrocities of his vassal, and then presented an anonymous document in which he reported in detail, with German punctuality, about the bloody adventures of the “great monster”.

The denunciation spoke of tens of thousands of tortured civilians and for the first time mentioned anecdotes about beggars burned alive, about monks impaled, about how Dracula ordered hats to be nailed to the heads of foreign ambassadors, and other similar stories. An unknown author compared the Wallachian prince with the tyrants of antiquity, arguing that during his reign, Wallachia resembled a “forest of those impaled”, accused Vlad of unprecedented cruelty, but at the same time did not care at all about the plausibility of his story. There are a lot of contradictions in the text of the denunciation, for example, the names of settlements given in the document, where 20-30 thousand (!) People were allegedly destroyed, still cannot be identified by historians.

What was the documentary basis for this denunciation? We know that Dracula actually made several raids into Transylvania, destroying the conspirators hiding there, among whom were pretenders to the Wallachian throne. But, despite these local military operations, the prince did not interrupt commercial relations with the Transylvanian Saxon cities of Sibiu and Brasov, which is confirmed by Dracula's business correspondence of that period. It is very important to note that, in addition to the denunciation that appeared in 1462, there is not a single earlier evidence of massacres of civilians in Transylvania in the 50s of the 15th century. It is impossible to imagine how the destruction of tens of thousands of people, which took place regularly for several years, could go unnoticed in Europe and would not be reflected in the chronicles and diplomatic correspondence of those years.

Consequently, Dracula's raids on the enclaves that belonged to Wallachia, but located on the territory of Transylvania, were considered in European countries as an internal affair of Wallachia at the time they were carried out and did not cause any public outcry. Based on these facts, it can be argued that the anonymous document that first reported the atrocities of the "great monster" was not true and turned out to be another fake fabricated by order of King Matthias following the "letter to the Sultan" in order to justify the illegal arrest of Vlad Dracula. For Pope Pius II, who was a close friend of the German emperor Frederick III and therefore sympathized with the Saxon population of Transylvania, such explanations were enough. He did not interfere in the fate of a high-ranking prisoner, leaving the decision of the Hungarian king in force. But Matthias Korvin himself, feeling the precariousness of the accusations made by him, continued to discredit Dracula, who was languishing in prison, resorting, in modern terms, to the services of the "mass media". A poem by Michael Behaim, created on the basis of a denunciation, engravings depicting a cruel tyrant, “sent around the world for public viewing”, and, finally, many editions of early printed brochures (of which thirteen have come down to us) under the general title “About one great monster” - all this was supposed to form a negative attitude towards Dracula, turning him from a hero into a villain. Apparently, Matthias Korvin was not going to release his captive, dooming him to a slow death in a dungeon. But fate gave Dracula the opportunity to survive another takeoff.

During the reign of Radu the Beautiful, Wallachia completely submitted to Turkey, which could not but disturb the new Pope Sixtus IV. It was probably the intervention of the pontiff that changed the fate of Dracula. The Prince of Wallachia actually showed that he could withstand the Turkish threat, and therefore it was Vlad who had to lead the Christian army into battle in a new crusade. The conditions for the prince's release from prison were his conversion from the Orthodox to the Catholic faith and his marriage to his cousin Matthias Korvin. Paradoxically, the “great monster” could get freedom only by becoming related to the Hungarian king, who until recently represented Dracula as a bloodthirsty monster…

Two years after the release, in the summer of 1476, Vlad, as one of the commanders of the Hungarian army, went on a campaign; his goal was to liberate the Turkish-occupied Wallachia. The troops passed through the territory of Transylvania, and documents have been preserved that say that the townspeople of the Saxon Brasov joyfully welcomed the return of the “great monster”, which, according to the denunciation, committed unheard-of atrocities here a few years ago. Entering Wallachia with battles, Dracula drove out the Turkish troops and on November 26, 1476 again ascended the throne of the principality. His reign turned out to be very short - the prince was surrounded by obvious and hidden enemies, and therefore the fatal denouement was inevitable.

The death of Vlad at the end of December of that year is shrouded in mystery. There are several versions of what happened, but they all boil down to the fact that the prince fell victim to treason, trusting the traitors who were in his entourage. It is known that the head of Dracula was donated to the Turkish sultan, and he ordered to put it on one of the squares of Constantinople. And Romanian folklore sources report that the headless body of the prince was found by the monks of the Snagov monastery located near Bucharest and buried in a chapel built by Dracula himself near the altar.

Thus ended the short but bright life of Vlad Dracula. Why, contrary to the facts testifying that the Wallachian prince was “framed” and slandered, does the rumor continue to attribute to him atrocities that he never committed? Opponents of Dracula argue: firstly, numerous works by various authors report Vlad's cruelty, and, therefore, such a point of view cannot but be objective, and secondly, there are no chronicles in which he appears as a ruler doing pious deeds. It is easy to refute such arguments. An analysis of the works that talk about the atrocities of Dracula proves that they all either go back to a handwritten denunciation of 1462, “justifying” the arrest of the Wallachian prince, or were written by people who were at the Hungarian court during the reign of Matthias Corvin. From here, the Russian ambassador to Hungary, clerk Fyodor Kuritsyn, drew information for his story about Dracula, written around 1484.

He acted in accordance with the cruel laws of war, but the destruction of the aggressor on the battlefield can under no circumstances be equated with the genocide of the civilian population, in which Dracula was accused by the customer of the anonymous denunciation. The stories of the atrocities in Transylvania, for which Dracula received the reputation of the "great monster", turned out to be slander, pursuing specific selfish goals. History has developed in such a way that descendants judge Dracula by the way Vlad's actions were described by his enemies, who sought to discredit the prince - where can we talk about objectivity in such a situation ?!

As for the lack of chronicles praising Dracula, this is due to the too short period of his reign. He simply did not have time, and perhaps did not consider it necessary to acquire court chroniclers, whose duties included praising the ruler. Another thing is King Matthias, famous for his enlightenment and humanism, “with whose death justice also died,” or the Moldavian prince Stefan, who ruled for almost half a century, betrayed Dracula and impaled two thousand Romanians, but at the same time was nicknamed the Great and Holy ...

There are two types of Dracula. We know Dracula - the national hero of Romania, a wise and brave ruler, a martyr, betrayed by friends and spent about a third of his life in prison, slandered, slandered, but not broken. However, we also know another Dracula - the hero of anecdotal stories of the 15th century, a maniac, a "great monster", and later a god-damned vampire. By the way, about vampirism: no matter what atrocities the prince was accused of by his contemporaries, there is not a single written source that says that he drank the blood of his victims. The idea of "turning" Dracula into a vampire only arose in the 19th century.

A member of the occult Order of the Golden Dawn (he practiced black magic), Bram Stoker became interested in this historical figure at the suggestion of Professor Arminius Vambery, who was known not only as a scientist, but also as a Hungarian nationalist. This is how Count Dracula appeared - a literary character who gradually turned in the mass consciousness into the main vampire of all times and peoples.

Let's decide once and for all. Who is he - the great and terrible Count Dracula ...

The Romanian ruler Vlad III, better known as Dracula (1431-1476), came from the family of Basarab the Great, the ruler of Wallachia (1310-1352), who defended the independence of his state from Hungary in a difficult struggle.

Vlad III's father - Vlad II - seized the throne in 1436, overthrowing his cousin with the support of the Hungarian king Sigismund Luxembourg. But later, yielding to Turkish pressure, Vlad II was forced to renew the vassal obligations of the Wallachian rulers and send two sons, Vlad and Rada, as hostages to the court of the Sultan.

Hungary, of course, also stepped up the pressure, and Vlad II constantly had to maneuver, seeking compromises.

However, in 1447 he was killed on the orders of the regent of the Hungarian kingdom, the legendary Janos Hunyadi, and a new Hungarian protege took the Wallachian throne.

In 1448, seventeen-year-old Vlad made his first attempt to seize the throne. Taking advantage of the fact that Hunyadi's troops were defeated by the Turks, Vlad, with Turkish help, reigned under the name of Vlad III.

Vlad III gained "world fame" during his lifetime. Mainly - thanks to violent courage and equally violent bloodthirstiness, which even in the gloomy era of the Late Renaissance seemed pathological. He was unthinkably cruel to enemies, and to allies, and to subjects: he chopped off their heads, burned them, skinned them, forced them to cannibalism, boiled them alive, ripped open their stomachs, put them on a stake, etc. etc. In impalement, Dracula was especially successful.
Once, for no reason, he attacked his own innocent city and killed 10 thousand subjects under torture. Many of them were put on a stake - this is how he earned another nickname - “tepes”, or “impaler”.

During the wildest of the massacres arranged by him in 1460 on the day of St. Bartholomew in one of the cities of Transylvania, 30 thousand people were impaled.

Count Dracula was not just a sadist

His cruel punishments had some political meaning. For example, when envoys from the Turkish court dared not remove their hats in his presence, he ordered turbans to be nailed to their heads in what was no doubt a defiantly daring display of independence. Depending on the social status of the condemned, the cola differed in length, diameter, color, whimsical geometric figures were made up of them - something like a "torture garden", where Vlad III liked to feast at his leisure, and the cadaverous stench and groans of the agonizing did not spoil his appetite. That is why Vlad III entered the history of Romania under the nickname "The Impaler" (lit. "Impeller-on-the-Stake").

Even in a Hungarian prison, Vlad III, according to the old Russian "Tale of Dracula Governor", remained true to his passions: he caught or bought mice and birds, which he tortured, impaled and beheaded. The fury of Vlad III (in German sources he is called "wutrich" - "violent", "fiend", "fierce"), it seems, was pretty tired not only of enemies, but also of subjects, and in 1476 they killed Tepes at the age of 45 years. His severed head was preserved in honey and delivered as a trophy to the Sultan. According to the version of the 15th century, Vlad III was mistaken for a Turk in battle and, surrounded, pierced with spears, which, having noticed a mistake, was very regretted.

But if everything was so, then why did Vlad III, having managed to cut down five attackers, did not manage to explain to the others that he was their governor? And why did the "mourning" compatriots, trumpeting the head of the dead ruler, send it to the Sultan?

Some saw in him a national hero of Romania, a defender against Muslim expansion, a fighter against boyar abuses (C. Giurescu), others considered Vlad III an unprincipled tyrant, no different from other "Machiavellian" sovereigns of the Late Renaissance, called him a "terrorist" ruler , the forerunner of Stalin and Hitler (R. McNally and R. Florescu).

However, by all accounts, Dracula gained his reputation as a vampire warlock only at the end of the 19th century - thanks to the imagination and talent of Bram Stoker (1847-1912), author of the famous novel Dracula (1897). Indeed, in written sources there is no mention of witchcraft and vampirism of the Wallachian ruler. But if we take into account the specifics of these sources, it turns out that the fantasies of the English novelist were by no means groundless.

Therefore, information about Dracula should be interpreted not only in the historical and pragmatic aspect, but - and above all - in the mythological. This applies to the name itself, or rather the nickname of Vlad III Dracula. Fyodor Kuritsyn, the alleged author of The Tale of Dracula the Governor, characterizing Vlad III, directly says that "the name of Dracula is in the Vashian language, and ours is the Devil. Toliko is wicked, as by his name, so is his life." Here the Russian scribe of the 15th century makes a mistake, although not a fundamental one. In Romanian, "devil" is "dracula", and "Dracula" is "son of the devil".

The nickname "Dracul" was given to the father of Vlad III, but historians traditionally explain that the connection with the evil spirit has nothing to do with it.

It is no coincidence that local peasants, who had not heard of Stoker's novel, even in the 20th century considered Dracula's castle to be an unclean place.

Of course, there is reason to believe that the soldiers of Vlad III turned their spears against the ruler for reasons of fear and revenge or for the sake of a Turkish reward, and cut off his head in order to send it to the Sultan and thereby curry favor or visually confirm the fulfillment of the "order" - the head of Tepes was exhibited in Istanbul on general view. But for all that, Dracula's warriors acted exactly as custom prescribed to deal with vampires: the body of the bloodsucker had to be pierced with a sharp weapon, and the head must certainly be separated from the body.

From this point of view, the story of Dracula's grave is also characteristic. Vlad III was buried not far from the place of death - in the Orthodox Snagov Monastery, which was patronized by his family.

P.S. So Dracula is not a vampire, but a mere mortal!

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