“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 the entire male population of the principality from the age of twelve into the army, used the scorched earth tactics, leaving burned 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.
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 XV 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.
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From the Internet
Not every resident knows that Count Dracula - one of the most popular characters in many horror films, as well as the most famous vampire - is a real figure that took place in history. Count Dracula's real name is Vlad III Tepes. He lived in the 15th century. and was the ruler of the Wallachian principality, or as Wallachia is also called. Tepes is a national hero of the Romanian people and a locally revered saint who is revered by the local church. He was a valiant warrior, and a fighter against Turkish expansion into Christian Europe. But then the question arises, why did he become known to the whole world as a vampire who drinks the blood of innocent people?
Also, not everyone knows that the creator of the current image of Dracula was the English writer Bram Stoker. He was an active member of the Golden Dawn occult organization. Such communities have at any time been characterized by a great interest in vampires, which is not an invention of writers or visionaries, but a concrete medical fact. Physicians have long been researched and documented, which occur in our time, which is one of the most serious diseases. The image of a physically immortal vampire attracts occultists and black magicians who seek to oppose the lower world to the upper worlds - Divine and spiritual.
By the way, the occult attraction to vampirism (“spiritual” and ritual) is a distortion of the original, ancient Aryan vampirism.
In the 6th c. the Byzantine Procopius of Caesarea, whose works are the main sources on history, noted that before the Slavs began to worship the god of thunder (Perun), the ancient Slavs worshiped ghouls. Of course, this was not about Hollywood vampires attacking defenseless girls. In ancient, pagan times, vampires (this word came from the Slavs, which spread throughout Europe in the Middle Ages) were called outstanding warriors - heroes who especially revered Blood as a spiritual and physical entity. , there were certain rituals of worshiping the Blood - ablutions, sacrifices and the like.
Occultist organizations have completely perverted the ancient tradition, turning the worship of the sacred, spiritual Blood into the worship of the biological. Occultists (including Bram Stoker), in turn, distorted the image of Vlad Tepes, a valiant warrior who inherited the ancient traditions of the Franco-Slavs.
Appeared in the 14th century, the principality of Wallachia, on the banners of which since ancient times, there was an image of a crowned eagle with a cross in its beak, a sword and a scepter in its paws, was the first major state formation on the territory of today's Romania.
One of the leading historical figures of the era of the national formation of Romania is the Wallachian prince Vlad Tepes.
Prince Vlad III Tepes, Orthodox sovereign ruler of Wallachia. Almost everything related to the activities of this person is shrouded in mystery. The place and time of his birth are not precisely established. Wallachia was not the most peaceful corner of medieval Europe. The flames of countless wars and fires destroyed the vast majority of handwritten monuments. Only from the surviving monastic chronicles was it possible to recreate the appearance of the real historical prince Vlad, known to the modern world under the name of Count Dracula.
The year when the future ruler of Wallachia was born, we can only determine approximately: between 1428 and 1431. Built at the beginning of the 15th century. the house on Kuznechnaya Street in Sighisoara still attracts the attention of tourists: it is believed that it was here that a boy was born, named Vlad at baptism. It is not known whether the future ruler of Wallachia was born here, but it is established that his father, Prince Vlad Dracul, lived in this house. As you might guess, "dracul" in Romanian means dragon. Prince Vlad was a member of the knightly Order of the Dragon, whose goal was to protect Orthodoxy from the infidels. The name of this order is closely connected with the ancient beliefs of the Balkan peoples; in the Balkan folklore, snakes, a dragon is often a positive character, a protector of a clan, a hero who defeats a demon.
The prince had three sons, but only one of them became famous - Vlad. It should be noted that he was a true knight: a brave warrior and a skilled commander, a deeply and truly believing Orthodox Christian, always guided by the norms of honor and duty in his actions. Vlad was distinguished by great physical strength. His fame as a magnificent cavalryman thundered throughout the country - and this at a time when people from childhood got used to a horse and weapons.
As a statesman, Vlad adhered to the principles of true patriotism: the fight against invaders, the development of crafts and trade, the fight against crime. And in all these areas, in the shortest possible time, Vlad III achieved impressive success. The chronicles tell that during his reign it was possible to throw a gold coin and pick it up a week later in the same place. No one would have dared not only to appropriate someone else's gold, but even to touch it. And this is in a country where, two years before, there were no less thieves and vagabonds than the settled population - townspeople and farmers! How did this incredible transformation happen? Very simply - as a result of the policy of systematic cleansing of society from "asocial elements" carried out by the Wallachian prince. The court at that time was simple and quick: a tramp or a thief, regardless of what he stole, was waiting for a fire or block. The same fate was prepared for all gypsies, or notorious horse thieves, and in general for idle and unreliable people.
Now we should make a small digression. For further narration, it is important to know what the nickname under which Vlad III entered history means. Tepes literally means "impaler". It was the pointed stake during the reign of Vlad III that was the main instrument of execution. Most of those executed were captured Turks and Gypsies. But the same punishment could befall anyone who was convicted of a crime. After thousands of thieves died on stakes and burned in the flames of bonfires in city squares, there were no new hunters to test their luck.
We must pay tribute to Tepes: he did not give indulgence to anyone, regardless of social status. Anyone who had the misfortune to incur the prince's wrath, expected the same fate. The methods of Prince Vlad also turned out to be a very effective regulator of economic activity: when several merchants accused of trading with the Turks expired on a stake, cooperation with the enemies of the Faith of Christ came to an end.
The attitude towards the memory of Vlad Tepes in Romania, even in modern times, is not at all the same as in Western European countries. And today, many consider him a national hero of the era of the formation of the future Romania, which dates back to the first decades of the 14th century. At that time, Prince Basarab I founded a small independent principality on the territory of Wallachia. The victory he won in 1330 over the Hungarians - the then owners of the Danube lands - secured his rights. Then began a long, exhausting struggle with the big feudal lords - the boyars. Accustomed to unlimited power in their tribal domains, they resisted any attempts by the central government to control the entire country. At the same time, depending on the political situation, they did not hesitate to resort to the help of either Catholic Hungarians or Muslim Turks. After more than a hundred years, Vlad Tepes put an end to this unfortunate practice, once and for all solving the problem of separatism.
And now let's leave Wallachia and cast a glance at another country bordering on it, which played a decisive role in the fate of our hero. To the north of Bucharest today endless cornfields stretch for tens of kilometers. But during the time of Vlad III, the forest was noisy here - from the Danube to the foothills of the Carpathians, centuries-old oak forests spread like a green sea. Behind them began a plateau suitable for agriculture. Saxons and Hungarians have long striven for this fertile free land, for fertile land, protected from enemy raids by dense forests and spurs of mountain ranges. The Hungarians called these places Transylvania - "the country on the other side of the forests", and the Saxon merchants who built well-fortified cities here - Siebenbürgen, that is, Semigrad. More and more people flocked to this area. For some fifty years Transylvania flourished.
Her city-republics - Shesburg, Kronstadt, Germanstadt - grew and grew rich. More than 250 villages and villages, which did not know the Turkish raids, provided the entire population with an abundance of wheat, mutton, wine and oil. The geographical position of Transylvania was very favorable: as soon as the region became inhabited, one of the main branches of the Great Silk Road went along it. New crafts, new workshops, oriented mainly to export, emerged. In addition, the Transylvanians engaged in what would later be called economic piracy. Thus, the cunning weavers of Semigradje made carpets, almost indistinguishable from Turkish ones, and sold them for the corresponding price.
The wealth of Transylvania made it an eminently tasty prey for the mighty Ottoman Empire. Semigradie, not being a centralized state, did not have its own standing army. And only with the help of subtle and complex political games did the Transylvanian cities manage to ensure the stability of their conglomerate. But the empire of Mohammed I was too big an opponent. No cunning arguments of the Semigrad politicians could convince the Turks to voluntarily abandon their expansion to the north. Therefore, the independence of Transylvania turned out to be closely connected with the plans and actions of the Wallachian sovereigns: the small Orthodox principality of Wallachia lay between Semigrad and the Muslim colossus, playing the role of a kind of buffer. Before attacking Transylvania, the Turks needed to conquer Wallachia, and it was in the interests of the Semigradians to create such a state of affairs that the Sultan would think twice before starting a new war with Wallachia.
The epithet "new" is not accidental. Although in the middle of the 14th century. a significant part of the Balkan Peninsula was already part of the Ottoman Empire, the Turks did not feel like masters here. Revolts against the Turkish yoke flared up here and there. They were always brutally suppressed, but still sometimes they forced the Turks to make some compromises. One of these compromises was the preservation of the state status of individual principalities, subject to vassal dependence on the Sultan. An annual tribute was agreed - for example, Wallachia paid it in silver and timber. And in order for this or that prince not to forget for a moment about his duties towards the ruler of the Mohammedans in Istanbul, he had to send his eldest son as a hostage to the court of the Sultan. And if the prince began to show obstinacy, the young man was waiting - at best - death.
Such a fate was prepared for the young Vlad. Together with several other noble youths - Bosnians, Serbs, Hungarians - he spent several years in Adrianople as a "guest".
Many books have been written about the sophisticated executions of the Muslim Middle Ages, it is scary to read them. We confine ourselves to describing two small and, according to the concepts of that time, insignificant episodes that young Vlad witnessed.
The first episode is a story about the Sultan's mercy. It was like this: one of the vassal princes raised an uprising and thereby condemned to death two of his sons - hostages. The boys, with their hands tied, were brought to the foot of the throne, and Sultan Murad graciously announced that, in his infinite mercy, he decided to soften the punishment they deserved. Then, at a sign from the sovereign, one of the Janissary bodyguards stepped forward and blinded both brothers. The word "mercy" in relation to this case was used quite seriously, without any mockery.
The second story is related to cucumbers. The hospitable Turks grew their usual vegetables for the table of the captive princes, and one day it turned out that several cucumbers had been stolen from the garden. An inquiry urgently carried out by one of the viziers yielded no results. Since gardeners were the first to be suspected of stealing a rare delicacy, a simple and wise decision was made: immediately find out what was in their stomachs. There were enough "specialists" in ripping open other people's bellies at the court, and the will of the vizier was immediately executed. To the joy of the faithful servant of the ruler, his clairvoyance received a brilliant confirmation: pieces of a cucumber were found in the fifth cut stomach. The culprit was beheaded, while the rest were allowed to try to survive.
As for the execution on a stake, invented by the Turks, a rare day did without this spectacle. The death of one or more unfortunates was, as it were, an obligatory traditional prologue to an even more extensive bloody drama.
It is hard to imagine what was happening in the soul of a twelve-year-old boy who saw all this from day to day. The impressions acquired by Vlad in his teenage years, washed by the rivers of Christian blood, turned out to be decisive in shaping the character of the future ruler of Wallachia. What feelings overwhelmed his heart when he looked at the death throes of people, primarily Christians captured by the Turks - pity, horror, anger? Or, perhaps, the desire to punish the Turks by using their own weapons on them? In any case, Vlad had to hide his feelings, and he perfectly mastered this art, because in the same way his father in distant Wallachia, gritting his teeth, he listened to the arrogant speeches of the Turkish ambassadors, holding back his hand, torn to the hilt of the sword.
Both Vlad, old and young, believed that this was for the time being.
In 1452, Vlad returned to his homeland, and soon took the empty Wallachian throne. Very soon he had to face the opposition of the boyars, who interfered with the implementation of a single political line, and he waged a ruthless fight against them. In addition, the boyars were clearly disposed in favor of the Turks. This is easy to understand: the governors of the Sultan did not encroach on the privileges of the ancient families, but only demanded the timely payment of tribute. None of the boyars was going to fight with the Sultan, and as for the tribute, all its weight was a burden on the entire nation. The oligarchs, alarmed by the plans of the young prince, began to weave intrigues. But Vlad was ready for it. As soon as the opposition formed, he began to act, and with energy and scope, completely unexpected for his opponents.
On the occasion of some holiday, the prince invited to his capital, in Tirgovishte, almost the entire Wallachian nobility. None of the boyars declined the invitation, not wanting to show distrust or hostility by refusing. And the very number of invitees, it would seem, demonstrated their general safety. Judging by the fragmentary descriptions that have survived to this day, that feast was luxurious and was a lot of fun. But the holiday ended in an unusual way: by order of the owner, five hundred guests were put on a stake without having time to sober up. The problem of the "internal enemy" was solved forever.
The next step was the fight against the Turks. The charge of hatred for them, accumulated in the soul of the young prince, was enormous. Vlad III was eager to show his teachers that he had learned all the lessons taught to him well. Now it was finally possible to cast off the shackles of false obedience.
In the fourth year of his reign, Vlad immediately stopped paying all forms of tribute. It was an open challenge. Since he had no children, there were no hostages, and Sultan Murad, showing obvious frivolity, limited himself to sending a punitive detachment of a thousand horsemen to Wallachia - to teach a lesson to the recalcitrant vassal and bring his head to Istanbul, as a warning to others.
But everything turned out differently. The Turks tried to lure Vlad into a trap, but they themselves were surrounded and surrendered. The prisoners were taken to Tirgovishte, where the execution of the captured Turks took place. They were put on stakes - every one of them, within one day. Punctual in everything, Tepes also observed the principle of hierarchy in execution: for the Turkish Agha, who commanded the detachment, a stake with a gold tip was prepared.
The enraged Sultan moved a huge army against Wallachia. The decisive battle took place in 1461, when the people's militia of Vlad III met with the Turkish army, which outnumbered the Vlachs by several times. The Turks again suffered a crushing defeat.
But now Vlad was threatened by a new enemy, stubborn and cautious - the rich cities of Transylvania. Far-sighted Saxon merchants, alarmed by the courage of Vlad III, preferred to see a more restrained sovereign on the Wallachian throne. And the large-scale war of Wallachia with the Ottoman Empire did not at all correspond to their interests. It was obvious that the Sultan would never accept defeat - the resources of the Turks are huge, new battles, new wars were coming. And if all the Balkan countries are engulfed in fire, Transylvania will no longer be saved. And the reason for everything is Prince Vlad - his desperate struggle made Wallachia not a shield against the Turks, but a bone in the sultan's throat, thus exposing rich Semigradye to mortal danger.
This is how the residents of Semigrad reasoned, starting a diplomatic campaign to remove Vlad from the political scene. One of the favorites of the powerful Hungarian king Dan III was named as a candidate for the throne in Tirgovishte. Naturally, the king liked this idea, and as a result, relations between Hungary and Wallachia became noticeably more complicated.
In addition, the Transylvanians, acting according to Tepesh, at the direct instigation of the devil himself, continued to conduct a lively trade with the Turks. It was impossible to endure such audacity, and Vlad III began a third war - his army moved north.
The Transylvanians paid dearly for their attempts to eliminate their neighbor. Tepes with fire and sword passed through their flourishing plains: the cities were taken by storm. And the defeated Shesburg saw five hundred of his most distinguished citizens on stakes in the middle of the square.
But the already defeated enemy dealt Tepes an unexpected blow.
What turned out to be beyond the strength of the Turkish army, was able to accomplish a small, but the most influential layer - the trading elite of Semigradye. A method was applied and proved to be effective, well known to people of our time: an appeal to "public opinion" with the help of the printed word. and at the expense of several trading houses a pamphlet was printed, where anonymous authors described in detail - in a distorted form - all the activities of Vlad. The pamphlet contained some details regarding the "insidious plans" of the Wallachian sovereign in relation to the Kingdom of Hungary.
The slander brought the expected result. The course of action of Vlad III caused outrage at the European courts, and King Dan III was furious and began to act.
Chance came to the aid of the king. In 1462, the Turks again invaded Wallachia and after the siege took the princely citadel - Poenari Castle, the "eagle's nest" of Vlad III, and then destroyed it. The prince's wife died. Now these events are reminded only of the ruins whitening on the rock and the nickname "river of the princess", preserved behind the turbulent stream of Argess.
Not expecting an attack, Vlad did not have time to gather troops and fled to the north. King Dan, very pleased that the circumstances had turned out so well, immediately captured Vlad and imprisoned him.
Twelve years later, Dan, convinced of Vlad's "submission", released him, spreading the rumor that Tepes humbled his pride and even supposedly converted to Catholicism. In the autumn of 1476, Vlad returned to his homeland. But the boyars, who had grown stronger during his absence, managed to defeat the prince's squad. Tepes was again in the power of Dan. The boyars demanded the extradition of the ruler they hated, and the fate of the prince was decided. However, Vlad III fled and died in battle.
Finding the body of Tepes, the boyars chopped it into pieces and scattered it around. Later, the monks from the Snagov Monastery collected the remains of the deceased and buried them in the ground.
Having lost its sovereign, Wallachia in the 16th century. finally came under Turkish rule, and only in the first third of the 19th century. as a result of the rise of the national movement and with the support of Russia, it achieved, along with Moldova, autonomy.
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, his 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 figure is modest, but in 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 references to the fact that Dracula liked to resort to the cruel torture of 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 to 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 a peaceful life, he would not have succeeded in doing this.
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, a servant bribed by the Turks killed him, according to another, the prince died in battle against the same Turks.
Bad reputation
Today, Vlad Dracula is much better known not for the historical facts of his life, but for 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 plot 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.
Chassburg, Transylvania, Kingdom of Hungary
Bucharest, Principality of Wallachia
2) Ilona Zhilegay
Vlad III Basarab, also known as Vlad Tepes(Rom. Vlad Țepeș - Vlad Kolovnik, Vlad the Impaler, Vlad the Impaler) and Vlad Dracula(rum. Vlad Drăculea (November or December - December) - the ruler of Wallachia in, - and. The nickname "Tepesh" ("The Impaler", from the Rum. ţeapă [tsyape] - "stake") received for cruelty in reprisals against enemies and subjects Veteran of wars against Turkey Vlad III's residence was located in Targovishte... Vlad received the nickname Dracula (Son of the Dragon or the Younger Dragon) in honor of his father, who was (since 1431) in the elite knightly Order of the Dragon, created by Emperor Sigismund in 1408 year... Members of the order had the right to wear a medallion with the image of a dragon around their neck.Vlad III's father not only wore the sign of the order, but also minted it on his coins, depicted it on the walls of churches under construction, for which he received the nickname Dracul - the Dragon (or the Devil).
Biography
As a result of the "Night attack" on June 17, 1462, he forced the retreat of the 100-120 thousandth Ottoman army that invaded the principality, led by Sultan Mehmed II.
In the same year, due to the betrayal of the Hungarian monarch Matthias Korvin, he was forced to flee to Hungary, where he was taken into custody on false charges of collaborating with the Turks and spent 12 years in prison.
Anonymous German document from 1463
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 King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary) and published in 1463 in Germany. It is there that for the first time there are 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 Matthias Corvinus of a large amount allocated by the papal throne for the crusade), not a single earlier mention of these “pseudo-folklore” stories was found.
Once came to him 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 said to 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: “When you 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.
This text was written by the Russian ambassador to Hungary Fyodor Kuritsyn in 1484. It is known that in his "Tale of Dracula Voivode" Kuritsyn uses information from that anonymous source, written 21 years earlier.
Below 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 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: “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. 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. "There is 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 else, and the stench does not reach you."
- Dracula asked the ambassadors of the Ottoman Empire who came to him demanding recognition of vassalage: "Why didn't they take off their hats to him, the ruler." Hearing the answer that they would bare their heads only in front of the Sultan, Vlad ordered the caps to be nailed to their heads.
Literary and screen image of Dracula
The reign of Dracula had a great influence on his contemporaries, who formed his image in the folklore tradition of the Romanians and their neighboring peoples. An important source in this case is the poem by M. Behaim, who in the 1460s lived at the court of the Hungarian king Matthew Corvinus, German pamphlets are known, distributed under the title "On a Great Monster". Various Romanian legends tell about Tepes, both directly recorded among the people and processed by the famous storyteller P. Ispirescu.
Vlad III became a literary hero shortly after his death: it was written about him in Church Slavonic (which at that time was used in Romania as a literary language), after the Russian embassy of Ivan III, very popular in Russia, visited Wallachia.
The emergence of a connection between the image of Vlad Tepes and Count Dracula is usually explained by the fact that Bram Stoker heard the legend that Tepes became a vampire after death. It is not known whether he heard a similar legend; but there were reasons for its existence, since the murderer Tepes was cursed by the dying more than once, and, in addition, changed his faith (although this fact is questioned). According to the beliefs of the Carpathian peoples, this is quite enough for a posthumous transformation into a vampire. However, there is another version: after the death of Vlad Tepes, his body was not found in the grave...
At his direction, the victims were impaled on a thick stake, the top of which was rounded and oiled. The stake was inserted into the vagina (the victim died almost within a few minutes from profuse blood loss) or the anus (death came from a rupture of the rectum and developed peritonitis, the person died for several days in terrible agony) to a depth of several tens of centimeters, then the stake was installed vertically. The victim, under the influence of the gravity of his body, slowly slid down the stake, and sometimes death occurred only after a few days, since the rounded stake did not pierce the vital organs, but only went deeper into the body. In some cases, a horizontal bar was installed on the stake, which prevented the body from sliding too low and ensured that the stake did not reach the heart and other critical organs. In this case, death from blood loss occurred very slowly. The usual version of the execution was also very painful, and the victims writhed on a stake for several hours.
Tepes sought to measure the height of the stakes with the social rank of the executed - the boyars turned out to be higher impaled than commoners, so the social status of the executed could be judged from the forests of those impaled.
imitators
The doubtfulness of the scale of Dracula's atrocities did not prevent later rulers from "adopting" such methods of conducting domestic and foreign policy. For example, when John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, probably having heard a lot about effective "draculia" methods during the diplomatic service at the papal court, began impaling Lincolnshire rebels in 1470, he himself was executed for actions - as the sentence ran - "contrary to the laws of this countries".
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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 - so 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 "Tepes" (lit. "Impeller-on-the-stake").
Even in a Hungarian prison, Vlad III, according to the old Russian "Tale of Dracula Voivode", 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", "fierce", "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 regrettable.
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 acquired 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!
