Vlad Tepes or Count Dracula...

There was a governor in the Muntian land, a Christian of the Greek faith, his name in Wallachian is Dracula, and in our opinion - the Devil. He was so cruel and wise that, what was his name, such was his life ...

Fedor Kuritsyn, "The Tale of Dracula Governor"

“Along with great cruelty, Vlad Dracula possessed great valor. Such was his courage that in 1462 he crossed the Danuba and made a horse raid at night on the camp of Sultan Mehmed II himself with an army about to invade Wallachia ... Dracula defeated several thousand Turkish soldiers, and the Sultan himself almost lost his life ... The glory of Dracula survived his mysterious death and strange funeral in 1476 and faded, it seems, only in the rays of the European Enlightenment. (Gelling. "History of Central Europe")

For nearly six centuries, Vlad the Impaler has been shadowed by the sinister shadow of his intimidating reputation. It seems that we are talking about actually a fiend of hell. A bloodthirsty vampire, "horror flying on the wings of the night", a despot impaling for the slightest offense, and so on and so forth. Vlad Tepes has turned into a monster in the mass consciousness, which has never been equal.

Or maybe it was a figure common for that era, of course, possessing outstanding personal qualities, among which demonstrative cruelty occupied by no means the last place? Horror films are made about Dracula and blood-curdling books are written. There are still disputes about the personality of the Wallachian ruler, regular attempts are being made to find out the relationship between myth and reality, truth and fiction in the descriptions of this person. However, when trying to understand the events that are almost six centuries away from us, sometimes unconsciously, and sometimes intentionally, new myths are created around the image of this person.

So what was he really like and why was he chosen to be the “main vampire” of history? Who was the one who for millions of readers and moviegoers became the embodiment of vampirism? At home, in Romania, he is usually considered the champion of "cruel justice", the savior and defender of the fatherland. One of the researchers formulated this strange antithesis as follows: "The notorious Dracula, a Wallachian sadist and patriot."

But ambiguities begin immediately, as soon as we try to reproduce the full name, title and nickname of our hero. Some sources confidently call the Wallachian ruler Vlad III, while others - no less confidently - Vlad IV. And we are not talking about father and son (the serial number of the father, also Vlad, varies accordingly), but about the same person. Of course, given the antiquity of years, such discrepancies are not surprising ... But, on the other hand, no one gets confused in the numbers of much more numerous Louis!

The year of his birth, let alone the date, is not exactly known. Vlad the Impaler Dracula was most likely born in 1430 or 1431 (some people even say 1428 or 1429), when his father, Vlad Dracul, a pretender to the Wallachian throne, supported by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg, was in Sighisoara, a Transylvanian city near the border with Wallachia.

In popular literature, the birth of Vlad is often associated with the moment his father entered the Order of the Dragon, where he was received on February 8, 1431 by Emperor Sigismund, who then also occupied the Hungarian throne. However, in fact, this is just a coincidence, but rather an attempt to invent such a coincidence. There are a lot of such fictional, and sometimes real coincidences in the biography of Vlad Tepes. They should be treated with great care.
The father of Vlad III, the ruler of Wallachia Vlad II (or, according to some documents, still III), being in his youth at the court of the German emperor, really entered the Order of the Dragon, we accept the order was exceptionally respectable - its members were obliged to imitate St. George in his indomitable struggle with evil spirits, which was then associated with the hordes of the Turks, crawling into Europe from the southeast.

It was thanks to his entry into the Order of the Dragon that Tepes' father received the nickname Dracul (Dragon), which later passed by inheritance to his son. So called not only Vlad, but also his brothers Mircho and Radu. Therefore, it is not clear whether such a name was associated with the idea of ​​evil spirits, or even rather the other way around. As a constant reminder of this vow, the knights wore the image of a dragon killed by George and hanging with outstretched wings and a broken back on the cross. But Vlad II obviously overdid it: he not only appeared with the sign of the order in front of his subjects, but also minted the dragon on his coins, even depicted churches under construction on the walls. In the eyes of the people, he, exactly the opposite, became a dragon worshiper and therefore acquired the nickname Vlad Dracul (Dragon). The author of the Russian “Tale of Dracula the Governor” writes directly: “in the name of Dracula in the Vlashesky language, and in ours - the Devil. Toliko is wicked, as by his name, so is his life.

It is known that this nickname was used by foreign rulers in the official title of Tepes when he was the ruler of Wallachia. Tepes usually signed "Vlad, son of Vlad" with a listing of all titles and possessions, but two letters signed "Vlad Dracula" are also known. It is clear that he bore this name with pride and did not consider it offensive.

The nickname Tepes (Tepesh, Tepes or Tepez - Romanian transcription allows options), which has such a terrible meaning (in Romanian "Impeller", "Piercer", "Impaler"), was not known during his lifetime. Most likely, it was used by the Turks even before his death. Of course, in the Turkish sound - "Kazykly". However, it seems that our hero did not object at all to such a name. After the death of the ruler, it was translated from Turkish and began to be used by everyone, under which he went down in history. There is also a portrait preserved in the Tyrolean castle of Ambras. Of course, Dracula was hardly exactly the way the medieval artist portrayed him. Contemporaries admitted that Vlad, unlike his brother Radu, nicknamed the Handsome, did not shine with beauty at all. But he was a physically very strong man, an excellent rider and swimmer.

But whether he was a pathological sadist or an uncompromising hero who had no right to pity - opinions differed then and continue to diverge now. First, let's look at history. The Principality of Wallachia in those days was that very small state, which, as the wise Lord Bolingbroke from The Glass of Water noted, gets any chances if two large ones claim its territory at once. In this case, the interests of Catholic Hungary, advancing on Orthodoxy, and the Muslim Porte, claiming world domination, converged on Wallachia. Wallachia was an area sandwiched between Turkish possessions from the south (especially after 1453, when Byzantium crushed by the Turks fell) and Hungary from the north.

In addition, rich Transylvania (or Semigradje), which belonged to Hungary, was hiding behind small Wallachia, where crafts developed rapidly, a branch of the Great Silk Road passed, self-governing cities founded by the Saxons grew. Semigrad merchants were interested in the peaceful coexistence of Wallachia with the aggressor Turks. Transylvania was a kind of buffer territory between the Hungarian and Wallachian lands.
The peculiarity of the geopolitical position of Wallachia, as well as religious specificity (the confession of Orthodoxy by the people and sovereigns) contrasted it with both Muslim Turkey and the Catholic West. This led to the extreme inconsistency of military policy. The rulers either went along with the Hungarians against the Turks, or let the Turkish armies into Hungarian Transylvania. The Wallachian rulers more or less successfully used the struggle of the superpowers for their own purposes, gaining the support of one of them in order to overthrow the protégé of the other with another palace coup. It was in this way that Vlad Sr. (father) ascended the throne, with the help of the Hungarian king, overthrowing his cousin. However, Turkish pressure increased, and the alliance with Hungary did little. Vlad the elder recognized the vassal dependence of Wallachia on the Porte.

Such coexistence was achieved according to the scenario traditional for that time: the princes sent their sons to the court of the Turkish Sultan as hostages, who were treated well, but in the event of a rebellion in a vassal state, they were immediately executed. The sons of the Wallachian ruler became such a guarantor of obedience: Radu the Handsome and Vlad, who would earn his far from innocent nickname later. Meanwhile, Vlad Sr. continued to maneuver between two fires, but in the end he was killed, along with his son Mircho, either by the Hungarians, or by his own boyars.

In addition, speaking of the horrors that are inextricably linked with the name of Dracula, one should remember the state of the country and the system of power that existed there. Sovereigns were elected to the throne from the same clan, but the choice was not determined by any specific principles of succession to the throne. Everything was decided exclusively by the alignment of forces in the circles of the Wallachian boyars. Since any of the members of the dynasty could have many both legitimate and illegitimate children, any of whom became a contender for the throne (it would have been one of the boyars to put him on it!), The consequence of this was a fantastic leapfrog of rulers. A "normal" transfer of power from father to son was rare. It is clear that when the presumptuous ruler sought to consolidate his powers, terror was put on the agenda, and both the relatives of the ruler and the all-powerful boyars turned out to be its object.

Terrorist, so to speak, reigns were both before and after Vlad III. Why, then, did what happened under him enter into oral traditions and literature as having surpassed everything conceivable and unthinkable, having gone beyond the limits of the most cruel expediency? The deeds of this ruler, widely disseminated in the written works of the 15th century, really chill the blood.

The very life of Vlad (in the Romanian legends, he is the governor Tepes) seems to be an incessant transition from one extreme situation to another. At the age of thirteen, he is present at the defeat of the Wallachian, Hungarian and Slavonian troops by the Turks in the battle of Varna, then - the years of his stay in Turkey as a hostage issued by his father (then he learned the Turkish language). At the age of seventeen, Vlad learns about the murder of his father and older brother by the boyars from the "Hungarian" party. The Turks free him and put him on the throne.

From Turkish captivity, Vlad returned to his homeland a complete pessimist, a fatalist, and with the full conviction that the only driving forces of politics are the force or the threat of its application. He did not last long on the throne for the first time: the Hungarians threw off the Turkish protege and put their own on the throne. Vlad was forced to seek asylum from the allies in Moldova. However, four more years pass, and during the next (already Moldovan) turmoil, the ruler of this country, a supporter of Vlad, who hospitably received him in Moldova, perishes. A new escape - this time to the Hungarians, the true culprits of the death of Dracula's father and brother, and four years of stay in Transylvania, at the Wallachian borders, greedy waiting in the wings.

In 1456, the situation finally developed favorably for the fugitive ruler. Once again, Dracula takes the throne with the help of the Wallachian boyars and the Hungarian king, dissatisfied with his previous protégé. Thus began the reign of Vlad Tepes in Wallachia, during which he became the hero of legends and performed most of his deeds, which still cause the most controversial assessments.

In the fourth year of his reign, Dracula immediately stops paying tribute to the Turks and gets involved in a bloody and unequal war with the Sultan's Porte. For the successful conduct of any war, and even more so with such a formidable opponent, it was necessary to strengthen their power and restore order in their own state. Tepes set about implementing this program in his usual style.

The first thing that, according to the historical chronicle, Vlad did, having established himself in the then capital of Wallachia, the city of Targovishte, was to find out the circumstances of the death of his brother Mircho and punish the guilty. He ordered to open the grave of his brother and made sure that, firstly, he was blinded, and secondly, he turned over in his coffin, which proved the fact of being buried alive. According to the chronicle, Easter was just being celebrated in the city and all the inhabitants dressed up in the best clothes. Seeing malicious hypocrisy in such behavior, Tepes ordered that all the inhabitants be put in chains and sent to hard labor to restore one of the castles intended for him. There they had to work until the ceremonial clothes turned into tatters.

The story sounds psychologically quite reliable, and the document in which it is contained seems to be trustworthy. This is not a pamphlet written by Vlad's enemies, but a solid work compiled by an impassive chronicler, and almost simultaneously with the events taking place.

However, let us ask ourselves the question: is it possible to believe this story described in the chronicle? Power in Wallachia was seized by Vlad on August 22, 1456, after the massacre of a rival, whose death occurred on August 20. What does Easter have to do with it, because it was going towards autumn? More plausible is the assumption that these events refer to the first accession of Vlad to the throne in 1448, immediately after the death of his brother. However, then he ruled for only two autumn months - from October to early December, that is, there could not be any Easter holiday either. It turns out that we are dealing with a legend that somehow distorted reality and linked together different incidents that were initially unrelated to each other. Although, perhaps, some of the details that fell into the chronicle correspond to reality. For example, the episode with the opening of Mircho's grave. Such an event could actually happen, and as early as 1448, when Tepes became ruler for the first time.

What is certainly confirmed by the mentioned chronicle is the fact that the legends about the reign of Vlad Tepes began to take shape almost immediately with the beginning of this reign. By the way, although all these stories contained a description of the various cruelties committed by Vlad, their general tone was rather enthusiastic. They all agreed that Tepes quickly brought order to the country and achieved its prosperity. However, the means that he used in this case are far from being so unanimously enthusiastic in our time.

Since the second accession of Dracula, something unimaginable has been happening in the country. By the beginning of his reign, there were about 500 thousand people under his rule (including those adjacent to Wallachia and controlled areas of Transylvania). For six years (1456-1462), not counting the victims of the war, over 100 thousand were destroyed by Dracula's personal order. Is it possible that a ruler, even a medieval one, would destroy a fifth of his subjects like this for a great life? Even if in some cases it is possible to try to bring terror to some rational basis (intimidation of the opposition, tougher discipline, etc.), the numbers still raise new questions.

The origin of the legends about Dracula requires explanation. Firstly, the activities of Vlad Tepes were depicted in a dozen books - first handwritten, and after the invention made by Gutenberg and printed, created mainly in Germany and in some other European countries. All of them are similar, so, apparently, they rely on some one common source. The most important sources in this case are the poem by M. Beheim (a German who lived at the court of the Hungarian king Matthias Korvin in the 1460s), as well as German pamphlets distributed under the title “On a Great Monster” at the end of the same century.

Another group of collections of legends is represented by manuscripts in Russian. They are close to each other, similar to the German books, but in some ways they differ from them. This is an old Russian story about Dracula, written in the 1480s, after the Russian embassy of Ivan III visited Wallachia.

There is also a third source - oral traditions that still exist in Romania - both directly recorded among the people and processed by the famous storyteller P. Ispirescu in the 19th century. They are colorful, but controversial as a support for the search for truth. The fairy-tale element that has accumulated in them over several centuries of oral transmission is too great.
The source to which the German manuscripts go back is clearly written by the enemies of Tepes and depicts him and his activities in the most black colors. With Russian documents it is more difficult. Without abandoning the depiction of Vlad's cruelties, they try to find more noble explanations for them and put emphasis in such a way that the same actions look more logical and not so gloomy in the circumstances.

Here are some of the stories written by an unknown German author:

• There is a known case when Tepes summoned about 500 boyars and asked them how many rulers each of them remembers. It turned out that even the youngest of them remembers at least 7 reigns. Tepes' answer was an attempt to put an end to this order - all the boyars were impaled and dug around the chambers of Tepes in his capital Targovishte.

• The following story is also given: a foreign merchant who came to Wallachia was robbed. He files a complaint with Tepes. While they are catching and impaling the thief, on the orders of Tepes, the merchant is thrown a purse, in which there is one coin more than it was. The merchant, having discovered a surplus, immediately informs Tepes. He laughs and says: “Well done, I wouldn’t say - you should sit on a stake next to the thief.”

• Tepes discovers that there are many beggars in the country. He convenes them, feeds them to their heart's content and addresses the question: “Do they not want to get rid of earthly suffering forever?” On a positive answer, Tepes closes the doors and windows and burns all those gathered alive.

• There is a story about a mistress who tries to deceive Tepes by talking about her pregnancy. Tepes warns her that she does not tolerate lies, but she continues to insist on her own, then Tepes rips open her stomach and shouts: “I told you that I don’t like lies!”

• A case is also described when Dracula asked two wandering monks what the people say about his reign. One of the monks replied that the population of Wallachia scolded him as a cruel villain, and the other said that everyone praised him as a liberator from the threat of the Turks and a wise politician. In fact, both one and the other testimonies were fair in their own way. And the legend, in turn, has two endings. In the German "version", Dracula executed the former for not liking his speech. In the Russian version of the legend, the ruler left the first monk alive, and executed the second for lying.

• One of the creepiest and least credible pieces of evidence in this document is that Dracula liked to have breakfast at the site of an execution or the site of a recent battle. He ordered to bring him a table and food, sat down and ate among the dead and dying on the stakes of people.

• According to the testimony of an old Russian story, Tepes ordered to cut out the genitals of unfaithful wives and widows who violate the rules of chastity and rip off their skin, exposing the bodies to the point of decomposition of the body and eating it by birds, or do the same, but first pierce them with a poker from the crotch to mouth

• There is also a legend that there was a bowl at the fountain in the capital of Wallachia, made of gold; everyone could go up to her and drink water, but no one dared to steal her.

• Once Italian ambassadors came to Tepes (option - Turkish). They took off their hats, and under their hats they have little caps. And they had a custom: they should not take off these hats (turban) in front of anyone, even in front of their emperor (sultan?). And Tepes ordered his people to nail the hats (turban) to the ambassadors directly to their heads.
• At that time, cucumbers were grown as a delicacy and one day the head gardener missed a few pieces. Everyone who had anything to do with the garden was summoned to Vlad and, on his orders, the executioner began to rip their bellies open. On the fifth person, he stopped because he found the remains of cucumbers. The culprit was immediately beheaded, while others were allowed to survive.

Chronological table of the biography of Vlad III Dracula-Tepes

	EVENT
1431	the birth of Vlad III Dracula-Tepes, the father of Tepes - Vlad II Dracul enters the Order of the Dragon, founded in 1387 by the Hungarian king Sigismund of Luxembourg.
1436	Vlad II Dracul ascends the throne of Wallachia. Presumably, in the same year - the birth of Radu cel Furmos (sometimes transcribed as "Furmosh" - "The most beautiful")
1437-1438	Vlad II Dracul enters into a forced alliance with Mohammed II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Wallachia acquires the status of "mumtaz eyyaleti" - a privileged province within the Ottoman Empire
1438	the Ottoman army, which includes Serbian troops, makes a predatory campaign in Wallachia. Vlad II Dracul is forced to accompany them.
1442	the sultan, doubting the loyalty of Vlad II Dracul, accompanied by Vlad III Dracula the Impaler and Radu cel Furmos to Adrianople.
1443	Vlad II Dracul leaves Adrianople, leaving Rada and Vlad as hostages, who are transferred to the Egriguez fortress a few months later.
1444	through the fault of Vladislav I, king of the Hungarians, Bohemians and Croatians, the Battle of Varna (Varna Crusade) was lost. The death of Vladislav I. Janos Hunyadi Korvin flees from the battlefield. Almost immediately follows his arrest by Vlad II Dracul.
1445	a new campaign in South Wallachia led by Vlad II Dracul. Wallachia regains the Danube fortresses conquered by the Turks. Ladislaus V ascends the throne of Hungary, Postumus
1445-1447	Janos Hunyadi Corvin goes free, in a difficult political struggle he achieves the title of regent of Hungary under the juvenile Ladislav Postum.
1448 (summer)	by direct order Janos Hunyadi Corvina Vlad II Dracul executed
1448 (October)	Mohammed II releases Vlad III Dracula the Impaler to freedom so that he takes the throne of Wallachia. Radu cel Furmos remains hostage. The battle of Kosovo is lost.
1448 (December)	Janos Hunyadi Korvin returns to Wallachia, deposes Vlad III Dracula on the Wallachian throne, returns to Hungary, leaving Vladislav Daneshti II as governor. Vlad III Dracula-Tepes flees to Moldova under the auspices of Bogdan Moldavsky, where he meets Stefan than Mare.
1449-1451	Vlad III Dracula Tepes takes part in the military operations of Moldova against Poland
1451	the death of Bogdan Moldavsky, Vlad III Dracula-Tepes and Stefan than Mare move to Transylvania under the protection Janos Hunyadi Corvina
1453	the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, the fall of the Byzantine Empire.
1456 (July 21-22)	Vlad III Dracula the Impaler, along with Janos Hunyadi, takes part in the Battle of Belgrade, in which the Ottoman army is defeated, which stops the advance of the Turks to the west.
1456 (8 (?) August)	death from the plague of Janos, the Hungarian throne passes to Ladislav Postum.
1456 (20 August)	death of Vladislav II Daneshti at the hands of Vlad III Dracula the Impaler.
1456 (22 August)	the Wallachian throne, with the support of Ladislaus Postum, passes to Vlad III Dracula the Impaler.
1456-1457	Vlad III Dracula-Tepes seizes Transylvania, begins repressions against Transylvanian merchants-colonists.
1457	Vlad III Dracula-Tepes helps Stefan than Mare take the throne of Moldova.
1457	The throne of Hungary passes to Matthias Hunyadi Corvinus, who receives a large amount from the pope to organize a crusade.
1457-1459	Vlad gradually stops paying tribute to the Sultan, local clashes with the beys are increasingly breaking out on the borders of Wallachia. However, the formal vassalage of Wallachia in relation to the Ottoman Empire still remains.
1460	Muhammad demands tribute. Vlad responds. The Sultan increases the amount of tribute.
1461 (winter)	Muhammad invites Vlad III Dracula the Impaler to negotiate border issues in one of the southern Wallachian fortresses - Giurgiu. Vlad refuses, offering a meeting on a neutral, open territory, the Turks agree. Yunus Bey is sent for negotiations, military support is provided by the commandant of the Nikopol fortress, Hamza Pasha, with a 4,000-strong army. Not a single person returns from the negotiations to Turkey - having surrounded the Turks, Vlad III Dracula-Tepes with a 3,000-strong army defeats them.
1461 (winter-spring)	blitzkrieg on the border fortresses captured by the Turks. Vlad III Dracula-Tepes, among others, captures such large, strategically important objects as Novigrad, Turtukay. The total number of those killed according to the results of the blitzkrieg: Giurgiu - 6414, Novigrad - 384, Turtukay - 630. Total: 23809. Of those killed, half were Ottomans, half were Albanians.
1461 (summer(?))	Vlad III Dracula-Tepes marries cousin Matthias Corvin (various options - Lydia, Matilda, Elena).
1462 (spring)	Muhammad sends a punitive expedition of 30,000 men led by Mahmud Pasha. Of these, 12 thousand remain in the border fortresses, the rest cross the Danube and begin a predatory campaign. When the Ottoman army returns from the raid, Vlad III Dracula-Tepes strikes with the forces of his personal army, killing 10 thousand Turks, freeing the captured garrisons and prisoners.
1462 (summer)	Mohammed with 250,000 army is sent on a punitive expedition. He is accompanied by Radu cel Furmos. Vlad III Dracula-Tepes announces general mobilization. Of the allies, only Stefan cel Mare and Matthias Corvin respond. Wallachians use scorched earth tactics. The transportation of products for the Ottoman army along the Danube is blocked by the Kiliya fortress, which formally belongs to Matthias Korvin. The ratio of forces: 32 thousand (of which 7 thousand are a personal army) - Vlad III Dracula-Tepes, 250 thousand - Mohammed. The flying detachment of Vlad III Dracula-Tepes, gradually exhausting the enemy, inflicts pinpoint strikes on the Ottomans.
1462 (17 June)	the famous "night attack" of Tepes: the invasion of the personal army of Vlad III Dracula into the camp of the Ottomans on the outskirts of Targovishte. Result: 30 (35?) thousand Ottomans were killed, the sultan miraculously survives; from Vlad III Dracula-Tepes - 1 thousand captured, Vlad was slightly wounded in the head.
1462 (late June)	the army of the Ottomans goes to Targovishte, where they come across a forest of stakes with "missing" Turks, among them - Hamza Pasha, Yunus Bey. The Sultan turns the army back: on the borders with Hungary, the army of Matthias is on duty, the fleet of Stefan cel Mare approaches Chilia, finally cutting off the possibility of delivering products. Vlad III Dracula Tepes sends a detachment to Chilia (the fortress belongs to Hungary, and Stefan represents Poland), Stefan retreats. After that, Vlad III Dracula-Tepes strikes another blow at the outgoing Ottoman army, breaks the vanguard, but, having collided with the main forces, retreats. Departing, Mohammed leaves Rada behind the Danube.
1461 (presumably)	the birth of Mihni (Michal) cel Reu (another version of the transcription "chel Rau" - "Evil") - the eldest son of Vlad.
1462 (autumn-winter	The Wallachian boyars form an alliance with Radu against Vlad III Dracula the Impaler. Radu is gradually pushing Vlad to the north. After the betrayal of the boyars, Vlad is forced to retreat to Transylvania, where he arranges a meeting with Matthias Corvinus, who still holds an army on the borders. Negotiations took place, however, on the way back to Mutenia, Vlad, on the personal orders of Matthias Korvin, was captured by the Czech mercenary Jan Zhiskra. Before the European anti-Turkish coalition, Matthias is justified by false letters in which Vlad III Dracula-Tepes allegedly promises the Sultan his help in capturing Hungary and Transylvania. The throne of Wallachia is occupied by Radu cel Furmos.
1463	Vlad is imprisoned in the fortress of Pest.
1464	Vlad III Dracula the Impaler is transferred to the Vyshegrad fortress.
1464-1475 (according to some sources: 1464-1468)	Vlad III Dracula-Tepes spends in captivity in Visegrad, in the tower of Solomon, along with his wife. In the fortress, two of his sons are born: Vlad and another (the name is not known, presumably Mircea).
1475 (according to some sources - 1468)	Vlad III Dracula-Tepes was transferred under house arrest to Pest, where the strictness of supervision over the captive is gradually reduced, to the point that the latter is allowed to the Hungarian court, he is allowed to carry weapons within the house and meet with foreign ambassadors.
1475	the throne of Wallachia is occupied by Lajos (Layota) Bessarab (Bessarab Batrin?)
1475 (January)	Vlad was released at the insistence of Stefan cel Mare. Vlad III Dracula-Tepes again joins the anti-Turkish struggle. Under his command, the Hungarian troops took the fortress of Šabac in Serbia.
1475 (winter-spring)	Vlad III Dracula-Tepes, together with Stefan Bathory (Batory), is fighting in Serbia. More and more supporters of Vlad III Dracula-Tepes appear, supporting his right to the Wallachian throne. Matthias Korvin equally supports Vlad III Dracula the Impaler and the second contender - Lajos (Laitoy) Bessarab.
1476 (summer-autumn)	The Sultan makes an attempt to march against Hungary. Vlad III Dracula the Impaler and Stefan Bathory lead the Hungarian-Wallachian army. Stefan cel Mare joins them. The Turkish army was partially defeated by the combined forces.
1476 (November 26)	Vlad III Dracula-Tepes, with the support of Stefan cel Mare, defeats Lajos Bessarab and wins the Wallachian throne for the third time. Stefan cel Mare returns to Moldova, leaving Vlad a detachment of 200 people for personal protection.
1476 (December)	Vlad III Dracula-Tepes continues military operations on his own and pushes the Turks to the south
1477 (January)	Vlad III Dracula the Impaler dies in battle

Who would have thought that a cruel tyrant could have any feelings for the opposite sex. His personal life is shrouded in myths and dark secrets. Like the version that Count Dracula was a vampire, his love affairs remain a controversial issue.

However, there are many legends about the relationship of Tepes with girls. One of which says that Vlad had a mistress, who also could not escape the cruelty of her lover. One day, the girl, finding her count in a bad mood, decided to please him by saying that she was expecting a baby. Dracula did not believe her and, moreover, accusing her of lying, ripped open her stomach with a dagger.

But, nevertheless, there is another legend that tells that Count Dracula still had strong feelings for a female representative. It happened when Vlad Tepes was still very young. Once, in Hungary, he met a runaway Romanian boyar and met his daughter Lydia. The count managed to dissuade the girl from the desire to go to the monastery and took her as his wife. But it was precisely this love and passion for Lydia that became the most painful test in Dracula's life. The legend says that the girl, believing the false denunciation that her count died in battle with the Turks, threw herself from the tower.

Everything we know about Dracula comes from his opponents. And everyone carefully uses their testimonies, point-blank not seeing documents with the opposite sign of dirty tricks (for example, the poem "Gyganiad" by J. Budai-Delyan of the late 18th - early 19th centuries, which tells how Dracula fought vampires; or the legend about his meeting with God, from whom he tried to find out the location of his father's grave in order to erect a temple on this place; or, finally, letters signed by Dracula's hand). And in the latter, by the way, he: a) gave land to the peasants, b) granted privileges to monasteries, c) defended the observance of church burial rites for executed criminals (which means that he certainly could not impale Christians); d) founded churches and monasteries, as well as Bucharest itself.

Everyone is persistently looking for materials about Dracula in Turkey, England, France, i.e. exclusively from his opponents, but this fact does not bother her. This number includes:

• "The Tale of Dracula" (16th century), where he is called the one who sold his soul to the devil, without mentioning, however, that he drank human blood;
• Turkish chronicles, sparing no colors to describe the cruelty and courage of the "Kazykly" (Impaler) that terrified the enemies,
• a novel by Bram Stoker, who was a member of the Golden Dawn occult order (he practiced black magic);
• "memories" of the Hungarian king Matthias Korvin, who twice betrayed Dracula;
• a lot of first-printed brochures under the title "On a Great Monster" replicated at his behest.

The main source was presented by Corwin in 1462, during Dracula's stay in prison, an anonymous denunciation, which reported on the bloody adventures of the "great monster": tens of thousands of tortured civilians, burned alive beggars, impaled monks and how Dracula ordered caps to be nailed to the heads of foreign ambassadors. From what dusty closets the king extracted it, it remains unclear. But the denunciation helped him a lot to keep the stubborn vassal in prison for several more months, until the new pontiff Sixtus IV intervened: Vlad, famous for his courage and incorruptibility, he needed to organize a new crusade against the Turks.

It was this document that formed the basis of numerous pamphlets and legends about Dracula, which some authors quote with voluptuousness: “In the year from the birth of our Lord 1456, Dracula did things terrifying and amazing. Appointed ruler of Wallachia, he ordered to burn four hundred young men who arrived in his lands in order to learn the language. At his command, a large family was put on stakes, and he ordered many of his subjects to be dug into the ground to the navel and then shot at. Others were fried and skinned” (texts of the Nuremberg pamphlets).
Surprisingly, besides this denunciation, there is no other evidence of the massacres of civilians in Transylvania in the 50s of the 15th century.

But let us leave on the conscience of historians the vicissitudes of ancient years. In the end, if there were no Romanian chronicles and documents left, archaeologists could dig in the ground. After all, it is impossible to imagine that the destruction of tens of thousands of people over the course of several years, strangely not noticed by the Europeans and therefore not reflected in their chronicles and diplomatic correspondence, did not leave any material traces, that is, bones (the victims were not fashioned from jelly) !

And we will try to think about what the prince annoyed European historians at a time when, according to Lord Helling, “terrible cruelty was a very common feature of the nobility”? To begin with, let's remember that in the 15th century, inquisitorial bonfires were blazing with might and main, wars were more common than arable farming, which is why hunger knocked on the gates of European cities more than once. Crusaders of various stripes did not give up their attempts to forcefully convert "infidels" into their faith (or rather, slavery).

Well, impaling Turks, Poles, Bulgarians on a stake was a more common activity than planting kids on a pot.
Logically, the sovereign of a small mountainous country, even if he had exorbitant cruelty, was very limited in funds - and there were not enough subjects, and it was easier to hide among the forests, and the fight against the Turks absorbed all the forces and resources - where else to try yourself?

The absence of court scribes called to praise their ruler, which every self-respecting pimple had, of course, was a big blunder of the prince. And the enemies tried to take advantage of it. And not far off descendants, on the basis of enemy slanders, created a chilling picture: in the very center of Europe, secretly from the European sovereigns (so that they never found out about anything), but clearly for the Turks, the semi-legitimate Prince Vlad, who twice regained himself and lost the throne , brought down the people by tens of thousands of people a year only because his soul demanded it.

At first, Dracula was called a vampire fighter, because of his joint struggle with the Roman emperor Sigismund Luxembourg against the Hussites, whose white banner depicted a chalice full of blood. Most lay people, far from the subtleties of theological conflicts, understood the Hussist symbol literally - as black magic. When Vlad, in order to get out of the Hungarian dungeon, was forced to change his faith to the Catholic, in the eyes of the population he automatically moved to the opposite camp - that is, those same Czech vampires that he had previously fought.

Religious apostasy in Romanian folklore has always meant selling one's soul to the devil. Communion in this case became the offering of the devil to his faithful servant in the form of human blood. Therefore, immediately after the change of faith, the first legends about Dracula as a vampire developed. And when he died (in early 1477), he was killed in accordance with the rituals recommended against vampires - they pierced the chest with a spear and cut off his head, which was sent to Istanbul, where it was exhibited in the city center for public viewing. The body was buried in a monastery located in the family domain of Vlad. When archaeologists opened the tomb centuries later, they found nothing but rubbish and donkey bones. But in another tomb, nearby, were the remains of a decapitated man.
Naturally, the creators of the myths about the Wallachian prince have other explanations in their arsenal.

According to another version, Dracula learns about some oriental method that guarantees life after death, and provides himself with a lair in advance. This method, as old as the world, suggested that in order to maintain the body in a state of non-dying, you need to drink fresh blood, and spend your days in a special crypt.

According to Stoker's version, Dracula received his distinctiveness as part of the Secret Knowledge in a certain "Sholomanch" (Solomon's school), where the devil himself was the mentor, who once every hundred years "chooses a student for himself and puts him on the Dragon."

So Vlad the Impaler became a mystical creature who slept during the day in a coffin hidden under the old church, committed murders at night, granting the elect eternal life as vampires, and along the way accumulated knowledge, subsequently counting on a real resurrection in the flesh.

Certainly the prince was seriously suffering from one of the blood diseases. In royal dynasties that married between a narrow circle of relatives, such genetic disorders were not unusual. Their frequency in the countries of the European southwest, bordered by mountains and Turks, was even higher. Hence the irritability characteristic of the prince and the frightening strangeness of his appearance. It is not surprising that the fear of falling into a lethargic sleep at any moment forced him to build a special tomb for himself, from which one could easily get out and at the same time rather disguised.

Fearing his imaginary death, the Sultan ordered to cut off the head of the prostrate. As for the unnatural bulge of huge eyes, it could indicate some kind of endocrine disease. It is possible that these diseases developed in Dracula after the Turkish captivity and the subsequent 10-year stay in the Hungarian dungeon. In a word, the riddles in his case are a wagon and a small cart.

The death of Vlad Dracula at the end of 1476 is shrouded in mystery. There are several versions of the tragedy: according to one of them, the prince was “by mistake” killed by his own soldiers during the battle with the Turks, according to another, the killers were people sent by Basarab Layota. But what really happened? The key to solving the crime lies in the very grave of Dracula, located in front of the altar of the monastery church of Snagov. When we see this grave, the question arises, how could a Catholic be buried in an Orthodox church, and even in such an honorable place at the royal gates? The explanation of this seemingly contradictory fact will allow us to reconstruct the circumstances of Dracula's death.

It is known that Vlad was killed not far from Bucharest in a forest near Lake Snagov. In winter, the monastery located on the island becomes practically inaccessible and only very important reasons could induce the prince to go there at the end of December 1476. Recall that the main condition for the release of Dracula from the Hungarian dungeons was a change of faith, otherwise he would face death in prison. The prince was forced to convert to Catholicism, but at the first opportunity he hastened to return to the bosom of the Orthodox Church. It can be assumed that Dracula fell into a death trap set up by Layota and the Turks, returning from the monastery after re-baptism.

Vlad Dracula is dead. He was supposed to go down in history as an implacable fighter against the Ottoman invaders, a defender of his people and the Orthodox Church, but the bad rumor gradually turned him into a bloodthirsty monster. After the death of Dracula, Matthias did not stop discrediting him, and the advent of printing made his task much easier. By the end of the 15th century, a lot of the same type of German pamphlets "On a Great Monster" appeared, retelling the content of the infamous denunciation of 1462, which we have already talked about earlier.

But this posthumous blow was not the last. Four centuries after the death of Dracula, in 1897, a novel by Bram Stoker was published, on the pages of which Vlad appeared as a disgusting vampire cursed by God and people. What prompted the author of the mystical novelist Stoker, who did not enjoy much success, to make Dracula the hero of his work? His choice was not accidental. "Turn" the prince of Wallachia into a vampire Stoker was advised by a professor at the University of Budapest Arminius Vamberi, known not only as a scientist, but also as an ardent Hungarian nationalist. The campaign to denigrate Dracula, started by King Matthias, continued...

For those who know Stoker's work based on the film version of F. Coppola, the novel may seem overlong and boring, and the role of the most bloodthirsty count is secondary. The book was not a huge success. The opinion of critics was unanimous: another gothic horror story. But it was what they call a time bomb that exploded when it caught the eye of director Francis Ford Coppola. She really penetrated him, and he squeezed everything he could out of the mystical story. The character created by the novelist does not at all resemble the real Dracula, however, some very small fragments of the novel suggest that Stoker knew the prince's biography very well. "Later, when I had to atone for the great shame of my people - the shame of Kosovo - when the banners of the Wallachians and the Magyars disappeared behind the crescent, who, if not one of my ancestors, crossed the Danube and defeated the Turks on their land? That was really Dracula! What a grief, when his unworthy sibling sold his people into slavery to the Turks, branding them with eternal disgrace," the earl told the story of his kind to Jonathan Harker.

After reading these lines from the novel, the question arises why Stoker, who knew very well that Dracula devoted his whole life to protecting the Christian church and fighting the Ottoman Empire, endowed the hero of his novel with demonic features? Why was Bram Stoker's Dracula afraid of the cross and cursed by God? What is it: an unsuccessful fantasy of the author or a deliberate distortion of facts?

Bram Stoker knew about vampires not only from folklore sources - this topic was well known to him in real life. Stoker was a member of the "Golden Dawn" - an occult organization created specifically for practicing black magic, in particular, practicing rituals associated with the use of human blood. Suffice it to say that the Golden Dawn at one time included such a sinister figure as Aleister Crowley, who called himself the "beast 666", and the head of the order and his wife were accused of real vampirism - the couple tried to drink the blood of a gullible neophyte who wanted to join secrets of the Golden Dawn.

The evil irony is this: we are judging a fearless knight who dedicated his life to defending the Christian church based on a novel created by a man who was engaged in black magic and the occult. In the minds of millions of our contemporaries, Vlad Dracula became a vampire, and this opinion cannot be changed, no matter what facts are given to justify it. Such is life, and Dracula is just one of an endless series of heroes slandered and betrayed by ungrateful descendants.

Your Majesty! In previous letters, I informed Your Majesty how the Turks, the most ardent enemies of Christianity, sent important envoys to us with a proposal to break the peace and break the friendly ties concluded between us and Your Majesty, cancel the wedding celebration and join them in order to go to Turkish Port, to the royal court; and if we do not renounce peace, friendly relations and participation in the wedding of Your Majesty, then the Turks will stop peaceful relations with us. Also, they sent a prominent adviser to the Turkish Sultan, namely Hamza Bey from Nikopol, to resolve the issue with the Danube border, because if this Hamza Bey could lead us in any way, whether by cunning, on parole, or otherwise deceitful way to Porto, it would be good, and if he could not, then he would find a way to find us and deliver us captured.

But, by the grace of God, while we were heading to that border, I learned about their cunning and treachery, and we were the ones who laid a hand on this Hamza Bey, in Turkish possessions, near the fortress called Giurgiu. When the Turks opened the fortress at the request of our people, expecting their people to come in, ours - mixed with theirs - entered the fortress and captured it, after which they set it on fire<…>

... Your Majesty, know that this time we did it to the detriment of them, who all encouraged us with their efforts to abandon Christianity and join their faith. So know, Your Majesty, that we have terminated peaceful relations with them, not for some personal benefit, but for the sake of Your Majesty, the holy crown of Your Majesty, the preservation of the entire Christian world and the strengthening of Catholicism.

Seeing what we had done, they abandoned all the quarrels and claims they had hitherto - both in regard to the possessions and the holy crown of Your Majesty, and in all other places - and turned all their fury against us. With the onset of spring, when the weather clears up, they hatch hostile plans to pounce on us with all their might. But, they do not have the means of crossing, since all the crossings on the Danube, except for the one near Vidin, I ordered to devastate, burn and destroy. At the Vidin crossing, they know that they cannot bring us significant harm, and therefore they intend to bring ships from Constantinople and Gallipoli by sea, directly to the Danube.

Thus, Gracious Sovereign, if it is Your Majesty’s intention to fight with them, recruit an army from all over the country, both from cavalrymen and infantrymen, bring them through the mountains to our country and deign to fight the Turks here. And if Your Majesty does not want to appear in person, then the whole army came to the Transylvanian possessions of Your Majesty, even before the feast of St. Gregory. If, however, it is not in Your Majesty's plans to send the entire army, then as many warriors as you wish came, at least from Transylvania and the Szekely region. Well, if you intend to send us help, Your Majesty, then please do not hesitate and tell us your plans directly. This time I ask you not to detain our person who will deliver the letter to Your Majesty, but to send it back immediately. Because in no way do we want to leave what we started in the middle of the path, but to bring it to the end. For if the Lord Almighty listens to the prayers and requests of all Christians and deigns to turn his ear to the prayers of those who suffer in His name, and thus give us victory over the pagans and enemies of Christianity, this will be the highest honor, benefit, and spiritual help to Your majesty, and true Christianity; because we do not want to run away from their barbarism, but, on the contrary, to fight them in any way. And if we come - God forbid! - to a bad end, and our small country will disappear. Your Majesty will also not get any benefit and relief from this, for this will cause damage to the entire Christian world. I will add that everything that our man, Radu Pharma (Grammatik), tells Your Grace, can be trusted in the same way as if we were talking with Your Majesty face to face ...

VLAD III TEPESH DRACULA

(b. c. 1431 - d. 1476)

Lord of Wallachia in 1448, 1456-1462 and 1476, distinguished by extreme cruelty. The prototype of the protagonist of the famous novel by B. Stoker about vampires "Count Dracula".

Thanks to numerous films based on the novel by Irish writer Bram Stoker, the name of the Transylvanian vampire count Dracula has long become a household name. However, the prototype of the protagonist of the novel did not live at all in Transylvania, but in Wallachia. And history would hardly have preserved his name if it were not for the incredible cruelty even for those harsh times of the Wallachian ruler Vlad III, nicknamed Tepes, which means "count". So he was named after his favorite method of execution - impalement, which Vlad preferred to all others. And his second nickname - Dracula - came from the Romanian "fights" - hell. It can be seen that there was something sinister, inhuman in the governor, since this particular name was destined to survive the centuries in order to enter the history of literature as one of the founders of the now popular literary horror stories - horror.

Vlad Dracula belonged to a noble family. At the age of seventeen, he deprived the throne of the Wallachian ruler Radu III, declared himself the ruler of Wallachia and a vassal of the Hungarian king Sigismund. Soon he betrayed the king and went over to the side of the Turkish Sultan. In 1448, at the head of a Turkish detachment, Vlad moved to the Hungarian city of Torgovishte and took it. But at the end of the same year, Sigismund managed to capture the recalcitrant vassal, and he was sent into exile. Dracula spent several years in Adrianople, Moldova and Transylvania. But in 1453 the new Hungarian king Matthias Korvin forgave him, and Vlad, returning to Wallachia, again became its ruler.

However, relations with the Hungarians soon began to deteriorate. Vlad began to brutally crack down on Transylvanian merchants and their families, not even sparing children and women. They were subjected to terrible torture and impaled. This terrible execution, which was in full swing in the regions bordering the Turks, assumed a slow, painful death for the executed. It was said that Dracula used to watch the torment of his victims on a stake during a feast or meal.

But soon the ruler chose a new object for his hatred. In 1453, the Turks took Constantinople and began to threaten the Balkan lands. Dracula had to pay tribute not only to the Hungarian overlord, but also to the Sultan. Every year the Turks demanded 10,000 ducats and 500 youths, and Vlad hated them fiercely.

It ended with the Wallachian ruler refusing to pay tribute. The Sultan sent an embassy to him. Upon learning that the ambassadors were ordered to lure him into a trap, Vlad subjected them to severe torture. The pretext was that the Turks refused to take off their turbans in his presence. It was prohibited by their religion. Then Dracula ordered turbans to be nailed to the heads of the unfortunate. And the Turks who were in captivity were put on stakes.

When Sultan Mohammed II the Conqueror, who appeared to pacify Wallachia, saw a forest of stakes crowned with the bodies of the executed, he could not help crying. Soon he defeated the army of Dracula. He fled to Hungary, where he was taken into custody. Matthias Korvin, who embezzled the money of the Pope, which he allocated for the campaign against the Turks, accused the Wallachian ruler of this. Dracula lived in captivity for about 12 years, and then was again placed on the throne of Wallachia. The Hungarians needed an ally against the Turks, and Vlad's hatred of them and his prowess on the battlefield were well known.

Soon Dracula took part in the Hungarian campaign against the Turks, but in 1476 he was ambushed and killed along with his son.

Rumors about the bloodthirsty ruler reached even the Russian state. In Europe, many writings circulated about his "exploits". One of them was brought to Russia by the ambassador of the Russian tsar at the court of the Hungarian king Fyodor Kuritsyn. On its basis, the “Legend of the Mutyansk governor Dracula” that has survived to this day was created.

During the time of Ceausescu in Romania, the atrocities of Vlad Tepes were hushed up and his role in the fight against the Turks was emphasized in every possible way. Stoker's novel was banned under the pretext of insulting the national feeling of the Romanians. Court historians argued that Vlad's cruelty was caused by circumstances. And the last dictator of Romania was often depicted in paintings or tapestries in the company of Romanian governors, among whom one of the first places was occupied by Vlad Tepes. Perhaps that is why, during the reign of Ceausescu, people whispered that children were kept in special kindergartens, whose blood was then transfused to the elderly dictator to prolong life, and after the execution of the “genius of the Carpathians”, images of the dictator with huge fangs were worn through the streets of Bucharest. The people shouted: "Ceausescu - Draculescu."

As for the cinema, here Dracula, with the light hand of Stoker, transformed into a vampire, has been one of the first places in popularity for many decades. There was a time when ambulances were on duty near the cinemas where films about him were shown to urgently take care of terrified spectators. His image inspired the creation of films by recognized masters Roman Polanski and Frank Coppola, whose films Vampire's Ball and Bram Stoker's Dracula were among the cinematic masterpieces.

From the book Burma - Hell of a half-forgotten war author Turk Harry

Operation Dracula To the east of Meithila in those days there was not yet a continuous Allied front, when a small group of Japanese soldiers who had fallen behind their own soldiers, five people, of whom two were wounded, retreated towards Taungji. They survived after the battles near Meitkhila. Now

From the book Notes on Lenin. Collection author Team of authors

Vlad. Bonch-Bruevich WHAT VLADIMIR ILYICH LENIN READ IN 1919 Although Vladimir Ilyich, in his afterword in the book State and Revolution, stated that “it is more pleasant to make a revolution than to study it,” in fact, in the whirlwind of events, he read incredibly much, wrote a lot , a lot of literary

From the book Serbian Sunset author Polikarpov Mikhail Arkadievich

Vlad. Bonch-Bruevich WHAT LENIN READ IN 1919 (Ending) I was fortunate enough to find in my archive, which is in an unsorted form, almost all issues of the journal "Knizhnaya Letopis" for 1917, which were then looked through by Vladimir Ilyich, when all the other issues No.

From the book Dossier on the stars: truth, speculation, sensations. Behind the scenes of show business the author Razzakov Fedor

Vlad The previously mentioned Vlad was nicknamed Terminator for his immeasurable strength. In a hotel in Pale in the morning he did gymnastics, mercilessly torturing his body. The Russians, watching Vlad doing push-ups from under the covers, provoked and teased him: “Wrong,

From the book 100 great originals and eccentrics author Balandin Rudolf Konstantinovich

Vlad STASHEVSKY V. Stashevsky was born in 1974 in Tiraspol. He was not even two years old when his father left the family. Later, the father tried to renew relations with his ex-wife, but he did not succeed. Vlad recalls: “I saw my father only once. And now he's calling his mom and

From the book Welcome to the USSR author Troitsky Sergey Evgenievich

Dracula Vlad Tepes (Dracula). Engraving of 1462. He became one of the popular heroes of Gothic phantasmagoria and horror films. Movies about vampires recreate the castle of Dracula - a sophisticatedly bloodthirsty dead man, revived by constant bloodshed and protecting himself from

From the book Directors of the Present Volume 1: Visionaries and Megalomaniacs author Plakhov Andrey Stepanovich

FIRST DEMO and KING OF THE PARTY VLAD FIRST. 1985. THE POWER OF EVIL In November 1985 I decided that Corrosion of Metal needed to make a demo tape in order to start popularizing our ensemble among the metal community. And how can an ensemble exist if they don't have

From the book Vlad Listiev [Field of Wonders in the Land of Fools] author Dodolev Evgeny Yurievich

From the book Love in the arms of a tyrant the author Reutov Sergey

VII.XI. Vlad, Vladik, Vladislav. Three wives, two shell casings, one life. The code of Vladislav Listyev is standardly compared with murdered fellow journalists. Killed both before and after March 1, 1995. Not very logical, in my opinion. And I suppose it’s not even about the fact that, unlike, say, from

From the author's book

Princess Maritza. My Dracula This golden goblet should be placed at the main source of Targovishte, so that everyone who is thirsty, whether a guest or a host, can quench it without hindrance. Vlad Dracul, nicknamed Tepes Boredom was unknown to her. At least that's what she thought

His life was full of struggle for power with cruel opponents. And he himself committed many atrocities that gave rise to terrifying myths about vampires among the people. Vlad III Basarab (circa 1431-1476) - the ruler of the small principality of Wallachia, located in the south of modern Romania, received two nicknames at once: Tepes and Dracula.

Devil or dragon?

It is known that the prototype of many modern stories about vampires and his father were in the knightly Order of the Dragon, which was founded in 1408 by King Sigismund I of Luxembourg of Hungary. According to some reports, it was a secret occult society that was looking for the source of eternal life. It is possible that they considered human blood to be an elixir for all diseases.

The word Dracul can be translated as "dragon", but in Romanian it also means: "damn, devil." So Vlad II Basarab called himself, and his son inherited this nickname, however, in his case it was transformed into "Dracula". The fact that the rulers of the Orthodox principality allowed themselves to be called so ambiguously may indicate their commitment to Satanism.

spiker

The nickname "Tepes" is even darker. It comes from the Romanian word țeapă, which translates as "stake". Vlad III was nicknamed the stinger, because he often carried out mass executions of innocent people in such a cruel way. The ruler of Wallachia, according to some sources, liked to dine among the unfortunate, slowly dying subjects. He enjoyed their death throes and agony.

Since the corpses of the deceased were completely bled, people began to say that Dracula not only eats while looking at them, but also drinks the blood of his victims. Perhaps people tried to somehow explain to themselves his atrocities.

Torture in Turkish captivity

Many researchers try to explain the cruelty of the ruler of Wallachia by the suffering he endured while in Turkish captivity. The fact is that in the summer of 1444 Vlad, who was a teenager, and his younger brother Radu, their own father handed over to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire Murad II (1404-1451) as hostages. If the Wallachians refused to pay tribute to the Turks and tried to fight for national sovereignty, then the boys would be executed.

Some sources claim that Vlad was brutally tortured in captivity, forcing him to convert to Islam. He saw how other hostages were dealt with, whose relatives did not please the rulers of the Ottoman Empire. And this, they say, influenced the character of the young man.

Brother seduced by the sultan

The psyche of the Wallachian prince could also be negatively affected by the sexual harassment that his brother Radu was subjected to by Mehmed II the Conqueror (1432-1481), the son of the Turkish Sultan.

At least the Greek historian Laonicus Chalkokondil wrote that Radu Basarab and Mehmed II were in an intimate relationship. This has led some researchers to suggest that Vlad witnessed the rape of his younger brother by the future ruler of the Ottoman Empire.

Bloody Easter

Dracula sought to establish his power in Wallachia, brutally cracking down on objectionable boyars who secretly supported the political opponents of their overlord. Once he invited representatives of the noble nobility to a feast on the occasion of Orthodox Easter and executed all his guests.

Historians recognize the veracity of this story, they argue only about the date of the event. Most likely, Easter of 1459 turned out to be such a bloody one, although some researchers point to 1457. They say that from 50 to 500 Wallachian nobles were killed then, and this could be a kind of sacrifice to the Devil.

Support for the Orthodox Church

In the light of all that has been said, it is not the cruelty of Vlad III that is truly shocking, but his piety. Dracula generously donated money and land to Orthodox monasteries and parishes located not only in Wallachia, but also in Greece. In 1460, not far from the town of Giurgiu, he founded the Komana Monastery, and a year later, a church was built at the expense of the ruler in the town of Tyrgshor.

Many historians believe that the reason for such generosity of Dracula was his attempts to drown out rumors among the people about his devotion to Satan.

Catholicism as the cause of vampirism

However, Vlad III failed to whitewash his name with donations. As an Orthodox principality, Wallachia faced constant pressure from Catholic Hungary and the Islamic Ottoman Empire. The inhabitants of a small country considered devotion to the faith of their ancestors to be their salvation. And they explained the cruelty of the blood-drinking ruler by his secret conversion to Catholicism.

Since the followers of the Western branch of Christianity, unlike the Orthodox, during the celebration of Easter do not partake of the blood of Christ (which is traditionally replaced by red wine), the Vlachs suspected that the apostate was trying to compensate for this deficiency by drinking human blood. That is, the conversion to Catholicism is the cause of vampirism. Romanians still believe that the rejection of the religion of their ancestors pushes a person into the clutches of the Devil.

Crimes explicit and fictional

It is worth recognizing, despite the unconditional cruelty of Vlad III, many stories about his atrocities were exaggerated in the popular mind, turning into horror legends. For example, the story of 20 thousand (in some sources - 30 thousand) people, impaled, whose appearance frightened the formidable warriors of the Ottoman Empire, was fabricated by political opponents and numerous enemies of Dracula after his death.

In addition, they say about the ruler of Wallachia:

He ordered caps or turbans to be nailed to the heads of either Turkish or Italian ambassadors, who refused to take them off in the presence of Vlad III.

He cut open the stomach of his mistress with a knife, trying to convince him of her pregnancy.

He put a woman on a stake because her husband had a short shirt.

He executed the boyar, who did not like the sight and smell of numerous corpses.

Gathered many beggars, promising them a sumptuous meal, and burned them along with the building.

And this is only a small part of the scary stories told about Dracula.

They stuck a stake in the heart and cut off the head

The fact that the ruler of Wallachia was popularly considered a vampire is also indirectly indicated by the way in which he was killed in 1476. Who committed the act of retribution for the numerous atrocities remained unknown. Some historians believe that they were Turks, other researchers blame the Hungarians or the indignant Wallachians, whose relatives fell victim to Dracula.

They pierced his heart with a wooden stake and cut off his head, which was sent to Sultan Mehmed II, so that no one would doubt the death of Vlad III.

The grave was empty

The reason for the sinister rumors about the vampirism of the ruler of Wallachia was the fact that his tomb was empty. The headless corpse of Dracula, as you know, was buried in an Orthodox monastery located in the city of Snagov. But when the researchers opened the tomb of the legendary vampire, many centuries later, they did not find any remains there.

Booker Igor 02/06/2016 at 16:37

At Pravda studio. Ru historian and archivist Alexander Andreev told the true story of the personal enemy of the Turkish Sultan, the Wallachian prince Vlad the Third, known by his later nickname Tepes and which became the prototype of the literary one.

- Who and how made an impaler and a vampire out of a personal enemy of the Ottoman Empire?

He was an impaler, he was not a vampire. He was called "a thorn in the side of the Sultan." He said, "I can only be a stake." He was attacked, he defended himself. He defended his country in such a way that shreds flew through the back streets. At the same time, the budget of the Ottoman Empire was 20 times larger than the budget of Wallachia - then Romania. Such a person was Vlad III, Dracula. To understand what happened in the terrible XV century, we must fall into the past, but before that, I would like to say the following. Izmail, Fokshany, Cahul, Rymnik - these names are known to all of us.

- Victories of Russian weapons ...

Yes, the great victories of Alexander Suvorov. And 300 years before Suvorov, Vlad Dracula successfully beat the Ottoman invaders in these places.

The first Romanian state was created about 2.5 thousand years ago, headed by Burebista, then he was replaced by Decebalus. It was the only country that beat the Romans as it wanted and as much as it wanted. The Roman legion was very difficult to defeat. The Romans were the first to invent the thrust. When the first rank of the legion was cut, then the enemies from the second rank stabbed, so this killing machine moved forward.

The Romans mixed up and the Romanians appeared. The name Dacia was coined by the Romans. Dacia experienced all the "charms" of the nomads: Goths, Huns, Bulgarians. Then the Pechenegs, Polovtsians appeared, and in the 10th century the Hungarians and Magyars broke into the Danube plain.

- Transylvaniaon thelatinmmeans "area between forests". Po-Romanian - Erdial,in our opinion -Semigradye.

The civilization of Tsar Romyniaska has existed for eight thousand years. They had a written language when there were no Sumerians and there was no Egypt. The wheel was invented in Romania.

By the way, in 1774 Romania was part of the Russian Empire, and in 1829 we gave them autonomy. In 1861, Wallachia and Moldova united, the Kingdom of Romania was created. In 1920, Transylvania returned to them.

The Wallachian prince, taking advantage of the fact that the Hungarians are engaged in a war with the Tatar-Mongols, creates a country between the Danube and the Carpathians, which is called Wallachia. "Vlachs" is translated as "farmers". Wallachia is a country of farmers. In the XIV century, Sigismund of Luxembourg tried to unite Europe - the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, the Czech king, the Polish king, the Hungarian king. He created the Order of the Dragon in 1308, which included 20 people of some sovereigns.

Vlad the Second is accepted into this order, who begins to sign the name Dracula. In Romanian, the word "Dracula" means "dragon". There is also the word "drak", which means "chief devil", or "devil". These two words are mixed. Vlad the Second in 1431 in Sighisoara, in Transylvania, had a son, Vlad.

In 1436, Vlad the Second Dracul became the ruler of Wallachia and ruled it for 12 years. Ruled well. At this time, another fight breaks out between Hungary, Poland and the Danubian principalities. As a result, the Polish king Vladislav becomes the king of the united region, and in 1443 a crusade against the Ottoman Empire begins. Vlad II also participates in it. Perhaps even his little son (Vlad the Third Dracula had two more brothers). Fights successfully. The Turks were driven across the Danube.

The Duke of Burgundy, Jean the Fearless, wanted to be the first to defeat the Ottomans, and Vlad the Third suggested otherwise, but they did not listen. The Ottomans cut off the infantry from the knights, after which they attacked the main army. Thanks to the steadfastness of the Romanian soldiers, they managed to escape from a complete defeat. There were two such battles in total. One under Mircea the Great in 1396 under Nikopol, and the second - under Varna.

After that, Wallachia began to pay tribute to the Ottomans. The tribute was symbolic - 350 piastres. They did not interfere in the government of the country, they did not build mosques. The Sultan demanded the children as hostages. Vlad the Third Dracula, together with his brother Radu, spent four years with the Sultan, first in Edirne, then he was transferred to Engrigrez Castle. "Slanting eye" - so translated. Vlad learned Turkish and Tatar, studied the control system of the armed forces of the Ottoman Empire and then beat them. He knew all the signals, passwords, mechanisms, military guards of Turkey.

How did Vlad Dracul come to power?

When Vlad came to power, two comets rose in the sky. Many got scared. But a magnificent state was created. As an example, Vlad studied the system of the Inquisition. Moreover, his inquisition was much tougher. The last time a man was burned in Europe was after the Battle of Borodino, that is, in the 19th century.

Vlad impaled 20,000 out of 600,000 people in Wallachia. He gathered the robbers in the palace and asked them: "What, guys, do you like this kind of life?" - "Like". I took them and burned them so that there would be no infection. He said that from one rotten apple in the cellar, all healthy people would die. We speak from the perspective of our humane 21st century, but in the 15th century it was different.

When the Ottoman Empire saw that Wallachia had grown rich, in 1460 the Sultan expressed to Vlad Dracula a wish to increase the tribute tenfold - from 300 piastres to three thousand. In addition, recruit an army of Janissaries from Slavic boys. Vlad objected. The ambassadors began to be rude. Vlad was a man with humor and asked the Turkish ambassadors: "Why did you come to me in turbans?" They say: "We always walk like that. Even the emperor had turbans." Dracul continued: "And if the wind knocks your hats off, will the custom be broken?" They answered: "Yes." I cannot allow this, Vlad said and gave the command to nail the turbans to the heads of the ambassadors with shoe nails. They rushed to the feet of the Sultan. And he sent 30 thousand soldiers to Wallachia. But Vlad broke them.

In fact, Vlad took the first blow and covered Europe with himself. Tepes used the scorched earth tactics. The wells contained either poison or sheep's wool, which kills instantly. Moreover, he gathered lepers from all over Europe and began to infect the Turkish army.

- Started biological warfare?

Yes. Since the time of Dacia, there has been talk that Romanians can turn into werewolves. One hundred and twenty thousand Turkish troops entered the territory of Wallachia and approached Targovishte. Tepes had somewhere between 25-30 thousand.

The Turks approached Targovishte and saw that there was some kind of army. When they came closer, they saw: with standards in their hands, four thousand invaders were sitting on stakes along with Hamza Pasha. And then Sultan Mehmed II Fatih the Conqueror realized that he would not leave alive from there. After that, he himself did not go on campaigns to Wallachia, because he realized that this would end badly for him.

Since then, the Turks began to call Vlad Kyzykly, that is, "Kolosozhatel", and in Romanian - Cepesh. Vlad Tepes III. The Sultan entered Istanbul at night. This has never happened. Fatih is the Conqueror, but sneaks like a thief at night. All of Europe started talking about the fact that it is possible to defeat the Turks, having 20 times less troops. The Pope collected gold so that Vlad would organize a crusade against the Turks. But here was the problem of Orthodoxy and Catholicism.

Was Vlad Dracula Orthodox?

Of course. Byzantium, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia are Orthodox states.

- Being a hostage of the Sultan, he did not change his faith?

He did not convert to Islam, because in this case he was deprived of the right to the throne. Vlad was intercepted by the son of the Hungarian commander Janos Hunyadi, who became the king of Hungary, Matvey Korvin. Corwin translates as "vulture raven".

1461st, 1462nd and 1463rd - three star years of Vlad. Scorched earth tactics. On June 17, 1462, the famous night attack of Vlad Tepes took place. He had seven thousand soldiers, the Turks - 130 thousand. True, 20 thousand Turks were killed along the way. The Turks knew that the Romanians had few forces. They did not make a shaft and a ditch, but simply surrounded themselves with two rows of wagons, spears were installed on them. At this time, a wild howl was heard. Following the battering rams, huge wolves burst into the Turkish camp with sabers in both paws. Vlad dressed his best warriors in wolf skins.

By the way, the Belarusians used the same technique when the nomadic Polovtsy rode up to them. And also in animal skins they cut down all the enemies. Why Belarus can be admired? Nobody could capture this people.

Behind the wolves, herds of horses and oxen with tow on their tails burst into the Turkish camp. The fire was thrown onto the camels and horses of the Turkish convoy. Following them, seven thousand Vlad's guards in Janissary uniform burst in. Well planned operation. Special groups gave Turkish battle signals with drums, timpani and trumpets, confusing the enemy. Then 35 thousand Turks perished. Complete victory for Wallachia. The Moldovans wanted to help, but the Poles did not allow them.

- How did Vlad the Third end his life?

Vlad renounced power and went to Transylvania, where, as a result of betrayal, he was captured by the Czech mercenaries of Matvei Korvin. Corwin prepared three letters for the court. Their originals have not survived, but the writing style is not Dracula's. Was a talented person. Just some Cervantes.

Vlad's enemies thought that he had killed 300,000 boyars. And in the largest city of Europe at that time - in London - only 20 thousand people lived. There were never any 300 thousand boyars in Wallachia.

In 1897, when he arrived, he hired a Hungarian consultant, and the Hungarian, out of anger that Wallachia held on, ruined the story of Vlad the Third, turning him into a monster. But for Romania, Vlad the Third Dracula is a great hero.

Interview prepared for publication and interviewed

The figure of the most famous vampire in the world for several centuries has been overgrown with a layer of various myths, true and not so, and our task today is to understand the mysterious appearance of the sinister prince. He is associated with a national hero who fought for justice, a cruel and bloody ruler who knew no mercy, and a well-known image from books and films draws in the imagination of the legendary bloodsucker seized by passions. For many who followed popular adaptations, the blood ran cold from the atmosphere conveying horror, and the vampire theme, shrouded in a veil of mystery and romance, becomes one of the main ones in cinema and literature.

The birth of a tyrant and a murderer

So, the story of Vlad Dracula began at the end of 1431 in Transylvania, when a son was born to the heroic governor Basarab the Great, who famously fought with the Turks. I must say that this was far from the most beautiful baby, and it is with his repulsive appearance that some historians associate the pathological manifestation of cruelty. A boy with incredible physical strength with a protruding lower lip and cold, bulging eyes revealed unique properties: it was believed that he saw people through.

The young biography of which was full of such terrible stories, after which he even lost his mind, was considered an unbalanced person with many strange ideas. From childhood, his father taught little Vlad to wield weapons, and his fame as a cavalryman literally thundered throughout the country. He swam perfectly, because in those days there were no bridges, and therefore he constantly had to swim across the water.

Order of the Dragon

Vlad II Dracul, who belonged to the elite Dragon with strict military and monastic orders, wore a medallion on his chest, like all his other members, in the form of a sign of his belonging to society. But he decided not to stop there. With his submission, images of a mythical fire-breathing animal appear on the walls of all churches and on coins that circulated in the country. The nickname Dracul, who converts the infidels to Christianity, the prince received in the order. It means "dragon" in Romanian.

Compromise solutions

The ruler of Wallachia - a small state located between the Ottoman Empire and Transylvania - was always ready for attacks from the Turks, but tried to compromise with the Sultan. So, in order to maintain the state status of his country, Vlad's father paid a huge tribute in timber and silver. At the same time, all the princes had duties - to send their sons as hostages to the Turks, and if uprisings broke out against the dominance of the conquerors, then inevitable death awaited the children. It is known that Vlad II Dracul sent two sons to the Sultan, where for more than 4 years they were held in voluntary captivity, which means a pledge of a fragile peace, so necessary for a small state.

They say that the fact of a long stay away from the family and the terrible executions witnessed by the future tyrant left a special emotional imprint on him, which was reflected in the already shattered psyche. Living at the Sultan's court, the boy saw a manifestation of cruelty towards everyone who is obstinate and opposed to power.

It is in captivity that Vlad III Tepes learns about the murder of his father and older brother, after which he receives freedom and the throne, but after several months he flees to Moldova, fearing for his life.

Violence from childhood

Historical chronicles know an incident when a rebellion was raised in one principality, and in retaliation for this, the offspring of the ruler, who were held hostage, were blinded. For theft of products, the Turks ripped open their stomachs, and for the slightest offense they put them on a stake. Young Vlad, who was repeatedly forced to renounce Christianity under the threat of reprisal, watched such terrible spectacles for 4 years. It is possible that the daily rivers of blood affected the young man's unstable psyche. It is believed that life in captivity became the very impetus that contributed to the appearance of bestial cruelty to all disobedient.

Nicknames Vlad

Born into the dynasty from which Bessarabia (ancient Romania) was later named, Vlad the Impaler is referred to in documents as Basarab.

But where he came from the nickname Dracula - opinions differ. There are 2 versions that explain where the son of the sovereign got this name from. The first says that the young heir had the same name as his father, but he began to add the letter “a” at the end to the inherited nickname.

The second version says that the word "dracul" is translated not only as "dragon", but also as "devil". And this is how Vlad, known for his incredible cruelty, was called by his enemies and intimidated locals. Over time, the letter “a” was added to the nickname Dracul for ease of pronunciation at the end of the word. A few decades after his death, the ruthless killer Vlad III receives another nickname - Tepes, which was translated from Romanian as "spear" (Vlad Tepes).

The reign of the merciless Tepes

1456 is the beginning of not only the short reign of Dracula in Wallachia, but also very difficult times for the country as a whole. Vlad, who was especially ruthless, was cruel to his enemies and punished his subjects for any disobedience. All the guilty died a terrible death - they were put on a stake, which differed in length and size: low murder weapons were chosen for commoners, and the executed boyars were visible from afar.

As ancient legends say, the prince of Wallachia had a special love for the groans of the agonizing and even arranged feasts in places where the unfortunate suffered from incredible torment. And the appetite of the ruler only increased from the smell of decaying bodies and the cries of the dying.

He was never a vampire and did not drink the blood of his victims, but the fact that he was an obvious sadist, with pleasure watching the suffering of those who did not obey his rules, is known for certain. Often the executions were political in nature, with the slightest disrespect followed by retaliatory measures, leading to death. For example, those of other faiths who did not take off their turbans and arrived at the prince's court were killed in a very unusual way - by driving nails into their heads.

Gospodar, who did a lot to unite the country

Although, as some historians say, the death of only 10 boyars was documented, as a result of the conspiracy of which Dracula's father and his older brother were killed. But legends call a huge number of his victims - about 100 thousand.

If the legendary ruler is viewed from the point of view of a statesman whose good intentions to liberate his native country from Turkish invaders were fully supported, then we can confidently say that he acted in accordance with the principles of honor and national duty. Refusing to pay the traditional tribute, Vlad III Basarab creates from among the peasants who forces the Turkish soldiers to retreat, who have arrived to deal with the disobedient ruler and his country. And all the prisoners were executed during the city holiday.

Violent religious fanatic

Being an extremely religious person, Tepes fanatically helped the monasteries, giving them land as a gift. Having gained reliable support in the person of the clergy, the bloody ruler acted very far-sighted: the people were silent and obeyed, because in fact all his deeds were sanctified by the church. It is even difficult to imagine how many prayers for lost souls were offered up to the Lord every day, but grief did not result in a fierce struggle against the bloody tyrant.

And what is surprising - so great his piety was combined with incredible ferocity. Wanting to build a fortress for himself, the cruel executioner gathered all the pilgrims who came to celebrate the great Easter holiday, and forced them to work for several years until their clothes decayed.

The policy of cleansing the country from anti-social elements

In a short time, he eradicates crime, and historical chronicles tell that gold coins left on the street continued to remain in the very place where they were thrown. Not a single beggar or vagabond, of whom there were very many in those troubled times, dared even touch the wealth.

Consistent in all his undertakings, the ruler of Wallachia begins to implement his plan to cleanse the country of all thieves. Such a policy, as a result of which everyone who dared to steal was awaited by a speedy trial and a painful death, bore fruit. After thousands of deaths at the stake or block, there were no people willing to take someone else's, and the unprecedented honesty of the population in the middle of the 15th century became a phenomenon that knows no analogues in the entire history of the world.

Order in the country through cruel methods

Mass executions, which have already become commonplace, are the surest way to gain fame and remain in the memory of posterity. It is known that Vlad III Tepes did not like gypsies, famous horse thieves and loafers, and until now it is in the camps that he is called a mass murderer who exterminated a huge number of nomadic people.

It should be noted that everyone who incurred the wrath of the ruler died a terrible death, regardless of their position in society or nationality. When Tepes learned that some merchants, despite the strictest ban, had established trade relations with the Turks, as a warning to everyone else, he impaled them on a huge market square. After that, there were no people who wanted to improve their financial situation at the expense of the enemies of the Christian faith.

War with Transylvania

But not only the Turkish sultan was dissatisfied with the ambitious ruler, the power of Dracula, who did not suffer defeat, was threatened by the merchants of Transylvania. The rich did not want to see such an unbridled and unpredictable prince on the throne. They wanted to put their favorite on the throne - the Hungarian king, who would not provoke the Turks, exposing all neighboring lands to danger. No one needed the prolonged massacre of Wallachia with the troops of the Sultan, and Transylvania did not want to enter into an unnecessary duel, which would have been inevitable in the event of hostilities.

Vlad Dracula, having learned about the plans of a neighboring country, and even trading with the Turks, which was prohibited on its territory, became extremely angry and dealt an unexpected blow. The army of the bloody ruler burned the Transylvanian lands, and the local residents who had public weight were impaled.

12-year imprisonment of Tepes

This story ended in tears for the tyrant himself. Outraged by the cruelty, the surviving merchants turned to the last resort - an appeal to overthrow Tepes with the help of the printed word. Anonymous authors wrote a pamphlet describing the ruthlessness of the ruler, and added a little from themselves about the plans of the bloody conqueror.

Not expecting a new attack, Count Vlad Dracula is taken by surprise by Turkish troops in the very castle that the unfortunate pilgrims built for him. By chance, he flees from the fortress, leaving his young wife and all his subjects to certain death. Outraged by the atrocities of the ruler, the European elite was just waiting for this moment, and the fugitive is taken into custody by the Hungarian king, who claims to his throne.

The death of the bloody prince

Tepes spends a long 12 years in prison and even becomes a Catholic for his political reasons. Taking the forced obedience of the tyrant for obedience, the king frees him and even tries to help him ascend to his former throne. 20 years after the start of his reign, Vlad returns to Wallachia, where angry residents are already waiting for him. accompanying the prince, was defeated, and the king, not going to fight with his neighbors, decides to extradite the tyrant to the state that suffered from his atrocities. Upon learning of this decision, Dracula runs again, hoping for a lucky chance.

However, fortune turned away from him completely, and the tyrant accepts death in battle, only the circumstances of his death are not known. The boyars, in a fit of anger, chopped the body of the hated ruler into pieces, and sent his head to the Turkish sultan. The monks who remember the good, who supported the bloody tyrant in everything, quietly bury his remains.

When, several centuries later, archaeologists became interested in the figure of Dracula, they decided to open his grave. To everyone's horror, it turned out to be empty, with traces of debris. But nearby they find a strange burial of bones with a missing skull, which is considered to be the last refuge of Tepes. To prevent the pilgrimage of modern tourists, the authorities moved the bones to one of the islands guarded by the monks.

The Birth of the Legend of the Vampire Seeking New Victims

After the death of the Wallachian sovereign, a legend was born about a vampire who did not find shelter in either heaven or hell. Locals believe that the spirit of the prince has taken on a new, no less terrible appearance and now prowls at night in search of human blood.

In 1897, the world saw the mystical novel by Bram Stoker, describing the risen from the dead Dracula, after which the bloodthirsty ruler began to be associated with a vampire. The writer used Vlad's real letters, preserved in the chronicles, but a large amount of material was nevertheless invented. Dracula appears no less merciless than his prototype, but aristocratic manners and a certain nobility make a real hero out of the Gothic character, whose popularity is only growing.

The book is seen as a symbiosis of science fiction and horror novel, in which ancient mystical forces and modern realities are closely intertwined. According to the researchers, the conductor's memorable appearance served as inspiration for creating the image of the main character, and many details were borrowed from Mephistopheles. Stoker clearly indicates that Count Dracula receives his magical power from the devil himself. Vlad the Impaler, turned into a monster, does not die and rise from the coffin, as described in early vampire novels. The author makes his character a unique hero, crawling along vertical walls and turning into a bat, which always symbolizes evil spirits. Later, this little animal will be called a vampire, although he does not drink any blood.

Confidence effect

The writer, who carefully studied Romanian folklore and historical evidence, creates a unique material in which there is no author's narration. The book is only a documentary chronicle, consisting of diaries, transcripts of the main characters, which only enhances the depth of the story. With a touch of authentic reality, Bram Stoker's Dracula soon becomes the unofficial vampire bible, detailing the rules of an alien world. And carefully traced images of the characters appear alive and emotional. The book is considered to be ground-breaking art done in the original format.

Screen adaptations

Soon the book will be filmed, and the writer's friend becomes the first actor to play Dracula. His Vlad the Impaler is a vampire with noble manners and an attractive appearance, although Stoker described an obnoxious old man. Since then, the romantic image of a handsome young man has been exploited, against whom the heroes unite in a single impulse to save the world from universal evil.

In 1992, director Coppola filmed the book, inviting famous actors to play the main roles, and Dracula himself played superbly. Before filming, the director forced everyone to read Stoker's book for 2 days to maximize immersion in the images. Coppola used various techniques to make the film, like the book, as realistic as possible. He even filmed footage of the appearance of Dracula on a black-and-white camera, which looked very authentic and frightening. Critics felt that the vampire played by Oldman was as close as possible to Vlad the Impaler, even his makeup resembled a real prototype.

Dracula's castle for sale

A year ago, the public was shocked by the news that Romania's most popular tourist attraction was up for sale. Bran, in which Tepes allegedly spent the night during his military campaigns, is being sold by her new owner for fabulous money. Dracula's castle once wanted to be bought by the local authorities, and now the world-famous place, which brings fabulous profits, is waiting for a new owner.

According to researchers, Dracula never stopped in this place, which is considered a cult place for all fans of vampire works, although the locals will vied with each other to tell chilling legends about the life of the legendary ruler in this fortress.

The castle, described in the smallest detail by Stoker, only became the setting for a horror novel that has nothing to do with ancient Romanian history. The current owner of the castle refers to his advanced age, which does not allow him to conduct business. He believes that all costs will pay off in full, because the castle is visited by about 500 thousand tourists.

Real gold mine

Modern Romania makes full use of the image of Dracula, attracting numerous tourist flows. Here they will tell about the ancient castles in which Vlad III Tepes did bloody atrocities, even despite the fact that they were built much later than his death. A highly lucrative business based on a relentless interest in the mysterious figure of the ruler of Wallachia, provides an influx of members of the sects, for which Dracula is the spiritual leader. Thousands of his fans make a pilgrimage to the places where he was born to breathe the same air.

Few people know the true story of Tepes, taking on faith the image of a vampire created by Stoker and numerous directors. But the story of the bloody ruler, who does not disdain anything to achieve his goal, begins to be forgotten over time. And with the name of Dracula, only a bloodthirsty ghoul comes to mind, which is very sad, because the fantastic image has nothing to do with a real tragic person and those terrible crimes that Tepes committed.