∆∆∆

THE HORROR OF DRACULA THE

UNBELIEVABLE TRUE STORY
DARKEST DYNASTY
 INTRODUCTION

i n june 1462 a vast ottoman army under sultan mehmed ii advanced on

the city of targoviste in volakia
after weeks of grueling ambushes and pitched battles resulting in
thousands of turkish deaths the ottomans were preparing for a siege of the
volakian capital but when a detachment of ottoman cavalry was sent ahead
of the main force they encountered a site that shook them
to their core they discovered a forest of impaled bodies there were over
twenty thousand ottoman captives rotting in the summer heat before the
walls of targoviste
the forest of stakes stretched for two miles in a vast crescent up to half a
mile wide this macabre site was more than the ottomans could take the scale
of the horror the astonishing
extremism of it broke their spirit and the sultan and his army retreated from
targoviste the architect of this horrific victory was vlad iii dracula his
cunning his military brilliance and
 CHAPTER 1

a bove all his extremism had saved his country and his people but
these very traits the extremism of led the impaler his willingness to
do anything to go further than anyone else to achieve
victory and his refusal to compromise would ultimately mean his downfall
this is the incredible story of vlad the impaler
vlad was born sometime between 1428 and 1431 the son of vlad ii dracul he
was born into a time of great conflict between the christian kingdoms of the
balkans and central europe and the ottoman turks who were determined to
conquer them vlad was born into a valaccian aristocracy called the boyas
the social structure of vlakia was quite simple
there were the three peasants who worked the land the bojas who ruled over
them and above them all was a prince known as the voivode there was no
simple succession between the voivodes of volakia legitimate rulers had to
be of the royal line ultimately descended from
bazarab the first but none served for very long and there were many
usurpations by brothers cousins and bastard sons of the two main factions
the great enemy of the draculeshti faction was the danish d the succession
was in practice about who was the strongest and this often came down to
who could retain the support of external allies because vallakia was
squeezed between larger more powerful kingdoms
vlad's father as voivode of valakia simply had to submit to one overlord or
another namely his mighty neighbours the kingdom of hungary to the north
or the ottoman turks to the south to understand vlad the impaler we must
first look at the actions of his father the choices of vlad ii dracul his allies
and enemies and the horrific manner of his death would all have a profound
impact on the character of his son vlad
i dracula and the often extreme actions that he took in his life to become
voivode vlad ii had courted the powers of central europe especially the
kingdom of hungary in fact this was where the famous name of dracul
meaning
dragon came from the order of the dragon was a chivalric order created by
sigismund of luxembourg who was king of hungary and eventually holy
roman emperor its primary purpose was to defend christendom from the
ottoman turks and vlad ii as an ally of
sigismund was welcomed into the order becoming known as dracul this
name was extended to his sons in the form of dracula and his clan his
descendants would become known as the draculeshti but when sigismund
died in 1437 and
hungary was weakened vlad ii sought instead to ally with the ottoman turks
to the south the ottomans always threatened invasion across the danube and
without hungarian support the vallakians had no hope of resisting and
so vlad ii travelled to the ottoman capital at adernae formerly the byzantine
city of adrianopol to pay homage to sultan murad ii and where he agreed to
pay an annual tribute and to provide military support to the ottomans
in their coming attack on hungary allying with the ottomans seems rather to
go against his oaths to defend christendom from the muslim turks but this
was the reality of ruling valaccia protecting your own position keeping
enough of the bowyars on your side and ensuring your peasants were not
wiped out in an invasion was a balancing act where every decision had
potentially terrible consequences to openly defy the sultan would have
meant the invasion of wallachia
thousands of valakians killed and taken as slaves and vlad's own death and
replacement as voivod by a boyar rival who was willing to make peace and
so vlad ii tried to play both sides as best he could but after supporting an
ottoman attack on hungarian transylvania he was paid a visit by one of the
great men of the age john hunyadi the transylvanian hunyadi as one of the
most powerful nobles of hungary was the leading opponent to ottoman
expansion
and would be at different times a terrible enemy and a staunch ally to both
vlad ii and vlad iii and now in 1440 punyadi who would soon be regarded
as the greatest military commander in the balkans and was already
a noble of great influence in hungary decided to bring vallakia back under
hungarian control using both the carrot and the stick in the next ottoman
invasion of transylvania vlad ii supported hunyadi
and when the ottomans were crushed the sultan demanded vlad come to
adernae to explain himself to defy the sultan's order would have invited an
invasion of valakia and so in 1442 vlad went down to adernae where he was
immediately seized
and imprisoned by the sultan along with his two young sons vlad who was
between 11 and 14 years old and radu who was about 7 years old now vlad
ii had been well aware of the risks of putting himself in the sultan's hands
and so he
left his eldest son behind to rule in his absence mochir ii was only about 15
years old and as his father and younger brothers were now ottoman captives
he could not side with hungary against the sultan
because of this ranyari invaded valakia deposed yang mercier ii and made
vlad ii's cousin bazarab into the voivode of volakiya in return for his
support of hungary after about a year vlad ii was released by the ottomans
and he returned
to retake volakia making himself voivod once more with the support of his
son mercia and the boyar faction that had remained loyal to them but vlad
was forced to leave his two young sons behind as hostages of the sultan and
they would remain there for about five
more years vlad the impaler the great and terrible enemy of the turks was in
fact partly raised by them and educated and instructed by ottoman tutors
but what was his life like as a hostage of the sultan before his time in
ottoman captivity vlad's childhood had been perfectly pleasant he had
joined his mother his two legitimate brothers and his father
when they all went to the vallakian capital tagoviste in 1437 and their
young vlad began his training as a knight he was taught how to fight with
the sword the bow and the lance and he excelled especially at horsemanship
he
also learned italian french and hungarian as well as latin for international
diplomacy the religion of the boyas was orthodox christianity but roman
catholicism had an influence too and because of the influence of catholic
hungary on his father young vlad was also instructed in the catholic faith at
an early age the schism between catholic and orthodox christians in europe
was for some people a greater concern than the struggle between
christianity and
islam and this schism was extremely important in the politics of the region
when vlad and radu were raised by the ottomans their education as princes
continued because the turks intended for them to be potential vassals when
they
came of age there was therefore no attempted conversion to islam that
would have been counterproductive the turks wanted to produce tame
christian princes who would deliver a principality along with its taxes
produce and slaves for
the sultan vlad did become fluent in turkish and he had contact with the
future sultan and his great enemy mehmed ii who was just a few years
younger than vlad we can only imagine the details of their relationship in
some ways they had
a similar character and both would become lifelong soldiers both would
attempt to centralize evermore authority under themselves at the expense of
their nobles although the future sultan would have a vast empire to
command in his
endless wars of conquest while vlad would have to fight repeatedly for his
throne and in defense of his people vlad chafed under his turkish captors
and was whipped frequently as punishment no doubt this along with the
frustrations of his captivity had a lasting emotional impact it was rather
different for his younger brother radu who in later life would be known as
radu the handsome due to his exceptional good looks and by all accounts he
had a far more
accommodating nature than did vlad and he became a favorite of mehmed ii
he was a few years older than radu as sultan mehmed ii would have five
wives and four children and he maintained a royal harem of other women as
was the
custom but their our account that he also loved and lay with boys and that
he did the same to the young radu the handsome to what extent these
accounts are true is hard to say perhaps they help to fuel the hatred vlad had
for the
turks and the sultan and whatever happened it seems that this period of
captivity was when vlad and radu began to fall out and as men they would
be great enemies and whatever horrors were inflicted upon them in their
captivity
vlad would turn against the turks while radu turned entirely towards them
their father negotiated with sultan murad ii in the summer of 1447 and no
doubt the fate of the boys was a
bargaining chip that encouraged vlad dracul to make favorable terms
unhappy at this renewed close relationship john hunyadi invaded valakia
intending to remove vlad ii and replace him with a more pro-hungarian
voivode and this was when the faction of the lakian boyas who were
opposed to vlad's faction decided to rebel the taneshti clan captured vlad
dracul's oldest son mercier ii they burned out his eyes with hot irons and
then they
buried him alive vlad dracul managed to make it out of targoviste and fled
south towards the danube perhaps intending to reach the turks but he was
caught and killed by vladislav ii of the daneshdi
john hunyadi momentarily claimed valaccia for himself but thought better
of it he rewarded the pro-hungarian boyar factions who had supported him
by making vladislav ii of the dhaneshti clan into the voivode of wallachia
there
is a story a legend perhaps that a loyal retainer of vlad ii named kazan
carried the dead prince's sword and his collar with the insignia of the order
of the dragon to young vlad dracula at adernae this kazan also related in
graphic
detail the murders of his brother and father at the hands of the daneshdi and
it is said that dracula now swore to kill vladislav ii in person in early 1448
sultan murad ii released
young vlad dracula so that he might take the vallakian throne and bring his
people back under ottoman control now this was highly unlikely because he
had few soldiers little money and no
power he was between 17 and 20 years old and he had not been in valaccia
for five or six years so he did not have the network of political influences
necessary to make a move on the throne but there was an opportunity in
october
1448 the hungarians clashed with the ottomans in a huge battle on the plain
of kosovo with the hungarians were germans and bohemians and volakians
under vladislav ii it was a great throw of the dice by hunyadi to crush the
ottoman forces and
throw back the endless invasions but the christians lost the battle and so
while the voivode was still 200 miles away dracula reached targoviste with
a small force of horsemen supplied
by or at least paid for by the ottomans there he claimed the throne he also
tried to have vladislav ii seized on his return but dracula's men failed
vladislav then rounded up the volakian troops returning piecemeal to
valaccia and rode against the young usurper vastly outmatched dracula was
defeated in battle and he fled his first period of rule was just two or three
months long and where else could he flee to but back
to ederne however vladislav ii's overlords the hungarians had been defeated
and the voivode of valaccia sought terms with the turks moving into the
ottoman orbit dracula sensed that his life was in
danger from hosts who might no longer need him to be their pet voivode so
he fled to moldavia he was safe there from hungarian and ottoman
interference and soon bogdan ii would become the voivode of moldavia
bogdan was related to dracula by marriage and young vlad grew close to
bogdan's son who would go on to become stephen the great during this
period dracula fought with stephen and bogdan ii against the forces of
poland
dracula's stay ended when bogdan ii was murdered and usurped by his
brother petra aaron in october 1451 vlad and stephen fled across the border
to transylvania which was dangerous because that land was ruled by
hunyadi but they
had few options left from there they fled to the saxon colony town of brazil
but hunyadi and vladislav had word that dracula was in the area and so he
ran again to sibyu another saxon town that would give him sanctuary
john hunyadi became increasingly suspicious of vladislav ii's growing
closeness with the turks when vladislav sent a delegation of bojas to
congratulate the new sultan mehmed ii on his ascension to the throne
hunyadi sieged the duchess of thagarash and amlash from the velakian
prince these were key entrance points into and across transylvania and
hunyadi believed he had a ready-made replacement for vladislav in the
young
dracula and now he took him into his service dracula was even taken to
buda where he was present at ladislash the fifth's coronation so that the
exiled valakian prince in waiting could swear allegiance to the new king of
hungary perhaps it seems astonishing that
dracula would make peace with hunyadi the architect behind the deposition
and murder of his father and brother but dracula wanted the throne and he
wanted to get his hands on vladislav ii and the other bojas who had actually
done these
terrible deeds and if he was ever to rest volakia away from the ottomans he
needed hungarian support so for once he swallowed his pride and accepted
from the king of hungary responsibility for defense of the
transylvanian frontier this was a role his father vlad ii had once fulfilled for
hungary but now in 1451 the transylvanian border was about to become a
far more dangerous place because sultan murad ii had died from a stroke
and his son mehmed ii was now on the ottoman throne and for good reason
he would become known to history as mehmed ii the conqueror in may
1453 the 21 year old sultan conquered constantinople and then he
turned his attention to the rest of the balkans in the face of the unstoppable
might of the ottomans vladislav ii turned even more towards the turks and
made further overtures to the sultan agreeing that mehmed armies could
march through
volakia by 1455 mehmed was mustering men and suppliers on the southern
banks of the danube mehmed's forces already had control of southern serbia
but now his target would be belgrade its strategic
position was vital once belgrade fell the danube would be open for an
ottoman fleet and army to attack buddha and eventually even vienna
hunyadi led the organization for the defense of belgrade pulling in every
ship and every man he could but the volakians under vladislav now allied to
the turks were raiding across the border into transylvania tying down troops
that were desperately needed in serbia negotiations between hunyadi and
vladislav failed when the volakians
stirred up a rebellion against hungary in fagarash in april 1456. finally
hunyadi agreed to give vlad dracula what he had long been waiting for
hungarian support to retake the vallakian throne
in june 1456 dracula set out through the pass over the carpathians at bran
with a small force of exiled boyars and
hungarian mercenaries determined to take the throne and to take his revenge
dracula sets to work gaining the support of the valakian bowyars especially
those of his father's faction and all those
disaffected with vladislav ii's increasing support for the ottomans it took
him less than a month of travelling from valley to valley stronghold to
stronghold from the mountains and foothills of the north to the plains of the
south before he was strong enough to move against the murderer of his
father
and elder brother dracula finally caught up with vladislav ii somewhere near
targoviste and cornered his enemy before the two armies dracula made
vladislav an offer to fight him in a
duel to the death single combat with the victor winning all of a luckia now
dracula had no need to do this he could have had his men kill vladislav or
he could have taken him prisoner and had him executed he could have done
anything he liked instead of risking his own life and risking complete
failure in his life's mission but as far as vlad dracula was concerned honor
demanded that he face his enemy man to man what
is more victory in a duel would prove to all that god was on his side and it
was a bold statement to the watching boyas that vlad was not a weakling
who had men to do his killing for him it showed also that he was a warrior
not a politician and that he was willing and able to get
his hands dirty and of course blood dracula cut down his enemy and so
avenged the murders of his father and brother valaccio would now be vlads
but the sultan was still coming for serbia and
so dracula returned to his duty of guarding the transylvanian parties against
ottoman attacks because with vallakia now allied to hungary john hunyadi
could move his transylvanian forces to belgrade while mehmed ii would
need to keep some of his own forces
guarding the danube against volakian raids but while this was going on the
turks had begun the siege of belgrade and were battering the walls with an
enormous number of guns hunyadi gathered an army
and a fleet and attacked the ottoman fleet on the danube winning a
magnificent victory before reinforcing the city mehmed ii launched an
assault on the breached walls but they were thrown back and routed in a
spectacular
and unlikely victory mehmed ii retreated all the way back to sophia and in
his rage had several of his generals executed this glorious victory was
marred however by the death of john hunyadi a plague a common
occurrence in sieges
 CHAPTER 2

r avaged the batted city in the days after the victory and hunyadi was
one of its victims so hungary lost its greatest soldier and christendom
lost its staunchest champion while vlad dracula lost the great lord
who had once been his enemy but who had become his strongest ally in
august 1456 dracula was formally elected by the higher boyar council and
confirmed in the cathedral of targoviste with the title of prince vlad son of
vlad the
great sovereign and ruler of ungrovakia and the duchess of amlash and
faragash as voivode dracula set out to work on international relations he
wrote to the mayors of the important towns of transylvania to hunyadi's son
lazlo and
to the boyas who were still not aligned with him he also worked to
undermine the rule of the moldavian usurper petra aaron intending his
cousin stephen he was still with him in tagalog vista for the moldavian
throne this was not merely repaying the favor for a relative it was
in vallakian interests to pull modalia away from the ottomans as they were
under petra aaron and away from poland where they had been traditionally
and into the hungarian sphere along with
valakia and in 1457 at the head of 6 000 volakian soldiers courtesy of
dracula stephen took on and defeated his uncle the murderer and usurper of
his father in two battles and stephen was crowned as moldavia's prince at
the time it
looked like dracula's first great success and of course it was but stephen
would go on to have a far longer and far greater reign than his cousin and
dracula had done well but hungary was still reeling from hunyadi's death
and
the danger of further ottoman attacks and volakia could not afford open
defiance of the turks when mehmed ii sent ambassadors to targoviste vlad
had to agree to a yearly tribute of 2000 gold to cats which was no small sum
but
even worse was the agreement to allow the passage of ottoman armies
through valaccia so that they might assault the hungarians in transylvania in
return the ottomans recognized dracula as the rightful ruler in effect
promising not to undermine his
rule or invade in an attempt to place another valaccian boja on the throne
that was the power the ottomans held over him still when they asked him to
come to constantinople to pay homage to the sultan dracula refused
perhaps he remembered well what had happened to his father under the
previous sultan perhaps he could not bring himself to stoop so low thus
buying himself time through diplomatic agreements with his neighbours
hungary moldavia and the ottomans vlad set to
work on valaccia he repaired and extended panari castle a potential bolthole
perched high on a steep rock precipice in the mountains the rules of his
agreements with the hungarians and turks stated that he
could not build such a fortress but vlad did it anyway he needed safe places
and he was willing to push his luck with the overlords who both needed him
at least for the time being he also had to project his power into the lowland
plains and so he founded the fortress of bucharest in june 1458 building on
and linking several villages in the area of course this would go on to
become an important city he also fortified the nearby monastery of snagov
and built a line of small
forts along the plain and river it should be said that fortifying monasteries in
the balkans was not in the least bit unusual these defenses were built of
course to defend valakia from the ottomans on the other side of the danube
but he needed
them against internal enemies too valakia like many mountain kingdoms in
history was fundamentally divided in preceding centuries each steep-sided
narrow valley was ruled by a different clan and its chief ruled his lands and
people like a king by the late medieval era these lords thrived as boyas
under the voivode they elected but those ancient divisions were still there
below the surface over the previous 40 years there had been 12 voivodes
despite the foreign powers sponsoring candidates the boyas were where the
real power lay in volakia any time the sitting voivode displeased them they
could choose to back another of the royal blood including vlad's younger
brother radu who still served the ottomans this fundamental instability at the
heart of vallakian politics kept the voivodes in check and so it kept vallakia
weak in the face of its more powerful neighbors dracula did not wish to be
another
short-lived ruler he did not want to leave volakia in the hands of a puppet of
the ottomans or the hungarians and in fact there had been rebellions against
his rule from the start they were still partisans of ladislav ii working against
dracula and the powerful boyar chief albu the great had organized an
unsuccessful revolt in the months after dracula took power and still album
maintained a private army agitating for vlad's removal and controlling parts
of
the country and so dracula began a great purge of the boyars they say a
tyrant should commit all his atrocities at once and put them behind him
rather than dragging them out over his entire reign and certainly vlad did his
best in that regard it was now when he first carried out the
acts that would give him his famous sobriquet first of all his men ambushed
albu the great and then impaled him and his entire family only albu's
brother escaped he fled to the town of brazil which would become the main
refuge for
valakian dissidents during vlad's reign this was an extreme act but the
boyars understood albu had maintained a force against vlad and the voivode
had attacked and defeated it it seemed to
them that the fighting was over and when vlad invited them to easter
celebrations at the capital 200 boyars attended with their families just as the
guests finished their meal in the banqueting hall of the palace the boyars
and their wives were seized by
dracula's men they were dragged out through the gates and impaled on mass
beyond the city walls the act of impalement itself required a very long
sturdy pole with a sharpened
end this point would sometimes be greased with lard to aid its entry into
and through the body which began at the victim's rectum and ended with an
exit through the mouth or throat by which point the victim should have
mercifully expired
the sheer horror of this method of execution is of course what makes vlad
the impaler into the legendary figure he is today what drove him to commit
such appalling acts against not only his own boja lords but their wives
while slaughtering his enemies by sword or beheading or hanging might
have had the same result in terms of removing them from the field but mass
impalement was a means to terrorize the survivors his enemies and even his
allies it was a
message sent loud and clear that vlad dracula was not to be trifled with he
did not impale the boyar's children but their fate was hardly much better as
they were marched to ponari castle where they slaved away firing bricks
and
carrying them up the slopes to build the towers and keeps no doubt these
children were ultimately worked to death and vlad the impaler was not done
in fact he was just getting started
vlad replaced much of the old aristocracy with new men who had been loyal
to him granting confiscated boyar land to low-born followers he created a
new institution above the bowyar council that would be responsible for
carrying out his will and he filled it with loyal men he also created a new
military officer class drawn from the three peasant soldiers who had
performed well on the
 CHAPTER 3

b attlefield men who could be relied on in battle but who also owed
their newly elevated social status to vlad iii and he created a small
standing army a royal bodyguard by these and other
reforms and his purges vlad was in some ways seeking to emulate the
centralization he had witnessed at the ottoman court he intended to make
himself as much of an autocrat as the sultan was he also generously
supported that other
power in his realm the romanian orthodox church granting them tax
immunities and other privileges especially to monasteries and he extended
church properties in return he expected them to be his voice amongst the
common people he
especially supported the monastery of snagov on an island in a lake a few
miles from bucharest this place is rumored to be the location of vlad's body
although no one knows for sure certainly though he trusted the monks and
they trusted him enough that they
guarded his royal treasure here at snagov during the ottoman invasion of
valakia in 1462. his relationship with the catholic church in valaccia was
not so close during the early part of his reign in fact there is evidence of
him directly
attacking catholic monasteries and even impaling catholic priests but only
when they defied him mainly though he replaced foreign catholic abbots
with romanian ones with his external allies secured his
internal enemies purged and repressed and his reforms begun vlad in 1459
suddenly refused to pay the agreed tribute to mehmed ii in return for
ottoman peace the volakians had to pay a carefully
calculated monetary sum and specific amounts of grain and animals to
constantinople the lowlands especially were so productive that the turks
saw valakia primarily as a vast granary there was also the devsharma the
blood
tax although forcing slaves into a military service had a more ancient origin
the ottoman system was perhaps formalized by murad the first the
conqueror of adrian opal and much of the southern balkans they took young
christian boys from the
conquered lands and pressed them into military service under the sultan
they were given the name yani seri meaning new troops and they came to
be known as janissaries this was a way for the sultan to centralize his own
military
power rather than being reliant only on his regional lords for raising troops
of course the devsherme was a terrible evil christian boys between 8 and 10
years old were taken from their families in the lands subject to ottoman
power
and not only would they be lost to their families forever they would also be
made into soldiers and turned against their own people and all the enemies
of the turks and in 1459 vlad dracula said enough hungary was now ruled
by john hunyadi's
son matthias corvinus he was supported by his uncle by marriage michael
shilaji a longtime ally and friend of draculas and it was this relationship that
led to further atrocities by dracula this time committed against the saxon
towns of
transylvania it perhaps seems strange that saxons were here at all but these
german colonies had been founded generations earlier along the vallakian
transylvanian border to provide an economic boost to the region the
volakians and transylvanians were populated by three peasants and their
overlords and they had few merchants skilled craftsmen and artisans and no
real towns the rulers of these lands looked at more modernized kingdoms
and realized they were missing out on
potential tax revenue from the kind of economic activity that generated
actual cash instead of just crops and livestock so they invited saxons to set
up colonies in their lands and awarded them favorable incentives in taxation
and
political freedom during vlad's early reign he had maintained a positive
relationship with the saxon towns and many had supported his war against
vladislav ii in return he had given them a commercial treaty promising to
protect them against
the ottomans and the right to unimpeded trade across transylvania and
volakia but this close relationship changed when the hungarians squeezed
the towns for more revenue and the town of bistri revolted and michael
zilajii called on
dracula to bring the region to heal and dracula brought his soldiers stormed
the walls of bistri and looted and burned the town the ringleaders fled to the
towns of brazov and sibu and far from stamping it out the rebellion spread
the saxons clever merchants rather than nobleman soldiers had once began a
propaganda campaign against dracula spreading rumors that he was a secret
vassal to mehmed ii they also now supported dracula's rival boyar faction
the daneshdi and dan iii brother of the deposed vladislav ii established
himself in the saxon town of brazov and claimed the throne of valakia after
being elected by a group of danesh de boyars and other lords who had fled
dracula's earlier purges
another rival claimant was declared in the saxon town of sibyu vlad
dracula's half-brother known as vlad the monk was funded by the saxon
merchants and supported by more unhappy boyas and a
third candidate emerged from the daneshi clan a son of dan ii called bazarab
also had the backing of boyars alarmed by dracula's reforms and he was
also supported by saxon funding all of dracula's hard work was coming
undone all the blood he had spilled to secure his throne and centralized
power and now it seemed it was not enough there were still so many
enemies and they had moved just after he had cut off the turks clearly he
had not gone far enough with
his purges and punishments first he stripped the sacks and towns of their
trade protections and encouraged the merchants of volakia and the italian
republics with favourable tariffs this had the benefit of bringing the small
but important balakian merchant class
over to his side against the other claimants and then vlad moved against
them militarily this campaign waged between 1458 and 1460 would lead to
dracula's infamy
being spread across europe by saxon propaganda that's not to say their
claims were untrue but they certainly intended to rally the support of
catholic europe especially in germany against their enemy their pamphlets
and woodcuts made vlad
into an inhuman monster the later nurnberg chronicle of 1488 says the
following quote both women and men young and old perished some he
brought home with him to valaccia and impaled them there he declared a
peace and during the
same he had many merchants and wagoneers from workland impaled he
also had a large family extinguished and impaled ambassadors numbering
55 were sent from the kingdom of hungary and saxony and transylvania
into volakia dracula kept
them waiting for five weeks and had stakes made for their impalement
meanwhile he went into wurtzland and destroyed the grain and had all the
crops burned and he had the populace led into captivity then dracula rested
near saint jacob's chapel he had the
outskirts burned also when the day came early in the morning he had
women and men young and old impaled around the hill by the chapel and
sat down among them and ate his breakfast with enjoyment end quote sibiu
and brashov were within the duchess of phagorash and
amlash which were possessions of
 CHAPTER 4

t he prince of valakia within transylvania sibiu was ordered to give up its

support of vlad the monk and brazov was told to do the same with dan
iii neither town responded to the ultimatums
and so they had to be destroyed it's fair to say that vlad dracula was not a
man inclined to compromise he was also a brilliant and brutal soldier at the
head of a small cavalry force he surprised the saxons with a lightning
raid through the passes to burn the lands that supported sibyu and brashov
slaughtering and impaling villagers and burning their homes and fields
saxon merchants abroad in the country were tortured and impaled these acts
would be amplified through
later propaganda in german pamphlets that describe dracula boiling 600
saxon merchants alive which although true to the spirit of the campaign
would have been impractical in reality but the campaign of terror worked
the saxons of
brashov begged michael shilajit to call dracula off and offered to hand over
dan the third and his supporters and to pay ten thousand florins for war
damages but shilajit's nephew mathias corvinus
the king of hungary arrested shilajit and brazhov reneged on its promises
the king went one step further and threw his support behind dan the third
against vlad dracula once again the tables had turned on dracula
his extremism was almost successful but it also made him more enemies
still compromise was not in his nature and he went back to work burning
and slaughtering until he smashed through the suburbs of brash of itself
here is
where he is said to have dined beneath a forest of the impaled and their
hacked off limbs in sight of the townsfolk on the walls saxon propaganda
tells us he happily dipped the bread of his breakfast into the blood of his
victims
and in 1460 dracula captured dan iii he had a gravedug for his rival while
dan waited beside it and even had to listen to his own funeral service before
vlad beheaded him and then unsurprisingly he had dan the
third supporters impaled dracula killed thousands of the transylvanian
germans but eventually mattias corvinus organized a fragile piece dracula
would pay for some of the damages his campaign had caused while
the saxons were required to pay an annual sum to dracula to maintain a 4
000 strong mercenary army in theory to help dracula defend them against
the ottomans because war against the turks was coming in the face of
continued
ottoman expansion through serbia and the sultan's plans to cross the danube
to take volakia and moldavia the christian kingdoms declared and organized
a crusade and now dracula would go to war
against the turks as the forces of christendom readied for action dracula's
old friend and ally michael shilajit was captured by the ottomans while on
reconnaissance in bulgaria they tortured him for information on hungary's
military
preparations but presumably they were not happy with his answers or lack
thereof because shilajit was executed by being sworn in half now comes
another legendary moment in dracula's life
during a visit by ottoman envoys they had come to discover the valakian
intentions in the coming crusade and to make a final attempt to bring the
voivode back on side that must have been a faint hope dracula had stopped
paying tribute and the turks had ever since
been launching raids on valaccia across the danube for plunder and to take
volakian peasants especially children for the ottoman slave markets when
these raiders were captured dracula had been having them impaled
and now the sultan had executed one of dracula's few allies in a deliberately
brutal fashion so tension was running high when the envoys came to
dracula's court the prince's men instructed the diplomats to remove their
turbans as a sign of respect
the envoys explained that the turban was not the equivalent of a christian's
hat and that their custom demanded that the turbines never be removed
dracula then strengthened their custom by having three spikes driven
through each of their heads pinning the turbines in
place forever coming to terms at this point was highly unlikely but
communication was still ongoing between voivode and sultan and mehmed
ii decided to use this correspondence to trick dracula into putting himself in
danger so he could be
seized and killed hamza pasha the bay of nicopolis and the greek in his
service thomas catavolinos offered to meet dracula at jeju an important
fortress on the danube when dracula was almost at the fortress the
ottomans sprung their trap and ambushed the volakians but dracula was a
step ahead of them the turks had in fact ambushed a decoy party and the
valakians in turn ambushed the turks dracula then rode on to jeju
with a select group of his men all dressed as ottoman soldiers at the gates of
the fortress dracula presented himself as an ottoman officer and influenced
turkish demanded they let him in once inside his men attacked and started
killing the garrison until the stunned
turks surrendered dracula had in effect declared war and he did not sit back
and wait for the ottoman invasion instead during the winter of 1461-62 he
led his horsemen back and
forth across the danube raiding deep into ottoman bulgaria at phenomenal
speed attacking turkish forces from serbia all the way to the black sea he
divided his cavalrymen into small raiding parties that moved quickly and
lived off the land to cause havoc and disorder while dracula sought to
capture or destroy all the fortresses along the danube that the turks meant to
use for their invasion of volakia in february 1462 dracula wrote the
following in a letter to matthias
corvinus in buddha quote i have killed men and women old and young who
lived at oblasitsa at novoselo where the danube flows into the sea up to
rehova which is located near chile in the lower danube up to places such as
samovit and jijin
we killed 23 884 turks and bulgars without counting those whom we burned
in homes or whose heads were not cut by our soldiers thus your highness
must know that i have broken the peace with the sultan end
quote along with his letter dracula sent the king of hungary two large bags
of the heads noses and ears that he and his men had cut off their enemies the
one thousand ottoman troops that he had captured after the ambush near
jeju
were force marched to targoviste and impaled two especially tall stakes
were made for the treacherous hamza pasha and thomas catavolinos dracula
hoped to have done so much damage to the ottoman preparations that their
invasion would
be delayed giving him more time to prepare vallakia however the resources
of the ottoman empire were truly vast the ground was here mahmoud with
an army of eighteen thousand men rushed to capture breela a port on the
vallakian
side of the danube after taking it mahmoud struck north into wallachia on a
vast raiding mission doing to valakia what vlad had done to bulgaria but
when the turks returned loaded with booty to re-cross the danube dracula
attacked and won a great victory it was recorded that dracula killed ten of
the ottoman army this victory brought mehmed ii into the field in 1462 with
a vast army designed
to conquer valakia once and for all and to turn it into a province of the
empire there were at least sixty thousand regular troops and thirty thousand
auxiliaries including bulgarians serbians and anatolians and they brought
with them 120 cannon there was essentially no hope for volakia they were
vastly outnumbered and outmatched in terms of troop quality after all of
vlad's purges of the boyars and his organizational reforms valakia
had lost much of its elite and even more of those boyars opposed to dracula
fled for transylvania at this critical time this left valaccia a corps of
horsemen 10 000 strong while the rest of dracula's forces were peasant
soldiers
raised through a mass levy of 20 thousand infantry clearly if there was to be
any hope at all valakia needed allies unfortunately none were forthcoming
and valaccia was on its own
the turks brought a fleet from the black sea up the danube to ferry their vast
army across dracula fought hard to stop the river crossing contesting the
probing attacks before a massive battle that turned you what made the
difference more even than the huge numbers and the
excellent soldiers of the ottomans was their artillery pounding the volakian
positions on the north bank the ottomans then ferried across light artillery in
their first wave the turkish soldiers dug trenches after they crossed to help
defend against the relentless valakian cavalry assaults that were striving to
throw them back into the river inspired by the hussites in bohemia and
previously employed against the turks by hunyadi dracula also employed
war wagons with men shooting from inside with early
firearms by all accounts it was a close run thing and the difference was
certainly the barrages from those 120 cannons eventually though all the
ottoman infantry including the janissaries had
been ferrowed across and the vast army advanced into valaccia mehmed ii
had also brought with him his replacement puppet voivode vlad's younger
brother radu the handsome rode at the head of four thousand
horsemen of his own the ottoman army moved relentlessly towards the
capital of targoviste dracula had no hope of defeating the turks in a pitched
battle and instead he began a guerrilla war grain stores and crops were
burned
livestock and peasants were driven away to the north and most importantly
wells were poisoned and small rivers were damned and diverted to create
marshes and bogland it was june and the problem of getting enough water
for the vast horde slowed
the ottoman advance as they moved slowly through the dense forests the
turks were ambushed repeatedly dracula's peasant army even dug huge man
traps and covered them with timber and leaves the ottomans were soon
suffering from severe dehydration in the
scorching summer heat and every night the army had to stop and dig
massive earthworks to defend from the relentless night assaults foraging
parties guards and anyone outside the defensive camps were taken
by the volakians in the darkness and impaled what's more a terrible camp
sickness soon spread through the ottoman army and their advance slowed
further the turks were deeply affected by these torments and yet the weight
of their
numbers and the will of their sultan drove them on through the scorched
earth towards the highlands and targoviste dracula had grown up with the
turks and he knew mehmed ii personally he understood the mind of his
enemy he knew
that he could not kill them all but he could perhaps break their spirit and
make the cost of conquering velaqia too great to stand and so as the
ottoman army made camp in the land around his capital dracula tortured
captive ottoman officers until
they revealed the location of mehmed ii's camp and then he gathered all his
best remaining cavalry perhaps seven to ten thousand troops and went to
kill the sultan on the night of the 17th of june dracula
led the assault known as the night attack at targoviste they came in with
flaming torches shooting arrows and slashing through the turks with their
swords penetrating deeper and deeper toward the sultan's magnificent great
50:00tent it was torn down by raging velaqian horsemen and the residents
dragged out into the torchlight it was not the tent of the sultan but of two
wazirs who were immediately executed when dracula finally found
mehmed's tent
it was surrounded by the sultan's janissaries who stood shoulder to shoulder
and shot their firearms and arrows into the valackians driving them away to
get past the outer guards at the start of the attack vlad and his men had
posed as turks calling out the passwords in turkish that they had tortured
from ottoman prisoners and now they continued to sow confusion amongst
their enemies shouting out false orders in turkish to disrupt the ottoman
response but with the element of surprise fading
momentum stalling and the far greater numbers of the turks beginning to
tell the volakians were forced to withdraw the ottomans lost perhaps 15 000
men while the valakians around 5000 most of them in the fighting retreat
vlad had come very close but it wasn't enough and eventually mehmed ii
advanced to the walls of tagoviste its defenses had been made formidable
by dracula and the sultan was perhaps already considering
returning home instead of losing more men to thirst and disease in a
prolonged siege but when his men found the forest of 20 000 impaled turks
stretching for two miles outside the city they had finally had as much as
they could take
as the ottomans retreated dracula scored another victory driving the enemy
back across the danube but his country was reeling from the assault and his
people were on the verge of collapse but what the ottomans could not do by
force they would complete by cunning and it would lead to dracula's
[Music] downfall when he retreated from valakia mehmed ii left vlad's little
brother raddie behind dracula had saved his
people from conquest but at terrible cost the land was burned the waters
poisoned families left fatherless now radu was here backed by a small
ottoman contingent to offer them peace and
prosperity under his leadership all the disaffected volation factions that vlad
had offended over the years soon flocked to radu helped no doubt buy
bottomless bags of ottoman coin the saxon towns of the north especially
threw their political and financial
weight behind him where vlad was an extremist vladi the handsome knew
nothing but compromise he had the backing of the ottomans and with him
in charge the ottomans would not invade again a desperate people
welcomed what only he could offer them
the turning tide became a torrent and vlad political support swiftly vanished
and he had no forces with which to contest radu's growing army by the end
of the year of his victory over the turks vlad dracula fled across the
mountains of transylvania and radu iii began his rule as voivode of volakia
radu's army chased dracula from castle to fortress but vlad got away in
transylvania he had word from mathias corvinus that he would meet him
and
perhaps provide him with hungarian forces to retake his throne a desperate
vlad had few other options but it was a trick and dracula was captured in the
king's name he would not suffer a terrible captivity
however far from it the hungarians found it useful to hold a rival for the
vallakian throne in their possession to encourage the current one to remain
on his best behavior dracula was further honored by a position in the
hungarian army and he was even offered marriage
into the hungarian royal family in exchange for converting from orthodox to
the catholic faith in the coming years the ottomans continued to chip away
at the balkans especially albania under skanderbeg and an ottoman backed
vallachia under radio
iii began to clash with moldavia under stephen the great stephen defeated
radu in battle and the handsome coward ran away leaving his treasure his
magnificent clothes his standards and astonishingly his wife and
daughter the defeated humiliated radu died of disease and basarat iii
supported by the ottomans took the throne of valakia back in hungary
dracula's time was coming again
to secure hungarian support he married illona the daughter of vlad's old ally
michael chilaji she was the king's cousin and so vlad was now part of the
hunyadi clan he had two sons with her and along with an older illegitimate
son they lived
together at the hungarian court the extremists had become rehabilitated and
even respectable in the eyes of the european nobility when the ottomans
moved to conquer moldavia in 1474 they were supported by 17 000
vallakian troops under basarat
iii the turks had an enormous force of 120 000 men but they were brilliantly
defeated by stephen at vashli in january 1475. in the face of this stunning
defeat the
volakian forces not only fled they turned on the ottomans they attacked
them and sieged turkish battle standards this was intended to prove
basarab's loyalty to stephen and to the hungarians it did not work and
stephen now one of
the great heroes of christendom moved to have basarat replaced by
stephen's cousin vlad dracula before that could happen dracula was required
by the hungarians to assist in a campaign in bosnia where he was tasked
with capturing srebrenica from the
ottomans this newly reformed respectable vlad had lost none of his cunning
however and he disguised his hungarian troops as turks and rode into
srebrenica during market day taking the enemy by complete
surprise he then burned the city to the ground plundered everything of value
and impaled every turk that he found it seems then that vlad had not
changed in his essential character but that did not put off the christians
fighting
against ottoman aggression far from it a papal legate wrote the following
quote he tore the limbs off the turkish prisoners and placed their parts on
stakes and displayed the private parts of his victims so that when the turks
see these they will run away in fear end
quote although the peasants had always loved dracula the bowyars of
valakia must have wondered what awaited them when vlad rode back into
their lands in 1476 to
claim the throne for the third and final time by overthrowing basarat iii this
time vlad had allied soldiers from hungary transylvania serbia and volakia
and vlad's invasion was coordinated with the moldavian army under stephen
attacking from the east basarap however had the support of 18 000 ottoman
troops and a bloody battle was fought that could have gone either way but a
defeated batara fled for the turks and vlad dracula was crowned voivod in
late november
1476. it was an incredibly unlikely return to power and europe rejoiced at
the news one of christendom's most famous soldiers would now alongside
his cousin stephen stop the relentless advance of
the turks and perhaps even turn back the tide but less than a month later
dracula would be dead the exact circumstances of his death are shrouded in
mystery but he was likely killed in a battle near bucharest the
story goes that vlad's two thousand men were ambushed by basarap
returned from the turks with four thousand ottomans another story is that
vlad was assassinated in camp by a turkish assassin before the skirmish
took place
another story says it was a case of mistaken identity and he was accidentally
killed by his moldavian soldiers in the confusion of battle mistaking him for
an ottoman one version has him so killed because he was in disguise as a
turk a victim of his own cunning
of course the legend of dracula demands that something poetic or tragic
occurred at the end but the death in battle of a lifelong soldier and knight is
hardly unusual or surprising whatever really happened after he died his
head was
claimed by janissaries and sent back to mehmed ii who ultimately impaled
it on a spike in constantinople whether this story also is a little too perfect is
hard to say the final resting
place of his body is also a mystery the story goes that it was found by local
monks and buried in the chapel of the monastery at snagov vlad iii dracula
was contemporaries with greater and more successful men than he had been
john hunyadi stephen the great skanderbeg and
his great enemy the warmonger sultan mehmed ii all held more power for
longer and won more battles than dracula but even in this era of the most
horrific bloodshed his willingness to go so far beyond the limits of
conventional
conduct has helped turn his story and not theirs into legend vlad features in
my novel vampire impaler book six of my historical fantasy series the
immortal knight chronicles it features many of the great