Most of the members of this list are probably aware of the fact that when Bram Stoker penned his immortal classic, Dracula, he based his vampire villain on an actual historical figure. Stoker's model was Vlad III Dracula (call Tepes, pronounced tse-pesh); a fifteenth century voivode or prince of Wallachia of the princely House of Basarab. Wallachia is a province of Romania bordered to the north by Transylvania and Moldavia, to the east by the Black Sea and to the south by Bulgaria. Wallachia first emerged as a political entity during the late thirteenth century from the weltering confusion left behind in the Balkans as the East Roman Empire slowly crumbled. The first prince of Wallachia was Basarab the Great (1310-1352), an ancestor of Dracula. Despite the splintering of the family into two rival, clans some member of the House of Basarab continued to govern Wallachia from that time until well after the Ottomans reduced the principality to the status of a client state. Dracula was the last prince of Wallachia to retain any real measure of independence. In order to understand the life of Vlad Dracula it is first necessary to understand something about the nature of Wallachian society and politics. The throne of Wallachia was hereditary but not by the law of primogeniture; the boyars or great nobles had the right to elect the voivode from among the various eligible members of the royal family. As with most elective monarchies during the Middle Ages the power of the central government tended to be dissipated among the nobility as various members of the ruling family vied for the throne. Wallachian politics also tended to be very bloody. Assassination was a common means of eliminating rivals and many of the voivodes ended their lives violently and prematurely. By the late fifteenth century the House of Basarab had split into two rival clans; the descendants of Prince Dan and those of Prince Mircea the Old (Dracula's grandfather). These two branches of the royal house were bitter rivals. Both Dracula and his father, Vlad II Dracul, murdered rivals from the Danesti upon reaching the throne.
The second ascendant fact of fifteenth century Wallachian political life was the influence of powerful neighbors. In 1453 Constantinople and the last vestiges of the Byzantine or East Roman Empire, which had blocked the Islam's access to Europe for nearly one thousand years, succumbed to the armed might of the Ottoman Turks under Sultan Mohammed the Conqueror. Long before the fall of the Imperial City the Ottomans had penetrated deep into the Balkans. Dracula's grandfather, Mircea the Old, was forced to pay tribute to the sultan early in the fifteenth century. The Hungarian Kingdom to the north and west of Wallachia reached the zenith of its power during the fifteenth century and assumed Constantinople's ancient mantle as defender of Christendom. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the princes of Wallachia attempted to maintain a precarious independence by constantly shifting allegiances between these powerful neighbors.
Dracula ruled as Prince of Wallachia on three separate occasions. He first claimed the throne with Turkish support in 1448. On this occasion he ruled for only two months (November-October) before being driven out by a Danesti claimant supported by Hungary. Dracula dwelt in exile for several years before returning to Wallachia to kill the Danesti prince, Vladislav II, and reclaim the Wallachian throne with Hungarian support. Dracula's second regnal period stretched from 1456 to 1462. It was during this time that Dracula carried out his most famous military exploits against the Turks and also committed his most gruesome atrocities.
In 1462 Dracula fled to Transylvania to seek the aid of the King of Hungary when a Turkish army overwhelmed Wallachia. Instead of receiving the assistance he expected Dracula was imprisoned by the Hungarian king. He remained a prisoner of Matthias Corvinus of Hungary for several years. For most of the period of Dracula's incarceration his brother, Radu the Handsome, ruled Wallachia as a puppet of the Ottoman sultan. When Radu died (ca. 1474-1475) the sultan appointed Basarab the Old, a member of the Danesti clan, as prince.
Eventually, Dracula regained the favor and support of the Hungarian king. In 1476 he once again invaded Wallachia. His small force consisted of a few loyal Wallachians, a contingent of Moldavians sent by his cousin Prince Stephen the Great of Moldavia, and a contingent of Transylvanians under their prince, Stephen Bathory. The allies succeeded in driving Basarab out of the country and placing Dracula on the throne (November 1476). However, after Dracula was once again in control, Stephen Bathory returned to Transylvania taking most of Dracula's army with him. The Turks soon counterattacked with overwhelming force. Dracula was killed fighting the Turks near Bucharest in December of 1476. His head was sent to Constantinople where the Sultan had it displayed on a stake to prove that the terrible Impaler was really dead.
II. What's in a name ?
There has been considerable debate among scholars concerning the meaning of the name 'Dracula'. The name is clearly related to Dracula's father's sobriquet 'Dracul'. Drac in Romanian means devil and 'ul' is the definitive article. Therefore, 'Dracul' literally means 'the devil'. The '-ulea' ending in Romanian indicates 'the son of'. Under this interpretation Dracula becomes Vlad III, the son of the devil. The experts who support this interpretation usually claim that Vlad II earned his devilish nickname by his clever and wily political maneuvering.
The second interpretation of the name is more widely accepted. In 1431 Vlad II was invested with the Order of the Dragon by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg. The Order of the Dragon was a knightly order dedicated to fighting the Turk. Its emblem was a dragon, wings extended, hanging on a cross. From 1431 onward Vlad II wore the emblem of the order. His coinage bore the dragon symbol. The dragon was the symbol of the devil and consequently and alternate meaning of 'drac' was dragon. Under this interpretation Vlad II Dracul becomes Vlad II, the Dragon and his son, Vlad III Dracula, becomes Vlad III, the Son of the Dragon.
There is some confusion in the secondary sources concerning Dracula's exact title. In most of the sources he is referred to as Vlad III. However, many sources refer to him as Vlad IV or Vlad V. I am somewhat at a loss to explain this confusion. The lists of Wallachian princes that I have seen would seem to make the correct title Vlad III. The only conclusion I have been able to reach is that there is some confusion in the sources between the various Wallachian voivodes named Vlad and those named Vladislav. This argument gains credence when one realizes that Dracula occasionally signed his name as 'Vladislaus'. I would welcome an explanation from anyone capable of resolving this problem.
III. The Life of Vlad III Dracula, called the Impaler (1431-1476)
Dracula was born in 1431 in the Transylvanian city of Sighisoara. At that time Dracula's father, Vlad II Dracul, was living in exile in Transylvania. Vlad Dracul was in Transylvania attempting to gather support for his planned effort to seize the Wallachian throne from the Danesti prince, Alexandru I. The house where Dracula was born is still standing. In 1431 it was located in a prosperous neighborhood surrounded by the homes of Saxon and Magyar merchants and the townhouses of the nobility.
Little is known about the early years of Dracula's life. It is known that he had an elder brother, Mircea, and a younger brother named Radu. His early education was left in the hands of his mother, a Transylvanian noblewoman, and her family. His real education began in 1436 after his father succeeded in claiming the Wallachian throne and killing his Danesti rival. His training was typical of that common to the sons of the nobility throughout Europe. His first tutor in his apprenticeship to knighthood was an elderly boyar who had fought under the banner of Enguerrand de Courcy at the Battle of Nicolopolis against the Turks. Dracula learned all the skills of war and peace that were deemed necessary for a Christian knight. The political situation in Wallachia remained unstable after Vlad Dracul seized the throne in 1436. The power of the Turks was growing rapidly as one by one the small states of the Balkans surrendered to the Ottoman onslaught. At the same time the power of Hungary was reaching its zenith and would peak during the time of John Hunyadi, the White Knight of Hungary, and his son King Matthias Corvinus. Any prince of Wallachia had to balance his policies precariously between these two powerful neighbors. The prince of Walla chia was officially a vassal of the King of Hungary. In addition, Vlad Dracul was a member of the Order of the Dragon and sworn to fight the infidel. At the same time the power of the Ottomans seemed unstoppable. Even in the time of Vlad's father, Mircea the Old, Wallachia had been forced to pay tribute to the Sultan. Vlad was forced to renew that tribute and from 1436-1442 attempted to walk a middle course between his powerful neighbors.
In 1442 Vlad attempted to remain neutral when the Turks invaded Transylvania. The Turks were defeated and the vengeful Hungarians under John Hunyadi forced Dracul and his family to flee Wallachia. Hunyadi placed a Danesti , Basarab II, on the Wallachian throne. In 1443 Vlad II regained the Wallachian throne with Turkish support, on the condition that he sign an new treaty with the sultan that included not only the customary annual tribute but the promise to yearly send contingents of Wallachian boys to join the sultan's Janissaries. In 1444, to further assure the sultan of his good faith, Vlad sent his two younger sons to Adrianople as hostages. Dracula remained a hostage in Adrianople until 1448.
In 1444 the King of Hungary, Ladislas Posthumous, broke the peace and launched the Varna campaign under the command of John Hunyadi in an effort to drive the Turks out of Europe. Hunyadi demanded that Vlad II fulfill his oath as a member of the Order of the Dragon and a vassal of Hungary and join the crusade against the Turk. The Pope absolved Dracul of his Turkish oath but the wily politician still attempted to steer a middle course. Rather than join the Christian forces himself he sent his oldest son, Mircea. Perhaps he hoped the sultan would spare his younger sons if he himself did not join the crusade.
The results of the Varna Crusade are well known. The Christian army was utterly destroyed in the Battle of Varna. John Hunyadi managed to escape the battle under conditions that add little glory to the White Knight's reputation. Many, apparently including Mircea and his father, blamed Hunyadi for the debacle. From this moment forth John Hunyadi was bitterly hostile toward Vlad Dracul and his eldest son. In 1447 Vlad Dracul was assassinated along with his son Mircea. Mircea was apparently buried alive by the boyars and merchants of Tirgoviste. Hunyadi placed his own candidate, a member of the Danesti clan, on the throne of Wallachia.
On receiving the news of Vlad Dracul's death the Turks released Dracula and supported him as their own candidate for the Wallachian throne. In 1448 Dracula managed to briefly seize the Wallachian throne with Turkish support. Within two months Hunyadi forced Dracula to surrender the throne and flee to his cousin, the Prince of Moldavia, while Hunyadi once again placed Vladislav II on the Wallachian throne.
Dracula remained in exile in Moldavia for three years, until Prince Bogdan of Moldavia was assassinated in 1451. The resulting turmoil in Moldavia forced Dracula to flee to Transylvania and seek the protection of his family enemy, Hunyadi. The timing was propitious; Hunaydi's puppet on the Wallachian throne, Vladislav II, had instituted a pro-Turkish policy and Hunyadi needed a more reliable man in Wallachia. Consequently, Hunyadi accepted the allegiance of his old enemy's son and put him forward as the Hungarian candidate for the throne of Wallachia. Dracula became Hunyadi's vassal and received his father's old Transylvanian duchies of Faragas and Almas. Dracula remained in Transylvania, under Hunyadi's protection, until 1456 waiting for an opportunity to retake Wallachia from his rival. In 1453 the Christian world was shocked by the final fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans. The East Roman Empire which had existed since the time of Constantine the Great and which for a thousand years had shielded the rest of Christendom from Islam was no more. Hunyadi immediately began planning another campaign against the Turks. In 1456 Hunyadi invaded Turkish Serbia while Dracula simultaneously invaded Wallachia. In the Battle of Belgrade Hunyadi was killed and his army defeated. Meanwhile, Dracula succeeded in killing Vladislav II and taking the Wallachian throne but Hunaydi's defeat made his long term tenure questionable. For a time at least, Dracula was forced to attempt to placate the Turks while he solidified his own position.
Dracula's main reign stretched from 1456 to 1462. His capital was the city of Tirgoviste while his castle was raised some distance away in the mountains near the Arges River. Most of the atrocities associated with Dracula's name took place in these years. It was also during this time that he launched his own campaign against the Turks. This campaign was relatively successful at first. His skill as a warrior and his well-known cruelty made him a much feared enemy. However, he received little support from his titular overlord, Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary (the son of John Hunyadi) and Wallachia's resources were too limited to achieve any lasting success against the conqueror of Constantinople.
The Turks finally succeeded in forcing Dracula to flee to Transylvania in 1462. Reportedly, his first wife committed suicide by leaping from the towers of Dracula's castle into the waters of the Arges River rather than surrender to the Turks. Dracula escaped across the mountains into Transylvania and appealed to Matthias Corvinus for aid. Instead the King had Dracula arrested and imprisoned in a royal tower near Buda. Dracula remained a prisoner for twelve years.
Apparently his imprisonment was none too onerous. He was able to gradually win his way back into the graces of Hungary's monarch; so much so that he was able to meet and marry a member of the royal family (some of the sources claim Dracula's second wife was actually the sister of Matthias Corvinus). The openly pro-Turkish policy of Dracula's brother, Radu the Handsome, who was prince of Wallachia during most of Dracula's captivity probably was a factor in Dracula's rehabilitation. During his captivity Dracula also renounced the Orthodox faith and adopted Catholicism. It is interesting to note that the Russian narrative, normally very favorable to Dracula, indicates that even in captivity he could not give up his favorite past-time; he often captured birds and mice which he proceeded to torture and mutilate -- some were beheaded or tarred-and-feathered and released, most were impaled on tiny spears.
The exact length of Dracula's period of captivity is open to some debate. The Russian pamphlets indicate that he was a prisoner from 1462 until 1474. However, during that period Dracula managed to marry a member of the Hungarian royal family and have two sons who were about ten years old when he reconquered Wallachia in 1476. McNally and Florescu place Dracula's actual period of confinement at about four years from 1462 until 1466. It is unlikely that a prisoner would be allowed to marry into the royal family. Diplomatic correspondence from Buda during the period in question also seems to support the claim that Dracula's actual period of confinement was relatively short.
Apparently in years between his release and 1474 when he began preparations for the reconquest of Wallachia Dracula resided with his new wife in a house in the Hungarian capital. One anecdote from that period tells how a Hungarian captain followed a thief into Dracula's house. When Dracula discovered the intruders he killed the Hungarian officer rather than the thief. When questioned about his actions by the king Dracula answered that a gentlemen does not enter the presence of a great ruler without an introduction had the captain followed proper protocol he would not have incurred the wrath of the prince. In 1476 Dracula was again ready to make another bid for power. Dracula and Prince Stephen Bathory of Transylvania invaded Wallachia with a mixed force of Transylvanians, a few dissatisfied Wallachian boyars and a contingent of Moldavians sent by Dracula's cousin, Prince Stephen the Great of Moldavia. Dracula's brother, Radu the Handsome, had died a couple of years earlier and been replaced on the Wallachian throne by another Turkish candidate, Basarab the Old, a member of the Danesti clan. At the approach of Dracula's army Basarab and his coherents fled, some to the protection of the Turks, others to the shelter of the mountains. After placing Dracula on the throne Stephen Bathory and the bulk of Dracula's forces returned to Transylvania, leaving Dracula's tactical position very weak. Dracula had little time to gather support before a large Turkish army entered Wallachia determined to return Basarab to the throne. Dracula's cruelties over the years had alienated the boyars who felt they had a better chance of surviving under Prince Basarab. Apparently, even the peasants, tired of the depredations of the Impaler, abandoned him to his fate. Dracula was forced to march to meet the Turks with the small forces at his disposal, somewhat less than four thousand men.
Dracula was killed in battle against the Turks near the small town of Bucharest in December of 1476. Some reports indicated that he was assassinated by disloyal Wallachian boyars just as he was about to sweep the Turks from the field. Other accounts have Dracula falling in defeat, surrounded by the bodies of his loyal Moldavian bodyguard (the troops loaned by Prince Stephen of Moldavia remained with Dracula after Stephen Bathory returned to Transylvania). Still other reports claim that Dracula, at the moment of victory, was accidentally struck down by one of his own men. Dracula's body was decapitated by the Turks and his head sent to Constantinople where the sultan had it displayed on a stake as proof that the Impaler was dead. He was reportedly buried at Snagov, an island monastery located near Bucharest.
IV. Atrocities
More than anything else the historical Dracula is known for his inhuman cruelty. Impalement was Dracula's preferred method of torture and execution. Impalement was and is one of the most gruesome ways of dying imaginable. Dracula usually had a horse attached to each of the victim's legs and a sharpened stake was gradually forced into the body. The end of the stake was usually oiled and care was taken that the stake not be too sharp; else the victim might die too rapidly from shock. Normally the stake was inserted into the body through the buttocks and was often forced through the body until it emerged from the mouth. However, there were many instances where victims were impaled through other bodily orifices or through the abdomen or chest. Infants were sometimes impaled on the stake forced through their mothers' chests. The records indicate that victims were sometimes impaled so that they hung upside down on the stake.
Death by impalement was slow and painful. Victims sometimes endured for hours or days. Dracula often had the stakes arranged in various geometric patterns. The most common pattern was a ring of concentric circles in the outskirts of the city that was his target. The height of the spear indicated the rank of the victim. The decaying corpses were often left up for months. It was once reported that an invading Turkish army turned back in fright when it encountered thousands of rotting corpses impaled on the banks of the Danube. In 1461 Mohammed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, a man not noted for his squeamishness, returned to Constantinople after being sickened by the sight of twenty thousand impaled corpses rotting outside of Dracula's capital of Tirgoviste. The warrior sultan turned command of the campaign against Dracula over to subordinates and returned to Constantinople.
Thousands were often impaled at a single time. Ten thousand were impaled in the Transylvanian city of Sibiu (where Dracula had once lived) in 1460. In 1459, on St. Bartholomew's Day, Dracula had thirty thousand of the merchants and boyars of the Transylvanian city of Brasov impaled. One of the most famous woodcuts of the period shows Dracula feasting amongst a forest of stakes and their grisly burdens outside Brasov while a nearby executioner cuts apart other victims. Impalement was Dracula's favorite but by no means his only method of torture. The list of tortures employed by this cruel prince reads like an inventory of hell's tools: nails in heads, cutting off of limbs, blinding, strangulation, burning, cutting off of noses and ears, mutilation of sexual organs (especially in the case of women), scalping, skinning, exposure to the elements or to wild animals and boiling alive.
No one was immune to Dracula's attentions. His victims included women and children, peasants and great lords, ambassadors from foreign powers and merchants. However, the vast majority of his victims came from the merchants and boyars of Transylvania and his own Wallachia. Many have attempted to justify Dracula's actions on the basis nascent nationalism and political necessity. Many of the merchants in Transylvania and Wallachia were Saxons who were seen as parasites, preying upon the Romanian natives of Wallachia, while the boyars had proven their disloyalty time and time again. Dracula's own father and older brother were murdered by unfaithful boyars. However, many of Dracula's victims were Wallachians and few deny that he derived a perverted pleasure from his actions.
Dracula began his reign of terror almost as soon as he came to power. His first significant act of cruelty may have been motivated by a desire of revenge as well as a need to solidify his power. Early in his main reign he gave a feast for his boyars and their families to celebrate Easter. Dracula was well aware that many of these same nobles were part of the conspiracy that led to his father's assassination and the burying alive of his elder brother, Mircea. Many had also played a role in the overthrow of numerous Wallachian princes. During the feast Dracula asked his noble guests how many princes had ruled during their life times. All of the nobles present had out lived several princes. One answered that at least thirty princes had held the throne during his life. None had seen less than seven reigns. Dracula immediately had all the assembled nobles arrested. The older boyars and their families were impaled on the spot. The younger and healthier nobles and their families were marched north from Tirgoviste to the ruins of a castle in the mountains above the Arges River. Dracula was determined to rebuild this ancient fortress as his own stronghold and refuge. The enslaved boyars and their families were forced to labor for months rebuilding the old castle with materials from another nearby ruin. According to the reports they labored until the clothes fell off their bodies and then were forced to continue working naked. Very few of the old gentry survived the ordeal of building Castle Dracula.
Throughout his reign Dracula systematically eradicated the old boyar class of Wallachia. The old boyars had repeatedly undermined the power of the prince during previous reigns and had been responsible for the violent overthrow of several princes. Apparently Dracula was determined that his own power be on a modern and thoroughly secure footing. In the place of the executed boyars Dracula promoted new men from among the free peasantry and the middle class; men who would be loyal only to their prince. Many of Dracula's acts of cruelty can be interpreted as efforts to strengthen and modernize the central government at the expense of feudal powers of the nobility and great towns.
Dracula was also constantly on guard against the adherents of the Danesti clan. Some of his raids into Transylvania may have been efforts to capture would-be princes of the Danesti. Several members of the Danesti clan died at Dracula's hands. Vladislav II was murdered soon after Dracula came to power in 1456. Another Danesti prince was captured during one of Dracula's forays into Transylvania. Thousands of the citizens of the town that had sheltered his rival were impaled by Dracula. The captured Danesti prince was forced to read his own funeral oration while kneeling before an open grave before his execution.
Dracula's atrocities against the people of Wallachia were usually attempts to enforce his own moral code upon his country. He appears to have been particularly concerned with female chastity. Maidens who lost their virginity, adulterous wives and unchaste widows were all targets of Dracula's cruelty. Such women often had their sexual organs cut out or their breasts cut off. They were also often impaled through the vagina on red-hot stakes that were forced through the body until they emerged from the mouth. One report tells of the execution of an unfaithful wife. Dracula had the woman's breasts cut off, then she was skinned and impaled in a square in Tirgoviste with her skin lying on a nearby table. Dracula also insisted that his people be honest and hard working. Merchants who cheated their customers were likely to find themselves mounted on a stake beside common thieves.
V. Anecdotal Evidence
Much of the information we have about Vlad III comes from pamphlets published in Germany and Russia after his death. The German pamphlets appeared shortly after Dracula's death and, at least initially, may have been politically inspired. At that time Matthias Corvinus of Hungary was seeking to bolster his own reputation in the Holy Roman Empire and may have intended the early pamphlets as justification of his less than vigorous support of his vassal. The pamphlets were also a form of mass entertainment in a society where the printing press was just coming into widespread use. Much like the subject matter of the supermarket tabloids of today, the cruel life of the Wallachian tyrant was easily sensationalized. The pamphlets were reprinted numerous times over the thirty or so years following Dracula's death strong proof of their popularity.
The German pamphlets painted Dracula as an inhuman monster who terrorized the land and butchered innocents with sadistic glee. The Russian pamphlets took a somewhat different view. The princes of Moscow were at that time just beginning to build the basis of what would become the autocracy of the czars. They were also having considerable trouble with disloyal, often treasonous boyars. In Russia, Dracula was presented as a cruel but just prince whose actions were directed toward the greater good of his people. Despite the differences in interpretation the pamphlets, regardless of their land of origin, agree remarkably well as to specifics. The level of agreement between the various pamphlets has led most historians to conclude that at least the broad outlines of the events covered actually occurred.
Romanian verbal tradition provides another important source for the life of Vlad Dracula. Legends and tales concerning the Impaler have remained a part of folklore among the Romanian peasantry. These tales have been passed down from generation to generation for five hundred years. Through constant retelling they have become somewhat garbled and confused and they are gradually being forgotten by the younger generations. However, they still provide valuable information about Dracula and his relationship with his own people. Many of the tales contained in the pamphlets are also found in the verbal tradition, though with a somewhat different emphasis. Among the Romanian peasantry Dracula is remembered as a just prince who defended his people from foreigners, whether those foreigners be Turkish invaders or German merchants. He is also remembered as somewhat of a champion of the common man against the oppression of the boyars. Dracula's fierce insistence on honesty is a central part of the verbal tradition. Many of the anecdotes contained in the pamphlets and in the verbal tradition demonstrate the prince's efforts to eliminate crime and dishonesty from his domain. However, despite the more positive interpretation, the Romanian verbal tradition also remembers Dracula as an exceptionally cruel and often capricious ruler. There are several events that are common to all the pamphlets, regardless of their nation of origin. Many of these events are also found in the Romanian verbal tradition. Specific details may vary among the different versions of these anecdotes but the general course of events usually agrees to a remarkable extent. For example, in some versions the foreign ambassadors received by Dracula at Tirgoviste are Florentine, in others they are Turkish. The nature of their offense against the Prince also varies from version to version. However, all versions agree that Dracula, in response to some real or imagined insult, had their hats nailed to their heads. Some of the sources view Dracula's actions as justified, others view his acts as crimes of wanton and senseless cruelty. There are about nine anecdotes that are almost universal in the Dracula literature.
(1) The Golden Cup
Dracula was known throughout his land for his fierce insistence on honesty and order. Thieves seldom dared practice their trade within Dracula's domain they knew that the stake awaited any who were caught. Dracula was so confident in the effectiveness of his law that he placed a golden cup on display in the central square of Tirgoviste. The cup was never stolen and remained entirely unmolested throughout Dracula's reign.
(2) The Foreign Merchant
A merchant from a foreign land once visited Dracula's capital of Tirgoviste. Aware of the reputation of Dracula's land for honesty, he left a treasure-laden cart unguarded in the street over night. Returning to his wagon in the morning, the merchant was shocked to find 160 golden ducats missing. When the merchant complained of his loss to the prince, Dracula assured the him that his money would be returned and invited him to remain in the palace that night. Dracula then issued a proclamation to the city find the thief and return the money or the city will be destroyed. During the night he ordered that 160 ducats plus one extra be taken from his own treasury and placed in the merchant's cart. On returning to his cart in the morning and counting his money the merchant discovered the extra ducat. The merchant returned to Dracula and reported that his money had indeed been returned plus an extra ducat. Meanwhile the thief had been captured and turned over to the prince's guards along with the stolen money. Dracula ordered the thief impaled and informed the merchant that if he had not reported the extra ducat he would have been impaled alongside the thief.
(3) The Two Monks
There are several versions of this anecdote. In some the two monks were from a Catholic monastery in Wallachia or wandering Catholic monks from a foreign land. In either case Catholic monks would be viewed as representatives of a foreign power by Dracula. In other versions of the story the monks were from a Romanian Orthodox establishment (the native church of Wallachia). Dracula's motivation also varies considerably among the different versions of the story. All versions of the story agree that two monks visited Dracula in his palace at Tirgoviste. Curious to see the reaction of the churchmen, Dracula showed them the rows of impaled corpses in the courtyard. When asked their opinions of his actions by the prince, one of the monks responded, 'You are appointed by God to punish evil- doers. The other monk had the moral courage to condemn the cruel prince. In the version of the story most common in the German pamphlets, Dracula rewarded the sycophantic monk and impaled the honest monk. In the version found in the Russian pamphlets and in the Romanian verbal tradition Dracula rewarded the honest monk for his integrity and courage and impaled the sycophant for his dishonesty.
(4) The Polish Nobleman
Benedict de Boithor, a Polish nobleman in the service of the King of Hungary, visited Dracula at Tirgoviste in September of 1458. At dinner one evening Dracula ordered a golden spear brought and set up directly in from of the royal envoy. Dracula then asked the envoy why he thought this spear had been set up. Benedict replied that he imagined that some boyar had offended the prince and that Dracula intended to honor him. Dracula then responded that he had, in fact, had the spear set up in honor of his noble, Polish guest. The Pole then responded that had he done anything to deserve death that Dracula should do as he thought best. He further asserted that in that case Dracula would not be responsible for his death, rather he would be responsible for his own death for incurring the displeasure of the prince. Dracula was greatly pleased by this answer and showered the man with gifts while declaring that had he answered in any other manner he would have been immediately impaled.
(5) The Foreign Ambassadors
There are at least two versions of this story in the literature. As with the story of the two monks, one version is common in the German pamphlets and views Dracula's actions unfavorably while the other version is common in eastern Europe and sees Dracula's actions in a much more favorable light. In both versions ambassadors of a foreign power visit Dracula's court at Tirgoviste. When granted an audience with the prince the envoys refused to remove their hats as was the custom when in the presence of the prince in Wallachia. Angered at this sign of disrespect Dracula had the ambassadors' hats nailed to their heads so that they might never remove them. In the German version of the story the envoys are Florentine and refused to remove their hats to demonstrate their superiority. When Dracula asked the ambassadors why they wouldn't remove their hats they responded that such was not their custom and that they wouldn't remove their hats, even for the Holy Roman emperor. Dracula immediately had their hats nailed to their heads so that they might never come off and had the ambassadors ejected from his court. In Germany and the West, where the concept of diplomatic immunity was at least given lip service, this was held to be an act of barbarity against the representatives of a friendly power.
In the version of the story common in the east, the envoys are Turkish. When ushered into the presence of the prince, the Turks refused to remove their Phrygian caps. When questioned they answered that it was not the custom of their fathers to remove their hats. Dracula then ordered their hats nailed to their heads with three nails so that they might never have to break such an excellent tradition. The envoys were then sent back to the sultan. In the east this was held to bee a courageous act of defiance in the face of the power of the Ottoman sultan. It should also be noted that the nailing of hats to the heads of those who displeased a monarch was not an unknown act in eastern Europe. Apparently this method was occasionally used by the princes of Moscow when faced by unpleasant envoys.
(6) Dracula's Mistress
Dracula once had a mistress who lived in a house in the back streets of Tirgoviste. This woman apparently loved the prince to distraction and was always anxious to please him. Dracula was often moody and depressed and the woman made every effort to lighten her lover's burdens. Once, when Dracula was particularly depressed, the woman dared tell him a lie in an effort to cheer him up; she told him that she was with child. Dracula warned the woman not to joke about such matters but she insisted on the truth of her claim despite her knowledge of the prince's feelings about dishonesty. Dracula had the woman examined by the bath matrons to determine the veracity of her claim. When informed that the woman was lying Dracula drew his knife and cut her open from the groin to her breasts while proclaiming his desire for the world to see where he had been. Dracula then left the woman to die in agony.
(7) The Lazy Woman
Dracula once noticed a man working in the fields while wearing a too short caftan. The prince stopped and asked the man whether or not he had a wife. When the man answered in the affirmative Dracula had the woman brought before him and asked her how she spent her days. The poor, frightened woman stated that she spent her days washing, baking and sewing. The prince pointed out her husband's short caftan as evidence of her laziness and dishonesty and ordered her impaled despite her husband's protestations that he was well satisfied with his wife. Dracula then ordered another woman to marry the peasant but admonished her to work hard or she would suffer her predecessor's fate.
(8) The Nobleman with the Keen Sense of Smell
On St. Bartholomew's Day in 1459 Dracula caused thirty thousand of the merchants and nobles of the Transylvanian city of Brasov to be impaled. In order that he might better enjoy the results of his orders, the prince commanded that his table be set up and that his boyars join him for a feast amongst the forest of impaled corpses. While dining, Dracula noticed that one of his boyars was holding his nose in an effort to alleviate the terrible smell of clotting blood and emptied bowels. Dracula then ordered the sensitive nobleman impaled on a stake higher than all the rest so that he might be above the stench.
In another version of this story the sensitive nobleman is an envoy of the Transylvanian cities of Brasov and Sibiu sent to appeal to the cruel Wallachian to spare those cities. While hearing the nobleman's appeal Dracula walked amongst the stakes and their grisly burdens. Some of the victims still lived. Nearly overcome by the smell of drying blood and human wastes the nobleman asked the prince why he walked amidst the awful stench. Dracula then asked the envoy if he found the stench oppressive. The envoy, seeing an opportunity to ingratiate himself with Dracula, responded that his only concern was for the health and welfare of the prince. Dracula, angered at the nobleman's dishonesty ordered him impaled on the spot on a very high stake so that he might be above the offending odors.
(9) The Burning of the Sick and Poor
Dracula was very concerned that all his subjects work and contribute to the common welfare. He once noticed that the poor, vagrants, beggars and cripples had become very numerous in his land. Consequently, he issued an invitation to all the poor and sick in Wallachia to come to Tirgoviste for a great feast, claiming that no one should go hungry in his land. As the poor and crippled arrived in the city they were ushered into a great hall where a fabulous feast was prepared for them. The prince's guests ate and drank late into the night, when Dracula himself made an appearance. What else do you desire? Do you want to be without cares, lacking nothing in this world, asked the prince. When they responded positively Dracula ordered the hall boarded up and set on fire. None escaped the flames. Dracula explained his action to the boyars by claiming that he did this, 'in order that they represent no further burden to other men so that no one will be poor in my realm.
VI. Dracula and the Vampire Myth
It is unclear why Bram Stoker chose this fifteenth century Romanian prince as the model for his fictional vampire. Stoker was friends with a Hungarian professor from Buda-Pest and many have suggested that Dracula's name might have been mentioned by this friend. Regardless of how the name came to Stoker's attention the cruel history of the Impaler would have readily loaned itself to Stoker's purposes. The events of Dracula's life were played out in a region of the world that was still basically medieval even in Stoker's time. The Balkans had only recently shaken off the Turkish yoke when Stoker started working on his novel and the superstitions of the Dark Ages were still prevalent. Transylvania had long been a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire but it too had endured a long period of Turkish domination and its culture was still largely medieval. The legend of the vampire was and still is deeply rooted in that region. There have always been vampire-like creatures in the mythologies of many cultures. However, the vampire, as he became known in Europe and hence America, largely originated in the Slavic and Greek lands of eastern Europe. A veritable epidemic of vampirism swept through eastern Europe beginning in the late seventeenth century and continuing through the eighteenth century. The number of reported cases of rose dramatically in the Hungary and the Balkans. From the Balkans the plague spread westward into Germany, Italy, France, England and Spain. Travellers returning from the Balkans brought with them tales of the undead, igniting an interest in the vampire that has continued to this day. Philosophers in the West began to study the phenomenon. It was during this period that Dom Augustin Calmet wrote his famous treatise on vampirism in Hungary. It was also during this period that authors and playwrights first began to explore the vampire myth. Stoker's novel was merely the culminating work of a long series of works that were inspired by the reports coming from the Balkans and Hungary.
Given the history of the vampire myth in Europe it is perhaps natural that Stoker should place his great vampire in the heart of the region that gave birth to the myth. Once Stoker had determined on a locality Vlad Dracula would stand out as one of the most notorious rulers of the selected region. He was obscure enough that few would recognize the name and those who did would know him for his acts of brutal cruelty; Dracula was a natural candidate for vampirism. Why Stoker chose to relocate his vampire from Wallachia to the north of Transylvania remains a mystery.
The vampire myth is still wide-spread in eastern Europe. Similarly the name of Dracula is still remembered in the Romanian oral tradition but that is the end of any connection between Dracula and the vampire myth in folklore. Outside of Stoker's novel the name of Dracula was never linked with the myth of the vampire. Despite his inhuman cruelty, in Romania Dracula is remembered as a national hero who resisted the Turkish conquerors and asserted Romanian national sovereignty against the powerful Hungarian kingdom.
PART ONE: The Dawn of National Consciousness
The roots of ethnic conflict in Transylvania go back at least as far as the collapse of the feudal kingdom of Hungary on the blood-soaked plains of Moh�cs. This battle against the Ottoman Turks in 1526 resulted in the division and depopulation of the once powerful and prosperous kingdom of Matthias Rex (1458--90). The Hungary that had provided stability for Eastern Europe for over 500 years was now subjected to depredations from both East and West. Transylvania, which had been an integral part of this kingdom, henceforth faced an uncertain future as the Habsburgs and the Ottomans attempted to consolidate their hold over northwestern and central Hungary respectively.
The defeat at Moh�cs opened an age of constant conflict. The Hungarian population was dramatically and drastically reduced in the ceaseless military struggles. Many sections of the former kingdom were totally depopulated. It was during these critical years of the Turkish wars that Transylvania gained added significance for the peoples of Eastern Europe. The Hungarian princes who governed it from 1541 until the end of the seventeenth century provided continuity to the quest for Hungarian independence. At the same time, Transylvania became a haven for the Rumanian populations of Wallachia and Moldavia.
The study by L. S. Domonkos provides an ethnic profile of the medieval kingdom of Hungary on the eve of the Battle of Moh�cs. It sketches the ethnic composition and the prevailing state order of which Transylvania was an integral part. Domonkos also shows that the relations between these diverse groups were not confrontational along ethnic lines.
The study by Louis J. Elteto focuses on the beginnings of the disintegration, which in the long run produced some of the nationality conflicts of the future. Elteto's analysis reflects on the period that follows the Battle of Moh�cs, its main concern being to outline the impact of the Reformation on the national consciousness of the Hungarians, Saxons, and Rumanians of Transylvania. This period represents for all the peoples of Transylvania an important phase in the differentiation of their respective self-definitions.
B�la K. Kir�ly's study is concerned with the role of Transylvania in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in fostering or hindering
the concept of independence for the kingdom of Hungary. As noted above, the Battle of Moh�cs signalled the end of independence for Hungarian statehood. Its division into Habsburg and Ottoman-occupied parts meant that the remainder, i.e., Transylvania, was now the only hope for the preservation of Hungarian liberty and the only political entity that could work toward the reestablishment of the kingdom of Hungary.
Together these three studies provide the broad background for the developments that led to the emergence of modern nationalism in Transylvania.
1. The Multiethnic Character of the Hungarian
Kingdom in the Later Middle Ages
by L. S. DOMONKOS
THE NATIO HUNGARICA
The Hungarian kingdom in the late Middle Ages was not a national state in the modern sense of the word, but a multiethnic political unit in which the Magyar nobility held the dominant position. In this respect Hungary is not unique, for the medieval period does not offer examples of national states. Hungary had within its borders a large number of non-Magyar inhabitants in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries who were nevertheless members of the "Natio Hungarica" or "Natio Hungarorum," irrespective of the ethnic background. The terms of "Natio Hungarica" or "Natio Hungarorum" should be viewed basically as indicators of geographic and not ethnic origin. An individual belonged to the "Hungarian Nation" if he or she resided under the authority of the king of Hungary, i.e., in the lands of the Hungarian crown.[1] Probably the clearest illustration of this point can be drawn from late medieval university practices. A large number of students from the Hungarian kingdom attended the University of Vienna in the fifteenth century, where the scholars were divided into four "nations," following the model of the great University of Paris. These nations were the Austrian, which also included Italy; the Rhenish, comprising the Rhineland and Western Europe; the Hungarian, with the Slavic areas added; and the Saxon, to which belonged students from northern and eastern Germany, Scandinavia, and England.[2] If, for example, a student from one of the Transylvanian Saxon towns enrolled at the University of Vienna, as Thomas Altenberg of Szeben (Hermannstadt, Sibiu) did in 1453, he was inscribed into the registers of the Hungarian Nation[3] and not the Saxon Nation, for the simple reason that he came from a territory of the Hungarian crown. The fact that Thomas Altenberg spoke German and might have felt more at home in the Austrian, Rhenish, or Saxon nations at the University does not enter the picture at all. He was, because of the geographic location of his home, a member of the Natio Hungarica.[4]
The Hungarian kingdom in the fifteenth century comprised a geographic entity bounded by the Carpathian Mountain range in the north, east, and southeast, and by the Danube and Sz�va (Sava) rivers in the south and southwest. The western border with Austria did not follow any major geographical barrier or line. The area of the kingdom was about 300,000 square kilometers (or 124,000 square miles) and included the regions of Hungary proper, Croatia-Slavonia, and for a time the coast of Dalmatia. The population of fifteenth-century Hungary (including Transylvania but excluding Croatia-Slavonia), has been estimated to have been between 3.4 and 4 million inhabitants. The more conservative figure given by Erik Moln�r,[5] who based his calculations on a family unit of four members, is probably more nearly correct than the estimates of Istv�n Szab�, who took a five-member peasant family as the norm.[6] It is interesting to note that in 1720, almost 200 years after the Battle of Moh�cs, the population of the same area is still 3.5 to 4 million.[7] This gives some indication of the devastation caused by the Turkish wars. Under the authority of the Hungarian crown, the areas of Transylvania and Croatia-Slavonia enjoyed a degree of autonomy in their political and administrative life but were parts of the regnum Hungariae. The kingdom was subdivided into counties, of which fifty-seven were in Hungary proper, seven in Transylvania, and seven in the Slavonian area. South of the Sz�va River frontier were a number of military districts (b�ns�gok), which were buffer areas against Turkish expansion and scenes of a number of campaigns against the Ottomans during the early period of the reign of Matthias Corvinus.
In the early sixteenth century, Mikl�s Ol�h (1493--1568), humanist scholar, friend of Erasmus, and later archbishop of Esztergom --- and as his name indicates, of Rumanian origin --- composed an important geographic treatise entitled "Hungaria,"[8] in which he gave an invaluable description of the kingdom as it was before the Turkish devastation. Ol�h's work has been studied with care by art historians, but it is also important to us because in Chapter XIX of "Hungaria," Ol�h enumerated the various inhabitants found in Hungary during his own lifetime. He describes these as follows: "The territory of the Hungarian kingdom contains in our time diverse nations, [namely] Hungarians, Germans, Bohemians, Slavs, Croatians, Saxons, Sz�kelys, Vlachs, Serbs, Cumans, Jaziges, Ruthenians, and most recently Turks."[9] Ol�h mentions twelve "nations" who resided under the sovereignty of the Hungarian crown. These same twelve groups were present during the 200 years prior to the Battle of Moh�cs, which is the period on which we plan to focus. It is well known that Moh�cs brought about the destruction of the medieval Hungarian monarchy and ushered in great
changes that also effected the subsequent ethnic composition of the state, to the detriment of the once dominant Magyar element. Following roughly the outline presented by Ol�h, let us examine the twelve "nations" and their major characteristics during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
THE MAGYAR ELEMENT AND THE SZ�KELYS
The first mentioned "nation" were the Magyars, who were the dominant ethnic group in the Hungarian kingdom in the late Middle Ages. Not only were the Magyars the politically significant element, but they also constituted the vast majority of the population. By the end of the fifteenth century, the kingdom was more thoroughly Hungarian than it ever was until the post-Trianon era of the twentieth century.[10]
Our most reliable, although unfortunately incomplete, sources of information concerning the wealth, size, population density, etc. of the late medieval Hungarian state are the taxation records of 1494--95. These were prepared during the tenure of Zsigmond Ernuszt, bishop of P�cs and treasurer (thesaurarius) of the realm, who in 1496 was accused of having stolen a sizeable sum from the treasury. In order to clear himself, Ernuszt prepared elaborate accounts for the period 1494--95, which are an invaluable source for the study of the social and economic conditions of the period.[11]
Elem�r M�lyusz, one of the most renowned Hungarian medievalists, estimated on the basis of taxation documents that 77.25 percent of those employed in agricultural pursuits in the fifteenth century were Magyars. This is based on the analysis of the names of the taxpayers. M�lyusz also found that about 17 percent of the names were such that it is impossible to determine the ethnic group to which the individual belonged. Some of these were undoubtedly also Hungarians, which would push the percentage up further, to about 80 percent.[12]
The Magyar population was concentrated in the lower-lying regions of the Carpathian Basin, in the plateau areas, and in the river valleys. Since there was, for a long period, an ample land reserve, the less desirable areas were left to others or remained unoccupied. Particularly strong were the settlements in the counties of Baranya, Tolna, B�cs, and Bodrog. Towns and villages in the valleys of the K�r�s, Szamos, and Maros in eastern Hungary were inhabited predominantly by Hungarians. The same is true of the lower valley of the V�g and Nyitra rivers in northwestern Hungary. The evidence presented by surviving charters and other documents from the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries is overwhelming: the place names are predominantly Hungarian, indicating that the majority of the population was in fact Magyar.[13]
If one were to draw a map showing ethnic distribution in Hungary, the more mountainous regions would show the presence of Slovak, Rumanian, or Ruthenian inhabitants in large areas. This, however, should be viewed with a certain amount of caution because of the great differences in the density of the population between the counties on the plain and in the Carpathian or Transylvanian regions. Mountains and forests can give livelihood to much smaller numbers of people; consequently, settlements were of more modest proportions in these regions. Furthermore, since many of these mountain settlements were of more recent foundation, they were also less populous.[14] To illustrate density of population, we must again turn to the tax lists of 1495, which measure the number of porta (tax-paying units) per county. There were 15,000 portas in Baranya, 11,000 in Somogy, and 10,000 in Tolna County. At the same time there were 300 portas in �rva County, 790 in Lipt�, and 1,420 in Z�lyom[15] all located in the mountainous areas of northern Hungary. It is clear that the population of the Magyar-inhabited plains counties was several times the number of inhabitants that could be found in the border counties, which were generally more sparsely inhabited and where the Hungarian population was a smaller proportion of the total.
Of the fifty-seven counties that made up Hungary proper, twenty-two counties formed a coherent block of Magyar-inhabited areas. Around this core were twenty-six counties where other "national" or ethnic groups were present in larger or smaller numbers. And, finally, there was a number of counties in which the Magyar element was probably less than 20 percent. Seven of these were in the northernmost part of the kingdom: Trencs�n, �rva, Tur�c, Lipt�, Z�lyom, Szepes, and S�ros. Two, M�ramaros County in the east and Pozsega in the southwest, had few Hungarian inhabitants, although even there the nobility was predominantly Magyar.[16]
In general, we can say that the weight of the Hungarian population was to be found in the south, in those regions that fell under Turkish domination first and remained subjugated for the longest. It is there that the tragedy of Hungarian history can be found. While the southern counties would be depopulated, the northern would be able to grow relatively unimpeded. In 1495, there were 2.75 portas per square kilometer in Tolna County and .80 porta per square kilometer in Trencs�n County. Yet, in 1870, Trencs�n County had 258,000 inhabitants, Tolna 222,000.[17]
Two areas under the Hungarian crown but with some degree of autonomy were the Croatian-Slavonian region and Transylvania. The number of Hungarians in Slavonia was small. Except for a few members of the nobility, the percentage of Magyars in this region was insignificant.
In Transylvania, the situation was quite different. There were three administrative units in Transylvania: the Saxon region (Sz�szf�ld), the Sz�kely region (Sz�kelyf�ld), and the Seven Counties (Bels�szolnok, Doboka, Kolozs, Torda, K�k�ll�, Feh�r and Hunyad). The Saxon region was obviously German; the Sz�kelys were Magyars; and in the seven counties the total population was about two-thirds Magyar, and one-third Rumanian (Vlachs, Wallachians).[18] In some areas, the number of Vlachs (Wallachians) was probably higher.
We have until now been concerned mainly with the peasantry, which, after all, was the bulk of the population. Let us now examine briefly the other segments of the Magyars, namely the nobility and the urban dwellers. The "political nation" was made up of the nobility, secular and ecclesiastic, which constituted about 5 percent of the total population. The vast majority of these belonged to the petty or lesser nobility, which was almost exclusively Magyar. Among the barons and prelates, however, there were many who rose to prominence although of non-Hungarian ancestry. Random examples of this can be seen in the case of the Cillei (Cilli) family, the powerful competitors of the Hunyadis. The Croatian-Slavonian Frangep�n and Vitrovec families were also considered barons of the Hungarian kingdom.[19] Although some Hungarian historians have tried to disprove that the Hunyadi family was of Vlach (Wallachian) origin, the overwhelming evidence supports the view that they indeed were not Magyars, but rose in the service of the Hungarian king, received nobility, intermarried with Magyar noble families, and thus rose to prominence.[20] A large number of others were also able to make this transition, among them the famous Dr�gffy, Majl�th, and N�dasdi families.[21] Similarly, leaders of the Slovak, Ruthenian, and Saxon communities made their way into the ranks of Hungarian nobles. There are, however, instances where the reverse situation was also evident. Magyar nobles living in predominantly Slovak-inhabited areas became linguistically assimilated to their subjects, as is evident from their correspondence by the sixteenth century.[22] Generally, it was advantageous for any person, regardless of ethnic background, to join the ruling class rather than to be part of the exploited segment of society.
Among the prelates there was also a number of important men who rose to prominence in the Hungarian state, although they were
ethnically not Magyars. Excellent examples of this are provided by the careers of Archbishop J�nos Vit�z of Esztergom and of his nephew, the great humanist-poet Janus Pannonius, bishop of P�cs (F�nfkirchen). The Vit�z family was of Slavonian origin and had intermarried with Magyar nobility.[23] Vit�z was one of the most loyal supporters of Hunyadi, and under Matthias was eventually rewarded with the offices of chancellor and primate of Hungary. Janus Pannonius was a member of the Royal Council and privy chancellor. It was obviously ability that determined the rise of these men and not the question of whether they were Magyar or Slavonian. Other examples abound: the successor of Janus as bishop of P�cs was Zsigmond Ernuszt, whose family originated from Austria and who was probably partially Jewish. Gy�rgy Szathm�ri, bishop of V�rad (Oradea, Grosswardein) and later of P�cs, was born of German parents in Kassa (Kosice, Kaschau) while Johann Filipecz, bishop of V�rad, was a Moravian. L�szl� Ving�rdi Ger�b, bishop of Transylvania, was a member of a Saxon family that made the transition to the Magyar nobility in the course of the fifteenth century. All these men served the Hungarian kingdom without being of Magyar ancestry and had a strong attachment to the "Natio Hungarica," of which they were an integral part.
When we examine the backgrounds of the heads of the "political nation," namely the kings, we find that the Hungarian kingdom was ruled by men who were, for the most part, non-Magyars. The list of rulers for the fifteenth century presents a curious picture. Sigismund (1378--1437) was of the House of Luxembourg. Although a stranger in Hungary at first, by the end of his reign he often wore Magyar dress, swore in Hungarian, and was buried next to his hero, Saint L�szl�, at V�rad. Albert (1437--39) was a Habsburg, Wladislaw I (1440--44) a Pole. J�nos Hunyadi, regent (1446--52), was of Rumanian ancestry; L�szl� V (1444--57) lived most of his life abroad and probably knew little if any Hungarian. The only "true Magyar" king was Matthias (1458--90), succeeded by the Polish Wladislaw II (1490--1516). The ethnically predominantly Magyar kingdom of Hungary was ruled by non-Hungarian kings through most of the fifteenth century.
Turning our attention away from nobles, prelates, and kings, we find that the population of the urban centers was predominantly non-Magyar. Hungary was slow to develop cities. The growth of towns before the Tatar invasion was minimal, and even in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the number of true cities was very small.[24] The Decree of 1514 enumerated those cities (civitas) that by virtue of their privileges could be counted as genuine urban centers. Altogether there were only twenty-four in the whole kingdom, the most important of
which were the free royal cities of Buda (Ofen), Pest, Kassa, Pozsony (Bratislava, Pressburg), Nagyszombat, B�rtfa, Eperjes, and Sopron (�denburg).[25] By 1500, however, there were about 750 market towns (oppidum, mez�v�ros) throughout the land.[26] It is an interesting Hungarian phenomenon that from the second half of the fifteenth century onward the growth of the civitas stagnated, while the number of oppida increased considerably.[27] The population of the market towns was often made up of German settlers (hospites, guests) in the early fourteenth century. During the course of the next 100 years, however, large numbers of Magyar and Slavic settlers took up their residence in the market towns. In the areas inhabited predominantly by Hungarians, the oppida became mainly Magyar, while in areas where the Slavic population was the majority, their movement to the market towns made those particular settlements Slavic.[28] Our information about the development of oppida in the Transylvanian area is fragmentary. The almost complete monopoly of the Germans as urban settlers was eventually broken down by the movement of both Magyar and Slavic populations into the cities and towns.
This urbanization trend was a general European phenomenon and is not peculiar to the Hungarian kingdom. Two obvious results of this population movement were the abandonment of villages in many formerly inhabited areas[29] and the increase of Magyar and Slavic elements in the urban centers. The fact that many towns had increasingly mixed populations made it possible to weaken the ethnic identity of the non-Magyars, especially of the Germans. This led in some instances to the "Magyarization" of some individuals, just as others lost their German identity and became part of their Slovak environment. In Buda, for example, the Ohnwein family became Bornemissza during the course of the fifteenth century.[30] In Eperjes, the entry of Magyars into town life and their growing influence has been demonstrated by the study of B�la Iv�nyi.[31] Towns such as Sz�kesfeh�rv�r and Esztergom were almost completely Magyar by 1500, although they had had large French, Flemish, and Italian populations in the previous centuries. Szeged and �buda were always Magyar. Pest was changing from a predominantly German to predominantly Hungarian town. In Buda, the German-speaking population was still very strong. Only in the fifteenth century were the Hungarians able to force the Germans to agree to the rotation of the judgeship (judocus) so that one year the incumbent was German, the next Hungarian.[32] The German preponderance at Buda can best be seen in the organization of the parishes on Castle Hill. The Hungarian parish was the Church of Saint Mary Magdalena, a simpler, smaller structure. The German parish church, named after Our Lady (today
Matthias or Coronation Church), was a far more imposing and larger structure than the parish of the Magyars. The laws of the capital city of Hungary were written in German and are known as the Ofner Stadtrecht.[33] Buda became a Hungarian city only in the twentieth century.
Before leaving the subject of the Hungarian element, let us turn briefly to the examination of the Sz�kelys (Siculi, Seklers). In origin and language, they were Magyars and lived as a compact block in the eastern part of Transylvania called the Sz�kelyf�ld. All the Sz�kelys were considered noble and as such owed military service but paid no taxes to the king.[34] The royal representative in the region was called the isp�n (comes sicolorum), whose primary function was to lead the Sz�kely military units in case of war. Their social organization still reflected the vestiges of the clans that made up the "Sz�kely nation." Originally, there were seven territorial units based upon these clans, each of which was called a sz�k. From these, several subunits (fi�sz�k) were formed in the course of time. At the head of each sz�k there was an elected captain (hadnagy, later kapit�ny) and a judge.[35] Together, all the Sz�kelys formed the Universitas Sicolorum, one of the three administrative units of Transylvania. The population was originally divided into two major classes based upon the type of military service that they performed; i.e., those who fought on foot were called darabant and those who fought on horseback, l�f�. In 1473, Matthias Corvinus reorganized them militarily and created three classes, namely the primor, who led a troop of Sz�kelys into battle; the primipilatus, composed of the l�f�, who constituted the cavalry; and the pixidarius, made up of those who fought on foot.[36]
This autonomous block of Magyar-speaking inhabitants in Transylvania was able to retain its language, customs and institutions throughout the late Middle Ages and for centuries thereafter.
Yes, there was a real Dracula, and he was a true prince of darkness. He was Prince Vlad III Dracula, also known as Vlad Tepes, meaning "Vlad the Impaler." The Turks called him Kaziglu Bey, or "the Impaler Prince." He was the prince of Walachia, but, as legend suggests, he was born in Transylvania, which at that time was ruled by Hungary.
According to legend, Walachia was founded in 1290 by a Transylvanian named Radu Negru, or Rudolph the Black. Dracula's grandfather, Prince Mircea the Old, reigned from 1386 to 1418. He fought to keep Walachia independent from the Turks but was forced to pay tribute to them. He and his descendants continued to rule Walachia, but under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire (Turkey).
The throne of Walachia was not necessarily passed from father to son. The prince was elected by the country's boyars, or land-owning nobles. This caused fighting among family members, assassinations, and other unpleasantness. Eventually the royal House of Basarab was split into two factions -- Mircea's descendants, and the descendants of another prince named Dan II. Dan's descendants were called the Danesti.
Mircea had an illegitimate son, Vlad, born around 1390. He grew up in the court of King Sigismund of Hungary, first probably as a hostage and later as a page. Sigismund, who became the Holy Roman Emperor in 1410, founded a secret fraternal order of knights called the Order of the Dragon to uphold Catholicism and fight Turkey. Vlad was admitted to the Order, probably in 1431. The boyars of Walachia started to call him Dracul, meaning "dragon." Vlad's second son would be known as Dracula, or "son of the dragon." Dracul also meant "devil." So some of Dracula's enemies called him "son of the devil."
Sigismund made Vlad the military governor of Transylvania, a post he held from 1431 to 1435. During that time he lived in the town of Sighisoara or Schassburg. You can still visit the citadel there and even the house where Vlad's son Dracula was born. Today there's a restaurant on the second floor. There's also a mural in the house that may depict Vlad Dracul.
Young Dracula
Dracula was born in November or December of 1431. His given name was Vlad. He had an older brother, Mircea, and a younger brother, Radu the Handsome. Their mother may have been a Moldavian princess or a Tranyslvanian noble. It is said that she educated Dracula in his early years. Later he was trained for knighthood by an old boyar who had fought the Turks.
Dracula's father was not content to remain a mere governor forever. During his years in Transyvlania, he gathered supporters for his plan to seize Walachia's throne from its current occupant, a Danesti prince named Alexandru I. In late 1436 or early 1437 Vlad Dracul killed Alexandru and became Prince Vlad II.
Vlad was a vassal of Hungary and also had to pay tribute to Hungary's enemy, Turkey. In 1442 Turkey invaded Transylvania. Vlad tried to stay neutral, but Hungary's rulers blamed him and drove him and his family out of Walachia. A Hungarian general, Janos Hunyadi (who may have been the illegitimate son of Emperor Sigismund) made a Danesti named Basarab II the prince of Walachia.
The following year Vlad regained the throne with the help of the sultan of Turkey. In 1444 he sent his two younger sons to Turkey to prove his loyalty. Dracula was about 13. He spent the next four years in Adrianople, Turkey as a hostage.
In 1444 Hungary went to war with Turkey and demanded that Vlad join the crusade. As a member of the Order of the Dragon, Vlad was sworn to obey this summons. But he didn't want to anger the Turks, so he sent his eldest son, Mircea, in his place. The Christian army was demolished at the Battle of Varna, and Vlad and Mircea blamed Janos Hunyadi.
In 1447 Vlad and Mircea were murdered. Mircea was killed by the boyars and merchants of the Walachian city Tirgoviste. There are different stories about how he died - he may have been tortured and burned, or buried alive. Apparently his father died at the same time. Some say that the assassinations were organized by Hunyadi.
Since Vlad and Mircea were dead, and Dracula and Radu were still in Turkey, Hunyadi was able to put a member of the Danesti clan, Vladislav II, on the Walachian throne. The Turks didn't like having a Hungarian puppet in charge of Walachia, so in 1448 they freed Dracula and gave him an army. He was seventeen years old.
It seems that Dracula's little brother Radu chose to remain in Turkey. He had grown up there, and apparently remained loyal to the sultan.
Dracula's Reign
With the help of his Turkish army, Dracula seized the Walachian throne. However, he only ruled for two months before Hunyadi forced him into exile in Moldavia. Again Vladislav II became Walachia's prince.
Three years later Prince Bogdan of Moldavia was assassinated and Dracula fled the country. By now Vladislav II had become a supporter of Turkey, and Hunyadi was sorry he had put him on the throne. Everyone switched sides - Dracula became Hunyadi's vassal, and Hunyadi now supported Dracula's attempt to regain his throne. In 1456 Hunyadi invaded Turkish Serbia while Dracula invaded Walachia. Hunyadi was killed, but Dracula killed Vladislav II and took back his throne.
He established his capital at Tirgoviste - you can still see the ruins of his palace there. And nearby a statue of Vlad Tepes still stands. He is considered an important figure in Romanian history because he unified Walachia and resisted the influence of foreigners.
But it's Dracula's cruelty that most non-Romanians remember. After becoming prince, Dracula supposedly invited many beggars and other old, sick and poor people to a banquet at his castle. When his guests had finished eating their meal and drinking a toast to him, Dracula asked them, "Would you like to be without cares, lacking nothing in this world?"
Yes, they said enthusiastically.
So Dracula had the castle boarded up and set it on fire. Nobody made it out alive - and that was the end of their problems, as he had promised. "I did this so that no one will be poor in my realm," he said.
According to another story, he invited 500 boyars to a banquet and asked them how many princes had ruled in their lifetimes. They said they had lived through many reigns. Shouting that this was their fault because of their plotting, Dracula had them all arrested on the spot. The older ones were impaled; the others were marched 50 miles to Poenari where they were forced to build a mountaintop fortress. They worked a long time; when their clothes fell off, they worked naked. Most of them died, of course. And of course Dracula seized the boyars' property and passed it out to his supporters. In that way he created a new nobility, loyal to him.
(The ruins of the Poenari fortress can still be seen. You have to climb nearly 1,500 steps and cross a little bridge to reach it. It's now called Castle Dracula, but several places are called that. Another "Castle Dracula" is Bran Castle, near the town of Brasov. Although Dracula may have stayed there occasionally, it certainly wasn't his home.)
Dracula liked to set up a banquet table and dine while he watched people die. His favorite form of execution was impalement. It was slow; people could take days to die. He liked to impale many people at once, arranging the stakes in fancy designs. Nothing was too brutal for Dracula - he enjoyed having people skinned, boiled alive, etc. He prided himself on making the punishment (supposedly) fit the crime.
By 1462, when he was deposed, he had killed between 40,000 and 100,000 people, possibly more. He always thought up some excuse for these executions. He killed merchants who cheated their customers. He killed women who had affairs. Supposedly he had one woman impaled because her husband's shirt was too short. He didn't mind impaling children, either. Afterwards he would display the corpses in public so everyone would learn a lesson. It's said that there were over 20,000 bodies hanging outside his capital city. Of course, the stories about Dracula's cruelty might have been exaggerated by his enemies.
Despite all this, Dracula's subjects respected him for fighting the Turks and being a strong ruler. He's remembered today as a patriotic hero who stood up to Turkey and Hungary. He was the last Walachian prince to remain independent from the Ottoman Empire. He was so scornful of other nations that when two foreign ambassadors refused to doff their hats to him, he had the hats nailed to their heads. He was opposed to the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches because he thought foreigners, operating through the churches, had too much power in Walachia. He tried to prevent foreign merchants from taking business away from his citizens. If merchants disobeyed his trade laws, they were, of course, impaled.
Dracula created a very severe moral code for the citizens of Walachia. You can guess what happened to anyone who broke the code. Thieves were impaled, even liars were impaled. Naturally there wasn't a lot of crime in Walachia during his reign.
To prove how well his laws worked, Dracula had a gold cup placed in a public square. Anyone who wanted to could drink from the cup, but no one was allowed to take it out of the square. No one did.
A visiting merchant once left his money outside all night, thinking that it would be safe because of Dracula's strict policies. To his surprise, some of his coins were stolen. He complained to Dracula, who promptly issued a proclamation that the money must be returned or the city would be destroyed. That night Dracula secretly had the missing money, plus one extra coin, returned to the merchant. The next morning the merchant counted the money and found it had been returned. He told Dracula about this, and mentioned the extra coin. Dracula replied that the thief had been caught and would be impaled. And if the merchant hadn't mentioned the extra coin, he would have been impaled, too
Dracula Overthrown
In 1462 Dracula attacked the Turks to drive them out of the Danube River valley. Sultan Mehmed II retaliated by invading Walachia with an army three times larger than Dracula's. Dracula was forced to retreat to his capital, Tirgoviste. He burned his own villages and poisoned wells on the way so that the Turkish army wouldn't have any food or water.
When the sultan reached Tirgoviste, he saw a terrifying scene, remembered in history as "the Forest of the Impaled." There, outside the city, were 20,000 Turkish prisoners, all impaled. The sultan's officers were too scared to go on - Dracula had won again.
Although the sultan retreated, Dracula's little brother Radu did not. The Turks had provided him with an army in hopes that he could seize Dracula's throne. Many of Dracula's boyars abandoned him to join Radu. Radu's army pursued Dracula to his fortress at Poenari. Dracula's wife was so frightened that she threw herself from the upper battlements. The Turks seized the castle, but Dracula managed to escape through a secret tunnel. There were still some peasants around he hadn't impaled, and they helped him flee from Walachia.
He went to the new king of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus, for help. Instead the king had him imprisoned in a tower. Dracula remained in Hungary while Radu ruled Walachia as a puppet for the Turks. After the first four years he was allowed to move into a house. He became a Catholic to please the Catholic Hungarians. He ingratiated himself with the Hungarian royal family, and even married one of its members (possibly the king's cousin).
But he was still the same old Dracula. He impaled rats and birds for fun. Once a thief broke into his house and a Hungarian captain followed him to arrest him. Dracula didn't kill the thief - he killed the officer. Why? Because the officer was a gentleman, and should have known not to enter a house uninvited.
The Death of Dracula
In 1473, Dracula's brother Radu lost the Walachian throne to a member of the Danesti clan, Basarab the Old. Radu died of syphilis in January of 1475, and in 1476 Dracula invaded Walachia with the help of Moldavia and Transylvania. They drove Basarab out of the country, and Dracula again became Walachia's prince. Most of Dracula's army then went home to Transylvania.
The Turks attacked a few months later. Dracula was killed while fighting near Bucharest in December 1476. Some say he died at the hands of a Turkish assassin posing as a servant, or that he was accidentally killed on the battlefield by his own men because he had disguised himself as a Turk to confuse the enemy. The sultan displayed Dracula's head on a pike in Constantinople to prove that he was dead. His body was buried at the island monastery of Snagov, which he had patronized. But excavations in 1931 failed to turn up any sign of his coffin!
== THE HISTORICAL DRACULA: VLAD III TEPES, 1431-1476 ==
== I. Historical Background ==
M
ost of you ("the members of this list", R.P.'92, -Ed.) are probably aware of the fact that when Bram Stoker penned his immortal classic, Dracula, he based his vampire villian on an actual historical figure. Stoker's model was Vlad III Dracula (called Tepes, pronounced tse-pesh); a fifteenth century viovode, or prince, of Wallachia of the princely House of Basarab. Wallachia is a provence of Romania bordered to the north by Transylvania and Moldavia, to the east by the Black Sea and to the south by Bulgaria. Wallachia first emerged as a political entity during the late thirteenth century from the weltering confusion left behind in the Balkans as the Eastern Roman Empire slowly crumbled. The first prince of Wallachia was Basarab the Great (1310-1352), an ancestor of Dracula. Despite the splintering of the family into two rival clans, some members of the House of Basarab continued to govern Wallachia from that time until well after the Ottomans reduced the principality to the status of a client state. Dracula was the last prince of Wallachia to retain any real measure of independence.
In order to understand the life of Vlad Dracula it is first necessary to understand something about the nature of Wallachian society and politics. The throne of Wallachia was hereditary but not by the law of primogeniture; the boyars, or great nobles, had the right to elect the voivode from among the various eligable members of the royal family. As with most elective monarchies during the Middle Ages the power of the central government tended to be dissipated among the nobility as various members of the ruling family vied for the throne. Wallachian politics also tended to be very bloody. Assasination was a common means of eliminating rivals and many of the voivodes ended their lives violently and prematurely. By the late fifteenth century the House of Basarab had split into two rival clans; the descendants of Prince Dan and those of Prince Mircea the Old (Dracula's grandfather). These two branches of the royal house were bitter rivals. Both Dracula and his father, Vlad II Dracul, murdered rivals from the Danesti upon reaching the throne.
The second ascendant fact of the fifteenth century Wallachian political life was the influence of powerful neighbors. In 1453 Constantinople and the last vestiges of the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman Empire, which had blocked the Islam's access to Europe for nearly one thousand years, succumbed to the armed might of the Ottoman Turks under Sultan Mohammed the Conqueror. Long before the fall of the Imperial City the Ottomans had penetrated deep into the Balkans. Dracula's grandfather, Mircea the Old, was forced to pay tribute to the sultan early in the fifteenth century. The Hungarian Kingdom to the north and west of Wallachia reached the zenith of its power during the fifteenth century and assumed Constantinople's ancient mantle as defender of Christendom. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the princes of Wallachia attempted to maintain a precarious independence by constantly shifting allegiances between these powerful neighbors.
Dracula ruled as Prince of Wallachia on three seperate occasions. He first claimed the throne with Turkish support in 1448. On this occasion he ruled for only two months (October-November) before being driven out by a Danesti claimant supported by Hungary. Dracula dwelt in exile for several years before returning to Wallachia to kill the Danesti prince, Vladislov II, and reclaim the Wallachian throne with Hungarian support. Dracula's second regnal period streched from 1456 to 1462. It was during this time that Dracula carried out his most famous military exploits against the Turks and also committed his most gruesome atrocities.
In 1462 Dracula fled to Transylvania to seek the aid of the King of Hungary when a Turkish army overwhelmed Wallachia. Instead of receiving the assistance he expected Dracula was imprisoned by the Hungarian king. He remained a prisoner of Matthius Corvinus of Hungary for several years. For most of the period of Dracula's incarceration his brother, Radu the Handsome, ruled Wallachia as a puppet of the Ottoman sultan. When Radu died (ca. 1474-1475) the sultan appointed Basarab the Old, a member of the Danesti clan, as prince.
Eventually, Dracula regained the favor and support of the Hungarian king. In 1476 he once again invaded Wallachia. His small force consisted of a few loyal Wallachians, a contingent of Moldavians sent by his cousin Prince Stephen the Great of Moldavia, and a contingent of Transylvanians under their prince, Stephen Bathory. The allies succeeded in driving Basarab out of the country and placing Dracula on the throne (November 1476). However, after Dracula was once again in control, Stephen Bathory returned to Transylvania taking most of Dracula's army with him. The Turk's soon counter-attacked with overwhelming force. Dracula was killed fighting the Turks near Bucharest in December of 1476. His head was sent to Constantinople where the Sultan had it displayed on a stake to prove that the terrible Impaler was really dead.
== II. What's in a name? ==
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here has been considerable debate among scholars concerning the meaning of the name 'Dracula'. The name is clearly related to Dracula's father's sobriquet 'Dracul'. Drac in Romanian means devil and "ul" is the definitive article. Therefore, "Dracul" literally means "the devil." The "ulea" ending in Romanian indicates "the son of." Under this interpretation Dracula becomes Vlad III, son of the devil. The experts who support this interpretation usually claim that Vlad II earned his devlish nickname by his clever and wily political maneuvering.
The second interpretation of the name is more widely accepted. In 1431 Vlad II was invested with the Order of the Dragon by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg. The Order of the Dragon was a knightly order dedicated to fighting the Turk. Its emblem was a dragon, wings extended, hanging on a cross. From 1431 onward Vlad II wore the emblem of the order. His coinage bore the dragon symbol. The dragon was the symbol of the devil and, consequently, the alternate meaning of 'drac' was dragon. (Note: "dragon", noun, Middle English from Old French, derivation of the Latin, "draco"; served as the emblem of the Roman Cavalry. ed.-MLW) Under this interpretation Vlad II Dracul becomes Vlad II, the Dragon and his son, Vlad III Dracula, becomes Vlad III, the Son of the Dragon.
There is some confusion in the secondary sources concerning Dracula's exact title. In most of the sources he is referred to as Vlad III. However, many sources refer to him as Vlad IV or Vlad V. I am somewhat at a loss to explain this confusion. The lists of Wallachian princes that I have seen would seem to make the correct title Vlad III. The only conclusion I have been able to reach is that there is some confusion in the sources between the various voivodes named Vlad and Vladislav. This argument gains credence when one realizes that Dracula occasionally signed his name 'Vladislaus'. I would welcome an explanation from anyone capable of resolving this problem.
== III. The Life of Vlad III Dracula, called the Impaler (1431-1476) ==
D
racula was born in 1431 in the Transylvanian city of Sighisoara. At that time Dracula's father, Vlad II Dracul, was living in exile in Transylvania. Vlad Dracul was in Transylvania attempting to gather support for his planned effort to seize the Wallachian throne from the Danesti Prince, Alexandru I. The house where Dracula was born is still standing. In 1431 it was located in a prosperous neighborhood (of the fortress town Sighisoara, ed.) surrounded by the homes of Saxon and Magyar merchants and the townhouses of the nobility.
Little is known about the early years of Dracula's life. It is known he had an elder brother, Mircea, and a younger brother named Radu. His early education was left in the hands of his mother, a Transylvanian noblewoman, and her family. His real education began in 1436 after his father succeeded in claiming the Wallachian throne and killing his Danesti rival. His training was typical to that common to the sons of the nobility throughout Europe. His first tutor in his apprenticeship to knighthood was an elderly boyar whom had fought under the banner of Enguerrand de Courcy at the battle of Nicolopolis against the Turks. Dracula learned all the skills of war and peace that were deemed necessary for a Christian knight.
The political situation in Wallachia remained unstable after Vlad Dracul seized the throne in 1436. The power of the Turks was growing rapidly as one by one the small states of the Balkans surrendered to the Ottoman onslaught. At the same time the power of hungary was reaching its zenith and would peak during the time of John Hunyadi, the White Knight of Hungary, and his son King Matthius Corvinus. Any prince of Wallachia had to balance his policies precariously between these two powerful neighbors. The prince of Wallachia was officially a vassal of the King of Hungary. In addition, Vlad Dracul was a member of the Order of the Dragon and sworn to fight the infidel. At the same time the power of the Ottomans seemed unstoppable. Even in the time of Vlad's father, Mircea the Old, Wallachia had been forced to pay tribute to the Sultan. Vlad was forced to renew that tribute and from 1436-1442 attempted to walk a middle coarse between his powerful neighbors.
In 1442 Vlad attempted to remain neutral when the Turks invaded Transylvania. The Turks were defeated and the vengeful Hungarians under John Hunyadi forced Dracul and his family to flee Wallachia. Hunyadi placed a Danesti, Basarab II, on the Wallachian throne. In 1443 Vlad II regained the Wallachian throne with Turkish support, on the condition that he sign a new treaty with the sultan that included not only the customary annual tribute but the promise to yearly send contingents of Wallachian boys to join the sultans Janissaries. In 1444, to further assure to the sultan of his good faith, Vlad sent his two younger sons to Adrianople as hostages. Dracula remained as a hostage in Adrianople until 1448.
In 1444 the King of Hungary, Ladislas Poshumous, broke the peace and launched the Varna campaign under the command of John Hunyadi in an effort to drive the Turks out of Europe. Hunyadi demanded that Vlad II fulfill his oath as a member of the Order of the Dragon and a vassal of Hungary and join the crusade against the Turk. The Pope absolved Dracul of his Turkish oath, but the wily politician still attempted to steer a middle coarse. Rather than join the Christian forces himself he sent his oldest son, Mircea. Perhaps he hoped the sultan would spare his younger sons if he himself did not join the crusade.
The results of the Varna Crusade are well known. The Christian army was utterly destroyed in the Battle of Varna. John Hunyadi managed to escape the battle under conditions that add little glory to the White Knight's reputation. Many, apparently including Mircea and his father, blamed Hunyadi for the debacle. From this moment forth John Hunyadi was bitterly hostile toward Vlad Dracul and his eldest son. In 1447 Vlad Dracul was assasinated along with his son Mircea. Mircea was apparently buried alive by the boyars and merchants of Tirgoviste. Hunyadi placed his own candidate, a member of the Danesti clan, on the throne of Wallachia.
On receiving the news of Vlad Dracul's death the Turks released Dracula and supported him as their own candidate for the Wallachian throne. In 1448 Dracula managed to briefly seize the Wallachian throne with Turkish support. Within two months Hunyadi forced Dracula to surrender the throne and flee to his cousin, the Prince of Moldavia, while Hunyadi once again placed Vladislav II on the Wallachian throne.
Dracula remained in exile in Moldavia for three years, until Prince Bogdan of Moldavia was assasinated in 1451. The resulting turmoil in Muldavia forced Dracula to flee to Transylvania and seek the protection of his family enemy, Hunyadi. The timing was propitious; Hunyadi's puppet on the Wallachian throne, Vladislov II, had instituted a pro-Turkish policy and Hunyadi needed a more reliable man in Wallachia. Consequently, Hunyadi accepted the allegiance of his old enemy's son and put him forward as the Hungarian candidate for the throne of Wallachia. Dracula became Hunyadi's vassal and received his father's old Transylvanian duchies of Faragas and Almas. Dracula remained in Transylvania, under Hunyadi's protection, until 1456 waiting for an opportunity to retake Wallachia from his rival.
In 1453 the Christian world was shocked by the final fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans. The East Roman Empire which had existed since the time of Constantine the Great and which for a thousand years had shielded the rest of Christendom from Islam was no more. Hunyadi immediately began planning another campaign against the Turks. In 1456 Hunyadi invaded Turkish Serbia while Dracula simultaniously invaded Wallachia. In the Battle of Belgrade Hunyadi was killed and his army defeated. Meanwhile, Dracula succeeded in killing Vladislav II and taking the Wallachian throne, but Hunyadi's defeat made his long term tenure questionable. For a time at least, Dracula was forced to attempt to placate the Turks while he solidified his own position.
Dracula's main reign stretched from 1456 to 1462. His capital was the city of Tirgoviste while his castle was raised some distance away in the mountains near the Arges River. Most of the atrocities associated with Dracula's name took place in these years. It was also during this time that he launched his own campaign against the Turks. His campaign was relatively successful at first. His skill as a warrior and his well-known cruelty made him a much feared enemy. However, he received little support from his titular overlord, Matthius Corvinus, King of Hungary (the son of John Hunyadi) and Wallachia's resources were too limited to achieve any lasting success against the conqueror of Constantinople.
The Turks finally suceeded in forcing Dracula to flee to Transylvania in 1462. Reportedly, his first wife committed suicide by leaping from the towers of Dracula's castle into the waters of the Arges River rather than surrender to the Turks. Dracula escaped across the mountains into Transylvania and appealed to Matthius Corvinus for aid. Instead, the King had Dracula arrested and imprisoned in a royal tower near Buda. Dracula remained a prisoner for twelve years.
Apparently his imprisonment was none too onerous. He was able to gradually win his way back into the graces of Hungary's monarch; so much so that he was able to meet and marry a member of the royal family (some of the sources claim Dracula's second wife was actually the sister of Matthius Corvinus). The openly pro-Turkish policy of Dracula's brother, Radu the Handsome, who was prince of Wallachia during most of Dracula's captivity probably was a factor in Dracula's rehabilitation. During his captivity Dracula also renounced the Orthodox faith and adopted Catholicism. It is interesting to note that the Russian narrative, normally very favorable to Dracula, indicates that even in captivity he could not give up his favorite past-time; he often captured birds and mice which he proceeded to torture and mutilate � some were beheaded or tarred-and-feathered and released, most were impaled on tiny spears.
The exact length of Dracula's period of captivity is open to some debate. The Russian pamphlets indicate that he was a prisoner from 1462 until 1474. However, during that period Dracula managed to marry a member of the Hungarian royal family and have two sons who were about ten years old when he reconquered Wallachia in 1476. McNally and Florescu place Dracula's actual period of confinement at about four years from 1462 to 1466. It is unlikely that a prisoner would be allowed to marry into the royal family. Diplomatic correspondence from Buda during the period in question also seems to support the claim that Dracula's actual period of confinement was relatively short.
Apparently, in years between his release in 1474 when he began preparations for the reconquest of Wallachia Dracula resided with his new wife in a house in the Hungarian capital. One anecdote from that period tells how a Hungarian captain followed a thief into Dracula's house. When Dracula discovered the intruders he killed the Hungarian officer rather than the thief. When questioned about his actions by the king Dracula answered that a gentleman does not enter the presence of a great ruler without an introduction � had the captain followed proper protocol he would not have incurred the wrath of the prince.
In 1476 Dracula was again ready to make another bid for power. Dracula and Prince Stephen Bathory of Transylvania invaded Wallachia with a mixed force of Transylvanians, a few dissatisfied Wallachian boyars and a contingent of Moldavians sent by Dracula's cousin, Prince Stephen the Great of Moldavia. Dracula's brother, Radu the Handsome, had died a coulpe of years earlier and had been replaced on the Wallachian throne by another Turkish candidate, Basarab the Old, a member of the Danesti clan. At the approach of Dracula's army Basarab and his coherents fled, some to the protection of the Turks, others to the shelter of the mountains. After placing Dracula on the throne Stephen Bathory and the bulk of Dracula's forces returned to Transylvania, leaving Dracula's tactical position very weak. Dracula had little time to gather support before a large Turkish army entered Wallachia determined to return Basarab to the throne. Dracula's cruelties over the years had alienated the boyars who felt they had a better chance of surviving under Prince Basarab. Apparently, even the peasants, tired of the depredations of the Impaler, abandoned him to his fate. Dracula was forced to march to meet the Turks with the small forces at his diposal, somewhat less than four thousand men.
Dracula was killed in battle against the Turks near the small town of Bucharest in December of 1476. Some reports indicated that he was assasinated by disloyal Wallachian boyars just as he was about to sweep the Turks from the field. Other accounts have Dracula falling in defeat, surrounded by the bodies of his loyal Moldavian bodyguard (the troops loaned by Prince Stephen of Moldavia remained with Dracula after Stephen Bathory returned to Transylvania). Still other reports claim that Dracula, at the moment of victory, was accidentally struck down by one of his own men. Dracula's body was decapitated by the Turks and his head sent to Constantnople where the sultan had it displayed on a stake as proof that the Impaler was dead. He was reportedly buried at Snagov, an island monastery located near Bucharest.
== IV. Atrocities ==
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ore than anything else the historical Dracula is known for his inhuman cruelty. Impalement was Dracula's preferred method of torture and execution. Impalement was and is one of the most gruesome ways of dying imaginable. Dracula usually had a horse attached to each of the victim's legs an a sharpened stake was gradually forced into the body. The end of the stake was usually oiled and care was taken that the stake not be too sharp; else the victim might die too rapidly from shock. Normally the stake was inserted into the body through the buttocks and was often forced through the body until it emerged from the mouth. However, there were many instances where victims were impaled through other bodily orifices or through the abdomen or chest. Infants were sometimes impaled on the stake forced through their mother's chests. The records indicate that victims were sometimes impaled so that they hung upside down on the stake.
Death by impalement was slow and painful. Victims sometimes endured for hours or days. Dracula often had the stakes arranged in various geometric patterns. The most common pattern was a ring of concentric circles in the outskirts of a city that was his target. The height of the spear indicated the rank of the victim. The decaying corpses were often left up for months. It was once reported that an invading Turkish army turned back in fright when it encountered thousands of rotting corpses impaled on the banks of the Danube. In 1461 Mohammed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, a man not noted for his squeamishness, returned to Constantinople after being sickened by the sight of twenty thousand impaled corpses outside of Dracula's capital of Tirgoviste. The warrior sultan turned command of the campaign against Dracula over to subordinates and returned to Constantinople.
Thousands were often impaled at a single time. Ten thousand were impaled in the Transylvanian city of Sibiu (where Dracula had once lived) in 1460. In 1459, on St. Bartholomew's Day, Dracula had thirty thousand of the merchants and boyars of the Transylvanian city of Brasov impaled. One of the most famous woodcuts of the period shows Dracula feasting amongst a forest of stakes and their grisly burdens outside Brasov while a nearby executioner cuts apart other victims.
Impalement was Dracula's favorite but by no means hjis only method of torture. The list of tortues employed by this cruel prince reads like an inventory of Hell's tools: nails in heads, cutting off of limbs, blinding, strangulation, burning, cutting off of noses and ears, mutilation of sexual organs (especially in the case of women), scalping, skinning, exposure to the elements or to wild animals and boiling alive.
No one was immune to Dracula's attentions. His victims included women and children, peasants and great lords, ambassadors from foreign powers and merchants. However, the vast majority of his victims came from the merchants and boyars of Transylvania and his own Wallachia. Many have attempted to justify Dracula's actions on the basis of nascent nationalism and political necessity. Many of the merchants in Transylvania and Wallachia were Saxons who were seen as parasites, preying upon Romanian natives of Wallachia, while the boyars had proven their disloyalty time and time again. Dracula's own father and older brother were murdered by unfaithful boyars. However, many of Dracula's victims were Wallachians and few deny that he derived a perverted pleasure from his actions.
Dracula began his reign of terror almost as soon as he came to power. His first significant act of cruelty may have been motivated by a desire of revenge as well as a need to solidify his power. Early in his main reign he gave a feast for his boyars and their families to celebrate Easter. Dracula was well aware that many of these same nobles were part of the conspiracy that led to his father's assasination and the burying alive of his elder brother, Mircea. Many had also played a role in the overthrow of numerous Wallachian princes. During the feast Dracula asked his noble guests how many princes had ruled during their life times. All of the nobles present had out lived several princes. One answered that at least thirty princes had held the throne during his life. None had seen less than seven reigns. Dracula immediately had all the assembled nobles arrested. The older boyars and their families were impaled on the spot. The younger and healthier nobles and their families were marched north from Tirgoviste to the ruins of a castle in the mountains above the Arges River. Dracula was determined to rebuild this ancient fortress as his own stronghold and refuge. The enslaved boyars and their families were forced to labor for months rebuilding the old castle with materials from another nearby ruin. According to the reports they labored until the clothes fell off their bodies and then were forced to continue working naked. Very few of the old gentry survived the ordeal of building Castle Dracula.
Throughout his reign Dracula systematically eradicated the old boyar class of Wallachia. The old boyars had repeatedly undermined the power of the prince during previous reigns and had been responsible for the violent overthrow of several princes. Apparently Dracula was determined that his own power be on a modern and thoroughly secure footing. In the place of the executed boyars Dracula promoted new men from among the free peasantry and middle class; men who would be loyal only to their prince. Many of Dracula's acts of cruelty can be interpreted as efforts to strengthen and modernize the central government at the expense of the feudal powers of nobility and great towns.
Dracula was also constantly on guard against the adherents of the Danesti clan. Some of his raids into Transylvania may have been efforts to capture would-be princes of the Danesti. Several members of the Danesti clan died at Dracula's hands. Vladislav II was murdered soon after Dracula came to power in 1456. Another Danesti prince was captured during one of Dracula's forays into Transylvania. Thousands of citizens of the town that had sheltered his rival were impaled by Dracula. The captured Danesti prince was forced to read his own funeral oration while kneeling before an open grave before his execution.
Dracula's atrocities against the people of Wallachia were usually attempts to enforce his own moral code upon his county. He appears to have been particularly concerned with female chastity. Maidens who lost their virginity, adulterous wives and unchaste widows were all targets of Dracula's cruelty. Such women often had their sexual organs cut out or their breasts cut off. They were also often impaled through the vagina on red-hot stakes that were forced through the body until they emerged from the mouth. One report tells of the execution of an unfaithful wife. Dracula had the woman's breasts cut off, then she was skinned and impaled in a square in Tirgoviste with her skin lying on a nearby table. Dracula also insisted that his people be honest and hard working. Merchants who cheated their customers were likely to find themselves mounted on a stake beside common thieves.
== V. Anecdotal Evidence ==
M
uch of the information we have about Vlad III comes from pamphlets published in Germany and Russia after his death. The German pamphlets appeared shortly after Dracula's death and, at least initially, may have been politically inspired. At that time Matthias Corvinus of Hungary was seeking to bolster his own reputation in the Holy Roman Empire and may have intended the early pamphlets as justification of his less than vigorous support of his vassal. The pamphlets were also a form of mass entertainment in a society where the printing press was just coming into widespread use. Much like the subject matter of the supermarket tabloids of today, the cruel life of the Wallachian tyrant was easily sensationalized. The pamphlets were reprinted numerous times over the thirty or so years following Dracula's death � strong proof of their popularity.
The German pamphlets painted Dracula as an inhuman monster who terrorized the land and butchered innocents with sadistic glee. The Russian pamphlets took a somewhat different view. The princes of Moscow were at the time just beginning to build the basis of what would become the autocracy of the czars. They were also having considerable trouble with disloyal, often troublesome boyars. In Russia, Dracula was presented as a cruel but just prince whose actions were directed toward the greater good of his people. Despite the differences in interpretation the pamphlets, regardless of their land of origin, agree remarkably well as to specifics. The level of agreement between that various pamphlets has led most historians to conclude that at least the broad outlines of the events covered actually occurred.
Romanian verbal tradition provides another important source for the life of Vlad Dracula. Legends and tales concerning the Impaler have remained a part of folklore among the Romanian peasantry. These tales have been passed down from generation to generation for five hundred years. Through constant retelling they have become somewhat garbled and confused and they are gradually being forgotten by the younger generations. However, they still provide valuable information about Dracula and his relationship with his people. Many of the tales contained in the pamphlets are also found in the verbal tradition, though with a somewhat different emphasis. Among the Romanian peasantry Dracula is remembered as a just prince who defended his people from foreigners, whether those foreigners be Turkish invaders or German merchants. He is also remembered as somewhat of a champion of the common man against the oppression of the boyars. Dracula's fierce insistence on honesty is a central part of the verbal tradition. Many of the anecdotes contained in the pamphlets and in the verbal tradition demonstrate the prince's efforts to eliminate crime and dishonesty from his domain. However, despite the more positive interpretation, the Romanian verbal tradition also remembers Dracula as an exceptionally cruel and often capricious ruler.
There are several events that are common to all the pamphlets, regardless of their nation of origin. Many of these events are also found in the Romanian verbal tradition. Specific details may vary among the different versions of these anecdotes, but the general coarse of events usually agrees to a remarkable extent. For example, in some versions the foreign ambassadors received by Dracula at Tirgoviste are Florentine, in others they are Turkish. The nature of their offense against the Prince also varies from version to version. However, all versions agree that Dracula, in response to some real or imagined insult, had their hats nailed to their heads. Some of the sources view Dracula's actions as justified, others view his acts as crimes of wanton and senseless cruelty. There are about nine anecdotes that are almost universal in the Dracula literature:
(1) The Golden Cup
Dracula was known throughout his land for his fierce insistence on honesty and order. Thieves seldom dared practice their trade within Dracula's domain � they knew that the stake awaited any who were caught. Dracula was so confident in the effectiveness of his law that he placed a golden cup on display in the central square of Tirgoviste. The cup was never stolen and rermained entirely unmolested throughout Dracula's reign.
(2) The Foreign Merchant
A merchant from a foreign land once visited Dracula's capital of Tirgoviste. Aware of the reputation of Dracula's land for honesty, he left a treasure-laden cart unguarded in the street over night. Returning to his wagaon in the morning, the merchant was shocked to find 160 golden ducats missing. When the merchant complained of his loss to the prince, Dracula assured him that his money would be returned and invited him to remain in the palace that night. Dracula then issued a proclamation to the city � find the thief and return the money or the city will be destroyed. During the night he ordered that 160 ducats plus one extra be taken from his own treasury and placed in the merchant's cart. On returning to his cart in the morning and counting his money the merchant discovered the extra ducat. The merchant returned to Dracula and reported that his money had indeed been returned plus an extra ducat. Meanwhile the thief had been captured and turned over to the prince's guards along with the stolen money. Dracula ordered the thief impaled and informed the merchant that if he had not reported the extra ducat he would have been impaled alongside the thief.
(3) The Two Monks
There are several versions of this anecdote. In some the two monks were from a Catholic monastery in Wallachia or wandering Catholic monks from a foreign land. In either case, the Catholic monks would be viewed as representatives of a foreign power by Dracula. In other versions of the story the monks were from a Romanian Orthodox establishment (the native church of Wallachia). Dracula's motivation also varies considerably amomng the different versions of the story.
All versions of the story agree that two monks visited Dracula in his palace at Tirgoviste. Curious to see the reaction of the churchman, Dracula showed them rows of impaled corpes in the courtyard. When asked their opinions of his actions by the prince, one of the monks responded, "You are appointed by God to punish evil-doers." The other monk had the moral courage to condemn the cruel prince. In the version of the story most common in the German pamphlets, Dracula rewarded the sycophantic monk and impaled the honest monk. In the version found in Russian pamphlets and in Romanian verbal tradition Dracula rewarded the honest monk for his integrity and courage and impaled the sycophant for his dishonesty.
(4) The Polish Nobleman
Benedict de Boithor, a Polish nobleman in the service of the King of Hungary, visited Dracula at Tirgoviste in September of 1458. At dinner one evening Dracula ordered a golden spear brought and set up directly in front of the royal envoy. Dracula then asked the envoy why he thought this spear had been set up. Benedict replied that he imagined that some boyar had offended the prince and that Dracula intended to honor him. Dracula then responded that he had, in fact, had the spear set up in the honor of his noble, Polish guest. The Pole then responded that had he done anything to deserve death that Dracula should do as he thought best. He further asserted that in that case Dracula would not be responsible for his own death, rather he would be responsible for his own death for incurring the displeasure of the prince. Drcaula was greatly pleased by this answer and showered the man with gifts while declaring that had he answered in any other manner he would have been immediately impaled.
(5) The Foreign Ambassadors
There are at least two versions of this story in the literature. As with the story of the two monks, one version is common in the German pamphlets and views Dracula's actions unfavorably while the other version is common in eastern Europe and sees Dracula's actions in a much more favorable light. In both versions ambassadors of a foreign power visit Dracula's court at Tirgoviste. When granted an audience with the prince the envoys refused to remove their hats as was the custom when in the presence of the prince in Wallachia. Angered at this sign of disrespect Dracula had the ambassadors' hats nailed to their heads so that they might never remove them.
In the German version of the story the envoys are Florentine and refused to remove their hats to demonstrate their superiority. When Dracula asked the ambassadors why they wouldn't remove their hats they responded thet such was not their custom and that they wouldn't remove their hats, even for the Holy Roman Emporer. Dracula immediately had their hats nailed to their heads so that they might never come off and had the ambassadors ejected from his court. In Germany and in the West, where the concept of diplomatic immunity was at least given lip service, this was held to be an act of barbarity against the representatives of a freindly power.
In the version of the story common in the east, the envoys are Turkish. When ushered into the presence of the prince, the Turks refused to remove their Phrygian caps. When questioned they answered that it was not the custom of their fathers to remove their hats. Dracula then ordered their hats nailed to their heads with three nails so that they might never have to break such an excellent tradition. The envoys were sent back to the sultan. In the east this was held to be a courageous act of defiance in the face of the Ottoman sultan. It should also be noted that the nailing of hats to heads of those who displeased a monarch was not an unknown act in eastern Europe. Apparently this method was occasionally used by the princes of Moscow when faced by unpleasant envoys.
(6) Dracula's Mistress
Dracula once had a mistress who lived in a house in the back streets of Tirgoviste. This woman apparently loved the prince to distraction and was always anxious to please him. Dracula was often moody and depressed and the woman made every effort to lighten her lover's burdens. Once, when Dracula was particularly depressed, the woman dared tell him a lie in an effort to cheer him up; she told him that she was with child. Dracula warned the woman not to joke about such matters but she insisted on the truth of her claim despite her knowledge of the prince's feelings about dishonesty. Dracula had the woman examined by the bath matrons to determine the veracity of her claim. When informed that the woman was lying Dracula drew his knife and cut her open from the groin to her breasts while proclaiming his desire for the world to see where he had been. Dracula then left the woman to die in agony.
(7) The Lazy Woman
Dracula once noticed a man working in the fields while wearing a too short caftan. The prince stopped and asked the man whether or not he had a wife. When the man answered in the affirmative Dracula had the woman brought before him and asked her how she spent her days. The poor, frightened woman stated that she spent her days washing, baking and sewing. The prince pointed out her husband's short caftan as evidence of her laziness and dishonesty and ordered her impaled despite her husband's protestations that he was well satisfied with his wife. Dracula then ordered another woman to marry the peasant but admonished her to work hard or she would suffer her predecessor's fate.
(8) The Nobleman with the Keen Sense of Smell
On St. Bartholomew's Day in 1459 Dracula caused thirty thousand of the merchants and nobles of the Transylvanian city of Brasov to be impaled. In order that he might better enjoy the results of his orders, the prince commanded that his table be set up and that his boyars join him for a feast amongst the forest of impaled corpses. While dining, Dracula noticed that one of his boyars was holding his nose in an effort to alleviate the terrible smell of clotting blood and emptied bowels. Dracula then ordered the sensitive nobleman impaled on a stake higher than all the rest so that he might be above the stench.
In another version of this story the sensitive nobleman is an envoy of the Transylvanian cities of Brasov and Sibiu sent to appeal to the cruel Wallachian to spare those cities. While hearing the nobleman's appeal Dracula walked amongst the stakes and their grisly burdens. Some of the victims still lived. Nearly overcome by the smell of drying blood and human wastes the nobleman asked the prince why he walked amidst the awful stench. Dracula then asked the envoy if he found the stench oppressive. The envoy, seeing an opportunity to ingratiate himself with Dracula, responded that his only concern was for the health and welfare of the prince. Dracula, angered at the nobleman's dishonesty ordered him impaled on the spot on a very high stake so that he might be above the offending odors.
(9) The Burning of the Sick and Poor
Dracula was very concerned that all his subjects work and contribute to the common welfare. He once noticed that the poor, vagrants, beggars and cripples had become very numerous in his land. Consequently, he issued an invitation to all the poor and sick in Wallachia to come to Tirgoviste for a great feast, claiming that no one should go hungry in his land. As the poor and crippled arrived in the city they were ushered into a great hall where a fabulous feast was prepared fore them. The prince's guests ate and drank late into the night, when Dracula himself made an appearance. "What else do you desire? Do you want to be without cares, lacking nothing in this world?", asked the prince. When they responded positively Dracula ordered the hall boarded up and set on fire. None escaped the flames. Dracula explained his action to the boyars by claiming that he did this, "in order that they represent no further burden to other men so that no one will be poor in my realm."
== VI. Dracula and the Vampire Myth ==
I
t is unclear why Bram Stoker chose this fifteenth century Romanian prince as the model for his fictional vampire. Stoker was friends with a Hungarian professor from Buda-Pest and many have suggested that Dracula's name might have been mentioned by this friend. Regardless of how the name came to Stoker's attention the cruel history of the Impaler would have readily loaned itself to Stoker's purposes. The events of Dracula's life were played out in a region of the world that was still basically medieval even in Stoker's time. The Balkans had only recently shaken off the Turkish yoke when Stoker started working on his novel and the superstitions of the Dark Ages were still prevelent. Transylvania had long been a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but it too had endured a long period of Turkish domination and its culture was still largely medieval.
The legend of the vampire was and still is deeply rooted in that region. There have always been vampire-like creatures in the mythologies of many cultures. However, the vampire, as he became known in Europe and hence America, largely originated in the Slavic and Greek lands of eastern Europe. A veritable epidemic of vampirism swept through eastern Europe beginning in the late seventeenth century and continuing through the eighteenth century. The number of reported cases rose dramatically in Hungary and the Balkans. From the Balkans the plague spread westward into Germany, Italy, France, England and Spain. Travellers returning from the Balkans brought with them tales of the undead, igniting an interest in the vampire that has continued to this day. Philosophers in the West began to study the phenomenon. It was during this period that Dom Augustin Calmet wrote his famous treatise on vampirism in Hungary. It was also during this period that authors and playwrights first began to explore the vampire myth. Stoker's novel was merely the culminating work of a long series of works that were inspired by the reports coming from the Balkans and Hungary.
Given the history of the vampire myth in Europe it is perhaps natural that Stoker should place his great vampire in the heart of the region that gave birth to the myth. Once Stoker had determined on a locality Vlad Dracula would stand out as one of the most notorious rulers of the selected region. He was obscure enough that few would recognize the name and those who did would know him for his acts of brutal cruelty; Dracula was a natural candidate for vampirism. Why Stoker chose to relocate his vampire from Wallachia to the north in Transylvania remains a mystery.
The vampire myth is still wide-spread in eastern Europe. Similarly the name of Dracula is still remembered in the Romanian oral tradition, but that is the end of any connection between Dracula and the vampire myth in folklore. Outside of Stoker's novel the name of Dracula was never linked with the myth of the vampire. Despite his inhuman cruelty, in Romania Dracula is remembered as a national hero who resisted the Turkish conquerors and asserted Romanian national sovereignty against the powerful Hungarian kingdom.
April 30, 1992
Ray Porter
(a.k.a. "The Dragon")
Copyright � 1992, Ray Porter
== A. Editor's Notes ==
� This document, "The Historical Dracula", was originally authored by Ray Porter and dated April 30, 1992. According to Mr. Porter, it first appeared as a contribution to the LISTSERV FAQ Vampyres List on the public IBM VM Mainframe host at Georgetown University � "vampyre-l@guvm".
� I first encountered this essay in the spring of 1995 on the "Vampyres Only" homepage. Unfortunately I'd lost track of that URL and was unable to subsequently relocate it, a situation aggrivated by the fact that there were still few Web search engines available then. But fortunately, I had a hardcopy printout, so in March of 1997 I typed out a new copy of the document in HTML format and "republished" it on my new Eskimo North web-site. It is (basically) the document listed here; what is now before you is a slightly re-edited version. The version originally republished included a dozen "(sic)" comments which were included to indicate what I knew were errors in the original. Rather than change, or "correct", minor typos I elected at that time to reproduce the paper verbatum, since it technically was not my right to edit, modify or "improve" upon its content without concent of the original author. Any additional errors which then remained were likely introduced by myself during copy.
The re-edited version here mostly corrects minor spelling errors, both my own as well as original. In addition, two content edits and a few contextual links have been added and are clearly marked. However, the prior version can still be found, reproduced (for the most part, by verbatum) on numerous other Web-sites.
� Not long after republishing my version of Mr. Porter's essay, I managed to locate and contact him where he works at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He gave me his official approval to keep his document on my site. yeah! =)
As well, he later provided me with an updated version in Microsoft WORD .DOC format, to which a link is provided here for those who wish for an official source to reference, gratiously provided to the public by its author. However, it unfortunately does not include original references, footnotes, or bibliography.
In our correspondences, Ray explained that the original version as posted on the vampyres@guvm BitNet List was actually authored directly on the Mainframe host through a 3270 dumb-terminal using a simple text editor, without the benefit of a spell-checker and only limited re-editing capabilities. The bibliography was a part of that original submission; and he says, it was still attached to the document the last time he had access to the FAQ files of that list. In addition, he relates how he didn't actually have a copy of it himself until he sometime later managed to relocate a version on the `Net (possibly, like me, on the "Vampyrs Only" Web-site) and downloaded it � which by that time had undergone some unauthorized editing and reformatting, and had lost its bibliography. The DOC version he sent me (and is presented here) was based on that version and represents his attempt to restore it to its original format.
I do have some information somewhere in my older backups about where Ray did his original research and what kinds of sources he was able to utilize, so when I recover those I shall post what info I do have. In the meantime, if anyone who used to recieve or participate in this list has a copy of these original files, I would most certainly like to hear from you!...Thanks.
Says Ray, "I never dreamed that this little thing would have such a long Internet life." Well, you can beleive it, Ray. :)
If you desire more information about this document, you may reach Ray directly by sending email to him at mailto:ray_porter@unc.edu or by visiting his Web-site at http://www.unc.edu/~dragon/.
== B. Related Links and Resources ==
� For additional historical information online about Vlad III (Tepes, the "Impaler") Dracula, XV c. Prince of Wallachia - defender of Christendom, the man and his times, and some of the historical origins of the European vampire phenomina in myth, legend, and folklore, these links listed here below are presented for your descrimination:
1. Another *very* nice site is Dracula vs Vlad Tepes - Myth and History, by three(3) Romanian students, in both Romanian and English. This one is not only factual and well thought out, but it is candy for the eyes as well as food for the brain. The English is not perfect, but who cares? It's just plain fun!!! Recommended!
2. "Vlad the Impaler: Dracula's Real-life Persona", by Joseph Geringer, a prolific author on the Crime Library web-site, is definately one of the better articles written for the layman anywhere online! It comes in eight(8) "chapters": Man More Than Myth; Where East Meets West; Among the Ottomans; Viovode; The Impaler; Staggering the Turks; A Brother's Treason; Gotterdamerung; and an Epilog as well as bibliography. Masterfully pulls together many of the most common resources. Also recommended!
3. Elizabeth Miller, a professor of English and a respected authority on all things "Dracula", has a series of essays worth looking at, including one focusing on the Order of the Dragon.
4. "VLAD TEPES - The Historical Dracula" is a good example of how to compile various works together into a concise, seemless form which is in many ways arguably better than the original sources. The editor and site author, Don Linke, besides presenting the material in a visually appealing and effective manner, also does a good job of giving proper citations of his sources.
5. Castle of Spirits has an original article, "Vlad Dracula, The Impaler" which is pretty good and worth reading. Includes the mystery of his grave.
6. Dagobert's Revenge has another nice English-language article about the history of Vlad and his family history called "Profiles in Royalty: Vlad Dracula" by Nick de Vere (with Professor Raymond McNally). Though "western", it is nicely balanced.
7. "Vlad Dracula: An intriguing figure in the fifteenth century", A biography of Vlad the Impaler by Benjamin Leblanc. Here it is published on an otherwise uninteresting and forgettable vampire site. I will link to a better source when I locate one...
8. In some ways a nicer version of this document by Benjamin Leblanc, in French this time, is "Vlad Dracula, Waida Princeps et Waiuoda Walachiae Transalpinae, 1431-1476" on "De Cadaveris Ambulatoriis - Dossier sur Vlad Dracula". Not only is it more esthetically pleasing, but I like it for its much more thorough (mais oui, en fran�ais!) bibliography.
9. Andrew Modeen's CastleVania Anthology pages has a section entitled "In Search of Dracula" (neither the book, nor TV show) which not only includes some good historical details, but an example of a Romanian peasant ballad as well!
10. On the Romanian Travel site is "Dracula, between Legend and Reality", an appendix to a broader survey of Romanian history.
11. Though the Nord'Est page "Dracula - history and fiction" is part of a site designed to attract customers for tours, it does offer up some noteworthy points of historical interest.
12. If you are able to get through the outward retoric, there is useful content to be taken from the article "Dracula was a Christian" on "666 - The Antichrist's Almanac, Online Edition". (NOTE: The Editor is not endorsing this site in general, and does not agree with the conclusions of its thesis. While it does contain facts which are true in isolation, it is here only as an alternate view point, and source for only the most descriminating reader.)
13. Another source of information, once again coming from a rather repugnent source(!), is "CHAPTER 36 : THE MELTING POT - ROMANIA, BULGARIA, ALBANIA AND GREECE - Part i, Romania", from a book by Arthur Kemp entitled "March of the Titans - A History of the White Race". WARNING: This material comes from a site hosted by Don Black and Stormfront, a White Pride/White Nationalist organization. By NO means do I believe in or advocate racism or white-supremecy! Please do not send me hate mail. I am loath to include this source here except for that some of the historical content included therein may be of some use to the intelligent, decerning reader. If someone could point me to a better source for comparable information, I will gladly replace this with it. In the meantime,
...use at your own risk!
14. Adrian Axinte's "DRACULA: between myth and reality" examines the problem of our intertwined perceptions of fact and fiction.
15. The World of Royalty has a site entitled "The Real Prince Dracula". It doesn't cover anything that hasn't already been on other sites, but it does host a plethora of links useful for further reading.
16. "'This Man Belongs to Me' The Life and Deaths of Vlad the Impaler", by David Carroll, an original essay on the origins of our modern myth. Includes bibliography.
17. The Vlad Dracula Timeline - It's yet another "vampyr" site, but it is brief and does contain some useful information.
18. "Who Was The Real Dracula? A History Of Vlad The Impaler", by Jim O'Rear, is on yet another horror site, but it's a decent article nonetheless.
19. "Dracula Joins Star Trek: Vampire Folklore in the Space Age", by Jimmy Gonzalez, is a short examination of myth and legend, and how it has come to mean what it does in our modern age, ...while the "Vampire Origins" section on Monstrous.Com examines the causes.
20. The ParaScope.Com has a good section on the origins of the Vampire myth � it is off-line now for redesign, but is supposed to return in early 2002...
21. This student's online paper, "Vlad Dracula, the prince who became ruler... eventually" (if I may paraphrase;) is short and focuses mostly on legends and anacdotes about his eleged cruelty, though it does mention a few details not usually found in most other online treatises. She cites and lists her sources. (a student site, so don't expect it to survive long.)
22. "Vlad the Impaler", an article on Unicorn Garden's "Illustrated Guide to Vampires" is short and comparatively tame. Could be suggested reading as a brief introduction for those with only a casual interest, and for young children � no worse than Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm.
23. North Park University has a site entitled "The Story of Vlad III Tepes, the REAL Dracula", by Mircea Arsenie. It is short, but includes citations, footnotes, and bibliography.
24. Regarding Romanian tourism as a source of info:
 Here's an historical page about Prince Vlad and the so-called Dracula's Castle from the Romanian Tourist Board, with links to Romanian castles, monestaries, and other points of interest. (English)
 Of contraversy with some Romanian citizens, the sites of Draculea, Dracula Land, and DracuLand are all obviously intended to draw on the ignorance of the ordinary western tourist and moronic neo-cult-gothic wannabies (hey!, don't blame them, it's (y)our own stupid fault!);P Nevertheless, they do also offer useful info for the serious student looking to take their 1st trip into the region.
 "In Quest of the Vampire Count" - a site describing a 4-day tour, and representative of what is both right and wrong with modern tourism, is disappointing in its numerous post-Stokerian references, but does provide some nice pictures of many wonderful historical sites in Romania.
 Warning�Editorial!: Not one to necessarily promote the commercial exploitation of valued historical sites (atleast, not carelessly so; and then when so, only in the hope that tourism should provide the money necessary for the conservation and preservation of the same), and having not yet the personal experience of my own, I cannot recommend, or say with authority, that any particular tours company or agency is better or worse than any other if you do decide to go and see Romania for yourself. However, I did recieve (14-12-2001) an unsolicited testimonial from a one Shawn Mackey, about her trip to Romania, praising the knowledge and sensitivity to subject matter by "Otto" of Satu Mare, her tour guide and owner of Transylvania Inc. (aka Undiscovered Lands), if the authenticity of content in her correspondence is to be believed. I cannot make a judgement on that. I am not personally recommending them, per se � it is merely presented here for your information. I also provide here a link to her original correspondence for your descriminating inspection.
...My own personal-favourite travel agency, Rick Steves' Europe Through The Backdoor Tours, does not yet provide a "good" package to Romania � much as they uncharacteristically do not provide a good travel package to Finland(!), which is quite a-typical for them. "Eastern" Europe is a relatively recent addition for them, and I expect them to offer some very good "backdoor" trips in the near future. In this case, *I* can and would (will,do) recommend *them*! (Ed., -MLW)
25. The Web-site for the Romanian Studies Program at Eastern Nazarene College not only includes a short article about Vlad Dracula, but also has information about the history and culture of the country.
26. "The History of Dracula" on Arthur's Web, though brief, hits on the major points of modern interest and mentions something of the origins in regional folklore. (Perhaps unintentional, but nonetheless symbolic, the logo for his "Dracula's Homepage" is of two crossed septors, pointing in diverging directions to content divided into topics of History and Legend. ...Fruedian perhaps?)
27. Look to Romanian native Andrei F. Tamas' page Transylvania: The Legend, featuring J. Gordon Melton's book, "Vampires: A Chronology". Andrei is a very nice fellow. :)
28. The History of the Family Dracul is a set of semi-fictional historical novels, but the Web-site has some good pics.
29. Here is a site by "Marrah": The Vlad Dracula Gallery. In large part, a republication of my own efforts, though the citation references a source URL I never owned or published (obviously, the work of a 3rd-party), the effort is none-the-less appreciated. However, I picked this one out of the several now in circulation because Marrah, to a greater extent than is usual, atleast makes the attempt to enhance the subject with some useful additions (mostly in the form of maps, an opposing argument for Vlad's correct reges-suffixum nomen, and inclusion of info from other additional sources), as well as present the document in a unique layout. Alternately, you can find a more recent version of her treatment, though also more traditional in layout, at her SacroSanctum web-site, entitled "The Life of Vlad IV Dracula". Like the previous version of her treatment, she attempts to clarify Vlad Tepes' title as Wallachian Regent in a section called "The Name Game", but supports her argument with the addition of a chronological list of both branches of the ruling Basarab-family princes. (Note: The argument over whether the title-designate of "III" or "IV" is more correct may depend upon one's own opinion as to whether or not Vlad's first, brief "reign" in 1448, backed by the Turks, can be considered valid. I believe it is. -MLW)
30. A decent short list of commonly cited Internet "historical" Dracula links.
31. The short list of most commonly cited modern sources on the historical Dracula amongst articles on the Internet today.
32. If you wish to participate in active discussions relating to Vlad III Tepes, the historical Dracula, and topics of medieval history in general, I recommend monitoring the SOC.HISTORY.MEDIEVAL Usenet "News_Group" via DejaNews (now Google Groups) or your favourite NNTP-client.
o I apologize for the lack of a good bibliographical listing in this section. I plan to add one in the future, as well as continue to add more online resource links about the *true* historical Dracula. If you know of links and resources which would add value to this page, or if any of the existing links turn up "broken", please let me know. Thanks! -MLW...
== C. Final Notes ==
� My primary purpose for republishing this essay, and listing the accompanying links, is to express my personal interest in the topical subject-matter of the true and historical figure that was Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, and the geo-politics of his times, as well as my interest in the broader, unrelated area of the origins of folklore and folktales, and of medieval life and history in general. Just as important is my desire to provide a means for this essay to be made readily and freely available to the public, while simultaniously ensuring the rightful acknowledgement that its author is due. It is all too common these days on the Internet that information is stolen, plagiarized, used out of context, and/or mis-represented � whether knowingly or unknowingly. Too often this abuse goes beyond the boundaries and simple cause of free speech and fair use. Enough said!
My interest in Bram Stoker and his famous novel is only slight at best, and only so far as what little truth it may or may not contain. Aside from some of my tastes in music, I have absolutely *NO* interest in the modern underground "Gothic" cult movement, influences of the works by author Anne Rice, or any other of the post-Stokerian derivatives which have embedded themselves in our(my) modern "western" culture. I myself prefer the persuit of fact, rather than fiction. Worlds of distorted, quasi-original fantasy hold little interest for me when compared to the sagas of our recorded history. I don't believe in vampires, witchcraft, or a devil the equal of God. But many people(s) through history have, and *that* is what interests me!
So if you are interested in subjects "Gothic", or modern practices of the occult and esoteric rituals, I am the wrong person to ask! Please don't send me email with questions about such topics � I recommend you visit sources of alternative information like Art Bell's Web-site instead. Thankyou in advance for your consideration...
...However, if you have a genuine interest in ancient and medieval history, that would be a different matter altogether!
