Vlad the Impaler

Name

The name Dracula, which is now primarily known as the name of a vampire, was for centuries known as the sobriquet of Vlad III. Diplomatic reports and popular stories referred to him as Dracula, Dracuglia, or Drakula already in the 15th century. He himself signed his two letters as "Dragulya" or "Drakulya" in the late 1470s. His name had its origin in the sobriquet of his father, Vlad Dracul ("Vlad the Dragon" in medieval Romanian), who received it after he became a member of the Order of the Dragon. Dracula is the Slavonic genitive form of Dracul, meaning "[the son] of Dracul (of the Dragon)". In modern Romanian, dracul means "the devil", which contributed to Vlad's reputation.

Vlad III is known as Vlad Țepeș (or Vlad the Impaler) in Romanian historiography. This sobriquet is connected to the impalement that was his favorite method of execution. The Ottoman writer Tursun Beg referred to him as Kazıklı Voyvoda (Impaler Lord) around 1500. Mircea the Shepherd, Voivode of Wallachia, used this sobriquet when referring to Vlad III in a letter of grant on 1 April 1551.

Early life

Vlad was the second legitimate son of Vlad II Dracul, who was himself an illegitimate son of Mircea I of Wallachia. Vlad II had won the moniker "Dracul" for his membership in the Order of the Dragon, a militant fraternity founded by Sigismund of Luxemburg, King of Hungary. The Order of the Dragon was dedicated to halting the Ottoman advance into Europe. Since he was old enough to be a candidate for the throne of Wallachia in 1448, Vlad III was probably born between 1428 and 1431. Vlad was most probably born after his father settled in Transylvania in 1429. Historian Radu Florescu writes that Vlad was born in the Transylvanian Saxon town of Segesvár, Kingdom of Hungary (now Sighișoara, Romania), where his father lived in a three-story stone house from 1431 to 1435. Modern historians identify Vlad's mother either as a daughter or kinswoman of Alexander I of Moldavia or as his father's unknown first wife.

Vlad II Dracul seized Wallachia after the death of his half-brother Alexander I Aldea in 1436. One of his charters (which was issued on 20 January 1437) preserves the first reference to Vlad III and his elder brother, Mircea, mentioning them as their father's "firstborn sons". They were mentioned in four further documents between 1437 and 1439. The last of the four charters also refers to their younger brother, Radu.

After a meeting with John Hunyadi, Voivode of Transylvania, Vlad II Dracul did not support an Ottoman invasion of Transylvania in March 1442. The Ottoman Sultan, Murad II, ordered him to come to Gallipoli to demonstrate his loyalty. Vlad and Radu accompanied their father to the Ottoman Empire, where they were all imprisoned. Vlad Dracul was released before the end of the year, but Vlad and Radu remained hostages to secure his loyalty. They were held imprisoned in the fortress of Eğrigöz, according to contemporaneous Ottoman chronicles. Their lives were especially in danger after their father supported Vladislaus, King of Poland and Hungary, against the Ottoman Empire during the Crusade of Varna in 1444. Vlad II Dracul was convinced that his two sons would be "butchered for the sake of Christian peace", but neither Vlad nor Radu was murdered or mutilated after their father's rebellion.

Vlad Dracul again acknowledged the sultan's suzerainty and promised to pay an annual tribute to him in 1446 or 1447. John Hunyadi (who had by then become the regent-governor of Hungary in 1446), invaded Wallachia in November 1447. The Byzantine historian Michael Critobulus wrote that Vlad and Radu fled to the Ottoman Empire, which suggests that the sultan had allowed them to return to Wallachia after their father paid homage to him. Vlad Dracul and his eldest son, Mircea, were murdered. Hunyadi made Vladislav II (son of Vlad Dracul's cousin, Dan II) the ruler of Wallachia.

Reigns

First rule

Upon the death of his father and elder brother, Vlad became a potential claimant to Wallachia. Vladislav II of Wallachia accompanied John Hunyadi, who launched a campaign against the Ottoman Empire in September 1448. Taking advantage of his opponent's absence, Vlad broke into Wallachia at the head of an Ottoman army in early October. He had to accept that the Ottomans had captured the fortress of Giurgiu on the Danube and strengthened it.

The Ottomans defeated Hunyadi's army in the Battle of Kosovo between 17 and 18 October. Hunyadi's deputy, Nicholas Vízaknai, urged Vlad to come to meet him in Transylvania, but Vlad refused him. Vladislav II returned to Wallachia at the head of the remnants of his army. Vlad was forced to flee to the Ottoman Empire by 7 December 1448.

We bring you the news that [Nicholas Vízaknai] writes to us and asks us to be so kind as to come to him until [John Hunyadi] ... returns from the war. We are unable to do this because an emissary from Nicopolis came to us ... and said with great certainty that [Murad II had defeated Hunyadi]. ... If we come to [Vízaknai] now, the [Ottomans] could come and kill both you and us. Therefore, we ask you to have patience until we see what has happened to [Hunyadi]. ... If he returns from the war, we will meet him, and we will make peace with him. But if you will be our enemies now, and if something happens, ... you will have to answer for it before God

In exile

Vlad first settled in Edirne in the Ottoman Empire after his fall. Not long after, he moved to Moldavia, where Bogdan II (his father's brother-in-law and possibly his maternal uncle) had mounted the throne with John Hunyadi's support in the autumn of 1449. After Bogdan was murdered by Peter III Aaron in October 1451, Bogdan's son, Stephen, fled to Transylvania with Vlad to seek assistance from Hunyadi. However, Hunyadi concluded a three-year truce with the Ottoman Empire on 20 November 1451, acknowledging the Wallachian boyars' right to elect the successor of Vladislav II if he died.

Vlad allegedly wanted to settle in Brașov (which was a centre of the Wallachian boyars expelled by Vladislaus II), but Hunyadi forbade the burghers to give shelter to him on 6 February 1452. Vlad returned to Moldavia where Alexăndrel had dethroned Peter Aaron. The events of his life during the years that followed are unknown. He must have returned to Hungary before 3 July 1456 because, on that day, Hunyadi informed the townspeople of Brașov that he had tasked Vlad with the defence of the Transylvanian border.

Second rule

The circumstances and the date of Vlad's return to Wallachia are uncertain. He invaded Wallachia with Hungarian support either in April, July or August 1456. Vladislav II died during the invasion. Vlad sent his first extant letter as voivode of Wallachia to the burghers of Brașov on 10 September. He promised to protect them in case of an Ottoman invasion of Transylvania, but he also sought their assistance if the Ottomans occupied Wallachia. In the same letter, he stated that "when a man or a prince is strong and powerful he can make peace as he wants to; but when he is weak, a stronger one will come and do what he wants to him", showing his authoritarian personality.

Multiple sources (including Laonikos Chalkokondyles's chronicle) recorded that hundreds or thousands of people were executed at Vlad's order at the beginning of his reign. He began a purge against the boyars who had participated in the murder of his father and elder brother or whom he suspected of plotting against him. Chalkokondyles stated that Vlad "quickly effected a great change and utterly revolutionized the affairs of Wallachia" through granting the "money, property, and other goods" of his victims to his retainers. The lists of the members of the princely council during Vlad's reign also show that only two of them (Voico Dobrița and Iova) were able to retain their positions between 1457 and 1461.

Vlad sent the customary tribute to the sultan. After John Hunyadi died on 11 August 1456, his elder son, Ladislaus Hunyadi, became the captain-general of Hungary. He accused Vlad of having "no intention of remaining faithful" to the king of Hungary in a letter to the burghers of Brașov, also ordering them to support Vladislav II's brother, Dan III, against Vlad. The burghers of Sibiu supported another pretender, a "priest of the Romanians who calls himself a Prince's son". The latter (identified as Vlad's illegitimate brother, Vlad Călugărul) took possession of Amlaș, which had customarily been held by the rulers of Wallachia in Transylvania.

Ladislaus V of Hungary had Ladislaus Hunyadi executed on 16 March 1457. Hunyadi's mother, Elizabeth Szilágyi, and her brother, Michael Szilágyi, stirred up a rebellion against the king. Taking advantage of the civil war in Hungary, Vlad assisted Stephen, son of Bogdan II of Moldavia, in his move to seize Moldavia in June 1457. Vlad also broke into Transylvania and plundered the villages around Brașov and Sibiu. The earliest German stories about Vlad recounted that he had carried "men, women, children" from a Saxon village to Wallachia and had them impaled. Since the Transylvanian Saxons remained loyal to the king, Vlad's attack against them strengthened the position of the Szilágyis.

Imprisonment in Hungary

Matthias Corvinus came to Transylvania in November 1462. The negotiations between Corvinus and Vlad lasted for weeks, but Corvinus did not want to wage war against the Ottoman Empire. At the king's order, his Czech mercenary commander, John Jiskra of Brandýs, captured Vlad near Rucăr in Wallachia.

To provide an explanation for Vlad's imprisonment to Pope Pius II and the Venetians (who had sent money to finance a campaign against the Ottoman Empire), Corvinus presented three letters, allegedly written by Vlad on 7 November 1462, to Mehmed II, Mahmud Pasha, and Stephen of Moldavia. According to the letters, Vlad offered to join his forces with the sultan's army against Hungary if the sultan restored him to his throne. Most historians agree that the documents were forged to give grounds for Vlad's imprisonment. Corvinus's court historian, Antonio Bonfini, admitted that the reason for Vlad's imprisonment was never clarified. Florescu writes, "[T]he style of writing, the rhetoric of meek submission (hardly compatible with what we know of Dracula's character), clumsy wording, and poor Latin" are all evidence that the letters could not be written on Vlad's order. He associates the author of the forgery with a Saxon priest of Brașov.

Vlad was first imprisoned "in the city of Belgrade" (now Alba Iulia in Romania), according to Chalkokondyles. Before long, he was taken to Visegrád, where he was held for 14 years. No documents referring to Vlad between 1462 and 1475 have been preserved. In mid-1475, Stephen III of Moldavia sent his envoys to Matthias Corvinus, asking him to send Vlad to Wallachia against Basarab Laiotă, who had submitted himself to the Ottomans. Stephen wanted to secure Wallachia for a ruler who had been an enemy of the Ottoman Empire, because "the Wallachians [were] like the Turks" to the Moldavians, according to his letter. According to the Slavic stories about Vlad, he was only released after he converted to Catholicism.

Third rule and death

Matthias Corvinus recognized Vlad as the lawful prince of Wallachia, but he did not provide him with military assistance to regain his principality. Vlad settled in a house in Pest. When a group of soldiers broke into the house while pursuing a thief who had tried to hide there, Vlad had their commander executed because they had not asked his permission before entering his home, according to the Slavic stories about his life. Vlad moved to Transylvania in June 1475. He wanted to settle in Sibiu and sent his envoy to the town in early June to arrange a house for him. Mehmed II acknowledged Basarab Laiotă as the lawful ruler of Wallachia. Corvinus ordered the burghers of Sibiu to give 200 golden florins to Vlad from the royal revenues on 21 September, but Vlad left Transylvania for Buda in October.

Vlad bought a house in Pécs that became known as Drakula háza ("Dracula's house" in Hungarian). In January 1476 John Pongrác of Dengeleg, Voivode of Transylvania urged the people of Brașov to send to Vlad all those of his supporters who had settled in the town, because Corvinus and Basarab Laiotă had concluded a treaty. The relationship between the Transylvanian Saxons and Basarab remained tense, and the Saxons gave shelter to Basarab's opponents during the following months. Corvinus dispatched Vlad and the Serbian Vuk Grgurević to fight against the Ottomans in Bosnia in early 1476. They captured Srebrenica and other fortresses in February and March 1476. In the Bosnian campaign, Vlad once again resorted to his terror tactics, mass impaling captured Turkish soldiers and massacring civilians in conquered settlements. His troops mostly destroyed Srebrenica, Kušlat, and Zvornik.

Mehmed II invaded Moldavia and defeated Stephen III in the Battle of Valea Albă on 26 July 1476. Stephen Báthory and Vlad entered Moldavia, forcing the sultan to lift the siege of the fortress at Târgu Neamț in late August, according to a letter of Matthias Corvinus. The contemporaneous Jakob Unrest added that Vuk Grgurević and a member of the noble Jakšić family also participated in the struggle against the Ottomans in Moldavia.

Matthias Corvinus ordered the Transylvanian Saxons to support Báthory's planned invasion of Wallachia on 6 September 1476, also informing them that Stephen of Moldavia would also invade Wallachia. Vlad stayed in Brașov and confirmed the commercial privileges of the local burghers in Wallachia on 7 October 1476. Báthory's forces captured Târgoviște on 8 November. Stephen of Moldavia and Vlad ceremoniously confirmed their alliance, and they occupied Bucharest, forcing Basarab Laiotă to seek refuge in the Ottoman Empire on 16 November. Vlad informed the merchants of Brașov about his victory, urging them to come to Wallachia. He was crowned before 26 November.

Ancestry and descendants

Vlad had two wives, according to modern specialists. His first wife may have been an illegitimate daughter of John Hunyadi, according to historian Alexandru Simon. They had one son, Mihnea the Evil, that was born in 1462. In 1462, Vlad and his wife were forewarned of an attack by Turkish forces on Poenari Castle led by Vlad's half-brother Radu cel Frumos. Not wanting to be captured and believing there was no escape, his wife threw herself from the tower and into the river below, Riul Daomnei – the Princess's River, named for the tragedy.

Vlad's second wife was Justina Szilágyi, who was a cousin of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary. She was the widow of Vencel Pongrác of Szentmiklós when "Ladislaus Dragwlya" married her, most probably in 1475. She survived Vlad Dracul, and married thirdly Pál Suki, then János Erdélyi. They had two children, the first being an unnamed son that was killed before 1486. Vlad's third son, Vlad Drakwlya, unsuccessfully laid claim to Wallachia around 1495. He was the forefather of the noble Drakwla family.

While Vlad has three documented children, it is believed that he had another illegitimate son. During the 1462 siege, Vlad, his attendants, and an illegitimate son managed to escape into the mountains. While fleeing, his son fell off the saddle he was tied to and was lost in the woods. Vlad did not return to search for his son, leaving him behind. The boy, who was not yet in his teens, was found the following morning by a shepherd who took him in and raised him as his own. Vlad would return to the area 14 years later where he was reunited with his son and granted the shepherd riches in return for caring for the son. Not much else is known about the boy, however it is believed he stayed in the area and eventually became governor of the castle.

Legacy

Reputation for cruelty

Stories about Vlad's brutal acts began circulating during his lifetime. After his arrest, courtiers of Matthias Corvinus promoted their spread. The papal legate, Niccolo Modrussiense, had already written about such stories to Pope Pius II in 1462. Two years later, the Pope included them in his Commentaries.

It was even rumored that Vlad once dipped his bread into the blood of his impaled victims. So far, this remains legendary, as the story has not been confirmed.

Meistersinger Michael Beheim wrote a lengthy poem about Vlad's deeds, allegedly based on his conversation with a Catholic monk who had managed to escape from Vlad's prison. The poem, called Von ainem wutrich der heis Trakle waida von der Walachei ("Story of a Despot Called Dracula, Voievod of Wallachia"), was performed at the court of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, in Wiener Neustadt during the winter of 1463. According to one of Beheim's stories, Vlad had two monks impaled to assist them to go to heaven, also ordering the impalement of their donkey because it began braying after its masters' death. Beheim also accused Vlad of duplicity, stating that Vlad had promised support to both Matthias Corvinus and Mehmed II but did not keep the promise.

In 1475, Gabriele Rangoni, Bishop of Eger (and a former papal legate), understood that Vlad had been imprisoned because of his cruelty. Rangoni also recorded the rumour that while in prison Vlad caught rats to cut them up into pieces or stuck them on small pieces of wood, because he was unable to "forget his wickedness". Antonio Bonfini also recorded anecdotes about Vlad in his Historia Pannonica around 1495. Bonfini wanted to justify both the removal and the restoration of Vlad by Matthias. He described Vlad as "a man of unheard cruelty and justice". Bonfini's stories about Vlad were repeated in Sebastian Münster's Cosmography. Münster also recorded Vlad's "reputation for tyrannical justice".

Turkish messengers came to [Vlad] to pay respects, but refused to take off their turbans, according to their ancient custom, whereupon he strengthened their custom by nailing their turbans to their heads with three spikes, so that they could not take them off.

Works containing the stories about Vlad's cruelty were published in Low German in the Holy Roman Empire before 1480. The stories were allegedly written in the early 1460s, because they describe Vlad's campaign across the Danube in early 1462; however, they do not refer to Mehmed II's invasion of Wallachia in June of the same year. They provide a detailed narration of the conflicts between Vlad and the Transylvanian Saxons, showing that they originated "in the literary minds of the Saxons".

Possible hemolacria

According to research published in 2023 based on the analysis of samples collected from letters written by Vlad, he may have had a rare condition known as haemolacria, which causes a person's tears to be partially composed of blood.

As a regional hero

Due to his opposition to the Ottomans, Vlad was regarded by some in his region as a folk hero.

The Cantacuzino Chronicle was the first Romanian historical work to record a tale about Vlad the Impaler, narrating the impalement of the old boyars of Târgoviște for the murder of his brother, Dan. The chronicle added that Vlad forced the young boyars and their wives and children to build the Poenari Castle. The legend of the Poenari Castle was mentioned in 1747 by Neofit I, Metropolitan of Ungro–Wallachia, who complemented it with the story of Meșterul Manole, who allegedly walled in his bride to prevent the crumbling of the walls of the castle during the building project. In the early 20th century, Constantin Rădulescu-Codin, a teacher in Muscel County where the castle was situated, published a local legend about Vlad's letter of grant "written on rabbit skin" for the villagers who had helped him to escape from Poenari Castle to Transylvania during the Ottoman invasion of Wallachia. In other villages of the region, the donation is attributed to the legendary Radu Negru.

Rădulescu-Codin recorded further local legends, some of which are also known from the German and Slavic stories about Vlad, suggesting that the latter stories preserved oral tradition. For instance, the tales about the burning of the lazy, the poor, and the lame at Vlad's order and the execution of the woman who had made her husband too short a shirt can also be found among the German and Slavic anecdotes. The peasants telling the tales knew that Vlad's sobriquet was connected to the frequent impalements during his reign, but they said only such cruel acts could secure public order in Wallachia.

Most Romanian artists have regarded Vlad as a just ruler and a realistic tyrant who punished criminals and executed unpatriotic boyars to strengthen the central government. Ion Budai-Deleanu wrote the first Romanian epic poem focusing on him. Deleanu's Țiganiada (Gypsy Epic) (which was published only in 1875, almost a century after its composition) presented Vlad as a hero fighting against the boyars, Ottomans, strigoi (or vampires), and other evil spirits at the head of an army of gypsies and angels. The poet Dimitrie Bolintineanu emphasized Vlad's triumphs in his Battles of the Romanians in the middle of the 19th century. He regarded Vlad as a reformer whose acts of violence were necessary to prevent the despotism of the boyars. One of the greatest Romanian poets, Mihai Eminescu, dedicated a historic ballad, The Third Letter, to the valiant princes of Wallachia, including Vlad. He urges Vlad to return from the grave and to annihilate the enemies of the Romanian nation:

Vampire mythology

The stories about Vlad made him the best-known medieval ruler of the Romanian lands in Europe. However, Bram Stoker's Dracula, which was published in 1897, was the first book to make a connection between Dracula and vampirism. Stoker had his attention drawn to the blood-sucking vampires of Romanian folklore by Emily Gerard's article about Transylvanian superstitions (published in 1885). His limited knowledge about the medieval history of Wallachia came from William Wilkinson's book entitled Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia with Political Observations Relative to Them, published in 1820.

Stoker "apparently did not know much about" Vlad the Impaler, "certainly not enough for us to say that Vlad was the inspiration for" Count Dracula, according to Elizabeth Miller. For instance, Stoker wrote that Dracula had been of Székely origin only because he knew about both Attila the Hun's destructive campaigns and the alleged Hunnic origin of the Székelys. Stoker's main source, Wilkinson, who accepted the reliability of the German stories, described Vlad as a wicked man. Actually, Stoker's working papers for his book contain no references to the historical figure, the name of the character being named in all drafts but the later ones 'Count Wampyr'. Consequently, Stoker borrowed the name and "scraps of miscellaneous information" about the history of Wallachia when writing his book about Count Dracula.

Appearance and representations

Pope Pius II's legate, Niccolò Modrussa, painted the only extant description of Vlad, whom he had met in Buda. A copy of Vlad's portrait has been featured in the "monster portrait gallery" in the Ambras Castle at Innsbruck. The picture depicts "a strong, cruel, and somehow tortured man" with "large, deep-set, dark green, and penetrating eyes", according to Florescu. The colour of Vlad's hair cannot be determined because Modrussa mentions that Vlad was black-haired, while the portrait seems to show that he had fair hair. The picture depicts Vlad with a large lower lip.

Vlad's bad reputation in the German-speaking territories can be detected in a number of Renaissance paintings. He was portrayed among the witnesses of Saint Andrew's martyrdom in a 15th-century painting, displayed in the Belvedere in Vienna. A figure similar to Vlad is one of the witnesses of Christ in the Calvary in a chapel of the St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna.

[Vlad] was not very tall, but very stocky and strong, with a cold and terrible appearance, a strong and aquiline nose, swollen nostrils, a thin and reddish face in which the very long eyelashes framed large wide-open green eyes; the bushy black eyebrows made them appear threatening. His face and chin were shaven but for a moustache. The swollen temples increased the bulk of his head. A bull's neck connected [with] his head from which black curly locks hung on his wide-shouldered person.