Not every inhabitant of the planet Earth knows that Count Dracula is one of the most popular heroes of many horror films, as well as the most famous vampire - this is a real figure that took place in history. Count Dracula's real name is Vlad III Tepes. He lived in the 15th century. and was the ruler of the Wallachian principality, or as it is also called: Wallachia.
Today we will analyze in detail the biography of Vlad Dracula and try to understand why he "became a vampire" after his death.
Tepes is a national hero of the Romanian people and a locally revered saint who is revered by the local church. He was a valiant warrior and fighter against Turkish expansion into Christian Europe. But why did he become known to the whole world as a vampire who drinks the blood of innocent people? Now let's figure it out.
Not everyone knows that the creator of the current image of Dracula was the English writer Bram Stoker. He was an active member of the Golden Dawn occult organization. For such communities at any time was characteristic great interest to vampires, which is not an invention of writers or visionaries, but a specific medical fact. Physicians have long investigated and documented the real facts of vampirism, which happen in our time and which is one of the most serious diseases. The image of a physically immortal vampire attracts occultists and black magicians who seek to oppose the lower world to the upper worlds - Divine and spiritual.
In the VI century. Byzantine Procopius of Caesarea, whose works are the main sources on the history of the ancient Slavs, noted that before the Slavs began to worship the god of thunder (Perun), the ancient Slavs worshiped ghouls. Of course, this was not about Hollywood vampires attacking defenseless girls. In ancient, pagan times, outstanding warriors, heroes who especially revered Blood as a spiritual and physical entity, were called vampires. There are even opinions that there were certain rituals of worshiping the Blood - ablutions, sacrifices, and the like.
In ancient times, outstanding warriors, heroes were called vampires.
Occultist organizations have completely perverted the ancient tradition, turning the worship of the sacred, spiritual Blood into the worship of the biological. The Principality of Wallachia, which appeared in the XIV century, on the banners of which from ancient times there was an image of a crowned eagle with a cross in its beak, a sword and a scepter in its paws, was the first major state formation on the territory of today's Romania. One of the leading historical figures of the era of the national formation of Romania is the Wallachian prince Vlad Tepes.
Prince Vlad III Tepes, Orthodox sovereign ruler of Wallachia. Almost everything related to the activities of this person is shrouded in mystery. The place and time of his birth are not precisely established. Wallachia was not the most peaceful corner of medieval Europe. The flames of countless wars and fires destroyed the vast majority of handwritten monuments. Only on the basis of the surviving monastic chronicles was it possible to recreate the appearance of the real historical prince Vlad, famous modern world under the name of Count Dracula.
The year when the future ruler of Wallachia was born can only be determined approximately: between 1428 and 1431. Built at the beginning of the XIV century. the house on Kuznechnaya Street in Sighisoara still attracts the attention of tourists: it is believed that it was here that a boy was born, named Vlad at baptism. It is not known whether the future ruler of Wallachia was born here, but it is established that his father, Prince Vlad Dracul, lived in this house. Dracul means dragon in Romanian. Prince Vlad was a member of the knightly Order of the Dragon, whose goal was to protect Orthodoxy from the infidels. The prince had three sons, but only one of them became famous - Vlad. It should be noted that he was a true knight: a brave warrior and a skilled commander, a deeply and truly believing Orthodox Christian, always guided by the norms of honor and duty in his actions. Vlad was distinguished by great physical strength. His fame as a magnificent cavalryman thundered throughout the country - and this is at a time when people from childhood got used to a horse and weapons.
As a statesman, Vlad adhered to the principles of patriotism: the fight against invaders, the development of crafts and trade, the fight against crime. And in all these areas, in the shortest possible time, Vlad III achieved impressive success. The chronicles tell that during his reign it was possible to throw a gold coin and pick it up a week later in the same place. No one would have dared not only to appropriate someone else's gold, but even to touch it. And this is in a country where, two years before, there were no less thieves and vagabonds than townspeople and farmers! How did this transformation take place? Very simply - as a result of the policy of systematic cleansing of society from "asocial elements" pursued by the Wallachian prince. The court at that time was simple and quick: a tramp or a thief, regardless of what he stole, was waiting for a fire or block. The same fate was in store for all gypsies or notorious horse thieves and, in general, idle and unreliable people.
"Tepes" in literal translation means "impaler"
It is important to know what the nickname under which Vlad III went down in history means. Tepes literally means "impaler". It was the pointed stake during the reign of Vlad III that was the main instrument of execution. Most of those executed were captured Turks and Gypsies. But the same punishment could befall anyone who was convicted of a crime. After thousands of thieves died on stakes and burned in the flames of bonfires in city squares, there were no new hunters to test their luck.
Vlad did not give indulgence to anyone, regardless of social status. Anyone who had the misfortune to incur the prince's wrath, expected the same fate. The methods of Prince Vlad also turned out to be a very effective regulator of economic activity: when several merchants accused of trading with the Turks expired on a stake, cooperation with the enemies of the Faith of Christ came to an end.
The attitude towards the memory of Vlad Tepes in Romania, even in modern times, is not at all the same as in Western European countries. And today, many consider him a national hero of the era of the formation of the future Romania, which dates back to the first decades of the XIV century. At that time, Prince Basarab I founded a small independent principality on the territory of Wallachia. The victory he won in 1330 over the Hungarians - the then owners of the Danube lands - secured his rights. Then began a long, exhausting struggle with the big feudal lords - the boyars. Accustomed to unlimited power in their tribal domains, they resisted any attempts by the central government to gain control over the entire country. At the same time, depending on the political situation, they did not hesitate to resort to the help of either Catholic Hungarians or Muslim Turks. After more than a hundred years, Vlad Tepes put an end to this unfortunate practice, once and for all solving the problem of separatism.
A pointed stake during the time of Vlad III Tepes was the main instrument of execution
Below are some of the stories written by an unknown German author at the suggestion of King Matthias Hunyadi in 1463:
— A foreign merchant who came to Wallachia was robbed. He files a complaint with Tepes. While they are catching and impaling the thief, on the orders of Tepes, the merchant is thrown a purse, in which there is one coin more than it was. The merchant, having discovered a surplus, immediately informs Tepes. He laughs and says: “Well done, I wouldn’t say - you should sit on a stake next to the thief.”
- Tepes discovers that there are many beggars in the country - he calls the beggars, feeds them to their fill and asks the question: “Do they want to get rid of earthly suffering forever?” On a positive answer, Tepes closes the doors and windows and burns all those gathered alive.
- There is a story about a mistress who tries to deceive Tepes by talking about her pregnancy. Tepes warns her that she does not tolerate lies, but she continues to insist on her own, then Tepes rips open her stomach and shouts: “I told you that I don’t like lies!”
- A case is also described when Dracula asked two wandering monks what people say about his reign. One of the monks replied that the population of Wallachia scolded him as a cruel villain, and the other said that everyone praised him as a liberator from the threat of the Turks and a wise politician. In fact, both one and the other testimonies were fair in their own way, and the legend, in turn, has two endings. In the German "version", Dracula executed the former for not liking his speech. In the Russian version of the legend, the ruler left the first monk alive, and executed the second for lying.
“One of the creepiest and least credible pieces of evidence in that document is that Dracula liked to have breakfast at the place of execution or the site of a recent battle. He ordered to bring him a table and food, sat down and ate among the dead and dying on the stakes of people.
- According to the testimony of an old Russian story, unfaithful wives and widows who violate the rules of chastity, Tepes ordered to cut out the genitals and peel off the skin, exposing them to the point of decomposition of the body and eating it by birds, or to do the same, but after piercing them with a poker from the crotch to the mouth .
- There is also a legend that there was a bowl at the fountain in the capital of Wallachia, made of gold; everyone could go up to her and drink water, but no one dared to steal her.
The reign of Count Dracula had a great influence on his contemporaries
Vlad III Tepes became a literary hero shortly after his death: the Tale of the Muntan Governor Dracula was written about him in Church Slavonic after the Russian embassy of Ivan III visited Wallachia. The death of Tepes occurred in December 1476. He was buried in the Snagov Monastery.
In the first quarter of the 20th century, after the appearance of Bram Stoker's novels "Children of the Night" (English "Children of the Night") and "Vampire (Count Dracula)" (English meaning "Dracula"), as well as the classic German expressionist film "Nosferatu: Symphony Horror" the main character of these works - "Count Dracula" - became the most memorable literary and cinematic image of the vampire. The emergence of a connection between the image of Vlad III Tepes and Count Dracula is usually explained by the fact that Bram Stoker heard the legend that Tepes became a vampire after death. It is not known whether he heard a similar legend; but there were reasons for its existence, since the murderer Tepes was cursed by the dying more than once, and, in addition, changed his faith (although this fact is questioned). According to the beliefs of the Carpathian peoples, this is quite enough for a posthumous transformation into a vampire. However, there is another version: after the death of Vlad Tepes, his body was not found in the grave.
In the middle of the 20th century, a whole pilgrimage of tourists began to the grave of the famous "vampire". To reduce the flow of unhealthy attention to the tyrant, the authorities moved his grave. Now she is on the island and is guarded by the monks of the monastery.
The very name of the hero of these essays sounds more than ominous. Dracula is the name of the leader of vampires from horror films, and this name is borrowed from Tepes, who is the prototype of the on-screen monster. For more than five centuries, Vlad Tepes has been haunted by the sinister shadow of his fearsome reputation. It seems that we are talking about actually a fiend of hell. In fact, he was a fairly common figure for that era, where, in terms of his personal qualities, demonstrative cruelty occupied by no means the last place.
Vlad III Tepes in the mass consciousness has become a monster that has no equal
There are still disputes about the identity of the Wallachian ruler, and most of even quite serious books about him bear names like “Vlad the Impaler - Myth and Reality” or “Vlad Dracula - Truth and Fiction”, and so on to the extent of the authors' imagination. However, trying to understand the events that are more than half a millennium away from us, the authors, sometimes unconsciously, and sometimes intentionally, pile up new myths around the image of this man.
There are such historical figures, whose cruel deeds chill the blood and inspire horror. According to biographers, he personally observed the torture of convicts, who were alternately doused with boiling water and ice water, and then drowned in the river. Not far behind is the Hungarian countess, who, according to legend, loved to bathe in the blood of young girls in order to preserve her youth.
This list is endless, but it is worth noting the famous ruler of Wallachia, Vlad III Tepes, who became the prototype of Dracula in the novel of the same name. The life of this wearer of the crown is shrouded in myths and true tales, they say that frightened enemies called Vlad the son of the devil. Tepes went down in history as an "impaler" and instigator of biological warfare, but in his native country he gained fame as a genius of military thought.
Childhood and youth
The biography of Tepes, a descendant of Vlad II Dracula and the Moldavian princess Vasiliki, partly remains a mystery, because scientists cannot give an exact answer when the ruler of Wallachia was born. Historians have only conjectural facts and date his birth between 1429-1430 and 1436.
The young Tepes did not make a pleasant impression and had a repulsive appearance: his face was decorated with large cold eyes and protruding lips. According to ancient legend, a little boy saw through people. Vlad's parent raised his offspring in accordance with the strict rules of that time, so initially the young man learned to wield weapons, and only then began to learn to read and write.
Vlad spent his childhood in the historical region, the city of Sighisoara. Then Transylvania (now located in Romania) belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary, and the house in which Tepes lived with his father and older brother still stands and is located at Zhestyanshchikov, 5.
In 1436, Vlad II became the ruler of Wallachia and moved to the capital of this small state - Targovishte. The possessions of the ruler were located between Transylvania and the Ottoman Empire, so the prince of Wallachia was ready for an attack by the Turks. To maintain sovereignty, Dracul was forced to pay tribute to the Turkish Sultan with wood and silver, as well as give expensive gifts to Turkish nobles.
Following the ancient custom, Vlad II sent his sons to the Turks, so Tepes, together with his brother Radu, were held in voluntary captivity for four years. According to rumors, in Turkey, the brothers watched the torture, and Radu became the object of sexual violence. However, there is no authentic evidence that Vlad II sent his offspring to the Ottoman Empire as hostages.
Scientists, on the contrary, believe that the ruler of Wallachia was confident in the safety of his sons, since he himself often visited the Turkish Sultan. The only thing that Vlad and Radu had to be afraid of during their stay in Turkey was the changeable mood of the Sultan, who liked to touch alcohol.
Governing body
In December 1446, the Hungarians carried out a coup d'état, as a result of which Vlad II was beheaded, and his elder brother Tepes was buried alive in the ground. These events became the background for the formation of the character of Dracula.
The Turkish sultan found out about this Hungarian arbitrariness, and he began to gather troops. Having defeated the Hungarians, the leader of the Ottoman Empire put Tepes on the throne, displacing the Hungarian protégé Vladislav II, who took the throne with the support of the Transylvanian governor Janos Hunyadi.
The Sultan lent Turkish troops to Dracula, and in 1448 a new ruler appeared in Wallachia. The newly-minted ruler Tepes begins an investigation into the murder of his father and stumbles upon facts related to the boyars.
Janos Hunyadi declared Dracula's accession to the throne illegal, the Hungarian commander began to gather an army, but by that time Tepes managed to hide in Moldova, then in Transylvania, from where he was expelled by Janos' supporters.
In 1456, Tepes again visits Transylvania, where he gathers an army of associates in order to conquer the throne of Wallachia. It is known that Vlad III ruled the state for 6 years and was noted not only inside Wallachia, but also outside these lands. According to some sources, during his reign Tepes killed about a hundred thousand people, but these data are not confirmed.
He also pursued a church policy aimed at strengthening the church, provided material assistance to the clergy, and also became famous for military campaigns in Transylvania and the Ottoman Empire (Tepes refused to pay tribute). Among other things, Vlad III sent money transfers to the monasteries of Greece.
Personal life
Contemporaries describe Vlad Tepes in different ways. Some say that he was a pale-faced and thin handsome man with a pitch-black mustache, while others argue that the ruler of Wallachia had a repulsive appearance, and his bulging cold eyes instilled fear in everyone and everyone. But scientists agree on one thing: Vlad Dracul was an infinitely cruel person.
It was not in vain that the ruler was nicknamed the "impaler", since impaling people on a stake was Vlad III's favorite method of execution. Enemies who died such a death bled, so pale bodies hung on pointed sticks (Vlad preferred cola with a rounded top, lubricated with oil, which were inserted into the rectum).
By the way, this is why Vlad Dracula was called a vampire in folklore and literary works, although there is no evidence that Tepes tried human blood.
It is noteworthy that Sultan Mehmed II, seeing thousands of rotting corpses of the Turks, fled with his army without looking back. Vlad III liked such a grave situation and his appetite even increased from the sight of the agony of defeated enemies.
As for the personal life of Tepes, she shrouded in mystical and mysterious halos: so many literary works have been written about his wives and mistresses that it is difficult to understand whether this is reality or fiction of writers. Rumor has it that Dracula was married twice to certain Elizabeth and Ilona Siladya. The ruler of Wallachia had three sons: Michael, Vlad and Mihnia Evil.
Death
It is said that Vlad III Tepes died in 1476 at the initiative of Layota Basarab. But there is no exact information about how the enemy of the Ottoman Empire died. There are several opinions: either Vlad was killed by bribed subjects, or Tepes died by the sword during the battle with the Turks (allegedly Dracula was accidentally mistaken for an enemy).
Others testified that Tepes' heart stopped beating for no reason while he sat in the saddle. According to unreliable information, the head of Dracula was kept in the palace of the Turkish Sultan, as a trophy.
Dracula
Vlad III Tepes received the nickname Dracula from his father, who was a member of the highly respected Order of the Dragon, fighting pagans and atheists. Members of this community wore precious metal medallions engraved with a mythological monster. Also, the parent of Tepes minted coins, where fire-breathing creatures were depicted. The surname Tepes went to Vlad after his death: the Turks awarded the prince with such a nickname, the very word "tepes" means "count".
More than one work has been written about such a colorful character as Vlad III, but a book that helped popularize Dracula as a fanged lover of blood was written by Bram Stoker.
It is worth saying that the Irish writer worked on his brainchild for seven years, studying historical works about the Wallachian ruler. But, nevertheless, Stoker's manuscript cannot be attributed to a biographical work. This is a full-fledged novel embellished with fantasy and artistic metaphor.
Bram's work gave a new wave in the world of literature and cinema: numerous manuscripts began to appear about Dracula afraid of the Sun and garlic, and documentaries were also shot. The canonical image of Count Dracula, who lives in a gloomy castle and drinks blood, was created by the American actor Bela Lugosi (film "Dracula" (1931), who skillfully reincarnated as a pale-faced vampire.
Memory
- 1897 Dracula (Bram Stoker)
- 1922 - the film "Nosferatu. Symphony of Horror (Friedrich Wilhelm)
- 1975 - opera "Vlad the Impaler" (George Dumitrescu)
- 1992 - the film "Dracula" ()
- 1998 - music album "Nightwing" about the life of Vlad Tepes (Marduk group)
- 2006 - musical "Dracula: Between Love and Death" (Bruno Pelletier)
- 2014 - the film "Dracula" (Harry Shore)
1431, in Sighisoara. His father is Vlad II Dracul. Nicknamed Dracula (son of the dragon), Vlad received because of his father's membership (since 1431) in the elite knightly Order of the Dragon, created by Emperor Sigismund in 1408. Members of the order had the right to wear a dragon medallion around their neck. The father of Vlad III wore the sign of the order, and also minted it on his coins, depicted it on the walls of the churches being built.
At the age of 12, together with his younger brother, Vlad was taken hostage and held in Turkey for 4 years. Probably, it was this fact that influenced the psyche of Vlad III and spoiled it. In the future, he was spoken of as an extremely unbalanced person with many strange ideas and habits. At the age of 17, he learned about the murder of his father and older brother by the boyars. The Turks released him and put him on the throne, which he left a few months later under the pressure of Janos Hunyadi. Dracula was forced to seek asylum from the allies in Moldova, but after four years, during the Moldavian unrest, the ruler of Moldova, who was Vlad's uncle, died.
Vlad Tepes fled again, already together with his cousin Stefan cel Mare - to Hungary, has been in Transylvania for four years - at the Wallachian borders. In 1456 he ascended the throne with the help of the Hungarians and the Wallachian boyars. By the beginning of the reign, about 500 thousand people were under the rule of Tepes. There is evidence that during the six years of his reign (1456-1462), Vlad Dracula destroyed up to one hundred thousand people. However, with a detailed analysis of the sources, historians agree that these data are significantly exaggerated.
Tepes waged a struggle with the boyars for the centralization of state power. He armed free peasants and townspeople to fight internal and external danger (the threat of the conquest of lands by the Ottoman Empire). In 1461 he refused to pay tribute to the Turkish sultan. As a result of his famous "Night Attack" on June 17, 1462, he forced the 30,000-strong Turkish army that invaded the principality, led by Sultan Mehmed II, to retreat.
Due to the betrayal of the Hungarian monarch Matthias Corvina, he was forced to flee to Hungary in 1462, where he was imprisoned on false charges of collaborating with the Turks and spent 12 years in prison without trial. Again becoming the ruler in 1476, he was killed by the boyars.
According to another version, from the 15th century, Vlad III was mistaken for a Turk in battle and, surrounded, pierced with spears, which, having noticed a mistake, was very regretted.
The basis of all future legends about the unprecedented bloodthirstiness of the ruler was a document compiled by an unknown author (presumably on the orders of the Hungarian king) and published in 1463 in Germany. It is there that for the first time there are any descriptions of the executions and tortures of Dracula, as well as all the stories of his atrocities.
From a historical point of view, the reason to doubt the accuracy of the information presented in this document is extremely high. In addition to the obvious interest of the Hungarian throne in replicating this document (the desire to hide the fact of the theft by the king of Hungary of a large amount allocated by the papal throne for the crusade), no earlier references to any of these “pseudo-folklore” stories were found.
However, the dubiousness of the scale of Dracula's atrocities did not prevent later rulers from "adopting" such methods of conducting internal and foreign policy. For example, when John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, probably having heard a lot of effective "dracula" methods during the diplomatic service at the papal court, began impaling Lincolnshire rebels in 1470, he himself was executed for actions - as the sentence ran - "contrary to the laws of this countries".
Tyranny of Dracula
According to a German document published in 1463, Vlad Dracula, as a ruler, was distinguished by extraordinary cruelty. However, as a result of detailed analysis, many historians doubted the authenticity of these testimonies, since their main purpose was to justify the illegal arrest of the ruler Dracula by the king of Hungary.
“Once you came to him from the Turkish clerk 1, and always went up to him and bowed according to your custom, but cap 2 did not take off your heads. He asks them: “What for the sake of tacos do you do a great favor to the sovereign and such a shame do you do to me?” They answered: “This is our custom, sovereign, and our land has.” He told them: “And I want to confirm your law, but stand strong,” and commanded them to nail caps to their heads with a small iron nail and let them go, rivers to them: “Go tell your sovereign, he has learned to endure that shame from you, we but not with skill, let him not send his custom to other sovereigns who do not want to have it, but let him keep it with him.
This text was written by the Russian ambassador to Hungary Fyodor Kuritsyn in 1484. It is known that in his "Tale of Dracula Voivode" Kuritsyn uses information from that anonymous source, written twenty-one years earlier.
There are several hypotheses regarding the reasons for attributing the properties of a vampire to Vlad III. The first of these is the emergence of similar legends from other legends about his "bloodthirstiness". The second one is a little more complicated.
There is a belief among Romanians: an Orthodox who renounces his faith (most often converted to Catholicism) will certainly become a vampire, while the conversion to Catholicism of Vlad III Tepes, who once robbed Catholic monasteries, was a very impressive event for his fellow-religious subjects. It is likely that the emergence of this belief is due to the mechanism of a kind of “compensation”: when converting to Catholicism, the Orthodox, although he retained the right to communion with the Body of Christ, refused to receive communion with the Blood, since Catholics have double communion - the privilege of the clergy. Accordingly, the apostate had to strive to compensate for the "damage", and since betrayal of faith is not complete without the devil's intervention, then the method of "compensation" is chosen according to the devil's prompt.
However, there is an opinion that Dracula did not change his faith, as this would lead to the loss of rights to the throne.
Famous cases about Vlad III Tepes
Below are some of the stories written by an unknown German author at the suggestion of King Matthias Hunyadi in 1463:
There is a known case when Tepes summoned about 500 boyars and asked them how many rulers each of them remembers. It turned out that even the youngest of them remembers at least 7 reigns. Tepes' answer was an attempt to put an end to this order - all the boyars were impaled and dug around the chambers of Tepes in his capital Targovishte.
The following story is also given: a foreign merchant who came to Wallachia was robbed. He files a complaint with Tepes. While they are catching and impaling the thief, on the orders of Tepes, the merchant is thrown a purse, in which there is one coin more than it was. The merchant, having discovered a surplus, immediately informs Tepes. He laughs and says: “Well done, I wouldn’t say - you should sit on a stake next to the thief.”
Tepes discovers that there are many beggars in the country - he calls the beggars, feeds his fill and asks the question: “Do they want to get rid of earthly suffering forever?” On a positive answer, Tepes closes the doors and windows and burns all those gathered alive.
There is a story about a mistress who tries to deceive Tepes by talking about her pregnancy. Tepes warns her that she does not tolerate lies, but she continues to insist on her own, then Tepes rips open her stomach and shouts: “I told you that I don’t like lies!”
A case is also described when Dracula asked two wandering monks what the people say about his reign. One of the monks replied that the population of Wallachia scolded him as a cruel villain, and the other said that everyone praised him as a liberator from the threat of the Turks and a wise politician. In fact, both one and the other testimonies were fair in their own way. And the legend, in turn, has two endings. In the German "version", Dracula executed the former for not liking his speech. In the Russian version of the legend, the ruler left the first monk alive, and executed the second for lying.
One of the creepiest and least credible pieces of evidence in that document is that Dracula liked to eat breakfast at the site of an execution or the site of a recent battle. He ordered to bring him a table and food, sat down and ate among the dead and dying on the stakes of people.
According to the testimony of an old Russian story, unfaithful wives and widows who violate the rules of chastity, Tepes ordered to cut out the genitals and peel off the skin, exposing them to the point of decomposing the body and eating it by birds, or to do the same, but after piercing them with a poker from the crotch to the mouth.
There is also a legend that there was a bowl at the fountain in the capital of Wallachia, made of gold; everyone could go up to her and drink water, but no one dared to steal her.
Features of Dracula's executions
Many stakes, with people suspended from them, were given various geometric shapes born of Impaler's fantasy. There were various nuances of executions: one stake was driven through the anus, while Tepes specifically made sure that the end of the stake was by no means too sharp - profuse hemorrhage could stop the torture of the executed too soon. The ruler preferred the torment of the executed to last at least a few days. Others had stakes driven through their mouths into their throats and hung upside down. The third hung, pierced through the navel, the fourth was pierced through the heart. Executions were also used in the form of boiling alive in a cauldron, peeling the skin with exposing it to be eaten by birds, strangulation, etc.
Vlad III Tepes sought to measure the height of the stakes with the social rank of the executed - the boyars turned out to be higher impaled than the common people, so the social status of the executed could be judged from the forests of those impaled. A case is known when one day a tyrant ordered his guards to nail the hats of foreign ambassadors to their heads, who refused to take them off when they entered the count's chambers. Ambassadors were sent by Mehmed II, having learned about this, he went to Vlad with a war.
Literary and screen image of Dracula
The reign of Dracula had a great influence on his contemporaries, who formed his image in the folklore tradition of the Romanians and their neighboring peoples. An important source in this case, it is the poem of M. Behaim, who in the 1460s lived at the court of the Hungarian king Matthew Corvinus, German pamphlets are known, distributed under the title “On a Great Monster”. Various Romanian legends tell about Tepes, both directly recorded among the people and processed by the famous storyteller P. Ispirescu.
Vlad 3 Tepes became a literary hero shortly after his death: the Tale of the Muntyan governor Dracula was written about him in Church Slavonic (which at that time was used as a literary language in Romania), after the Russian embassy of Ivan III, very popular in Russia, visited Wallachia .
The death of Tepes occurred in December 1476. He was buried in the Snagov Monastery.
Count Dracula in the horror film Nosferatu. In the first quarter of the 20th century, after the appearance of Bram Stoker's novels "Children of the Night" (English "Children of the Night") and "Vampire (Count Dracula)" (English meaning "Dracula"), as well as the classic German expressionist film "Nosferatu: Symphony Horror" the main character of these works - "Count Dracula" - became the most memorable literary and cinematic image of the vampire. Now the image of Dracula is also often used in computer and video games. One of the most striking examples of such games is Castlevania.
The emergence of a connection between the image of Vlad III Tepes and Count Dracula is usually explained by the fact that Bram Stoker heard the legend that Tepes became a vampire after death. It is not known whether he heard a similar legend; but there were reasons for its existence, since the murderer Tepes was cursed by the dying more than once, and, in addition, changed his faith (although this fact is questioned). According to the beliefs of the Carpathian peoples, this is quite enough for a posthumous transformation into a vampire. However, there is another version: after the death of Vlad Tepes, his body was not found in the grave.
In the middle of the 20th century, a whole pilgrimage of tourists began to the grave of the famous "vampire". To reduce the flow of unhealthy attention to the tyrant, the authorities moved his grave. Now she is on the island and is guarded by the monks of the monastery. (Encyclopedia Wikipedia)
More about Vlad the Impaler-Dracula.
Worst reputation ever.
The very name of the hero of these essays sounds more than ominous. Dracula is the name of the leader of vampires from horror films, and this name is borrowed from Tepes, who is the prototype of the on-screen monster. Also, “dracula” means “devil” in Romanian, and “Tepes” means “staker”, “lover of impaling”, which occupation Vlad became famous among the people for all time.
For more than five centuries, Vlad Tepes has been haunted by the sinister shadow of his fearsome reputation. It seems that we are talking about actually a fiend of hell. In fact, he was a fairly common figure for that era, to some extent outstanding, of course, in his personal qualities, among which demonstrative cruelty occupied by no means the last place.
However, after Stalin, Hitler or Pol Pot, the scale of the atrocities that are commonly associated with Tepes may seem small. Yes, and in those days he had worthy competitors - for example, Tamerlane, who lived half a century before him.
Nevertheless, it was Vlad III Tepes who turned into a monster in the mass consciousness, which has no equal. If we count the circulation of films about Dracula and the number of their views, then they will break the record, leaving behind both the villains mentioned above and Ivan the Terrible, who learned a lot from Tepes and surpassed his teacher.
There are still disputes about the identity of the Wallachian ruler, and most of even quite serious books about him bear names like "Vlad the Impaler - Myth and Reality" or "Vlad Dracula - Truth and Fiction", and so on to the extent of the authors' imagination. However, trying to understand the events that are more than half a millennium away from us, the authors, sometimes unconsciously, and sometimes intentionally, pile up new myths around the image of this man.
What was he really like? Let's try to figure it out, without any guarantee that we will be able to establish the truth. Because almost no historical source that tells about him can be completely trusted.
1. Feudal customs.
Vlad the Impaler Dracula was most likely born in 1430 or 1431 (some say even 1428 or 1429), when his father, Vlad Dracul (without the "a" at the end), a claimant to the Wallachian throne, supported by the Holy Roman Emperor empire of the German nation by Sigismund of Luxembourg, was located in Sighisoara, a Transylvanian city near the border with Wallachia (Muntenia).
In popular literature, the birth of Vlad is often associated with the moment his father entered the Order of the Dragon, where he was received on February 8, 1431 by Emperor Sigismund, who then also occupied the Hungarian throne. However, in fact, this is either just a coincidence, or even an attempt to invent such a coincidence. There are a lot of such fictional, and sometimes real coincidences in the biography of our hero. They should be trusted with great care.
It was thanks to his entry into the Order of the Dragon that Tepes' father received the family name "Dracul", which later passed by inheritance to his son with the addition of the ending "a" or "ya", denoting belonging to the genus.
It is not at all obvious and even certainly unknown whether such a name was associated with the idea of evil spirits. This issue will be discussed below. It is only known that it was used by foreign rulers in the official title of Tepes when he was the ruler of Muntenia. Tepes usually signed "Vlad, son of Vlad" with a listing of all titles and possessions, but two letters signed "Vlad Dracula" are also known. It is clear that he bore this name with pride and did not consider it offensive.
The nickname "Tepes", which has such a terrible meaning, was not known in Romanian during his lifetime. Most likely, even before his death, this nickname was used by the Turks. Of course, in the Turkish sound: "Kazykly". However, it seems that our hero did not object at all to such a name.
After the death of the ruler, it was translated from Turkish and began to be used by everyone, under which he went down in history.
Although rather little is known about the youth of Tepes, it is still more than about the young years of Stefan the Great. All historians begin their story about Stefan from the moment they take the throne. Only then is the death of Stefan's father in 1451 and other events related to earlier times mentioned in passing.
Even the year of Stefan's birth (approximately between 1435 and 1440) is given with even greater uncertainty than that of Tepes. From the youth of the Moldavian ruler, episodes are mainly known when he was next to his older comrade and cousin. Tepes was older than Stefan by about seven or eight years. It is by the way Tepes was taught and brought up that they now judge the education received by Stefan.
It is known that Vlad from childhood spoke Latin, as well as German and Hungarian, went through a good military training in a European manner, and then, when he was a hostage to the Turkish Sultan, he thoroughly studied the customs, language and military techniques of his future opponents. All of the above knowledge Tepes skillfully and ingeniously applied in practice. The style of his Latin official correspondence is excellent. Vlad owes many military victories over the Turks precisely to his knowledge of the intricacies of the enemy's behavior.
The vicissitudes of the dramatic, and, even let me say, fantastic fate of Vlad Tepes become clearer if you look at the relationship between the two families, namely, Draculesti - the family of the descendants of the father of Tepes, Vlad Dracul (the father's brothers were later assigned to this family, who, generally speaking, , they themselves never had such a name), and Korvinov, whose two main representatives, Janos and Matthias Hunyadi, played a decisive role in the events of Vlad's life.
It cannot be said that there was enmity between these families, sort of like between the Montagues and the Capulets. Often there were moments when they could be called mortal enemies without prevarication. And yet the Shakespearean analogy does not fit here at all. Even the beginning of "two equally respected families ..." is not good - the Dracula family rose only to the princes, while Matthias Hunyadi became the king of Hungary. This became possible thanks to the undoubted merits of Janos as the organizer and leader of the anti-Turkish struggle in the Balkans.
The Draculesti (Draculesti) dynasty competed "on an equal footing" with the Daneshti family, related to them - the descendants of one of the rulers of Muntenia Dan. These two families, in the struggle for the Wallachian throne, did not hesitate to destroy each other at every opportunity.
Janos Hunyadi, having concentrated in his hands enormous power, even more than his official position (at one time he was the ruler of the Kingdom of Hungary), disposed of the fate of Transylvania and Muntenia at his own discretion. He decided who should be the ruler of Muntenia, since his support guaranteed success to the applicant, and death to his rival.
For a long time, Yanosh kept the side of the Daneshti clan, for which there are explanations. It all started after the unsuccessful Varna Crusade, when on November 10, 1444, a large coalition of European allies led by the Hungarian king Vladislav was defeated. Vladislav fell in battle, and the second-ranking leader of the Christians, Hunyadi, managed to escape from the battlefield under circumstances that many considered proof of his cowardice.
Modern historians, having analyzed both the reasons for the defeat at Varna and the events that unfolded on the battlefield, seem to have restored the reputation of Janos. It seems that Vladislav himself should be blamed for the defeat, who, being less experienced in military affairs than Hunyadi, did not want to listen to his opinion and made several fatal mistakes. There were two main ones: stopping for a halt on the eve of the battle instead of the immediate start of the battle and a premature attempt to attack the main forces of the Turks with insufficient forces for that in the midst of the battle itself. That is, at first Vladislav hesitated too much, then he hurried, doing so in both cases primarily out of stubbornness, wanting to show that he was no worse military leader than Hunyadi.
The situation was also bad with interaction with another military group - the galley fleet moving along the Danube under the leadership of Valerand de Vavrin. In general, the crusaders in this campaign showed very little organization, and although, thanks to the art of Janos Hunyadi, the battle was almost won at some point, it ended in defeat.
Janos was forced to agree with his crowned commander, and when he rushed into an adventure that cost him his life, and the defeat of the allied army, he hurried to the rescue and at the same time he himself found himself in a very risky position.
However, immediately after the lost battle, it was necessary to urgently look for the culprit, and Janos, it seemed, could not be saved either by excuses or previous merits. None other than the father of Tepes, Vlad Dracul, arrested Janos and imprisoned him, and another glorious fighter against the Ottomans, Gheorghe Brankovich, even offered to hand him over to the Turks. The Sultan, showing chivalry, refused the offer.
Nevertheless, after a very short time, Janos Hunyadi was not only free, but also became regent under the new minor Hungarian king. This can only be explained by the fact that, in addition to past, very glorious, merits and actual innocence, Janos, in addition, also had the most influential patrons. Considering that representatives of the most powerful dynasties of Europe also claimed the regency, one can guess that none other than the Pope himself acted as intercessor for Janos.
In 1447, on the direct orders of Janos, the father of V. Tepes was killed, and after a short time, Vlad's older brother, Mircea, also died a painful death.
In general, the impression remains that the Corvin and Draculesti families either exchanged very sensitive blows between themselves, then, as if nothing had happened, resumed cooperation, turning from fierce enemies into reliable comrades-in-arms and vice versa, while seemingly not experiencing any strong feelings towards each other. feelings.
Such relationships baffled me for a long time, and the only explanation that I found for myself was that they simply corresponded to the mores prevailing in the knightly environment of that time, apparently very similar to the mores of modern mafia clans.
At the same time, the Corvin family, being in a superior position in relation to the Draculesti family, dealt more sensitive blows. This did not prevent either Vlad's father, or Vlad himself, after some time to return to the service of the Corvins and serve them faithfully, sometimes even against their own interests. It is known that difficult and tense negotiations could have preceded this.
Since Vlad's father had to yield to a more powerful enemy - the Turkish Sultan - and agree to rather harsh conditions of cooperation with him (this is how his two sons were given hostage), the principle "who is strong is right" was imprinted in the mind of Vlad Tepes indelibly.
From Turkish captivity, Vlad returned to his homeland a complete pessimist, a fatalist and with the full conviction that the only driving forces Policies serve as the force or threat of its application.
Full article here:One of the most mysterious and cruel kings who ever lived on earth, whose name is surrounded by mysticism. Vlad III Tepes (1431-1476) received the nickname "ear-bearer" for his particular cruelty during the massacre of enemies. The ruler of Wallachia was born in 1431. His real name is Vlad III Dracul, translated from Romanian means "son of the dragon." His father Vlad II was a member of the knightly order of the Dragon, wore a medallion and minted the sign of the order on his coins depicting a dragon. There is another translation of the name Dracul - "son of the devil", perhaps that was what his enemies and frightened subjects called him.
When Vlad III was 12 years old, he was kidnapped by the Turks, for the next 4 years he and his younger brother were held hostage, which had a very negative effect on his psyche. He became unbalanced, acquired strange habits. At the age of seventeen, he learned about the murder of his father and older brother by the boyars, which became the reason for his hatred of the boyars and the subsequent struggle with them.
Vlad the Impaler liked to arrange feasts next to the dying in agony of enemies, enjoying their groans and the smell emanating from decaying bodies. He was not a vampire, but he was a cruel sadist, reveling in the suffering of those who disobeyed his will. They say that he executed more than 100 thousand boyars, but only 10 of those who were involved in the death of Dracula's father and brother are documented.
As a statesman, Vlad Tepes was the liberator of his native country from the Turks and a man of honor, fulfilling his national duty. He refused to pay tribute, created a peasant militia who defended their homeland from the Turkish troops who came to punish the disobedient king. All captured Turks were executed on the square during the holiday.
Dracula was a religious fanatic, donated land to churches, received the support of the clergy, which means that his actions were consecrated by the church. The people had to obey silently. Once Vlad gathered the worshipers on the feast of the Great Easter and forced them to build a fortress until their clothes fell apart from time.
The merciless ruler completely eradicated crime in his state through a cruel trial and painful death. Not a single beggar dared to take someone else's. Even scattered coins on the streets were not touched. The population became exceptionally honest after many thousands of executions, there was no similar phenomenon in the whole world. Thanks to the amazing cruelty, Vlad Tepes gained fame and memory of his descendants. He had a special dislike for gypsies, thieves and loafers, whom he exterminated in whole camps.
The elite of Europe was outraged when they learned about the atrocities of Dracula, they decide to take him into custody and such an opportunity is provided. During the escape, Vlad abandoned his wife and all his subjects, dooming them to death, but was detained by the Hungarian king. I had to spend 12 years in prison. For the sake of freedom, he needed to convert to Catholicism. This move was accepted by the king as a sign of submission, and he even helped Dracula take the throne again. But soon they want to kill him again. During his life, Vlad Tepes tried to escape many times, but this time he was not lucky. The boyars, chopping his body into pieces, sent the Turkish Sultan's head. The monks, to whom Dracula was kind, quietly buried his remains.
Modern archaeologists became interested in the history of Vlad Tepes, but the grave they opened turned out to be empty. Nearby was a burial without a skull, and it is considered to be the remains of Dracula. Subsequently, his remains were transferred to the island, which is guarded by monks to avoid tourist invasions.
Interesting facts from the life of Vlad Dracula
Vlad III Tepes (Dracula) - ruler of Wallachia (born around 1431 - death 1476)
Vlad Dracula (Dracula) is a real historical person of the 15th century. The biography of the ruler Dracula is interesting, tragic and based on information contained in Serbian, Polish, Byzantine and even Russian chronicles. The great Moscow sovereign Ivan III ordered to write down the history of the ruler Dracula, nicknamed Tepes (namely, the ruler, and not the count!) As a warning to posterity. Many of the historians believe that these notes were carefully studied in his youth by John Vasilyevich IV, who later received the nickname Terrible.
The famous humanist and poet Cardinal Aeneas Piccolomini (1405-1464), traveling through Europe, personally met with Vlad Dracula. In his essay "Cosmography", the cardinal describes his appearance as follows: "A man of medium height, with a high forehead and a face sharply tapering to the chin."
We add to this description that Vlad III Tepes and all other representatives of the Draculesti genus, including the living ones, never suffered from pallor and other ailments of vampires. Vlad himself was not really tall, but he had great physical strength. He had a large aquiline nose, wide shoulders and a thick neck. On his head was a luxuriant head of dark hair. According to the chroniclers, Vlad was an excellent horseman and wielded excellent cold weapons. In his younger years, he became the winner of the prestigious Nuremberg jousting tournament in Germany.
Vlad's ancestors came to Romania and Moldova from Hungary in the 13th century. They adopted the language and faith of the new homeland, becoming its rulers. In the center of Chisinau there was a monument to the sovereign of Moldavia Mircea the Old - the grandfather of Vlad II. Wallachia was founded in 1290.
Exactly 100 years later, the illegitimate son of the ruler Mircea, who was named Vlad, was born. He was distinguished by courage and courage in the battles that now and then thundered in those parts. The people called him Dracula, and there is not even a hint of mysticism in this nickname: Vlad II Dracula was in the secret knightly order of the Dragon, or rather, even the defeated dragon. There is nothing secret that would not become obvious: many people, including the Turks, learned about the order.
At the end of 1431, a son was born to Vlad II, who, in honor of his father, also received the name Vlad.
“The Wallachian dog has become old and does not obey the owner,” the Sultan said to the viziers, throwing a green silk cord onto a golden dish.
It was a verdict. Vlad II became the ruler of Wallachia, taking the throne of his father, who died at the request and sentence of the Turkish Sultan.“Let's see if the dragon knights will help the new Wallachian ruler in battles with the warriors of Islam,” the grand vizier laughed maliciously. “So that he does not intend against the padishah, let him give his son as a hostage!”
So, while still a boy, the future Vlad III Dracula, later nicknamed the Impaler (“Tepesh” in Russian means “count”), became a hostage of the Sultan.
In those days, in order to keep the vassals who were ready to rebel all the time in obedience, the Turks took their children hostage and executed them with cruel death at the first manifestations of their parents' disobedience. Often the boys were first castrated, and then sent to the harem, and only after a while they were killed. The life of the hostage constantly hung in the balance. I had a chance to leave my father's house and get an upbringing at the court of the Sultan.
For a long 7 years, outwardly maintaining humility, the young man languished in captivity and only after the death of his father and older brother did he receive freedom.
“You will take the place of a parent,” releasing Vlad, the grand vizier nodded favorably to him. “Make no mistake if you want to save life and power.
He did not know that not much time would pass and the young Wallachian ruler, who had learned the lessons of Turkish cruelty well, would instill panic in the Muslims and receive from them the nickname Kazykly - the Piercer!
God, what freedom is this! A recent hostage, who mourned the death of his father, was released under escort on the condition of maintaining obedience to the Ottomans and paying tribute. Vlad went home along with the officials assigned to him, spies and guards. But, having found himself in his native city of Segisoara - on the territory of modern Romania, Dracula immediately threw off his mask of humility: he expelled all the Turks and, on pain of death, forbade them to appear in his possessions. This turned out to be not the empty bravado of a 19-year-old youth who was thirsting for revenge!
Dracula chose the city of Brasov as his stronghold and began to prepare for a long and bloody war. His other stronghold was in Tirgovishte, which stood on the high bank of the Yalomirtsy River. At the same time, the ruler Vlad III was actively involved in the internal affairs of his state.
From the Turks, Vlad adopted the cruel method of execution - impalement. Historical chronicles note: Dracula's executioners achieved such virtuoso art (if brutal murders can be called art) that the stake passed through the human body, minimally touching the internal organs. The victim suffered for a long time before dying. To prolong the agony, a special crossbar was nailed to the stake so that the body would not completely sit down, like on a skewer, and the victim could not die quickly.
Soon, Vlad gathered all the boyars together with their families in the palace for a feast - in total, according to the chroniclers, there were up to 500 guests. They feasted in Tirgovishte. Allegedly, Vlad III celebrated his accession to the throne. During the feast, when the wine flowed like water, the ruler, with an innocent look, slyly asked the order of the tipsy guests:
- Tell me, boyars, how many rulers have you decided?
- A lot, my lord! - The guests chimed in excitedly. - Not one or two.
"Great," Dracula chuckled. And he shouted angrily: - They are all killed, like my father and older brother. They were killed because you constantly conspired and sold yourself with giblets to the Turks, becoming blind executors of their will. Traitors! Now a new nobility will appear in my state! Hey guard! Take them all!Those who are older, regardless of gender, the ruler ordered to impale. He gathered the rest in the courtyard of his palace-castle and gloomily told them:
“You will go on foot under escort to Poenri. There, build a fortress on top of a hill above the river. Whoever survives, let him consider himself lucky. Build day and night. Stake awaits negligent!
In fact, Vlad III sent the boyars-enemies to hard labor.
The gospodar sincerely believed that all citizens should definitely work for the good of the motherland, and therefore those who could not do this - the poor, the poor, the sick and thieves - did not favor.
Once the ruler addressed a speech to the city beggars - cripples and beggars:
- Do you want to get rid of the oppressive feeling of hunger forever and not chatter your teeth from the cold?
Hearing how the beggars and cripples began to chatter approvingly in response, Vlad III suggested:
Come to me, be my guests.
The brethren of beggars, petty thieves and cripples were treated to glory in a large barn. When the "guests" got tipsy, Vlad quietly left and gave a signal to the palace guards. The warriors drilled by him quickly boarded up the windows and doors, and then set fire to the barn from 4 corners. A high flame quickly rose, dry boards crackled in the fire. The roar of the fire drowned out the screams of those burned alive.
According to the version of other chroniclers, the ruler gathered enemy spies in one of the old castles and burned it along with the traitors. This version is more plausible - the small Orthodox Wallachia had enough enemies. As if between millstones, it was squeezed by the Muslim Ottoman Empire on the one hand and the Catholic Kingdom of Hungary on the other.
Foreigners who visited Wallachia wrote with surprise that "there is no crime in the country." All the years of the reign of Vlad III, on the square of his capital, there was a large golden goblet, from which anyone could drink spring water. They were terribly afraid of stealing, knowing what fate awaits a thief - a stake! Vlad Dracula, nicknamed Tepes, did not spare thieves. It may seem strange, but the ruler enjoyed the love and trust of the people. He saw him as a protector, and the new boyars, created by the ruler to replace the executed traitors, stood behind their ruler like a mountain.
In particular, Vlad did not favor the Turks. The chroniclers mention a case when the ruler strictly ordered the envoys of the Sultan who arrived to him:
- Bare your heads! You are in the palace of the Orthodox ruler of Wallachia.
“You know better than others that faith in Allah does not allow us to do this.
– Do you believe so devoutly that you are ready to suffer for your faith and the prophet?
“Yes,” the Turks firmly answered, not knowing what the padishah’s vassal had planned.
- Hey guard! - the ruler clapped his hands - Take them! Let the executioner nail their turbans to their heads!
The ruler preferred mass executions to single executions. Moreover, he ordered to arrange stakes in the form of different patterns, and most often - circles. In particular, he loved executions during feasts. The ruler sat at a table laden with dishes and goblets of wine, and admired how the condemned were writhing in pain on stakes.
But Vlad did not forget about other types of execution: he tore off the skin of criminals alive, threw them into boiling water. Beheaded, blinded. Strangled, hung, cut off noses, ears, genitals and limbs. After the executions, the bodies were put on public display.
With a special "trepidation" Dracula treated female chastity. The victims of his cruelty were girls deprived of virginity, unfaithful wives and unchaste widows. Often they cut out their genitals and cut off their breasts. On the order of the ruler, one such unfortunate woman was first cut off her chest, then they skinned her and put her on a stake in the main square, and her skin was torn off next to the executioner's bench.
However, Dracula not only eradicated crime and "pressed to the nail" libertines. He did his best to protect his subjects from the violence of even more cruel Turkish enslavers.
Russian chroniclers talk more kindly about Dracula than German and, of course, Turkish ones. Wallachia and Muscovy sent diplomatic missions to each other, mostly consisting of Orthodox priests. Ivan III was flattered that the Wallachian prince personally wrote letters to him in Church Slavonic.
1462 - Vlad III Dracula unexpectedly attacked the Turks and drove them out of the Danube valley.
- Our former hostage shows disobedience? - Learning about this, Sultan Mehmed II, nicknamed the Conqueror, grinned. “Let them bring me his head on a platter!”
The Turks could not tolerate the neglect of their power, which had already conquered a large part of Europe! Soon, a twenty-thousand Janissary army advanced to the possessions of Vlad III, against which Dracula could put up half as many fighters. But they burned with hatred for the enslavers, and the ruler managed not only to learn the language of the enemy, but also to learn all his strengths and weaknesses. The Turks knew almost nothing about him as a military leader, while he had an outstanding military talent. Gospodar occupied several well-fortified mountain fortresses and took control of the main passes.
To meet the Ottomans, he sent a select detachment of daredevils, ordering them to capture the Turkish avant-garde at any cost. Soon the brave men returned and brought the captured Janissaries. The lord rejoiced.
In the morning, axes rattled - they sharpened stakes and drove them in at the walls of Tirgovishte. The bound Janissaries were put on stakes. Belyuk-bashi, officers of the Janissary corps received the last honors: their stakes were gilded with ocher.
- To Wallachia! growled Mehmed II, having learned about the fate of the Janissaries. - On a hike! Spare no one, and chain the Wallachian ruler like a dog.
But the ruler managed to prepare well for the invasion of the Turks. Having placed the detachments along the path of the Ottoman army, he attacked at the most inopportune moments for the enemy - at crossings or at night. The forty-thousandth army of the Turks retreated, and Vlad managed with small losses.
On the third campaign, the Sultan sent 250,000 soldiers against Vlad III Tepes: more than the population of Wallachia, including women and children. The Lord sent an army of 40,000 against the enemy. Dracula avoided large-scale clashes, preferring guerrilla tactics. He personally carried out reconnaissance and basically managed with the forces of his guard. Dressing in Turkish clothes, Vlad Tepes and his comrades flew into the enemy camp at night, set fires, chopped the Turks. Panic began, the Turks half-awake killed their own, and Vlad's guards disappeared into the darkness.
Once, after a particularly bloody raid on the camp, the elite Turkish cavalry rushed after a detachment of night Wallachian "werewolves", and the entire Ottoman army moved after the vanguard. When it dawned, a terrible sight appeared before the eyes of the Turkish soldiers. 7,000 of their riders, led by the noble governor Yunus Bey, were not mounted on horses, but ... on stakes. In the same battle formation in which they pursued Vlad.
Retreating to the capital, Dracula burned villages and poisoned wells.
Approaching Tirgovishte, the sultan saw a terrible picture, known in history as the "Forest of the Impaled". A whole forest of stakes grew in front of the city, on which Vlad planted about 20,000 Turks.
In the sultry air, the stench from the bodies of the executed decomposed in the sun spread far.
“It is impossible to take the country away from a husband capable of such deeds,” said the shocked Sultan.
As always, betrayal played its vile role. The Turks retreated, but did not retreat. Their fourth campaign against Wallachia nevertheless ended in the defeat of the sovereign.
Everyone betrayed Dracula: both mercenaries and Transylvanians who swore allegiance. Moldovans were in no hurry to help. Even his brother Radu took part in the campaign against Wallachia as part of the Turkish army.
Many boyars, who until recently stood behind the gospodar mountain, joined the Turks. They herded Vlad into Poenri's fortress. The prince's wife preferred death to the disgrace of captivity and threw herself from a high tower. The Turks captured the fortress, but Vlad was able to escape through an underground passage.
For his time, Vlad III Tepes was a brilliantly educated person: he spoke Turkish, Hungarian, Latin, German and Russian, read books, had a quick pen and loved philosophy. Finding no other way out, Dracula went to seek help from King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary.
Seeing the worried Wallachian ruler, defeated in a bloody struggle with the Turks, Matthias was delighted - now Vlad is in his hands! He arrested him and ordered him to be imprisoned.
The years of Dracula's imprisonment were described in detail by the Russian diplomat Fyodor Kuritsyn, clerk of Grand Duke Ivan III. The first period of captivity, Vlad spent time in prison, where he showed another of his many talents: he made boots that the guard sold in the market. This significantly replenished the meager diet of a noble captive.
Dyak Kuritsyn testifies: Vlad was in prison for many years and steadfastly adhered to the Orthodox faith, although Matthias constantly persuaded him to accept Catholicism, promising freedom, the return of the throne and the hand of his cousin. The Russian chronicler connects the release of Dracula with the fact that he nevertheless accepted the “Latin charm” (Catholicism). However, recent studies prove: Vlad did not betray Orthodoxy! The grace of Matthias is explained simply: the king of Hungary, receiving money from the pope for the war against the infidels, abused "misuse". He freed the ardent fighter against Islam to rake in the heat with his hands.
According to Western chroniclers, even in prison Dracula sharpened twigs with a knife and planted rats, mice and birds on them. Allegedly having gained freedom after 4 years (according to other sources, only 14 years later), he married the king's sister and lived in an ordinary house.
1476 - having received the help of the Transylvanians and Moldavians, Vlad invaded Wallachia and was again able to seize power. When the allies returned home, the Turks saw the moment as opportune and attacked Wallachia. The ruler staunchly resisted, but died in the battle near Bucharest around 1480, 46 years old. Allegedly, he became a victim of his own masquerade - habitually disguised as a Turk, the ruler went on reconnaissance, and when he returned, his soldiers mistook him for an enemy scout and killed him, piercing him with spears.
The boyars cut off the head of Vlad III in order to save their own heads (at least, such is the legend), and sent it as a gift to the Turkish Sultan. This subsequently gave birth to a belief: vampires die from a wasp stake and separation of the head from the body. But Romanian peasants still believe today - Dracula is alive! Archaeologists who excavated at the altar of the church in the Snatovsky Monastery, where Vlad III Tepes was supposedly buried, did not find his body in the crypt. But in a secret crypt they found a skeleton with a crown on the skull and a necklace with the image of a dragon. Dracula? But which one?
The castle on the banks of the river Arges, where Dracula lived, is believed to be cursed. Around it, wolves howl at night, and a host of bats live in the ruins.
But there is another version of the fate of Vlad III Dracula, which was outlined by some chronicles of Western Europe.
According to this version, the same Aeneas Piccolomini played a fatal role in the life of the ruler, from the moment of their first meeting he managed to become Pope Pius II. He wanted to go down in history as the head of the church, under which Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulcher will be recaptured. Knowing Vlad personally, the pope believed that only he was suitable for the role of leader of the troops in a new crusade against the infidels. The pope invited him to Rome, but the ruler was extremely reluctant to leave his possessions and sent his cousin to the pope instead of himself.
War is always a big expense! The pope gave the ruler's cousin a huge sum, with a request to transfer it to Vlad, so that he would arm the assembled troops and move them against the Turks. Cousin swore to do everything exactly. Who knows how the fate of world history would have turned if the dreams of Pius II had come true? Vlad was a very talented commander and fiercely hated the Turks! But Fate decides things in its own way and chooses historical paths itself.
The cousin used the money he received from the pope to plot against Vlad. Having managed to deceive the suspicious and incredulous ruler, he overthrew him from the throne, committing palace coup. But he did not dare to execute Tepes, so he imprisoned him in a fortress, placing strong guards.
Like any scoundrel who usurped the throne, the new ruler was constantly looking for excuses for himself. He again began to pay tribute to the Turks, and in 1464 he ordered the publication of a book about what a terrible villain Vlad Dracula was. Some real facts interspersed on the pages of the book with outright lies, the artists hired by the new ruler made naturalistic illustrations that made an indelible impression on contemporaries.
Until that time, secular books were practically not published - printed publications were usually of a religious nature. The new ruler, in fear of the overthrown brother and in the desire to justify himself in the eyes of his contemporaries and descendants, despised all the rules of honor and moral prohibitions. Not to mention faith and conscience. He published in 1463, during the life of Vlad Tepes, the book "The History of the Governor Dracula". It said that the ruler, in order to preserve youth and strength, bathes in the blood of the victims.
Lampoon went for a walk around Europe, spreading the gloomy glory of Vlad to various countries. The author reproduced the portraits of Vlad, and later historians discovered them in the museums of Vienna, Budapest, Nuremberg, and Berlin. No wonder they say - a drop hammers a stone! The new ruler achieved his goal: the image of Tepes as a formidable warrior of the Turks faded over time in the memory of people.
In addition, the famous Dracula was not immortal - he died, and he was buried in a monastery surrounded by lakes, not far from modern Bucharest. Buried and forgotten for many centuries. Only thanks to the efforts of the usurper, the image of the cruel ruler Dracula remained in folklore.
Yes, Vlad III Tepes took many secrets to the grave! Now many museums are filled with the attributes of "vampirism", and Satanists consider Dracula their spiritual father. This is complete historical and religious illiteracy, lack of knowledge. In fact, the ruler of Wallachia believed passionately, was an Orthodox man, built churches and monasteries.
It is characteristic that the Turkish and German chroniclers exacerbated the gloomy side of Dracula's character and reign, while the Romanian ones, on the contrary, whitewashed him. The Russians, on the other hand, treat with understanding that the ruler of a small country at the turn of the Christian world boldly opposed the military Muslim expansion. And alone, not counting on someone's help. Thanks to Vlad Tepes, the people of Romania, its language and culture, and the Orthodox faith have been preserved. Perhaps it is not by chance that he became a favorite hero?
How Vlad III Tepes was turned into a vampire
How did it happen that the name Dracula became a household name for the characters of novels and horror films?
It all started at the end of the 19th century, almost 400 years after the death of Vlad III. The first electric lamps were already burning, the telegraph was working, steamships and battleships were sailing along the seas. Turkey has long lost its former power and turned into an ordinary, rather backward country.
And Europe was suddenly embraced by the fashion for mediums and all sorts of otherworldly horrors - theaters simply chased plays where the action took place in ancient castles with ghosts and other effects tickling the nerves. The gentlemen publishers did not lag behind, demanding bloody dramas with a bloody bias from the authors.
Demand dictates supply: the “gold mine” was actively developed by journalist and playwright Brem Stoker. He had a lively pen, a violent dark fantasy, he easily guessed what the public and the owners of theaters needed. "Bloody" dramas and novels came out in batches from his pen. Stoker got rich on evil spirits, ghosts and the like.
Once in Vienna, he heard about the history of the ruler Vlad Dracula. Stoker rejected wars and victories, cunning and a long captivity at once, but turned the ruler Dracula into a count, endowing him with the features of a bloody maniac, psychopath and vampire! This was Bram Stoker's finest hour - with his light hand, the image of a terrible bloodsucker began to walk around the world, luring innocent creatures into the castle and killing guests.
Other authors did not lag behind - did the vampire belong to Stoker alone ?! Everyone wanted to make a fortune on vampires and ghosts. Books sold out in large numbers, the audience died at the performances. Later, the "vampyriad" began to be filmed - first in silent films, later in sound and color, and now on television and replicating on video cassettes and disks. The old terrible tale-lie turned out to be surprisingly tenacious!
But do they remember the real ruler Vlad, not invented by idle hacks? Remember! In Romania, it turns out, there is even a special society "Dracula", which unites admirers of their idol.
Lost in the picturesque Carpathian mountains, the town of Bran (it is also the ancient Broshov, or Brasov), on a high rocky hill, rises the castle of the legendary Vlad Tepes, made of strong wild stone. Over the past 600 years, the banner of enemy foreign conquerors has never fluttered over it! Now there is a museum in the castle, where tourists like to come to see where and how the despot, who became almost fabulous, lived, the sworn enemy of the Turkish enslavers, who at the same time terrified his subjects. By the way, this real castle of the Lord Vlad Dracula was filmed by Hollywood filmmakers when creating a world-famous film.
There is a bad reputation among the local population about the castle. They say that at night in the halls and long passages the floorboards creak and the shadow of a cruel and unfortunate ruler suddenly appears. And woe to the one who gets in the way of the ghost. Therefore, there were few daredevils who would dare to spend the night in the halls of the famous castle-museum.
Believe it or not, one of them was the infamous Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. According to quite credible evidence, he saw the ghost of Dracula and even spoke with him.