vlad

Vlad Tepes (1431 - 1476) AKA. Vlad 'the impaler', 'Dracula' son of Vlad Dracul

The name Dracula was applied to Vlad during his lifetime. it was derived from "dracul" a Romanian word that can be translated as "devil" or "dragon". Vlads father

joined the Order of the Dragon, a Christian brotherhood dedicated to fighting the Turks, in 1431, shortly after Vlad's birth. The oath of the order required, among other things , wearing the insignia at all times. The name Dracula means son of Dracul or son of the Dragon or Devil.

The actual birth date of Vlad, later called Vlad the Impaler, is unkown, but was probebly late in 1430. He was born is Scassburg (aka Sighisoara), a town on Transylvania. Soon after his birth, in February 1431, his father, also named Vlad, traneled to Nuremburg, Germany, where he was invested with the insignia of the Order of the Dragon. The accompanying oath dedicated the family to the fight against the Turks, who had begun an attack upon Europe that would eventually carry them to the very gates of Vienna. Vlad was a claimant to the throne of Wallachia, that part of contemorary Romania south of the Transylvanian Alps. He was able to wrest the throne from his half brother in 1436.

and Vlad, with the sultan on a raid into Transylvania. Doubting Vlad Dracul's loyalty, the sultan had him brought before him and imprisoned. Dracul nevertheless reaffirmed his loyalty and had Vlad (Dracul had two sons named Vlad, born to different mothers) and Radu, his younger sons, remain with the sultan to guarantee their pact. They were placed under house arrest at egrigoz. The period of imrisonment deeply affected Vlad. On the one hand, he took the opportunity of his confinement to learn the Turkish language and customs. But his treatment ingrained the cynicism so evident in his approach to life and infused in him a Machaivellian attitude toward political matters. His early experiences also seem to have set within his personality the desire to seek revenge from anyone who wronged him.

In December 1447 his father, Mircea , was murdered and his older brother burned alive under the orders of Hungarian governor John Hunyadi (aka Ioande Hunedoara), with the assistance of the boyers, the ruling elite families of Wallachia, The death of Mircea mande Vlad the successor, but with Hunyadi's backing, Vladislav II, a member of another branch of the family , assumed the Wallachian throne. Vald tried to claim the throne in 1448, but his reign lasted only a couple of months before he was forced to flee to the neighbouring kindom of Moldavia. In 1451, while he was at Suceava, the Moldavian capital, the ruler was assissinated. For whatever reasons, Vlad then went to Transylvania and placed himself at the mercy of Hunyadi, the very person who had ordered hos father's assassination.

The allience between Hunyadi and Vlad may have been made possible by that event, Vlad left Transylvania for Wallachia. He defeated Vladislav II and on August 20 caught up with the fleeing prince and killed him. Vlad then began his six year reign, during which his reputation was established. In September he took both a formal oath to Hungarian King Ladislaus V and, a few days later, an oath of vassalage to the Turkish sultan.

impaler.jpg (14378 bytes) Early in his reign, probably in the spring of 1459, Vlad committed his first major act of revenge. On easter Sunday, after a day of feasting, he arrested the boyer families, whom he held responsible for the death of his father nad brother. The older ones he simply impaled outside the palace and the city walls. He forced the rest to march from the capitol city of Tirgoviste to the towm of Poenari, where over the summer, in the most humiliating of circumstances, they were forced to build his new outpost overlooking the Arges River. This chateau would later be identified as Castle Dracula. Dracula's actions in destroying the power of the boyers was part of his policy of creating a modern, centraized state in what is today Romania. He turned over the estates and positions of the deceased boyers to people who owed their loyalty to him.

Vlad's brutal manner of terrorizing his enamies and the seemingly arbitrary manner in which he had people punished earned him the nickname 'Tepes' or 'The Impaler' the common name by which he is known today. he not only used the stake againts the boyers, whom he was trying to bring into subservience, he also terrorized the churches, both the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic, each of which had strength in his territory.

During his reign, Vlad moved to the village of Bucharest and built it in to an important fortified city with strong outer walls. Seeing the mountians as protective bulwarks, Vlad built his castle in the foothills of the Transylvanian Alps. Later, feeling more secure and wishing to take control of the ptentially wealthy plains to the south, he built up Bucharest.

Vlad was denounced by his contemporaries, and those in the next several generations who wrote of him published numerous tales of his cruelty. He was noted for the number of victims, conservatively set at 40,000, in his brief six-year reign. He thus became responsible for the largest number of deaths by a single ruler until modern times . Ivan the Terrible, with whom he has been frequently compared, put fewer than 10,000 to death. Furthermore, Vlad the Impaler ruled over fewer than half-a-million people. Above and beyond the number who died as a result of his policies, as McNally and Florescu have noted, Vlad refined the use of methods of torture and death to a degree that shocked his contempories. He not only impaled people in various ways but also often executed his victims in a manner related to the crime for which they were being punished.

The beginning of the end of his breif reign can be traced to the late months of 1461. for reasons not altogether clear, Vlad launched a campaignto drive the Turks from the Danube River valley south-east of Bucharest. In spite of early successes, when the Turks finally mounted a response, Vlad found himself without allies and was forced to retreat to the face of overwhelming numbers. The Turkish assault was slowed on two occasions. First, on June 17, several hours after sunset, Dracula attacked the Turkish camp in order to capture the Sultan. Unfortunatly, he was directed to the wrong tent, and while many Turks were slain in the attack, the sultan got away. Unable to follow up on his momentary victory, Vlad was soon on the retreat again. When the Sultan reached the capital city of Tirgoviste, he found that Dracula had impaled several people outside the town, a fact that impressed the sultan and gave him pause to consider his action. He decided to return to Adrianople (now Edirne) and left the next phase of the battle to Vlads younger brother Radu, now the Turkish favorite to the Wallachian throne. Radu, at the head of a Turkish army joined by Vlads Romanian detractors, pursued him to his castle on the Agnes River.

Hunedoara Castle, historicaly connected with the legend of Dracula

During his reign, Vlad moved to the village of Bucharest and built it in to an important fortified city with strong outer walls. Seeing the mountians as protective bulwarks, Vlad built his castle in the foothills of the Transylvanian Alps. Later, feeling more secure and wishing to take control of the ptentially wealthy plains to the south, he built up Bucharest. Vlad was denounced by his contemporaries, and those in the next several generations who wrote of him published numerous tales of his cruelty. He was noted for the number of victims, conservatively set at 40,000, in his brief six-year reign. He thus became responsible for the largest number of deaths by a single ruler until modern times . Ivan the Terrible, with whom he has been frequently compared, put fewer than 10,000 to death. Furthermore, Vlad the Impaler ruled over fewer than half-a-million people. Above and beyond the number who died as a result of his policies, as McNally and Florescu have noted, Vlad refined the use of methods of torture and death to a degree that shocked his contempories. He not only impaled people in various ways but also often executed his victims in a manner related to the crime for which they were being punished. The beginning of the end of his breif reign can be traced to the late months of 1461. for reasons not altogether clear, Vlad launched a campaignto drive the Turks from the Danube River valley south-east of Bucharest. In spite of early successes, when the Turks finally mounted a response, Vlad found himself without allies and was forced to retreat to the face of overwhelming numbers. The Turkish assault was slowed on two occasions. First, on June 17, several hours after sunset, Dracula attacked the Turkish camp in order to capture the Sultan. Unfortunatly, he was directed to the wrong tent, and while many Turks were slain in the attack, the sultan got away. Unable to follow up on his momentary victory, Vlad was soon on the retreat again. When the Sultan reached the capital city of Tirgoviste, he found that Dracula had impaled several people outside the town, a fact that impressed the sultan and gave him pause to consider his action. He decided to return to Adrianople (now Edirne) and left the next phase of the battle to Vlads younger brother Radu, now the Turkish favorite to the Wallachian throne. Radu, at the head of a Turkish army joined by Vlads Romanian detractors, pursued him to his castle on the Agnes River.
Hunedoara Castle, historicaly connected with the legend of Dracula

At Castle Dracula he was faced with overwheming odds, his army having melted away. he chose to survive by escaping through a secret tunnel and then over the Carpathian s into transylvania His wife (or mistress), accorfing to local legend, comitted suicide before the Turks overran the castle. In Transylvania he presented himself to the new Kink of Hungary, Mathias Corvinus, who arrested him. At this time the first publications of stories of Vlad's cruelties were circulated through Europe.

Vlad was imprisoned at the Hungarian capital of Visegrad although it seems he lived under somewhat comfortable conditions after 1466. By 1475 events had shifted to the point that he emerged as the best candidate to retake the Wallachian throne. In the summer of 1475 hr was again recognised as the prince of Wallachia. soon thereafter he moved with an army to fight in Serbia, and upon his return he took up the battle against the Turkswith the King of Moldavia. He was never secure on his throne. Many Wallachians allied themselves with the Turks against him, His end came at the hands of an assassin at some point toward the end of December 1476 or early January 1477.

The actual location of Vlad's burial site is unknown, but a likely spot is the church at the Snogov monastery, an isolated rural monastery built on an island. Excavations there have proved inconclusive. A tomb near the altar thought by many to be Vlad's resting place was empty when opened in the early 1930's. A second tomb near the door, however, contained a body richly garbed and buried with a crown.

Knowledge of the historical Dracula has had a marked influence on both Dracula films and fiction. Two of the more important Dracula films, Dracula (1974) and Bram Stoker's Dracula, the 1992 production attempted to intergrate the historical research on Vlad the Impaler into the story and used it as a rationale to make Dracula's actions more comprehensible.