There is no other ruler in the history of medieval Europe whose life would be overgrown with so many myths as Vlad III, the ruler of a tiny and unknown Wallachia. However, his peculiar methods of governing and reprisals against the recalcitrant earned him a bad reputation even among his contemporaries, accustomed to everything. Much was embellished, much was invented, but Vlad the Impaler, whose biography is very bizarre, remained in the mass consciousness as an ominous vampire count.
Nickname Confusion
The future ruler of Wallachia was born presumably in 1430, the exact date is in doubt. Then he still bore the short name of Vlad III. Impaler - the nickname that he was awarded later. In Romanian, it means "stake", and he was awarded it for a wonderful habit of executing criminals in this way.
At that time his father Vlad II lived in Tighisoara, in Transylvania. His mother was the Moldavian princess Vasilika.
The nickname "Dracula", under which he will becomeknown, the future Tepes inherited from his father. "Dracula" Vlad II was nicknamed due to the fact that he was a member of the Order of the Dragon, founded by the Hungarian monarch Sigismund. Having already become the ruler, he began to actively use the image of the mythical beast on coins, heraldic shields, emblems. After that, he received the nickname Dracula.
Childhood
Until the age of seven, the future Vlad Kolosazhatel, whose family subsequently increased after the birth of another son, Redu, lived with his father, mother and brothers in Tighisoara, in Transylvania. Then Vlad II received the vacated throne of the ruler and moved to Wallachia.
The political situation in the region in those years was very difficult. Little Wallachia in those years was balancing between Catholic Hungary and Muslim Turkey. Vlad II leaned towards Turkey, for which he was imprisoned by the Hungarian ruler Janos Hunyadi.
After a series of military clashes, Vlad II returned to the Wallachian throne with the consent of the Turks, however, to guarantee his loy alty, he was forced to send two of his sons, Vlad and Reda, to the Sultan's court.
Becoming Tepes
So, at the age of 14, Vlad and his brother went to the headquarters of the Turkish Sultan, where he spent several years. According to the chroniclers of those years, he changed a lot during the time spent away from his homeland. Extreme cruelty, emotional imbalance - all this is the result of a forced vacation in the palace of the sultans, where, moreover, he could observe the numerous executions of criminals in a sophisticated way. Maybe it was there that the formation took placesuch a person as Vlad Kolosazhatel. Who he is is now known to almost everyone.
While the son was in the status of a hostage, the father was on the hot throne of the ruler of Wallachia. Dracula's father Vlad II either entered into military alliances with the Hungarians, or moved away from them.
It ended up that Janos Hunyadi in 1446 organized the overthrow of the obstinate vassal. Vlad II was beheaded, and Dracula's older brother Mircea was buried alive.
First coming to power
Vlad the Impaler, having reached the age of majority, decided to avenge the death of his loved ones. With the support of Turkish troops, he entered Wallachia and deposed the Hungarian protégé Vladislav.
An investigation was immediately launched into the causes of the coup that resulted in the execution of his father. In a short time, he brought seven boyars to justice.
However, the thirst for revenge at that time remained unsatisfied. The Hungarian monarch Janos Hunyadi declared Dracula the illegal ruler of Wallachia and in 1448 again organized the overthrow of the prince he objected to.
Wandering through Eastern Europe
The disgraced ruler was forced to leave Wallachia. Vlad the Impaler roamed the yards of various petty princes a lot. He spent several years in Moldova. There he established friendly relations with the viceroy of the Moldavian throne, Stefan. Subsequently, he will help him ascend the throne.
Vlad Dracula the Impaler continued to get on the nerves of the Hungarian monarch, even being in the statusexile and hanger-on in insignificant provinces. Janos Hunyadi sent out angry letters demanding nothing to do with Dracula to all his vassals.
The situation was defused by another war with Turkey. In 1456, Western Europe began to gather a crusade against the Ottomans in order to recapture Constantinople from them. At this time, the Hungarian king is no longer up to petty quarrels with former subjects, and Vlad the Impaler calmly arrives in Transylvania.
Just at this time, the Franciscan monks recruited volunteers for a campaign against Constantinople among the local population. For ideological reasons, they closed the path to their army for adherents of the Orthodox faith. Vlad Tepes, being a believer of the Romanian Orthodox Church, took advantage of this circumstance and invited the outcast soldiers to join his squad and go to Wallachia.
Reign of the Impaler
In 1456, Vlad Dracula once again seizes the Wallachian throne and remains to rule here for six years. Indomitable in his lust for revenge, he resumes his investigation into the deaths of his father and older brother.
Numerous revealed facts of betrayal of local boyars became the reasons for their terrible execution.
Vlad Dracula the Impaler organized a big reception in his palace, where he invited all the doomed nobles. Unsuspecting traitor boyars with a calm soul came to the feast, where the mass extermination of objectionable people took place.
Just in timeThe six-year reign in Wallachia largely formed the demonic image of Vlad the Impaler. During his stay in Turkey, he became addicted to a sophisticated method of execution through impalement and actively used it against enemies.
Becoming the ruler of Wallachia, Dracula took a vassal oath of allegiance to the Hungarian monarch, but this did not prevent him from undertaking numerous raids on Transylvania.
During one of these campaigns, an epic battle took place with the ruler of Brasov, Dan. Having defeated his army, Vlad, without the slightest tenderness, organized the mass executions of captured soldiers. Moreover, at the same time with them, he impaled all the women who accompanied the army. Contemporaries colorfully described these events, adding that Tepes' soldiers tied infants to their mothers during execution.
However, the Middle Ages is a controversial time. Along with stories about the sophisticated cruelty of Dracula, there are also evidence of his wise rule in his land. Numerous parables about Dracula's Solomonic decisions in resolving disputes, about the absence of theft in Wallachia, remained recorded in the ancient Russian literary monument - "The Tale of Dracula the Governor", composed by Fyodor Kuritsyn, deacon of the Russian embassy in Hungary.
War with Turkey
Little Wallachia, under different rulers, leaned either towards Turkey or Hungary. In the end, Vlad the Impaler made his final choice and began fighting against the Ottomans. This was preceded by an internal struggle with the boyars and the strengthening of their absolute power. Vlad armed the peasants, free people andgathered quite a large army.
In 1461, Dracula announced his refusal to pay tribute to the Sultan and slaughtered the entire Turkish administration on the banks of the Danube.
In response, Mehmed II brought a huge 100,000-strong army into the possession of Tepes. I must say that the cruel ruler knew how to fight well. The famous night attack, undertaken by him in June 1462, remained in history. With a small army of only 15,000 men, he de alt a crushing blow to the 100,000-strong armada of the Turks and forced them to retreat. During the fighting, Vlad acted extremely harshly and mercilessly. He sent all the prisoners to the stake, after which the morale of the proud Ottomans began to drop significantly.
Mehmed II was forced to retreat and withdrew his troops from Wallachia. However, the military victory turned into a political defeat for Vlad. Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, decided to isolate the too strong specific ruler and imprisoned Tepes on trumped-up charges of treason.
The Last Years of Dracula
Vlad spent 12 years in prison, but this did not break his indomitable spirit. In 1475, after leaving prison, as if nothing had happened, he went to war as part of the army of the Hungarian king. Being one of the army commanders, he took part in the fighting in Bosnia against the Turks, helped his old friend Stefan the Great to defend Moldova.
It was with the help of the latter that Vlad made another return to Wallachia, where he again took the throne for himself, deposing the Turkish protege Loyota Basarab.
Howeverafter the departure of the Moldavian allies, he had too few loyal people left. Less than a year later, Loyota organized the murder of the indomitable ruler.
Reflection of the Impaler in culture
The mystical image of Count Dracula, very far from reality, was formed almost five hundred years after Vlad's death. At the end of the sixties of the XV century, the work of a certain Michael Beheim was published - "The Tale of the Villain", which colorfully and in detail described the "exploits" and examples of the cruelty of Tepes.
However, until the end of the 19th century, he remained a mere mortal, until the writer Bram Stoker made a brief acquaintance with the history of Eastern Europe.
The phlegmatic Briton was struck by medieval passions, and especially by the colorful image of the Impaler with the no less colorful nickname Dracula. Thanks to Stoker's pen, the Wallachian ruler turned into a gloomy necromancer and a vampire with supernatural powers.
Countless film adaptations have only fixed this image in the mass consciousness, and Count Dracula today bears little resemblance to his real-life prototype.
