Favorite pastime of Count Vlad Tepes. Vlad Tepes - Count Dracula

28.09.2019 -

Vlad III, also known as Vlad the Impaler or simply Dracula, was a legendary voivode-prince of Wallachia. He ruled the principality three times - in 1448, from 1456 to 1462 and in 1476, during the beginning of the period of the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans. Dracula became a popular folklore character in many countries of Eastern Europe due to his bloody battles and the defense of Orthodox Christianity from the Ottoman invasion. And at the same time is one of the most popular and bloody figures in the history of pop culture. The chilling legends about Dracula are known to almost everyone, but what was the real Vlad Tepes.

1. Small homeland

The real historical prototype of Dracula was Vlad III (Vlad the Impaler). He was born in Sighisoara, Transylvania in 1431. Today, a restaurant has been built on his former birthplace, which attracts thousands of tourists from all over the world every year.

2. Order of the Dragon

Dracula's father was called Dracul, which means "dragon". Also according to other sources, he had the nickname "devil". He received a similar name because he belonged to the Order of the Dragon, which fought against the Ottoman Empire.

3. Father was married to the Moldavian princess Vasilisa

Although nothing is known about Dracula's mother, it is assumed that at that time his father was married to the Moldavian princess Vasilisa. However, since Vlad II had several mistresses, no one knows who Dracula's real mother was.

4. Between two fires

Dracula lived in a time of constant war. Transylvania was located on the border of two great empires: the Ottoman and the Austrian Habsburgs. As a young man he was imprisoned, first by the Turks and later by the Hungarians. Dracula's father was killed, and his older brother Mircea was blinded with red-hot iron stakes and buried alive. These two facts greatly contributed to how vile and vicious Vlad became later.

5. Constantine XI Palaiologos

It is believed that the young Dracula spent some time in Constantinople in 1443 at the court of Constantine XI Palaiologos, a legendary figure in Greek folklore and the last emperor of Byzantium. Some historians suggest that it was there that he developed his hatred of the Ottomans.

6. The son and heir of Mikhn is evil

It is believed that Dracula was married twice. His first wife is unknown, although she may have been a Transylvanian noblewoman. She gave birth to Vlad's son and heir, Mikhn the evil. Vlad married a second time after serving his sentence in Hungary. Dracula's second wife was Ilona Siladi, the daughter of a Hungarian nobleman. She bore him two sons, but neither of them became the ruler.

7. Nickname "Tepes"

The nickname "Tepes" in Romanian means "kolschik". It appeared 30 years after Vlad's death. Vlad III earned his nickname "The Impaler" (from the Romanian word țeapă 0 - "stake") as he killed thousands of Turks in a macabre way - by impaling them. He learned about this execution as a teenager, when he was a political hostage of the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople.

8. The worst enemy of the Ottoman Empire

It is believed that Dracula is to blame for the deaths of more than a hundred thousand people (most of them are Turks). This made him the worst enemy of the Ottoman Empire.

9. Twenty thousand rotting corpses frightened the Sultan

In 1462, during the war between the Ottoman Empire and Wallachia, which was ruled by Dracula, Sultan Mehmed II fled with his army, horrified by the sight of twenty thousand rotting corpses of Turks impaled on stakes on the outskirts of the capital of the Principality of Vlad, Targovishte. During one battle, Dracula retreated into the nearby mountains, leaving behind prisoners impaled on stakes. This caused the Turks to stop their pursuit, as the sultan could not bear the stench of decaying corpses.

10. Birth of a legend

The impaled corpses were usually displayed as a warning to others. At the same time, the corpses were white, because the blood flowed completely from the wound on the neck. This is where the legend that Vlad Tepes was a vampire came from.

11 Scorched Earth Tactics

Dracula also became known for the fact that when retreating, he burned villages along the way and killed all the locals. Such atrocities were committed so that the soldiers of the Ottoman army had no place to rest and so that there were no women whom they could rape. In an attempt to clear the streets of the capital of Wallachia, Targovishte, Dracula invited all the sick, vagabonds and beggars to one of his houses under the pretext of a feast. At the end of the feast, Dracula left the house, locked it outside and set it on fire.

12. The head of Dracula went to the Sultan

In 1476, 45-year-old Vlad was eventually captured and beheaded during a Turkish invasion. His head was brought to the Sultan, who put it on public display on the fence of his palace.

13. The remains of Dracula

It is believed that archaeologists who were looking for Snagov (a commune near Bucharest) in 1931 found the remains of Dracula. The remains were transferred to the historical museum in Bucharest, but they later disappeared without a trace, leaving the secrets of the real Prince Dracula unanswered.

14 Dracula Was Very Religious

Despite his cruelty, Dracula was very religious and surrounded himself with priests and monks throughout his life. He founded five monasteries, and his family founded more than fifty monasteries in 150 years. He was initially praised by the Vatican for defending Christianity. However, the church subsequently expressed its disapproval of Dracula's cruel methods and ended their relationship with him.

15. Enemy of Turkey and friend of Russia.

In Turkey, Dracula is considered a monstrous and vile ruler who executed his enemies in a painful way, purely for his own pleasure. In Russia, many sources consider his actions justified.

16. Transylvanian subculture

Dracula enjoyed immense popularity in the second half of the twentieth century. More than two hundred films have been made featuring Count Dracula, more than any other historical figure. At the center of this subculture lies the legend of Transylvania, which has become almost synonymous with the land of vampires.

17. Dracula and Ceausescu

Weird sense of humor. | Photo: skachayka-programmi.ga

According to the book Finding Dracula, Vlad had a very strange sense of humor. The book tells how his victims often twitched on the stakes "like frogs". Vlad thought this was funny, and once said of his victims: "Oh, what great grace they show."

20. Fear and the golden bowl

In order to prove how much the inhabitants of the principality feared him, Dracula placed a golden bowl in the middle of the town square in Targovishte. He allowed people to drink from it, but the golden cup had to remain in its place at all times. Surprisingly, during the entire reign of Vlad, the golden cup was never touched, although sixty thousand people lived in the city, most in extreme poverty.

Vlad Tepes or Count Dracula...

There was a governor in the Muntian land, a Christian of the Greek faith, his name in Wallachian is Dracula, and in our opinion - the Devil. He was so cruel and wise that, what was his name, such was his life ...

Fedor Kuritsyn, "The Tale of Dracula Governor"

“Along with great cruelty, Vlad Dracula possessed great valor. Such was his courage that in 1462 he crossed the Danuba and made a horse raid at night on the camp of Sultan Mehmed II himself with an army about to invade Wallachia ... Dracula defeated several thousand Turkish soldiers, and the Sultan himself almost lost his life ... The glory of Dracula survived his mysterious death and strange funeral in 1476 and faded, it seems, only in the rays of the European Enlightenment. (Gelling. "History of Central Europe")

For nearly six centuries, Vlad the Impaler has been shadowed by the sinister shadow of his intimidating reputation. It seems that we are talking about actually a fiend of hell. A bloodthirsty vampire, "horror flying on the wings of the night", a despot impaling for the slightest offense, and so on and so forth. Vlad Tepes has turned into a monster in the mass consciousness, which has never been equal.

Or maybe it was a figure common for that era, of course, possessing outstanding personal qualities, among which demonstrative cruelty occupied by no means the last place? Horror films are made about Dracula and blood-curdling books are written. There are still disputes about the personality of the Wallachian ruler, regular attempts are being made to find out the relationship between myth and reality, truth and fiction in the descriptions of this person. However, when trying to understand the events that are almost six centuries away from us, sometimes unconsciously, and sometimes intentionally, new myths are created around the image of this person.

So what was he really like and why was he chosen to be the “main vampire” of history? Who was the one who for millions of readers and moviegoers became the embodiment of vampirism? At home, in Romania, he is usually considered the champion of "cruel justice", the savior and defender of the fatherland. One of the researchers formulated this strange antithesis as follows: "The notorious Dracula, a Wallachian sadist and patriot."

But ambiguities begin immediately, as soon as we try to reproduce the full name, title and nickname of our hero. Some sources confidently call the Wallachian ruler Vlad III, while others - no less confidently - Vlad IV. And we are not talking about father and son (the serial number of the father, also Vlad, varies accordingly), but about the same person. Of course, given the antiquity of years, such discrepancies are not surprising ... But, on the other hand, no one gets confused in the numbers of much more numerous Louis!

The year of his birth, let alone the date, is not exactly known. Vlad the Impaler Dracula was most likely born in 1430 or 1431 (some even say 1428 or 1429), when his father, Vlad Dracul, a pretender to the Wallachian throne supported by the emperor of the "Holy Roman Empire" Sigismund of Luxembourg, was in Sighisoara, a Transylvanian city near the border with Wallachia.

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 just a coincidence, but rather an attempt to invent such a coincidence. There are a lot of such fictional, and sometimes real coincidences in the biography of Vlad Tepes. They should be treated with great care.
The father of Vlad III, the ruler of Wallachia Vlad II (or, according to some documents, still III), being in his youth at the court of the German emperor, really joined the Order of the Dragon, we accept the order was exceptionally respectable - its members were obliged to imitate St. George in his indomitable struggle against evil spirits, which was then associated with the hordes of the Turks, crawling into Europe from the southeast.

It was thanks to his entry into the Order of the Dragon that Tepes' father received the nickname Dracul (Dragon), which later passed by inheritance to his son. So called not only Vlad, but also his brothers Mircho and Radu. Therefore, it is not clear whether such a name was associated with the idea of evil spirits, or even rather the other way around. As a constant reminder of this vow, the knights wore the image of a dragon killed by George and hanging with outstretched wings and a broken back on the cross. But Vlad II obviously overdid it: he not only appeared with the sign of the order in front of his subjects, but also minted the dragon on his coins, even depicted churches under construction on the walls. In the eyes of the people, he, exactly the opposite, became a dragon worshiper and therefore acquired the nickname Vlad Dracul (Dragon). The author of the Russian “Tale of Dracula the Governor” writes directly: “in the name of Dracula in the Vlashesky language, and in ours - the Devil. Toliko is wicked, as by his name, so is his life.

It is known that this nickname was used by foreign rulers in the official title of Tepes when he was the ruler of Wallachia. 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 (Tepesh, Tepes or Tepez - Romanian transcription allows options), which has such a terrible meaning (in Romanian "Impaler", "Piercer", "Impaler"), was not known during his lifetime. Most likely, it was used by the Turks even before his death. 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. There is also a portrait preserved in the Tyrolean castle of Ambras. Of course, Dracula was hardly exactly the way the medieval artist portrayed him. Contemporaries admitted that Vlad, unlike his brother Radu, nicknamed the Handsome, did not shine with beauty at all. But he was a physically very strong man, an excellent rider and swimmer.

But whether he was a pathological sadist or an uncompromising hero who had no right to pity - opinions differed then and continue to diverge now. First, let's look at history. The Principality of Wallachia in those days was that very small state, which, as the wise Lord Bolingbroke noted from The Glass of Water, gets any chances if two large ones claim its territory at once. In this case, the interests of Catholic Hungary, advancing on Orthodoxy, and the Muslim Porte, claiming world domination, converged on Wallachia. Wallachia was an area sandwiched between Turkish possessions from the south (especially after 1453, when Byzantium crushed by the Turks fell) and Hungary from the north.

In addition, wealthy Transylvania (or Semigradje), which belonged to Hungary, was hiding behind small Wallachia, where handicrafts developed rapidly, a branch of the Great Silk Road passed, and self-governing cities founded by the Saxons grew. Semigrad merchants were interested in the peaceful coexistence of Wallachia with the aggressor Turks. Transylvania was a kind of buffer territory between the Hungarian and Wallachian lands.
The peculiarity of the geopolitical position of Wallachia, as well as religious specificity (the confession of Orthodoxy by the people and sovereigns) contrasted it with both Muslim Turkey and the Catholic West. This led to the extreme inconsistency of military policy. The rulers either went along with the Hungarians against the Turks, or let the Turkish armies into Hungarian Transylvania. The Wallachian rulers more or less successfully used the struggle of the superpowers for their own purposes, gaining the support of one of them in order to overthrow the protégé of the other with the next palace coup. It was in this way that Vlad Sr. (father) ascended the throne, with the help of the Hungarian king, overthrowing his cousin. However, Turkish pressure increased, and the alliance with Hungary did little. Vlad the elder recognized the vassal dependence of Wallachia on the Porte.

Such coexistence was achieved according to the scenario traditional for that time: the princes sent their sons to the court of the Turkish Sultan as hostages, who were treated well, but in the event of a rebellion in a vassal state, they were immediately executed. The sons of the Wallachian ruler became such a guarantor of obedience: Radu the Handsome and Vlad, who would earn his far from innocent nickname later. Meanwhile, Vlad Sr. continued to maneuver between two fires, but in the end he was killed, along with his son Mircho, either by the Hungarians, or by his own boyars.

In addition, speaking of the horrors that are inextricably linked with the name of Dracula, one should remember the state of the country and the system of power that existed there. Sovereigns were elected to the throne from the same clan, but the choice was not determined by any specific principles of succession to the throne. Everything was decided exclusively by the alignment of forces in the circles of the Wallachian boyars. Since any of the members of the dynasty could have many both legitimate and illegitimate children, any of whom became a contender for the throne (it would have been one of the boyars to put him on it!), The consequence of this was a fantastic leapfrog of rulers. A "normal" transfer of power from father to son was rare. It is clear that when the presumptuous ruler sought to consolidate his powers, terror was put on the agenda, and both the relatives of the ruler and the all-powerful boyars turned out to be its object.

Terrorist, so to speak, reigns were both before and after Vlad III. Why, then, did what happened under him enter into oral traditions and literature as having surpassed everything conceivable and unthinkable, having gone beyond the limits of the most cruel expediency? The deeds of this ruler, widely disseminated in the written works of the 15th century, really chill the blood.

The very life of Vlad (in the Romanian legends, he is also the commander Tepes) seems to be an incessant transition from one extreme situation to another. At the age of thirteen, he is present at the defeat of the Wallachian, Hungarian and Slavonian troops by the Turks in the battle of Varna, then - the years of his stay in Turkey as a hostage issued by his father (then he learned the Turkish language). At the age of seventeen, Vlad learns about the murder of his father and older brother by the boyars from the "Hungarian" party. The Turks free him and put him on the throne.

From Turkish captivity, Vlad returned to his homeland a complete pessimist, a fatalist, and with the full conviction that the only driving forces of politics are the force or the threat of its application. He did not last long on the throne for the first time: the Hungarians threw off the Turkish protege and put their own on the throne. Vlad was forced to seek asylum from the allies in Moldova. However, four more years pass, and during the next (already Moldovan) turmoil, the ruler of this country, a supporter of Vlad, who hospitably received him in Moldova, perishes. A new escape - this time to the Hungarians, the true culprits of the death of Dracula's father and brother, and four years of stay in Transylvania, at the Wallachian borders, greedy waiting in the wings.

In 1456, the situation finally developed favorably for the fugitive ruler. Once again, Dracula takes the throne with the help of the Wallachian boyars and the Hungarian king, dissatisfied with his previous protégé. Thus began the reign of Vlad Tepes in Wallachia, during which he became the hero of legends and performed most of his deeds, which still cause the most controversial assessments.

In the fourth year of his reign, Dracula immediately stops paying tribute to the Turks and gets involved in a bloody and unequal war with the Sultan's Porte. For the successful conduct of any war, and even more so with such a formidable opponent, it was necessary to strengthen their power and restore order in their own state. Tepes set about implementing this program in his usual style.

The first thing that, according to the historical chronicle, Vlad did, having established himself in the then capital of Wallachia, the city of Targovishte, was to find out the circumstances of the death of his brother Mircho and punish the guilty. He ordered to open the grave of his brother and made sure that, firstly, he was blinded, and secondly, he turned over in his coffin, which proved the fact of being buried alive. According to the chronicle, Easter was just being celebrated in the city and all the inhabitants dressed up in the best clothes. Seeing malicious hypocrisy in such behavior, Tepes ordered that all the inhabitants be put in chains and sent to hard labor to restore one of the castles intended for him. There they had to work until the ceremonial clothes turned into tatters.

The story sounds psychologically quite reliable, and the document in which it is contained seems to be trustworthy. This is not a pamphlet written by Vlad's enemies, but a solid work compiled by an impassive chronicler, and almost simultaneously with the events taking place.

However, let us ask ourselves the question: is it possible to believe this story described in the chronicle? Power in Wallachia was seized by Vlad on August 22, 1456, after the massacre of a rival, whose death occurred on August 20. What does Easter have to do with it, because it was going towards autumn? More plausible is the assumption that these events refer to the first accession of Vlad to the throne in 1448, immediately after the death of his brother. However, then he ruled for only two autumn months - from October to early December, that is, there could not be any Easter holiday either. It turns out that we are dealing with a legend that somehow distorted reality and linked together different incidents that were initially unrelated to each other. Although, perhaps, some of the details that fell into the chronicle correspond to reality. For example, the episode with the opening of Mircho's grave. Such an event could actually happen, and as early as 1448, when Tepes became ruler for the first time.

What is certainly confirmed by the mentioned chronicle is the fact that the legends about the reign of Vlad Tepes began to take shape almost immediately with the beginning of this reign. By the way, although all these stories contained a description of the various cruelties committed by Vlad, their general tone was rather enthusiastic. They all agreed that Tepes quickly brought order to the country and achieved its prosperity. However, the means that he used in this case are far from being so unanimously enthusiastic in our time.

Since the second accession of Dracula, something unimaginable has been happening in the country. By the beginning of his reign, there were about 500 thousand people under his rule (including those adjacent to Wallachia and controlled areas of Transylvania). For six years (1456-1462), not counting the victims of the war, over 100 thousand were destroyed by Dracula's personal order. Is it possible that a ruler, even a medieval one, would destroy a fifth of his subjects like this for a great life? Even if in some cases it is possible to try to bring terror to some rational basis (intimidation of the opposition, toughening discipline, etc.), the numbers still raise new questions.

The origin of the legends about Dracula requires explanation. Firstly, the activities of Vlad Tepes were depicted in a dozen books - first handwritten, and after the invention made by Gutenberg and printed, created mainly in Germany and in some other European countries. All of them are similar, so, apparently, they rely on some one common source. The most important sources in this case are the poem by M. Beheim (a German who lived at the court of the Hungarian king Matthias Korvin in the 1460s), as well as German pamphlets distributed under the title “On a Great Monster” at the end of the same century.

Another group of collections of legends is represented by manuscripts in Russian. They are close to each other, similar to the German books, but in some ways they differ from them. This is an old Russian story about Dracula, written in the 1480s, after the Russian embassy of Ivan III visited Wallachia.

There is also a third source - oral traditions that still exist in Romania - both directly recorded among the people and processed by the famous storyteller P. Ispirescu in the 19th century. They are colorful, but controversial as a support for the search for truth. The fairy-tale element that has accumulated in them over several centuries of oral transmission is too great.
The source to which the German manuscripts go back is clearly written by the enemies of Tepes and depicts him and his activities in the most black colors. With Russian documents it is more difficult. Without abandoning the depiction of Vlad's cruelties, they try to find more noble explanations for them and put emphasis in such a way that the same actions look more logical and not so gloomy in the proposed circumstances.

Here are some of the stories written by an unknown German author:

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 convenes them, feeds them to their heart's content and addresses the question: “Do they not 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 this document is that Dracula liked to have 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, Tepes ordered to cut out the genitals of unfaithful wives and widows who violate the rules of chastity and rip off their skin, exposing their bodies to the point of decomposition of the body and eating it by birds, or do the same, but first pierce them with a poker from the crotch to 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.

Once Italian ambassadors came to Tepes (option - Turkish). They took off their hats, and under their hats they have little caps. And they had a custom: they should not take off these hats (turban) in front of anyone, even in front of their emperor (sultan?). And Tepes ordered his people to nail the hats (turban) to the ambassadors directly to their heads.
At that time, cucumbers were grown as a delicacy and one day the head gardener missed a few pieces. Everyone who had anything to do with the garden was summoned to Vlad and, on his orders, the executioner began to rip their bellies open. On the fifth person, he stopped because he found the remains of cucumbers. The culprit was immediately beheaded, while others were allowed to survive.

Chronological table of the biography of Vlad III Dracula-Tepes

	EVENT
1431	the birth of Vlad III Dracula-Tepes, the father of Tepes - Vlad II Dracul enters the Order of the Dragon, founded in 1387 by the Hungarian king Sigismund of Luxembourg.
1436	Vlad II Dracul ascends the throne of Wallachia. Presumably, in the same year - the birth of Radu cel Furmos (sometimes transcribed as "Furmosh" - "The most beautiful")
1437-1438	Vlad II Dracul enters into a forced alliance with Mohammed II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Wallachia acquires the status of "mumtaz eyyaleti" - a privileged province within the Ottoman Empire
1438	the Ottoman army, which includes Serbian troops, makes a predatory campaign in Wallachia. Vlad II Dracul is forced to accompany them.
1442	the sultan, doubting the loyalty of Vlad II Dracul, accompanied by Vlad III Dracula the Impaler and Radu cel Furmos to Adrianople.
1443	Vlad II Dracul leaves Adrianople, leaving Rada and Vlad as hostages, who are transferred to the Egriguez fortress a few months later.
1444	through the fault of Vladislav I, king of the Hungarians, Bohemians and Croatians, the Battle of Varna (Varna Crusade) was lost. The death of Vladislav I. Janos Hunyadi Korvin flees from the battlefield. Almost immediately follows his arrest by Vlad II Dracul.
1445	a new campaign in South Wallachia led by Vlad II Dracul. Wallachia regains the Danube fortresses conquered by the Turks. Ladislaus V ascends the throne of Hungary, Postumus
1445-1447	Janos Hunyadi Corvin goes free, in a difficult political struggle he achieves the title of regent of Hungary under the juvenile Ladislav Postum.
1448 (summer)	by direct order Janos Hunyadi Corvina Vlad II Dracul executed
1448 (October)	Mohammed II releases Vlad III Dracula the Impaler to freedom so that he takes the throne of Wallachia. Radu cel Furmos remains hostage. The battle of Kosovo is lost.
1448 (December)	Janos Hunyadi Korvin returns to Wallachia, deposes Vlad III Dracula on the Wallachian throne, returns to Hungary, leaving Vladislav Daneshti II as governor. Vlad III Dracula-Tepes flees to Moldova under the auspices of Bogdan Moldavsky, where he meets Stefan than Mare.
1449-1451	Vlad III Dracula Tepes takes part in the military operations of Moldova against Poland
1451	the death of Bogdan Moldavsky, Vlad III Dracula-Tepes and Stefan than Mare move to Transylvania under the protection Janos Hunyadi Corvina
1453	the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, the fall of the Byzantine Empire.
1456 (July 21-22)	Vlad III Dracula the Impaler, along with Janos Hunyadi, takes part in the Battle of Belgrade, in which the Ottoman army is defeated, which stops the advance of the Turks to the west.
1456 (8 (?) August)	death from the plague of Janos, the Hungarian throne passes to Ladislav Postum.
1456 (20 August)	death of Vladislav II Daneshti at the hands of Vlad III Dracula the Impaler.
1456 (22 August)	the Wallachian throne, with the support of Ladislaus Postum, passes to Vlad III Dracula the Impaler.
1456-1457	Vlad III Dracula-Tepes seizes Transylvania, begins repressions against Transylvanian merchants-colonists.
1457	Vlad III Dracula-Tepes helps Stefan than Mare take the throne of Moldova.
1457	The throne of Hungary passes to Matthias Hunyadi Corvinus, who receives a large amount from the pope to organize a crusade.
1457-1459	Vlad gradually stops paying tribute to the Sultan, local clashes with the beys are increasingly breaking out on the borders of Wallachia. However, the formal vassalage of Wallachia in relation to the Ottoman Empire still remains.
1460	Muhammad demands tribute. Vlad responds. The Sultan increases the amount of tribute.
1461 (winter)	Muhammad invites Vlad III Dracula the Impaler to negotiate border issues in one of the southern Wallachian fortresses - Giurgiu. Vlad refuses, offering a meeting on a neutral, open territory, the Turks agree. Yunus Bey is sent for negotiations, military support is provided by the commandant of the Nikopol fortress, Hamza Pasha, with a 4,000-strong army. Not a single person returns from the negotiations to Turkey - having surrounded the Turks, Vlad III Dracula-Tepes with a 3,000-strong army defeats them.
1461 (winter-spring)	blitzkrieg on the border fortresses captured by the Turks. Vlad III Dracula-Tepes, among others, captures such large, strategically important objects as Novigrad, Turtukay. General number killed according to the results of the blitzkrieg: Giurgiu - 6414, Novigrad - 384, Turtukay - 630. Total: 23809. Of those killed, half were Ottomans, half were Albanians.
1461 (summer(?))	Vlad III Dracula-Tepes marries cousin Matthias Corvin (various options - Lydia, Matilda, Elena).
1462 (spring)	Muhammad sends a punitive expedition of 30,000 men led by Mahmud Pasha. Of these, 12 thousand remain in the border fortresses, the rest cross the Danube and begin a predatory campaign. When the Ottoman army returns from the raid, Vlad III Dracula-Tepes strikes with the forces of his personal army, killing 10 thousand Turks, freeing the captured garrisons and prisoners.
1462 (summer)	Mohammed with 250,000 army is sent on a punitive expedition. He is accompanied by Radu cel Furmos. Vlad III Dracula-Tepes announces general mobilization. Of the allies, only Stefan cel Mare and Matthias Corvin respond. Wallachians use scorched earth tactics. The transportation of products for the Ottoman army along the Danube is blocked by the Kiliya fortress, which formally belongs to Matthias Korvin. The ratio of forces: 32 thousand (of which 7 thousand are a personal army) - Vlad III Dracula-Tepes, 250 thousand - Mohammed. The flying detachment of Vlad III Dracula-Tepes, gradually exhausting the enemy, inflicts point strikes by the Ottomans.
1462 (17 June)	the famous "night attack" of Tepes: the invasion of the personal army of Vlad III Dracula into the camp of the Ottomans on the outskirts of Targovishte. Result: 30 (35?) thousand Ottomans were killed, the sultan miraculously survives; from Vlad III Dracula-Tepes - 1 thousand captured, Vlad was slightly wounded in the head.
1462 (late June)	the army of the Ottomans goes to Targovishte, where they come across a forest of stakes with "missing" Turks, among them - Hamza Pasha, Yunus Bey. The Sultan turns the army back: on the borders with Hungary, the army of Matthias is on duty, the fleet of Stefan cel Mare approaches Chilia, finally cutting off the possibility of delivering products. Vlad III Dracula Tepes sends a detachment to Chilia (the fortress belongs to Hungary, and Stefan represents Poland), Stefan retreats. After that, Vlad III Dracula-Tepes strikes another blow at the outgoing Ottoman army, breaks the vanguard, but, having collided with the main forces, retreats. Departing, Mohammed leaves Rada behind the Danube.
1461 (presumably)	the birth of Mihni (Michal) cel Reu (another version of the transcription "chel Rau" - "Evil") - the eldest son of Vlad.
1462 (autumn-winter	The Wallachian boyars form an alliance with Radu against Vlad III Dracula the Impaler. Radu is gradually pushing Vlad to the north. After the betrayal of the boyars, Vlad is forced to retreat to Transylvania, where he arranges a meeting with Matthias Corvinus, who still holds an army on the borders. Negotiations took place, however, on the way back to Mutenia, Vlad, on the personal orders of Matthias Korvin, was captured by the Czech mercenary Jan Zhiskra. Before the European anti-Turkish coalition, Matthias is justified by false letters in which Vlad III Dracula-Tepes allegedly promises the Sultan his help in capturing Hungary and Transylvania. The throne of Wallachia is occupied by Radu cel Furmos.
1463	Vlad is imprisoned in the fortress of Pest.
1464	Vlad III Dracula the Impaler is transferred to the Vyshegrad fortress.
1464-1475 (according to some sources: 1464-1468)	Vlad III Dracula-Tepes spends in captivity in Visegrad, in the tower of Solomon, along with his wife. In the fortress, two of his sons are born: Vlad and another (the name is not known, presumably Mircea).
1475 (according to some sources - 1468)	Vlad III Dracula-Tepes was transferred under house arrest to Pest, where the severity of supervision over the captive is gradually reduced, to the point that the latter is allowed to the Hungarian court, he is allowed to carry weapons within the house and meet with foreign ambassadors.
1475	the throne of Wallachia is occupied by Lajos (Layota) Bessarab (Bessarab Batrin?)
1475 (January)	Vlad was released at the insistence of Stefan cel Mare. Vlad III Dracula-Tepes again joins the anti-Turkish struggle. Under his command, the Hungarian troops took the fortress of Šabac in Serbia.
1475 (winter-spring)	Vlad III Dracula-Tepes, together with Stefan Bathory (Batory), is fighting in Serbia. More and more supporters of Vlad III Dracula-Tepes appear, supporting his right to the Wallachian throne. Matthias Korvin equally supports Vlad III Dracula the Impaler and the second contender - Lajos (Laitoy) Bessarab.
1476 (summer-autumn)	The Sultan makes an attempt to march against Hungary. Vlad III Dracula the Impaler and Stefan Bathory lead the Hungarian-Wallachian army. Stefan cel Mare joins them. The Turkish army was partially defeated by the combined forces.
1476 (November 26)	Vlad III Dracula-Tepes, with the support of Stefan cel Mare, defeats Lajos Bessarab and wins the Wallachian throne for the third time. Stefan cel Mare returns to Moldova, leaving Vlad a detachment of 200 people for personal protection.
1476 (December)	Vlad III Dracula-Tepes continues military operations on his own and pushes the Turks to the south
1477 (January)	Vlad III Dracula the Impaler dies in battle

Who would have thought that a cruel tyrant could have any feelings for opposite sex. His personal life is shrouded in myths and dark secrets. Like the version that Count Dracula was a vampire, his love affairs remain a controversial issue.

However, there are many legends about the relationship of Tepes with girls. One of which says that Vlad had a mistress, who also could not escape the cruelty of her lover. One day, the girl, finding her count in a bad mood, decided to please him by saying that she was expecting a baby. Dracula did not believe her and, moreover, accusing her of lying, ripped open her stomach with a dagger.

But, nevertheless, there is another legend that tells that Count Dracula still had strong feelings for a female representative. It happened when Vlad Tepes was still very young. Once, in Hungary, he met a runaway Romanian boyar and met his daughter Lydia. The count managed to dissuade the girl from the desire to go to the monastery and took her as his wife. But it was precisely this love and passion for Lydia that became the most painful test in Dracula's life. The legend says that the girl, believing the false denunciation that her count died in battle with the Turks, threw herself from the tower.

Everything we know about Dracula comes from his opponents. And everyone carefully uses their testimonies, point-blank not seeing documents with the opposite sign of dirty tricks (for example, the poem "Gypsyada" by J. Budai-Delyan of the late XVIII - early XIX centuries, telling about how Dracula fought the vampires; or the legend of his meeting with God, from whom he tried to find out the location of his father's grave in order to erect a temple on this place; or, finally, letters signed by Dracula's hand). And in the latter, by the way, he: a) gave land to the peasants, b) granted privileges to monasteries, c) defended the observance of church burial rites for executed criminals (which means that he certainly could not impale Christians); d) founded churches and monasteries, as well as Bucharest itself.

Everyone is persistently looking for materials about Dracula in Turkey, England, France, i.e. exclusively from his opponents, but this fact does not bother her. This number includes:

"The Tale of Dracula" (16th century), where he is called the one who sold his soul to the devil, without mentioning, however, that he drank human blood;
Turkish chronicles, sparing no colors to describe the cruelty and courage of the "Kazykly" (Impaler) that terrified the enemies,
a novel by Bram Stoker, who was a member of the Golden Dawn occult order (he practiced black magic);
"memories" of the Hungarian king Matthias Korvin, who twice betrayed Dracula;
a lot of first-printed brochures under the title "On a Great Monster" replicated at his behest.

The main source was presented by Corwin in 1462, during Dracula's stay in prison, an anonymous denunciation, which reported on the bloody adventures of the "great monster": tens of thousands of tortured civilians, burned alive beggars, impaled monks and how Dracula ordered caps to be nailed to the heads of foreign ambassadors. From what dusty closets the king extracted it, it remains unclear. But the denunciation helped him a lot to keep the stubborn vassal in prison for several more months, until the new pontiff Sixtus IV intervened: Vlad, famous for his courage and incorruptibility, he needed to organize a new crusade against the Turks.

It was this document that formed the basis of numerous pamphlets and legends about Dracula, which some authors quote with voluptuousness: “In the year from the birth of our Lord 1456, Dracula did things terrifying and amazing. Appointed ruler of Wallachia, he ordered to burn four hundred young men who arrived in his lands in order to learn the language. At his command, a large family was put on stakes, and he ordered many of his subjects to be dug into the ground to the navel and then shot at. Others were fried and skinned” (texts of the Nuremberg pamphlets).
Surprisingly, besides this denunciation, there is no other evidence of the massacres of civilians in Transylvania in the 50s of the 15th century.

But let us leave on the conscience of historians the vicissitudes of ancient years. In the end, if there were no Romanian chronicles and documents left, archaeologists could dig in the ground. After all, it is impossible to imagine that the destruction of tens of thousands of people over the course of several years, strangely not noticed by the Europeans and therefore not reflected in their chronicles and diplomatic correspondence, did not leave any material traces, that is, bones (the victims were not fashioned from jelly) !

And we will try to think about what the prince annoyed European historians at a time when, according to Lord Helling, “terrible cruelty was a very common feature of the nobility”? To begin with, let's remember that in the 15th century, inquisitorial bonfires were blazing with might and main, wars were more common than arable farming, which is why hunger knocked on the gates of European cities more than once. Crusaders of various stripes did not give up their attempts to forcefully convert "infidels" into their faith (or rather, slavery).

Well, impaling Turks, Poles, Bulgarians on a stake was a more common activity than planting kids on a pot.
Logically, the sovereign of a small mountainous country, even if he had exorbitant cruelty, was very limited in funds - and there were not enough subjects, and it was easier to hide among the forests, and the fight against the Turks absorbed all the forces and resources - where else to try yourself?

The absence of court scribes called to praise their ruler, which every self-respecting pimple had, of course, was a big blunder of the prince. And the enemies tried to take advantage of it. And not far off descendants, on the basis of enemy slander, created a chilling picture: in the very center of Europe, secretly from the European sovereigns (so that they never found out about anything), but clearly for the Turks, the semi-legitimate Prince Vlad, who twice regained himself and lost the throne , brought down the people by tens of thousands of people a year only because his soul demanded it.

At first, Dracula was called a vampire fighter, because of his joint struggle with the Roman emperor Sigismund Luxembourg against the Hussites, on whose white banner the chalice of the Eucharist was depicted, full of blood. Most lay people, far from the subtleties of theological conflicts, understood the Hussist symbol literally - as black magic. When Vlad, in order to get out of the Hungarian dungeon, was forced to change his faith to the Catholic, in the eyes of the population he automatically moved to the opposite camp - that is, those very Czech vampires that he had previously fought.

Religious apostasy in Romanian folklore has always meant selling one's soul to the devil. Communion in this case became the offering of the devil to his faithful servant in the form of human blood. Therefore, immediately after the change of faith, the first legends about Dracula as a vampire developed. And when he died (at the beginning of 1477), he was killed in accordance with the rituals recommended against vampires - they pierced the chest with a spear and cut off his head, which was sent to Istanbul, where it was exhibited in the city center for public viewing. The body was buried in a monastery located in the family domain of Vlad. When archaeologists opened the tomb centuries later, they found nothing but rubbish and donkey bones. But in another tomb, nearby, were the remains of a decapitated man.
Naturally, the creators of the myths about the Wallachian prince have other explanations in their arsenal.

According to another version, Dracula learns about some oriental method that guarantees life after death, and provides himself with a lair in advance. This method, as old as the world, suggested that in order to maintain the body in a state of non-dying, you need to drink fresh blood, and spend your days in a special crypt.

According to Stoker's version, Dracula received his distinctiveness as part of the Secret Knowledge in a certain "Sholomanch" (Solomon's school), where the devil himself was the mentor, who once every hundred years "chooses a student for himself and puts him on the Dragon."

So Vlad the Impaler became a mystical creature who slept during the day in a coffin hidden under the old church, committed murders at night, granting eternal life to the elect as vampires, and along the way accumulated knowledge, subsequently counting on a real resurrection in the flesh.

Certainly the prince was seriously suffering from one of the blood diseases. In royal dynasties that entered into marriages between a narrow circle of related persons, such genetic disorders were not unusual. Their frequency in the countries of the European southwest, bordered by mountains and Turks, was even higher. Hence the irritability characteristic of the prince and the frightening strangeness of his appearance. It is not surprising that the fear of falling into a lethargic sleep at any moment forced him to build a special tomb for himself, from which one could easily get out and at the same time rather disguised.

Fearing his imaginary death, the Sultan ordered to cut off the head of the prostrate. As for the unnatural bulge of huge eyes, it could indicate some kind of endocrine disease. It is possible that these diseases developed in Dracula after the Turkish captivity and the subsequent 10-year stay in the Hungarian dungeon. In a word, the riddles in his case are a wagon and a small cart.

The death of Vlad Dracula at the end of 1476 is shrouded in mystery. There are several versions of the tragedy: according to one of them, the prince was “by mistake” killed by his own soldiers during the battle with the Turks, according to another, the killers were people sent by Basarab Layota. But what really happened? The key to solving the crime lies in the very grave of Dracula, located in front of the altar of the monastery church of Snagov. When we see this grave, the question arises how a Catholic could be buried in Orthodox church, and even so place of honor at the royal doors? The explanation of this seemingly contradictory fact will allow us to reconstruct the circumstances of Dracula's death.

It is known that Vlad was killed not far from Bucharest in a forest near Lake Snagov. In winter, the monastery located on the island becomes practically inaccessible and only very important reasons could induce the prince to go there at the end of December 1476. Recall that the main condition for the release of Dracula from the Hungarian dungeons was a change of faith, otherwise he would face death in prison. The prince was forced to convert to Catholicism, but at the first opportunity he hastened to return to the bosom of the Orthodox Church. It can be assumed that Dracula fell into a death trap set up by Layota and the Turks, returning from the monastery after re-baptism.

Vlad Dracula is dead. He was supposed to go down in history as an implacable fighter against the Ottoman invaders, a defender of his people and the Orthodox Church, but the bad rumor gradually turned him into a bloodthirsty monster. After the death of Dracula, Matthias did not stop discrediting him, and the advent of printing made his task much easier. By the end of the 15th century, a lot of the same type of German pamphlets "On a Great Monster" appeared, retelling the content of the infamous denunciation of 1462, which we have already talked about earlier.

But this posthumous blow was not the last. Four centuries after the death of Dracula, in 1897, a novel by Bram Stoker was published, on the pages of which Vlad appeared as a disgusting vampire cursed by God and people. What prompted the author of the mystical novelist Stoker, who did not enjoy much success, to make Dracula the hero of his work? His choice was not accidental. "Turn" the prince of Wallachia into a vampire Stoker was advised by a professor at the University of Budapest Arminius Vamberi, known not only as a scientist, but also as an ardent Hungarian nationalist. The campaign to denigrate Dracula, started by King Matthias, continued...

For those who know Stoker's work based on the film version of F. Coppola, the novel may seem overlong and boring, and the role of the most bloodthirsty count is secondary. The book was not a huge success. The opinion of critics was unanimous: another gothic horror story. But it was what they call a time bomb that exploded when it caught the eye of director Francis Ford Coppola. She really penetrated him, and he squeezed everything he could out of the mystical story. The character created by the novelist does not at all resemble the real Dracula, however, some very small fragments of the novel suggest that Stoker knew the prince's biography very well. "Later, when I had to atone for the great shame of my people - the shame of Kosovo - when the banners of the Vlachs and the Magyars disappeared behind the crescent, who, if not one of my ancestors, crossed the Danube and defeated the Turks on their land? That was really Dracula! What a grief, when his unworthy sibling sold his people into slavery to the Turks, branding them with eternal disgrace," the earl told the story of his kind to Jonathan Harker.

After reading these lines from the novel, the question arises why Stoker, who knew very well that Dracula devoted his whole life to protecting the Christian church and fighting the Ottoman Empire, endowed the hero of his novel with demonic features? Why was Bram Stoker's Dracula afraid of the cross and cursed by God? What is it: an unsuccessful fantasy of the author or a deliberate distortion of facts?

Bram Stoker knew about vampires not only from folklore sources - this topic was well known to him in real life. Stoker was a member of the "Golden Dawn" - an occult organization created specifically for practicing black magic, in particular, practicing rituals associated with the use of human blood. Suffice it to say that the Golden Dawn at one time included such an ominous figure as Aleister Crowley, who called himself the "beast 666", and the head of the order and his wife were accused of real vampirism - the couple tried to drink the blood of a gullible neophyte who wanted to join secrets of the Golden Dawn.

The evil irony is this: we are judging a fearless knight who dedicated his life to defending the Christian church based on a novel created by a man who was engaged in black magic and the occult. In the minds of millions of our contemporaries, Vlad Dracula became a vampire, and this opinion cannot be changed, no matter what facts are given to justify it. Such is life, and Dracula is just one of an endless series of heroes slandered and betrayed by ungrateful descendants.

Your Majesty! In previous letters, I informed Your Majesty how the Turks, the most ardent enemies of Christianity, sent important envoys to us with a proposal to break the peace and break the friendly ties concluded between us and Your Majesty, cancel the wedding celebration and join them in order to go to Turkish Port, to the royal court; and if we do not renounce peace, friendly relations and participation in the wedding of Your Majesty, then the Turks will stop peaceful relations with us. Also, they sent a prominent adviser to the Turkish Sultan, namely Hamza Bey from Nikopol, to resolve the issue with the Danube border, because if this Hamza Bey could lead us in any way, whether by cunning, on parole, or otherwise deceitful way to Porto, it would be good, and if he could not, then he would find a way to find us and deliver us captured.

But, by the grace of God, while we were heading to that border, I learned about their cunning and treachery, and we were the ones who laid a hand on this Hamza Bey, in Turkish possessions, near the fortress called Giurgiu. When the Turks opened the fortress at the request of our people, expecting their people to come in, ours - mixed with theirs - entered the fortress and captured it, after which they set it on fire<…>

... Your Majesty, know that this time we did it to the detriment of them, who all encouraged us with their efforts to abandon Christianity and join their faith. So know, Your Majesty, that we have terminated peaceful relations with them not for the sake of some own benefit, but for the sake of Your Majesty, the holy crown of Your Majesty, the preservation of the entire Christian world and the strengthening of Catholicism.

Seeing what we had done, they left all the quarrels and claims they had hitherto - both in regard to the possessions and the holy crown of Your Majesty, and in all other places - and turned all their fury against us. With the onset of spring, when the weather clears up, they hatch hostile plans to pounce on us with all their might. But, they do not have the means of crossing, since all the crossings on the Danube, except for the one near Vidin, I ordered to devastate, burn and destroy. At the Vidin crossing, they know that they cannot bring us significant harm, and therefore they intend to bring ships from Constantinople and Gallipoli by sea, directly to the Danube.

Thus, Gracious Sovereign, if it is Your Majesty's intention to fight with them, gather an army from all over the country, both from cavalry and foot soldiers, bring them through the mountains to our country and deign to fight the Turks here. And if Your Majesty does not want to appear in person, then the whole army came to the Transylvanian possessions of Your Majesty, even before the feast of St. Gregory. If, however, it is not in Your Majesty's plans to send the entire army, then as many warriors as you wish came, at least from Transylvania and the Szekely region. Well, if you intend to send us help, Your Majesty, then please do not hesitate and tell us your plans directly. This time I ask you not to detain our person who will deliver the letter to Your Majesty, but to send it back immediately. Because in no way do we want to leave what we started in the middle of the path, but to bring it to the end. For if the Lord Almighty listens to the prayers and requests of all Christians and deigns to turn his ear to the prayers of those who suffer in His name, and thus give us victory over the pagans and enemies of Christianity, this will be the highest honor, benefit, and spiritual help to Your majesty, and true Christianity; because we do not want to run away from their barbarism, but, on the contrary, to fight them in any way. And if we come - God forbid! - to a bad end, and our small country will disappear. Your Majesty will also not get any benefit and relief from this, for this will cause damage to the entire Christian world. I will add that everything that our man, Radu Pharma (Grammatik), tells Your Grace, can be trusted in the same way as if we were talking with Your Majesty face to face ...

Count Dracula is one of the most media characters. However, few people know that the ruler of Wallachia, Vlad Tepes, who bore this nickname, did not at all resemble the image that mass culture has been replicating for more than a hundred years.

Wallachian Grozny

“The look of his eyes is lightning, the sound of his speeches is the thunder of heaven, the impulse of his anger is death and torture; but through all this, like lightning through the clouds, flashes the greatness of the fallen, humiliated, distorted, but strong and noble spirit in its nature.

This is how Belinsky wrote about the Russian Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, but such a characterization would have been quite suitable for another formidable ruler - the Wallachian ruler Vlad III Tepes, who lived a century earlier. There is much more in common between these two rulers than it might seem at first glance. Both belonged to the Orthodox faith and spoke Church Slavonic. Both lost their parents early and, despite their high rank, were subjected to harassment in childhood and adolescence. Both were among the most educated people of his era. And, finally, both show an example of how a vivid folklore and literary image almost completely replaces a person who actually lived, as a result, having very little in common with historical reality.

The birth of fiction

At the end of the 15th century, a unique monument of secular literature was created in the Old Russian language - a small “Tale of the Mutyansky [Romanian] governor Dracula”. The entire text, in fact, is a chain of short stories demonstrating one or another example of the ruler's cruelties, transcendent even by the standards of the late Middle Ages, which was not distinguished by humanism.

Say, once Dracula, having lost a battle with the Hungarian king, was captured and thrown into prison for 12 years (real historical fact). However, the Tale says, even in prison the governor “did not leave an evil custom, but he caught mice and birds, and executed them with tacos: he put some on a stake, cut off the heads of others, and let go of others, having plucked their feathers.”

The problem with The Tale of Dracula is that this most interesting work was written about 10 years after the death of Vlad III, who died in 1476.

However, whether Kuritsyn was in neighboring Transylvania and Wallachia, where Tepes lived and reigned, is not exactly known. Moreover, the Tale practically nowhere mentions the date and place of the atrocities described; in form and content, it is rather a journalistic article, rather than a historical chronicle. At the same time, to write his Tale, Kuritsyn partially used an anonymous pamphlet about the alleged cruelties of Dracula, written by order of the Hungarian king in 1463.

Why did the Hungarians need to discredit their neighbor? We will talk about this further.

three names

So, Vlad III was born under the dynastic surname Basarab (from which, by the way, the name of Bessarabia, one of the regions of medieval Romania, comes). It is not known exactly when, it is believed to be around 1430.

The nickname "Dracula", or "Dracula", which he wore during his lifetime, can be translated respectively as "Dragon" or "Son of the Dragon".

Vlad's father (and, possibly, Vlad himself) was a member of the knightly Order of St. George, whose adherents wore on their clothes images of a serpent defeated by their patron saint.

According to one version, among the founders of this order was the Serbian hero Milos Obilich, who fell in the battle with the Turks on the Kosovo field. The task of the order - the only Orthodox spiritual and knightly order of the Middle Ages - was to protect the Orthodox faith. Thus, it can be assumed that one of the motives for denigrating Dracula was his activity in this field - as we will see below, very significant.

Finally, the third name - Tepes, meaning: "The Impaler" - began to be widely used by Europeans only 30 years after the death of the voivode (and, as we see, during his lifetime simple people, it turns out, they didn’t even know that their ruler was a tormentor and a tyrant).

Having come to power in 1456, Vlad dealt with the Wallachian boyars who were guilty of a conspiracy that led to the death of his father and older brother. The number impaled was about 10 (in words: ten) people. Actually, these are the only historically confirmed victims of Tepes from among his own subjects.

Legends, however, say otherwise. Allegedly, the ruler and the courtiers often dined under impaled corpses (I remind you that the authenticity of this little story remains solely on the conscience of the author of the already mentioned Tale of Dracula). One day, Tepes's servant could not bear the stench emanating from rotting bodies, and then the despot ordered him to be planted on the highest stake, saying: "The stench will not reach you there."

But seriously, having ascended the throne, Vlad III began the centralization of the state, created a militia of free peasants to fight the Ottomans and Hungarians, stopped paying tribute to the Turkish Sultan. In 1462, he forced the 100,000-strong army of Mehmed II himself, who had invaded Wallachia, to retreat. According to legend, having deepened into the territory of the principality for only a few miles, the army of the recent conqueror of Constantinople turned back in fear: all these few miles along the road there were stakes with impaled Turks.

Age of mass culture

The Wallachian ruler found a second birth in 1897, with the publication of the Gothic novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, which later became a cult work of mass culture.

Allegedly, Count Dracula, cursed by one of his countless victims, rose from the grave after death, reborn as a vampire.

The real Tepes was no count, of course; Stoker added a sonorous title for the sake of Gothic beauty. His hero is cruel and bloodthirsty, however, as befits an infernal aristocrat, he is not without noble romantic features.

But no matter how the image of Dracula is transformed, one should pay tribute to modern Romanians, who made of his bloody deeds not a national tragedy, but a highly profitable tourism business. Today, in every second castle in Transylvania, you will be told chilling stories from the life of Tepes, who drank the blood of innocent victims almost right in this tower. And no one is embarrassed that this castle was built a hundred or two hundred years after the death of the great ruler.

1. Small homeland

2. Order of the Dragon

3. Father was married to the Moldavian princess Vasilisa

4. Between two fires

5. Constantine XI Palaiologos

6. The son and heir of Mikhn is evil

7. Nickname “The Impaler”

The nickname "Tepes" in Romanian means "kolschik". It appeared 30 years after Vlad's death. Vlad III earned his nickname "The Impaler" (from the Romanian word țeapă 0 - "stake"), as he killed thousands of Turks in a terrible way - by impaling them. He learned about this execution as a teenager, when he was a political hostage of the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople.

8. The worst enemy of the Ottoman Empire

It is believed that Dracula is to blame for the deaths of more than a hundred thousand people (most of them are Turks). This made him the worst enemy of the Ottoman Empire.

9. Twenty thousand rotting corpses frightened the Sultan

10. Birth of a legend

11 Scorched Earth Tactics

12. The head of Dracula went to the Sultan

In 1476, 45-year-old Vlad was eventually captured and beheaded during a Turkish invasion. His head was brought to the Sultan, who put it on public display on the fence of his palace.

13. The remains of Dracula

14 Dracula Was Very Religious

15. Monstrous Ruler

In Turkey, Dracula is considered a monstrous and vile ruler who executed his enemies in a painful way, purely for his own pleasure.

16. Transylvanian subculture

17. Dracula and Ceausescu

Former Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu (1965-1989) used Dracula in his campaign. More specifically, he referred to Vlad's patriotism in a speech to Hungarians and other ethnic minorities in Transylvania.

18. There are no vampires in Romania

Contrary to popular belief, vampires are not part of Romanian folklore and the word doesn't even exist in the Romanian language. The word comes from the Serbian "Vampyr".

19. “Like frogs”

According to the book Finding Dracula, Vlad had a very strange sense of humor. The book talks about how his victims often twitched on stakes "like frogs." Vlad thought this was funny, and once said of his victims: "Oh, what great grace they show."

20. Fear and the golden bowl

“There was a bloodthirsty prince Dracula in the world. He put people on a stake, roasted them on coals, boiled their heads in a cauldron, skinned them alive, cut them into pieces and drank blood from them ... ”said Abraham Van Helsing, leafing through a book about the lifetime crimes of a formidable vampire. Many people remember this episode from F. Coppola's film, based on Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula", and, perhaps, it was from this film that they learned that Dracula was not a fictional character.

The famous vampire has a prototype - Prince of Wallachia Vlad Dracula Tepes (Tepes - from the Romanian tepea - a stake, literally - a piercer, impaler), who ruled this Romanian principality in the middle of the 15th century. Indeed, to this day this man is called the “great monster”, who overshadowed Herod and Nero with his atrocities.

You probably already know all the details of this historical-fiction figure inside and out? Let's just summarize what is known.

Let's leave it to Stoker's conscience that he "turned" a real historical figure into a mythical monster, and try to figure out how justified the accusations of cruelty and whether Dracula committed all those atrocities that make the vampire addiction to the blood of young girls seem innocent fun. The acts of the prince, widely disseminated literary works XV century, and really chill the blood. Stories about how Dracula loved to feast, watching the torments of impaled victims, how he burned tramps, whom he himself invited to a feast, how he ordered nails to be hammered into the heads of foreign ambassadors who did not take off their hats, and so on, so on ... the imagination of the reader, who first learned about the atrocities of this medieval ruler, there is an image of a ferocious ruthless man with a sharp look of unkind eyes, reflecting the black essence of the villain. This image is quite consistent with the German book engravings, depicting the features of a tyrant, but the engravings appeared after the death of Vlad.

But those who happen to see a lifetime portrait of Dracula, practically unknown in Russia, will be disappointed - the person depicted on the canvas clearly “does not pull” on a bloodthirsty sadist and maniac. A small experiment showed that people who did not know who exactly was depicted on the canvas often called the "unknown" beautiful, unhappy ... Let's try and forget about the reputation of the "great monster" for a minute, look at the portrait of Dracula with an open mind. First of all, Vlad's large, suffering eyes attract attention. And the unnatural thinness of his emaciated yellowish face is also striking. Looking at the portrait, one can assume that this man suffered severe trials and hardships, that he is more of a martyr than an executioner...

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Vlad led Wallachia at the age of twenty-five, in 1456, at a very difficult time for the principality, when the Ottoman Empire expanded its possessions in the Balkans, capturing one country after another. Serbia and Bulgaria have already fallen under Turkish oppression, Constantinople fell, a direct threat hung over the Romanian principalities. The prince of small Wallachia successfully resisted the aggressor and even attacked the Turks himself, having made a trip to the territory of occupied Bulgaria in 1458. One of the goals of the campaign is to liberate and resettle in the lands of Wallachia the Bulgarian peasants who professed Orthodoxy. Europe enthusiastically welcomed the victory of Dracula. However big war with Turkey was inevitable. Wallachia prevented the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, and Sultan Mehmed II decided to overthrow the objectionable prince by military means.

The throne of Wallachia was claimed by the younger brother of Dracula Radu the Beautiful, who converted to Islam and became the favorite of the Sultan. Realizing that he could not alone resist the largest Turkish army since the conquest of Constantinople, Dracula turned to his allies for help. Among them were Pope Pius II, who promised to give money for the crusade, and the young Hungarian king Matthias Corvin, who called Vlad "beloved and true friend", and leaders of other Christian countries. All of them verbally supported the Wallachian prince, however, when trouble struck in the summer of 1462, Dracula was left face to face with a formidable enemy.

The situation was desperate, and Vlad did everything possible to survive in this unequal fight. He drafted the entire male population of the principality from the age of twelve into the army, used the scorched earth tactics, leaving burned villages to the enemy, where it was impossible to replenish food supplies, waged a guerrilla war. Another weapon of the prince was the panicky horror that he inspired in the invaders. Defending his land, Dracula mercilessly exterminated enemies, in particular, impaled the prisoners, using execution against the Turks, which was very “popular” in the Ottoman Empire itself.

The Turkish-Wallachian war of the summer of 1462 went down in history with the famous night attack, during which it was possible to destroy up to fifteen thousand Ottomans. The Sultan was already standing at the capital of the Principality of Targovishte, when Dracula, together with seven thousand of his soldiers, entered the enemy camp, intending to kill the Turkish leader and thereby stop the aggression. Vlad did not succeed in carrying out his daring plan to the end, but an unexpected night attack caused panic in the enemy camp and, as a result, very heavy losses. After the bloody night, Mehmed II left Wallachia, leaving part of the troops to Radu the Handsome, who himself had to wrest power from the hands of his older brother. The brilliant victory of Dracula over the troops of the Sultan turned out to be useless: Vlad defeated the enemy, but could not resist the "friends". The betrayal of the Moldavian Prince Stefan, cousin and friend of Dracula, who unexpectedly sided with Radu, turned out to be a turning point in the war. Dracula could not fight on two fronts and retreated to Transylvania, where the troops of another "friend" - the Hungarian king Matthias Corvin, who came to the rescue, were waiting for him.

And then something strange happened. In the midst of negotiations, Corwin ordered the arrest of his "faithful and beloved friend", accusing him of secret correspondence with Turkey. In letters allegedly intercepted by the Hungarians, Dracula begged Mehmed II for forgiveness, offered his help in capturing Hungary and the Hungarian king himself. Most modern historians consider the letters a crudely fabricated forgery: they are written in a manner unusual for Dracula, the proposals put forward in them are absurd, but most importantly, the original letters, these most important pieces of evidence that decided the fate of the prince, were “lost”, and only their copies in Latin have survived. given in the "Notes" of Pius II. Naturally, Dracula's signature was not on them. Nevertheless, Vlad was arrested at the end of November 1462, put in chains and sent to the Hungarian capital Buda, where he was imprisoned for about twelve years without trial or investigation.

What made Matthias agree with absurd accusations and brutally crack down on his ally, who at one time helped him ascend the Hungarian throne? The reason turned out to be banal. According to the author of the "Hungarian Chronicle" Antonio Bonfini, Matthias Corvinus received forty thousand guilders from Pope Pius II for the crusade, but did not use this money for its intended purpose. In other words, the king, constantly in need of money, simply pocketed a significant amount and shifted the blame for the thwarted campaign to his vassal, who allegedly played a double game and intrigued with the Turks.

However, accusations of treason against a man known in Europe for his uncompromising struggle against the Ottoman Empire, the one who almost killed and actually put to flight the conqueror of Constantinople Mehmed II, sounded quite absurd. Wanting to understand what really happened, Pius II instructed his envoy in Buda, Nicolas Modrusse, to sort out what was happening on the spot.

King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary. The younger son of Janos Hunyadi liked to be portrayed in the manner of a Roman emperor, with a laurel wreath on his head. He was considered the patron of science and art. During Matthias' reign, the expenses of his court soared, and the king found ways to replenish the treasury, from increasing taxes to using money donated by the Vatican to the Crusades. The prince was accused of cruelty, which he allegedly showed towards the Saxon population of Transylvania, which was part of the Hungarian kingdom. Matthias Korvin personally spoke about the atrocities of his vassal, and then presented an anonymous document in which he reported in detail, with German punctuality, about the bloody adventures of the “great monster”.

The denunciation spoke of tens of thousands of tortured civilians and for the first time mentioned anecdotes about beggars burned alive, about monks impaled, about how Dracula ordered hats to be nailed to the heads of foreign ambassadors, and other similar stories. An unknown author compared the Wallachian prince with the tyrants of antiquity, arguing that during his reign, Wallachia resembled a “forest of those impaled”, accused Vlad of unprecedented cruelty, but at the same time did not care at all about the plausibility of his story. There are a lot of contradictions in the text of the denunciation, for example, the names of settlements given in the document, where 20-30 thousand (!) People were allegedly destroyed, still cannot be identified by historians.

What was the documentary basis for this denunciation? We know that Dracula actually made several raids into Transylvania, destroying the conspirators hiding there, among whom were pretenders to the Wallachian throne. But, despite these local military operations, the prince did not interrupt commercial relations with the Transylvanian Saxon cities of Sibiu and Brasov, which is confirmed by Dracula's business correspondence of that period. It is very important to note that, in addition to the denunciation that appeared in 1462, there is not a single earlier evidence of massacres of civilians in Transylvania in the 50s of the 15th century. It is impossible to imagine how the destruction of tens of thousands of people, which took place regularly for several years, could go unnoticed in Europe and would not be reflected in the chronicles and diplomatic correspondence of those years.

Consequently, Dracula's raids on the enclaves that belonged to Wallachia, but located on the territory of Transylvania, were considered in European countries as an internal affair of Wallachia at the time they were carried out and did not cause any public outcry. Based on these facts, it can be argued that the anonymous document that first reported the atrocities of the “great monster” was not true and turned out to be another fake fabricated by order of King Matthias following the “letter to the Sultan” in order to justify the illegal arrest of Vlad Dracula. For Pope Pius II, who was a close friend of the German emperor Frederick III and therefore sympathized with the Saxon population of Transylvania, such explanations were enough. He did not interfere in the fate of a high-ranking prisoner, leaving the decision of the Hungarian king in force. But Matthias Korvin himself, feeling the precariousness of the accusations made by him, continued to discredit Dracula, who was languishing in prison, resorting, in modern terms, to the services of "means mass media". A poem by Michael Behaim, created on the basis of a denunciation, engravings depicting a cruel tyrant, “sent around the world for public viewing”, and, finally, many editions of early printed brochures (of which thirteen have come down to us) under the general title “About one great monster” - all this was supposed to form a negative attitude towards Dracula, turning him from a hero into a villain. Apparently, Matthias Korvin was not going to release his captive, dooming him to a slow death in a dungeon. But fate gave Dracula the opportunity to survive another takeoff.

During the reign of Radu the Beautiful, Wallachia completely submitted to Turkey, which could not but disturb the new Pope Sixtus IV. It was probably the intervention of the pontiff that changed the fate of Dracula. The Prince of Wallachia actually showed that he could withstand the Turkish threat, and therefore it was Vlad who had to lead the Christian army into battle in a new crusade. The conditions for the prince's release from prison were his conversion from the Orthodox to the Catholic faith and his marriage to his cousin Matthias Korvin. Paradoxically, the “great monster” could gain freedom only by becoming related to the Hungarian king, who until recently represented Dracula as a bloodthirsty monster…

Two years after the release, in the summer of 1476, Vlad, as one of the commanders of the Hungarian army, went on a campaign; his goal was to liberate the Turkish-occupied Wallachia. The troops passed through the territory of Transylvania, and documents have been preserved that say that the townspeople of the Saxon Brasov joyfully welcomed the return of the “great monster”, which, according to the denunciation, committed unheard-of atrocities here a few years ago. Entering Wallachia with battles, Dracula drove out the Turkish troops and on November 26, 1476 again ascended the throne of the principality. His reign turned out to be very short - the prince was surrounded by obvious and hidden enemies, and therefore the fatal denouement was inevitable.

The death of Vlad at the end of December of that year is shrouded in mystery. There are several versions of what happened, but they all boil down to the fact that the prince fell victim to treason, trusting the traitors who were in his entourage. It is known that the head of Dracula was donated to the Turkish sultan, and he ordered to put it on one of the squares of Constantinople. And Romanian folklore sources report that the headless body of the prince was found by the monks of the Snagov monastery located near Bucharest and buried in a chapel built by Dracula himself near the altar.

Thus ended the short but bright life of Vlad Dracula. Why, contrary to the facts testifying that the Wallachian prince was “framed” and slandered, does the rumor continue to attribute to him atrocities that he never committed? Opponents of Dracula argue: firstly, numerous works by various authors report Vlad's cruelty, and, therefore, such a point of view cannot but be objective, and secondly, there are no chronicles in which he appears as a ruler doing pious deeds. It is easy to refute such arguments. An analysis of the works that talk about the atrocities of Dracula proves that they all either go back to a handwritten denunciation of 1462, “justifying” the arrest of the Wallachian prince, or were written by people who were at the Hungarian court during the reign of Matthias Corvin. From here, the Russian ambassador to Hungary, clerk Fyodor Kuritsyn, drew information for his story about Dracula, written around 1484.

Having penetrated into Wallachia, the widely disseminated stories about the deeds of the “great monster” were transformed into pseudo-folklore narratives, which in fact have nothing to do with the folk tales recorded by folklorists in the regions of Romania that are directly related to the life of Dracula. As for the Turkish chronicles, the original episodes, which do not coincide with the German works, deserve closer attention. In them, Turkish chroniclers, sparing no color, describe the cruelty and courage of the “Kazykly” (which means Impaler), who terrified the enemies, and even partially acknowledge the fact that he put the Sultan himself to flight. We are well aware that the descriptions of the course of hostilities by the opposing sides cannot be impartial, but we do not dispute the fact that Vlad Dracula really dealt with the invaders who came to his land very cruelly. After analyzing the sources of the XV century, we can confidently assert that Dracula did not commit the monstrous crimes attributed to him.

He acted in accordance with the cruel laws of war, but the destruction of the aggressor on the battlefield can under no circumstances be equated with the genocide of the civilian population, in which Dracula was accused by the customer of the anonymous denunciation. The stories of atrocities in Transylvania, for which Dracula received the reputation of the "great monster", turned out to be slander, pursuing specific selfish goals. History has developed in such a way that descendants judge Dracula by the way Vlad's actions were described by his enemies, who sought to discredit the prince - where can we talk about objectivity in such a situation ?!

As for the lack of chronicles praising Dracula, this is due to the too short period of his reign. He simply did not have time, and perhaps did not consider it necessary to acquire court chroniclers, whose duties included praising the ruler. Another thing is King Matthias, famous for his enlightenment and humanism, “with whose death justice also died,” or the Moldavian prince Stefan, who ruled for almost half a century, betrayed Dracula and impaled two thousand Romanians, but at the same time was nicknamed the Great and Holy ...

In the muddy stream of lies it is difficult to discern the truth, but, fortunately, documentary evidence has come down to us of how Vlad Dracula ruled the country. The letters signed by him have been preserved, in which he gave land to the peasants, granted privileges to monasteries, an agreement with Turkey, scrupulously and consistently defending the rights of the citizens of Wallachia. We know that Dracula insisted on the observance of church burial rites for executed criminals, and this very important fact completely refutes the claim that he impaled the inhabitants of the Romanian principalities who professed Christianity. It is known that he built churches and monasteries, founded Bucharest, fought the Turkish invaders with desperate courage, defending his people and his land. And there is also a legend about how Dracula met with God, trying to find out where his father's grave is located, in order to erect a temple on this place ...

There are two types of Dracula. We know Dracula - the national hero of Romania, a wise and brave ruler, a martyr, betrayed by friends and spent about a third of his life in prison, slandered, slandered, but not broken. However, we also know another Dracula - the hero of anecdotal stories of the 15th century, a maniac, a "great monster", and later a god-damned vampire. By the way, about vampirism: no matter what atrocities the prince was accused of by his contemporaries, there is not a single written source that says that he drank the blood of his victims. The idea of "turning" Dracula into a vampire only arose in the 19th century.

A member of the occult Order of the Golden Dawn (he practiced black magic), Bram Stoker became interested in this historical figure at the suggestion of Professor Arminius Vambery, who was known not only as a scientist, but also as a Hungarian nationalist. This is how Count Dracula appeared - a literary character who gradually turned in the mass consciousness into the main vampire of all times and peoples.

Favorite pastime of Count Vlad Tepes. Vlad Tepes - Count Dracula

1. Small homeland

2. Order of the Dragon

3. Father was married to the Moldavian princess Vasilisa

4. Between two fires

5. Constantine XI Palaiologos

6. The son and heir of Mikhn is evil

7. Nickname "Tepes"

8. The worst enemy of the Ottoman Empire

9. Twenty thousand rotting corpses frightened the Sultan

10. Birth of a legend

11 Scorched Earth Tactics

12. The head of Dracula went to the Sultan

13. The remains of Dracula

14 Dracula Was Very Religious

15. Enemy of Turkey and friend of Russia.

16. Transylvanian subculture

17. Dracula and Ceausescu

20. Fear and the golden bowl

Chronological table of the biography of Vlad III Dracula-Tepes

Wallachian Grozny

The birth of fiction

three names

Age of mass culture

1. Small homeland

2. Order of the Dragon

3. Father was married to the Moldavian princess Vasilisa

4. Between two fires

5. Constantine XI Palaiologos

6. The son and heir of Mikhn is evil

7. Nickname “The Impaler”

8. The worst enemy of the Ottoman Empire

9. Twenty thousand rotting corpses frightened the Sultan

10. Birth of a legend

11 Scorched Earth Tactics

12. The head of Dracula went to the Sultan

13. The remains of Dracula

14 Dracula Was Very Religious

15. Monstrous Ruler

16. Transylvanian subculture

17. Dracula and Ceausescu

18. There are no vampires in Romania

19. “Like frogs”

20. Fear and the golden bowl

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