Vlad III Dracula (portrait)

Vlad III Dracula (Romanian: Vlad III Drăculea, November 1431 – December 1476), popularly known by his posthumous cognomen ‘the Impaler’ (Romanian: Țepeș), was a member of the House of Drăculești and three time Voivode of Wallachia (1448, 1456 – 1462, 1476). His reigns were marked most of all by near-continuous conflict with the rising power of the Ottoman Empire abroad and his struggle to keep his position at home in the face of the Wallachian boyars, pro-Ottoman rivals (notably his brother Radu the Handsome) and foreign rulers who sought to depose him (notably the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II). 

Vlad was born in November 1431 in Sighișoara, then part of the Voivodeship of Transylvania in the Kingdom of Hungary (now in Romania). He was the third son of Vlad II Dracul, who ascended the throne of Wallachia in 1436. The sobriquet ‘Dracula’, meaning ‘son of the dragon’, was derived from Vlad II’s membership of the Order of the Dragon, a knightly order organised by Holy Roman emperor Sigismund to defend Christian Europe against the rising Ottoman Empire. After being overthrown by pro-Hungarian factions in 1442, Vlad II struck a deal with the Ottomans by which he received military support against the Hungarian warlord János Hanyudi and political support in regaining the throne of Wallachia. In return, Vlad II promised to be loyal to the Ottomans, agreed to pay a yearly tribute and sent two of his sons – Vlad and Radu – to the Ottoman court as hostages. Although the brothers received an elite education, young Vlad considered his captivity a great humiliation, which may have nurtured the seeds of his brutality against the Ottomans in later years. By contrast, his brother Radu quickly earned the friendship of the future sultan Mehmet II, ultimately converted to Islam and entered Ottoman service.

In 1448, János Hanyudi incited the Wallachian boyars to murder Vlad II and his son Mircea and then installed his puppet Vladislav II on the throne. The Ottomans responded by releasing and helping the seventeen year old Vlad to become ruler of Wallachia that same year. Within two months however, the Hungarians drove him from power in favour of Vladislav II and Vlad fled to Moldavia, where he spent time with his uncle Bogdan II and nephew Stephen III. When a pretender murdered Bogdan II in 1451, Vlad and Stephen fled to Transylvania into the protection of none other than János Hanyudi, who thought Vlad’s considerable knowledge and hatred of the Ottoman Empire might yet serve his purpose.

Led by sultan Mehmet II, the Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453 and soon advanced north towards Hungary. Pinched in between the rivalling realms of the Ottomans and the Hungarians, Vladislav II of Wallachia in 1456 decided to switch sides and embarked on a pro-Ottoman course, to the dismay of János Hanyudi. Vlad now saw his chance and convinced János to let him conquer Wallachia while János himself moved south to lead the Hungarians to victory over the Ottomans at Belgrade. Thus, with Hungarian help, Vlad succeeded in taking Wallachia before the end of 1456 and is said to have personally executed Vladislav II after forcing him to read his own funeral oration before his freshly dug grave.

Vlad’s second and longest reign as Voivode of Wallachia now began. He immediately moved to destroy the power of the murderers of his father and half-brother: the Wallachian boyars. At a great Easter feast, he had many of the boyars seized and impaled – his favoured method of execution – and subsequently worked their sons to death in the construction of his new Poenari Castle on the Argeș river. An equally merciless purge was carried out among Transylvania’s German settlers – the Transylvanian Saxons – for supporting Vlad’s illegitimate half-brother Vlad the Monk and the brothers of the late Vladislav II. Vlad consolidated his rule from his capital Târgoviște through a strict moral and penal code, which saw any and all offenses typically punished with torture and death, regardless of the victim’s rank or descent, a practice which established Vlad’s reputation as a harsh ruler. Vlad distributed the wealth and positions of executed boyars and Transylvanian Saxons to members of the Wallachian middle class and free peasantry, thereby building a power base which was loyal only to him and might help him against foreign threats. To this end, Vlad also sent some 6,000 horsemen to the aid of his nephew Stephen III in taking the throne of Moldavia in 1457, strengthening his own position with a powerful ally who rose to become a formidable enemy of the Ottomans.

By 1459, the power of the Ottoman Empire had grown so threateningly that pope Pius II called a crusade at the Congress of Mantua that year. The key person in this undertaking was to be Matthias Corvinus, the new king of Hungary and son of János Hanyudi (d. 1456), who received no less than 40,000 ducats for the mustering of a 12,000 strong army. It must be noted that Matthias used most of the money for personal expenses and the crusade thus amounted to little. Nevertheless, Vlad also answered the papal call to arms and allied his Wallachia to the Hungarians. Still in 1459, sultan Mehmet II sent diplomats to Vlad’s court in Târgoviște with demands for the immediate payment of 10,000 ducats in tribute and 500 boys to be press-ganged into the Ottoman army. In the exchange that followed, Vlad is said to have not only refused the demands but also killed the sultan’s agents by having their turbans nailed to their heads. Mehmet II responded by sending his general Hamza Bey with an envoy of a 1,000 men to negociate and bring Vlad’s Wallachia back into the Ottoman fold. Vlad initially announced his willingness to accept the earlier Ottoman demands and even accompany Hamza Bey back to Constantinople to explain himself to the sultan. His true intentions became clear when he directed a Wallachian ambush of the Ottoman force and had them all impaled, the highest stake being reserved for Hamza Bey himself. In the winter of 1461, Vlad launched his own offensive as he led his army south of the Danube and destroyed Ottoman Bulgaria, causing a bloodbath among the Muslims – both Ottomans and Bulgarians – living there. A letter dated 2 February 1462 announced Vlad’s state of war with the Ottoman Empire to the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus.

The Ottoman answer to Vlad’s actions came quickly: sultan Mehmet II raised an army of 60,000 soldiers and 30,000 irregulars and moved against Wallachia in the spring of 1462. Marching in the Ottoman ranks was also Radu the Handsome, Vlad’s brother. Realising the Ottomans could not be defeated in open battle, Vlad and his forces – numbering no more than 30,000 – became guerilla fighters resorting to scorched earth tactics and terror to damage Ottoman morale and force their retreat. Vlad abandoned his capital Târgoviște, leaving some 20,000 impaled Ottoman prisoners – the Forest of the Impaled – to greet their advancing comrades who took the city on 4 June 1462. Vlad poisoned wells, burned lands and constantly harassed the Ottoman invaders, effectively damaging their morale. The most infamous example of this was the Night Attack of 16–17 June 1462 during which Vlad’s forces assaulted sultan Mehmet II’s camp in a failed assassination attempt which nevertheless caused the deaths of some 15,000 Ottoman soldiers. Despite such successes, Vlad was hard-pressed by early September: his capital had been taken, his Poenari Castle had been conquered by his own brother Radu, his wife had committed suicide, his forces and resources were exhausted and the remaining Wallachian boyars had switched sides to Radu. Vlad fled west to Hungary in hopes of gaining assistance from his ally Matthias Corvinus. However, Radu took the Wallachian throne and managed to make a deal with Matthias, who promptly betrayed Vlad and threw him in prison. His period of actual confinement is generally said to have lasted until 1466, but Vlad remained in Hungarian hands until 1475, using the time to rehabilitate himself at the Hungarian court: he converted to Catholicism, remarried and had two sons with his second wife Ilona Szilágyi, a relative of Matthias Corvinus. His rehabilitation was furthered due to Radu the Handsome’s very pro-Ottoman policy in Wallachia and the intervention of Stephen III of Moldavia.

By 1476, Vlad was ready for his final attempt at regaining the throne of Wallachia. Together with Stefan Báthory of Transylvania, Vlad assembled an army of Transylvanians, Hungarians, disgruntled Wallachians and Moldavians sent by Stephen III. Vlad’s brother Radu had died by then and had been replaced by the pro-Ottoman Basarab the Old, brother of Vlad’s long-dead rival Vladislav II and a member of the Dănești clan which had always opposed Vlad. Vlad and Stefan Báthory drove the forces of Basarab the Old to flight by November 1476, leaving Vlad once again in control of Wallachia. However, Stefan Báthory soon retreated to Transylvania with most of the army, leaving Vlad in a very precarious position as the Ottomans invaded Wallachia once again to reinstate Basarab the Old. Vlad met his demise in battle against the Ottomans near Bucharest in December 1476. The exact circumstances of his death are a matter of debate: one version states Vlad was killed with his loyal Moldavian bodyguards in a last stand against the Ottomans, while another version claims he was betrayed and killed by disloyal Wallachian boyars just as he was about to inflict defeat upon the Ottomans. Whatever the exact truth, the son of the dragon was no more as the year 1477 dawned. The Ottomans allegedly cut off his head and sent it back to Constantinople where Mehmet II put it on display to prove that the dreaded Vlad, known to the Ottomans as Kaziklu Bey (Impaler Lord), had finally perished…

“Unde eşti tu, Ţepeş Doamne, ca punând mâna pe ei, Să-i împarţi în două cete: în smintiţi şi în mişei.” ~ Mihai Eminescu

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