This portrait of Vlad Tepes, Prince of Wallachia, is a copy of an original painted during his lifetime. Ambras Castle, Austria • WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Dracula, Prince of Darkness, Lord of the Undead! This mythical character was born in 1897 from the fertile imagination of Bram Stoker. But behind the literary Dracula breathes a no less formidable historical figure, which inspired the writer of Irish origin:Vladislav III, voivode (prince) of Wallachia. Vlad, as he is often referred to, lived in the convulsed Balkan world of the 15th century. century. With Moldavia and Transylvania, Wallachia formed Tara Româneasca, that is to say Romania, where the Catholic sovereigns of Hungary opposed the Turks, who extended their mantle over the region. Both put pressure on the voivodes to side with them, which was not difficult:as the legitimate sons and the natural sons of the princes could all claim the throne, it was always possible to attract or coerce a suitor. The "Son of the Dragon" In Wallachia at the beginning of the 15th th century reigns chaos:the voivode in place confronts his brother for power, while the Ottomans launch their armies on the region, which is part of the Hungarian kingdom. Vlad II, son of a powerful voivode, hoped to occupy the throne when it was vacant, but it was his half-brother Alexander Aldea who won. In 1431, Vlad II was admitted to the Order of the Dragon, founded by Sigismund of Luxembourg, then King of Hungary. The order has 24 nobles of very high rank, whose vocation is to stop the Ottoman expansion in Europe, to fight against heresy and to defend the imperial family. From then on, Vlad received the nickname Dracul , the Dragon "; his son, born the same year, will be known as Vlad (or Dracula ), the "son of the Dragon". Sigismund of Luxembourg entrusts the defense of the border in Transylvania to Vlad II, who spends the next five years waging war and intrigue against Alexander – including with the collaboration of the Ottomans – to seize power. He will however have to wait for the natural death of his half-brother in 1436 to ascend the throne. In his youth, Vlad spent three years as a hostage at the Turkish court. There he meets his future enemy, the heir to the throne, Mehmed. Once in power, Vlad Dracul changes sides whenever he sees fit. This policy prompted John Hunyadi, regent of Hungary, to invade Wallachia in 1442-1443, in order to install more reliable voivodes on the throne. The following year, Sultan Murad II ambushed Vlad Dracul and forced him to leave his two youngest sons as hostages, Vlad and Radu the Handsome. In exchange, he provides him with troops to regain power in Wallachia. For three years, Dracula stays at the Ottoman court. He is well treated there by the sultan and his son Mehmed, the future conqueror of Constantinople, which does not prevent him from harboring a grudge against them. During this time, his father does not hesitate to change sides once again even if, in doing so, he puts the lives of his sons in danger. But, in 1447, the boyars (the Valachian nobles) rose up against Vlad Dracul and killed him, as well as his eldest son, Mircea, whom they buried alive after gouging out his eyes. John Hunyadi, who instigated the assassination, gave the throne to a Wallachian nobleman named Vladislav. It is at this moment in the story that the young Dracula, then 16 years old, reappears. In 1448, with Ottoman help, he expelled the new voivode of Wallachia, but the Hungarians put him back on the throne a few months later. However, Vladislav wasted no time in making a mistake:he sided with the Turks, who conquered Constantinople in 1453, and angered the Hungarians. Dracula seized the opportunity:in 1456, he defeated Vladislav in single combat. Dracula ousts the nobility To consolidate his power, Vlad III Dracula appoints men from the people, and even foreigners, to all public offices. This is not a reformist policy aimed at emancipating the lower classes; the prince seeks only to strengthen royal power by placing officials who are entirely dependent on the arbitrary will of the voivode, who can appoint, dismiss and even execute them at will. To replace the boyars, Dracula gradually created new elites:the armas , administrators of justice; the viteji , a military elite made up of small landowners who distinguished themselves on the battlefield; the sluji , acting as both political police and personal guard. At the same time, he favored peasants and artisans by exempting them from sending tributes and sons to the Ottoman Empire. An anecdote reveals the cruelty of Dracula towards the boyars. In 1459, for Easter, he invited 200 of them, with their families, to a big meal. The women and the old men are executed, the others are enslaved to serve as labor for the construction of a castle near the river, during which many will die of exhaustion. Banquets were often an opportunity to cruelly eliminate one's enemies, be they nobles or beggars. The sinister reputation that will make Vlad III Dracula the terror of the Balkans stems from the brutality with which he treats minorities. To get rid of vagabonds and beggars, he invites them to a banquet, closes the doors and has them burned alive. The gypsies are exterminated or conscripted into the army. The German population, mostly Saxon, also suffered a lot of bullying. It is concentrated in cities that enjoy autonomous governments and significant commercial and fiscal privileges. The establishment of Saxon settlements had once served to repopulate strategic areas and revive the local economy, but this population became, over time, a privileged class, to the detriment of the local Romanian population. Dracula imposes heavy tax burdens on her and blocks her trade when she refuses to pay. The Hungarians and the Saxons of Transylvania then offered their support to new pretenders to the throne. The candidates are not lacking:Dan III, Vlad the Monk (half-brother of Dracula) and Basarab Laiota. Vlad's answer is terrible. When the Saxon city of Brasov supported Dan III, Vlad had 30,000 people impaled, dined among the dying impaled, and then set fire to the city. We therefore cease to give him the honorable nickname of Dracula for that of Tepes , "the Impaler". As for him, he still signs “Wladislaus Dragwlya”. Religious persecution He also imposed his authority on the Catholic clergy, even if it meant chastising its members – which incidentally did not bother most Romanians, whose Orthodox faith was persecuted in Transylvania by the Catholic Hungarians and Saxons. This attracts the attention of Pope Pius II. A report, written for him in 1462, claims that Vlad murdered some 40,000 people. Other rebellious cities like Sibiu, Tara Barsei, Amnas and Fagaras also suffered bloody reprisals until their submission in 1460. Beyond his personal cruelty, Vlad's way of acting responds to a global policy whose purpose was to subjugate a privileged minority of foreign origin. With regard to his foreign policy, Vlad clearly differs from his father and other leaders of his time. Indeed, once in power, he never renounced his opposition to the Turks, whatever course events took. To this end, he received the support of Mathias Corvin, son of Jean Hunyadi and King of Hungary. On the contrary, his half-brother Radu the Handsome converted to Islam and, according to Byzantine chronicles, was even the lover of Sultan Mehmed II. For Vlad Tepes, the terror he arouses is a weapon. In 1462, he impaled 23,000 prisoners and their families on the way to the Turkish enemy. Vlad's campaigns against the Turks were extraordinarily brutal. In 1459, Mehmed II sent an embassy to claim a tribute of 10,000 ducats and 300 boys. In response, the Impaler has the ambassadors' turbans nailed to their heads, claiming that they have disrespected him by not uncovering to greet him. In 1461, the Turks offered him peace negotiations, but their real intention was to ambush him. Vlad responds with an incursion that devastates the Turkish territories south of the Danube. In 1462, he wrote to Mathias Corvin explaining to him that he had cut off 24,000 heads, this without counting the inhabitants who died in the burning of houses. To demonstrate the veracity of his statements, he wears whole bags of severed noses and ears. In reality, as the Impaler himself acknowledged, most of the victims were simple peasants:Serbian and Bulgarian Christians subject to the Turks. In the spring of 1462, Mehmed II gathered an army of 90,000 men and advanced on Wallachia. Vlad has 30,000 men. He chose to harass the Turks with night attacks, skirmish warfare using scorched earth tactics. Taking advantage of what he learned the Turkish language when he was a hostage of Murad II, Vlad infiltrates the Ottoman camps himself. He also uses terror:he impales 23,000 prisoners and their families on the enemy's road. The sultan, horrified, doubtless wondered if the author of these atrocities was really the Vlad with whom he had played as a child. Last fight against the Turks However, the final victory of the Turks did not come from their army, but from the defection of the Wallachian boyars to whom Radu, the half-brother of the Impaler, had promised to restore their privileges. Radu also knew how to attract other minorities, and even part of the Romanian population, tired of Vlad's bloodthirsty methods. This opposes a fierce resistance to the Turks and the nobles gathered around Radu. But, without money, he ends up finding himself cornered. In addition, Mathias Corvin wanted a truce with the Sultan:on November 26, 1462, the King of Hungary took Vlad prisoner while the Romanian was negotiating with him for money and troops. Dracula's head is sent to Constantinople to be exhibited as proof of his death. Vlad remains locked up for a short time, because his influential cousin Stephen III of Moldavia intercedes on his behalf. Mathias Corvin finally married him to his cousin Ilona Szilágyi around 1466, but he kept him with him for 12 years. Meanwhile, intrigues and betrayals continue in Wallachia. Stephen of Moldavia expelled Radu from this territory, but he did not return his throne to his cousin Vlad:he installed a new voivode in power, Basarab Laiota. Not very grateful to his protector, he immediately negotiated with the Turks to free himself from Moldavian vassalage. Still, when Radu died of syphilis in 1475, Mathias Corvin released the Impaler to recover Wallachia for the benefit of Hungary. In November 1476, Vlad succeeded in ousting Basarab Laiota from power, who returned soon after with the support of Ottoman troops. It was while facing the Turks that the Impaler died in December 1476. His head was sent to Constantinople to be exhibited and to dissipate the terror inspired by his name. Thus ends the story of Vlad III and begins the legend of Dracula. Find out more The Story of Prince Dracula, by Matei Cazacu, Droz, 2006.Dracula, by Bram Stoker, Actes Sud, 2001. Timeline 1431 Prince Vlad was born in Sighisoara, Transylvania. He was the son of Vlad II, Voivode of Wallachia, and a Moldavian princess.1444-1448 Vlad and his younger brother Radu are hostages of the Turks in Edirne, the Ottoman capital. After three years of captivity, Vlad accedes to the throne of Wallachia with the help of the Turks, but he is expelled by the Hungarians.1455 Vlad unites with the Hungarians to fight against the Turks, whom he defeats in Belgrade. The following year, he regained power by becoming voivode of Wallachia after killing Vladislav, a former ally of the Hungarians.1462 The Turks invade Wallachia. The boyars (nobles) support Radu, brother of Vlad. Abandoned by everyone and penniless, Vlad was imprisoned by Hungarian King Mathias Corvin, who held him for 12 years.1476 The Hungarians release Vlad so that he recovers the throne of Wallachia for the benefit of Hungary. After a year in power, he died in battle. His head is sent to Constantinople. Between Hungary and the Ottoman Empire The Carpathians, gateway to Europe At the time of Vlad III, the Carpathian region, where he lived, had immense political and economic importance. From Transylvania, for example, the ore which fed its armaments industry was exported to Nuremberg, 1,400 km away, in return for arms and cloth. In these economic exchanges, cities played a major role. Over the past centuries, German settlers, especially Saxons, had settled there, whom Vlad cruelly subjugated. The small states of Wallachia, Serbia and Bosnia formed the defensive belt of the Kingdom of Hungary against the Ottoman Turks, who had settled near the Danube at the end of the 14th century. century. Hungary then included a large part of the Transylvanian Plateau, surrounded to the north, east and south by the Carpathian Mountains. The eastern passes of these mountains, which led into Moldavia, were narrow, winding, and easy to block; this was not the case of the two wide passages in the south, in Wallachia:that of Roter Turm (leading to Sibiu) and that of Predeal (leading to Brasov). They were the gates of Hungary, hence the interest of Hungarians and Turks in controlling the voivodes, the princes of Wallachia.
