Who is he, Vlad Tepes Count Dracula? Vlad Tepes - biography of the ruler and bloody legend of Wallachia The famous Count Tepes.

Who is he, Vlad Tepes Count Dracula?

I'm not Cuvier, but judging by this tooth, Count Dracula of Transdanubia was a very strange and unpleasant man.

A. and B. Strugatsky

For almost six centuries, the ominous shadow of his fearsome reputation has been trailing behind Vlad the Impaler. It seems that we are actually talking about a fiend from hell. A bloodthirsty vampire, “a horror that flies on the wings of the night,” a despot who impales people for the slightest offense, and so on and so forth. Vlad the Impaler turned into a monster in the public consciousness, which had no equal.

Or maybe he was a common figure for that era, of course, possessing outstanding personal qualities, among which demonstrative cruelty was by no means the least important? Horror films are made about Dracula and blood-chilling books are written. There are still debates about the identity of the Wallachian ruler, and further 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 events that are almost six centuries distant 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 as the “main vampire” of history? Who was the one who became the embodiment of vampirism for millions of readers and moviegoers? In his homeland, Romania, he is generally considered a champion of “cruel justice,” a savior and defender of the fatherland. One of the researchers formulated this strange antithesis as follows: “The well-known Dracula, 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. Moreover, we are not talking about father and son (the serial number of the father, also Vlad, varies accordingly), but about one and 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 the much more numerous Louis!

The year of his birth, not to mention the date, is not precisely known. Vlad Tepes-Dracula was most likely born in 1430 or 1431 (some even say 1428 or 1429), when his father, Vlad Dracul, a contender for the Wallachian throne, supported by the Holy Roman Emperor 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 of his father’s entry into the Order of the Dragon, where he was accepted on February 8, 1431 by Emperor Sigismund, who then also occupied the Hungarian throne. However, in fact, this is just a coincidence, or rather an attempt to invent such a coincidence. The biography of Vlad Tepes is full of such fictitious and sometimes real coincidences. They should be treated with great caution.

The father of Vlad III, the ruler of Wallachia Vlad II (or according to some documents, still III), while in his youth at the court of the German emperor, actually joined the Order of the Dragon, and the order was extremely respectable - its members pledged to imitate St. George in his indomitable fight against evil spirits, which were then associated with the hordes of Turks creeping into Europe from the southeast. It was thanks to his entry into the Order of the Dragon that Tepes's father received the nickname Dracul (Dragon), which was later inherited by his son. This was the name given not only to Vlad, but also to 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 an image of a dragon killed by George and hanging with outstretched wings and a broken back on the cross.

But Vlad II clearly overdid it: he not only appeared with the sign of the order in front of his subjects, but also minted a dragon on his coins, and even depicted it on the walls of the churches he was building. In the eyes of the people, he, on the contrary, became a dragon worshiper and therefore acquired the nickname Vlad Dracul (Dragon). The author of the Russian “Tale of Dracula the Voivode” writes directly: “in the name of Dracula in the Vlash language, and in ours - the Devil. Just as he is evil-wise, as is 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 himself “Vlad, son of Vlad” with a list of all titles and possessions, but two letters are also known signed “Vlad Dracula”. 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 variations), which has such an eerie 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 Turkish sound - “Kazıkly”. 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 unlikely to be exactly as the medieval artist depicted him. Contemporaries admitted that Vlad, unlike his brother Radu, nicknamed the Handsome, did not shine with beauty. 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 on this matter then and continue to differ 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 “A Glass of Water,” stands no chance if two large ones claim its territory at once. In this case, the interests of Catholic Hungary, which was attacking Orthodoxy, and the Muslim Porte, which was laying claim to world dominion, converged in Wallachia. Wallachia was a region sandwiched between Turkish possessions from the south (especially after 1453, when Byzantium fell, crushed by the Turks) and Hungary from the north.

In addition, hidden behind the back of little Wallachia was rich Transylvania (or Semicity), which belonged to Hungary, where crafts rapidly developed, a branch of the Great Silk Road passed, and self-governing cities founded by the Saxons grew. The 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 unique geopolitical position of Wallachia, as well as its religious specifics (the people and rulers practiced Orthodoxy) contrasted it with both Muslim Turkey and the Catholic West. This led to extreme instability in military policy. The rulers either marched with the Hungarians against the Turks, or let the Turkish armies enter 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 protege of the other with the next palace coup. It was in this way that Vlad the Elder (father) ascended the throne, with the help of the Hungarian king, overthrowing his cousin. However, Turkish pressure increased, and the alliance with Hungary achieved little. Vlad Sr. admitted vassalage Wallachia from Porta.

Such coexistence was achieved according to the traditional scenario for that time: the princes sent their sons to the court of the Turkish Sultan as hostages, who were treated well, but in case of rebellion in the 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 not so 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, when speaking about the horrors 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 family, but the choice was not determined by any specific principles of succession to the throne. Everything was decided solely by the balance of power in the circles of the Wallachian boyars. Since any member of the dynasty could have many both legitimate and illegitimate children, any of whom became a contender for the throne (it would have been possible for one of the boyars to put it 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 its targets were both the ruler’s relatives and the all-powerful boyars.

There were terrorist reigns, so to speak, both before and after Vlad III. Why, then, did what happened under him become part of oral traditions and literature as having surpassed everything conceivable and inconceivable, going beyond the limits of the most cruel expediency? The actions of this ruler, widely reproduced in written works of the 15th century, are truly blood-chilling.

The very life of Vlad (in Romanian legends he is also Voivode Tepes) seems to be a constant transition from one extreme situation to another. At the age of thirteen, he was present during the defeat of the Wallachian, Hungarian and Slavonian troops by the Turks in the Battle of Varna, then he spent years in Turkey as a hostage given by his father (it was then that he learned the Turkish language). At seventeen, Vlad learns about the murder of his father and older brother by boyars from the “Hungarian” party. The Turks free him and place 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 force or the threat of its use.

He did not last long on the throne for the first time: the Hungarians overthrew the Turkish protege and placed their own on the throne. Vlad was forced to seek asylum from his allies in Moldova. However, another four years pass, and during the next (now Moldavian) unrest, the ruler of this country, a supporter of Vlad, who hospitably received him in Moldova, dies. 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, near the Wallachian borders, greedily biding his time.

In 1456, the situation finally turned out 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 the Impaler in Wallachia, during which he became a hero of legends and committed 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. To successfully wage any war, and even more so with such a formidable rival, it was necessary to strengthen one’s power and restore order in one’s own state. Tepes began to implement this program in his characteristic style.

The first thing that, according to the historical chronicle, Vlad did when he 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 perpetrators. He ordered his brother’s grave to be opened and became convinced that, firstly, he was blinded, and secondly, he turned over in his grave, which proved the fact of burial alive. According to the chronicle, the city was just celebrating Easter and all the residents dressed up in their best clothes. Seeing evil hypocrisy in this behavior, Tepes ordered all the inhabitants to be put in chains and sent to hard labor to restore one of the castles intended for him. There they had to work until their formal clothes turned into rags.

The story sounds psychologically quite reliable, and the document it contains seems trustworthy. This is not a pamphlet written by Vlad's enemies, but a good work compiled by a dispassionate chronicler, and almost simultaneously with the events that took place.

However, let us ask ourselves: is it possible to believe this story described in the chronicle?

Power in Wallachia was seized by Vlad on August 22, 1456, after the reprisal of his rival, whose death occurred on August 20. What does Easter have to do with it, since it was heading towards autumn?

It seems more plausible to assume that these events relate to Vlad’s first accession to the throne in 1448, immediately after the death of his brother. However, then he ruled only two autumn months - from October to early December, that is, there could be no Easter holiday either.

It turns out that we are dealing with a legend that has somehow distorted reality and linked together various incidents that were initially in no way connected with each other. Although, perhaps, some of the details included in the chronicle correspond to reality. For example, the episode with the opening of Mircho’s grave. Such an event could actually happen, as early as 1448, when Tepes became ruler for the first time.

What is certainly confirmed by the mentioned chronicle is the fact that legends about the reign of Vlad the Impaler began to take shape almost immediately with the beginning of this reign. By the way, although all these stories contained descriptions of 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 cause far from unanimous delight 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 the areas adjacent to Wallachia and controlled areas of Transylvania). In six years (1456–1462), not counting the victims of the war, over 100 thousand were destroyed on Dracula’s personal orders. Is it possible for a ruler, even a medieval one, to destroy a fifth of his subjects for such a good living? Even if in some cases one can try to put some rational basis behind terror (intimidating the opposition, tightening discipline, etc.), the numbers still raise new questions.

The origin of the legends about Dracula requires explanation. Firstly, the activities of Vlad the Impaler were depicted in a dozen books - first handwritten, and after the invention made by Guttenberg and printed, created mainly in Germany and some other countries. European countries. They are all similar, so they apparently rely on 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 Matt Corvinus in the 1460s), as well as German pamphlets distributed under the title “On One 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 German books, but in some ways they differ from them. This is an ancient 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 by 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 fabulous element that has accumulated in them over several centuries of oral transmission is too great.

The source to which the German manuscripts go back was clearly written by Tepes' enemies and depicts him and his activities in the darkest colors. It’s more difficult with Russian documents. Without abandoning the depiction of Vlad’s cruelties, they try to find more noble explanations for them and put emphasis so that the same actions look more logical and not so gloomy in the proposed circumstances.

One of the modern amateur researchers solved the problem of the relationship between truth and lies about Tepes in a simple way. He decided: since German sources vilify Vlad, and Russian ones defend him, we will take only those stories that are contained in both. These will certainly be true. However, this method turned out to be not very correct. Russian manuscripts were written, as has already been proven by scientists, on the basis of German ones. They portray Tepes in somewhat softer tones, but if some action was attributed to him, then it remains attributed, only with a different explanation. So if the German source contained lies, then the Russian one remained, only in a more moderate form.

There is a well-known episode when, at the beginning of his reign, Dracula, having called up to 500 boyars, asked them how many rulers each of them remembers. It turned out that even the youngest remembers at least seven reigns. Dracula's response was a kind of attempt to put an end to the “undignified” order, when the boyars turned out to be so much more durable than their overlords: all five hundred “decorated” the stakes dug around Dracula’s chambers in his capital Targovishte. But if in this case it is not difficult to understand the feelings of the “terrorist on the throne” and his motives, then it is perhaps impossible to explain everything else with them.

Thanks to these testimonies, replete with overlapping episodes, the image of the ruler is recreated, who loves to impale people to the point of selflessness and fight for truth and justice, and it is impossible to say where the first passion turns into the second and vice versa, they are so inextricably fused. “Truth” is conceived in no other way than in the form of the relentless killing of people, and vice versa - murders are committed exclusively in the name of “restoring justice.” This is achieved by a tirelessly sophisticated game played by the “evil-wise” (in the words of the ancient Russian author) Dracula with his contemporaries: he “invents” situations in which a certain gap should arise between the ideal, absolute truth-justice and the words or actions of the subjects. Here are some examples.

A foreign merchant who came to Wallachia was robbed. He files a complaint with Dracula. While they are catching and impaling the thief, with whom “in fairness” everything is clear, the merchant is given, on the orders of Dracula, a wallet containing one more coin than it was. The merchant, having discovered the surplus, immediately informs Vlad about it. He laughs: “Well done, I wouldn’t say it - you’d be sitting on a stake next to the thief.”

In general, distinguished by great fear of God, Dracula, who tirelessly built churches, said that his merit to the Almighty was exceptionally great - not a single predecessor of his sent so many holy great martyrs to God. When a certain monk began to accuse him of tyranny, and to call those executed martyrs, in full agreement with the words of Dracula himself, Dracula joyfully replied that he was ready to include the monk himself among the martyrs. And he included it.

Another example. Dracula merrily feasts, as an ancient Russian author puts it, among the “corpse.” The servant bringing the dishes winces. To the question “why?” it turns out that he cannot stand the stench. Dracula’s “resolution”: “So put him higher up so that the stench doesn’t reach him.” And the poor fellow writhes on a stake of unprecedented height.

As a rule, Dracula sought to measure the height of the stakes with the social rank of those executed - the boyars, too, were much higher than the commoners, thanks to which the “park of stakes” presented a kind of picture of an equal before the ruler in death, but class-differentiated Wallachian society.

Dracula’s “diplomacy” is also noteworthy. Here is a translation from Old Russian: “Dracula had such a custom: when an inexperienced ambassador from the tsar or from the king came to him and could not answer his insidious questions, he impaled the ambassador, saying: “It’s not me who is to blame for your death, but either your sovereign or you yourself. Don't blame me. If your sovereign, knowing that you are stupid and inexperienced, sent you to me, the much-wise sovereign, then your sovereign killed you; If you decided to go on your own, unlearned, then you killed yourself.” A classic example is the reprisal against Turkish ambassadors who, according to the custom of their country, did not take off their hats when bowing to Dracula. Dracula praised the custom, and in order to further strengthen them in it, he nailed the caps to the heads of the ambassadors.

This is no longer just sadism. Historians have done a lot to include Dracula among the “great” sadists of the Renaissance. Why not the brothers of Dracula and the “Neopolitan king Ferrante (...), a tireless worker, an intelligent and skillful politician,” who, having salted his killed enemies, seated them along the walls of the cellar, arranging in his palace a whole gallery, which he visited at a good moment, and dozens contemporaries of Vlad III like him?

But there is also a difference: Dracula’s rapturous play with truth - justice, into which, as is easy to see, he puts a special meaning. Firstly, it is testing the subjects for compliance with all possible ideals - honesty, eloquence, prosperity, grace, etc. Moreover, any deviation from the ideal is punished by painful death. Secondly, Dracula’s “truth” is a person’s vulnerability, that is, the ability to interpret words or actions in any way as carrying a hidden indication of his execution, and even more desirable, even the appearance of execution (as in the case of the Turkish ambassadors).

The episode with the Hungarian ambassador mentioned in various sources is very indicative here. Dracula, having invited him to a feast, points to an extremely large gilded stake and asks why this stake might be needed here. The answer follows that, it is true, a certain outstanding man committed a crime before Dracula and he wants to distinguish the stake condemned by beauty. Dracula answered: “You are right; “Here you are, the great sovereign’s ambassador, the royal ambassador, and I have prepared this stake for you.” By the criterion of openness to death, the ambassador himself recognized himself as suitable prey for Dracula. But the answer sounds: “Sir, if I have done something worthy of death, do as you wish. You are a fair judge, it is not you who will be to blame for my death, but I myself.” The Hungarian ambassador escapes - no, it turns out that in his previous remark there was a sanction for execution. Dracula doesn't have time to grab him. But at the same time he is pleased, the desired formula has been sounded: it is not he who kills people, it is their imperfections and miscalculations that kill. The denouement follows: “If I had answered differently, you would have been on this stake.”

The Sultan's troops arrived in time and defeated Dracula and approached Targovishte, but it was here that the unimaginable happened - thousands of human victims seemed to redeem the life of Tepes. Seeing a forest of stakes with the dead in front of the walls of his capital, the Sultan exclaimed: “What can we do with this man?” And, strangely losing his enthusiasm, he withdrew to Turkey with the main forces.

Nevertheless, Tepes's defeat was complete. Dracula, pressed by the remaining Turkish troops, fled. But Europe, which in the days of victories glorified him as a great Christian commander who took revenge for Constantinople desecrated by the Turks, and “did not notice” his bloody atrocities, rejected Dracula. The Hungarian king imprisoned him. Tepes spent 12 years there.

And then luck returned to him again. The Hungarian king invited Tepes to convert to Catholicism. Dracula renounces Orthodoxy. The marriage to the sister of King Matthew Corvinus follows, and the sadist, who had just been denounced by the pamphlets written in Hungary, becomes a desirable candidate for the Wallachian throne for the Hungarians. In 1476, he was again on the throne, having overthrown his brother Radu II, who adhered to the Turkish orientation. War with the Turks breaks out again.

Reports are conflicting about how Tepes died. According to one of them, Vlad had a Turkish servant - an agent introduced by the Sultan, who enjoyed the full trust of the ruler and accompanied him everywhere. It was he who killed Tepes, approaching him from behind and cutting off his head, which he took to the ruler of the faithful.

This version is unlikely. Tepes was too cautious and suspicious to trust the Turk (he knew the Turks’ passion for political games), and the only reason he could deal with him was to obtain some information about the enemy. In this case, it is unlikely that the “tongue” would be allowed to be armed unattended near the commander.

The fact that Vlad's head was taken to Turkey is reported in at least three European sources. One of them, the chronicle of Antonio Bonfini, an Italian historian and chronicler at the court of Matt Corvinus, appears to be the basis for other reports. Turkish sources say nothing about this.

The death of Vlad is described in great detail in the Kirillo-Belozersk manuscript. According to this version, Vlad separated from his troops and climbed the hill alone “to enjoy the spectacle of his soldiers successfully cutting down the Turks” (in fact, the military leader has more serious reasons to look at the battlefield from an elevated place). Then a detachment of Wallachian fighters came across him, who mistook him for a Turk, because, as usual, he was dressed in Turkish during the battle. Already pierced by a pike, he managed to cut down five of the attackers, but there were many more of them, and Vlad was stabbed to death by "many spears." Having found the dead body of the “wrongly” killed governor, the Wallachians cut off his head and sent it to the Sultan so that he too could rejoice.

Perhaps, gradually, the memory of the cruel seeker of justice - Vlad Dracula - would change in the memory of ordinary people, becoming the property of historians. But the figure of the Wallachian ruler interested the English writer Bram Stoker, and at the end of the 19th century his famous novel about the vampire Count Dracula appeared.

Very often in critical and historiographical literature there is a statement: the monster invented by Stoker has practically nothing in common with the historical Dracula. Particular emphasis is placed on the fact that in the Romanian tradition there is no indication of the transformation of Dracula into a vampire, not to mention the amazing changes that the biography of the real Dracula undergoes in the novel.

Stoker, a Wallachian (Romanian), turns his hero into a Transylvanian Hungarian Szekler. You can also point out other deviations of the writer from historical truth. Thus, he places Dracula's castle in the Transylvanian Borgo Pass. Here, in fact, there was a castle that Vlad the Impaler was supposed to visit, but the real residence of the ruler was on the Arges River, near the borders of Transylvania and Wallachia. Critics are most willing to point out that Stoker’s Dracula is completely different from Vlad the Impaler in the Romanian folklore tradition. Is it so? Is there really nothing in common between Dracula the moralist, Dracula the sadist and Stoker's vampire?

It is well known that Stoker made his hero a vampire by misunderstanding one word in a German pamphlet against Tepes, which in fact meant not a vampire, but a berserker. This was the name given to frantic ancient Germanic warriors who, in the heat of battle, imagined themselves as wolves tormenting their enemies. But Stoker’s Dracula remains a berserker. Boasting the glory of his ancestors, the count says that among them were the greatest berserkers of the era of migration of peoples. Where did the vampire come from?

It was assumed that this motif could have been born from another line of the pamphlet, in which Dracula was compared to a flea sucking the blood of its victim. In addition, it was pointed out that the image of the crazy Renfield, deifying Dracula and obsessed with the idea of ​​​​absorption different lives, in particular eating birds alive, is inspired by the image of Dracula tormenting birds and mice in prison.

As for Romanian folklore, the situation with it is far from being so simple. Indeed, the warrior Vlad III takes on heroic traits in him. Moreover, the very name Dracula, i.e. Son of the Dragon, or Son of the Devil, is decisively eliminated from Romanian folklore, where he is Voda (voivode) Tepes. However, some researchers note that in the biography of Dracula there is undoubtedly one episode that could well have caused the appearance of the legend about his transformation into a vampire - this is the apostasy from Orthodoxy, the transition to Catholicism, which, according to popular beliefs, is often punishable by a curse in the form of vampirism.

A noteworthy episode is found in one of the legends: all evil spirits rise against the Water of Tepes along with the Turks. There are vampires here too - they gather on Mount Ratesat, which lies on the border of Romania and Wallachia, very close to the historical castle of Dracula.

With this observation of researchers who have devoted a lot of time to “Dracula studies,” one should also compare the survey they conducted of the peasants who now live in the neighborhood of this castle. The results were unexpected. The peasants, of course, honor Tepes as a great hero, many even claim that their ancestors fought under his banner, but at the same time the castle is covered in strange glory. People are afraid to walk past it at night, and when folklorists asked to show the way to it, they were told: “Forbidden.”

There is also a belief among peasants: Dracula either did not die at all, or has the amazing ability to be reborn and appear to the living at any moment. This legend is also heroic: Tepes will come and be the defender of Romania from foreign invasion, as he was in the 15th century.

This text is an introductory fragment.

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

Fyodor Kuritsyn, “The Tale of Dracula the Voivode”

He drank the blood of his enemies and loved to dine among the thousands of his impaled victims. He cut out women's breasts, skinned people alive, pierced their stomachs, and nailed hats to their heads. The most important and bloody monster is the Prince of Darkness. The one whose name means “son of the Devil” in Romanian. The one whom cinema loves so much and who today has thousands of fans. The mysterious tyrant of the Middle Ages - Vlad Tepes Dracula. This is how our contemporaries consider him.

He died five centuries ago and then he was buried with honors, called the most just ruler, honest and noble. People could not hold back their tears because they knew that he gave his life to protect them. Vlad Dracula built churches and monasteries, founded the capital of Romania Bucharest and saved Europe from the Turkish invasion. He was a defender of the Orthodox faith, but died a Catholic. He was a brilliant commander, but he went down in history under a terrible nickname - Tepes, i.e. "impaled" Tens of thousands of executions are attributed to him. Who was he really? Why did he gain such fame? And when did the creation of the reputation of a man who is still considered a national hero in Romania begin?

In the 15th century, the prince Vlad III Dracula was the ruler or ruler of the small country of Wallachia, located in the center of Europe on the territory of modern Romania. Even during his reign, rumors spread across Europe about the extreme cruelty of Dracula. and after his sudden death he was generally declared a servant of the Devil. Below is one of the medieval engravings, where Vlad calmly dines among thousands of impaled people.

Perhaps this excitement would have passed over time, but soon after the death of Dracula an ambassador from the Russian Tsar Ivan III arrived in Romania Fedor Kuritsyn . He heard about the prince’s deeds and brought back from this trip his heartbreaking story - “The Tale of Dracula.” In Russia, the book was immediately banned - Kuritsyn admired the prince’s actions too much. But one day the legend fell into the hands of a minor Ivan IV the Terrible . For the young king, this book became a guide to governing the state. He carefully studied Dracula's methods of execution and eventually surpassed it. He began to combine skinning with burning; impaled and at the same time cut out pieces of meat from the unfortunate; He boiled the victims in oil, set them on fire and tore them by the legs.

All tyrants are alike. Something forces everyone to be cruel: the situation in the country, conspiracies, opposition, difficult childhood or congenital insensitivity and cruelty. But how did Dracula distinguish himself so much that he was proclaimed Prince of Darkness No. 1? Did he really drink blood? It's all the Irish writer's fault Bram Stoker . He lived in the 19th century and wrote horror novels, but none of them brought him success until he decided to write a novel about vampires. It was in the 19th century that everyone believed that ghouls exist. These are not just characters from folk tales. They live somewhere in the unknown and terrible forests of Eastern Europe, among the Serbs, Czechs and Russians. Stoker heard about Vlad the Impaler Dracula from his friend, a Hungarian scientist, who spoke about the forgotten tyrant and gave medieval books about the monster. In gratitude, Stoker made this scientist a fighter against vampires and introduced him into the book under the name Van Helsing . In Stoker's novel, a vampire count lives in a Transylvanian castle, who bites the necks of his guests, drinks their blood and turns them into zombie slaves. He sleeps in a coffin, he has red elongated fangs, a deformed spine and, most importantly, he is very afraid of sunlight. Naturally, Stoker changed and came up with a lot. And Dracula was not a count, but a prince. And he lived not in Transylvania, but in Wallachia. and slept not in a coffin, but on an ordinary bed.

Disease or vampirism?

Regarding Dracula's appearance and his photophobia, Stoker described the symptoms of a real disease, unknown at that time. Such people really have long fangs, they cannot stand in the sun because their skin becomes blistered, their skeleton becomes deformed and they become very scary. All these are sick porphyria. It occurs very rarely when a person’s metabolic process in the blood is disrupted. Doctors managed to identify porphyria not so long ago - in 1963. Patients with porphyria, of course, did not drink blood, but because of their ugly appearance they were feared and were often called the living dead. Of course, such clinical features leave an imprint on the psyche. Thus, a person who is afraid of daylight and has anatomical defects begins to acquire a certain aura of mystery. Perhaps Stoker saw a porphyria patient in his life. His appearance impressed the writer so much that he gave it to his hero, the bloodsucker Dracula. What did the real Wallachian prince look like?

Appearance of Vlad Dracula

A lifetime portrait of Dracula and his description have reached us: “He was a short, tightly built, broad-shouldered man. His facial features were rough. His skin was delicate. He had an aquiline nose, wide nostrils, very long eyelashes, wide eyebrows and a long mustache.” Nothing that would remind me of porphyria. So the appearance of the literary Dracula has nothing in common with the appearance of the prototype. Moreover, there is no information in any historical source that Dracula drank blood. Other atrocities were attributed to him, but he was not noticed in vampirism.

The tradition of drinking the blood of their enemies existed among the Kurds, Japanese samurai and Papuans of New Guinea. This is not about pleasure, but about conviction. By drinking the blood of your enemy, you gain his strength and youth. By eating a heart, you take possession of its courage. These traditions were unknown to medieval Romanians. But in the 19th century, Stoker knew very well about them, and all his life he was interested in the memories of famous European travelers. Thus, the writer’s imagination, in addition to his frightening appearance, endowed the Romanian prince with a love for fresh blood. and behind these horrors it is no longer possible to see the image of the real Dracula, the one whom Romanians still consider a national hero. and they were so offended by Bram Stoker that they even banned the novel “Dracula”. Ceausescu stated that the novel dishonors the honorable name of the illustrious son of the Romanian people, Vlad Dracula. But why did one tyrant protect another so much? What was good about Vlad the Impaler and his crimes? And why do Romanians love Dracula so much?

In the Middle Ages, Wallachia was a small principality adjacent to Transylvania, and today it is part of Romania. Mountains and thick fog hiding small towns. It seems that the Romanians there are still afraid of vampires, but they don’t know what they are. In their fairy tales, no one drinks blood. Such characters have never existed in popular imagination. Then it is not at all clear where the legend of the bloody Dracula came from.

The childhood and youth of Vlad Dracula

In 1431, in the city of Sighisoara, in the family of the prince Vlad II Dracula and the Moldavian princess Vasiliki a son was born. In general, the ruler of Wallachia had four sons: the eldest Mircea , average Vlad And Radu and the youngest is also Vlad (the son of the second wife of Prince Vlad II - Koltsuns , subsequently Vlad IV Monk ). Fate will not be kind to the first three of them. Mircea will be buried alive by the Wallachian boyars in Targovishte. Radu will become the favorite of the Turkish Sultan Mehmed II , and Vlad will bring his family the bad reputation of an cannibal. Vlad IV the Monk will live his life more or less calmly. The family's family coat of arms was a dragon. It was in the year of Vlad’s birth that his father joined the Order of the Dragon, whose members swore a blood oath to protect Christians from the Muslim Turks. They wore long black cloaks. By the way, the bloody Prince Dracula will wear the same one.

Over time, details of his birth appear in the legends about Prince Dracula. Allegedly, when the baby was born, one of the icons in the room began to cry blood. This was a sign of the birth of the Antichrist. In addition, two comets appeared in the sky at once, which was also not a good sign. Such tales are often invented after the birth of many prominent people.

In the 15th century, the country was captured by the Turks. Sultan Murad II demands to pay tribute - to send boys and animals to Turkey. It is impossible to argue with the Turks, they just captured Constantinople and became a threat to the whole world. Gradually, the small countries of Eastern Europe came under their rule. From the Balkans the Turks went to Romania and Wallachia had to become a Turkish province. The prince denied it as best he could, secretly joined the knightly Order of the Dragon, and played a double game with the Sultan. He taught his sons that the most important thing is freedom.

But one day the Sultan revealed his secret plan and summoned the prince and his sons to his place and accused him of treason. And so that the prince would serve him faithfully, he took his two sons as hostages: Vlad and Radu. If their father had rebelled against the Turks, the boys would have simply been killed. However, there were also advantages to this conclusion. Education in Turkey at that time was considered one of the best. Only there could Vlad learn martial arts and military strategy to resist this empire. It had to be studied from the inside. This is exactly what Vlad's father would have wanted. Several years passed and all this time the brothers were together. Vlad supported the younger Radu and took care of him. Together they dreamed that they would run home and, together with their father and older brother, take revenge on the Turks.

But it happened differently. Wallachia had many enemies: Hungarian neighbors who wanted to take away its lands; the boyars who wanted to put their protege on the throne and the Turks who established their own order. The country was in chaos. The Romanians gradually converted to Islam. And Dracula Sr. fought as best he could to preserve his rights and religion. But one day his captive sons found out that their father had been killed. His older brother Mircea also died with him. The boyars placed their candidate on the throne. Now it turned out that the heir to the throne was fourteen-year-old Vlad Dracula. An heir who had nothing - neither power nor freedom. He cherished in his soul hatred of the Turks and revenge for the death of his relatives. In his hatred, he did not notice how the irreparable happened - the heir to the Sultan, Mehmed, liked his younger brother. Known for his perverted predilection for boys, he took the weak Radu into his harem and made him his favorite. Vlad was choking with hatred. Through the prison bars, he saw how the Turks executed Christians - how they sharpened smooth sticks with a diameter of about 25 cm and impaled people on them. The unfortunate ones took 12 hours to die, because the stake gradually passed through the entire body, pierced the internal organs and passed through the mouth. Then Vlad decided to learn the language, techniques and customs of the Turks, and when the time comes, kill them in their own favorite way. So another six years passed in hatred and sadness.

One day, Vlad was brought to the Sultan and he said: “Come back home. Sit on your father’s throne and serve me more honestly than he served.” Returning, Vlad saw his country in ruins. Boyar feuds and struggles for power gave rise to chaos. Theft, lynching and lawlessness flourished. Part of the population turned Turkish and converted to Islam. Neighboring Transylvania threatened war. It was then that Vlad Dracula made three oaths to himself: to avenge the death of his father and older brother, to rescue his younger brother Radu from captivity, and to free the country from the Turks. He will not pay tribute, he will not give up boys for numerous Janissary barracks, because he is not a puppet, he is Vlad Dracula. The one whose name will become a nightmare for the Sultan. Personal life For four years, Vlad faithfully paid tribute to the Turks, sent humble letters to the Sultan, and assured of his loyalty. At the same time, he secretly formed his army.

Continuing his father's work, he began to establish connections with neighbors. He became friends with the King of Hungary and at his court found what he had never had - friend and love. The successor of the Hungarian king became a friend Matthias Corwin , and with love - beautiful Lydia , the daughter of a Romanian boyar, is a quiet, submissive and beautiful girl. She was going to become the bride of the Lord, to spend her life in a monastery. But a chance meeting with Vlad Dracula turned her life upside down. The prince in love begged on his knees to refuse the tonsure, and Lydia agreed to become his wife. This decision will make her unhappy and force her to die young. They were married in a small Hungarian temple. Vlad was happy. For the first time in his life, he wanted not to fight, but to enjoy the quiet joys of family.

Internal and foreign policy Vlad Dracula

But Vlad understood that life under the rule of the Turks could not last forever. All this time he lived in captivity of his nightmares, and woke up from his own scream. In a dream he saw his dead father. He was lowered into the grave alive. I saw a little brother who still remained in the power of the Turkish Sultan. The dead called for revenge, and the living waited for his return. And Vlad finally made up his mind. Bloody revenge of Vlad Dracula. At this time, the Pope tried to organize a new crusade against the Turks, but only Wallachia and Hungary agreed to fight. Other countries feared the Sultan's revenge. Vlad Dracula was so happy at the opportunity to get rid of Turkish dependence that he refused to pay tribute to the Sultan. It was a challenge, but the Sultan, busy with the war with Greece, decided to postpone the punishment of the daring Dracula. Vlad understood that before the war it was necessary to strengthen his power. There was little time, so the prince did not choose methods.

To begin with, he tried to stop the boyar feuds that were tearing apart his small country. In his family castle Targovishte, Vlad avenged the death of his father and older brother. According to legend, he invited the boyars to a feast, and then ordered them all to be slaughtered. It is believed that it was with this execution that the bloody procession of the great tyrant Vlad Dracula began. So the legends tell, but the chronicles convince each other - at the feast, Dracula only frightened the boyars, and only got rid of those whom he suspected of treason. During the first years of his reign, he executed 11 boyars who were preparing a coup against him. Having avoided a real threat, Dracula began to restore order in the country. He made new laws. For thefts, murders and violence, criminals faced execution - they had to be burned at the stake. When public executions began in the country, people realized that their ruler was not joking.

Vlad the Impaler quickly became famous as a just ruler. In his time, money could be left right on the street and no one would dare to steal it, because everyone knew that the punishment would be terrible. There was not a single thief in the country. For Vlad it did not matter whether a nobleman, a boyar or an ordinary beggar committed a crime. There was only one solution for everyone - execution. Legend claims that this is how he destroyed all the beggars and those who did not want to work. gradually he deliberately made people fear him. He even selected scary stories about his cruelty. He believed that this was the only way to make him respect himself and prepare the people for a difficult war with the Turks. In each city, Vlad left a golden cup at the main well so that anyone could drink the water. People feared and respected their ruler so much that no one dared to steal this cup. Some of his reforms healed the Wallachian economy in record time. Under Dracula, even hominy was cooked in milk, since milk was cheaper than water. He gave the green light to local merchants, and imposed a heavy duty on foreign ones. And when the merchants of neighboring Transylvania tried to rebel, he staged a show execution. In front of the entire merchant community, he ordered ten merchants who violated his law to be impaled. But they did not forgive him for this. Vlad punished the Saxons near Brasov, after which they began to write stories about him horror stories. The Saxons portrayed Dracula as a terrible, bloody and cruel ruler. To them he was a monster. Thus began the creation of the image of the Devil. The merchants decided to take revenge and spread rumors that Dracula is the Devil, destroying his people, that he burns entire cities, impales even babies, burns out the breasts of women, and then feasts among the corpses. Later, other terrible inventions were added to these fantasies.

One day Dracula hosted a dinner and invited beggars to his place. When the guests had eaten, the prince asked if they always wanted to be so full and happy. The guests nodded their heads happily. Then Vlad left, and the servants locked the house and set fire to it from all sides. No one survived. The same thing happened with the Turkish ambassadors. They came to the prince for negotiations, but refused to take off their turbans as a sign of respect. Then Dracula ordered these turbans to be nailed to the ambassadors' heads. There is only part of the truth in these stories. The beggars in the country really disappeared, but no one burned them at the feast. They were punished, and those who refused to work were burned. And no one nailed turbans to the ambassadors’ heads. Dracula knew Turkish customs too well. Since there was no chronicler at Dracula's court, there is too little information about him. The only "reliable" document was a pamphlet written by Saxon merchants. In it, he is naturally presented in the most negative light. But for the Romanian people he is a hero and a fair ruler who never killed innocent people.

Thus, in four years, Dracula completely changed the situation in his country. He founded the future capital - Bucharest, began building new castles and fortresses and continued not to pay tribute to the Sultan, realizing that they would soon want to punish him. But when Vlad turned to his allies Hungary and Moldova for support, they refused to help him. Friend and King of Hungary Matthias Corvinus has already spent the money allocated to him by the Pope for the crusade. Therefore, he was forced to support Dracula, but he did it in a very cunning way - he equipped an army and ordered him to stay on the border with Wallachia and wait. The angry Sultan gathered 250 thousand soldiers and sent them to Wallachia. Vlad was in despair, because he had only 30 thousand soldiers. Then he decided to retreat and wage a guerrilla war. His warriors attacked only at night, howling like wolves. The Turks were terrified; they thought they were fighting werewolves. This is exactly what Prince Dracula wanted. His army quickly appeared, killed and disappeared just as quickly. The Turks found nothing in Wallachia, not even horse feed. The water in the wells was poisoned. The Turks drank and died. In addition, ambushes awaited them in all the mountain gorges and forests.

The “scorched earth” tactic worked - the huge army of the Turks melted before our eyes. Everyone volunteered to join Dracula's army. Even 12-year-old boys and women were accepted into the army. And in 1462, one of the most famous and daring attacks of this war took place. Vlad dressed his soldiers in Turkish clothes and attacked the Sultan's headquarters at night. The panic began. No one understood who was attacking them and from where. The frightened Turks hacked at each other. The Sultan was not killed only by mistake - he was confused with the vizier. That night, Dracula's small army destroyed 30 thousand Turks. And the next day the Sultan discovered a forest of impaled Turkish soldiers - 4,000 dead. So Vlad surpassed his teachers in cruelty. The conqueror of Constantinople, the great and invincible sultan, after what he saw, said: “I cannot conquer a country ruled by such a bloodthirsty and great warrior” and simply retreated. King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary attributed this victory to himself. Allegedly, it was he who led Dracula in the war. O sent a letter to the Pope and reported that the money had not been spent in vain.

Now all of Europe glorified Dracula and Corvinus as heroes. The Hungarian king told the offended Dracula that he could not help him. I just didn’t have time to gather an army. And Vlad believed his friend. All he had to do was finish off the retreating Turkish troops. One day, during a routine battle with the Turks, Dracula suddenly encountered the commander of a Turkish detachment in battle. A battle ensued, and when Vlad took off the Turk’s helmet with a blow, he saw his brother Radu. He realized that his brother had become a traitor and a loyal servant of the Sultan. Vlad wanted to kill him, but his brother shouted that Vlad was his debtor. It was he who begged the Sultan to grant him freedom and the throne. Having killed hundreds of enemies, Dracula could not kill just one. This mistake will cost him his life.

Betrayal

He soon learned that Rada was supported by the boyars and made a new contender for the throne. There was a rebellion against the prince. The boyars entered into a secret agreement with the Turks. and they launched a new attack on the country. It was a trap - Vlad's small army could not fight on two fronts. He had to give up positions and retreat into the mountains, and hold the last defense high in the mountains - in his impregnable fortress Poenari . It was here that Dracula's hopes of liberating his country were buried. Here his army held the Turkish siege for several months and he managed to transport his wife here, saving him from the possible revenge of the boyars. The Turks nevertheless surrounded the fortress. Vlad, with the last of his strength, ran to the tower with a secret exit, where the unfortunate Lydia was waiting for him. But Vlad did not have time - the Turks had already made a hole in the wall of the tower. Lydia chose death over Turkish bullying and jumped from the tower into the river. For a woman of that time, being captured by the Turks was worse than suicide. She died defending her honor. They say that it was after the death of Lydia that Dracula sold his soul to Satan. Dracula fled from the fortress, but his life stopped - his wife died, his brother abdicated, his allies betrayed him. All he had left was revenge. The Turks, led by Radu, captured Wallachia. Meanwhile, the King of Hungary had to answer to the Pope for the failure of the campaign. And he found the culprit...

Vlad, hoping for his support, came to Buda, but he was captured. Corwin accused him of treason, allegedly he agreed with the Turkish Sultan to seize Hungary. Dracula was imprisoned and brutally tortured to extract a confession of “treason.” He pleaded not guilty to anything. So he spent ten years in a Hungarian prison. So his best friend, the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus, shamelessly betrayed Dracula, slandered him, forged letters to the Sultan, and ordered the creation of documents about the prince’s cruel crimes. And the reason for betrayal is as old as the world - money. Royal life required royal expenses, and Matthias appropriated the money allocated by the Pope for the crusade, and decided to shift the blame for the failure of the campaign onto Vlad Dracula, who was also his best friend.

In order to convince the Pope that the prince was capable of treason, he called the offended merchants from Transylvania (the same ones whom Dracula had punished for lying). Now they could take revenge and created an anonymous pamphlet in 1463, which described the inhuman atrocities of Dracula and tens of thousands of tortured civilians. This is how Europe learned about the bloody monster Dracula. While he was in prison, scary stories about his cruelty.

Five centuries have passed and after the success of Bram Stoker’s book, cinema became interested in Dracula. The world saw the first silent horror story about Dracula "Nosferatu - a symphony of horror." It was with her that the bloody march of the movie vampire Dracula began. Over the past 80 years, more than 200 films have been made about the world's main vampire. From the cult film by Francis Ford Coppola to the ironic film starring Leslie Nielsen. All this time, Romanians had not heard anything about Dracula the vampire. Films and books simply did not get behind the Iron Curtain. Only in 1992 did they learn in Romania that their Vlad Dracula for the entire Western world is the Prince of Darkness and a symbol of evil.

Vlad Dracula's Castle

Thanks to Stoker's book, Romania became known to the whole world and tourism began to develop in the country. Today, thousands of tourists strive to see Count Dracula's castle. However, there are many such castles throughout Romania, and Dracula simply did not see most of them - they were built after his death. For example, Bran Castle is considered the true residence of the prince, but he never visited there either. We can definitely say that Dracula visited only the Poenari fortress and the ancient city of Sighisoara, where, in fact, he was born. But Romanian guides naturally don’t talk about this. By the way, the house where Dracula was born is now a restaurant with a vampire theme. Whether this is worth the slandered name of a national hero, only money will answer.

The last descendant of Dracula

A direct descendant of Vlad Dracula now lives in the center of Bucharest - Constantin Bolacheanu-Stolnic . The uniqueness of the situation is that he is already 90 years old and has no children. so he is the last of Dracula's line. Constantin Bolacheanu-Stolnic is a neuropsychologist, anthropologist and geneticist. The old professor descends from Vlad the Impaler's older brother, Mircea. He knows everything about his legendary ancestor Dracula. And he tells people what Vlad really was - a man who fought for the independence of his country, but, unfortunately, fell victim to political intrigue. He is a hero, a national hero. And not only in official history, but also in folk legends. It is not known what the history of Europe would have been like if the Turks had conquered it. And the fact that they did not do this is the merit of Tepes. He had a strong personality. He was well educated, having received the best education at that time - Turkish. He was a good warrior and one of the few who could resist Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople. The last descendant of Dracula has already come to terms with the fact that his ancestor was turned into a gold mine. But he is still trying to unravel the mystery of the last months of the prince’s life.

The last years of life and death of Vlad Dracula

Vlad spent 12 years of imprisonment in prisons in Buda and Pest. In the meantime, the Pope was replaced, and the Turks became more active again. Europe faced the threat of Turkish invasion. His native Wallachia was ruled by his traitor brother Radu III the Handsome and, of course, by the Turks. There are suggestions that Radu converted to Islam. Therefore, the new Pope Pius II was afraid that the country might become completely Muslim. Then he remembered the captive Dracula. Who else, if not him, should fight for his country?

So after 12 years his imprisonment ended. The Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus released him so that he could drive out the Turks and rule Wallachia again. At the same time, he set two conditions for him: 1) he would marry his relative Ilona, ​​so that Corwin would not suspect him of treason; 2) will accept Catholicism to prove his honesty to the Pope. Vlad will humbly accept all the conditions - he married a second time and became an apostate. All just to return and fulfill his third oath - to liberate the country. When he set out on his last campaign against the Turks he was 45 years old. His wife managed to give birth to two sons, and the king of Hungary finally fulfilled his promise - he gave him an army. With battles, Vlad ascended the throne for the third time. But an unpleasant surprise awaited him at home - now everyone was afraid of him to death, even his own servants. He renounced his faith. Behind my back they whispered: sorcerer, devil, apostate. In addition, Wallachia was again weakened by civil strife. Dracula again fought with the Turks and victory was his. One day in 1462, during a battle, he suddenly felt a terrible blow to his back. He was killed by his own boyars, treacherously, in battle...

Then, before burial, superstitious people drove a stake into the prince’s chest and cut off his head. This is how they treated traitors to the faith back then. Vlad Dracula was buried by monks Snagovsky Monastery. But a few years later the grave was opened and only rubbish and animal bones were found in it. The panic began. There were rumors that Vlad Dracula was alive. No one knew that his grave was securely hidden under a slab in front of the entrance to the same church. Someone reburied the body specifically so that parishioners would trample Dracula’s ashes. According to ancient Orthodox custom, this meant that with such humiliation the deceased would atone for his earthly guilt.

Many centuries have passed and now for Romania the prince has again become a hero. time put everything in its place. People understood too late the role that Dracula played in the liberation of the country. Today in Romania there is a popular song: “Where are you, Tepes, our god? Come back and send all the rulers of Romania to hell...”

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Dracula. A real vampire from Transylvania Tuesday, January 14, 2020 16:06 ()

Dracula... In the minds of millions of people, this name is associated with the image of the legendary vampire from the dark and mysterious country of Transylvania - during the day he pretends to be a lifeless body, and at night he goes on a murderous path, terrifying entire generations of residents and... spectators, as well as readers since 1897 of the year. It was that year that he became the main character in Bram Stoker's stunningly successful horror novel.
But far fewer people know that Stoker's immortal character's name was borrowed from the real Dracula, who lived in the real-life Transylvania four centuries earlier. And although that Dracula was not at all a bloodsucker in the literal sense of the word, he gained no less terrible fame as a bloody tyrant, whose cruelty became an eternal and, perhaps, the most striking example of sadism.
The real Dracula was born in 1430 or 1431 in the ancient Transylvanian town of Sighisoara and was the second son of Vlad II, Prince of Wallachia. Having inherited his father's power, he became Vlad III, although he was better known as Vlad the Impaler, that is, the Impalement. His father’s name was Dracul - “devil” - perhaps because he was a fearless fighter, or because - and this is most likely - he was a member of the Catholic sect of the Order of the Dragon, and in those areas the dragon was synonymous with the devil. In any case, Vlad III called himself Dracul, the son of Dracul.
He was a brave warrior, but at times it was difficult to understand whose side he took in this or that battle between Eastern and Western religions, churches and cultures that mixed in the principality under his control. Either he leaned towards the Turks, then towards the Hungarians, he moved from the Roman Catholic Church to the Orthodox Church, he fought under the banner of Islam on the side of the Ottomans. In the political chaos of that era, he never stood firmly on his feet. Three times he lost and regained Wallachia - part of Southern Romania, including the regions of Transylvania.
Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. Born from the author's imagination in 1897, the vampire count still roams the world in films, novels and plays.
He first found himself on the Wallachian throne in 1443, on which he was placed by the Turks after his father and older brother fell at the hands of Hungarian mercenaries. Frightened by the Turks, who at one time patronized him, he fled, but returned to the throne in 14S6, already with Hungarian support. The next six years of his reign were marked by atrocities. In those days, torture and murder of political opponents were commonplace - the 14th - 15th centuries were etched in history as an era of unheard of atrocities and crimes. But Vlad’s antics, which later became an example for Ivan the Terrible, broke the records even of those years. The number of his victims is uncountable. According to one legend, he lured into an ambush a detachment of Turks, with whom he was supposed to meet peacefully for negotiations, inviting them to the city of Tirgovishte, took off their clothes, put them on stakes and burned them alive.
His victims were not only his enemies, but also his own subjects - nobles and ordinary peasants, as well as random travelers. Suspecting everyone indiscriminately, he executed innocent people. So, his soldiers discovered and burned a group of merchants crossing his lands. They didn’t even forget to kill the drivers. Another time, for the same reasons, he gathered together 400 foreign students, mostly boys, who were studying the language and customs in Wallachia, drove them into one room, locked them and set the house on fire.
He usually impaled his victims on stakes. But this seemed to him not enough, and the sadist came up with all sorts of other methods of killing for the victims - he pierced them with stakes from the front, back, side, through the chest, stomach, navel, groin. He strung them onto stakes through his mouth, upside down; came up with ways to make a person suffer longer. He invented different types of death for people of different ages, gender and status. For this purpose I prepared special stakes in the form geometric shapes, especially loved the curved ones. For an unknown reason, he executed the population of the entire village, placing stakes of different lengths in a circle on the hillside, placing the headman and other representatives of local authorities on top, so that they could from there take a last look at their former possessions with a misty gaze.
He decorated the overall picture of the executions with torn out nails, heads, ears and genitals. Those who lacked stakes were strangled, boiled in oil, or blinded. He took particular pleasure when the victims “danced and wriggled on their stakes.” Watching their suffering, he used to say: “Oh, what wonderful moments they experience!”
Thanks to a recent invention printing press stories about Dracula's "art" spread throughout Europe during his lifetime. He became a favorite character of pamphleteers, whose works were popular in many countries. Being the forerunners of future illustrated magazines, these publications placed on the title pages appeals to readers who were frozen in horror, such as: “The nightmarish story of a monster and torturer named Dracula, who distinguished himself by such acts hostile to Christianity as impaling people, cutting them into pieces, boiling women and children alive, as well as cannibalism.” The public bought and read such books, thrilled with fear and curiosity at the same time and forgetting that their native Inquisition was capable of no less terrible actions...
Thus Dracula became the first international media character.
But despite his crimes, in his homeland, in Romanian folklore, he remained a heroic figure who drove out the invaders. The Germans, in the books they published, especially emphasized the cruelty and sadism of Dracula, since among his Transylvanian victims there were many immigrants from Germany. But many chilling scenes were drawn from other sources - Russian testimonies, the memoirs of Pope Pius II (his legate in Hungary met with Dracula), Romanian ballads and legends, which only confirmed and multiplied the German examples.
One of Dracula's most memorable atrocities took place on April 2, 1459 in Brasov and was the result of a long dispute between Vlad and local merchants. At the end of the day, the prince's troops began to herd the people to the hill near the chapel on the outskirts of the city. In total, about 20 thousand people gathered, mainly representatives of the local nobility. They watched in horror as the soldiers burned their houses, and then the traditional procedure of impaling them began.
Closer to night, the hillside turned into a forest of stakes, along which streams of blood flowed and the heads of those who had no place on the points rolled. During the execution, one local boyar, as they say, shuddered from the terrible smell and sight of blood. And Dracula, who had a peculiar sense of humor, ordered the unfortunate man to be impaled on the highest stake so that he would be less bothered by unpleasant odors. The prince himself was not embarrassed by either the spectacle or the stench. According to legend, he calmly dined next to his fellow citizens who had died and were dying in agony.
He could not be accused of preferring one class or another. One day he gathered the boyars of an entire region and began asking them who lived under whose rule. They did not suspect that Dracula intended to take revenge for the brutal murder of his brother and father and was trying to find out which of the boyars could be present at their deaths. As a result, more than 500 people were impaled and died terrible death near his palace.
Another time, he invited poor residents to his palace, invited them to undress, and treated them to lunch. When they relaxed, all the doors suddenly slammed shut and the house burst into flames from different corners at once. “I did this in order to eradicate poverty in my state forever, so that no one else would suffer,” the prince said with cynical humor.
Women were a special target for this monster. The story tells that one day Dracula met a poorly dressed peasant. “Your wife is clearly not worthy of you,” he said. And although the peasant tried to assure the prince that his wife was quite happy with him, he ordered her to be impaled and the widower to find a new woman.
Unfaithful wives, girls who lost their virginity early, and widows who broke mourning were subject to immediate punishment. Their genitals were cut out, skinned alive and put on public display.
One of the legends has brought down to this day the case of one of his mistresses, who also failed to avoid death. Finding the gentleman in a grumpy state, she tried to return him to a good mood by telling him that she was pregnant. Dracula accused her of lying. Wanting to prove that she was deceiving him, he pulled out a sword and ripped open her stomach. The legend does not say whether he was right in his guess.
Dracula's insidious disposition was also evident when the ambassadors of the Turkish Sultan arrived to him, but did not remove their turbans when they bowed. Dracula inquired why they did not show him respect. “This is the custom of our country,” they answered. To this the count said that he supported this custom, and ordered their turbans to be nailed to their heads.
No one knows how many people this tyrant executed or tortured in various ways. The papal legate, Bishop Erlau, who had no reason to exaggerate, reports that Dracula doomed 100 thousand people to death, but other sources lead to suspicion that this number is also underestimated.
“The Tale of Dracula the Voivode”... In “The History of the Russian State” N.M. Karamzin called this story “the first Russian historical novel" Its manuscript ends with the name of the copyist - this is the monk of the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery Efrosin. But who is the author? It is known that in 1482 Ivan III sent diplomat Fyodor Kuritsyn to Buda. According to the assumption of academician A. Kh. Vostokov, “it is quite likely that the composition of this story can be attributed either to Kuritsyn himself, or to someone from his retinue who heard his eyewitness descriptions of what happened.”
Here summary“Tales” in the program of N. M. Karamzin.
There was a governor in the Muntyansky land, a Christian of the Greek faith, his name in Wallachian is Dracula, and in ours - the Devil. He was so cruel and wise that, as was his name, such was his life.
One day, ambassadors from the Turkish king came to him and, entering, they bowed according to their custom, but did not remove their caps from their heads. He asked them: “Why did they do this: they came to the great sovereign and inflicted such dishonor on me?” They answered: “This is the custom, sir, ours and in our land.” And he said to them: “And I want to confirm your law, so that they hold it tightly.” And he ordered the caps to be nailed to their heads with iron nails...
The king was very angry, and went to war against Dracula, and attacked him with great forces. The same, having gathered his entire army, attacked the Turks at night and killed many of them. But he and his small army could not defeat the huge army and retreated. And he himself began to examine everyone who had returned with him from the battlefield: whoever was wounded in the chest, he gave honors and made him a knight, and whoever was wounded in the back, he ordered to be impaled...
And the king sent an ambassador to Dracula, demanding tribute from him. Dracula gave that ambassador magnificent honors, and showed him his wealth, and said to him: “I am not only ready to pay tribute to the king, but with all my army and with all my wealth I want to go to his service, and as he commands me, so will he.” I will serve...” And the king was glad, for at that time he was waging war in the east. And he immediately sent an announcement throughout all the cities and throughout the entire earth that when Dracula went, no one would do him any harm, but, on the contrary, they would greet him with honor. Dracula, having gathered the entire army, set off, and the royal bailiffs accompanied him and gave him great honors. He, having gone deep into the Turkish land for five days' march, suddenly turned back and began to ravage cities and villages, and captured and killed many people, impaled some Turks on stakes, cut others in half and burned them, not sparing infants. He left nothing in his path, turned the entire land into a desert, and took away the Christians who were there and settled them in his own land. And he returned home, seizing untold riches, and released the royal bailiffs with honors, admonishing: “Go and tell your king about everything that you saw: I served him as much as I could. And if my service pleases him, I am ready to serve him in the same way, to the extent of my strength.”
He lost his throne in 1462 and, overthrown by the boyars, spent 20 years in a Hungarian fortress. He was then released to take part in the fight against the Ottomans, and after that Dracula regained the Wallachian throne. And there was a final battle with the Turkish army near Bucharest. Sources describe his death in different ways. Some claim that he was killed by traitorous boyars. Others say that he disguised himself as a Turk and disappeared, but the plan did not succeed: his companions mistakenly stabbed Dracula, and his head was displayed for a long time in Istanbul, impaled on a stake. This is what Sultan Mehmed II ordered.
The remains of the Wallachian ruler rest in the Snagov monastery, two dozen kilometers from Bucharest. This is one of the memorable historical places in Romania.
By the end of the 15th century, the monastery was known as one of the three largest monasteries in the country. Shortly after Dracula's death, the Church of the Annunciation collapsed. In the 17th century, the monastery experienced a new period of prosperity, becoming a recognized center of education in southeastern Europe. One of the first printing presses in the country, Antim Ivireanu, publisher of the Romanian translation of the Gospel, was installed in the monastery cells. Then the monastery was converted into a prison, and by the middle of the 19th century it was empty, and the ancient buildings gradually fell into disrepair.
This is what the Romanian writer Alexandru Odobescu wrote in 1862 in his short story “A Few Hours in Snagov”:
“The chipped slabs are in different parts temple, but who can say over whose ashes they were erected? Only one, the largest one, which lies opposite the royal doors at the altar, contains a legend. They say that this is the tombstone of one cruel and self-willed ruler Tepes, who in Snagov set up something like a torture chamber, from where the convict, who was tormented with fire and iron, was then thrown out into the lake with the help of a throwing weapon. ...Metropolitan Philaret allegedly ordered the letters to be cut from the stone on the grave of the despicable ruler who created such a terrible machine, and to place this stone to be trampled on forever or for the sake of saving the unfortunate soul under the feet of the priest when he comes out with the holy gifts.”
In the 30s of our century, Romanian historians Dinu Rosetti and Gheorghe Florescu, who carried out archaeological excavations in Snagov, found confirmation that one of the burials contained the remains of Vlad the Impaler. However, in the works of later Romanian historians this discovery is not only questioned, but somehow not considered indisputable.
...Fate brought them together. Dracula rests in Snagov after completing his earthly affairs in a grave behind the monastery wall, and Nicolae Ceausescu loved to be here, very close, in his palace, indulging in relaxation in between earthly affairs. In the evenings, a veil of twilight simultaneously covers Lake Snagov, the monastery standing on the island and the former country residence of the now executed and secretly buried dictator.
Previously, pleasure boats sailed along the lake and boat stations received tourists. But a few years after coming to power, the “beloved leader” decided to protect himself as much as possible and banned all movement.
In winter, the icy lake freezes quickly. And on the transparent ice, it seems, you can, in one sitting, push off from the shore, roll and glide to the island where Dracula sleeps. Or you may not get there - depending on your luck... They say that the messengers who brought Dracula either good or bad news were also lucky in different ways: even the one who reported the victory was sometimes prepared with a spruce stake in case the ruler was not in the best mood. What can we say about those who brought bad news...
Only stones remained from the fortifications of the former monastery. The church is deserted and quiet. Although it is noticeable that someone is looking after the sad place. It is Elder Emilian Poenaru, giving thanks to the Lord every day, who has been praying here for ten years now.
Here is the door to the temple. The darkened painting on the walls is barely visible. On the floor in front of the altar there is a stone slab - no name, no dates, no words about exploits and accomplishments. As Filaret commanded, everyone who approaches the altar stands with his foot on this slab...
Maybe Dracula was buried on the island so that he would not be able to cross the water at night and disturb people’s memory?..
The catastrophic earthquake of 1977 severely damaged the church and bell tower and destroyed the main dome. But the slab and the one under it were not awakened by the shaking of the earth. Several years ago the dome was recreated. Elder Poenaru wants to organize a museum of Vlad the Impaler here, but he can’t find a companion, no one stays on the island for a long time. It's like a curse is hovering over him.
Romanians love hoaxes. No matter how tragic and bloody the grandiose performance that took place on the streets of revolutionary Bucharest in last days December 1989, victims and losses cannot obscure the culmination of that insane action - the execution of the Ceausescu couple in one of the military garrisons in the city of Targovishte (the same one). Only many weeks later, footage of a secret burial ceremony in one of the unnamed cemeteries was shown on television. Naturally, however, for a good bribe, the Bucharest cemetery caretakers revealed the secret to journalists and began to conduct one excursion after another to two graves located 30 steps from each other and marked, like all fresh graves, with iron crosses and tablets. It’s just that the signs have fictitious names on them.
Time passed, the crosses were removed and no new ones were installed. And two graves remained nameless - and terrible: after all, it wasn’t just that someone’s hands lowered the coffins - on TV only hands were shown - into reinforced concrete pits. The same hands covered the graves with heavy slabs, and then piled them on top of the mound.
But the Bucharest old ladies weren’t afraid of these graves; they scouted everything out and brought bouquets of flowers here. And soon, as the promises of the new rulers did not come true, younger people also flocked here. Also with flowers. And with candles.
A man is weak and today he remembers the evil of yesterday with goodness. Or maybe ordinary Christian custom draws them here. And also - a hidden, unspoken desire to atone for the sin of the imminent and therefore today seemingly dubious trial of the ruler, whom they worshiped in blindness and servility for so many years.
Cemetery aspens tremble in the wind, their trunks creaking. There will be something to cut a stake from.

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

1. Small Motherland

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 at 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 the Ottoman Empire.

3. Father was married to the Moldavian princess Vasilisa

Although nothing is known about Dracula's mother, it is assumed that his father was married to the Moldavian princess Vasilisa at the time. 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 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 influenced how vile and vicious Vlad later became.

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 character in Greek folklore and the last emperor of the Byzantine Empire. Some historians suggest that it was there that he developed his hatred of the Ottomans.

6. Son and heir Mikhnya is evil

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

7. Nickname "Tepes"

The nickname "Tepes" translated from Romanian means "piercer". It appeared 30 years after Vlad's death. Vlad III earned his nickname "Tepes" (from the Romanian word țeapă 0 - "stake") because he killed thousands of Turks in a grisly manner - impalement. He learned about this execution as a teenager, when he was a political hostage. Ottoman Empire in Constantinople.

8. The worst enemy of the Ottoman Empire

It is believed that Dracula is responsible for the deaths of more than one hundred thousand people (most of them 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 Dracula's Wallachia, Sultan Mehmed II fled with his army, horrified by the sight of twenty thousand rotting Turkish corpses impaled on stakes on the outskirts of Vlad's capital, Targovishte. During one battle, Dracula retreated into the nearby mountains, leaving behind him imprisoned prisoners. This forced the Turks to stop their pursuit, since the Sultan could not stand the stench of decaying corpses.

10. Birth of a legend

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

11. Scorched earth tactics

Dracula also became known for the fact that during his retreat, he burned villages along the way and killed all the local residents. 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 cleanse the streets of the Wallachian capital 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 from the outside and set it on fire.

12. Dracula's head went to the Sultan

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

13. Remains of Dracula

It is believed that archaeologists who were searching for Snagov (a commune near Bucharest) in 1931 found the remains of Dracula. The remains were transferred to the historical museum in Bucharest, but later they 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 over 150 years. He was initially praised by the Vatican for defending Christianity. However, the church subsequently expressed its disapproval of Dracula's brutal methods and ended its relationship with him.

15. An enemy of Turkey and a 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 to be justified.

16. Transylvanian subculture

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

17. Dracula and Ceausescu

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

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

20. Fear and the Golden Cup

In order to prove how much the inhabitants of the principality feared him, Dracula placed a golden cup in the middle of the city 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 conditions of extreme poverty.

Arriving in, we discovered that almost all of our ideas about such a popular Romanian character as Vlad Dracula were not at all correct. Having stayed in the country for several days, we also became convinced that even guides often “float” in many issues related to it. Having received a couple of questions after the publication of the Romanian reports regarding the same ambiguities in the story of Dracula, I decided to do a little research and write about what I managed to find out.

Vlad Dracula is the most controversial figure in Romanian history. In terms of fame, among famous Romanians, only the Soviet-era dictator Ceausescu can compete with him, but he is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, while Vlad is still interesting to thousands of people around the world.

There are so many blank spots, assumptions and myths in the history of Vlad that almost no statement about him can be made without the prefixes “according to legend”, “commonly believed” or “allegedly”. Moreover, on top of the crumbs of historical truth, huge layers of fiction, artistic and not so, were layered. In general, the way the personality of Vlad Dracula is now imagined by an ordinary person who is not interested in the history of Romania is so far from the truth that it has even ceased to resemble it. A " true story Dracula" is an almost unattainable concept.

So, for starters, the unquestioned facts of the biography of Vlad Dracula.

A Very Brief Biography.

- He was born in 1431, in the city of Sighisoara, in the family of the future Lord of Wallachia, Vlad II from the Besarab clan. He received a good education for that time.
- At the age of 12, together with his brother, he was given as a hostage to the Ottoman Empire. His brother Radu converted to Islam, but Vlad only became embittered, and then hated the Turks all his life.
- After the death of his father, Vlad III was elevated by the Turks to the throne of the ruler of Wallachia but was quickly removed from it with the participation of the Hungarian ruler Janusz Huniyadi. Vlad is forced to flee to Moldova and then to Hungary, where he becomes an adviser to his former enemy Janusz.
- In 1456, he sought the throne for the second time - this time on his own, and for 6 years he ruled Wallachia, pursuing an aggressive anti-Ottoman policy.
- In 1462, on false charges of conspiring with the Turks, Vlad III was arrested and placed under arrest.
- In 1474, Vlad was rehabilitated and in 1476, after the death of his brother Radu III, he returned to the throne of Wallachia.
- His third reign lasted not much more than two months, after which he was killed by an assassin sent by him, and his head was sent to Turkey as proof of his death.
-Almost everything else from the biography of Vlad Dracula is disputed, has several versions or is not known at all..

I won’t try to create a complete historical portrait of Vlad - this would be like a dissertation)). I will try, instead, to simply clarify the issues that caused us the most bewilderment and confused our guides.

Let's start with the simplest thing - the name.

What was Dracula's name?

Everyone knows who Count Dracula is, many remember Vlad the Impaler, some guess that this is, after all, more of a nickname than a real name. But what was his real name and what did it mean? In fact, the confusion begins even before Dracula's birth.

His father, Vlad II, was accepted into the army for his services in the fight against the Turks. knightly order Dragon, receives the nickname Dracul in his homeland. If you ask a Romanian today to translate this word for you, he will 100% answer “devil, devil.” But Vlad II willingly accepted this nickname, made it his family surname, decorated the walls of churches with it.. This is due to the fact that at that time the Latin roots of the word Dracul were still alive in the Romanian Language. That is, the nickname Dracul was perceived as a derivative of the Latin draco and Vlad II was still a Dragon and not a Devil.

From him Vlad III inherited the nickname Dracula or Dracula (Romanian Drăculea), i.e. diminutive of Dragon, "Son of the Dragon." Subsequently, perhaps due to the reputation of Vlad Dracula, or perhaps simply because the dragon now sounds “balaur” in Romanian, there was a misconception that this nickname originally meant “Devilish”.

The matter does not end there. There is another nickname: Vlad the Impaler - Impaler. This is explained by the “favorite” type of execution that Dracula practiced. He willingly impaled captured Turks and his opponents in his own kingdom. This name, which many seem more “deserved,” paradoxically, in fact, first appeared almost a hundred years after Vlad’s death.

Well, it seems like we’ve sorted out the name! So what about Vlad Dracula's reputation? Was he really such a cruel monster as is commonly believed?

The legendary cruelty of Dracula.

Most of the stories vividly depicting the atrocities of Vlad III are based on several documents written by a certain German author just after the arrest of Dracula by the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus. At the same time, several pamphlets and engravings on the same topic were published, which became “bestsellers” and were distributed throughout Western Europe. Most likely, this is an example of a “political order” and “black PR” of that time. King Matthias was very interested in tarnishing Vlad's name in order to justify his decision to capture him. After all, the (false) accusations against Dracula were not very convincing: he was accused of colluding with the Ottoman Empire, although he was widely known as a fierce opponent of the Turks. Apparently, this is how Dracula, a literary character, was born for the first time. Over time, stories about his cruelty only became more and more colorful, overgrown with details and intertwined with folklore. In addition, a certain political and geographical distribution of stories about Vlad the Impaler is interesting - in the countries of Western Europe, the dominant motif is Vlad the monster, a maniac enjoying the suffering of his victims, while in Eastern Europe, Romania itself and Russia, the main motif is Vlad the harsh ruler, cruel but fair .

But it cannot be said that all evidence of the cruelty of Vlad III is fiction. The executions of thousands of people are evidenced by documents from the entire period of his reign, including his own letters.
It is known that even in his youth, Vlad Dracula had an explosive, stubborn and rebellious character, which made his stay in Turkish captivity especially difficult. Subsequently, his hatred of the Turks exceeded all reasonable limits. In war, he knew no mercy, he was not embarrassed by any means in achieving his goal. And within the country, in the eternal confrontation with the boyars, who were constantly trying to challenge and limit his power, he showed himself to be a ruler of more than tough disposition. Perhaps this is why, during his reign, Vlad III was popular among the people and unpopular among the boyars.

Everything related to Dracula's castle is no less confusing.

"Dracula's Castles"

Here you won’t even immediately understand where to start.. Everywhere and everywhere “Dracula’s Castle” (or, even better, “Count Dracula’s Castle”) is called Bran Castle in Transylvania. This is as wrong as anything can be :)

The historical Vlad Dracula did not build this castle, did not live in it, did not storm it... In general, in fact, he had nothing to do with it. According to one version, he spent some time in this castle as a prisoner before being sent to Hungary, but this version is pretty far-fetched, since there is a record that he was arrested in the Oratia fortress nearby, and about his detention in Bran Not a word is written anywhere.

As for the character of Bram Stoker, the literary Count Dracula, he did not live here either. More precisely, there is not a single evidence that Bran was the prototype of the habitat of the Transylvanian Vampire and that Stoker even knew about this castle.

Where did this legend come from? Unclear. Romanian guides suggest that the tourists themselves decided to christen this castle this way. To be honest, it’s not entirely clear why. The castle does not at all resemble an ominous stronghold of a vampire - it is bright and joyful.

So where to look for Dracula's family estate? Let's go in order.
Vlad, as I already wrote, was born in the city of Sighisoara. His father’s mansion there is quite impressive, but it doesn’t look like a castle.

During his reign, Vlad lived in the city of Targovishte, which was at that time the capital of Wallachia. It is known that he built the Kindia Tower there, but this, of course, is not a castle..

Perhaps the best candidate for the role of Dracula's castle is Poenari Castle. Built long before the birth of Vlad, it was the ancestral castle of the Bessarabians, but was abandoned and destroyed. During his reign, Vlad Dracula ordered the restoration and expansion of the castle, due to its excellent strategic position.
In addition to its historical connection with Vlad, Poenari Castle boasts a local legend, making it even more attractive to Dracula fans.

According to legend, the army of the Turks, led by Vlad’s brother, Radu Bey, who had converted to Islam, was preparing to besiege Poenari Castle, where Vlad Dracula’s love, Justin, was at that time, while he himself was away. Among Radu's entourage was Vlad's former servant, who remained loyal to his old master. He writes a note warning about the approach of the Turkish army, and sends it with an arrow through the window of the princely chambers of the castle. Justina, having read the note and realizing that the castle is surrounded and, in the absence of Vlad and his army, will inevitably be taken, throws herself from the walls of the castle into the river flowing under the slope of the cliff on which the castle stands, preferring death to Turkish captivity. Since then, the river flowing under the walls of Poenari Castle has been called Râul Doamnei, which translates as Princess River.
We see an adaptation of this legend in an episode of the famous film by Francis Ford Coppola “Dracula”.

The last Romanian castle associated with the name of Dracula, Corvin Castle in Hunedoara, brings us to the next topic:

Hungarian captivity of Dracula.

At first glance, everything is clear and understandable here. It is “historically recorded” that in 1462 Vlad III was arrested and placed in the dungeon of Corvinus Castle, and in 1474 he was rehabilitated and in 1476 he assumed the rights of ruler of Wallachia for the third time. Without any doubt in their words, the guides of the Corvin Castle say, pointing to the eerie casemate in the basement of the castle: “The famous Vlad Dracula spent 12 years in captivity here.”

When I began to study this issue, I was immediately confused by another “historically recorded” fact: around 1465, Vlad married the cousin of the Hungarian king.. It’s unlikely that it’s right in this cell?

Continuing my search on the Internet, I was able to piece together something like this:
In 1462, Vlad was indeed arrested near the Oratia fortress on false charges of conspiring with the Turks. For Matthias Corvinus, this was a “necessary” political step: shortly before this, he received money from the Papal See for a crusade against the Turks, but squandered the funds for other purposes. A “scapegoat” was urgently needed, and Vlad, losing in the war to the Ottoman Empire, and planning to ask for help from the Hungarian king, became the best candidate..

But from Oratia it was transported not to Corvinus, but to Visegrad, in Hungary. As a high-ranking prisoner, he was kept in Visegrad Castle under "house arrest" rather than in prison. For the winter he moved to the capital of Hungary, returning back in the summer. Vlad quickly won the favor of Matthias Corwin. It was not so difficult: Vlad’s pro-Ottoman brother, Radu III, reigned in Wallachia, the Turks continued to press on the Hungarian and Moldavian borders, in addition, Vlad still had political supporters. Dracula soon got married, further strengthening his position, had two children and, as a result, finally moved to Budapest. In general, apparently, this was the calmest and most stable period of his life. And Corwin Castle, it seems, has no place at all in the real story of Dracula...

Portrait of Dracula.

The only portrait made during his lifetime dates back to the time of Vlad’s captivity (the original has not survived), which later became the model for all other existing images of him. The most popular oil portrait was made many years after Vlad's death and does not accurately resemble the original. For unknown reasons, the artist gave Vlad here the hereditary traits of the Habsburgs.

But, speaking of the portrait of Dracula, I rather want to paint a portrait of his personality, rather than his appearance.

So, what portrait of Dracula's personality emerges as a result? He is in no way similar to that gloomy man-beast who spent two-thirds of his life in a cage and went berserk during his short reign and was nicknamed the “Son of the Devil”, whom medieval “historians” painted for posterity.

“Son of the Dragon” is a sharp, energetic man, a talented commander, a flexible, charismatic politician; while heading a not at all large state, he resisted the onslaught of the huge Ottoman Empire all his life. Forced to take advantage of any help offered, even by the murderers of his own family, he restores his principality, devastated by the war. Of course, not a saint, he does not miss the opportunity to take cruel revenge on the Turks, who crippled his youth and took his brother away from him, and on his enemies among the nobility of his own country, as a result of whose conspiracy his father was killed and his elder brother was buried alive. He himself is betrayed again and again by his own allies and neighbors, but he does not give up, until the last, striving for his goal, until the killer’s hand manages to reach him from behind.
Such a person really deserves to become a literary character! But fate decreed otherwise...

Dracula the vampire.

The legend of "Nosferatu", Dracula the Vampire, of course, was created by Bram Stoker, writing his novel, which became so popular. The names of the legendary count and the ancient Wallachian prince coincide, of course, not by chance. Bram Stoker's diaries mention a book by William Wilkinson, a British diplomat in Eastern Europe, in which he could find a mention of Vlad Dracula. Stoker could also learn about Romanian legends in which the walking dead are present from his friend, Hungarian professor Armin Vambery. This guess is confirmed by the fact that in the novel, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing says that the source of his information about Count Dracula is Professor Arminius. The novel also has some parallels with the real biography of Vlad: his participation in the war with the Turks is emphasized and even a brother is mentioned who betrayed him and went over to the side of the enemy.
In his book, Stoker combined the name Dracula with the motif of vampirism, drawn from the Gothic novels of the time and perhaps from Eastern European fairy tales, in which vampires, werewolves, ghosts, specters and similar evil spirits abound.
So Dracula became the hero of a bestseller for the second time :)

Francis Ford Coppola (or rather his screenwriter) certainly did excellent preparatory work before filming began on Bram Stoker's Dracula. In addition to the excellent adaptation of the novel, we see added elements that tie the action even more tightly to the historical landscape. Firstly, in the film we see a presentation of the already mentioned legend about the death of Vlad’s wife, whose name is even consonant - Mina, and secondly, the “Order of the Dragon, founded by Count Dracula” is mentioned.

Order of the Dragon.

Such an order actually existed, but its founder was neither Dracula nor even his father, Vlad II, but the king of the Holy Roman Empire, Sigismund. The order had as its goal to fight the enemies of Christianity, in particular the Ottoman Empire. Vlad's father was accepted into the Knights of the Order of the Dragon for his services in the war against the Turks, thus receiving his nickname Dracul, founding the Drăculeşti dynasty and bequeathing to his son the name Dracula, which means "Son of the Dragon".
The symbol of the order was a dragon curled into a ring against the background of a cross. They say that this coat of arms is depicted by order of Vlad II on the walls of several churches in Romania, although we were not able to see any during our visit.

According to some reports, Vlad Dracula, at the age of five, was also accepted into this order, although this is doubtful. The fact is that in 1436, just when Vlad Dracula turned 5 years old, his father was officially deleted from the list of members of the Order of the Dragon because, having broken under the pressure of the Ottoman Empire, he recognized the power of the Sultan over himself and was forced into as a guide, take part in the invasion of Transylvania.. However, after the death of Sigismund in 1437, the order quickly lost its influence.

Descendants of Dracula.

And in this “simple” question, not everything is as simple as it could be :) According to various sources, Vlad had two or three wives, who bore him three or four sons and, possibly, a daughter. Apparently, one of his wives was not married to him and one of his sons was illegitimate, which causes confusion in the sources.
In any case, the Dracul line did not end with Vlad III. The Draculesti continued to live and rule in Wallachia until 1600, the year of Wallachia's reunification with Transylvania and Moldavia.
And now, among his distant descendants, one can name even such famous people, like Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain.

Although the descendants of Dracula are alive, there are no direct descendants of this family. Among the Transylvanian peaks, an old man who calls himself the last descendant of the famous governor Vlad does not live in a lonely castle, and if he does, we could not find him, but maybe one of the future guests of Romania will be lucky? :)

All illustrations in this post were found on the Internet and belong to their authors.

On November 8, Bram Stoker was born - the man who told the world the story of Count Dracula, a cruel vampire. How true is this story, replicated in horror books and films? Was Vlad the Impaler really that bloodthirsty, or is this just a cleverly created literary image?

Where did the scary name come from?

Vlad III Tepes was born around 1430. The name “Dracula” translated means “Dragon”, or rather “Son of the Dragon”, and Vlad inherited it from his father, VladaII, who was one of the knights of the Order of the Dragon.

The mission of the knights was simple and at the same time complex - to preserve and protect Orthodoxy, which at that time was in danger from the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire. The image of a dragon defeating an insidious serpent adorned the clothes of knights, on coins, and Vlad II even had a personal seal with a dragon.

As for the nickname “Tepesh”, it literally means “impaled”. This name was added to the official title of the ruler of Wallachia, Vlad. III Dracula three decades after his death, when numerous fictitious and greatly exaggerated stories about his reign flourished.

If we talk about documented facts, then his bloody atrocities consist of the execution of a dozen people - Tepes impaled the conspiratorial boyars who killed his father and brother. The rest of his victims are not victims at all, but enemies with whom he fought valiantly.

Creepy legends about VladIII Dracula

For the first time, it was not Bram Stoker who told the world about the cruelties of Dracula. At the end of the 15th century, a certain Fedor Kuritsyn, who was on diplomatic service at IvanaIII, traveled through Hungary and Moldova.

The Hungarian king and the Moldavian ruler told him terrible stories about the neighboring ruler - the governor of Wallachia, Vlad the Impaler. They excitedly talked about how Vlad impaled everyone indiscriminately - his own and others, placing buckets under the bodies of the victims and dipping pieces of bread into their blood. How he insidiously invited hundreds of boyars to his place for dinner, and then ordered the soldiers to kill them all. How he boiled alive those who had the misfortune of being guilty of something, and forced others to eat this terrible “dish”...

The horrified Russian diplomat wrote “The Tale of the Mutyansky Governor Dracula” (Mutyansky means Romanian). Strictly speaking, this is a collection of fictional stories about a cruel ruler, which does not claim to be historically accurate.

Defender of the Orthodox Faith

If we turn to historical documents and forget for a while about the artistic fiction of Fyodor Kuritsyn, Bram Stoker and numerous film directors, a completely different portrait emerges.

Vlad III became Prince of Wallachia at the age of 25. In those years, the Ottoman Empire sought to expand its possessions, invading the territory of the Balkans deeper and deeper. Serbia and Bulgaria were already under the yoke of the Turks, Constantinople surrendered... The Romanian principalities were about to share the common fate.

However, unexpectedly the Turks were defeated. The young prince of Wallachia was not going to submit to the aggressor. Moreover, he himself moved to the territory of occupied Bulgaria with an army to save the Bulgarian peasants professing Orthodoxy and settle them in Wallachia, away from the Turkish invaders. The victory of the brave Dracula caused delight among the Bulgarians and other residents of European countries.

It is clear that the Turks were determined to destroy the rebellious Wallachian governor, who was hindering the further expansion of the Ottoman Empire. Sultan MehmedII was preparing a serious military campaign against Vlad.

Betrayal of those closest to you

The situation was complicated by the fact that Vlad's younger brother - Radu Handsome, he himself planned to take the throne of Wallachia, and the Turks supported him in this - after all, he converted to Islam and was a real favorite of the Sultan. Vlad understood well: in order to resist the powerful Turkish army, allies are needed. Many people promised to help him - including the Pope PiusII, and the Hungarian king Matthias, and the rulers of other countries professing Christianity... But everything was limited to empty promises. When the Turks attacked, Vlad Dracula found himself alone with them.

All men of Wallachia, starting from the age of 12, were drafted into the army. Vlad fought desperately, using scorched earth tactics and guerrilla raids. And in order to instill superstitious terror on the enemy, he impaled captured opponents everywhere - after all, this was the method of execution that was widespread in the Ottoman Empire.

As a result, Vlad managed to defeat the enemy. But it was more difficult to deal with “friends”: everyone betrayed him. Radu's own brother became an enemy, the Moldavian prince went over to his side Stefan, who once assured Dracula of his devotion. The Hungarian king Matthias, who initially sent his troops to help Vlad, suddenly accused Dracula of secret correspondence with the Turkish Sultan, in which Vlad allegedly promised assistance to the Turks in capturing the Hungarian ruler.

From the point of view of modern scientists, all these letters are a crude forgery. However, contemporaries believed the treacherous Hungarian king. Vlad Dracula was arrested and thrown into prison in the Hungarian capital Buda. There was no trial, no investigation - he was simply kept there for 12 years.