The real story of Dracula. Scary facts about Count Dracula. Return to power

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

Wallachian Grozny

“The look of his eyes is lightning, the sound of his speech is heavenly thunder, the outburst of his anger is death and torture; but through all this, like lightning through the clouds, the greatness of a fallen, humiliated, distorted, but strong and noble in nature spirit shines through.”

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

The Birth of Fiction

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

Let's say, once Dracula, having lost a battle with the Hungarian king, was captured and thrown into prison for 12 years (real historical fact). However, the Tale says, even in captivity, the governor “did not abandon the evil custom, but caught mice and birds, and executed them in this way: he impaled some, cut off the heads of others, and released others after plucking their feathers.”

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

However, whether Kuritsyn was in neighboring Transylvania and Wallachia, where Tepes lived and reigned, is not known for sure. Moreover, in the “Tale” the date and place of the commission of the described atrocities are almost never mentioned; in form and content this is more of a journalistic article rather than historical chronicle. At the same time, to write his “Tale,” Kuritsyn partially used an anonymous pamphlet about the alleged cruelties of Dracula, written by order of the Hungarian king in 1463.

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

Three names

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

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

Vlad's father (and, perhaps, Vlad himself) was in knightly order Saint George, whose adherents wore on their clothes images of the serpent, defeated by their patron saint.

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

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

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

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

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

The Age of Popular Culture

The Wallachian ruler found a rebirth in 1897, with the publication of Bram Stoker’s Gothic novel “Dracula,” which later became a cult work of mass culture.

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

The real Tepes, of course, was not any count; Stoker added the sonorous title for the sake of gothic beauty. His hero is cruel and bloodthirsty, however, as befits an infernal aristocrat, he is not devoid of noble romantic traits.

But no matter how the image of Dracula is transformed, we should pay tribute to modern Romanians, who turned his bloody deeds not into a national tragedy, but into a highly profitable tourism business.

Today, in every second castle in Transylvania, you will be told chilling stories from the life of Tepes, who drank the blood of innocent victims almost right in this tower. And no one is embarrassed that this castle was built one hundred or two hundred years after the death of the great ruler.

There are such historical figures, whose cruel deeds chill the blood and inspire horror. According to biographers, he personally observed the torture of convicts, who were alternately doused with boiling water and ice water, and then drowned in the river. The Hungarian countess, who, according to legend, loved to bathe in the blood of young girls in order to preserve her youth, is not far behind.

This list can be continued endlessly, but it is worth noting the famous ruler of Wallachia, Vlad III the Impaler, who became the prototype of Dracula in the novel of the same name. The life of this bearer of the crown is shrouded in myths and true stories; they say that frightened enemies called Vlad the son of the devil. Tepes went down in history as an “impaler” and instigator of biological warfare, but in his native country he gained fame as a genius of military thought.

Childhood and youth

The biography of Tepes, a descendant of Vlad II Dracula and the Moldavian princess Vasiliki, partly remains a mystery, because scientists cannot give an exact answer when the ruler of Wallachia was born. Historians have only speculative facts and date his birth between 1429-1430 and 1436.

Young Tepes did not make a pleasant impression and had a repulsive appearance: his face was adorned with large, cold eyes and protruding lips. According to the ancient legend, a little boy saw right through people. Vlad’s parent raised his offspring in accordance with the strict rules of the time, so initially the young man learned to wield a weapon, and only then began to learn to read and write.

Vlad spent his childhood in the historical region, the city of Sighisoara. At that time, Transylvania (now located in Romania) belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary, and the house in which Tepes lived with his father and older brother still stands and is located at Zhestyanshchikov 5.

In 1436, Vlad II became the ruler of Wallachia and moved to the capital of this small state - Targovishte. The ruler's possessions were located between Transylvania and the Ottoman Empire, so the prince of Wallachia was ready for an attack by the Turks. To maintain sovereignty, Dracul was forced to pay tribute to the Turkish Sultan in wood and silver, as well as give expensive gifts to Turkish nobles.

Following ancient custom, Vlad II sent his sons to the Turks, so Tepes and his brother Radu were held in voluntary captivity for four years. According to rumors, the brothers observed torture in Turkey, and Radu became the object of sexual violence. However, there is no reliable evidence that Vlad II sent his offspring to the Ottoman Empire as hostages.

Scientists, on the contrary, believe that the ruler of Wallachia was confident in the safety of his sons, since he himself often visited Turkish Sultan. The only thing that Vlad and Radu had to fear during their stay in Turkey was the changeable mood of the Sultan, who loved to touch alcohol.

Governing body

In December 1446, the Hungarians carried out a coup d'état, as a result of which Vlad II's head was cut off and his older brother Tepes was buried alive. These events became the background to the formation of Dracula's character.

The Turkish Sultan learned about this Hungarian outrage and began to gather troops. Having won the victory over the Hungarians, the leader Ottoman Empire placed Tepes on the throne, displacing the Hungarian protege Vladislav II, who took the throne with the support of the Transylvanian governor Janos Hunyadi.

The Sultan lent Dracula Turkish troops, and in 1448 a new ruler appeared in Wallachia. The newly-minted ruler Tepes begins an investigation into the murder of his father and stumbles upon facts related to the boyars.

Janos Hunyadi declared Dracula's accession to the throne illegal, the Hungarian commander began to gather an army, but by that time Tepes had managed to hide in Moldova, then in Transylvania, from where he was expelled by Janos' supporters.

In 1456, Tepes again visited Transylvania, where he gathered an army of associates in order to conquer the throne of Wallachia. It is known that Vlad III ruled the state for 6 years and made his mark not only inside Wallachia, but also outside these lands. According to some sources, during his reign Tepes destroyed about one hundred thousand people, but this data has not been confirmed.

He also pursued church policies aimed at strengthening the church, provided material assistance to clergy, and also became famous for his military campaigns in Transylvania and the Ottoman Empire (Tepes refused to pay tribute). Among other things, Vlad III sent money transfers to the monasteries of Greece.

Personal life

Contemporaries describe Vlad the Impaler in different ways. Some say that he was a pale-faced and thin handsome man with a pitch-black mustache, while others claim that the ruler of Wallachia had a repulsive appearance, and his bulging, cold eyes instilled fear in everyone. But scientists agree on one thing: Vlad Dracul was an infinitely cruel person.

It was not for nothing that the ruler was nicknamed “the impaler,” since impaling people was Vlad III’s favorite method of execution. Enemies who died such deaths bled to death, so pale bodies hung on sharpened sticks (Vlad preferred colas with a rounded top, lubricated with oil, which were inserted into the rectum).

By the way, this is why Vlad Dracula was nicknamed a vampire in folklore and literary works, although there is no evidence that Tepes tasted human blood.

It is noteworthy that Sultan Mehmed II, seeing thousands of rotting corpses of the Turks, fled with his army without looking back. Vlad III liked this grave environment and his appetite even increased from the sight of the agony of his defeated enemies.

As for Tepes’s personal life, it was shrouded in mystical and mysterious halos: so much has been written about his wives and mistresses literary works, that it is difficult to understand whether this is reality or fiction of the writers. Rumor has it that Dracula was married twice to certain Elizabeth and Ilona Sziladyi. The ruler of Wallachia had three sons: Mikhail, Vlad and Mikhnia the Evil.

Death

They say that Vlad III Tepes died in 1476 on the initiative of Lajota Basarab. But there is no exact information about how the enemy of the Ottoman Empire died. There are several opinions: either Vlad was killed by bribed subjects, or Tepes died from the sword during a battle with the Turks (allegedly Dracula was accidentally mistaken for an enemy).

Others testified that Tepes's heart stopped beating out of the blue while he was sitting in the saddle. According to unreliable information, Dracula's head was kept in the palace of the Turkish Sultan as a trophy.

Dracula

Vlad III Tepes received the nickname Dracula from his father, who was a member of the highly respected Order of the Dragon, fighting pagans and atheists. Members of this community wore medallions made of precious metals, which were engraved with a mythological monster. Tepes’s parent also minted coins depicting fire-breathing creatures. The surname Tepes went to Vlad after his death: the Turks awarded this nickname to the prince; the word “Tepesh” itself means “stake”.

More than one work has been written about such a colorful character as Vlad III, but the book that helped popularize Dracula as a fanged lover of blood was written by Bram Stoker.

It is worth saying that the Irish writer worked on his brainchild for seven years, studying historical works about the Wallachian ruler. But, nevertheless, Stoker's manuscript cannot be attributed to biographical work. This is a full-fledged novel, embellished with fantasy and artistic metaphor.

Bram's work gave a new wave in the world of literature and cinema: numerous manuscripts about Dracula, who fears the Sun and garlic, began to appear, and were also filmed documentaries. The canonical image of Count Dracula, who lives in a gloomy castle and drinks blood, was created by the American actor Bela Lugosi (film “Dracula” (1931), who masterfully portrayed the pale-faced vampire.

Memory

• 1897 – novel “Dracula” (Bram Stoker)
• 1922 – film “Nosferatu. Symphony of Horror" (Friedrich Wilhelm)
• 1975 – opera “Vlad the Impaler” (Gheorghe Dumitrescu)
• 1992 – film “Dracula” ()
• 1998 – music album “Nightwing” about the life of Vlad Tepes (group Marduk)
• 2006 – musical “Dracula: Between Love and Death” (Bruno Pelletier)
• 2014 – film “Dracula” (Harry Shore)

Many modern readers know Count Vlad Dracula solely from Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula" and the film of the same name. But the story of the real Dracula is much worse than literary fiction!
The Romanian ruler Vlad III, better known as Dracula (1431-1476), came from the family of Basarab the Great, ruler of Wallachia (1310-1352), who defended the independence of his state in a difficult struggle.

Vlad III's father, Vlad II, seized the throne in 1436, overthrowing his cousin with the support of the Hungarian king Sigismund of Luxembourg.

By the way, even before his ascension to the throne, Vlad II joined the Order of the Dragon, founded by the same Sigismund, and received the nickname “Dracul”. The word "Dracul" in Romanian means not only "devil", but also "dragon". Vlad III adopted the nickname Dracula, which, accordingly, means “Son of the Dragon,” or “Son of the Devil.”

To say that Vlad III was a handsome man is to greatly embellish the reality. He had bulging eyes (probably a sign of Graves' disease), a protruding chin and a protruding lower lip. According to legend, Vlad Dracula had a hypnotic gift and could see right through people.

In those turbulent times there was a war with the Turks. While still children, Vlad Dracula and his brother Radu the Handsome were captured, or rather, they were given away by their own father as a guarantee of peace. There, while still very young, Vlad witnessed several terrible executions, which apparently had an impact on his entire future life.

When Vlad III finally took the throne of Wallachia in 1452, difficult times came for the entire people. Dracula was distinguished by great cruelty both towards his subjects and towards the captured Turks, with whom the war did not stop.

During the reign of Vlad III, order reigned in the country, although it was established by cruel methods. For example, Dracula ordered the execution of any thief, regardless of how much or what he stole.

Dracula's favorite form of execution was impalement. For this, Vlad III received the nickname Tepes (in other translations - Tepes or Tapisha), which literally meant "impaled".

Vlad impaled not only criminals and captured Turks, but also gypsies, whom he strongly disliked, considering (though not without reason) horse thieves and slackers.

Of course, Dracula never drank the blood of his victims, preferring less exotic food. But he loved to dine in the so-called “gardens of death” - places where there were a huge number of stakes. Of course, they are by no means empty. At the same time, the smell of decaying corpses and the groans of the dying did not spoil Vlad’s appetite at all!

Dracula was more than just a sadist. His cruel punishments had some political meaning. For example, when the envoys of the Turkish court dared not to remove their headdresses in his presence, he ordered the turbans to be nailed to their heads, which was undoubtedly a defiantly bold demonstration of independence.

No matter what, Dracula was deeply religious person. During his reign, he donated a huge amount of land and villages to the monasteries. And the piety of Vlad III bordered on fanaticism, without at all moderating his cruelty.

Vlad built himself a personal stronghold - the Poenari fortress. By the way, the fortress was built practically by slave labor of pilgrims who gathered in Tirgovist from surrounding villages for the Easter holiday. But in 1462 the Turks destroyed Poenari, forcing Dracula to flee.

His wife, who did not want to fall into the hands of invaders even more cruel than her husband, threw herself off a cliff into the river, later called the “Princess River” - Argesa. Bran Castle was only a temporary refuge, a kind of observation and border point for Vlad the Impaler.

Dracula fought hard against the boyars, strengthening his own one-man rule. So, one day he invited several hundred boyars to a feast, at the end of which he impaled them all. The country was horrified, but, paradoxically, the authority of Vlad III increased, reaching almost fanaticism.

However, in 1462, Vlad was overthrown by his own brother, Radu the Beautiful, and imprisoned. But even there the cruel prince did not change his own preferences. If in freedom Dracula impaled people, watching with pleasure their torment, then in captivity he had fun with mice and birds.

Vlad the Impaler was killed in 1479 under unclear circumstances. Whether it was one of his subjects who could not bear the count’s cruelty, or whether the Turks tracked him down, no one can say with certainty.

Dracula was pierced with stakes and his head was cut off, which was sent to the Turkish Sultan as a gift. Vlad was buried in the Orthodox Snagov monastery, but when, centuries later, his supposed grave was opened, his body was not found there. However, another grave was discovered next door with a skeleton in rich clothes. However, it cannot be argued that Count Vlad III Tepes actually rested in the grave.

Despite Dracula's cruelty, people began to perceive him as a vampire only after Bram Stoker's novel. It is known that Stoker was based on real materials, for example, on the letters of Vlad III himself and some church manuscripts.
However, many things were conjectured by the author.

By the way, the way Tepes was killed is very similar to the way vampires were killed! According to legend, a vampire must be pierced with a stake and his head cut off. This is exactly what the killers did to their victim!

Let's talk about this most interesting character during his lifetime he became a legend and earned the popular nickname “the horror of the Ottomans.” And at the same time, let’s try to separate “the wheat from the chaff,” so to speak. He became the prince (sovereign) of Wallachia three times, spent 12 years in prison, hid from enemies many times, was a living “collateral” for the Turks, eradicated crime in his principality and was the only one of the opponents of the Ottoman warriors who instilled fear in them, bordering on panic with his own appearance on the battlefield.

Exact date of birth Vlad III Basaraba, which is exactly what his real name sounds like, is unknown. Between 1429 and 1431, in the city of Sighisoara, a son was born into the family of Prince Vlad II Dracula and the Moldavian princess Vasiliki. In general, the ruler of Wallachia had four sons: the eldest Mircea, the middle ones Vlad and Radu, and the youngest - also Vlad (the son of the second wife of Prince Vlad II - Koltsuna, later Vlad IV the 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 the bad reputation of a cannibal to his family. And only Vlad IV the Monk will still 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. It is from his father that Vlad III will inherit his family nickname - Dracula. In his youth, Vlad III was called Dracul (Romanian: Dracul, that is, “dragon”), inheriting his father’s nickname without any changes. However, later (in the 1470s) he began to indicate his nickname with the letter “a” at the end, since by that time it had become most famous in this form.

Dracula spent his childhood in this house, which is still preserved in the city of Sighisoara in Transylvania, at the address: st. Zhestyanshchikov, 5. The only thing is that over the past 500 years, the region of Transylvania itself has changed its state affiliation; in the 15th century it belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary, but now it, the city of Seguisoara and the house in which Dracula lived with his father, mother and older brother are located on territory of Romania.

The family of the future ruler of Wallachia lived in Seguisoara until 1436. In the summer of 1436, Dracula's father took the Wallachian throne and, no later than the autumn of that year, moved his family from Sighisoara to Targovishte, where the capital of Wallachia was located at that time. According to all data, Vlad III received an excellent education in the Byzantine style for those times. However, he was unable to complete his education fully, because politics intervened. In the spring of 1442, Dracula's father quarreled with Janos Hunyadi, who was the de facto ruler of Hungary at that time, as a result of which Janos decided to install another ruler in Wallachia - Basarab II.
In the summer of 1442, Dracula's father went to Turkey to Sultan Murat II to ask for help, but was forced to stay there for 8 months. At this time, Basarab II established himself in Wallachia, and Dracula and the rest of his family were in hiding. In the spring of 1443, Dracula's father returned from Turkey with the Turkish army and deposed Basarab II. Janos Hunyadi did not interfere with this, as he was preparing for a crusade against the Turks. The campaign began on July 22, 1443 and lasted until January 1444. In the spring of 1444, negotiations began on a truce between Janos Hunyadi and the Sultan. Dracula's father joined the negotiations, during which Janos agreed that Wallachia could remain under Turkish influence. At the same time, the Sultan, wanting to be sure of the loyalty of the “Wallachian governor,” insisted on a “pledge” (amanate in Turkish). The word “pledge” meant that the sons of the “voivode” should come to the Turkish court - that is, Dracula, who was about 14 years old at that time, and his brother Radu, who was about 6 years old. Negotiations with Dracula’s father ended on June 12, 1444 of the year. Dracula and his brother Radu went to Turkey no later than the end of July 1444.

Modern researchers agree on one thing: it was in Turkey that Vlad received some kind of psychological trauma, which forever made him someone who is remembered with horror and delight throughout Romania. There are several versions of what happened:
1. The future ruler of Wallachia was tortured by the Turks to persuade him to convert to Islam.
2. It is as if Vlad’s younger brother, Radu, was seduced by the heir to the Turkish throne, Mehmed, making him his favorite lover. The medieval author, the Greek historian Laonik Chalkokondylos, writes about this in particular. However, according to him, this episode dates back to the later period of the 1450s.
3. The brutal murder of his father and older brother in December 1446. The death occurred as a result of a coup d'etat carried out by the Wallachian boyars, with the support of the Hungarians. Hunyadi's protege, Vladislav II, ascended the throne of Wallachia. By order of the Hungarian commander, Dracula's father was beheaded, and Dracula's older brother was buried alive.
4. Well, the most common one is that the morals in the Sultan’s palace were so “simple” that under their influence Vlad later developed his sadistic inclinations. For example, according to legend, Vlad and his younger brother witnessed (they were specially brought in) an “investigation” into the theft of a rare vegetable (possibly a cucumber!) in the Sultan’s greenhouse. Each of the 12 gardeners who had access to the greenhouse at one time or another that day had their stomachs ripped open, and the seventh in a row was found to have what they were looking for. Those who didn’t have their bellies ripped open were lucky, those who had already been ripped open were “mercifully allowed to survive,” but the criminal who devoured the fetus was impaled while still alive.

In the autumn of 1448, Dracula, together with Turkish troops lent by the Sultan, entered the Wallachian capital - Targovishte. When exactly this happened is not known exactly, but there is a letter from Dracula dated October 31, where he signs himself as “voivode of Wallachia.” Immediately upon ascending the throne, Dracula begins an investigation into the events surrounding the deaths of his father and brother. During the investigation, he learns that at least 7 boyars who served his father participated in the conspiracy and supported Prince Vladislav, for which they received various favors.
Meanwhile, Janos Hunyadi and Vladislav, who lost the battle on Kosovo, arrived in Transylvania. On November 10, 1448, Janos Hunyadi, while in Sighisoara, announced that he was starting military campaign against Dracula, calling him an "illegitimate" ruler. On November 23, Janos was already in Brasov, from where he moved with the army to Wallachia. On December 4, he entered Targovishte, but by that time Dracula had already escaped.

From 1448 to 1455, Vlad Dracula lives in exile at the court of the Moldavian sovereigns. In 1456, Dracula was in Transylvania, where he gathered an army of volunteers to go to Wallachia and retake the throne. At this time (from February 1456) a delegation of Franciscan monks led by Giovanni da Capistrano was in Transylvania, who also collected volunteer army to liberate Constantinople, captured by the Turks in 1453. The Franciscans did not take the Orthodox on the campaign, which Dracula took advantage of, attracting rejected militias into his ranks. In April 1456, a rumor spread throughout Hungary that the southern borders of the state were approaching Turkish army led by Sultan Mehmed. On July 3, 1456, in a letter addressed to the “Saxons of Transylvania,” János Hunyadi announced that he had appointed Dracula “protector of the Transylvanian regions.” After this, Janos and his troops departed for Belgrade, which was already almost surrounded by the Turkish army. The militia, collected by the Franciscan monk Giovanni da Capistrano, also followed to Belgrade, which was initially supposed to go to Constantinople, and Dracula’s army stopped on the border of Transylvania with Wallachia. The Wallachian prince Vladislav II, fearing that in his absence Dracula might take the throne, did not go to defend Belgrade.

On July 22, 1456, the Turkish army retreated from the Belgrade fortress, and in early August, Dracula's army moved to Wallachia. Dracula was helped to gain power by the Wallachian boyar Mane Udrische, who went over to his side in advance and persuaded several other boyars from the princely council under Vladislav to do the same. On August 20, Vladislav was killed, and Dracula became a Wallachian prince for the second time. 9 days earlier (August 11), in Belgrade, Dracula's long-time enemy and killer of his father, Janos Hunyadi, died of the plague.

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 in honor of Easter (500 people), and then ordered each and every one of them to be stabbed (poisoned or impaled, as options). 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 escaped real threat, Dracula began to restore order in the country. He made new laws. For theft, murder and violence, criminals faced only one punishment - death. When public executions began in the country, people realized that their ruler was not joking.
In this regard, true equality before the law reigned in the Principality of Wallachia: no matter who you were, a boyar with a three-hundred-year pedigree, or a rootless beggar, for any crime or disobedience to the dragon prince, death awaited you. Often long and painful. Legend claims that this is how he destroyed all the beggars and those who did not want to work. There is an opinion that gradually he deliberately made people fear him. He even selected scary stories about his cruelty. But, the strangest thing is that the common people LOVED their “dragon”.
A contemporary describes the Wallachians as a very thieving and arrogant people. Imagine his surprise when, a year after the beginning of the reign of Vlad Dracula, one could throw a gold coin on the street and come tomorrow to find it lying in the same place.

Also widely known is the episode with the Turkish ambassadors, described by the Russian ambassador to Hungary Fyodor Kuritsyn in 1484 in “The Tale of Dracula the Voivode”:

“I came to him once from the Turkish clissarium<послы>, and when she went down to him and bowed according to her custom, and<шапок, фесок>I didn’t take off my chapters. He asked them: “Why did you commit such a shame against the great sovereign and commit such disgrace?” They answered: “This is our custom, sir, and this is our land.” He said to them: “And I want to confirm your law, so that you stand strong,” and he commanded them to nail the caps to their heads with a small iron nail and let them go, telling them: “As you go, tell your sovereign, he has learned to endure that shame from you, we but not with skill, but do not send his custom to other sovereigns who do not want to have it, but let him keep it for himself.”

In 1461, Vlad Dracula refused to pay tribute to Sultan Mehmed. The Ottomans did not forgive this, and that same spring a 250,000-strong Turkish army invaded Wallachia (according to modern data, it was still smaller than “only” 100-120 thousand). However, Dracula did not give up and launched a real and merciless attack against the conquerors. guerrilla warfare. He armed everyone who wanted it. In his 30,000-strong army, peasants and nobles, monks and beggars fought together, even women and children from the age of 10 participated in battles with the Turks. On July 17, 1461, as a result of the famous “night attack,” Vlad’s army was defeated and forced the huge army of Mehmed II to retreat. From 2,000 to 4,000 thousand Turkish prisoners captured in this battle were impaled. Moreover, senior commanders on stakes with gold tips, officers on stakes with silver tips, but ordinary soldiers had to be content with ordinary wood. Even by Turkish standards, such reprisals were a little excessive. It was then that Vlad received his Ottoman nickname - Kazykly (Turkish Kazıklı from the Turkish word kazık [Kazık] - “stake”). That is, translated as “kipper” or “spear cutter”. Later, this particular nickname was simply translated into Romanian word for word - Tepes (Romanian: Țepeș). If we sum up the most famous names and Vlad's nicknames, it turns out: Vlad III Dragon the Impaler. Sounds good, huh?

In the same 1461, as a result of the betrayal of the Hungarian monarch Matthias Corvinus, Dracula was forced to flee to Hungary, where he was later imprisoned on false charges of collaboration with the Turks and served in prison for 12 years.

In 1475, Vlad III Dracula was released from a Hungarian prison and again began to participate in campaigns against the Turks. In November 1475, as part of the Hungarian army (as one of the military commanders of King Matthias, the “royal captain”), he went to Serbia, where from January to February 1476 he participated in the siege of the Turkish fortress of Sabac. In February 1476, he took part in the war against the Turks in Bosnia, and in the summer of 1476, together with another “royal captain” Stefan Bathory, he helped the Moldavian prince Stefan the Great defend against the Turks.
In November 1476, Vlad Dracula, with the help of Stefan Bathory and Stefan the Great, overthrew the pro-Turkish Wallachian prince Lajota Basarab. On November 8, 1476, Targovishte was taken. On November 16, Bucharest was captured. On November 26, the general meeting of noble people of Wallachia elected Dracula as their prince.
Then the troops of Stefan Bathory and Stefan the Great left Wallachia, and only those warriors who subordinated directly to him (about 4,000 people) remained with Vlad Dracula. Soon after this, Vlad was treacherously killed on the initiative of Layota Basaraba, but sources differ in the stories about the method of murder and the direct perpetrators.
Medieval chroniclers Jacob Unrest and Jan Dlugosz believe that he was killed by his servant, bribed by the Turks. The author of “The Tale of Dracula the Voivode” Fyodor Kuritsyn believes that Vlad Dracula was killed during the battle with the Turks.
Also preserved is the testimony of the Moldavian prince Stefan, who helped Vlad take the Wallachian throne:
“And I immediately gathered soldiers, and when they came, I united with one of the royal captains, and, united, we brought the said Drahula to power. And he, when he came to power, asked us to leave him our people as guards, because he did not trust the Vlachs too much, and I left him 200 of my people. And when I did this, we (with the royal captain) left and almost immediately that traitor Basarab returned and, having overtaken Drahula, who was left without us, killed him. All my people were also killed, with the exception of 10."

The basis of all future legends about the unprecedented bloodthirstiness of the ruler was a document compiled by an unknown author (presumably on the orders of the Hungarian king) and published in 1463 in Germany. It is there that for the first time any descriptions of the executions and torture of Dracula are found, as well as all the stories of his atrocities.
From a historical point of view, there is extremely great reason to doubt the accuracy of the information presented in this document. In addition to the obvious interest of the Hungarian throne in replicating this document (the desire to hide the fact that the king of Hungary had stolen a large sum allocated by the papal throne for crusade), no earlier references to any of these "pseudo-folklore" stories have been found.

A list of the atrocities of Vlad Dracula the Impaler in this anonymous document:
There is a known case when Tepes called together about 500 boyars and asked them how many rulers each of them remembered. It turned out that even the youngest of them remembers at least 7 reigns. Tepes's response was an attempt to put an end to this order - all the boyars were impaled and dug in around Tepes' chambers in his capital Targovishte;
The following story is also given: a foreign merchant who came to Wallachia was robbed. He files a complaint with Tepes. While the thief is being caught and impaled, the merchant is given, on Tepes’ orders, a wallet containing one coin more than it was. The merchant, having discovered the surplus, immediately informs Tepes. He laughs and says: “Well done, I wouldn’t say it - I wish you were sitting on a stake next to the thief”;
Tepes discovers that there are many beggars in the country. He convenes them, feeds them to the full and asks them the question: “Would you like to get rid of earthly suffering forever?” To a positive response, Tepes closes the doors and windows and burns everyone gathered alive;
There is a story about a mistress who tries to deceive Tepes by talking about her pregnancy. Tepes warns her that he does not tolerate lies, but she continues to insist on her own, then Tepes rips open her stomach and shouts: “I told you that I don’t like lies!”;
An incident is also described when Dracula asked two wandering monks what people were saying about his reign. One of the monks replied that the population of Wallachia reviled him as a cruel villain, and another said that everyone praised him as a liberator from the threat of the Turks and a wise politician. In fact, both testimonies were fair in their own way. And the legend, in turn, has two endings. In the German "version", Dracula executed the former because he did not like his speech. In the Russian version of the legend, the ruler left the first monk alive and executed the second for lying;
One of the creepiest and least believable pieces of evidence in this document is that Dracula liked to have breakfast at the site of his execution or the site of a recent battle. He ordered a table and food to be brought to him, sat down and ate among the dead and people dying on stakes. There is also an addition to this story, which says that the servant who served Vlad food could not stand the smell of decay and, clutching his throat with his hands, dropped the tray right in front of him. Vlad asked why he did this. “I can’t stand it, the terrible stench,” answered the unfortunate man. And Vlad immediately ordered to put him on a stake, which was several meters longer than the others, after which he shouted to the still living servant: “You see! Now you are higher than everyone else, and the stench does not reach you”;
According to the evidence of an ancient Russian story, Tepes ordered to cut out the genitals of unfaithful wives and widows who violated the rules of chastity, and to tear off their skin, exposing their bodies until the body decomposed and was eaten by birds, or to do the same, but first piercing them with a poker from the crotch to the lips;
Dracula asked the ambassadors of the Ottoman Empire who came to him demanding recognition of vassalage: “Why didn’t they take off their hats in front of the Orthodox ruler.” Hearing the answer that they would bare their heads only in front of the Sultan, Vlad ordered the turbans to be nailed to their heads.

Just illustrations for this “document” from 1463

However, modern historians deny most of these horror stories, considering them fiction. Although Tepes impaled hundreds of people, and even thousands of Turks (whom he apparently did not consider as people). And the “honesty” of his subjects was bought with the lives of 15% of the population of Wallachia. He was simultaneously feared to the point of fainting, hated, idolized and loved. Few medieval rulers evoked such conflicting emotions among those around them.
And another, and more famous, “life” of Vlad the Impaler Dracula began in the first quarter of the 20th century, after the appearance of Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula”.

According to legend, the ruler of Wallachia, Vlad III Basarab Dracula, nicknamed Tepes, is buried either here: in the Comana monastery, founded by Vlad 15 years earlier.

Or in the Church of the Annunciation in Snagov.

Count Dracula, created by Bram Stoker, is one of the most famous vampires in literature. It was he who became the “classical” prototype of the modern vampire - elegant and mysterious man thirsty for human blood. However, if you didn’t know, he couldn’t hold a candle to his namesake Vlad the Impaler, the ruler of Wallachia, known for his excessive “humanism” and “love” for people...

For many years he kept all of Wallachia in fear with his unpredictable and unbridled cruelty. He, of course, did not drink blood from the necks of the victims, but thousands of bloody executions, murders of “unworthy” city residents and impalement were very much to his liking, which is confirmed by manuscripts of the 15th century. Nevertheless, about him there are two direct opposite points vision.

According to the first, Tepes was a crazy sadist who took pleasure in tormenting his victims. According to the second, he was a fighter against the Turks he hated. In this way, he simply tried to fight the cowardice of the soldiers and the betrayal of the boyars. Be that as it may, manuscripts have survived to this day that describe all the cruelties of the prince.

All researchers agree that the nickname “Dracul” was inherited by Vlad III from his father, Vlad II, who was a knight of the Order of St. George (Order of the Dragon). Each knight of the order had to wear the sign of a dragon on his clothes, but the father of Vlad III, emphasizing his belonging to the order, went even further - he placed the image of a dragon on the gold coins that he minted in his own name.

The coins spread widely in Wallachia and gave rise to the nickname, which Vlad III then inherited. Although over time, people assigned the name a different meaning - “son of the Devil,” which was more like the truth.

Dracula's father - Vlad II

In his youth, Vlad III was called Dracul (Roman: Dracul), inheriting his father's nickname without any changes. However, later (in the 1470s) he began to indicate his nickname with the letter “a” at the end, since by that time it had become most famous in this form

A 15th-century manuscript tells how Dracula once invited several guests to his mansion, threw a feast, and then impaled them right at the dinner table. Then he slowly finished his lunch, dipping bread into buckets of their blood.

Dracula avenged his father by killing hundreds of people. And he didn’t just kill, but ripped open their stomachs with blunt swords. Vlad spent most of his youth in a Turkish prison, and when he was released, he learned that his father had been betrayed by his own people, including the boyars. And since the young prince did not know the names of the traitors, he invited them all to a feast, at which they were executed.

Theodore Aman, “Boyars caught at a feast by the envoys of Vlad the Impaler”

One of the creepiest accounts is that Dracula liked to have breakfast at the site of his execution or the site of a recent battle. He ordered a table and food to be brought to him, sat down and ate among the dead and people dying on stakes.

There is also an addition to this story, which says that the servant who served Vlad food could not stand the smell of decay and, clutching his throat with his hands, dropped the tray right in front of him. Vlad asked why he did this. “I can’t stand it, the terrible stench,” answered the unfortunate man. And Vlad immediately ordered to put him on a stake, which was several meters longer than the others, after which he shouted to the still living servant: “You see! Now you are above everyone else, and the stench does not reach you.”

Dracula had a sense of humor - albeit a very unusual one. For example, when people impaled were twitching like frogs, the prince looked at them and seemed to casually remark: “Oh, what amazing grace they have!”

It may seem that Dracula was just an ordinary madman who did nothing but run around and kill people, but this is not so.

Impalement was accepted as punishment for a crime, regardless of whether the offender committed murder or stole a loaf of bread. Of course, there were exceptions. One day, a gypsy from a camp traveling through the lands of Dracula stole something. When he was caught, the prince ordered the unfortunate man to be boiled, and forced the other gypsies to eat him.

Dracula got rid of all the sick and poor, burning them alive in an attempt to restore order on the streets of the capital of Wallachia. One day he invited all the beggars, the sick and the vagabonds to one of his houses under the pretext of a holiday.

After they had eaten, Dracula politely excused himself, went out and ordered all the windows and doors in the house to be boarded up. Then the house was burned down. According to the chronicles of that time, not a single person survived.

These were just flowers: sometimes the prince burned entire villages in his domains for no apparent reason.

Dracula “gave” gold cups to his subjects. The result of hundreds of murders was that Dracula was in complete control of his people and he knew it. To test how much his subjects feared him, he placed cups made of pure gold on the main capital square.

It was announced that anyone could drink from them, but under no circumstances should the cups leave the square. At that time, about 60,000 people lived in the city, but during the entire period of the prince’s reign, no one even touched these bowls, although they were in full view of thousands of people living in poverty.

Theodore Aman, "Vlad the Impaler and the Turkish Ambassadors" (1861-64)

Dracula asked the ambassadors of the Ottoman Empire who arrived to Tepes demanding recognition of vassalage: “Why didn’t they take off their hats to him, the ruler.” Hearing the answer that they would bare their heads only in front of the Sultan, Vlad ordered the caps to be nailed to their heads.

There is a story about a mistress who tries to deceive Tepes by talking about her pregnancy. Tepes warns her that he does not tolerate lies, but she continues to insist on her own, then Tepes rips open her stomach and shouts: “I told you that I don’t like lies!”

According to the evidence of an ancient Russian story, Tepes ordered to cut out the genitals of unfaithful wives and widows who violated the rules of chastity, and to tear off their skin, exposing their bodies until the body decomposed and was eaten by birds, or to do the same, but first piercing them with a poker from the crotch to mouth

One day, Dracula sent troops to drive the Turks out of his land. And when the Turks began to win, he ordered his own villages to be burned so that the Turks had nowhere to rest and replenish supplies. Moreover, he poisoned all the wells and killed thousands of inhabitants so that all this would not go to the invaders.

Bran Castle became famous after Bram Stoker wrote his famous novel Dracula, where the main character is Count Dracula, the “vampire of Transylvania”. In reality, Count Dracula never lived there. He simply loved to hunt here and stopped for the night from time to time. The rest is the imagination of writers and filmmakers.

Bran Castle was nicknamed "Dracula's Castle" three decades ago by Western tourists who came to Romania in search of Dracula. Having visited a castle in Transylvania, they were struck by its similarity to the castle that Stoker described in his novel, so they nicknamed it “Dracula’s Castle.”

Unfortunately (or fortunately, this is debatable), over time, the connection between Stoker's novel and the castle became firmly ingrained in people's minds.

The Corvin Castle has more to do with Dracula - according to legend, it was in the local dungeon that the overthrown ruler Vlad the Impaler languished for 7 years.

During the war with the Turks, the prince died on the battlefield. It is believed that Dracula's body was buried in the cemetery of the Snagov monastery on the outskirts of Bucharest. But there are conflicting rumors: some claim that the prince’s body was never found, others that the remains were buried, but then disappeared.

The second version seems to be true, since Vlad III was probably buried with treasure, and robbers could have reached the grave.