Vlad III Dracula

The legend of Vlad Ţepeş, the Impaler

Dracula Vlad III Dracula (also known as Vlad Ţepeş or Vlad the Impaler) (1431 - 1476) reigned as Prince of Wallachia in 1448, 1456-1462 and 1476. He was born in Sighişoara, in Transylvania as the son of Vlad Dracul (reigned in 1436-1442; 1443-1447) and grandson of Mircea the Elder (1386-1418). The Bran Castle, near Braşov, is said to be one of the residence of Dracula.

He is popularly associated with the title of vampire, being the inspiration for a character of Bram Stoker's horror novel, Dracula. In fact, Dracula's renown reached the West through the Saxons from the Transylvanian towns of Brasov (Kronstadt) and Sibiu (Hermannstadt), who often gave shelter to those who claimed the Wallachian throne; Vlad, to punish the Saxons, pillaged and burnt down Sibiu and the neighboring area, and many Saxons were impaled. The same happened to the Saxon merchants who came on business to Târgoviste, the capital of Wallachia.

His father Vlad, born in 1390, was an illegitimate son of Prince Mircea the Elder, brought up at the court of King Sigismund of Hungary. Sigismund, who later became Holy Roman Emperor, founded a secret order of knights called the Order of the Dragon to defend Christianity from Ottoman expansion. Vlad was inducted into this order and was then known in Wallachia as "Vlad the Dragon" or "Vlad II Dracul".

In 1431, King Sigismund made Vlad Dracul the governor of Transylvania; it was in Sighişoara where his second son, also named Vlad, was born. Vlad would be known as Drăculea or Dracula, which means "Son of the Dragon". In 1436, Vlad Dracul's ambition to seize the throne of Wallachia led him to kill the incumbent king named Alexandru I Aldea, crowning himself as Vlad II.

When the Turks invaded Transylvania in 1442, Ulaszlo I of Hungary accused Vlad of failing to properly defend the approaches to Transylvania from the south and forced Vlad out of Wallachia. Vlad and his family appealed to Murad II for assistance and regained the throne the following year. To secure his allegiance, Vlad was required to surrender his two youngest sons, Vlad and Radu the Handsome, as hostages in March 1442. They were sent to Egrigoz and for the next four years they were held in the Ottoman Empire as a hostage.

Shortly after, however, Hungary declared war on the Ottoman Empire. Vlad Dracul was summoned to join the crusade, and as a member of the Order of the Dragon he could not refuse outright, but, not wishing to anger the captors of his younger sons, he sent his eldest son Mircea cel Tânăr (Mircea the Younger) in his place. The crusade was a failure, and the Christian armies were crushed at the Battle of Varna. In 1447 both Vlad II Dracul and Mircea were murdered on Hungarian orders by the Boyar council, and the puppet king Vladislav II was installed in Wallachia. This displeased the Turks, who therefore freed the 17 year old Vlad Dracula and gave him an army. He regained the throne becoming Vlad III, but was quickly forced out by Hungary, who again installed Vladislav II as ruler.

When Vladislav II switched sides to support the Ottoman Turks, Vlad Dracula was able to gain Ladislaus' support for a fresh attempt to win the throne. He killed Vladislav in 1456 and ruled a united Wallachia until 1462, when the king of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus, fell out with him and invaded Wallachia.

After four years (1462-1466) as Matthias's prisoner in Buda, he was again reinstated as the ruler of Wallachia and in 1474 he was given command of a contingent of soldiers and re-entered in the principality, determined to win back his throne. During the fights against the Turkish armies, thousands of bodies of Ottomans prisoners were impaled on the banks of the Danube outside of Dracula's capital of Târgovişte.

In 1475 Vlad was killed under mysterious circumstances. His body was buried in front of the altar of the church of the Snagov Monastery, on an island near Bucharest. In 1935, a richly dressed but beheaded corpse was exhumed at Snagov, a fate known to have overtaken Dracula, whose head was supposedly sent as a gift to the Turkish sultan.

In 1897, the Irish writer Bram Stoker published Dracula, which made Vlad the Impaler famous world-wide. Stoker read the stories about Dracula printed in the 15th and 16th centuries and was struck by his acts of cruelty. He decided to make him his character; he also read several books about Transylvania (a name of Latin origin, meaning "the country beyond the forests"), and thought that this "exotic" land would make a proper setting for Dracula's deeds.

In fact, Stoker used Vlad only as a source of inspiration, since in his novel, Dracula is not prince Vlad the Impaler, but a Transylvanian count living in a mysterious castle where he lured his victims. His story takes place in the Bistritza area, and the castle lies near the Bârgau Pass (in the Carpathian Mountains). As Stoker had never visited Transylvania, most places and happenings were pure fiction.