Dracula, Prince of Many Faces

by Radu R Florescu

  During Prince Mircea's reign the chief danger was the presence of the Turks, who in 1387 threatened what was left of free Serbia. Mircea probably sent a Wallachian contingent to fight alongside the crusaders at the first battle of Kosovo. Although the Turkish sultan, Murad I, was killed in that hard-fought battle, his son Bayezid took up the cause and led his troops to the victory that signaled the end of Serbian independence. When in 1393 the Turks finally completed the transformation of Bulgaria into a Turkish province, Mircea realized that the handwriting was on the wall; shortly thereafter he signed the first act of Wallachian submission to the sultan.

  It was in order to avoid total subjection to the Turks that Mircea signed a treaty of alliance with Sigismund of Luxemburg in 1395. This act accounts for Mircea's participation the following year in the last great western anti-Ottoman crusade, led by Sigismund, John of Nevers, son of the duke of Burgundy, Frederick of Hohenzollern, the duke of Lancaster, and other western and eastern allies. On September 25, 1396, on the heights just outside the fortress of Nicopolis on the Danube, ignoring Mircea's advice to lead the attack with his well-seasoned infantry, Sigismund sent out the heavily clad feudal cavalry of the west. They suffered a disastrous defeat, “as the Christians fled like pigs, over-whelmed with fear,” in the words of a contemporary Turkish historian. The Turks took many prisoners, including a cousin of the king of France, whom they ransomed.

  The humiliating defeat experienced at the hands of the Turks might have proven disastrous for Prince Mircea, had destiny not turned to his advantage, through a fortunate diversion on Bayezid's eastern flank. Out of central Asia and Persia arose one of the last great Tatar warriors, the infamous leader Timur Lenk, known in the west as Tamerlane. After founding his own powerful state in Asia Minor, Timur was ready to challenge the power of the Turks.

  It was at the battle of Ankara (Angora) that Timur's forces inflicted a great defeat on Sultan Bayezid in 1402. The latter, having been captured, preferred to commit suicide rather than survive as a captive. Mircea did his best to exploit the temporary decline in Turkish power by championing the cause of Musa Çelebi, Bayezid's weak-willed son, who had married Mircea's daughter Arina, to seize the sultanate. He managed to install the boy on the throne at Adrianople on February 17, 1411, where the latter ruled during three years. This was the high point in the career of Dracula's grandfather. It seemed that Romania might become a major eastern power like Poland, yet this was not to be. Musa, Mircea's protégé, was murdered in 1413 by his brother Mehmed I with the support of the emperor of Constantinople, Manuel II of the Paleologus dynasty. The Turks made a remarkable comeback. Sultan Mehmed captured the powerful island fortress of Giurgiu, and Mircea lost control also of the province of Dobruja, which had once given him access to the Black Sea.

  By 1417 Mircea was forced to accept the inevitable: he recognized Turkish suzerainty and agreed to pay a tribute of 3,000 golden ducats to the sultan. However, unlike the total submission of other Balkan states, his land maintained its autonomy. In contrast to its neighbors in the south, Wallachia preserved its native administration and an independent church; the nobility lost none of its lands; and no Turk was allowed to settle on Romanian soil. Yet a reign that had begun so brilliantly ended in humiliation and defeat. One year later (1418), Mircea was laid to rest in the Byzantine-style monastery of Cozia in the gorge of the river Olt, where his tomb can be admired to this day.

  Mircea had been married to Princess Maria, the daughter of a powerful Hungarian noble family called Tolmay, which owned important estates in the Lake Balaton area of Hungary and in northeastern Transylvania. Maria was also related to the powerful Cilli family (one of whose members, Barbara, became the second wife of Sigismund of Luxemburg). Of the many sons born to Mircea only one, Mihail, was legitimate, and from 1408 to 1418 he was co-ruler with his father, a frequent practice in those days. More important than Mihail was Prince Mircea's numerous illegitimate brood, conceived by a variety of unknown women. These sons' claims to the throne, in accordance with existing Romanian customs, were quite valid. None of them amounted to much, except for two: a certain Alexandru Aldea, who ruled briefly in 1431, and Vlad, Dracula's father.

  We know very little of Dracula's father's early life beyond the fact that he was born sometime before 1395 in Wallachia. Because of Mircea's close relationship with Sigismund of Luxemburg before the battle of Nicopolis, it is likely that young Vlad was sent as a hostage to Buda, the count of Sigismund I—as a token of Mircea's good faith in maintaining the treaty of alliance he had signed with Hungary in 1395. In any case, we know that Vlad spent much of his youth in the Hungarian capital and in other German cities such as Nuremberg, where the future Holy Roman Emperor also sometimes held court. Sigismund, in fact, described Vlad as “educated at our court” (which implied conversion to Roman Catholicism).

  The death of Prince Mircea in 1418 ended Vlad's forcible confinement, but the young son of the prince decided to stay on as a page of Sigismund. He was treated with the respect due his rank, attached to the retinue that surrounded the emperor, and followed the peregrinations of this retinue from Nuremberg to Prague, Buda, Rome, and various cities of Transylvania. As a page he was given the choice education reserved for members of the imperial family, which was as much French as German in culture and character—because of the influence of Sigismund's French first wife. The emphasis lay on the values of chivalry and the precepts of knighthood, and on learning languages, since the rudiments of German, Hungarian, Latin, Greek, and Italian were essential for a cosmopolitan court. Vlad was also obliged to acquaint himself with the tedious bureaucracy of the imperial chancellery. No matter how privileged, according to a recent Romanian biographer Vlad was profoundly unhappy with the drudgery, the petty rivalries and intrigues, the uncongenial, unhealthy climate, and the Germanic surroundings of the emperor's court.

  More to the point, Vlad had the conviction that after Sigismund's defeat at Nicopolis, the emperor had lost all interest in the idea of eastern crusading and had become more intent upon pursuing political ambitions in the west. Vlad's paramount objective was to secure his father's throne, which after the death in 1420 of Mihail had once again become an object of dispute among all the illegitimate half-brothers. Meanwhile, an additional rival, Dan II, the son of one of Mircea's brothers and hence a cousin of Vlad, had appeared on the scene. He and his successors maintained with the future Dracula family a struggle so bitter and bloody that historians have labeled it the Dracula-Dnesti feud. In terms of its violence it can be compared to the Lancaster-York conflict in England, Shakespeare's Capulet-Montagu rivalry, or the Burgundian-Capetian antagonism in France. Even Pope Pius II made note in his Commentaries of its bitterness.

  Rather than continue to rely on the emperor, Vlad thought that a better avenue for securing the throne would be to gain the support of the Polish king, Ladislas II Jagiello a sometime rival of Sigismund, who through the union of Poland and Lithuania had formed the most formidable coalition of states in eastern Europe. Thus, with a few faithful adherents, under cover of darkness, Vlad secretly left Buda in the early spring of 1423. He wished to exchange masters and find a more supportive sponsor at Krakow. However, word of this unwarranted disappearance leaked out; when his destination became known, orders were given to the brothers Márton and György Thurzó, counts of Ujvár, to pursue and catch the escapees before they reached the Polish border. They were caught, admonished, and brought back to Buda. By way of retaliation for this act of disloyalty, the emperor confirmed Dan II, who had ruled since 1422, as prince of Wallachia. However, there were to be no further reprisals, though Vlad was for some time placed under stricter surveillance.

  One way of distracting this turbulent young page from rash actions of this kind was to use his considerable skills for diplomacy in negotiations that were just beginning to help pave the way for a union between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, in which both Emperor Sigismund and the Byzantine emperor John VIII Paleologus had a stake. The Greek
historian Michael Ducas recorded Vlad's presence in Constantinople in a perfunctory manner: “In those days there appeared one of the many bastard sons of Mircea, the profligate voevod of Wallachia. As an officer in the army he had access to the palace of Emperor John, where early on he deliberated with young men knowledgeable in both warfare and acts of sedition. At that time there happened to be certain Wallachians in Constantinople who were willing to help him along.” Vlad's mission was to greet and accompany Emperor John VIII, who had landed in Venice on November 15, 1423, hoping to find military support in the maritime republic, in Milan, or with the Holy Roman Emperor himself. Vlad's mission was to explain to the embattled and beleaguered Byzantines that the essential precondition for any Western assistance was acceptance of the supremacy of Rome. He later befriended the emperor on the lengthy homeward sea journey to Constantinople.

  However, the wily Romanian also had plans that deviated from his ostensible mission. He was going to Constantinople in the best tradition of other Romanian and Balkan princes: namely, to seek political support for his own candidacy and perhaps to bolster his chances by marrying a Byzantine princess. (He was only around twenty-eight at the time, and teenage princesses of marriageable age abounded.) From the emperor's viewpoint, the “export” of Byzantine princesses had been an important weapon used by successive members of the imperial family to keep the Balkan peninsula under their political control.

  Vlad's first glimpse of the glamour and glitter of the dying thousand-year-old civilization of Byzantium made an indelible impression. The luxury, ritual, and the extraordinary refinery of the court, the abundance and diversity of goods at the central marketplace were impressive enough. The local bazaars further titillated the imagination with the display of exquisite articles of apparel and consumption: ornate jewelry of silver and gold, silk brocades, textiles from Flanders, perfumes, spices from the east shipped by the Genoese and the Venetians, the choicest wines from the Balkans, beautiful slaves of many races from Europe and Asia — in short, everything was aimed at impressing the unwary traveler. Most theatrical was the mystery and complexity of the Orthodox ritual at the holy shrine of St. Sophia, which had more affinities to a mystical dialogue between celebrants and the faithful than to a religious service. This sacred drama was enhanced by the heavy use of incense, and its setting among gilt-edged mosaics of saints and emperors and indescribably edifying ikons, their eyes turned towards heaven, motioning the faithful to prayer. Pageantry such as this, in addition to cruel distractions at the hippodrome that pitted men against beasts, and the popular superstitious consultations with witches and oracles, exercised Vlad's imagination.

  For Vlad this immersion was so tempting as to make him entertain the thought of defecting to Constantinople from his lackluster German court. However, open talks with Emperor John VIII about the hopelessness of the military situation at Constantinople persuaded Vlad to return. The Romanian prince, in turn, convinced the emperor that his presence was essential at the church councils that were being discussed by Emperor Sigismund to meet eventually at Basel in 1431 and at Florence in 1439, to implement the union between the two churches. Thus, during the few months that he spent in the Byzantine capital, Vlad played a small but useful role in the intricate negotiations aimed at saving Constantinople by reuniting the two churches, an essential precondition to the formation of a new joint east and west crusade to eliminate the Turks from Europe.

  At a personal level, in furthering his own ambitions the young prince's efforts were far less successful. He was introduced to a number of eligible princesses of the Byzantine court, and had a brief tryst on the Bosporus with an unnamed Greek heiress. But as he left the imperial city, he realized only too well that insofar as the Wallachian throne was concerned, he could expect no more help from Emperor John VIII Paleologus than from the Polish king. In any event, Vlad's decision to remain loyal to the Emperor Sigismund was soon to bear fruit.

  In the years following the death of Jan Hus, the first martyr of the Protestant cause in Europe, the Hussite heresy that he had championed began to spread. Sigismund summoned an imperial diet at Nuremberg in February 1430 to organize the fifth crusade against the powerful armies of the rebel Hussite leader Jan Žižka von Trokow, who using quite revolutionary tactics had kept four crusading armies at bay in the 1420s. Among the novel tactics of war that helped account for Žižka's success was the use of mobile fortified camps composed of wagons chained to one another. The soldiers manning each cart were organized in much the same manner as a modern tank crew. This western method of warfare was later adopted by John Hunyadi, and taught to his young ward, Dracula.

  Vlad was summoned to Nuremberg one year later, together with other high dignitaries of the realm. In the early dawn of February 8, 1431, a most unusual ceremony took place in the double chapel of the imperial fortress, which involved Vlad's induction in the Order of the Dragon. The order had originally been founded by the Holy Roman Emperor and his second wife, Barbara Cilli, in 1387 and reorganized on December 13, 1408, with the character of a secret fraternal society. Like other semimilitary and religious orders of knights (such as the Knights of the Hospital of St. John and the Teutonic Order of Knights), its ostensible objectives and duties were protecting the German king and his family, defending the empire, shielding widows and orphans, and going into mourning and praying for the deceased members of the society. A principal aim entailed the defense and propagation of Catholicism against the partisans of Jan Hus and other heretics, and, of course, crusading against the infidel Turks. The reason for the “secret” character of the order, in the eyes of its founders, was the undeclared ultimate aim of gaining for the house of Luxemburg political supremacy in Europe. This also provided the principal reason for the small number of first-class members initially inducted — only twenty-four in all, including Vlad — drawn from the royalty of Europe.

  Among a host of symbolic minutiae required of a new knight was the wearing of two capes, of differing colors to suit differing occasions: one green, reminiscent of the dragon's hue, which was worn over a red garment representing the blood of the martyrs; one black, to be adopted by Stoker's future vampire, to be worn only on Fridays or during the commemoration of Christ's Passion. In addition, each member of the order was given a golden necklace or collar on which appeared the insigne of the dragon in a medallion artfully designed by a master craftsman from Nuremberg. The dragon was represented with two wings and four paws outstretched, jaws half open, and its tail curled around its head and its back cleft in two, hanging prostrate on a double cross similar to the cross of Lorraine adopted by Joan of Arc. On the cross appeared in Latin the mottos of the society: “O quam misericors est Deus”(“Oh how merciful is God!”) and “Justus et Pius” (“Just and Faithful”). This symbolized the victory of Christ over the forces of darkness. The medallion had to be worn at all times until the member's death, and after death, in theory, it was to be placed in the defunct member's casket.

  For Vlad this was a singular honor that more than richly repaid his minor diplomatic assignments. He was certainly in distinguished company: among the twenty-four “first-class” members were heads of state such as King Alfonso of Aragon and Naples, Stepfan Lazarevič of Serbia, Prince Witold of Lithuania, and his cousin (to whose court Vlad had tried to escape) Ladislas Jagiello of Poland. Those of the “second class” of the order included members of the Hungarian nobility and other barons of the empire.

  When he eventually returned to his native country, Vlad was called “Dracul” by the boyars, who knew of his honor, because he was a Draconist, a member of the Order of the Dragon (draco in Latin), dedicated to fighting Turks and heretics. On the other hand, the people at large, unfamiliar with the details of Vlad's investiture in the order, seeing a dragon on his shield, and later on his coins, called him “Dracul” with the meaning of the “devil,” because in Orthodox iconography, particularly those ikons that depicted St. George slaying a dragon, the dragon symbolized the devil. The word drac (-ul is si
mply the definite article “the”) can mean both “devil” and “dragon” in the Romanian language. It is important also to underscore the fact that, at the time, the use of this particular nickname in no way implied that Dracul was an evil figure, in some way connected with the forces of darkness, as some have suggested. The name Dracula, immortalized by Bram Stoker, was later adopted, or rather inherited, by Dracul's son. Dracula, with the a, is simply a diminutive, meaning “son of the dragon.” (The son inherited the title Dracul by virtue of the statutes of the order.) Evil implications were attached to the name only much later by Dracula's political detractors, who exploited its double meaning. That the family itself did not consider the epithet in any way offensive is proven by the fact that they consistently adopted it, that Dracula signed letters by that title, and that historians used Dracula to describe all members of the family (Radu and Mircea, his brothers, for instance), as well as their descendants, who were collectively known as the Drculetis.

  Later that evening of February 8 a far more meaningful ceremony took place in the throne room of the fortress of Nuremberg in the presence of the emperor; the Burgrave of Nuremberg, Friedrich von Zolern (of the House of Hohenzollern); the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, Klaus von Redwitz; the nobles of the kingdoms of Hungary, Bohemia, and the empire; and a few other boyars from Vlad's native Wallachia. This time Dracul, as we can now dub him, swore allegiance to the emperor, whom he referred to as “my natural Lord and Sovereign, at whose Court we are assembled to accomplish very great things.” He was then given the official staff of office and declared prince of Wallachia. In return for this great honor the emperor made one additional request: when established on his new throne, though ruling an Orthodox country, Dracul must give protection and free exercise of religion to those of the Catholic faith; the Franciscan Minorites were specifically mentioned as deserving special consideration and goodwill. Thus, Vlad Dracul was now tied to the empire by a threefold bond: as a Draconist, a vassal of Sigismund, and a fellow Catholic crusader.