In addition to the influence of formal training, Dracula's personality inevitably bore the stamp of the uncertain and shifting fortune of his father's political career. When finally secure on his throne in 1436, Dracul, a wily politician, sensed that the tenuous balance of power was rapidly shifting to the advantage of the ambitious Turkish sultan Murad II. Having destroyed the independence of both Serbia and Bulgaria, Murad was contemplating the final blow against what was left of Byzantine independence. Thus, shortly after the death of his patron Sigismund, in 1437, Dracul signed an alliance with the Turks. Sultan Murad received Dracul and three hundred of his boyars in the city of Brusa (now Bursa) with great pomp as the Wallachian prince made his official act of submission and paid the ten-thousand-ducat tribute, a yearly custom (alliance or no) since Prince Mircea's time.
In 1438, the year following the great Transylvanian peasant revolt, Dracul accompanied Murad II on one of his frequent incursions into Transylvania, during which murdering, looting, and burning took place on a large scale. The councils of threatened cities and towns still believed that they could get better treatment from Dracul, a co-national, than from the Turks. This explains the eagerness of the mayor of the town of Sebe to surrender specifically to Dracul, on condition that the lives of his townsmen be spared and that they not be carried into Turkish slavery. Dracul, according to his Dragon oath, was obligated to protect Christians against pagans, and on this occasion at least, he was able to save the town from complete destruction. Altogether 70,000 prisoners and much booty was captured during this first massive Turkish inroad into Transylvania. We know these details from a remarkable account written by a participant — the so called Student of Sebe, simply identified as “Brother George,” a prisoner who had fought with the courage born of despair, in the Tailors' Tower of Sebe, which survives to this day and has been renamed in his honor the “Student's Tower.” During his long period of Turkish captivity Brother George wrote his Memoirs in both German and Latin, providing a fascinating view of Turkish mores during the fifteenth century.
Dracul changed his pro-Turkish policies in the early 1440s in circumstances that can be explained only by a cursory glance at the general situation in southeastern Europe. One factor was certain: having put the affairs of the Roman Catholic church in some sort of order, Pope Eugenius IV had worked hard for the reunion of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches at the council held at Florence, a union that took place in the presence of the Byzantine Emperor John VIII on July 4, 1439. This was the essential precondition for a western crusade in defense of Constantinople. Another new element was the emergence of one of the most remarkable political and military leaders in Europe in the period before Dracula's reign. This man was John Hunyadi, and his life and career are deeply intertwined with those of both Dracul the father and Dracula the son. Claimed as a hero both by the Romanians and Hungarians, Hunyadi was not in the least hindered in his career by his lowly Romanian ethnic origins.
A portrait of Hunyadi reveals a man of medium height, with auburn hair and a reddish complexion, with a bull neck, brown penetrating eyes, and a well-proportioned body, a distinctive trait being his high forehead. He had very little formal education, though he spoke Hungarian, Romanian, Serb, Croatian, Italian, and a little Turkish. The ladies thought him no less agreeable because of his extraordinary charm and skill as a dancer. The guiding principle of his life was ambition, and all means were considered good to serve that end. A self-made adventurer, a shrewd businessman, and a banker of sorts, Hunyadi amassed a vast fortune and lent his money at interest to the Holy Roman Emperor. Hunyadi was a condottiere in the classical sense, with this one difference: He believed in the crusading ideal and wished to apply it in the Balkans in order to chase the Turks out of Europe and relieve the threat to Constantinople. In this sense Hunyadi was a good European, and Christianity was his “fatherland.” This ideal notwithstanding, attaining political power, rather than making money, was his supreme goal. To that end, again, all means — money, titles, perhaps even crusading — were equally good instruments. Hunyadi wanted to achieve control of central and eastern Europe for himself and his sons by Erzsébet Szilágy, a member of the lower Hungarian nobility of Transylvania. In spite of changing political and military fortunes, Hunyadi was successful in the end in becoming viceroy of Hungary and governor of Transylvania, and he established his son Matthias, born in 1439, as one of Hungary's great Renaissance kings. (Matthias adopted the epithet Corvinus, from another family estate, recalling the Black Bird —corvus means “crow” — that, according to legend, had once saved him from death. Thus the Black Bird became the centerpiece of the new dynasty's coat of arms.)
To backtrack a bit, Emperor Sigismund, who had an eye for talent, recognized Hunyadi's courage and military potential and appointed him a page at his court. It was at Nuremberg during Dracul's investment in the Dragon Order that Hunyadi first met the future Wallachian prince, though the two men never became close. After a short time as a page at Nuremberg, Hunyadi was sent as a military apprentice to learn the latest techniques of war from a past master in that art, the condottiere Filippo Maria Visconti, who at the time was campaigning against the Venetians. The Transylvanian leader also studied the tactics used by Hussite Bohemians, whose armed battle wagons served as an offensive weapon and had the effectiveness of a modern tank; in defense, chained to each other, they had the staying power of a fortress.
When the emperor Sigismund died in 1437, Hunyadi thought it expedient to swear loyalty to the Habsburg archduke of Austria, who succeeded to the throne as Albert II. Albert had been handpicked as successor by Sigismund because he had married Sigismund's ambitious daughter Elizabeth. Albert was thus crowned the next king of Hungary with the traditional crown of St. Stephen in the ancient cathedral of Székesfehérvár (Alba Regia). An inexperienced but noble character, the young king had inherited a difficult situation: open revolt by the serfs in Transylvania, the lingering effects of Hussite rebellion in Bohemia, and defiance by the Hungarian nobility, which never had much fondness for the House of Habsburg. Despite these other problems, Albert decided to give priority to the danger posed by the Turkish inroads (like the raid Dracul joined) in Transylvania, which threatened both his capitals, Buda and Vienna. This is why he assigned John Hunyadi, now established as viceroy and governor general of Transylvania, the task of defending the southern portion of the kingdom. This initial modest defensive assignment was turned to good account in the following years by the ambitious Transylvanian warlord dubbed the White Knight of the Wallachians. He operated upon the principle (later Napoleon's) that attack was the best means of defense. From this time until his death from the plague in 1456, Hunyadi was responsible for organizing no fewer than four major multinational crusades — in an endeavor to chase the Turks permanently out of their Balkan provinces and relieve pressure on the city of Constantinople.
Sultan Murad II, whose spies kept him accurately informed of events at the Hungarian court, such as Hunyadi's appointment, was determined to forestall Hungarian plans by striking first. He attacked Smederevo, the last free Serbian fortress outside of Belgrade, defended by George Brankovi, the despot of Serbia, and his sons Gregor and Stepan. In spite of heroic resistance, Smederevo was captured on August 27, 1439. The two boys, Gregor and Stepan, were taken hostage by the sultan in spite of the fact that the sultan had married Maria, Brankovi's daughter. Brankovi was able to flee across the Hungarian border, and one year later he decided to give to the crown of Hungary his capital city, Belgrade, which commanded an extraordinarily powerful position on the flank of the Hungarian kingdom, at the confluence of the Danube and the Sava rivers. Even before that “gift,” Albert had little option other than to declare a crusade on the Turks. Unfortunately, before he could gather an army, he died of dysentery in Vienna on October 27, 1439, among the troops that he had assembled.
The succession to the Hungarian throne now hinged upon the actions of two powerful women. One was Albert's widow, Elizabeth, daughter of
Emperor Sigismund, who was allied through her mother to one of the most influential German feudal families, the counts of Cilli. Estranged before his death from Albert, who had tried to exclude her from the succession, Elizabeth, an ambitious and domineering woman anxious to exercise power in her own right, spent little time mourning her husband. With the help of her mother, her relative and Brankovi's son-in-law Ulrich, head of the Cilli clan, as well as the newly elected Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, a Habsburg cousin of Albert, she attempted to assert her own authority. Claiming that she was pregnant at the time of her husband's death, she said that she wished to secure the crown of Hungary for her unborn child. Idle gossip in Buda, however, had it that the child was not Albert's, but the fruit of an illicit affair with a Hungarian nobleman. This “child of miracle” was born on February 22, 1440, and, as we have seen, was appropriately nicknamed Ladislas Posthumus. In an attempt to ensure the legality of the succession, the scheming Elizabeth secretly sent her lady-in-waiting Helen Kottarenin to steal the crown of St. Stephen from the fortress of Visegrád where it was housed and had her infant boy crowned Ladislas V by the primate of Hungary, Denes Széchi, at Székesfehérvár, in accordance with the customs of the land. For safekeeping she appointed his uncle Frederick III as “guardian” and Enea Silvio de' Piccolomini (the future Pope Pius II) as tutor, while the Hussite Slovak mercenary Jan Jiskra of Brandýs formed her personal guard.
This clever coup was hardly in the interests of Hunyadi, the great White Knight of the Christians, who correctly foresaw a period of weakness and instability in Hungarian affairs. For that reason he, as well as a majority of the Hungarian nobility, favored the candidature of a young Polish king, the romantic and chivalrous Ladislas III, son of the great Jagiello. Eventually a compromise was worked out because Elizabeth did not have the power to oppose Hunyadi and the nobility: Elizabeth would recognize Ladislas III of Poland as king of Hungary during his lifetime but reserved the right of her son Ladislas Posthumus to succeed him if the Polish king had no heirs. The problem of the Hungarian succession was eventually resolved by the heroic death of the twenty-year-old Ladislas III on the battlefield at Varna, Bulgaria, in 1444, which left the throne of Hungary in the hands of Ladislas Posthumus.
Finally in control of the situation, John Hunyadi, governor general of Transylvania, came to Dracul at Tîrgovite in 1441 on a mission from the newly elected Polish king of Hungary, demanding the renewal of the crusade against the Turks, which the Wallachians had forsaken during Albert's brief interlude as king. Persistent Turkish military pressure at Belgrade (now a Hungarian fortress) and the civil strife in Hungary made it imperative to secure Wallachian loyalties. The Hungarians further relied on the fact that as a member of the Order of the Dragon, Dracul would find it difficult not to renew his pledges of allegiance to the Christian cause. On the other hand, as a realist, particularly after the fall of Smederevo, Dracul was only too well aware of the overwhelmingly strong military position of the Ottomans: by 1442 they controlled the whole line of the Danube, and their garrisons occupied important fortresses such as Giurgiu and Turnu on the Wallachian side of the river. Added to these logistical factors, an argument that had some bearing on Dracul's decisions was the treacherous game played by Hunyadi, who, while appealing for his support, continued to give secret assurances to the son of Dan II, Basarab, the rival candidate for the Wallachian throne, who had made his headquarters in Transylvania. This last factor may have been decisive in Dracul's decision to preserve his neutrality between Turks and Hungarians, at least for a time. When the Turks entered Wallachia in March 1442, under their commander ihabeddin, bey of Rumelia, Dracul remained neutral, simply allowing the Turkish troops free access into Transylvania. The Turks suffered a disastrous defeat and several of their leaders were slain.
Dracul's half-hearted fulfillment of his role as a vassal of the sultan planted the seeds of suspicion in the mind of Sultan Murad, who was an honorable man and believed in the sanctity of treaty obligations. The governor of Bulgaria, according to a Turkish historian, Mehmed Neri, helped cast further doubt on Vlad's loyalties. “Gracious Lord,” he told Sultan Murad, “Believe me, neither John Hunyadi nor George Brankovi [theoretically a vassal] is loyal to you. Nor should you believe that Vlad Dracul is a true friend — he is fickle.” The sultan simply answered: “At springtime I will invite both of them to come to my court.” Brankovi, with his suspicions of Turkish double-dealing, wisely stayed away in his fortress at Belgrade. The more trusting Dracul, taking with him his two youngest sons, Dracula and Radu, set out for Gallipoli to meet the sultan. As soon as he had reached the city gates, the prince was seized by a Turkish contingent, and bound in chains. His two young sons were taken away to the distant mountain fortress of Egrigöz in Asia Minor. Dracul was held in Turkish custody at Gallipoli and later, for just short of one year, in the Ottoman capital city, Adrianople, a “guest” of the sultan, while his eldest son, Mircea, undoubtedly Dracul's favorite, ruled in Wallachia (1442-1443). Dracul was eventually released upon the promise, sworn on both the Bible and the Koran, not to participate in any further action against his Turkish suzerain. He was to pay the usual tribute of 10,000 gold ducats, but to this was added the obligation of sending a contingent of young boys, five hundred strong, destined for the Turkish janissary corps — a new act of fealty. Given Dracul's previously unreliable record, one can sympathize with the Turkish concern with obtaining tangible guarantees that would obligate Dracul to keep promises that he had made and broken before. As a further guarantee of future loyalty, Dracul undertook to leave his two younger sons, Dracula, aged barely eleven or twelve, and Radu, not more than seven years old and “no taller than a bouquet of flowers.” For the next six years Vlad Dracula, an adolescent, lived among the Turks without father or mother. He did not speak the language of his jailers. Their religion was strange to him. He must have felt abandoned by his father and other kin.
Contemporary Turkish chronicles tell us that Dracula and his brother Radu were held captive, at least for a time, at the fortress of Egrigöz (“crooked eyes”) in the Kütahya district of the province of Karaman in western Anatolia. One of the co-authors visited Egrigöz, located almost three thousand feet above sea level. The town occupied a beautiful site on the southeastern slope of Mount Kocia. The whole region consists of small mountains and vast forests of oak, pine, and beech trees; it is similar to the sub-Carpathian region of Wallachia in which the two princes had been brought up. The two hostages were later transferred to Tokat, in the interior of Anatolia, and later to Adrianople. Dracula was held in Turkey until 1448. Radu stayed until 1462.
After their transfer to the capital city of Adrianople, the two boys traveled with the sultan's court in the company of other hostages to Bursa and the summer palace at Manisa. Indeed, the purpose of hostage taking was not merely to guarantee the good behavior of the parents, but also to influence mental attitudes, to instill in princes likely to succeed to the throne loyalty to the Ottoman Empire, without necessarily requiring that they convert to Islam. These youths were to be treated with kindness and civility so long as their elders maintained their pledge. These favorable terms would cease only if the original agreement were broken, or if the hostage misbehaved in an outrageous fashion. The story of the sons of the Serbian ruler Brankovi provides a good case in point: on May 8, 1441, the two young princes, Stepan and Gregor, having exploited the generous terms of their confinement by engaging in treasonable correspondence with their father, were punished by being blinded with red-hot irons — this in spite of the tears of their beautiful twenty-two-year-old sister Mara, the Sultan's wife.
One famous hostage at the court of Murad II was the nobleman George Castriota, from Kruja, also known as “Skanderbeg,” the future hero of Albanian anti-Ottoman resistance. He was a much older man and an object of general admiration and awe, treated as an “uncle” and elder statesman by all the younger Balkan hostage princes. Another remarkable younger man, brought up at the same court and less than a year younger
than Dracula (he was born on March 30, 1432) was none other than Murad's second son, Mehmed Çelebi, the future Mehmed II, who would become Dracula's protagonist. In such distinguished company both Dracula and Radu were brought up, tutored by the best minds and in the cultivated traditions of fifteenth-century Ottoman education. Among a stable of tutors and scholars was the famous Kurdish philosopher Ahmed Gürani, an imposing man with a beard who had the right to use the whip, even with the heir to the throne. Other reknowned teachers included the mullahs Sinan, Hamiduddin, and Iyas Effendi, a former Serbian prisoner of war. Beyond including the precepts of the Koran, Aristotelian logic, and applied and theoretical mathematics, Dracula's education was completed in fine Byzantine traditions inherited by the Turks. Dracula's knowledge of the Turkish language was soon close to perfect — a circumstance that was to stand him in good stead on future occasions.
Undoubtedly this six-year period of Turkish captivity, at an age when character is molded, constituted at least as significant a segment in Dracula's upbringing as his years at the Wallachian court. Thus the period is relevant in accounting for Dracula's cold and sadistic personality. On the whole, Dracula, a gaunt and rather ungainly youth, was a difficult pupil, prone to temper bouts; the whip and other forms of punishment were often resorted to in order to cow him into obedience. By way of contrast, there was Radu, whose unusual good looks and sensuality attracted the female members of the seraglio as well as the male “minions” in the Sultan's court. Because of their differences of character, temperament, and physique, the two brothers developed for each other an intense hatred, which was exacerbated by the associated differences in treatment they received.
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