Dracula, Prince of Many Faces

by Radu R Florescu

  Even the favorite torture, impalement, though never before practiced on so wide a scale, was not a Dracula innovation. It was known to Asiatic people, and practiced by the Turks, as well as by other Balkan rulers, including Dracula's cousin Stephen of Moldavia. (In 1473, Stephen had 2,300 of his Wallachian prisoners impaled through the navel.) The German Saxons of Transylvania had written legal codes in which impalement was specifically described as a suitable form of punishment for a variety of serious crimes.

  But no matter how carefully we account for Dracula's crimes by placing them in the context of his times and even seeing motivation for some, it is a matter of record that in the end he was abandoned by all his people. Many of his contemporaries, even his henchmen, felt that no one was really safe from impalement at the hands of this villain. One cannot adopt the adage “tout comprendre, c' est tout pardonner,” especially as some of Dracula's atrocities seem to have been motivated only by a streak of irrationality. Dracula, in other words, was on occasion guilty of senseless butchery.

  Although we are unwilling to indulge in a Freudian analysis of Dracula's personality, the nature of some of his crimes, particularly vis-à-vis women, suggests sexual abnormalities that have never been explained by historians. The ritual and manner of impalement, watching his victims eat flesh, the cutting of sexual organs—all point to morbid sexual deviation. In this connection, one anecdote mentioned in the Russian narrative seems to confirm Dracula's anger toward women. On one occasion, relates the Slavonic narrative, one of Dracula's mistresses pretended that he had made her pregnant. Dracula was angered by what he evidently expected to be a lie. He first had his mistress examined; then, realizing that he had been made an object of ridicule, had her womb cut open from her sexual organs to her breasts. As the unfortunate woman lay dying, writhing in excruciating pain, Dracula cynically remarked: “Let the world see where I have been.”

  What can explain the savagery of such crimes? The answer that suggests itself even to a nonspecialist is that Dracula may have been partially impotent. The ritual of impalement may have provided a satisfaction that substituted for his own inadequacy.

  As we review Dracula's domestic policies, several factors besides the atrocities he committed stand out. Dracula's mentality and his politics can in part be labeled as representative of an age that witnessed the final disappearance of feudalism, the emergence of the centralized nation-state, and the rise of a middle class. In the case of Dracula's state, the arguments for “modernization,” for subjugating the boyars, were all the more cogent, since he faced imminent danger from outside, threatening the very existence of his principality. Bearing this in mind, even his use of impalement can sometimes be explained on utilitarian grounds. The use of these terror tactics against the German cities of Transylvania will provide a good case in point, to which we shall now turn.

  CHAPTER 5

  Transylvanian Terror

  EVERY twentieth-century movie buff associates the fictitious “Count Dracula” with Transylvania. In many ways this association fits the real Vlad Dracula. In a historic sense, these upland regions of the western portion of modern Romania — a vast plateau of mountains and foothills bordered by the eastern and western Carpathian mountains — was in fact “Dracula country.” Vlad Dracula was born in Sighioara, Transylvania, he was educated there early in life, and his first wife hailed from that province. It was from Transylvania that he came to assume his throne, and it was in that province that he hoped to find moral as well as material support against his enemies both at home and abroad. It should also be added that the commercial relations between Transylvania and Wallachia had always been close. Most of Dracula's correspondence is to be found in the archives of Sibiu and Braov; when things did not work out in Wallachia, Dracula sought asylum in Transylvanian cities such as Sighioara, Braov, or Hunedoara. This relationship was intermittently darkened by a variety of incidents that grew to tragic proportions and need an explanation.

  His relationship with the German Saxon community was particularly uneven. When the Hungarian kings completed the conquest of Transylvania, they needed colonists to settle on their new lands. They appealed essentially to German colonists, who responded enthusiastically with massive migrations, first during the twelfth century and later at the close of the thirteenth, following the extensive destruction of townships and the massacres that accompanied the Mongol invasions of Genghis Khan and his successors. These Germans were collectively known as Saxons, because of their use of Saxony as a staging area on their trek eastward. In fact, they came from every part of Germany: the Rhineland, the Moselle area, Brunswick, Westphalia, and Luxemburg. Most of them settled in the southern and northern portions of Transylvania, building powerful, fortified townships — in effect, privileged, self-governing communities with a powerful voice in the Transylvanian parliament. The Germans in Transylvania were officially recognized as a “nation,” though under the ultimate authority of the princes of Transylvania. Identical privileges had been granted to the less populous Szeklers (whose Asiatic ancestry we have already noted), who, like the Germans, were Catholics, Catholicism being the only established religion in Transylvania. The citizens of these fortified towns were governed by a mayor and a city council, which had a great deal of independence and maintained a loyalty to their German homelands, to which they were tied by sentimental, religious, and cultural bonds. They also, consequently, tended to favor the interests of the Habsburg family, the rulers of Austria. In fact, each city conducted a foreign policy of its own, not always coincident with that of the Hungarian king or his local representative, the prince of Transylvania. So long as Ladislas V Posthumus, a member of the Habsburg family, was king of Hungary, there were no problems of allegiance. When he died in 1458, however, most of the German townships of Transylvania threw their loyalty to the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, one of their kin, rather than siding with the Hunyadis, whom they considered aliens.

  We have already mentioned by their Romanian names a number of these Transylvanian German towns, which in those days were known by German equivalents. The most important were Braov, the largest center; Sibiu; Sighioara, Dracula's birthplace; Sebe; and Bistria, the setting Bram Stoker uses. The populations of these townships, ranging from 4,000 to 10,000 inhabitants, espoused traditional German values: hard work, frugality, and efficiency. They developed a great variety of goods destined for more than local consumption and organized according to traditional principles of the medieval guilds. There were butchers, shoemakers, tailors, clockmakers, goldsmiths, jewelers, textile and silk manufacturers, and metalworkers, all of whom took pride in the good quality of their workmanship, the high standards of which became known throughout southeastern Europe. They catered particularly to the refined tastes of the wealthy upper classes. As noted, one specialty that had aroused the interest of military leaders, including the sultan, was the manufacture of firearms made of heavy steel or bronze. The cannon foundries and bombard factories of Braov and gunpowder workshops of Sibiu became quite famous — indeed the German arms manufacturers of Transylvania were the Krupps of the fifteenth century, fully conversant with the latest techniques of war. Also substantially adding to the wealth of the Germans were the monopolies granted to them by the Hungarian kings over the rich gold, silver, and copper ores that had been mined since antiquity in the Transylvanian Alps.

  Given this development of local industry and connections with their former homeland, the German townships naturally began to engage in a very lucrative east-west trade. It followed essentially two different routes. The northern route, centered on the city of Bistria, carried Saxon goods to some twenty-five German ports like Hamburg and Danzig along the Baltic seacoast, which had formed an association of their own, often referred to as the Hanseatic League. Braov and Sibiu, on the other hand, conducted a much larger volume of trade, which followed the two southern passes leading from Transylvania to Wallachia, Turnu Rou, and Bran. Their merchants traveled to the principal cities of Wallachia, Cîmpulung,
Tîrgovite, and Tîrgsor, and the ports of Brila and Chilia on the Danube delta, and finally, by sea, to Constantinople and even beyond. From Wallachia the Saxons imported grain, flax, hemp, horses, and various other farm animals. Spices and other refined goods from Asia would also cross Wallachian territories in the opposite direction, though the German balance of trade was always favorable and the difference was made up in hard cash — the currency of Venice or Florence being generally preferred.

  German-Wallachian trade, then, centered on market towns such as Tîrgovite and Tîrgsor, where important fairs were held and the Saxons could display their goods. The Germans also made use of such towns as warehousing centers for goods in transit farther east. Insofar as fiscal policy was concerned, German goods were, if sold in Wallachia, subject to certain import duties, in accordance with past usage; if they were shipped outside Wallachia, the merchants were charged an export tax. The point of restricting commerce to certain towns was that the prince could thereby exercise control over the influx of foreign goods and protect native merchants from foreign exploitation. The collection of export and import duties obviously benefited the Wallachian treasury and helped to pay the mercenary soldiers needed for the army. Levying tariffs also tended to enhance the prosperity of the selected towns.

  To round off our image of these German people who had settled on the borderlands of European civilization, we should add that the Teutonic Order of Knights, which had played a crucial role in civilizing and Christianizing the Slavs during an earlier period and had built a string of fortresses from the Baltic to the Carpathians, played a far smaller role in Transylvania during the fifteenth century. The powerful fortresses that they had built, such as Bran, which guarded the city of Braov during the thirteenth century, had been placed under the control of the cities that they were meant to defend. In Dracula's time, the order, which had lost both power and prestige following its defeat by the Poles at the battle of Tannenberg, was considered untrustworthy by the Hungarian kings and confined its activities to the defense of a region known as the Banat, the region of southwest Transylvania around the Danube shoe, which extends into present-day Yugoslavia, where they controlled a number of important forts.

  Most of Dracula's activities involved two Transylvanian districts with a strong concentration of German settlers. One was the area in the vicinity of Braov, referred to in the old documents as Burzenland (now ara Bîrsei), which included a dozen smaller townships and many villages of mixed ethnic origin. The other district, far more German in character, lay in the vicinity of the city of Sibiu, and as described by Emperor Sigismund's biographer, Eberhard Windecke, as Sieben Burgen (seven fortresses), a name still used by the Germans to describe all of Transylvania. Both ara Bîrsei and the “Seven Fortresses” were located within the duchies of Fgra and Amla, traditional possessions of the Wallachian princes in Transylvania proper. Since these regions contained populations of mixed ethnic origins, they were a constant source of contention with the Hungarian kings, who preferred to forget that there were dozens of purely Romanian townships and villages within the boundaries of these duchies.

  In order to understand fully the “terror” activities that Dracula aimed at the “privileged” German communities of Transylvania, it should be recognized that, even in this prenational age, Romanians who shared their native tongue and Orthodox religion with him formed a majority of the population of Transylvania (roughly 500,000 total inhabitants in the fifteenth century) and enjoyed no rights. Considered as a “people without a history,” most of them were serfs attached to the lands of either Hungarian, Szekler, or Saxon landowners. The Romanian upper class in Transylvania had been virtually destroyed. The only ones who survived were those families that, out of self-interest — the case of Hunyadi was typical — decided to become Hungarians and adopt the Catholic faith. Nonetheless, the vast majority of Romanians clung to their language, which was taught in the family, given the absence of schools, and to their Orthodox church, which continued to function even though it was not a “recognized” religion and there were no Orthodox Romanian bishoprics in Transylvania at this time. Priests in the various peasant parishes continued to be ordained by the metropolitan of Moldavia or Wallachia, who thus helped keep religion alive among the Romanians of Transylvania. Sometimes the oppressed Romanian population would revolt or even join with Hungarian serfs against the nobility, as was the case with the Bobîlna uprising in 1437. Repressed politically by the Hungarian kings and religiously by no fewer than three inquisitions, somehow Romanian national and spiritual life survived at a very modest level. This is reflected in the quaint village churches built entirely of wood (the people were not allowed to build in stone) that are still standing today.

  Because of its extraordinarily beautiful, varied, and at times forbidding countryside, the diversity of language, races, religions, and traditions, the impact of both western and eastern cultural patterns, and the commercial prosperity and industry of its towns, Transylvania indeed presented a most unusual, perhaps unique, microcosm of the full range of east-west civilization. These facts provide the chief explanation for its having attracted the attention of so many travelers from Dracula's time onward. Its wealth was both a blessing and a curse for the country; it became a magnet in the interplay of hostile and conflicting political interests.

  When Dracula became prince in 1456 he had every interest in maintaining good relations with all the German Saxon cities — indeed, the latter had been instructed, by the Hungarian king, Ladislas V, to support Dracula's quest for the Wallachian throne. It was, in fact, because of the support he had received from the Braovians, among whom he had many friends, that Dracula wrote a most cordial letter (September 6, 1456) to the mayor and the city councilmen, whom he described “as honest men, brothers, friends, and sincere neighbors” (honesti viri, fratres, amici et vicini nostri sinceri). Shortly thereafter he signed a commercial treaty with the Braovians and the district of ara Bîrsei, which contained the following provisions: (1) Dracula would help defend the Transylvanian Saxons against the Turks; (2) in case of need, he would be granted political asylum in the city; (3) the merchants of Braov and of the region were given the right to barter unimpeded in certain towns such as Rucr, Tîrgovite, and Tîrgsor, as had been the practice theretofore. They could sell their wares directly to the customers and buy their raw materials from the producer — the only obligation being that of paying the usual Wallachian customs duties, upon entry. Both sides undertook not to give protection to their political enemies, and not to confiscate the goods of their respective merchants, no matter what the provocation. In the same document Dracula swore renewed fidelity to the young king of Hungary. In essence, the economic treaty somewhat liberalized and confirmed existing privileges. A similar treaty was signed with the city of Sibiu, since each township maintained a policy of its own. It would be fair to presume that Bistria and the other more important German cities throughout Transylvania obtained identical commercial advantages.

  Such auspicious beginnings were not destined to endure. Before long, the Wallachian prince committed some of his worst atrocities at the expense of the Germans in Transylvania. These have been described in great detail by those Germans who survived.

  Among the causes for Dracula's increasing hostility toward the German Saxons were international factors. A new conflict had arisen between László Hunyadi, who had inherited all his father's titles and was ostensibly still commander-in-chief, and the Hungarian Habsburg king, Ladislas V, who was supported by the powerful Count Ulrich Cilli (related by marriage to the late Emperor Sigismund) and ultimately by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III. As governor of Belgrade, Hunaydi had invited the young king to make an official visit to the city, which had heroically resisted Mehmed's formidable onslaught. Shortly after the king had entered the fortress with his retinue (which included Count Cilli), the drawbridge leading to the fortress was suddenly closed, cutting off both the king and Count Cilli from their bodyguard, which was deliberately kept outside the
fortress walls. On the first day of the royal visit, in admittedly confusing circumstances, Count Cilli was assassinated by one of László Hunyadi's hired henchmen — an act of revenge for the numerous indignities that his father had suffered at the hands of a man who had consistently opposed him. Young King Ladislas V Habsburg, now totally at the mercy of Hunyadi, expected a similar fate, since it was known that Hunyadi had his sights set on the Hungarian crown. The king, however, stayed calm and was allowed to leave the fortress unharmed. But he meditated on his vengeance. There is no question that the real reason for the arrest, trial, and death sentence for László Hunyadi the following year (1457), the imprisonment of his young brother Matthias, and the formal confiscation of the vast Hunyadi estates by the king, though linked to the crime at Belgrade, were a result of the broader struggle for power that had always existed between Cillis and Hunyadis. In general, the events at Belgrade marked the beginning of a struggle for power between the Hunyadis and the Habsburgs, both of whom wanted the Hungarian crown. Following László's death, the leaders of the Hunyadi faction were Erzsébet Szilágy, John Hunyadi's widow, and Mihály Szilágy, her brother. They were not only determined to avenge the death of their kin, but now they openly worked for the downfall of László Habsburg. The new Hunyadi candidate to the throne was to be László's youngest brother, Matthias, who was still in jail.