Dracula's demented reign of terror through impalement had simply lasted too long. No one really felt secure from his terrible and inquisitorial vindictiveness. Besides, now that the Turks had withdrawn the bulk of their forces there was no further need of terror. Radu would restore all the ancient rights of the land, acknowledge the sultan as his lord, and pay the tribute. However, he would allow no Turk to settle on Romanian soil, nor would he force Wallachian youths to be inducted into the janissary corps. Here was Radu promising the nation a blander, more humane rule without stakes.
Radu's appeal to the nation proved irresistible. In the first instance the old nobility was won over. The boyar class, the real rulers of the land, had firmly believed, since the fall of Constantinople, that the realities of power dictated a policy of friendly cooperation with the Turks; they felt that continued collaboration with Hungary or with the papal crusade would in the long run lead to the extinction of the autonomy they had achieved. The peasants and merchants, on the other hand, had had enough of war and privation and were anxious to return to work, now that the independence of the country was no longer in danger. Though the Turkish army had been badly emasculated, losing about a third of its force, Dracula's losses were equally heavy, and he could less afford them. Despite a final victory at Buzu on June 26 against Evrenos Pasha, the last military encounter between the two armies, the number of defectors from Dracula's army to Radu's force was on the increase. In fact, Dracula's army was gradually melting away, leaving the prince without a throne and only a small number of personal bodyguards and mercenary soldiers. With his back to the wall, Dracula's instinct dictated retreat toward the Carpathian Mountains, toward his famous, virtually impregnable eagle's nest, where resistance was still possible. He would rely on guerrilla tactics in the mountainous terrain that he knew best. Final salvation, however, could come only from King Matthias of Hungary, whose army, he hoped, was finally moving toward Transylvania in response to his persistent appeals for help.
CHAPTER 7
Imprisonment and Death
WITH the defection to Radu of the majority of boyars and many of the Romanian people, Dracula's army simply melted away. It was but natural in these circumstances for the escapee to attempt to reach the Transylvanian border and seek help from the Hungarian king, his so-called ally whose assistance he had so far sought in vain. It was equally logical that Dracula and his few partisans should avoid the plain and the major cities, by the middle of September completely under Turkish or Radu's control. Dracula headed toward his famous castle hideout on the southern slopes of the Transylvanian mountains, at the Hungarian-Wallachian frontier, a logical point of departure for Braov, where the Hungarian king, should he come to Dracula's aid, would establish his headquarters. The castle had, after all, originally been built by Wallachian slave labor specifically for such an emergency. The precise road Dracula traveled from eastern Wallachia can be largely retraced with the help of local folklore. It is likely that he stayed within the protective shadow of the Sub-Carpathian mountains, crossing the Teleajen, Prahova, and Dîmbovia rivers, climbing quite high up near their sources. On that path Dracula likely passed through the villages of Cheia, Sinaia, and Ceteni. Tradition states that Dracula sought refuge in the castle rock at Ceteni overlooking the Dîmbovia. Finally, he crossed the Arge River, a few miles to the west, and reached his impressive mountain retreat.
There is one valid argument for the authenticity of the stories collected from the village surrounding Castle Dracula: all the narratives end precisely at the moment when Dracula crossed the border into Transylvania, demonstrating that no matter how imaginative the peasants could be, they related only events that they personally could have witnessed.
We shall paraphrase a classic folkloric narrative of Dracula's last moments of resistance on Romanian soil. Knowing of Dracula's hideout, Prince Radu ordered the Turkish forces to pursue his brother along the valley of the Arge River. Reaching the village of Poenari, they encamped upon a bluff that commanded an admirable view of Dracula's castle on the opposite bank of the Arge. From this vantage point, Radu and his Turkish allies set up their cherrywood cannons and small bronze artillery bombards. At Poenari to this day there is a field known as Tunuri (“the field of cannon”). The bulk of the Turkish janissaries descended to the river, forded it, and encamped at the foot of the Castle Mountain. The Turkish bombardment of the castle began without much success, because of the light caliber of the Turkish guns and the thickness of the castle walls. The orders for the final assault were to have been given the following day.
During that night, one of Dracula's relatives who had been enslaved by the Turks years before, mindful of his family allegiance, decided to forewarn the Wallachian prince of the great danger he was incurring by remaining in the fortress. Undetected, during the pitch-dark, moonless night, the former Romanian, who was a member of the janissary corps, climbed to the top of Poenari Hill, a short distance from Dracula's castle, and then, armed with a bow and arrow, took careful aim at one of the dimly lit openings in the main castle tower, which he knew contained Dracula's quarters. At the end of the arrow he had pinned a message advising Dracula to escape while there was still time. The Romanian-born Muslim witnessed the accuracy of his aim: the candle was suddenly extinguished by the arrow. Within a minute it was relit by Dracula's Transylvanian concubine; she could be seen reading the message by the flickering light. What followed could have been recalled only by Dracula's intimate advisers within the castle, who presumably witnessed the scene. Peasant imagination, however, reconstructed the story in the following manner. Dracula's mistress apprised her husband of the ominous content of the message. She told him that she would “rather have her body rot and be eaten by the fish of the Arge than be led into captivity by the Turks.” She then hurled herself from the upper battlements, her body falling down the precipice below into the river, which became her tomb. A fact that tends to corroborate this story is that to this day the river at that point is known as Rîul Doamnei, or the “Princess's River.” Apart from a brief notice in the Russian narrative, this tragic folkloric footnote is practically the only reference anywhere to Dracula's so-called wife, who is permanently enshrined only in local memories.
Surrounded by an overwhelming Turkish force, Dracula decided to attempt to escape across the mountains by subterfuge. According to tradition he left through a secret passage leading to the banks of the river; his party's horses were allegedly shod backward to confuse potential pursuers. A local peasant clan, simply identified as the seven Dobrin brothers, helped him get away. He needed their assistance because the ascent and the descent of the three-thousand-foot Fgra slopes were no easy task for the forty-one-year-old prince, and there were no passes at that point. The upper slopes are rocky, treacherous, and often covered with snow or ice even in summer. The precise escape route was mapped out by the Dobrins. Popular folklore names the sources of rivers, clearings, forested areas, even rocks, that provided landmarks along the way he took. Peasants in the area say that Dracula rewarded the Dobrins by taking them up on a mountain peak and donating all the land “as far as the eye could see” in return for their loyalty. Tradition states that Dracula officially confirmed this donation by inscribing it on rabbit-skin scrolls, and that these scrolls are preserved by the free landowning peasants in the village of Arefu, even in present-day socialist Romania. It is interesting to note that collectivization of land has never been applied in this mountain region. As he descended the Transylvanian slopes, the former prince, still at the head of a small mercenary force, decided to establish his headquarters at the Hungarian fortress of Königstein (“the King's Rock”), the ruins of which have survived. A small fortress had been originally established by John Hunyadi at the mountain summit of the Fgra to protect Braov from Turkish attack. There Dracula would await news from his scouts of the precise date of King Matthias's expected arrival at Braov, only a few miles away to the north, to decide on his future course of action.
During the fifteen
th century, even allowing for the slowness of travel of a large royal retinue accustomed to comfortable quarters, the snail's pace with which King Matthias and his army progressed from Buda to Braov hardly reflected great eagerness on Matthias's part to meet his so-called ally, with whose plight he was all too familiar. Matthias had left Buda on July 15; by August 10 he had barely reached the Hungarian city of Szeged. Ten days later he crossed the Transylvanian border and reached Turda only on September 17. By the thirtieth of the month he was at Sibiu, where the king and his court decided to spend the whole month of October discussing the various options created by the explosive situation of Dracula's defeat and Radu's inauguration as prince, and the consequences it would entail for Hungary and crusading policy. Matthias finally reached the ara Bîrsei and Braov area only in November, taking up residence in a castle still known as the little fortress (Cetuia), now completely restored, on the peak of a hill. He was in time to attend the celebrations of the feast day of Saint Martin, one of the patron saints of the German Saxons, when tradition entitled the king to collect a poll tax from every German household, badly needed for his depleted treasury. Although the slowness of the king's progress in Transylvania did not augur well for those who still believed in his commitment to the papal crusade, he kept up the pretense that he had crossed the border to come to the help of Dracula. At least the minnesinger Michael Beheim professed to believe in the sincerity of the king's intentions: “We are told that the king of Hungary declared himself ready to come to the aid of Dracula with a large army, set in motion from the city of Buda. He took the shortest route toward Transylvania and Kronstadt [Braov] with his army, which had numerous counts, barons, lords, knights, and servants in it, and it seems there was a great deal of excitement in the city [Braov].” The king also sent reassuring messages to Pope Pius II to the effect that he would soon attack the Turks on the Danube. Bonfini, King Matthias's official historian, reaffirmed this view. “The king,” he wrote, “was proceeding to Wallachia in order to liberate Dracula from the Turks… and he would give a relative of his to the Wallachian prince as a wife”—a reference implying that Matthias, at least at that time, was looking favorably on Dracula's request for a matrimonial union with the Hunyadi family, aware that his previous lady companions were illicit. Others at Buda, allegedly well informed, also professed to believe in the sincerity of the king's intention. Indeed, Sultan Mehmed's defeat in Wallachia, followed by his humiliating return to Constantinople, created admirable conditions for a successful anti-Ottoman crusade.
When he finally learned that King Matthias had reached Braov, Dracula joined him from his mountain retreat and took up residence in the Scheii district, the Romanian section of town which lay outside the city gates. Dan III had at one time resided there. Like any realistic condottiere, Dracula was keenly aware of the fact that he was no longer in control of the situation. The two men met in what is now the town hall, still standing in the old German section, and they maintained a pretense of negotiations, according to Beheim, “during a five-week period.” It was the first time that the two leaders had met as adults, and Dracula was in a position to take measure of Matthias's enigmatic personality, disguised by his diminutive bullish figure and rather plain exterior, high forehead, and deepset but shifty eyes. Hard political realities soon exploded the euphoria of the initial embrace. Far from being the awesome impaler prince, Dracula was little more than a political refugee with a few henchmen on foreign soil, who had lost the support of his war-worn country. His hated brother, Radu the Handsome, a minion of the sultan, was now on the throne but had maintained the traditional autonomy of the country. In essence, Dracula was a supplicant whose only assets were past promises, which meant little in an age where power was the only language that rulers understood.
There were good reasons for Matthias's lack of openness in negotiating with Dracula. In early August 1462 Radu had sent a boyar delegation to Braov, offering not only to renew the commercial concessions that Dracula himself had previously conceded in 1460 but adding a sum of 15,000 ducats for additional compensation. On the fifteenth of that month, Albert de Istenmezö, vice-count of the Szeklers, no great friend of Dracula, recommended to the authorities of Braov and Bran to give official recognition to Radu and observe the peace with the Turks. Similar negotiations were later carried out by Radu's boyars at Sibiu. Matthias was inevitably informed of Radu's recognition by the two powerful German cities, and even before he arrived at Braov in November, Matthias had been won over to their view. He not only gave official recognition to Prince Radu the Handsome, but also signed a five-year armistice with the sultan. This pact freed Mehmed II to plan yet another strike against his enemy, the ruler of Karaman in Anatolia. There is a good deal of speculation on the determining role played by Matthias's official court astrologer, an Italian by the name of Antonio della Camera, who had accompanied the king at Braov, in the latter's decision to abandon his erstwhile ally Dracula and to recognize Radu as prince in November. It was rumored at Braov that the astrologer was in the pay of powerful German banking interests, in Nuremberg and Augsburg, that had also worked for Dracula's demise. Matthias finally signed an armistice with Mehmed, evidently abandoning the projected crusade, for which important sums of money had been duplicitously gathered.
The principal reason, however, for Matthias's decision to recognize Radu (and to abandon Dracula and the anti-Ottoman crusade) had little to do with German or Turkish politics. Rather it was due to events in Vienna, where Emperor Frederick III, trying to impose additional taxes (6,000 florins), found himself in the embarrassing position of being besieged by the citizens of his own capital, in the royal palace (the Hofburg) on October 15. When a delegation of rebels traveled from the imperial capital to Braov in November to offer the Hungarian king nothing less than the Habsburg estates (an offer that in turn opened up the possibility of succeeding to the imperial crown), this proved to be the clinching factor in turning Matthias's attention to events in the west. All these events help account for King Matthias's decision to proceed with the arrest of his one-time ally Dracula.
The plot was carefully hatched by the king's men in a manner reminiscent of the ambushes that had been sprung in the past by Dracula himself. When, after weeks of fruitless talks, Dracula finally suggested to Matthias that they embark on the campaign to liberate Wallachia from his brother's and Turkish control, the king gave him a body of soldiers under the leadership of Jan Jiškra of Brandýs, a former Slovak Hussite leader, who in return for money had made his peace with the Habsburgs, and more recently had sold his services to the Hungarian king. Jiškra had little love for Dracula and resented the latter's support of the Hunyadis during the internal strife in Hungary when he had espoused the imperial cause. The small contingent, composed of a few remaining Dracula mercenaries, Hungarians, and Slovaks, were ostensibly to provide the vanguard for a larger Hungarian force that was to have followed under the command of King Matthias and transformed the operation into a full-fledged crusade. The troupe traveled along the traditional commercial road through Christian, Tohanu-Vechi, Zrneti, and Bran to the customs point at Rucr that would lead to the ancient Wallachian capital of Cîmpulung across the Transylvanian mountains. At the basin of the Dîmbovia River, the party reached the fortress of Königstein (Piatra Craiului), where Dracula had established his headquarters a few weeks before while awaiting Matthias's arrival at Braov. He was at last on what was technically Wallachian territory and in his heart of hearts rejoiced, because, according to Beheim, “he thought he was in his own land.”
Once arrived at Königstein Castle on December 5, a majestic location at the summit of the Fgra Mountains, Dracula's contingent and their war wagons were slowly lowered down from the high fortress to the Valley of the Saxons (Valea Sasului) below. To the north loomed the majestic, lofty snow-covered Carpathian Mountains; from the castle walls there was a sheer thousand-foot precipice straight down a wall of stone, wholly inaccessible from the valley below. It was only on December 6, when almost all o
f Dracula's soldiers had been lowered by ropes and pulleys to the lush, green valley of the dam built below, that the famous Slovak mercenary seized Dracula as his prisoner, under secret orders from the Hungarian king. Dracula was unable to resist. Far below in the valley, in the village of Dîmbovia, Dracula's men cried out loudly but in vain for their captured master. At that point there was nothing much they could do to save him.
The fortress of Königstein had been carefully chosen by Matthias precisely because it lay in the king's personal domain, not under the control of the municipality of Braov, which wished to claim jurisdiction over this important prisoner in order to condemn him to death for his inhuman crimes against the Saxons of Transylvania. Jiškra brought Dracula back to Braov, but once he was within the city walls, the Slovak was replaced by the more trustworthy Hungarian bodyguard. The royal retinue and its important prisoner then left for Alba Iulia, where Beheim, by far the best informed, tells us that Dracula was imprisoned at the fortress of Iersiu. It was only there that some form of judicial inquiry into Dracula's conduct was set in motion by the Hungarian king to justify his arrest. However, the party left Iersiu before the inquiry was completed. Then they proceeded by way of Media, Turda, Cluj, and Oradea, and crossed the actual frontier of Hungary near Debrecen. They finally reached Buda by Christmas of 1462.
Despite all the precautions that had been taken by King Matthias, the arrest of Dracula, only months after he had been universally greeted as a hero in the successful war against Mehmed, created a good deal of consternation among the European powers, particularly in Venice and Rome, where important sums had already been spent in the name of crusading. The problem was not a merely local matter. It became a cause of concern for all those powers that had a stake in the anti-Ottoman struggle. King Matthias was badly in need of a legitimate explanation for his drastic action.
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