by Dan Davis
But Vlad Dracula had stirred up a great mass of ill-feeling amongst the Saxon colonies in Transylvania. The German cities came together in rebellion and the royal captain general of Transylvania, Count Oswold Rozgony, threw his support behind the league.
The burghers of Brasov moved to materially support Vlad’s great boyar enemies the Danesti. They were a dynasty long in opposition to Vlad’s ancestors and they saw themselves as rightful rulers of Wallachia.
They began a campaign of subversion within Wallachia against Vlad III Dracula. They spread whispers that Dracula was in fact sworn in vassalage to Sultan Mehmed II and always had been. They sent men out to spread tales that Dracula was lying about his opposition to the Turks.
“Damn the bastards of Brasov,” Vlad said when he came through and stopped to inspect the sluji. “Always those Saxon dogs have been ungrateful, disloyal, and treacherous. Have you heard what lies they are spreading? Have you?”
“I have,” I said.
The most effective slander has the ring of truth to it and for years Wallachia had been in vassalage to the Turks. It was undeniable as the effects of that vassalage had been felt by every family in the kingdom. After all, the payments required under the terms of vassalage were calculated by Janissary tax collectors who went from place to place in the country, assessing the plenty or scarcity so that the rulers could not deceive their overlord the Sultan with regards to what was available. The taxes were paid in coinage and silver but also in livestock and in grain, supplied by the hardworking peasants to their lords and thence to the Turks. The Wallachian lowlands were so productive that the Turks viewed their northern vassal in large part as a vast granary which could be relied on to provide enormous quantities of grain that would feed its armies on campaign.
There was of course the devshirme, the Blood Tax, in which thousands of healthy boys were dragged from their homes and turned into Turkish slaves. Wallachians were a hearty and wily people who made the Sultan reliable soldiers and able administrators.
No matter what the rumours said about Vlad’s subservience, the truth was that in 1459 Dracula refused to pay the tribute to Sultan Mehmed II. That act would bring the wrath of the Turks down upon us from the south and it was at that moment that the Saxons began stirring up open rebellion in the north.
Up until that Saxon rebellion, I had never seen him express much in the way of anger. But when he was told of the accusations spreading amongst his people, Dracula threw an ancient oak table across his hall with force enough to shatter it, sending jagged boards flying back to where his men stood. While they ducked and cringed, Vlad stood unflinching with the crushed letter in his gloved fist.
“What else?” Vlad asked his messenger, a new boyar raised up from the peasantry and granted lands on the Transylvanian border.
The young man who had conveyed the message got back to his feet and stopped shielding his head with his arms. “Dan III, brother of Vladislaus II the former prince, has established himself in Brasov,” the man said, clearing his throat. “He has claimed the throne of Wallachia for himself and was elected as such by a group of Danesti boyars and other lords who fled from you or who you banished when you took your throne, my lord.”
“He calls himself voivode? And these landless, illegitimate boyars claim to have elected him?” Vlad spoke with his voice level. “Do you have word of Sibiu, Alexander?”
Another lord stepped forward and bowed. “I have word, my prince, of a man who claims to be the son of your father, and half-brother to you. All lies, I am sure. He calls himself Vlad the Monk.”
“He is my half-brother, of that I have no doubt. My father was not shy about spreading his seed. He is called Vlad the Monk because he was squirrelled away in a monastery so that he would be out of sight until he came of age. He has been stirring up trouble ever since. What does he have to do with the town of Sibiu?”
“The Monk has based himself at Sibiu, my lord, and they have granted him great sums of money with which to raise forces. He likewise has exiled boyars at his side.”
Vlad’s lip curled beneath his thick moustache. “A bold move for the burghers of Sibiu. I would have expected them to follow their brothers in Brasov, not go against them.”
“I believe Vlad the Monk has promised to extend the trade rights of Sibiu and the towns allied with it.”
“Those money grabbing fools. I already extended their rights when I took the throne and now they want more? And are willing to rebel in order to get it? Do they not fear my displeasure, Alexander?”
His face pale, the man bowed. “I cannot say, my lord.”
Vlad pursed his full lips and glanced around at me. “It seems that we must put down two rival factions and two rival rebellions. Is there anything else?”
A new man stepped forward and fell to one knee before his prince. “My lord, I have had word only this morning from one of my sons that a third candidate for your throne has declared himself. I do not know much but it is another one of the Danesti clan. A son of Dan II, named Basarab Laiot.”
Vlad raised his eyebrows and scoffed. “And who is backing this Basarab Laiot, who is the son of my father’s great enemy?”
“I do not know, my lord. All I know is that he made a series of promises to boyars in Wallachia and Transylvania and he has promised great things for certain Saxon towns.”
Dracula thanked the man and looked around at his lords, one after the other. “Is that all? Or are there any other of my father’s enemies or offspring in open rebellion?” His men shuffled their feet and glanced sidelong at each other. “Just three, is it? Well, three is enough, do you not think? It is clear that our enemies mean to overwhelm us with problems. While I attack one, the other will come in behind me and assault my lands or attempt to pin me between them. But we shall do nothing so foolish as that.”
Vlad broke off, looking up at the arches of the vaulted ceiling above.
“Shall we assemble the army, my lord?” one of his men said, as if prompting his overwhelmed prince.
“In time, certainly,” Vlad said, looking down again and searching the faces of every one of us present. “But this is a war on many fronts. Their claims that I am a Turkish lackey must be countered by the truth. And we shall move first of all to strike them in their most precious, most sensitive, most beloved parts.” He smiled, cupping a hand down low before him. “Their purses.”
If I had been a prince, I would have gone to war. My armies would have smashed my enemies one after the other. But Vlad had been raised to consider statecraft and had studied cunning under no less a tutor than William de Ferrers.
He countered his enemies with writ and with sanction, with declarations and proclamations. Vlad withdrew all previously awarded protections for trade for the Saxon towns and encouraged Wallachian merchants with highly favourable tariffs. He imposed exceedingly disadvantageous terms on all Saxon merchants in his lands. There were many declarations issued, one of which required them to entirely unpack their wagons for inspection by Wallachian officers and merchants at Târgoviște. Every time I passed by, there were Saxons complaining and arguing with the officials while their produce was spread across the square being poked and ruined by grinning Wallachian customs officers. The Saxons were forced to sell to Wallachian merchants at far lower prices than they could have received further along the trade routes.
All his economic warfare frustrated the Saxons and reduced their revenues enormously, while boosting Vlad’s. It also meant that the entire Wallachian merchant and artisan class became besotted with their new prince and he had swiftly won the loyalty of another caste in his nation.
The Saxon merchants of course did everything that they possibly could to avoid Vlad’s newly empowered customs officials and so Vlad had a perfectly legal cause to bring them and their cities to heel.
“Now it is time, Richard,” Vlad said to me one morning as I entered his hall. “We shall put the sluji to good use at last.”
“Against the Saxons?” I said. “I would
much rather take them south to raid across the Danube to kill Turks. That is why we made them.”
Vlad scowled. “In fact, Richard, we created them to kill William’s Blood Janissaries. Not ordinary Turks.”
I sighed. “They are not yet battle hardened. They need honing further before facing William’s men on the field.”
“Well then,” Vlad said, spreading his arms. “What difference does it make if they kill Saxons or Turks? Both are the enemies of Wallachia. Both are the enemies of Vlad Dracula. Anyway, Richard, by this rebellion the Saxons know they weaken a Christian kingdom in the face of the Turk. By rebelling against me they are working in concert with the Turk, if not in full collusion with him. It is a good and proper thing for a commander to test his men before throwing them into battle, yes. The sluji have trained together and now we will see how well they fight together? We must know. And these are the only battles they will see before Mehmed and William come. And come they will.”
I knew that Eva and the others would disagree with our immortals being used to attack Christians but nothing Vlad said was incorrect. It was one thing to see them march and camp and deploy but we had to see the sluji in action to be confident in them. And anyway, the Germans could be bloody well damned for their treachery, as far as I was concerned.
“Very well.”
And so we put the sluji to the test.
***
Both the towns of Sibiu and Brasov deserved to be punished. They were the most Saxon of districts in Transylvania and they were also within the duchies of Fogaras and Amlas, which were possessions of the Prince of Wallachia. And so Vlad was in his rights to order Sibiu to give up its support for Vlad the Monk and Brasov was formally instructed that they were harbouring a traitor to the crown in Dan III.
Neither city so much as sent a letter of response to Vlad’s demands.
While a light rain fell beneath a low grey sky, I approached the assembly field outside of Târgoviște leading my five hundred mounted sluji as well as the servants who would provide their blood and all other logistical support. There were hundreds of horsemen present but there was not the army I had expected to see.
Vlad had brought his bodyguard and a small number of boyars and their own retinues.
“Where are the cannons?” I asked Vlad, riding to him. “Where are the infantry?”
“Cannons, Richard?” Vlad asked, innocently, while his men laughed. “Infantry?”
I came close enough to him to drop my voice. “You want to take these towns, do you not? How do you expect to do it quickly without destroying the walls or storming them? If you expect my men to storm the walls of these wealthy places, one after the other, I will lose scores at least and possibly hundreds. You will throw away all I have built with the sluji if you mean to do such a thing.”
“You fear I mean to overrule your command of your men, Richard?” he asked. “Do you worry that I will command them and they will obey?”
I was confused and caught off-guard because that had not even occurred to me. The fact that he jumped right to that raised my hackles and I was about to tell him he was welcome to try when he smiled.
“I jest, Richard, I jest. No, you are quite right, of course. I do not have time to make a siege of these places, one after the other. While I am in one place, the other will run riot. No, no. We will simply destroy their lands instead. Each town has a dominion filled with productive villages. Well, we will burn every village and drive off all their people. All the merchants we find shall be killed, of course. Soon enough, the towns will capitulate. And if they do not, well, my dear friend Michael Szilágyi has given his word that he will bring his army down upon them with all the cannons and infantry that we might possibly need. Either way, the Saxons will give up before they are conquered. All they care about is money. Shall we depart?”
Our cavalry force moved swiftly across the mountains in spring 1458, passing by the Turno Ro, the Red Tower, which the Wallachians swore was stained red due to the blood of all the Turks who had bled upon its walls in their futile attempts to take it. Absurd, of course, but they seemed to believe it. Our destination was the valley of the River Hirtibaciu. These were the lands of Saxons who continued to support Vlad the Monk and so the people there were rebels. Their punishment would be death.
“We must not do this,” Eva said when we were about to order the men into the valley. “We did not make this brotherhood of blood to make war on the innocent.”
“They are not innocent. They are rebels.”
“Do not be so pig-headed,” she muttered. “You know this is wrong.”
“Very well, this is wrong,” I snapped, speaking quietly so that no one would know I was arguing with my woman. “But this is the path we are on. This path leads to William’s head on a spike and so it is our path.”
“Unleashing our men on women and children?”
“I will order them to leave the women and children unharmed,” I said.
She scoffed and walked away, because of course such a thing was absurd. Even so, I ordered the men to spare the lives of the women and to let the children flee.
“This will spread panic,” I said, projecting my voice over them all. “And send hungry mouths to Sibiu, which will cause them to surrender.”
The sluji broke off into companies, each commanded by a captain. Walt and Rob took the strongest, the steadiest of them in their companies. Claudin, Garcia, and Jan, took the rest. They knew their business and the sluji brought fire and death to the villages of the valley. The men they found were killed. Some of my men delighted in making spectacles of it, forcing their kin to watch as their menfolk were executed, sometimes in artful ways.
Rob made sure to protect the children at least, as best as he could, but even he struggled to keep the women from being violated. One might as well attempt to stop a white-topped wave from reaching a rocky shore. Such is the way of war. Everything a man does must be to make his own people strong so that war does not descend on his lands.
Thus, the valley of Hirtibaciu was turned to a smouldering ruin. Without resting, we moved on to the lands around the town of Brasov.
First, we destroyed the village of Bod. The houses were burned, as were the fields and the trees, and the waters were poisoned with corpses. Everyone was killed, other than a handful who were taken prison so that they could be publicly executed back at Târgoviște.
The village of Talme we also burned to the ground and every person slaughtered.
Any Saxon merchants who were captured attempting to flee the area were tortured before they were killed. At Birsei, a community of six hundred merchants were captured trying to force their way clear of our encirclement. They had banded together in hopes of overcoming us. But they were merchants and we were soldiers.
“Do you know,” Vlad said, his voice ringing out over them. They were tied up, on their knees, in a great mass. Many were bruised and bleeding and most had ropes around their necks tying them one to the other lest they attempt to flee again. “Do you know that I have promised to impale every Saxon merchant I find in these lands?”
The wind was the only answer. Somewhere, a man groaned in agony, physical or spiritual, and many of Vlad’s men laughed.
“Why is it then that you would stay?” Vlad asked them. “Can it be that you do not fear impalement?”
Again, they hung their heads.
Stephen cursed under his breath beside me. Even Serban looked sickened.
“Where is Eva?” I asked him.
Serban did not look at me. “I think the mistress would not wish to see more men put on sticks,” he said.
“She ain’t the only one,” Walt muttered.
“Impalement does not seem to frighten the Saxons overly much,” Vlad called to his men, as if he was astonished. “I think we must try other methods. Have them boiled.”
When it was clear that the prince was not joking, great cauldrons were brought from the kitchens of grand houses, fires were lit, and one or two bound men at a time w
ere dumped into the boiling water. The fires had to be built high and hot and hundreds of men brought wood for the fires for hours on end. Every so often the executions would have to be stopped while masses of boiled skin were scraped from where it accumulated on the sides of the cauldrons. The screams of the dying were nothing when compared to the sobbing and begging of the Saxons who lay shivering on the ground watching their friends boiling to death before them. It was hard work for the Wallachians, but their prince had set them the task and they were committed to seeing it done. At the end, a couple of dozen merchants were released before their time was up.
“In my great mercy, I have decided to grant your freedom,” Vlad pronounced. “You fortunate fellows will return to your homelands. If any of my men lay eyes on you again, you shall suffer a fate worse than the one you have just avoided.”
It was not mercy of course. Vlad wanted the tale to spread to the other towns. And spread it did, not just to the Saxons of Transylvania but to all German-speaking peoples and beyond. The tales of Vlad’s bloodthirsty depravity had begun.
As promised, Michael Szilágyi brought his forces down from Hungary and besieged Sibiu in October 1458 and though he did not take it, the Saxons towns as one agreed to come to the negotiating table.
Just as Dracula had predicted.
The murder and terror we had inflicted had shaken their resolve and the Saxon rebels gave in. In November, the burghers of Brasov agreed to surrender the would-be prince Dan III and his supporters to Vlad Dracula. They even agreed to pay Szilágyi ten thousand florins in restitution for the revenues they had withdrawn from Hungary. In return, they would have their previous commercial rights and privileges restored.
And all was well. Vlad congratulated all of us on a campaign of terror well waged. The sluji had done their part superbly, following the orders of their captains. They had drunk the blood of their enemies only when no mortals could bear witness and they now felt themselves blooded as a company. When we returned to the valley of Poenari, I told them I was proud of them and that with peace on our northern border, we would soon face their true enemies the Turks in battle.