by Dan Davis
Sadly, that was not to be. Not yet.
King Mattias Corvinus Hunyadi was not his father. He was far more ruthless and far less honourable. The king was displeased at the way the rebellion had been handled. Indeed, he was furious at the amount of blood that had been spilled and he felt that the terror we caused had blackened his name by association. In order to distance himself from the massacres, he had Szilágyi captured and imprisoned and it was clear to all parties that everything Szilágyi had agreed in the negotiations no longer had value.
Even more astonishing for us, for Vlad Dracula, was the King Mattias Corvinus declared his support for the rebel Dan III.
“It is all falling apart already,” Stephen said when we heard. “Corvinus hates Dracula.”
We were in our camp, seated around a table in my tent. The company busied itself outside while we discussed what it might mean for us.
“He fears him,” I said, nodding. “Fears his resolve.”
“We should all fear his resolve,” Stephen replied. “What happens to us, to the sluji, if Vlad is overthrown? With the King of Hungary for an enemy, with a replacement prince in his pocket, surely it is all but certain.”
“Keep your voices down,” Eva snapped.
“The treaty with the Saxons is finished,” Stephen said, leaning forward. “And so we are at war with Brasov again when it is the Turks we are here to fight. We have our immortal army, but they are being squandered on these ridiculous dynastic squabbles. We wanted a king who was strong. And now we have Vlad who is still unable to suppress his nobles or his other vassals despite the evil he wreaks and what is more we find that the King of Hungary is favouring a new prince for Wallachia.”
“These people are mad,” Walt said. “No offence, Serban.”
Serban looked up from his position guarding the entrance to the tent and looked away again.
“Do you doubt that Vlad will emerge victorious?” I asked them. “Even without our help, I would not doubt him.”
“He is a perfectly capable soldier,” Stephen said. “But with so many enemies how can he ever—”
“He is more than capable, Stephen,” I said, surprised at the fervour with which I found myself speaking. “He is decisive and he leads his men well, whether peasant or lord. He knows how men think. His own and his enemy’s. We are committed, now. We cannot abandon the sluji here and I fear that they would not follow me away from Wallachia. Not without Vlad’s permission at least. Not yet. We must make it so that Vlad emerges victorious. That is our path to throwing the sluji against the Blood Janissaries.”
“Everything you say is true,” Rob said. “But this way of waging war does not bring glory. Only blood.”
“Well then that is lucky for us,” I said. “For blood is what we need.”
They were not amused, and I could not blame them. It did not get any better and indeed, it grew to be far worse.
Early in the year, we raided the valley of the River Prahova, destroying the villages there which belonged to Brasov. We burned crops and killed everyone in our path. We reached Brasov swiftly, and they were not expecting us for many days yet. Much of the town lay outside its walls, having grown through its success so that many homes, large and small, lined the roads toward the town.
Unprotected by a wall, we smashed our way right into those suburbs and captured hundreds of residents.
Outside the walls of Brasov, Vlad ordered the prisoners be impaled.
They were raised aloft in their hundreds, writhing and screaming in full sight of the residents lining the walls. Those residents were the friends, business partners, and family, of the prisoners dying upon the stakes outside. On the walls, they screamed and begged and hurled insults, wailing as they watched their kin dying in the most horrific way imaginable.
Even the veterans of my Company of Saint George quailed at the sight and the sound of it and most of them walked away. But I could not. The sheer horror of it was breath-taking. In all my years, all I could recall that was the like of it was the massacres of the Mongols. They had dreamed up satanic punishments for their conquered foes but they were a savage, barbarian people. To see Christians killing Christians in such a fashion was a fresh horror that stunned me.
“Astonishing,” Stephen muttered, for he alone had stayed to watch. “Truly astonishing.”
“You sound almost as though you admire him for this,” I said.
“Do you not?” Stephen replied, not looking at me.
“Admire him? It is monstrous.”
“Precisely,” Stephen said. “Who could bring himself to do this? I could not. I could never. Never. Could you, Richard?”
“No.”
“Do you think William could? Of course, I am sure that he could. It is the sheer will of it, do you not think? The sheer will that is to be admired.”
“Keep your damned voice down, Stephen.”
In response to the wailing and the begging from the residents of Brasov, Vlad had a large trestle set up in amongst the dying people around and above him. There, he was served a hearty breakfast and he tucked into sausage and cheese and bread with gusto. While the citizens of Brasov watched from the walls, he had a man’s throat cut and the blood caught in a bowl. This was brought to him and he delighted in dipping his bread into it with every mouthful.
“By God, it is true,” Eva said, coming up beside me. “Serban said Vlad was drinking blood in full view of everyone. I did not believe him.”
I looked around and Serban was there beside Eva his face a mask of anguish. “No one will know what it means,” I said. “He is merely dipping his bread in the blood. It is a display of barbarity. Meant to break the will of Brasov.”
“He’s a madman,” Eva said.
Eventually, a quaking messenger was sent out under a flag of truce, while he covered his mouth to stop himself from vomiting or perhaps to block to reek of blood and ripped bowels.
“You bring word of your unconditional surrender?” Vlad asked, still eating.
The man’s eyes were rimmed red and his gaze kept wandering up to the dead men and women all around him. “Prince Dan is not in Brasov.”
One of Vlad’s lords stiffened. “Address your lord properly, or you shall join these men in the sky, you fat Saxon pig.”
He bowed and spoke again, shaking like a leaf. “Forgive me, My Lord Prince. It is just that…” he swallowed and tried again. “My lords the elders of Brasov send word that the rebel who names himself Dan III, left our city ten days ago. Neither he, nor his men, nor his soldiers, are within our walls or within our lands.”
“If you are lying, then your entire city shall suffer this same fate.” Vlad gestured above him.
“It is no lie. My Lord.”
“Then tell me. Where is he?”
The messenger fell to his knees and vomited onto the ground. “Please, my lord, have mercy.”
Vlad put down his piece of cheese and got to his feet. He strode across to the man sobbing over his own vomit, pulled his sword from the scabbard and used it to lift the man’s quivering chin up. “Where is the traitor?”
“He… he… he has invaded Wallachia!”
It was true. Unbeknownst to any of us, or Vlad’s agents, Dan III had moved decisively to invade Wallachia while we were moving on Brasov. It seemed that there were traitors yet in Vlad’s army, or at least that Dan had been incredibly lucky in his timing. Either way, he had got into Wallachia behind us and he had begun his campaign of insurrection. He intended to do just what every would-be Prince of Wallachia had to do in order to gain the throne. He had to get assurances from boyars one by one.
I expected Vlad to be furious. I thought that he would rage and order his men to find what traitor had sold him out.
Instead of fire, though, he was ice. After Brasov was subdued, Vlad turned our army around and led us straight into Wallachia. If Dan had been counting on us besieging Brasov for weeks and months, allowing him free reign behind our backs, he was sorely mistaken. Due to Vlad’s atrocit
y outside the walls, Brasov had fallen immediately and so Dan was shocked at our sudden appearance at his rear.
We caught up with him in April 1460 and defeated his small army before he could do too much mischief. It was not much of a battle. He was outnumbered and outclassed and I led the sluji on a wide manoeuvre around his rear, falling upon him when he was already engaged with Vlad’s forces.
His men surrendered at once, throwing down their weapons.
Before the assembled sluji and the rest of Vlad’s bodyguard and leading boyars, Dan III was brought forward. Dracula had ordered a proper grave to be dug and Dan was made to stand before it.
“What is this farce?” Dan said, shaking with rage. “You inhuman monster. Do you expect me to grovel in fear? Just kill me and be done with it.”
“You misunderstand, sir,” Vlad said, speaking loudly so that all could hear. “You see, you are already dead. Yes, you see, you died when you thought you could rise against me. This is simply your funeral.”
Vlad nodded to a black-robed priest who stepped forward and proceeded to recite the funeral for Dan III while he stood bound before his own grave.
When the ceremony was completed, the priest hurried back and Vlad Dracula stepped up to Dan III, drew his sword and cut off the man’s head in a single, effortless stroke.
It was masterfully done. Dan’s body and head both tumbled into the grave.
“Now,” said Vlad, turning to us. “Let us find my brother Vlad the Monk, shall we?”
We continued to plunder the Saxon lands and refused to make lasting peace with any of them until Vlad the Monk was captured. We hoped that the Saxons would collectively find the Monk and give him up but they seemed set against us. One could hardly blame them. We raided their lands all of the summer of 1460, taking their wealth and their people. Prisoners divulged that Vlad the Monk was in hiding in the Duchy of Amlas and so we burned the town of Amlas and impaled the citizens, after forcing a priest to lead them all in a repulsive procession to the site of their execution. My sluji burned and killed through half of the duchy and eventually everyone in the city and many in the villages were killed by one means or another.
How many it was that died, I do not know. Thousands, certainly. And the town of Amlas was so reduced that it never recovered.
It was disheartening.
“We waste our efforts against these people,” I said to Vlad in the smoking ruins. “Anyone can slaughter peasants and merchants. The sluji was meant for greater things.”
He turned his bulging eyes to me. “My enemies must be destroyed.”
I gestured around us. “I think they have been.”
“Not enough,” he snapped. “They resist, in their hearts if not in their actions.”
“Would you expect any less? You say they do not truly belong in your lands and that is true, of course. But then you still expect them to come to heel. They are not Wallachian. They know it as well as you do. You are a foreign ruler to them and always will be. You can never trust the Saxons but while they yet live and their cities still stand, will you not let them make peace? And then we can turn our efforts against the true enemy.”
“I will have their obedience.”
“Let them offer it. Let them offer some terms, at least. Everyone in Christendom knows they have been beaten.”
Mattias Corvinus acted as peacemaker, ironically, as it was his endorsement of Dan III that had encouraged the Saxons into open rebellion. But with his mediation, accommodation was reached. Commercial privileges were returned, which is all the mercantile people really care about. And for their part, the Saxons agreed to pay an annual fee large enough to maintain an army of four thousand mercenaries who would be employed against the Turks.
Thus strengthened, we could turn our soldiers south again.
12. Ottoman Invasion
1462
“Did you hear what he’s gone and done now?” Walt whispered.
We stood in Vlad Dracula’s great hall in Târgoviște along with hundreds of boyars, burghers, monks, priests, and soldiers milling around waiting for the prince to arrive. Their muttering filled the air to the rafters.
“I do not know,” I replied. “What has he done?”
“You heard about him going around and capturing all the beggars in Wallachia? All the beggars and the vagabonds. And he’s had them executed.”
“I heard. My heart does not bleed for the wastrels.”
Walt nodded and smiled in greeting at a soldier who had called out in salutation. “And did you hear that he had all the beggars rounded up and brought to a vast tent where they were served a mighty feast? And while they were eating, your man Vlad ordered that they be burned alive. See, he had the stools and benches soaked in oil, and the cloths upon the tables also, and when the order was given the whole lot of them, hundreds of the blighters, all went up like a bonfire.”
I scoffed. “If that had happened, Walt, I would have heard about it.”
“You don’t want to hear, that’s your problem, Richard. You have closed your ears to the truth of your friend.”
“Nonsense.”
“Did you hear what he done to that gypsy leader not a week last Tuesday?”
“No.”
Walt shifted closer. “Well, what he done was, he had the leader of this clan of gypsies boiled alive while his whole clan watched. See, his flesh was boiled all nice and so Vlad had the leader carved up into little pieces while his people, what was in irons, watched and despaired. And then, this is the worst part of the tale, so listen well, then he had pieces of the flesh forced into the mouths of every one of the gypsy clan. Force fed them their own lord and father, imagine that.”
I looked at him. “Where did you hear this?”
“One of Vlad’s lads, you know Michael One-Eye? He split that Saxon in two with his poleaxe outside Amlas.”
“I believe I do recall the fellow. He was there?”
“He swears it upon his mothers grave and all that is holy that his cousin Pepu was there.”
I chuckled. “Well, there you have it then. It did not happen.”
“Michael told me Vlad done a speech to the peasants who was watching. He said to them, he said, these men live off the sweat of others, so they are useless to humanity. Their lives are but a form of thievery. In fact, says Vlad, in fact the masked robber in the forest demands your purse but if you are quicker with your hand and more vigorous than he you can escape from him. But these vagabonds take your belongings gradually by their begging but still they take more. They are worse than robbers. I will see to it, Vlad says, that such men are eradicated from my land. And then he had the lot of them killed.”
I grunted. “That does sound like something he would say.”
Walt smiled, pleased with himself. “Told you so.”
“Silence now. The envoys are here.”
We knew that Sultan Mehmed and William’s policy of conquest was now to conquer across the Danube and secure at least the lowlands of Wallachia and the lower Danube all the way to the delta where it ran into the Black Sea. That part of the river was controlled by Vlad’s cousin Stephen in Moldavia.
Indeed, it was clear to all Christendom where the hammer blow would next fall.
The Turks would next attempt the conquest of Wallachia or Moldavia. Or both.
Pope Pius II called a congress of all Christian princes at Mantua for the necessary crusade. He even tried to create a new military order of knights, bearing the name of Our Lady of Bethlehem, who would be dedicated to waging war on the Turks while based on the island of Lemnos. But the Pope’s congress and his new order were born lame. Nothing came of the new order and it was quietly dropped, no doubt embarrassing the Pope. Worse, almost no kingdoms answered the call to take the cross.
It was no longer surprising to me that Christendom could not be relied upon. In England, the great lords loyal to Lancaster or York were fighting over the Crown. The French were pouting about a decision the Pope had made to favour Aragon’s suggestion for
the throne of Naples rather than the pretender put forward by the House of Anjou. The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III decided to taunt the Pope by sending Gregory of Heimburg as his representative, a man who had been excommunicated. The Holy Roman Empire was moving ever closer toward open defiance of Rome and Gregory was apparently openly hostile to the Pope in person during the congress. Ultimately, he promised to send thirty thousand infantry and ten thousand cavalry to the Danube in support of the crusade, which would have been a magnificent force to have on the frontier. In fact, though, Gregory never even attempted to raise them and the whole thing was no doubt simply an overt snub for Pope Pius II.
Poland, too, was engaged in its protracted conflict against the Teutonic Knights and even commanded Moldavia, her traditional vassal, to avoid conflict. The Albanians, isolated and threatened as they were, had secured a three-year truce with Mehmed II and they refused to break it, preferring to stay on the sidelines. It was short-sighted, for they would soon fall utterly before the Turks but mortal men act almost always in their immediate interest rather than doing what is best for their nation.
In an act of complete desperation, Pope Pius II sent a monk named Fra Ludovico da Bologna halfway across the world to the east of the Turks territories. There, he urged the Mohammedan states in the far east of Anatolia to attack the Turks and so open up two fronts at once, drawing away their strength from both.
I imagine that Fra Ludovico da Bologna was met with the same response wherever he went. Something along the lines of what do you think we have been trying to do for a hundred years, infidel?
Pope Pius was certainly being industrious, although some would say he was being desperate. He travelled to Ancona on Italy’s east coast and declared he would lead the crusade in person but no one flocked to join him. It was certainly desperation that caused him to write to Sultan Mehmed II in an attempt to convert him to Catholicism.