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<\/a>Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia (1431\u20131476), was a member of the House of Dr\u0103cule\u0219ti, a branch of the House of Basarab, also known by hispatronymic name: Dracula. He was posthumously dubbed Vlad the Impaler (Romanian: Vlad \u021aepe\u0219 pronounced [vlad t\u0361sepe\u0283]), and was a three-time Voivode of Wallachia,<\/a> ruling mainly from 1456 to 1462, the period of the incipient Ottoman conquest of the Balkans.<\/a> His father, Vlad II Dracul,<\/a> was a member of the Order of the Dragon,<\/a> which was founded to protect Christianity in Eastern Europe. Vlad III is revered as a hero in Bulgaria as well for his protection of the Bulgarian population both south and north of the Danube. A significant number of Bulgarian common folk and remaining boyars (nobles) moved north of the Danube to Wallachia,<\/a> recognized his leadership and settled there following his raids on the Ottomans.<\/p>\nAs the cognomen<\/a> ‘The Impaler’ suggests, his practice of impaling<\/a> his enemies is central to his historical reputation. During his lifetime, his reputation for excessive cruelty spread abroad, to Germany<\/a> and elsewhere in Europe.<\/a> The total number of his victims is estimated in the tens of thousands. The name of the vampire<\/a> Count Dracula<\/a> in Bram Stoker<\/a>‘s 1897 novel Dracula was inspired by Vlad’s patronymic.<\/p>\n During his life Vlad wrote his name in Latin<\/a> documents as Wladislaus Dragwlya, vaivoda partium Transalpinarum (1475).His Romanian patronymic<\/a> Dragwlya (or Dragkwlya)[5]Dragulea, Dragolea, Dr\u0103culea is a diminutive of the epithet Dracul carried by his father Vlad II<\/a>, who in 1431 was inducted as a member of the Order of the Dragon, a chivalric order<\/a> founded by Sigismund of Hungary<\/a> in 1408. Dracul is the Romanian definite form, the -ul being the suffixal definite article (deriving from Latin “ille”). The noun “drac” “dragon” itself continues Latin draco.<\/a> Thus, Dracula literally means “Son of the Dragon”. In Modern Romanian, the word drac has adopted the meaning of “devil” (the term for “dragon” now being balaur<\/a> or dragon). This has led to misinterpretations of Vlad’s epithet as characterizing him as “devilish”. Vlad was born in Sighi\u0219oara,<\/a> Transylvania,<\/a> in the Kingdom of Hungary<\/a> (today part of Romania<\/a>), in the winter of 1431 to Vlad II Dracul, future voivode of Wallachia. Vlad’s father was the son of the celebrated Voivode Mircea the Elder.<\/a> His mother is unknown, though at the time his father is believed to have been married to Princess Cneajna of Moldavia<\/a> (eldest daughter of Alexander “the Good”, Prince of Moldavia<\/a> and aunt to Stephen the Great of Moldavia<\/a>) but to also keep a number of mistresses. He had two older half-brothers, Mircea II<\/a> and Vlad C\u0103lug\u0103rul,<\/a> and a younger brother, Radu III the Handsome.<\/a><\/p>\n In the year of his birth, Vlad’s father, known under the nickname Dracul, had traveled to Nuremberg<\/a> where he had been vested into the Order of the Dragon.Vlad and Radu spent their early formative years in Sighi\u0219oara. During the first reign of their father, Vlad II Dracul, the Voivode brought his young sons to T\u00e2rgovi\u0219te, the capital of Wallachia at that time. In 1436, Vlad II Dracul ascended the throne of Wallachia. He was ousted in 1442 by rival factions in league with Hungary, but secured Ottoman support for his return by agreeing to pay the Tribute<\/a> to the Sultan.Vlad II also sent his two legitimate sons, Vlad and Radu, to the Ottoman court, to serve as hostages of his loyalty. After the death of Vlad II Dracul, Radu stayed at the Ottoman court. In October 2011, Prince Charles<\/a> publicly claimed that he is a descendant of Vlad the Impaler. The claim accompanied his announcement of a pledge to help conserve the forested areas of Transylvania. Radu Florescu documented on page 193 of his book, “Dracula: Prince of Many Faces” that the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I granted Ladislas Dracula and his brother John recognition as Dracula’s direct descendants: based on their documentation, the Emperor granted them letters patent (a patent of nobility) on January 20, 1535, in which their descent is described and also specific mention is made in the patent of “the ancient insignia of Ladislas’s family” as being the same as that of the Bathory family–i.e., gules (red) a sword covering three wolf teeth.<\/p>\n In December 1447, boyars in league with the Hungarian regent John Hunyadi<\/a> rebelled against Vlad II Dracul and killed him in the marshes near B\u0103lteni. Mircea, Dracul’s eldest son and heir, was blinded and buried alive at T\u00e2rgovi\u0219te. To prevent Wallachia from falling into the Hungarian fold, the Ottomans invaded Wallachia and put young Vlad III on the throne. However, this rule was short-lived as Hunyadi himself now invaded Wallachia and restored his ally Vladislav II,<\/a> of the D\u0103ne\u0219ti<\/a> clan, to the throne. After the Fall of Constantinople<\/a> to Mehmed II in 1453, Ottoman influence began to spread from this base through the Carpathians,<\/a> threatening mainland Europe, and by 1481 conquering the entire Balkans peninsula. Vlad’s rule thus falls entirely within the three decades of the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans.<\/a>Name<\/h3>\n
\nVlad’s moniker of \u021aepe\u0219 (“Impaler”) identifies his favourite method of execution. It was attached to his name posthumously, in ca. 1550. Before this, however, he was known as “Kazikli Bey” (The Impaler Lord) by the Ottoman Empire after their armies encountered his “forests” of impalement victims.<\/p>\nEarly life<\/h3>\n
Vlad Dracul<\/h3>\n
\nThe Byzantine<\/a> chancellor Mikhail Doukas<\/a> showed that, at T\u00e2rgovi\u0219te, the sons of boyars and ruling princes were well-educated by Romanian or Greek scholars commissioned from Constantinople.<\/a> Vlad is believed to have learned combat skills, geography, mathematics, science, languages (Old Church Slavonic<\/a>, German, Latin), and the classical arts and philosophy.<\/p>\nLife in Edirne<\/h3>\n
\nDuring his years as hostage, Vlad was educated in logic, the Quran<\/a> and the Turkish<\/a> language and works of literature.<\/a> He would speak this language fluently in his later years. He and his brother were also trained in warfare and riding horses. The boys’ father, Vlad Dracul, was awarded the support of the Ottomans and returned to Wallachia and took back his throne from Basarab II<\/a> and some unfaithful Boyars.<\/a><\/p>\nGenealogy<\/h3>\n
First reign and exile<\/h3>\n
\nVlad fled to Moldavia, where he lived under the protection of his uncle, Bogdan II.<\/a> In October 1451, Bogdan was assassinated and Vlad fled to Hungary. Impressed by Vlad’s vast knowledge of the mindset and inner workings of the Ottoman Empire as well as his hatred of the new sultan Mehmed II,<\/a> Hunyadi reconciled with his former rival and made him his advisor.<\/p>\n
\nIn 1456, three years after the Ottomans had conquered Constantinople, they threatened Hungary by besieging Belgrade. Hunyadi began a concerted counter-attack in Serbia<\/a>: while he himself moved into Serbia and relieved the siege (before dying of the plague), Vlad led his own contingent into Wallachia, reconquered his native land and killed Vladislav II in hand-to-hand combat.<\/p>\nSecond reign<\/h3>\n
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<\/a>Vlad found Wallachia in a wretched state: constant war had resulted in rampant crime, falling agricultural production, and the virtual disappearance of trade. Regarding a stable economy essential to resisting external enemies, he used severe methods to restorthree aims for Wallachia: to strengthen the country’s economy, its defense, and his own political power. He took measures to help the peasants’ well-being by building new villages and raising agricultural output. He understood the importance of trade for the development of Wallachia. He helped the Wallachian merchants by limiting foreign merchant trade to three market towns: T\u00e2rg\u0219or, C\u00e2mpulung and T\u00e2rgovi\u0219te.<\/p>\n![\"vladtepes3-res\"](\"http:\/\/www.dracula.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/vladtepes3-res.jpg\")
<\/a>Vlad III’s defeat at Poenari was due in part to the fact that the Boyars, who had been alienated by Vlad’s policy of undermining their authority, had joined Radu under the assurance that they would regain their privileges. They may have also believed that Ottoman protection was better than Hungarian. It was said as well that Radu (through his spies or traitors) found the place where some Boyars’ families were hidden during the war (probably some forests around Snagov) and blackmailed them to come to his side. By 8 September, Vlad had won another three victories, but continuous war had left him without any money and he could no longer pay his mercenaries. <\/p>\n