Vlad Ţepeş Documentary 1 , 2 , 3

Saturday, June 28, 2008

1



2



3

Did Dracula really exist ?

Working and traveling thru Europe it happened to me to be asked different things about Count Dracula. Sometimes just heard about the movie or saw it, other times they have heard about Transylvania or the vampires.

So here we have the most frequent asked questions about Dracula:

1. By far on the first place there is the question asking if Dracula really existed.

Answer: it depends if we are talking about the warlord that inspired Bram Stoker for its novel, yes it exists. His name was Vlad III Dracula and he lived in the XV-th century in Transylvania and Wallachia.

If we are thinking about a supposed vampire as he appears in the novel, no, there has been no vampire with this name, at least as far as I know.


2. Are there vampires in Transylvania? (yes, I have been asked even that)

Answer: No, there are no vampires, neither ghosts there.

3. Few days ago (February 2007) I have been asked if is true there are a lot of castles in Transylvania.
Answer (exactly the answer I gave to my colleague in Milan): Yes, absolutely. In order to explain a little I have to talk briefly about the history of Transylvania. As you probably know it has been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for centuries. In the 13th century the emperor brought the Saxon population at the south-eastern border and gave them some lands in order to defend the empire. As the middle age in Transylvania was all but not a calm period, they had to build fortifications in order to defend themselves. The most of the Castles date from the 13th – 14th and 15th century. Bran Castle as well as Râsnov are such examples of middle-age castles.

4. This is from two nice Americans I guided through Romania two years in a row: we were really in Sighisoara when they asked me how is Vlad seen in Romania: as a bloody criminal or as a hero.

Sword of Dracula - Trailer

Dracula's Reign

With the help of his Turkish army, Dracula seized the Walachian throne. However, he only ruled for two months before Hunyadi forced him into exile in Moldavia.
Again Vladislav II became Walachia's prince.

Three years later Prince Bogdan of Moldavia was assassinated and Dracula fled the country. By now Vlad II had become a supporter of Turkey, and Hunyadi was sorry he had put him on the throne. Everyone switched sides - Dracula became Hunyadi's vassal, and Hunyadi now supported Dracula's attempt to regain his throne. In 1456 Hunyadi invaded Turkish Serbia while Dracula invaded Walachia. Hunyadi was killed, but Dracula killed Vladislav II and took back his throne.
He established his capital at Tirgoviste - you can still see the ruins of his palace there. And nearby a statue of Vlad Tepes still stands. He is considered an important figure in Romanian history because he unified Walachia and resisted the influence of foreigners. Dracula Overthrown
In 1462 Dracula attacked the Turks to drive them out of the Danube River valley.
Sultan Mehmed II retaliated by invading Walachia with an army three times larger
than Dracula's. Dracula was forced to retreat to his capital, Tirgoviste. He burned
his own villages and poisoned fountains on the way so that the Turkish army wouldn't
have any food or water.
When the sultan reached Tirgoviste, he saw a terrifying scene, remembered in history as "the Forest of the Impaled." There, outside the city, were 20,000 Turkish prisoners, all impaled. The sultan's officers were too scared to go on - Dracula had won again.
Although the sultan retreated, Dracula's little brother Radu did not. The Turks had provided him with an army in hopes that he could seize Dracula's throne. Many of Dracula's boyars abandoned him to join Radu. Radu's army pursued Dracula to his fortress at Poenari. Dracula's wife was so frightened that she threw herself from the upper battlements. The Turks seized the castle, but Dracula managed to escape through a secret tunnel. There were still some peasants around he hadn't impaled, and they helped him flee from Walachia.
He went to the new king of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus, for help. Instead the king had him imprisoned in a tower. Dracula remained in Hungary for twelve years while Radu ruled Walachia as a puppet for the Turks. After the first four years he was allowed to move into a house. He ingratiated himself with the Hungarian royal family, and even married one of its members (possibly the king's sister). He became a Catholic at this time, which would have pleased the Catholic Hungarians.

The Death of Count Dracula

According to some accounts, Dracula's brother Radu died in 1474. The sultan put Basarab Batrinul, on the Walachian throne. In 1476 Dracula invaded Walachia with the help of Moldavia and Transylvania. They drove Basarab out of the country, and Dracula again became Walachia's prince. Most of Dracula's army then went home to Transylvania.

The Turks attacked a few months later. Dracula was killed while fighting near Bucharest.
Some say he was assassinated on the battlefield by his own boyards. After his death, Dracula was decapitated and his head was put on display in Constantinople. His body was buried in a monastery he had built near Snagov, in Romania. (Centuries later, the grave was examined. The only remains found were bones from an animal.)

Dracula in literature and cinematography

Think of Romania and literature together, and what may come to mind is the story of the famous vampire Count Dracula. Vampirism, in some form or another, has appeared in all times, in all cultures. Very often it has emerged during periods of spreading epidemics, of social changes and anxiety over the future or at the end of millennia. In 19th century England the mythology of vampires was quite popular. In 1819 Polidori published the fist vampire-novel in English "The Vampyre - a Tale". In 1872 Rymer wrote "Varney the Vampire". But undoubtedly the most famous is "Dracula", a masterpiece of the Irish writer Bram Stoker and published in 1897. The end of the 19th century was propitious to a profusion of horror stories and while writing the novel Stoker lived for a time in Whitechapell, the London neighbourhood where Jack the Ripper murdered many girls in 1888.
Though the tale may have Romanian roots, Bram Stoker never set foot in Romania. The truth is he never came closer to Transylvania than the reading room of the British Museum. Stoker worked for seven years on his novel, spending many hours in libraries documenting himself on the Balkan. As a result from his research the final Dracula incorporates many influences. Stoker mixed East European folklore with factual elements of Hungarian history and culture.
In the 19th century the West was fascinated by the East in a kind of negative way. The Habsburg Kingdom was seen as the limit of the so-called "civilised" world in opposition to the Orient, this mysterious world of sultans, where people were easily decapitated. From Vienna many coaches went to Western Europe, a single one went to Eastern Europe. The last stop was Sibiu, and the further territories were said to be "the land of the orthodox heretics". And seen from England, Transylvania was part of this enigmatic world. Besides many horror stories were going about and Bram Stoker read reports from Austrian servants on vampire epidemics in Romania and Serbia.
Stoker also mixed in elements of Hungarian countess Elisabeth Bathory (1560 - 1610), a Transylvanian woman who murdered hundred of serving girls and bathed in their blood in the belief that she could keep her eternally young.
And the strongest influence was Vlad Tepes . Stoker's friend Arminius Vamberey, a specialist of oriental matters, had explored the kingdoms of Central Asia and Mongolia, and witnessed human cruelty. As he was enthousiastic about these tales, Stoker immersed himself in research at the British Museum library and he discovered the historical figure Vlad Tepes , who suited perfectly to his project considering his cruelty and his nickname Dracula (devil/dragon). Beyond some elements borrowed from the original, historical Dracula - great strength, cruelty and savagery - Count Dracula has not so much in common with Vlad Tepes . The rest is literature, pure fiction. Count Dracula is an undead being, a being, who is never alive or dead, but who exists somewhere indefinably between the two states. He casts no shadow and reflects no image in a mirror, he hates garlic, cannot bear the view of a cross and sleeps in a coffin on good Transylvanian earth. He is completely plastic, able to change himself into several shapes, most familiarly those of bats and wolves.
Late Victorian audiences loved vampire stories, and almost immediately the novel sold successfully, both in England and on the continent and Stoker became suddenly famous. Since then for the Western world Transylvania has been the best place for horror scenes and symbolises a gloomy, dark land, a country of macabre beauty with baying wolves and bloodsuckers. The novel has never been out of print and its impact on the 20th century popular culture has proved phenomenal. Stoker's neck-biting, blood-sucking count has been the most widely popularised anti-hero in the whole Western culture. This masterpiece has inspired a century of horror writers and scores of films (about 400). The most famous among them are the silent movie "Nosferatu" by F.W. Murnau (1922), "Dracula" by Tod Browning (1931), "Dracula, Prince of Darkness" by Terence Fisher (1965), "Dance of Vampires" by R. Polanski (1967), "Nosferatu, Phantom of the Night" by Werner Herzog (1979), "Dracula" by F.F Coppola (1992) and "Interview with the Vampire" (1994).
In summer 1997, exactly a hundred years after the issue of Stoker's novel, a convention in Los Angeles even declared 1997 "The Year of the Vampires". First published in 1897, Dracula has been a best-seller around the world, including Hungary. But it wasn't published in Romania until 1990 and till recently the movie "Dance of Vampires" was forbidden in Hungary. This censorship was probably due to the negative image of Transylvania this book and this film conveyed in the eyes of the authorities. On the other hand Romanian tourism-managers rapidly understood how to take advantage of the popularity of the famous neck-biting Count.

Dracula's impact on today's tourism in Transylvania

People in Eastern Europe are not as fond of Dracula as Westerners are. When Transylvanian writer Andrei Codrescu emigrated to the USA, he was shocked to find a Romanian national hero miraculously transformed into an anti-hero, a blood-sucking vampire:
"You would be just as surprised to find yourself in the Carpathians confronted with a thriving film and comic book industry centred around the figure of George Washington, the necrophiliac sheep go."
Bram Stoker and Hollywood have succeeded in relegating a real place, with real people and real problems into a fiction, a land for movies. For a while, even the Romanian government encouraged the confusion, to promote its tourist trade. It published tourist brochures and run advertisements - picturing a mysterious-looking castle - in the New York Times and elsewhere headlined "Yes, there is a Transylvania". A castle? How did it come to that Dracula-castle?
After President Richard Nixon came to Romania on official state visit in 1969, many American tourists followed him to Transylvania. Actually Dracula's story was far more famous in the USA than behind the Iron Curtain. Since the American tourists asked many questions and were so eager to learn some more about bats, coffins, sharp long teeth and bloodsucking vampires, the Romanian Minister for Culture decided to find a castle corresponding to the description Jonathan Harker gives of the castle in Stoker's novel:
"(...) I did a little exploring in the castle. I went out on the stairs and found a room looking towards to the south. The view was magnificent, and from where I stood there was every opportunity of seeing it. The castle is on the very edge of a terrible precipice. A stone faking from the window would fall a thousand feet without touching anything! As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree-tops, with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm. Here and there are silver threads where the rivers wind in deep gorges through the forests."
The question arose where to find a suitable castle which looked "draculistic" enough and which was, if possible, close to a big city and a ski resort. Finally the castle of Bran, 23 km southwest of Bras ov, proved to be perfect. It is situated in the surroundings of Bras ov, the second biggest city in Romania, and of Poiana Bras ov, the most famous ski resort of the country. It stands majestically, though not mysteriously, on a hill. Built in 1377, the castle housed princes, kings and queens through the centuries, and guarded a commercial route between Wallachia and Transylvania. Between 1930 and 1947 it was used as a royal residence. Opened in the earlier seventies it was overrun by tourists. Everything here is based on a myth: in 1996 Dracula tee-shirts were on sale for five US dollars, "Vampirella squeeze bottles" appeared in 1997. Though Count Dracula never went there it looks as if everything would remember of his supernatural presence. The so-called "Dracula-Tours" at Bran are animations with macabre effects, though these effects were toned down after a tourist died of a heart attack when one staff member loomed out of a coffin. During one tour 11 Englishmen paid 8000 dollars each for the right to stand on the roof of Bran castle at night and howl. In summer lots of busses stop in Bran and there a hotel was built especially to host foreign tourists.
However Count Dracula had nothing to do with this edifice. Bran castle is simply an invention. First because Stoker's description is based on the Stains Castle in Cruden Bay, a small fishers' village in Scotland, where the novelist used to spend his holiday from 1893 to 1910. Second because geographically it is impossible, since Stoker located Dracula's castle close to Bistrit a, "just on the borders of three states, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Bukovina", that means about 300 kilometres away from the Bran-castle. The historical figure Vlad Tepes never went to Bran and his real castle stands 20 kilometres away from Curtea de Arges , that is to say approximately 100 kilometres away from Bran. In the 15th century it was almost completely destroyed and now we can only see some hilltop ruins overlooking the Arges River. In Sighis oara, a medieval Transylvanian town, the house where Vlad Tepes was born is still there and was turned out into a restaurant.
For sure, though Dracula is only a myth, it keeps influencing a lot the image of Transylvania which is still full of prejudices. Dracula and generally speaking all kind of vampires, ghosts and eerie beings are of course part of the popular culture but it is important to pass beyond stereotypes: you will not meet any vampire in Transylvania!

An Early Newspaper Article About Dracula

Vlad Dracula 1431 - 1476

Vlad Dracul was the father of Vlad The Impaler (1430 - 1477), the person who has been identified as the historical Dracula. He was the illegitimate son of Prince Mircea, the ruler of Wallachia, the area of present-day Romania south of the Carpathian Mountains. His Mother might have been Princess Mara of the Tomaj family of Hungary. He possibly spent a period of his youth at the court of Sigismund I of Luxembourg, the king of Hungary, as a token of faithfulness of Mircea's alliance with Sigismund. Thus, Vlad might have grown up in Buda and in locations in Germany. He married and had a son, also named Mircea.
In 1430 Vlad appeared in Transylvania as an official in charge of securing the Transylvanian border with Wallachia. He resided in Sighisoara, where toward the end of the year his second son, Vlad (later called Vlad the Impaler or Dracula) was born. Shortly after the child's birth, it became known that Sigismund had selected Vlad as his candidate to rule Wallachia. Vlad was invited to Nuremberg to be invested by the Order Of The Dragon.
Now bearing the title of prince of Wallachia, he was unable to secure the throne. He eventually created a powerful alliance by marrying Eupraxia, the sister of the ruler of Muldavia, as a second wife. In 1436 he was finally able to secure the Wallachian throne, and in the winter of 1436-37 he moved to Tirgoviste, the Wallachian capital. He had three other children : Radu, a second son also named Vlad (commonly referred to as Vlad the Monk), and a second son named Mircea.
In 1437, following the death of Sigismund, Vlad Dracul signed an alliance with the Turks, In March 1442 he allowed Mezid-Bey to pass through Wallachia and attack Transylvania. However, the Turkish army was defeated and the Hungarian army pursued Mezid-Bey back through Wallachia and drove Vlad Dracul from the throne in the process. He took refuge among the Turks, with whose help he regained the throne the following year. To secure the new relationship, Vlad Dracul left two sons, Vlad and Radu, in Turkish hands. Then, in 1444, Hungary moved against the Turks. Vlad Dracul, attempting to keep his pledge to the sultan but also aware of his obligations to the Christian Community, sent a small contingent to assist the Hungarian forces. They met with a resounding defeat, which Vlad Dracul and his son Mircea blamed on John Hunyadi, the governor of Hungary. In 1447 Hunyadi led a war against Vlad. The decisive battle was fought near Tirgoviste, and as a result Vlad was killed and Mircea captured by the Romanian boyars (the ruling elite) and tortured and killed.
The year after Vlad Dracul's death his son Vlad Dracula ("son of Dracul") attempted to assume his throne. He was unable to do so until 1456. Soon after becoming prince of Wallachia, he avenged the death of his father and brother.
Vlad Dracul was the father of Vlad The Impaler (1430 - 1477), the person who has been identified as the historical Dracula. He was the illegitimate son of Prince Mircea, the ruler of Wallachia, the area of present-day Romania south of the Carpathian Mountains. His Mother might have been Princess Mara of the Tomaj family of Hungary. He possibly spent a period of his youth at the court of Sigismund I of Luxembourg, the king of Hungary, as a token of faithfulness of Mircea's alliance with Sigismund. Thus, Vlad might have grown up in Buda and in locations in Germany. He married and had a son, also named Mircea.
In 1430 Vlad appeared in Transylvania as an official in charge of securing the Transylvanian border with Wallachia. He resided in Sighisoara, where toward the end of the year his second son, Vlad (later called Vlad the Impaler or Dracula) was born. Shortly after the child's birth, it became known that Sigismund had selected Vlad as his candidate to rule Wallachia. Vlad was invited to Nuremberg to be invested by the Order Of The Dragon.
Now bearing the title of prince of Wallachia, he was unable to secure the throne. He eventually created a powerful alliance by marrying Eupraxia, the sister of the ruler of Muldavia, as a second wife. In 1436 he was finally able to secure the Wallachian throne, and in the winter of 1436-37 he moved to Tirgoviste, the Wallachian capital. He had three other children : Radu, a second son also named Vlad (commonly referred to as Vlad the Monk), and a second son named Mircea.
In 1437, following the death of Sigismund, Vlad Dracul signed an alliance with the Turks, In March 1442 he allowed Mezid-Bey to pass through Wallachia and attack Transylvania. However, the Turkish army was defeated and the Hungarian army pursued Mezid-Bey back through Wallachia and drove Vlad Dracul from the throne in the process. He took refuge among the Turks, with whose help he regained the throne the following year. To secure the new relationship, Vlad Dracul left two sons, Vlad and Radu, in Turkish hands. Then, in 1444, Hungary moved against the Turks. Vlad Dracul, attempting to keep his pledge to the sultan but also aware of his obligations to the Christian Community, sent a small contingent to assist the Hungarian forces. They met with a resounding defeat, which Vlad Dracul and his son Mircea blamed on John Hunyadi, the governor of Hungary. In 1447 Hunyadi led a war against Vlad. The decisive battle was fought near Tirgoviste, and as a result Vlad was killed and Mircea captured by the Romanian boyars (the ruling elite) and tortured and killed.
The year after Vlad Dracul's death his son Vlad Dracula ("son of Dracul") attempted to assume his throne. He was unable to do so until 1456. Soon after becoming prince of Wallachia, he avenged the death of his father and brother.

The name Dracula was applied to Vlad during his lifetime. It was derived from Drac, a Romanian word that can be interpreted variously as "devil" or "dragon". Vlad's father had joined the Order of the Dragon, a Christian brotherhood dedicated to fighting the Turks, in 1431, shortly after Vlad's birth. The oath of the order required, among other things, wearing the order's insignia at all times. The name Dracula means son of Dracul or son of the dragon or devil.
In December 1447 Vlad's father was murdered and brother burned alive under the orders of Hungarian governor John Hunyadi with the assistance of the boyars, the ruling elite families of Wallachia. The death of Mircea made Vlad the successor, but with Hunyadi's backing.
Vladislav II, a member of another branch of the family, assumed the Wallachian throne. Vlad tried to claim the throne in 1448, but his reign lasted only a couple of months before he was forced to flee to the neighboring kingdom of Moldavia. In 1451, while he was at Suceava, the Moldavian capital, the ruler was assassinated. For whatever reasons, Vlad then went to Transylvania and placed himself at the mercy of Hunyadi. The alliance between Hunyadi and Vlad may have been possible by Vladislav II's adoption of pro-Turkish policy which alienated Hunyadi. Vlad fought beside Hunyadi, who in the end acknowledged Vlad's claim to the Wallachian throne.
Hunyadi dies of the plague at Belgrade on August 11, 1456. Immediately after that event, Vlad left Transylvania for Wallachia. He defeated Vladislav II and on August 20 caught up with the fleeing prince and killed him. Vlad then began his six year reign, during with his reputation was established. In September he took both a formal oath to Hungarian King Ladislaus V and, a few days later, an oath of vassalage to the Turkish sultan.
Vlad's brutal manner of terrorizing his enemies and the seemingly arbitrary manner in which he had people punished earned him the nickname "Tepes" or "the Impaler" the common name by which he is known today.
At Castle Dracula he was faced with overwhelming odds, his army having melted away. He chose to survive by escaping through a secret tunnel and then over the Carpathians into Transylvania. His wife according to local legend, committed suicide before the Turks overran the castle. In Transylvania he presented himself to the new king of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus, who arrested him. At this time the first publications of stories of Vlad's cruelties were circulating through Europe. Vlad was imprisoned at the Hungarian capital, by 1475 events had shifted to the point that he emerged as the best candidate to retake the Wallachian throne. In the summer of 1475 he was again recognized as the prince of Wallachia. His end came at the hand of an assassin at some point toward the end of December 1476 or early January 1477.
The actual location of Vlad's burial site is unknown, but the likely spot is the church at the Snagov monastery, located on an isolated island. Excavations there have proved inconclusive. A tomb near the altar thought by many to be Vlad's resting place was empty when opened in the early 1930's.

Source - The Vampire Book - The Encyclopedia Of The Undead
By J. Gordon Melton

The Merchant's Money

A merchant was traveling through Dracula's kingdom when he remembered about the supposed honesty in it. He had nowhere to stay and the night was falling so he decided to leave his cart full of coins in a public plaza and go to sleep elsewhere.

In the morning, the merchant found 160 coins missing from his cart. Very depressed about this, he informed Dracula about his loss and Dracula promptly told him to stay in his palace for the night. Dracula then ordered his guards to find the thief or else he would destroy his whole kingdom and impale everyone within it.

Dracula secretly sent the 160 coins to the merchant's cart plus another coin. The next day, when the merchant returned to his cart, he was very pleased to find the 160 coins. When he went to thank Vlad the Impaler, he mentioned the extra coin. Vlad told the merchant that the thief had been caught and was being impaled at the moment and that if the merchant hadn't mentioned about the extra coin, he would have been impaled too.

The Cup of Gold

Vlad was so obsessed with honesty among his kingdom that a single lie could mean a person's demise. This is not to mention a thief - who would be ultimately tortured and impaled.

Vlad was so confident about his kingdom's honesty that during his reign he placed a cup made of gold in a public plaza for people to drink water from. The sole requirement was for the user to return the cup after its drinking from it. During Dracula's reign, the cup was never stolen because any thief certainly knew what would await him if caught.