Vlad Tepes Essay, Research Paper

-The Real Prince Dracula-

Yes, there was a existent Dracula, and he was a true prince of darkness. He was Prince Vlad III Dracula, besides known as Vlad Tepes, intending & # 8220 ; Vlad the Impaler. & # 8221 ; The Turks called him Kaziglu Bey, or & # 8220 ; the Impaler Prince. & # 8221 ; He was the prince of Walachia, but, as legend suggests, he was born in Transylvania, which at that clip was ruled by Hungary.

A Transylvanian named Radu Negru, or Rudolph the Black founded Walachia in 1290. It was dominated by Hungary until 1330, when it became independent. The first swayer of the new state was Prince Basarab the Great ( 1310-1352 ) , an ascendant of Dracula. Dracula & # 8217 ; s gramps, Prince Mircea the Old, reigned from 1386 to 1418. He participated in one excessively many losing conflicts against the Turks and was forced to pay testimonial to them. He and his posterities continued to govern Walachia, but as lieges of the Ottoman Empire.

The throne of Walachia was non needfully passed from male parent to boy. The prince, or voivode, was elected by the state & # 8217 ; s boyars, or land-owning Lords. This caused combat among household members, blackwashs, and other unpleasantness. Finally the House of Basarab was split into two cabals & # 8211 ; Mircea & # 8217 ; s posterities, and the posterities of another prince named Dan. Dan & # 8217 ; s posterities were called the Danesti.

Mircea had an illicit boy, Vlad, born around 1390, who was educated in Hungary and Germany. Vlad served as a page for King Sigismund of Hungary, who became the Holy Roman Emperor in 1410. Sigismund founded a secret fraternal order of knights called the Order of the Dragon to continue Christianity and support the imperium against Turkey. Because of his courage combat Turks, Vlad was admitted to the Order, likely in 1431. The boyars started to name him Dracul, intending & # 8220 ; dragon. & # 8221 ; Vlad & # 8217 ; s 2nd boy would be known as Dracula, or & # 8220 ; boy of the dragon. & # 8221 ; Dracul besides meant, & # 8220 ; devil. & # 8221 ; So Dracula & # 8217 ; s enemies, particularly German Saxons, called him & # 8220 ; boy of the devil. & # 8221 ;

Interesting fact: members of the Order of the Dragon had a particular costume to have on on Sundays. It was a ruddy garment with a black ness over it. . . that & # 8217 ; s why the fictional Dracula wears a ness!

Finally Sigismund made Vlad the military governor of Transylvania, a station he held from 1431 to 1435. During that clip he lived in the town of Sighisoara or Schassburg. You can still see the bastion there and even the house where Vlad & # 8217 ; s boy Dracula was born. Today there & # 8217 ; s a eating house on the 2nd floor. There & # 8217 ; s besides a wall painting in the house that may picture Vlad Dracul.

-Young Dracula –

Dracula was born in November or December of 1431. His given name was Vlad. He had an older brother, Mircea, and a younger brother, Radu the Handsome. Their female parent may hold been a Moldavian princess or a Tranyslvanian baronial. It is said that she educated Dracula in his early old ages. Subsequently he was trained for knighthood by an old boyar who had fought the Turks.

Dracula & # 8217 ; s male parent was non content to stay a mere governor everlastingly. During his old ages in Transylvania, he gathered protagonists for his program to prehend Walachia & # 8217 ; s throne from its current resident, a Danesti prince named Alexandru I. In late 1436 or early 1437 Vlad Dracul killed Alexandru and became Prince Vlad II.

Vlad was a liege of Hungary and besides had to pay testimonial to Hungary & # 8217 ; s enemy, Turkey. In 1442 Turkey invaded Transylvania. Vlad tried to remain impersonal, but Hungary & # 8217 ; s swayers blamed him and drove him and his household out of Walachia. A Magyar general, Janos Hunyadi ( who may hold been the illicit boy of Emperor Sigismund ) made a Danesti named Basarab II the prince of Walachia.

The undermentioned twelvemonth Vlad regained the throne with the aid of the grand Turk of Turkey. In 1444 he sent his two younger boies to Turkey to turn out his trueness. Dracula was about 13. He spent the following four old ages in Adrianople, Turkey as a surety.

In 1444 Hungary went to war with Turkey and demanded that Vlad fall in the campaign. As a member of the Order of the Dragon, Vlad was sworn to obey this biddings. But he didn & # 8217 ; t want to anger the Turks, so he sent his eldest boy, Mircea, in his topographic point. The Christian ground forces was demolished at the Battle of Varna, and Vlad and Mircea blamed Janos Hunyadi.

In 1447 Vlad and Mircea were murdered. The boyars and merchandisers of the Walachian City Tirgoviste killed Mircea. There are different narratives about how he died & # 8211 ; he may hold been tortured and burned, or buried alive. Apparently his male parent died at the same clip. Some say that Hunyadi organized the blackwashs.

Since Vlad and Mircea were dead, and Dracula and Radu were still in Turkey, Hunyadi was able to set a member of the Danesti kin, Vladislav II, on the Walachian throne. The Turks didn & # 8217 ; t like holding a Magyar marionette in charge of Walachia, so in 1448 they freed Dracula and gave him an ground forces. He was 17 old ages old.

It seems that Dracula & # 8217 ; s small brother Radu chose to stay in Turkey. He had grown up at that place, and seemingly remained loyal to the grand Turk.

-Dracula & # 8217 ; s Reign –

With the aid of his Turkish ground forces, Dracula seized the Walachian throne. However, he merely ruled for two months before Hunyadi forced him into expatriate in Moldavia. Again Vladislav II became Walachia & # 8217 ; s prince.

Three old ages subsequently Prince Bogdan of Moldavia was assassinated and Dracula fled the state. By now Vladislav II had become a protagonist of Turkey, and Hunyadi was sorry he had put him on the throne. Everyone switched sides & # 8211 ; Dracula became Hunyadi & # 8217 ; s liege, and Hunyadi now supported Dracula & # 8217 ; s try to recover 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 & # 8211 ; you can still see the ruins of his castle at that place. And nearby a statue of Vlad Tepes still stands. He is considered an of import figure in Rumanian history because he unified Walachia and resisted the influence of aliens.

But it & # 8217 ; s Dracula & # 8217 ; s inhuman treatment that most non-Romanians remember. After going prince, Dracula purportedly invited many mendicants and other old, ill and hapless people to a banquest at his palace. When his invitees had finished eating their repast and imbibing a toast to him, Dracula asked them, & # 8220 ; Would you wish to be without attentions, missing nil in this universe? & # 8221 ; Yes, they said enthusiastically.

So Dracula had the palace boarded up and put it on fire. Cipher made it out alive & # 8211 ; and that was the terminal of their jobs, as he had promised. & # 8220 ; I did this so that no 1 will be hapless in my kingdom, & # 8221 ; he said.

Harmonizing to another narrative, he invited 500 boya

R to a feast and asked them how many princes had ruled in their life-times. They said they had lived through many reigns. Shouting that this was their mistake because of their plotting, Dracula had them wholly arrested on the topographic point. The older 1s were impaled ; the others were marched 50 stat mis to Walachia’s capital, Poenari, where they were forced to construct a mountaintop fortress. They worked a long clip ; when their apparels fell off, they worked naked. Most of them died, of class. And of class Dracula seized the boyars’ belongings and passed it out to his protagonists. In that manner he created a new aristocracy, loyal to him.

( The ruins of the Poenari fortress can still be seen. You have to mount about 1,500 stairss and traverse a small span to make it. It & # 8217 ; s now called Castle Dracula, but several topographic points are called that. Another & # 8220 ; Castle Dracula & # 8221 ; is Bran Castle, near the town of Brasov. Although Dracula may hold stayed there on occasion, it surely wasn & # 8217 ; t his place. )

Dracula liked to put up a feast tabular array and dine while he watched people die. His favourite signifier of executing was impalement. It was slow ; people could take yearss to decease. He liked to transfix many people at one time, set uping the bets in fancy designs. Nothing was excessively barbarous for Dracula & # 8211 ; he enjoyed holding people skinned, boiled alive, etc. He prided himself on doing the penalty ( purportedly ) fit the offense.

By 1462, when he was deposed, he had killed between 40,000 and 100,000 people, perchance more. He ever thought up some alibi for these executings. He killed merchandisers who cheated their clients. He killed adult females who had personal businesss. Purportedly he had one adult female impaled because her hubby & # 8217 ; s shirt was excessively short. He didn & # 8217 ; t mind transfixing kids, either. Afterwards he would expose the cadavers in public so everyone would larn a lesson. It & # 8217 ; s said that there were over 20,000 organic structures hanging outside his capital metropolis. Of class, his enemies might hold exaggerated the narratives about Dracula s inhuman treatment.

Despite all this, Dracula & # 8217 ; s topics respected him for contending the Turks and being a strong swayer. He & # 8217 ; s remembered today as a loyal hero who stood up to Turkey and Hungary. He was the last Walachian prince to stay independent from the Ottoman Empire. He was so contemptuous of other states that when two foreign embassadors refused to doff their chapeaus to him, he had the chapeaus nailed to their caputs. He was opposed to the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches because he thought aliens, runing through the churches, had excessively much power in Walachia. He tried to forestall foreign merchandisers from taking concern off from his citizens. If merchandisers disobeyed his trade Torahs, they were, of class, impaled.

Dracula created a really terrible moral codification for the citizens of Walachia. You can think what happened to anyone who broke the codification. Thiefs were impaled, even prevaricators were impaled, and of course there wasn & # 8217 ; t a batch of offense in Walachia during his reign.

To turn out how good his Torahs worked, Dracula had a gilded cup placed in a public square. Anyone who wanted to could imbibe from the cup, but no 1 was allowed to take it out of the square. No one did.

A visiting merchandiser one time left his money outside all dark, believing that it would be safe because of Dracula & # 8217 ; s rigorous policies. To his surprise, some of his coins were stolen. He complained to Dracula, who quickly issued a announcement that the money must be returned or the metropolis would be destroyed. That dark Dracula in secret had the losing money, plus one excess coin, returned to the merchandiser. The following forenoon the merchandiser counted the money and found it had been returned. He told Dracula about this, and mentioned the excess coin. Dracula replied that the stealer had been caught and would be impaled. And if the merchandiser hadn & # 8217 ; t mentioned the excess coin, he would hold been impaled, excessively.

-Dracula Overthrown –

In 1462 Dracula attacked the Turks to drive them out of the Danube River vale. Sultan Mehmed II retaliated by occupying Walachia with an ground forces three times larger than Dracula & # 8217 ; s. Dracula was forced to withdraw to his capital, Tirgoviste. He burned his ain small towns and poisoned Wellss on the manner so that the Turkish ground forces wouldn & # 8217 ; Ts have any nutrient or H2O.

When the grand Turk reached Tirgoviste, he saw a terrific scene, remembered in history as & # 8220 ; the Forest of the Impaled. & # 8221 ; There, outside the metropolis, were 20,000 Turkish captives, all impaled. The grand Turk & # 8217 ; s officers were excessively frightened to travel on & # 8211 ; Dracula had won once more.

Although the grand Turk retreated, Dracula & # 8217 ; s small brother Radu did non. The Turks had provided him with an ground forces in hopes that he could prehend Dracula & # 8217 ; s throne. Many of Dracula & # 8217 ; s boyars abandoned him to fall in Radu. Radu & # 8217 ; s ground forces pursued Dracula to his fortress at Poenari. Dracula & # 8217 ; s married woman was so scared that she threw herself from the upper crenelations. The Turks seized the palace, but Dracula managed to get away through a secret tunnel. There were still some provincials around he hadn & # 8217 ; T impaled, and they helped him fly from Walachia.

He went to the new male monarch of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus, for aid. Alternatively the male monarch had him imprisoned in a tower. Dracula remained in Hungary for twelve old ages while Radu ruled Walachia as a marionette for the Turks. After the first four old ages he was allowed to travel into a house. He ingratiated himself with the Magyar royal household, and even married one of its members ( perchance the male monarch & # 8217 ; s sister ) . He became a Catholic at this clip, which would hold pleased the Catholic Hungarians.

But he was still the same old Dracula. He impaled rats and birds for merriment. Once a stealer broke into his house and a Magyar captain followed him to collar him. Dracula didn & # 8217 ; t kill the stealer & # 8211 ; he killed the officer. Why? Because the officer was a gentleman, and should hold known non to come in a house uninvited.

-The Death of Dracula –

Harmonizing to some histories, Dracula & # 8217 ; s brother Radu died in 1474. The grand Turk put one of the Danesti kin, Basarab the Old, on the Walachian throne. In 1476 Dracula invaded Walachia with the aid of Moldavia and Transylvania. They drove Basarab out of the state, and Dracula once more became Walachia & # 8217 ; s prince. Most of Dracula & # 8217 ; s ground forces so went place to Transylvania.

The Turks attacked a few months subsequently. Dracula was killed while contending near Bucharest. Some say he was assassinated on the battleground by his ain boyars, or was by chance killed by one of his work forces. The sultan displayed Dracula & # 8217 ; s caput on a expressway in Constantinople to turn out that he was dead. His organic structure was buried at the island monastery of Snagov, which he had patronized. But diggings in 1931 failed to turn up any mark of his casket!

And that is the narrative of the existent Prince Dracula.

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