The Lord Count Drakulya

by Paul Doherty

  Later that same day Drakulya personally supervised the questioning of the man who called himself ‘Father Peter.’ Of course, he was no monk but turned out to be a Swabian by birth, a professional mercenary and assassin hired by the city fathers of Brasov to carry out their murder of Drakulya. At first he would not speak but then Drakulya had two iron poles driven into the ground in the palace grounds. The man was suspended by his wrists from them and a small fire lit beneath his naked feet; as the skin began to blacken, crack and then peel, he screamed for mercy, so Drakulya cut him down. ‘Father Peter’ then gave his story in full. How he had been recruited by the city fathers of Brasov, paid a certain amount on account and promised five times as much if the attempt was successful. He and his companion, also a Swabian mercenary, had been given detailed descriptions of Drakulya, the palace at Tirgoviste and the Prince’s habits and customs. He added the interesting note that most of this information had been given to Brasov by leading Boyars in Wallachia and dryly commented that they had not been informed of Drakulya’s superb swordmanship. He claimed he was a soldier and begged for a quick death but Drakulya would not grant this. He had his assailant taken to the market place at Tirgoviste and arranged for him to be torn apart by horses. Drakulya then had what was left of the corpse salted, pickled, and sealed in two barrels and these were sent with his compliments to the city fathers at Brasov.

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  After the assassination attempt Drakulya was never at ease at Tirgoviste, he was always eager to leave, constantly journeying around the country to implement an effective form of government based on a harsh but fair legal system. Law-breakers were treated with severity; thieves lost a limb for the first crime and their lives for a second offence. Whores were publicly branded while murderers were summarily hanged, their bodies left to rot, impaled on huge stakes. I know you have heard about this cruelty but harsh times demand harsh measures. I was his chancellor; I journeyed with him and saw the effects of the breakdown in law and order. Villages and hamlets totally wiped out by marauders; houses became black charred heaps, whilst the young girls and boys were hustled quickly across the Danube to the Turkish slave markets. The lawlessness also affected trade, both on road and river; convoys were regularly ambushed, the merchants tortured and slain and their goods taken. The offenders were usually landless men, mercenaries taking advantage of the civil war and Turkish incursions to reap a rich harvest.

  Drakulya responded by building citadels at Bucharest, Rucar and other towns. These were heavily garrisoned with professional soldiers. Their main task was to crush the marauding bandit bands using the Vlasie Forest and the lonely hills as lairs to prey on travellers or the unprotected communities of the Wallachian Plain. Drakulya always believed in setting an example. On one occasion, shortly after coming to the throne, he personally led an expedition against the most notorious band of marauders led by a father and son. This group were eventually cornered and trapped in one of the many narrow gorges which score the flanks of the Carpathian foothills. All the marauders were immediately cut down but the father and son were seized and taken prisoner. The son was a young man of about nineteen summers. He was led away while Drakulya entertained the father in his camp. At first nervous, the bandit leader began to relax under Drakulya’s cajolery and persuasive flattery, hoping perhaps that Drakulya would grant him a pardon and amnesty. Drakulya liberally supplied his guest with drink from his own wineskin and eventually said he would serve “his guest” with a rare dish. I was not there when the incident occurred but Drakulya had a piece of meat well garnished with spices and herbs served up to the bandit leader. As soon as the bandit leader had taken a few bites and expressed his appreciation Drakulya asked him, “By what right do you prey on the citizens of my country?” The man did not answer, his mouth gorged with the rich, red meat he was chewing. “Do you know what meat you are eating?” Drakulya continued. The man shook his head, his chin streaming with juices. “Have you not been wondering what happened to your son?” Drakulya asked. “Even a jackal looks after its own offspring and does not eat them as you are doing now!” The man spat out what he was eating and retched violently, spitting and cursing Drakulya as his arms were pinioned by two guards. Drakulya simply ignored this, leaned forward and slapped the man hard around the face. He then ordered the bandit leader to be hanged, his body to be cut up in quarters and displayed on one of the main river crossings.

  Drakulya also concentrated on eradicating the hordes of landless men who shirked any employment and became professional beggars, filling the streets and market places of the town and harassing travellers and lonely farmsteads. They did this with impunity, often in organised gangs, with banners displaying mottoes such as “We are looking for a master, but if God is good then we won’t find one.” Drakulya had the leader of one of these organised begging guilds brought before him at Tirgoviste and asked him why he did not take up regular employment. This individual had the temerity to reply, “Your Excellency, the furrier works his fingers day and night but does not get anything out of it; the tailor works all his life and ends up a shadow. Most craftsmen die and are buried with their empty collection plate and a long list of debts.”

  “Yes,” Drakulya replied, curbing his anger. “These men die but they do so honourably, while you live off their sweat. You are useless to humanity. You are a thief, much worse than the masked robber of the forest from whom a person can escape. You, however, take the belongings of others bit by bit. I swear,” Drakulya continued, almost shouting, “that you and your sort will be cleared from my land!”

  Surprisingly the man was dismissed without any form of punishment but in the late spring of 1457 Drakulya, mimicking a story he had heard from the Christian Gospel, invited these begging guilds to a great feast in the market-place at Tirgoviste. All the roads into the capital were busy for days as these rogues and their families invaded Tirgoviste. The Prince was deluged with petitions and requests from citizens, merchants and city officials that his invitation be revoked and these people dispersed, but Drakulya ignored these ordering me to open the storehouses and provide the beggars with cloaks and coats. Then on the appointed day, I think it was around the Catholic feast which marks the beginning of their Lent, the beggars were taken from the market-place to a large empty house where tables had been set and covered with food. I accompanied Drakulya there to welcome these hordes with open arms. The rogues applauded him, cheering him to the rafters, extolling his generosity as a benevolent prince but Drakulya, eyes cold, face impassive, beckoned them to the tables, inviting them to begin their feast. They had a banquet, gorging themselves on the rich meats and sweet wines until many of them simply lay on the floor in a stupour of drunkenness. Drakulya withdrew from the house, taking me and other retainers with him. I then noticed that the entire building had been surrounded by a group of his most hard-bitten mercenaries in full battle dress. As soon as the Prince left the house, these closed and barred all doors and then began to unload from nearby carts large bundles of wood which they soaked in oil and at a sign from the Prince, despite my astonished outcries, set alight. There was a faint wind blowing and within a short while the blaze rose high on all sides round the house, the flames licking hungrily at the old dry timbers. I stood aghast as shouts, shrieks and yells of pain came from the people enclosed there. The sound was horrendous until the roaring flames and crashing timbers silenced them for ever. Drakulya watched the flames die down and turned to me. “Well, Rhodros?” he smiled. “You can now say there are no poor in my country!”

  Incidents such as these struck terror into the hearts and minds of the law-breakers. Within a few months what was an endemic and serious social problem was eventually eradicated from the country. Men will say that Drakulya was cruel, ruthless and without pity. All I can write in his defence is that if he was, then he was better than the ravenous human wolves he so ruthlessly hunted down. Certain mealymouthed clerics and penny-pinching lawyers protested at his actions but in the main the enforcement of law and order was wel
comed widely by the communities and, above all, the peasants of the principality.

  Although Drakulya concentrated on domestic matters, he also maintained a close watch on affairs beyond his border. At the council meeting of January 1457 he had promised retaliation against the Saxon merchants of Transylvania, who had broken their commercial agreements with him and were now harbouring and sheltering members of the rival Danesti family. Drakulya was still busy enforcing law and order at home and had already loaned troops to assist his cousin Stephen in Moldavia. But in the early summer of 1457 he sent Theodore on a lightning raid across the Transylvanian border into the areas around the city of Sibiu. Theodore burnt, pillaged and destroyed castles, villages and farmsteads around the city, the news of his atrocities filtering back. Prisoners were not taken but men, women and children were either cut down in their own homes or impaled alive before Theodore’s troops withdrew from the area. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to blame Theodore for these barbarities. Drakulya openly welcomed them, informing awestruck Boyars and Wallachian merchants that he would have no Saxon city interfering in the domestic matters of his realm. Theodore took certain leading Saxon merchants prisoner and these were escorted to the capital of Tirgoviste, where Drakulya summarily tried them for treason and had them impaled alive on long poplar stakes in a narrow gorge which ran along the north side of the city.

  The practice of impalement was common in the areas; Drakulya had used it before but only to display the corpses of people he had killed. These important Saxon merchants were the first of thousands to be impaled alive in that macabre spot which soon became known as the Valley of the Shadows. I never attended the impalements, nor did Mihail, but Drakulya watched every one, commenting and joking with his soldiers at the pathetic attempts of the prisoners to cover their naked bodies or claw at the stakes driven up into their bowels in a vain effort to fend off a horrendous death. Once the men were dead, a deputation of the leading Boyars from the city came and asked the Prince for the bodies to be removed. Drakulya refused, caustically commenting that he intended to plant an orchard in that valley which would shock the world. Yet, if Drakulya had thought that the Saxon merchants would heed the lesson of Sibiu, then he was disappointed. They retaliated by seizing Wallachians in their provinces and hurling them from the city walls while they openly proclaimed their support for Drakulya’s leading Danesti rival, Danicul.

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  During the winter months of 1457 and 1458 Drakulya concentrated his energies on building up supplies and massing troops along the Transylvanian border. He recalled his own mercenaries from Moldavia and seized any Transylvanian on Wallachian soil, had them taken to the town of Campalung and, in November 1458, had them all publicly burnt alive. In this he was virtually given a free hand for the Hungarian king, Ladislaw, was in the throes of a violent conflict with Hunyadi’s second son, Matthew Corvinus, whom both Drakulya and I had met at our celebrated meeting at Bran Castle. In the early spring of 1459 when the snows had melted from the mountain passes, Drakulya, Mihail and myself travelled to Rucar, now the headquarters of Drakulya’s campaign against the Saxon cities of Brasov and Sibiu. A few days after our arrival there and following a meeting with Theodore and his captains, Drakulya ordered the entire Wallachian forces into Transylvania.

  The invasion took the form of five or six (I forget how many) mounted columns, which crossed the border moving quickly and stealthily to a fixed assembly point. No foot soldiers were taken and very little supplies, the columns being instructed to carry only provisions for a few days until enough stores had been captured. It was a brilliant campaign. The columns in the west manifested themselves and gave the impression of a massive attack on Sibiu, whereas Drakulya’s real intention was to punish the city of Brasov. He had the advantage of surprise and stealth as well as excellent communications between each of the columns. The merchants of Sibiu immediately sent to Brasov for help, which the city fathers sent, oblivious to the main Wallachian force under Drakulya now quartered at Zeyding, a small town on the edge of the Transylvanian plain.

  On the night of Saturday, April 1st, the Wallachian force moved out of Zeyding and moved quickly north through the Prahova Valley to the outskirts of Brasov. From our previous stay both Drakulya and I knew that the city had strong walls and powerful citadels, so suprise was essential. We reached a hill by the southern suburb of the city overlooking the old church of St. Bartholomew. Brasov was peaceful, we could detect no patrols or scouts, and the ease by which we seized this strategic hill meant that the city fathers did not expect any assault. Drakulya pronounced himself satisfied, unfurled his great black banner, the silver dragon curling and writhing on its dark expanse, and at this signal our forces began to march down towards the city. The church of St. Bartholomew was quickly looted of vestments and precious objects. At attempt by the brave priest to toll the bell was brutually cut short but its clanging, even for a short while, had alerted the city and robbed us of total surprise. Our scouts reported that all gates to the citadel were now barred, but Drakulya still pushed into that suburb which skirted the chapel of St. Jacob, the very area where we had resided during our stay.

  The attack was brutal; our soldiers left their horses at certain assembly points and methodically moved from house to house cutting down anyone alert enough to have armed himself, then indulging in an orgy of pillage and rape. I saw one of Theodore’s lieutenants rape a young mother and then callously cut her throat and those of her two small children. Old men had their greying beards seized and their heads dashed against the very door posts of their houses which our soldiers looted with their accustomed ease and precision. The cries and shrieks of the inhabitants were pitiful to hear. Entire families preparing themselves to go to their Catholic Mass on Sunday morning suddenly found their homes invaded by callous and brutual soldiery. We took no man prisoner, spared no child and subjected women to every known abuse and rape. Drakulya permitted this, ordering the scouts to keep an eye out for any counter-attack from the citadel. His troops moved from one quarter of the suburb to the other and soon long columns of black smoke began to rise in the clear spring air. When I saw two or three of our mercenaries taking their turn in raping a young girl, whose body lay across the threshold of a house, her dress pushed high above her head, her bleeding ankles pinioned to the ground, I asked Drakulya for some order to stop the bloodshed and abuse. But the Prince turned to me; “Rhodros,” he chided gently, “these people were my allies.” He pointed to the white twitching body of the girl. “Perhaps her father, her brother, actually signed the treaty with me which they later broke, giving shelter to my enemies.” He leaned across and gripped my shoulder till I winced with pain. “Can’t you understand, Rhodros?” he urged. “If I don’t do this, then everything we have worked for will be lost.” When his hand dropped away, I simply turned my horse and rode back through startling black ruins of what only a short while before had been a peaceful suburb, to our assembly point at the hill above the church of St. Bartholomew.

  By noon the whole southern suburb of the city was a mass of flame and smoke. Those citizens of Brasov secure in their citadel could only accept their crushing defeat. They simply did not have the troops to launch any counter-attack and were unwilling to venture from their citadel in case this too was stormed and taken by Drakulya. In the afternoon a series of trumpet blasts backed up by officers began an orderly withdrawal of our men out of Brasov. They returned, many of them covered in sweat, grime and other unmentionable stains. They also brought carts piled high with valuables from the houses and churches they had pillaged and behind these, roped together by the neck, a long stream of prisoners of either sex and every age. I thought the latter would be held to ransom or even sent across the Danube to be sold as slaves to the Turks, but a more dreadful fate awaited some of them.

  While Drakulya’s main body of troops had been occupied in sacking the outskirts of the city, a number of auxiliaries had gone to nearby woods, from where they brought cart loads of freshly prepared stakes cut and
hewn, their edges specially blunted so as not to kill their victims immediately. The terrified captives, when they saw these implements of torture, began to cry and shriek in a way that I thought would soften the hardest heart. I saw several of Theodore’s hard-bitten mercenary captains go pale beneath the dirt and grime of their morning’s work as they bit their lips, casting sideways glances at their commanders. Like most of their kind, these soldiers were quite prepared to witness and perform the most brutal acts in the heat of battle and the capture of a city, but this cold blooded terrorisation disturbed even them. Drakulya however was implacable. The prisoners were taken aside, secured by a cordon of soldiers, while he ordered retainers to set up tables and serve himself and his captains wine and food piled high on precious plates so recently pillaged from the city. He then sent a white-faced Mihail under a banner of truce back to Brasov’s citadel with promises of safe conduct for any delegation the merchant community sent out to treat with him. Mihail was instructed to bring these envoys to the brow of the hill to meet Drakulya and hear his terms.

  A few hours later, just as day ended, Mihail returned with three frightened envoys. On hearing of their approach, Drakulya immediately instructed the meal to be served and gave an order for the impalement of ten captives taken earlier in the day. Seven of these captives were men and, brushing aside my protest, three young women, none of whom had passed their seventeenth year. Some of the men were barely conscious from earlier wounds but the shrieks of the young girls as their clothes were torn from them and their wrists and ankles seized by the soldiers, are still with me today in this dark prison cell. Their legs held apart, the specially oiled stakes were thrust up into their bowels and then secured firmly into the ground on each side of the tables at which we sat. Drakulya then ordered his captains to eat and drink, turning a blind eye to my refusal of food. Instead I rapidly drank deep draughts of wine, hoping they would obliviate the terrible cries of the impaled prisoners. It was into this devilish, macabre scene that the Brasov envoys arrived. They must have thought they were in hell itself. Around them and flowing down the hill were the camp fires of the soldiers who had sacked their city while on the brow of the hill, flanked by two rows of hideously impaled victims, sat the cause of all their problems, eating and drinking as if he was in his own palace hall at Tirgoviste. Never in my life have I seen men so struck with terror. Drakulya rose and greeted them and, stretching across the table, offered them wine and dishes, but they, weak and white-faced with terror, could only stutter an almost inaudible reply, their eyes drawn to the terrible scenes on either side of them. Eventually, one of them fainted in a pool of his own urine, overcome by exhaustion and terror at the sights he had seen. When this occurred, Drakulya ordered camp stools to be brought for the two other envoys, totally ignoring the hapless unconscious man.