It worked out pretty well for both sides until a major famine hit the Empire in 376. The Romans cut the Ostrogoths’ grain rations to nothing, but continued supplying the Roman garrisons in the area as usual. When the starving Ostrogoths appealed to the garrisons for help, they were offered dog meat in exchange for female slaves.
Enraged, the Ostrogoths marched to the nearest major Roman city, Marcianopolis in what is now Bulgaria. Many of their sick, children, elderly and even healthy adult women died along the way, leaving them largely a band of very angry and desperate young men. When they arrived at Marcianopolis, they were barred from the walled city, and the local governors clumsily attempted to assassinate the Ostrogoths’ leaders at a hastily arranged summit meeting.
At that point, the Ostrogoths decided the Romans were their enemies, and that they had nothing left to lose. Avoiding the undermanned Roman garrisons in the area, the Ostrogoths raided and looted the countryside at will, taking everything they could from the largely defenseless local people. When the Romans stood idly by, the Goths were encouraged by their success and drew reinforcements from locals eager to get rid of their Imperial overlords. The rebellious Ostrogoths managed to occupy much of what is now Bulgaria, Eastern Greece and the European part of Turkey.
The Romans sent a military expedition under the command of Emperor Valens himself to put down the revolt. It didn’t work. At the Battle of Adrianople in 378, the combination of a strong Gothic cavalry charge and a group of over-eager Romans who attacked before they were ordered to do so led to an impressive rout by the Goths. Valens, abandoned by his guards, was killed in the ensuing massacre.
The very idea of a barbarian tribe defeating a Roman army—let alone killing the Emperor—was absolutely unthinkable, and the area collapsed into chaos. The Ostrogoths and their allies began to ravage the Balkans, killing Roman administrators and destroying Imperial infrastructure.
The Romans eventually responded, pushing the Ostrogoths to negotiate a peaceful settlement with Valens’ successor Theodosius in 382. But the Ostrogoths had made a powerful point. The so-called barbarian tribes surrounding the Roman Empire had gained enough technology, discipline and will to take on the Romans and win—it was the beginning of the end of the Empire.
After the peace agreement, the Ostrogoths were ostensibly allies of the Empire again, but mutinies and looting raids against the Romans became commonplace. Eventually the Ostrogoths allied with other tribes—including the fearsome Vandals, Huns and Alans—to commit opportunistic, small-scale invasions around the Empire’s edges.
Emboldened by the success of his distant relatives, Alaric, king of the Visigoths, attacked Italy. Although he was defeated in battle twice by the legendary Roman general Flavius Stilicho, he survived and remained a threat to the Empire. The Emperor Honorious actually moved the Empire’s capital from Rome to the distant city of Ravenna out of fear. Foolishly, he also had Stilicho executed on trumped-up charges of plotting a coup. With his formidable adversary out of the picture, Alaric invaded Italy and his men laid siege to Rome in 410. Rather than fight, Honorious offered to pay the Visigoths to leave. Alaric accepted and gave the Romans 300 slaves as a sign of goodwill.
The Romans accepted the slaves and then refused to pay. In a move as cunning as the more famous Trojan Horse ruse, the Visigoth “slaves” then fought their way to the Salarian Gate and let their allies into the walled city—and the sack of Rome began. The Visigoths looted Rome for three days.
Although they didn’t take all that much, the Visigoths’ raid had a profound effect on the Empire. Rome, the Eternal City, had been safe from invaders for 800 years. But after its sacking by the Visigoths, barbarian raiders started pouring in and the Empire started to disintegrate.
However, the Goths had their own problems. Constantly attacked by neighboring tribes, they struggled to survive. The Ostrogoths were eventually defeated and absorbed by the Longobards in Italy in 568, while the Visigoths were beaten and dispersed by the Ummayyads in Spain in 711.
Later Europeans, particularly in Spain and Sweden, claimed to be descendants of Goths, but they really didn’t exist as an identifiable people after the eighth century.
While the Goths undeniably have a place in history for their part in the fall of the Roman Empire, few people really identify with them anymore. It’s not as though teenagers dress up in barbarian finery when they call themselves Goths. In fact, the word “Goth” was for many centuries an insult, suggesting a lack of refinement or intellect—a barbaric mentality, quite the opposite of how today’s “Goths” like to view themselves.
The word’s meaning has changed over the centuries, like many do, as a result of ignorance and, in this case, something of a scam. Horace Walpole was an eighteenth century English nobleman, politician, poet and architect. He called his broad, strong architectural style “gothic,” to differentiate it from the much more detailed neo-classical style that was popular in his time. His style didn’t have much in common with what the Goths actually built (virtually none of which still existed by his time), but few people questioned the authenticity of the term. Besides, Walpole’s buildings looked old, and gothic was a cool, old-sounding word, so it stuck.
Walpole had clearly grown attached to the name, because when he wrote his first novel, The Castle of Otranto, in 1764, he described it as “gothic.” Walpole said he had found a long-forgotten Italian manuscript dating from 1529 in a library of an “ancient Catholic family in the North of England.” He said he had meticulously translated the story, which itself was a retelling of a far older story from the days of the barbarians, and released it as a “gothic” novel. A long, violent tale that involved prophecy, ghosts, monsters and other supernaturalia, The Castle of Otranto was also heavily laden with eroticism and sexual innuendo.
Not surprisingly, it was a huge success and went into many printings. Although Walpole later relented and admitted he had written the book, it didn’t make much difference. The addictive blend of supernatural violence mixed with subtle eroticism had already become known as the gothic style.
Walpole’s success launched countless imitators and, even centuries later, many are inspired by his style. But the best known gothic novel is, of course, Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
An Irish immigrant, Stoker worked hard and eventually became business manager of the world famous Lyceum Theatre in London. While there, he earned extra money and became quite well connected by writing sensational novels—what we’d call pulp fiction today. While researching his books, Stoker became quite interested in Eastern European legends, particularly that of the vampire.
Although stories of the dead rising to eat the flesh and blood of the living are commonplace in most Western cultures, including those of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the vampire legend we know today originated in Southeastern Europe, including Transylvania—the northern part of Romania, where it borders Hungary.
Although there were significant and often bizarre regional differences—Albanian vampires were said to have a preference for high-heeled shoes, while a Bulgarian one could be identified by his single nostril—the armature of the story was surprisingly consistent throughout much of the region. Vampires were dead humans who rose at night to drink the blood of living humans. Blood gave them strength and warded off a permanent grave. They feared and hated sunlight, and they could only be killed by esoteric means, including a stake to the heart or decapitation.
Stoker became intrigued, as he saw the potential for both horror and sexuality in the blood-sucking undead. He also wanted to play on the rising current of fear of foreigners that was then plaguing much of the British Empire. He knew he needed a compelling, charismatic nobleman as the lead character. An avid student of European history, Stoker settled on a combination of two notorious men, Gilles de Rais and Vlad Tepes.
De Rais was a fifteenth century French nobleman who used his position, good looks and abundant charm to get away with murder. He did get away with it for years, until he was implicated in the disapp
earance of a local priest who he’d been seen arguing with. Investigators discovered in his castle the remains of between 80 and 200 children, mostly boys, who de Rais had tortured, raped and murdered (often not in that order). His two henchmen told the complete story of how de Rais sent them to recruit the youngsters, ranging in age anywhere from 6 to 18, for him to have his deadly way with. The trio were hanged in 1440 and de Rais has since become identified as the first modern serial killer.
Tepes, on the other hand, was (and still is) to many people something of a hero. Although his father, Vlad II, was King of Wallachia (approximately the southern half of modern-day Romania), Vlad was born in Transylvania after his father was exiled by powerful Wallachian nobles loyal to the mighty Ottoman Empire. The second of three sons, Vlad III was later given by his father to the Turkish sultan as part of deal to stave off an Ottoman invasion.
Vlad hated his life as a captive and was frequently beaten for his insolence and refusal to convert to Islam. He secretly vowed to make the Turks pay.
In 1447, Vlad II was discovered in Transylvania and assassinated by Wallachian knights. Fearing rebellion, the Turks invaded and placed Vlad III on the throne as a puppet ruler. It made sense at the time: he was the legitimate claimant to the throne after his older brother Mircea was blinded by iron stakes and buried alive by political rivals; he had lived for so long under the boot of Ottoman oppression, they believed, that he would be too timid to do anything but what they told him.
It might have worked if Wallachia hadn’t been invaded later that year by John Hunyadi—the man who killed Vlad II—forcing Vlad III to flee to Hungary. Eventually, the Hungarians convinced Hunyadi that Vlad III was a valuable ally, so he was pardoned and brought back to Wallachia as a political advisor. And when Hunyadi died of plague in 1456, Vlad III succeeded him as king.
Vlad quickly decided that his primary purpose as king was to protect himself. He eliminated a number of his rivals by execution and greatly reduced the economic and political power of the unpopular and often cruel noblemen, known as boyars. This—along with his natural charisma, frequent appearances at public events and reputation for fairness—made him phenomenally popular among his people.
Vlad is said to have won many loyal Wallachian admirers by his reaction to a Turkish emissary who refused to take off his hat before an infidel. According to the story, he had his men nail the Turk’s hat to his head, which many Wallachians found hilarious at the time.
Vlad III was relentless in hunting down political rivals—particularly members of the Danesti clan—and killing anyone of any political stripe who could possibly pose a threat to his reign. It was at this time that he became known as Vlad the Impaler, because his preferred method of execution was to place the victim on top of a long metal rod so that the point of the rod entered the victim’s anus and he died slowly as the weight of the body pushed it down the rod.
Deciding it was time to get back at the much-hated but all-powerful Ottoman Empire, he stopped paying them tribute and signed a truce with the Turks’ bitter rivals, the Hungarians. When a Turkish mission to assassinate him failed, Vlad III invaded their territory in what’s now Serbia and killed 20,000 mostly innocent people, many of whom received his signature impaling.
Enraged, Sultan Mehmed II of Turkey sent in an invasion force five times the size of Vlad’s 20,000-man army and chased him out of Wallachia, installing Vlad’s hated younger brother, Radu the Handsome, on the throne. Soon, Vlad was captured in Transylvania and imprisoned by the Hungarians.
The Hungarians took it easy on him—particularly after he converted to Catholicism—and eventually freed him. He lived with his wife and son in Budapest, plotting his revenge. At least one (largely pro-Vlad) telling of the story maintains that he simply could not give up his favorite hobby and frequently captured birds and animals to torture and mutilate.
In 1475, he gathered a number of Hungarian, Transylvanian and Wallachian allies and marched on his old capital. Radu had died two years earlier and the Turks had installed a man named Besarab as king. On hearing of Vlad’s approach, Besarab fled, and Vlad was crowned without a fight. Convinced that their job was done, his allies left him with just a token guard of loyal Wallachians.
It was a bad idea. The Wallachian boyars, still angry with Vlad, revolted, captured him and delivered him to the Turks. There are many different accounts of the circumstances leading up to Vlad’s death (all cruel), but historical documents of the event agree that he was finally beheaded, his head was preserved in honey and delivered to the Turkish sultan, who placed it on a stake in his palace as proof that Vlad was actually dead.
One of the key indications that Stoker based his character on Vlad is the novel’s title itself. Vlad II’s bloodthirsty reputation earned him the title “Dracul”—contemporary Romanian for “devil” or “dragon”—and he bore the title proudly, styling himself as Vlad Dracul (Vlad the Devil) during his reign. When Vlad III burst onto the scene with even more bloodlust, he became known by the diminutive form—as Vlad Dracula, or Vlad the Little Devil.
So entrenched was the idea that Vlad was the basis of Dracula that two Romanian sites later became tourist attractions billed as “Dracula’s Castle.” Poenari Castle actually was inhabited by Vlad III for a few years because it was at the top of a treacherous canyon and almost impervious to attack. But that same remoteness led Vlad and other rulers to abandon it, and it fell into ruin at least three times. Most of the walls and some towers still stand, but Poenari Castle is now really little more than a weedy pile of old bricks that tourists have to climb up 1,859 nearly vertical stairs to see.
Bran Castle, on the other hand, is easy to get to and looks very much like a storybook castle. It draws hundreds of thousands of visitors—but it’s not Dracula’s castle. Although the locals will tell you Vlad lived there, there’s no historical evidence that he did. He was held prisoner in its dungeon for two days when the Ottomans held sway in the region, so he did actually stay there. And you can actually buy “Dracula’s” castle if you really want it. The Romanian government, under pressure from the rest of the European Union to right the wrongs of its Communist predecessors, gave Bran Castle back to its rightful owner in 2006. Dominic von Habsburg—a retired furniture designer from suburban North Salem, New York, who is usually too humble to point out he’s also Archduke Dominic—has put the property up for sale. The asking price is about $82 million, but may go higher because he has told his lawyers he will only sell to those “who will treat the property and its history with appropriate respect.”
Although a number of popular novels featuring vampires had already appeared by that time, none had the critical impact of Dracula. Originally published in 1897, Dracula tells the story of an English lawyer, John Harker, who is sent to Transylvania to handle a real estate transaction his bosses are undertaking with a count who lives there. On his arrival, Harker is immediately impressed with Count Dracula’s wealth, charm and refinement. But when Dracula pays a little too much attention to a picture of his fiancée, Mina, Harker begins to wonder about the intentions of his host. Before long, he realizes he’s a prisoner in Dracula’s castle and disobeys his orders not to go out of his room at night. When he first emerges to explore the castle, Harker is set upon by three beautiful women. At first he’s pretty happy, until he realizes they want to kill him. Dracula saves him at the last minute and sends him on his way back to London.
After he returns, a Russian ship carrying nothing but coffin-sized boxes of sand from Transylvania runs aground in England. The crew is missing and the captain’s log recounts a harrowing tale of crew member after crew member disappearing. After the ship crashes, witnesses report seeing a large animal, perhaps a wolf, jump off and dash away into the woods.
Immediately afterwards, Dracula appears in England and reenters Harker’s life. The Transylvanian count starts paying an undue amount of attention to Mina and her attractive friend Lucy. Before long, Lucy falls seriously ill. One of her wealthy suitors calls in a spec
ialist, professor Abraham Van Helsing from Amsterdam, to help her out. Van Helsing quickly determines that Lucy has been bitten by a vampire, but refuses to tell anyone about it for fear he won’t be believed. Lucy dies. When Van Helsing and her trio of suitors visit her grave to prove his hypothesis, she emerges, attacks them and they kill her (again) by beheading her.
Dracula finds out about this and bites Mina. He then flees to Transylvania, followed by Van Helsing and others who manage to kill Dracula by slashing his throat and stabbing him in the heart. His death frees Mina from his power and she and John live happily ever after.
Despite rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, Dracula was only a middling commercial success. It was very popular with literary and academic types, but failed to catch on with a larger audience.
Realizing that Stoker’s slow pacing and dense prose were Dracula’s inhibiting factors, an enterprising German filmmaker, Freidrich Wilhelm Murnau, decided to adapt the story for the screen in 1921. He had no trouble finding investors once he decided on a leading man. Max Schreck was a talented veteran stage actor whom Murnau described as “strikingly ugly”—and it didn’t hurt that his family name coincidentally happened to be the German word for “terror.”
Careful not to infringe on copyright, Murnau changed the name of the main character from Count Dracula to Graf (the German equivalent of count) Orlok and the title from Dracula to Nosferatu. Actually, the entire title was Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu, Symphony of Horror). Murnau never explained the origin of the name, but nosophoros is Greek for “plague carrier” (Orlok does spread the plague in the movie) and nesuferitul is Romanian for “the insufferable one.”
His precautions didn’t work. In 1922, Florence Stoker, Bram’s widow, received an anonymous package from Berlin. In it was a poster for Nosferatu that featured a line that read: “Freely adapted from Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” As diligent as Murnau was throughout the production, his promoters let him down after the film was made.
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