by Dan Davis
“Astonishing,” Stephen muttered, for he alone had stayed to watch. “Truly astonishing.”
“You sound almost as though you admire him for this,” I said.
“Do you not?” Stephen replied, not looking at me.
“Admire him? It is monstrous.”
“Precisely,” Stephen said. “Who could bring himself to do this? I could not. I could never. Never. Could you, Richard?”
“No.”
“Do you think William could? Of course, I am sure that he could. It is the sheer will of it, do you not think? The sheer will that is to be admired.”
“Keep your damned voice down, Stephen.”
In response to the wailing and the begging from the residents of Brasov, Vlad had a large trestle set up in amongst the dying people around and above him. There, he was served a hearty breakfast and he tucked into sausage and cheese and bread with gusto. While the citizens of Brasov watched from the walls, he had a man’s throat cut and the blood caught in a bowl. This was brought to him and he delighted in dipping his bread into it with every mouthful.
“By God, it is true,” Eva said, coming up beside me. “Serban said Vlad was drinking blood in full view of everyone. I did not believe him.”
I looked around and Serban was there beside Eva his face a mask of anguish. “No one will know what it means,” I said. “He is merely dipping his bread in the blood. It is a display of barbarity. Meant to break the will of Brasov.”
“He’s a madman,” Eva said.
Eventually, a quaking messenger was sent out under a flag of truce, while he covered his mouth to stop himself from vomiting or perhaps to block to reek of blood and ripped bowels.
“You bring word of your unconditional surrender?” Vlad asked, still eating.
The man’s eyes were rimmed red and his gaze kept wandering up to the dead men and women all around him. “Prince Dan is not in Brasov.”
One of Vlad’s lords stiffened. “Address your lord properly, or you shall join these men in the sky, you fat Saxon pig.”
He bowed and spoke again, shaking like a leaf. “Forgive me, My Lord Prince. It is just that…” he swallowed and tried again. “My lords the elders of Brasov send word that the rebel who names himself Dan III, left our city ten days ago. Neither he, nor his men, nor his soldiers, are within our walls or within our lands.”
“If you are lying, then your entire city shall suffer this same fate.” Vlad gestured above him.
“It is no lie. My Lord.”
“Then tell me. Where is he?”
The messenger fell to his knees and vomited onto the ground. “Please, my lord, have mercy.”
Vlad put down his piece of cheese and got to his feet. He strode across to the man sobbing over his own vomit, pulled his sword from the scabbard and used it to lift the man’s quivering chin up. “Where is the traitor?”
“He… he… he has invaded Wallachia!”
It was true. Unbeknownst to any of us, or Vlad’s agents, Dan III had moved decisively to invade Wallachia while we were moving on Brasov. It seemed that there were traitors yet in Vlad’s army, or at least that Dan had been incredibly lucky in his timing. Either way, he had got into Wallachia behind us and he had begun his campaign of insurrection. He intended to do just what every would-be Prince of Wallachia had to do in order to gain the throne. He had to get assurances from boyars one by one.
I expected Vlad to be furious. I thought that he would rage and order his men to find what traitor had sold him out.
Instead of fire, though, he was ice. After Brasov was subdued, Vlad turned our army around and led us straight into Wallachia. If Dan had been counting on us besieging Brasov for weeks and months, allowing him free reign behind our backs, he was sorely mistaken. Due to Vlad’s atrocity outside the walls, Brasov had fallen immediately and so Dan was shocked at our sudden appearance at his rear.
We caught up with him in April 1460 and defeated his small army before he could do too much mischief. It was not much of a battle. He was outnumbered and outclassed and I led the sluji on a wide manoeuvre around his rear, falling upon him when he was already engaged with Vlad’s forces.
His men surrendered at once, throwing down their weapons.
Before the assembled sluji and the rest of Vlad’s bodyguard and leading boyars, Dan III was brought forward. Dracula had ordered a proper grave to be dug and Dan was made to stand before it.
“What is this farce?” Dan said, shaking with rage. “You inhuman monster. Do you expect me to grovel in fear? Just kill me and be done with it.”
“You misunderstand, sir,” Vlad said, speaking loudly so that all could hear. “You see, you are already dead. Yes, you see, you died when you thought you could rise against me. This is simply your funeral.”
Vlad nodded to a black-robed priest who stepped forward and proceeded to recite the funeral for Dan III while he stood bound before his own grave.
When the ceremony was completed, the priest hurried back and Vlad Dracula stepped up to Dan III, drew his sword and cut off the man’s head in a single, effortless stroke.
It was masterfully done. Dan’s body and head both tumbled into the grave.
“Now,” said Vlad, turning to us. “Let us find my brother Vlad the Monk, shall we?”
We continued to plunder the Saxon lands and refused to make lasting peace with any of them until Vlad the Monk was captured. We hoped that the Saxons would collectively find the Monk and give him up but they seemed set against us. One could hardly blame them. We raided their lands all of the summer of 1460, taking their wealth and their people. Prisoners divulged that Vlad the Monk was in hiding in the Duchy of Amlas and so we burned the town of Amlas and impaled the citizens, after forcing a priest to lead them all in a repulsive procession to the site of their execution. My sluji burned and killed through half of the duchy and eventually everyone in the city and many in the villages were killed by one means or another.
How many it was that died, I do not know. Thousands, certainly. And the town of Amlas was so reduced that it never recovered.
It was disheartening.
“We waste our efforts against these people,” I said to Vlad in the smoking ruins. “Anyone can slaughter peasants and merchants. The sluji was meant for greater things.”
He turned his bulging eyes to me. “My enemies must be destroyed.”
I gestured around us. “I think they have been.”
“Not enough,” he snapped. “They resist, in their hearts if not in their actions.”
“Would you expect any less? You say they do not truly belong in your lands and that is true, of course. But then you still expect them to come to heel. They are not Wallachian. They know it as well as you do. You are a foreign ruler to them and always will be. You can never trust the Saxons but while they yet live and their cities still stand, will you not let them make peace? And then we can turn our efforts against the true enemy.”
“I will have their obedience.”
“Let them offer it. Let them offer some terms, at least. Everyone in Christendom knows they have been beaten.”
Mattias Corvinus acted as peacemaker, ironically, as it was his endorsement of Dan III that had encouraged the Saxons into open rebellion. But with his mediation, accommodation was reached. Commercial privileges were returned, which is all the mercantile people really care about. And for their part, the Saxons agreed to pay an annual fee large enough to maintain an army of four thousand mercenaries who would be employed against the Turks.
Thus strengthened, we could turn our soldiers south again.
12. Ottoman Invasion
1462
“Did you hear what he’s gone and done now?” Walt whispered.
We stood in Vlad Dracula’s great hall in Târgoviște along with hundreds of boyars, burghers, monks, priests, and soldiers milling around waiting for the prince to arrive. Their muttering filled the air to the rafters.
“I do not know,” I replied. “What has he done?”
&nb
sp; “You heard about him going around and capturing all the beggars in Wallachia? All the beggars and the vagabonds. And he’s had them executed.”
“I heard. My heart does not bleed for the wastrels.”
Walt nodded and smiled in greeting at a soldier who had called out in salutation. “And did you hear that he had all the beggars rounded up and brought to a vast tent where they were served a mighty feast? And while they were eating, your man Vlad ordered that they be burned alive. See, he had the stools and benches soaked in oil, and the cloths upon the tables also, and when the order was given the whole lot of them, hundreds of the blighters, all went up like a bonfire.”
I scoffed. “If that had happened, Walt, I would have heard about it.”
“You don’t want to hear, that’s your problem, Richard. You have closed your ears to the truth of your friend.”
“Nonsense.”
“Did you hear what he done to that gypsy leader not a week last Tuesday?”
“No.”
Walt shifted closer. “Well, what he done was, he had the leader of this clan of gypsies boiled alive while his whole clan watched. See, his flesh was boiled all nice and so Vlad had the leader carved up into little pieces while his people, what was in irons, watched and despaired. And then, this is the worst part of the tale, so listen well, then he had pieces of the flesh forced into the mouths of every one of the gypsy clan. Force fed them their own lord and father, imagine that.”
I looked at him. “Where did you hear this?”
“One of Vlad’s lads, you know Michael One-Eye? He split that Saxon in two with his poleaxe outside Amlas.”
“I believe I do recall the fellow. He was there?”
“He swears it upon his mothers grave and all that is holy that his cousin Pepu was there.”
I chuckled. “Well, there you have it then. It did not happen.”
“Michael told me Vlad done a speech to the peasants who was watching. He said to them, he said, these men live off the sweat of others, so they are useless to humanity. Their lives are but a form of thievery. In fact, says Vlad, in fact the masked robber in the forest demands your purse but if you are quicker with your hand and more vigorous than he you can escape from him. But these vagabonds take your belongings gradually by their begging but still they take more. They are worse than robbers. I will see to it, Vlad says, that such men are eradicated from my land. And then he had the lot of them killed.”
I grunted. “That does sound like something he would say.”
Walt smiled, pleased with himself. “Told you so.”
“Silence now. The envoys are here.”
We knew that Sultan Mehmed and William’s policy of conquest was now to conquer across the Danube and secure at least the lowlands of Wallachia and the lower Danube all the way to the delta where it ran into the Black Sea. That part of the river was controlled by Vlad’s cousin Stephen in Moldavia.
Indeed, it was clear to all Christendom where the hammer blow would next fall.
The Turks would next attempt the conquest of Wallachia or Moldavia. Or both.
Pope Pius II called a congress of all Christian princes at Mantua for the necessary crusade. He even tried to create a new military order of knights, bearing the name of Our Lady of Bethlehem, who would be dedicated to waging war on the Turks while based on the island of Lemnos. But the Pope’s congress and his new order were born lame. Nothing came of the new order and it was quietly dropped, no doubt embarrassing the Pope. Worse, almost no kingdoms answered the call to take the cross.
It was no longer surprising to me that Christendom could not be relied upon. In England, the great lords loyal to Lancaster or York were fighting over the Crown. The French were pouting about a decision the Pope had made to favour Aragon’s suggestion for the throne of Naples rather than the pretender put forward by the House of Anjou. The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III decided to taunt the Pope by sending Gregory of Heimburg as his representative, a man who had been excommunicated. The Holy Roman Empire was moving ever closer toward open defiance of Rome and Gregory was apparently openly hostile to the Pope in person during the congress. Ultimately, he promised to send thirty thousand infantry and ten thousand cavalry to the Danube in support of the crusade, which would have been a magnificent force to have on the frontier. In fact, though, Gregory never even attempted to raise them and the whole thing was no doubt simply an overt snub for Pope Pius II.
Poland, too, was engaged in its protracted conflict against the Teutonic Knights and even commanded Moldavia, her traditional vassal, to avoid conflict. The Albanians, isolated and threatened as they were, had secured a three-year truce with Mehmed II and they refused to break it, preferring to stay on the sidelines. It was short-sighted, for they would soon fall utterly before the Turks but mortal men act almost always in their immediate interest rather than doing what is best for their nation.
In an act of complete desperation, Pope Pius II sent a monk named Fra Ludovico da Bologna halfway across the world to the east of the Turks territories. There, he urged the Mohammedan states in the far east of Anatolia to attack the Turks and so open up two fronts at once, drawing away their strength from both.
I imagine that Fra Ludovico da Bologna was met with the same response wherever he went. Something along the lines of what do you think we have been trying to do for a hundred years, infidel?
Pope Pius was certainly being industrious, although some would say he was being desperate. He travelled to Ancona on Italy’s east coast and declared he would lead the crusade in person but no one flocked to join him. It was certainly desperation that caused him to write to Sultan Mehmed II in an attempt to convert him to Catholicism.
I imagine William laughing down to his belly when he read that letter.
It was all rather pathetic. All it did was signal to our enemies that we were weak and disunited and desperate. They could scent our blood more than ever.
But Vlad Dracula responded to the Pope’s call.
He was committed to destroying the Turks and all Mohammedans. As his father before him, Vlad was a member of the Order of the Dragon.
So few were with us.
Michael Szilágyi was one of the few good and honourable men left in the Balkans and he swore he would wage war against the enemy. But Szilágyi made a fundamental error. He was carrying out forward reconnaissance in Bulgaria in preparation for the invasion we knew was coming. But he failed to take the proper precautions despite being in enemy territory and he was captured.
This great man had not long previously been in effect Regent of Hungary and had by his actions secured the crown for his nephew. But the Turks captured him and took him to Constantinople and was passed over to Zaganos Pasha; my dearest brother. There, William tortured him mercilessly for information about Hungary’s military preparations and the state of specific defences.
How much Michael Szilágyi gave up, I do not know.
But what I do know is that William had my friend and Vlad’s mentor sawn in half.
Soon after, a large party of Turkish envoys arrived from Constantinople. Vlad made them wait for days for an audience which was a deliberate and obvious snub. Many townsfolk in Târgoviște were made nervous by the presence of the increasingly agitated envoys, knowing as they did that any provocation made it more likely that war would begin. The soldiers and leaders amongst them, though, knew that war was inevitable. The only question was when it would begin.
Finally, Vlad had them brought to the castle and he awaited them in his hall in all his finery. The Turks were irritated by the sneering soldiers who escorted them so closely that they at times dragged the envoys by the arms. When they protested, the soldiers laughed and mocked them.
But on they came in their colourful robes and great headdresses of wound cloth with jewels set over the forehead.
When they bowed before Vlad III Dracula, then, their blood was up. The audience of boyars and burghers was clearly hostile and the envoys frowned and huffed to be so disrespected. Eve
n the priests scowled at them.
“Not a happy bunch of lads, are they,” Walt whispered.
“He means to send them back to Mehmed fully insulted.”
Walt shrugged. “Good for a laugh, I suppose.”
“It is an act of defiance. To shake his enemy and to show his men that he does not fear the Sultan. Hush, now.”
The Turks made their introductions and bowed. “I thank you, my lord Vlad, Prince of Wallachia, for welcoming us to—”
“What is the meaning of this?” Vlad said, his voice overwhelming them and silencing every murmur in the hall.
The envoy broke off and traded glances with his fellows. “My lord? I am afraid I do not understand—”
“How is it that you come to me so attired?”
The envoy looked down at his robes. “My lord, this is the clothing commonly worn by my—”
“Look around you, Turk.” Vlad commanded. “Look at the men in my hall. What do you see?”
All of the envoys looked at the hundreds of lords and soldiers and priests all around them, glaring in hatred. “I see the great and noble lords of Wallachia and no doubt of other Christian lands who serve—”
“What do you see upon their heads?”
He looked startled for a moment before recovering. “My lord,” he said and bowed. “At your court and at the courts of Christian monarchs, it is the custom for your people to bare their heads when addressing their king, their prince, as a sign of respect. And yet it is the custom of the Turks to wear such turbans as you see us wearing before you as our own form of respect. For us to remove our turbans would be signifying that we disrespected you and this of course we could never dream of doing, my lord.”
Vlad stared at him and allowed a heavy silence to descend once more. “Where are you, envoy of the Sultan?”
“My lord? We are in your fine hall, my lord. In the magnificent city of Târgoviște.”
