A Brief History of Vampires by M.J. Trow

Author:M.J. Trow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472107732
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

11

VLAD VOIVOD

BATTLE FOR THE CROWN

Vlad Ţepeş ruled Wallachia three times. Most of the stories attributed to him in the Saxon, Russian and Romanian tales belong to the central period that lasted from 1456 to 1462. But in 1447, he was still a prisoner of Murad II and the Turks.

News of his father’s and brother’s deaths reached him by the end of the year. The story, according to one tradition, is that it was told to him by Mehmed, already by this time, more than his father’s heir apparent. Another possibility is that the news was brought by a galloper, the boyar Cazan who had been Vlad Dracul’s chancellor and that it was he who brought the boy his father’s sword and dragon device. There is no doubt that in the complex, parasitical and rather ‘big brother’ relationship between the Ottoman Empire and Wallachia, the future Impaler’s position now changed dramatically. He was heir to Wallachia; not simply a voivod, which implies a warlord governing for someone else, but a prince with all the hereditary status that that entailed. He was officially freed from his position as hostage and given a rank in the Turkish army, although exactly what is unclear. Given that Skanderbeg had held a similar place earlier and that the janissary corps were made up of ‘foreigners’, this made perfect sense.

The vacuum created by Vlad Dracul’s death had already been filled. On 3 December 1447, János Hunyadi declared himself Prince of Wallachia, but this was merely to gain time to establish his protégé Vladislav II, son of Dan, in Dracul’s place. In Wallachia, there was no law of primogeniture, so that contention for the throne was a free for all. Ţepeş, now seventeen and tired of being an exile in an alien land, waited for the opportunity to snatch the throne back.

The chance came in September 1448 when the White Knight crossed the Danube and marched through Turkish-held Serbia, to join forces with Skanderbeg to the south. With him slogged perhaps 9,000 Wallachians under Vladislav, the whole army looting and rioting in true crusader fashion among the villages they found. In an eerie repetition of history, Hunyadi’s army met the Turks at Kosovo Polje, the Field of Blackbirds, the scene of the crusaders’ defeat by Bayezid the Thunderbolt in 1389. The chronicler Chalkondyles wrote:

On the left wing there was Dan [Vladislav II] who was [Hunyadi’s] great friend whom he had brought to the throne of the land of the Dacians because of his animosity for Dracula . . .1

Unusually, for a medieval battle that normally lasted hours, the second Kosovo extended for three days, although it must have been in reality a series of engagements. Between 17 and 19 October, Christian and Muslim harried each other. Estimates of numbers vary, but it is likely that Hunyadi commanded a little over 20,000 men. Even so he was seriously outnumbered by Murad’s 40,000. His German hand-gunners held the centre well but Hunyadi had not waited for Skanderbeg’s forces as was the plan and one account says that the Wallachians deserted.

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