Vlad III Dracula
and his external policy
To understand the external policy of Vlad III Dracula or any other Wallachian ruling prince I invite you to play a game with me. In fact it's a circus number called rope walking.
You are the Wallachian ruling prince. Think at your little thin country as being the rope under your feet. And the rope is 100m high above the ground.
Well, you have not a single safety net under you. In fact, you have two: one on the left side, called Hungarian Kingdom, the other on the right side, called Ottoman Empire. Unfortunately they are in continuous movement. You can only guess their movements because they won't tell you a word about. And they target not to save you, but to fish you!
Do you think it's difficult enough? Sorry, but nope! Let's make it harder. From the Hungarian side blows a cold icy powerful wind. From the Ottoman side a hot burning wind is coming. And once again you have to guess the power, the direction and the moment those winds start blowing.
Now you have two choices: to choose the right moment and jump in one of the nets or to stay on the rope. Many ruling princes chose to jump. Only few took the rope way and those are Romanian heroes. And Vlad III chose to stay on the rope.
The two powerful neighbors of Wallachia, the Kingdom of Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, were at the peak of their fight to keep/enlarge their territories, turning Wallachia into a battlefield. They both realized that the control over the Danube River could bring them many advantages.
Vlad III Dracula thought the same way. Choosing to fight against the Ottomans he realized he couldn't stay in front of them without help from Hungary. In the same time he didn't want to be a Hungarian vassal. But how to find the balance?
Vlad's first attempt to reach the Wallachian throne was sustained by the Turks. How he managed to gain the Sultan's trust I'll never understand. They needed a puppet, not a fighter. The Sultan Murat preferred him to his brother, Radu the Handsome (which in his hostage detention became a close friend of Sultan's son, the future Mehmet the Conqueror). This can show us how smart Vlad III was.
Vlad's second attempt to reach the Wallachian throne was sustained by Ioan Corvin of Hunedoara. You see? He managed again to gain the trust, this time, of the Sultan's greatest enemy. But Ioan Corvin died at the very beginning of second reign of Vlad III.
At that time Transylvania was split by the fights for power between the parties formed by Ioan Corvin of Hunedoara's successors (led by his brother-in-law Mikhail Szilagy) and the party of Hungarian noblemen that supported king Ladislau V the Posthumous. Mikhail Szilagy party followed Ioan Corvin policy of fight against Turks.
Vlad III took Mikhail Szilagy's side, who finally won managing to bring his nephew, Matthias Corvin (the son of Ioan Corvin of Hunedoara) to the throne (in 1548). Matthias Corvin and Vlad III had very close relationship at the beginning. But they deteriorated very soon because of several factors.
When King Matthias Corvin arrested Mikhail Szilagy and freed himself from his uncle custody, he left behind his father policy against Turks and turned his interest to western Europe. But Vlad III Dracula remained with Mikhail Szilagy's party and policy. The Hungarian great landowners never sustained Mathias Corvin to be their king (mostly because his half Romanian origin). But he had a consistent support from the two cities, Sibiu and Brasov.
If, at the beginning, Matthias Corvin mediated the conflict between Vlad III Dracula and the two towns, the Hungarian king gradually took the merchants side. The political and economical emancipation showed by the ruling prince of Wallachia wasn't what he really expected.
Many people think Vlad's attacks on Transylvanian towns were only cruel revenge acts. But the story isn't exactly as you know. In fact he strived for much higher aims than for a simple revenge. He wanted not only to strength Wallachian economy and secure his throne but also to keep control over the mountains passes, telling to Hungarian king that Wallachia isn't his vassal. Vlad the Impaler wanted to affirm his independence but never wanted a war with Hungary.
But what's the story of the conflict with Saxons?
To help Wallachian economy he asked Saxon traders to not charge fees for Wallachian traders who sell their merchandises in their towns. In exchange, they freely could sell their merchandises on Wallachian territories. When Saxons traders still charged Wallachians, Vlad restricted their Wallachian market to only 3 fairs charging them fees. Well, the answer of Brasov traders was bloody: they caught Wallachian traders and impaled them.
Only at this point Vlad III become guilty for vengeance because he caught Saxon traders from Targoviste and impaled them, too. He did nothing more than applying the Dark Edge slogan "eye for the eye".
Did Saxon people stop at this point? They sheltered and sustained in battle the claimant for Wallachian throne, Dan II. After few harassment battles Dan II and his army arrived close to Targoviste where Vlad III Dracula beat and caught him. Dan was decapitated and the prisoners impaled. Vlad overrun southern Transylvania as reprisals.
And the story repeated when Saxon people sheltered and sustained another claimant at Wallachian throne, the future ruling prince Vlad the Monk. Only this time Vlad didn't expect him to arrive at Targoviste gates. He overrun again southern Transylvania searching for Vlad the Monk who managed to run and hide.
Still, forced by the growing power of Ottoman Empire (or the lack of other claimants for Wallachian throne?), the two Christian neighbors signed a treat.
Later, when Vlad the Impaler won against the Ottomans, King Matthias Corvin didn't tell a word about who were the fighters and their leader. He assumed the whole victory with serenity even he didn't send a single man to help Wallachian prince.
Putting order in his country and counting on Transylvanian support, but also knowing that the Sultan is cached in his Anatolian campaign, Vlad stopped the tribute payment to the Turks. Never saying he doesn't pay, he simply delayed it over and over again.
But the Anatolia long campaign needed that tribute, too. The Sultan sent an army led by Hamza-beg to force Vlad to pay the tribute or to catch him. But Vlad crashed it. And he didn't stop here.
Vlad Dracula attacked and conquered during the winter 1461-1462 the fortresses on the line of Danube. People think it was a revenge action. Other people said it was a vainglory action. In fact it was another clever tactic of Vlad the Impaler. He spent several years of his life between Ottomans. He knew that Hamza-beg action was only the vanguard of the next events.
And he knew much more: the Ottomans' war tactics. They always started the movements of their big army in spring. Never in winter, when the movement is slow and the cold and the lack of food could decimate them. So, the Turkish Danube fortresses got no help in winter. With a surprising quick attack Vlad conquered the Ottoman fortresses laying on Danube River from Rahova to the place where Danube flowed into the sea, including Nicopolis.
He wined twice from this situation (at least it's that he hoped). First, by taking those fortresses he weakened the Ottomans power at Danube and implicit the support they could give to a Sultan future campaign. It was also a psychological consequence over the Ottoman soldiers. The news about impaling spread quickly and drove the fear into their souls. But he also hoped that clearly showing his intentions against the Ottomans and his skills as an army leader to Matthias Corvin he'll get the support he need to win the war.
That's why in his letter from February 11th 1462 addressed to the Hungarian king the ruling prince wrote a detailed report of the campaign, telling him about the fortresses conquered as well as the number of dead Turks (23883) and asking his ally for help in the future war against the Ottomans. Unfortunately, the Hungarian king didn't do anything to help him. He left Buda in August with the declared intention to help Vlad's campaign. But at this time the fights between Vlad III and the Sultan was already stopped.
Well, the Sultan didn't wait for that help to come. As Vlad supposed, he started to move his great army in spring. Vlad III Dracula convoked his own "greater army", a local notion meaning all the men capable of carrying weapons, counting 25000-30000 fighters. Because of the great difference between the two armies, Vlad had to use tactics and strategies meant to prevent the actions of the Ottoman army, depending first, on the skill of the leader and second, of the courage and the devotion of the soldiers. And he has had plenty of both.
So he applied the old Romanian winning tactics: the crops wasting, the wells poisoning, the quick attacks over the enemy units searching for food/water and surprise attacks at night resting time.
The night attack was mentioned by various sources. Among them, the chronicler Laonic Chalcocondil states that "the brave ruling prince himself got in the middle of the Ottoman camp, disguised as a spy to get information in order to locate the sultan's tent to assassinate him". A lot of soldiers were killed, but the assassination of the sultan failed.
The chronicler Laonic Chalcocondil tells us that Turks caught a Wallachian soldier that night. They asked him to reveal information about the Wallachian army threatening him with death. He didn't tell them a word except he was not afraid to die. The vizier, admiring the soldier behavior, told him that the Wallachian ruling prince could rise to a big power with such an army and released him.
"The forest of the impaled people" show was another winning tactic. A terrifying view: along three kilometers they saw a forest of stakes and about 20000 bodies were stuck in these stakes (as Chalcocondil wrote). The sultan, "defeated and ashamed", as chronicler Mikhail Doukas asserts, gave the retreat order, "with no pray, no victory, and having lost many of his men". The sultan himself admitted the failure of his expedition saying he "couldn't get the country away from a man who does such great things", statement that was also recorded by Laonic Chalcocondil.
After his own withdrawal from that campaign, the Sultan left enough army behind. So that what Vlad dreaded most came true. His boyars betrayed him. Because of the country resources attrition, he was forced to "trust" Matthias Corvin. Wrong move, but he had no other choice. Instead of the help he expected he was arrested.
Scholars say the Matthias Corvin' reason was to give an explanation for his own passive attitude against the Turks, showing a guilty person. This may be. But let's think a little bit. Vlad's father and his brother were killed because of their alliance with the Turks. Then how happened that Vlad was only arrested?
I think the king Matthias Corvin had a second hidden reason for this. He was scared by the skills and the power Vlad III could have if his intentions were to annex Transylvania. So, he had to quickly remove him from Wallachian throne. It's known that Matthias Corvin missed all skills a military leader needed. But what if he kept "the specialist" in his own backyard, at his own disposal? That can explain the "mild detention" that Vlad had. He was never put into a prison cell. It was rather a forced staying.
Matthias Corvin also managed to disrate Vlad in Europe's eyes. The first German pamphlets about Vlad Dracula were printed in Vlad's Visegrad detention time. This way the Hungarian king assured that Vlad would never receive direct support from any of Western Europe kings/princes.
Despite Matthias Corvin's fear, Vlad hadn't had expansion thoughts. Vlad III Dracula external policy was centered on Wallachian independence of the two powerful neighbors: Hungarian Kingdom and Ottoman Empire.
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