Dracula, Prince of Many Faces Page 5

  On a darker note, one of the most terrifying inventions associated with this period of technological progress in Europe was that of gunpowder, with its deafening noise and bright flash. It revolutionized warfare by making killing much easier than it had been during the Middle Ages, with the refined set of dos and don'ts instilled into the code of chivalry, which formed the most important aspect of the education of a young knight. The candidate was taught to respect human life, protect women and children, and observe the right of an enemy to seek sanctuary in a church. From the Renaissance onward, wars involved paid professionals who had little or no concern for the sanctity of human life. They were taught to kill, not to maim or to disarm. No distinction between soldiers and civilians was to be made any longer. The cannon, the monopoly of the tyrant, used by Dracula's armies, was the supreme instrument of destruction, and only exceedingly thick walls could save civilian populations from its devastations.

  In addition to this new and more terrible kind of warfare, epidemics, following the pandemic of the Black Death (bubonic plague) in the 1300s, which had reduced by a third the population of Europe, continued to ravage eastern Europe in cyclical recurrences during Dracula's period. Other dread diseases, such as syphilis, tuberculosis, leprosy, and smallpox, accompanied the Turkish conquest of the Balkans. Calamities such as these, along with natural disasters like floods, earthquakes, and swarms of locusts, noted by travelers particularly in eastern Europe, also fostered belief in false idols, the burning of “witches” and “warlocks,” consultation of oracles and soothsayers, and other types of superstitious behavior. Given the often resultant brevity of life, and the high incidence of infant mortality, the age of Dracula was, understandably, also a period of cynicism and despair. This fact helps to explain the cruelty and the low regard for human life exhibited by Dracula and his contemporaries.

  The Romanian Background

  Dracula became a crusader because his country was, by virtue of geography, the one most immediately threatened by the Turks. Thus it is impossible to understand the man, the statesman, and the soldier without knowledge of the essential geopolitics of his country, which even today is rare in the west. Indeed, many of the myths and confusions connected with his name originated in the fertile imaginations of Bram Stoker and countless filmmakers who persist in describing Transylvania, a western region of present-day Romania, as a mysterious land of gypsies, vampires, and superstitious peasants.

  The territories comprised by contemporary Romania have a very ancient history. Having been conquered by Rome in two successive campaigns (A.D. 101 and A.D. 105–106), natives of the land, called at that time Dacians, finally laid down their arms, while their king took poison to avoid captivity. A Roman occupation followed, involving massive migrations from all provinces of the Roman Empire. This land of opportunity beyond the Danube was labeled “Happy Dacia,” because of the fertile agricultural soil of the plain and the extensive mineral deposits of gold and silver that had been mined in the Carpathian Mountains ever since ancient times. Roman Dacia, although not exactly coincident with the frontiers of modern Romania, included much of the Danube plain and extended beyond the Carpathian Mountains into the plateau of southern Transylvania. In modern terms, one can visualize the backbone of the territory inhabited by the Dacians as forming a huge inverted S that extended from the borders of what is now Czechoslovakia down to the Danube, this backbone being formed by the mountains themselves. Roman power did not extend, however, either to the Black Sea or to the Dniester River. By A.D. 271, under heavy pressure by barbarian invaders, the military force and the Roman administration withdrew south of the Danube to what is now Bulgaria. Most historians argue that the bulk of the native population, who within this brief period of time came to speak a rough Latin dialect, stayed behind, seeking shelter in the plateau of Transylvania.

  Dracula's birthplace, Transylvania, is thus the region that was inhabited from ancient times by the Daco-Romans, or, as they came to be called because of the basic Latinism of their language, Romanians. For convenience, we shall use that designation from here on. The region beyond the heavily forested Carpathian belt, which the Hungarians gradually occupied until the thirteenth century, was described by their early chroniclers in Latin as “trans silva,” literally “beyond (or across) the forest,” a very accurate description of the densely forested mountains. The Hungarians were an essentially nomadic people who had come from central Asia; they still speak a Turkic language unrelated to that of other European peoples except the eastern Finns. The Hungarians established their kingdom in ancient Pannonia, the plain east of Romania, then extended their sway over Transylvania at the beginning of the eleventh century.

  A century later, the Hungarian kings invited another Asiatic tribe to whom they were related, the Szeklers, or Székely (Stoker erroneously says Dracula is of Szekler ancestry), whom some historians describe as the descendants of Attila's Huns, to their territory. The Hungarian word szek means “seat” and el means “beyond”; they were accordingly established “beyond the seat of power,” on the actual frontiers of Hungarian land. The Szeklers were followed by Germans, most of whom came from the Rhineland and Flanders and who likewise were given considerable land. These Germans eventually were allowed to establish self-governing cities and gained extensive trading privileges. They were collectively known as Saxons. In 1211, for additional protection of their lands from eastern invaders, the kings of Hungary gave charters to the renowned Germans of the Teutonic Order to defend their southeastern border for some twenty years.

  The Romanians who had survived in Transylvania during the period of barbarian invasion organized in small independent fiefdoms; they tended their sheep, practiced agriculture, and kept alive their language and traditions. They maintained a precarious autonomy during the period of Hungarian domination. Then, taking advantage of the devastations wrought by the Mongol invasion of Batu Khan in 1241, which had seriously weakened Hungarian power, they began to migrate from the plateau of Transylvania into the foothills of the Carpathians, in two separate colonizations. The earlier took place at the close of the thirteenth century when Romanians founded the principality of Wallachia—the word Vlach is simply a German word designating all Latin-speaking peoples. (The Romanians now prefer to call the area Muntenia, “the land of the mountains,” or ara Româneasc, “the Romanian land.”) Around 1352 another migration took place, from the northern Carpathian Mountains into what became Moldavia, named because of the proximity of the land to the Moldova River, where the new settlers considered themselves comparatively secure from Tatar or Hungarian attacks.

  When Wallachia, where Dracula was to rule, was first established as a state in about 1290, its political organization was rather crude. By the standard of the mosaic of small eastern European states, Wallachia was not a very large country, even if one considered the two Transylvanian duchies of Fgra and Amla to be under its rule. It consisted of 48,000 square miles of territory (roughly the size of the State of New York), and had a total population of half a million inhabitants, most of them Romanian, scattered in 3,220 villages and townships. The vast majority lived in the country, particularly in the hilly Carpathian districts, close to the Transylvanian plateau from which they had come. The Danubian plain to the south, in those days still covered in part by extensive forests, was sparsely populated because of the danger of Turkish incursions.

  Tîrgovite became the capital of Wallachia around 1385. Earlier capitals had been located closer to the mountains, for reasons of security. Brila, on the Danube, was the largest commercial port. Important fifteenth-century commercial centers were Tîrgsor, an inland trading center near Tîrgovite that has long since disappeared, and Rucr, a northeastern frontier outpost. Bucharest, much closer to the Danubian plain, although in existence as an urban center since the early Middle Ages, was too exposed to Turkish attack to acquire much significance. Few of these towns were fortified in the western sense, being surrounded at most by wooden palisades. Some of these townships were, in
point of fact, no more than extended villages. A handful of fortresses of Serbian or Byzantine design, occupying remote strategic positions on the mountains, the Danube, or the sea, at the eastern frontiers of the country, had been built by Dracula's predecessors, but on a very small scale, unlike the powerful German and Teutonic fortresses to the north. Most were intended only as places of refuge rather than as defensive bastions. One more powerful strategic fortress at the Moldavian frontier was built at the town of Chilia, on the northernmost branch of the Danubian delta outlets. Another important fortress, which fell to the Turks in 1416, was Giurgiu, built on a Danube island at great cost (with the revenues of salt mines) by Dracula's grandfather, to protect his southern flank against the Turks.

  The two main classes of Wallachian society were the boyars and the peasants. One could barely distinguish the beginnings of a middle estate in the fifteenth-century. Whether these boyars were originally free landowners, wealthy village leaders, or the legitimate descendants of an old military caste, in the western European sense of the term, is a problem best left to specialists. However, the boyars' claim to represent a native aristocracy is at least partially substantiated by the fact that, from the very birth of the principality, or even before its foundation, the term boyar was generally associated with tenure, not necessarily ownership, of land. In that sense, boyars possessed vast domains comprising dozens of villages. They constantly extended these by purchase, by marriage, or through princely donations. On these estates, like the feudal aristocracy in the west, the boyars were truly sovereign lords.

  In addition to land, members of the upper echelons of the boyar hierarchy were also granted certain titles of Byzantine origin, roughly corresponding to our cabinet offices. These titles were usually conferred in recognition of merit, military or otherwise, in the service of the ruling prince of Wallachia. The first boyar of the land was the ban, or governor, of the province of Oltenia. The ban, like other title holders, commanded the services of one or two aides, usually boyars of lesser importance. There were in addition countless court sinecures and minor appointments. The important functions brought substantial revenues. In the provinces other boyars were appointed governors of districts and castles. The title of “great boyar” secured for the holder of that rank a seat in the state council, which, together with the prince, ruled the land. In this duality of government, it was, at times, difficult to say precisely where true power lay.

  On the surface, the prince—domnul in Romanian, from the Latin dominus (lord); the Slavic voivode was less frequently used—possessed all the chief attributes of power. He was the formal sovereign and the head of the central and local administration; he raised and spent taxes, collected customs and revenues, dispensed justice, minted coins, and was commander in chief of the army and the police. In spite of these formidable attributes, his power was far from being absolute. Primogeniture, one of the more important means of consolidating centralized authority in the west, had not developed in Wallachia. In practice, any son of the ruling prince, whether legitimate or not, could be selected by the boyar council and then invested by the primate. This situation often led to factional strife and anarchy, as various boyar factions supported different princely candidates. The boyar council also had to be consulted to confirm important edicts and even to witness ordinary judicial transactions, such as land donations.

  A powerful instrument of princely power was the Romanian Orthodox church, loosely linked to the patriarchate of Constantinople since the conversion of the country by missionaries of the Eastern Orthodox church during the ninth century. In point of fact, from the foundation of the Wallachian principality, the Romanian church was to all intents and purposes autonomous under the rule of a native chief bishop, who styled himself “Metropolitan of Ungro-Wallachia and Exarch of the Plains.” His see was at Curtea-de-Arge, northwest of Tîrgovite. Theoretically, his authority extended to all those of the Orthodox faith in Transylvania. Serving him were other bishops and the abbots of a number of wealthy and powerful monasteries such as Tismana, Govora, Cotmeana, Vodia, Cozia, Glavacioc, Dealul, and Snagov. They owned vast tracts of land and countless villages, and had a seat in the princely council. These monasteries, which enjoyed immunities and privileges and were exempt from taxation, generally supported the central power. Princes occasionally resided and hid their treasures there. In times of danger, individual monasteries were compelled to make financial contributions to the war cause commensurate with their respective importance. In addition, there were a few Roman Catholic abbeys belonging to the Dominican, Franciscan, Cistercian, and Benedictine orders, some of them offshoots of more powerful Transylvanian foundations across the mountains. A Franciscan monastery existed at Tîrgovite, close to the prince's palace. The Roman Catholic church, however, had little influence. Roman Catholicism was always considered “foreign” and was suspect both for religious and political reasons, since the papacy was closely associated with Hungarian power.

  As noted, it makes little sense to speak of a middle class in fifteenth-century Wallachia. The development of certain towns, however, inevitably entailed commerce, and much of that commerce was in the hands of Transylvanian merchants, particularly German merchants from the Saxon communities, who enjoyed a virtual monopoly in certain Wallachian trading cities. In exchange for this monopoly the German merchants had to pay customs duties, which provided a lucrative revenue for the princely treasury. There were two traditional commercial roads from Transylvania into Wallachia, which followed two river passes across the mountains: one along the Olt River from Sibiu to Turnu Rou, the frontier point, the other from Braov to Rucar along the Dîmbovia River. Along these two passes, Transylvanian-manufactured goods found their way to such marketing towns as Tîrgsor or Tîrgovise. The obligation to buy and sell goods only in specific towns led to a considerable confluence of people during the trade-fair days of the year. From the prince's point of view it was important to be able to control foreign trade, both because of the revenues generated and because of the native artisan and mercantile class, developing at the beginning of the fifteenth century, that looked to the prince to protect its interests against Transylvanian and other competition.

  In terms of origin, all Romanian peasants were originally free. In actual practice a good many of them gradually became serfs on boyar and ecclesiastical estates, though the process was just beginning in Dracula's time. In case of war, the prince would naturally appeal to the boyars, who, together with their retainers and servants, fought under their individual banners. In addition, however, the ruler of the state also relied on the free peasants, who gave the Wallachian army a definite popular and peasant character in contrast to the feudal structure of the armies of neighboring states. Also in contrast to the armies of powerful feudal countries such as France and England, the Wallachian army often reached as many as thirty to forty thousand men in size, out of a total population of only half a million, a much higher proportion of soldiers under arms.

  Outside a major war, though, fought in defense of the fatherland, the prince could rely for repression on only a very small contingent of police and custom forces. There were, in addition, the prince's personal guard and the garrisons of fortresses. The absence of military power made the struggle against the nobility difficult in times of peace. A prince could certainly punish “disloyal” boyars or churchmen by confiscating their fortunes or lands, but only in certain, limited cases: treason was one, the absence of an heir another, nonpayment of taxes yet a third. When confiscation was justified by law, the prince often created new boyars from among his adherents.

  As a potential crusading power, the Wallachian principality during the fifteenth century had some characteristics that clearly distinguished it from its neighbors. Unlike Serbia and Bulgaria, where the Turks had previously encountered only weak feudal armies, Wallachia had an army of free peasants and boyars determined to defend their native soil. It seemed as if the social and political framework of the country as well as its unique military institutio
ns were awaiting a ruler able enough to exploit them against the enemy from without.

  Dracula's Ancestors

  Dracula came from a native ruling family the first known ancestor of which was Basarab the Great (1310–1352), a shadowy early ruler of Wallachia of whom little is known beyond his name and various legends carried in the collective memory of the Romanian people. Specialists in genealogy have noted that the name Basarab is of Oriental rather than Romanian origin; Basarab's coat of arms, with its device of three dancing black figurines, bears witness to his victory over the dark-skinned Tatars when his ancestors settled in the Romanian lands.

  The best known of the early Basarabs is Mircea the Old, sometimes referred to as Mircea the Great, Dracula's grandfather, who ruled with interruption during a period of some thirty-two years (from 1386 to 1418), quite a record for the period. Mircea built an extensive Romanian state, stretching north to south from the mountains to the Danube River, and east to west from the Black Sea to the Danube bend. The region included two districts of Transylvania, the duchies of Amla and Fgra, and the Banat region of Severin to the southwest. To protect his land from Hungarian encroachment on the north, he constructed a number of small outposts along the frontier of Transylvania. He built the powerful island fortress of Giurgiu in order to halt the growing expansion of the Turks, his immediate neighbors in Bulgaria to the south. His son Vlad, Dracula's father, was fond of recalling the strategic importance of Giurgiu by saying that, once the fortress was finished, “even the women of his land armed with their spindles would be able to conquer the Turkish Empire.” Dobruja, the region bordering the Black Sea that included the Danube delta, fell to Mircea in 1389. Mircea also fortified the stronghold of Chilia on the Danube delta. These achievements led Mircea to assume the bombastic title “God's anointed and Christ's loving autocrat Ioan Mircea Great Voevod and prince, with God's help ruler over Ungro-Wallachia and parts of the country beyond the mountains, the Tatar lands, the duchies of Amla and Fgra, ruler of the Banat of Severin and of both banks of the Danube up to the Black Sea.”