Vlad Tepes "Dracula"

Romania is a country in East-Central Europe. In ancient times, the Roman Empire occupied Dacia, a province on today’s Romanian territory. For almost one thousand years after the Romans occupied Dacia, many people migrated from Asia into Europe and tried to pass through this territory, which Romanian people fought to protect. Today’s Romania consists of the three historical principalities of Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia. While many similarities exist among the three principalities and their people, such as language and customs, they have different histories. While Transylvania was part of the Habsburg Empire for many years, Moldavia and Wallachia were vassal states to the Ottoman Empire. Transylvania is located in the central and western part of Romania, Wallachia is south of the Carpathian Mountains and north of Bulgaria, and Moldavia is in the eastern part of Romania where it borders to the Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova.

Vlad the Impaler, also known as Dracula, was born in Sighisoara, a medieval town in Transylvania, in 1431. He served three terms as Voievod of the Romanian people in Wallachia over a period of 30 years. His first term lasted for two months in the fall of 1448; the second was between 1456 and 1462. Vlad was elected for a third term in 1476 and served only for two months before his death. Vlad wanted to make the political position of Voievod very powerful. Many years of fighting for power created instability within the country. At the same time, the boyars (the Romanian nobility) abused and tortured the peasants in order to get more taxes. These factors hindered the country’s resistance to an outside invasion. Vlad understood that the main problem causing the instability of the state was due to the internal conflict between the nobility that wanted to gain power. He became known beyond Wallachia’s borders as a successful fighter against the Turks, but also as a ruthless ruler. Notorious for his brutal punishment methods, he gained the name Vald the Impaler after his favorite form of punishing his enemies—impaling them on wooden stakes. His method of law enforcement was simple: all criminals and personal enemies deserved the death penalty. They had to die in agony. A few months after Vlad began his third term in 1476, the Turks attacked again. Vlad the Impaler was killed while fighting near Bucharest in December 1476. Some say he died at the hands of a Turkish assassin, posing as a servant, or that he was accidentally killed on the battlefield by his own men because he had disguised himself as a Turk to confuse the enemy. His body was buried at the island monastery of Snagov, which he patronized.