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The Reign
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The ruins of Dracula's palace (the Ancient Court). With the help of his Turkish army, Dracula seized the Walachian
throne. After two months, Hunyadi forced him into exile in Moldavia. Again
Vladislav II became Walachia's prince.
In 1456 Dracula invaded Walachia and took back his throne.
He established his capital at Tirgoviste - you can still see the
ruins of his palace there. He is considered an important figure in Romanian
history because he unified Walachia and resisted the influence of foreigners.
Dracula's subjects respected him for fighting the Turks and
being a strong ruler. He's remembered today as a patriotic hero who stood up to
Turkey and Hungary. He was the last Walachian prince to remain independent from
the Ottoman Empire.
Dracula created a very severe moral code for the citizens of
Walachia. You can guess what happened to anyone who broke the code. Thieves were
impaled, even liars were impaled. Naturally there wasn't a lot of crime in
Walachia during his reign.
 In 1462 Dracula attacked the Turks to drive them out of the
Danube River valley. Sultan Mehmed II retaliated by invading Walachia with an
army three times larger than Dracula's. Dracula was forced to retreat to his
capital, Tirgoviste. He burned his own villages and poisoned wells on the way so
that the Turkish army wouldn't have any food or water.
When the sultan reached Tirgoviste, he saw a terrifying scene,
remembered in history as "the Forest of the Impaled." There, outside
the city, were 20,000 Turkish prisoners, all impaled. The sultan's officers were
too scared to go on - Dracula had won again.
The Turks and boyars helped Dracula's little brother Radu fight
against Dracula. Dracula's wife was so frightened that she threw herself from
the upper battlements. The Turks seized the castle, but Dracula managed to
escape through a secret tunnel and flee from Walachia.
The new king of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus imprisoned him in a
tower. Dracula remained in Hungary for twelve years.
But he was still the same old Dracula. He impaled rats and birds
for fun. Once a thief broke into his house and a Hungarian captain followed him
to arrest him. Dracula didn't kill the thief - he killed the officer. Why?
Because the officer was a gentleman, and should have known not to enter a house
uninvited.
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RoDI
ISOC
IWA
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