DRACULA: HALLOWEEN VAMPIRE OR GUARDIAN OF CHRISTENDOM?

Think of Dracula, think of Bram Stoker, whose 1897 horror novel Dracula has inspired hundreds of progressively inferior vampire movies.

But Dracula was real – not the vampire, but Count Vlad III Dracula (A.D. c. 1428 - 1477) of Wallachia (now part of Romania). Known as Vlad III the Impaler but called Dracula (after the Order of the Dragon, a knightly order founded to defend Christendom against the Ottoman Empire and Islam), the Count’s brutality staggers the imagination. But as my personal physician Dr. Calin Braicu, a Romanian immigrant, says, “Count Dracula saved Romania from Islam.”

In the 1400s the Ottoman Turks were the dominant power in the Middle East, and the Sultan had designs on Eastern Europe. In 1442 Dracula’s father Vlad II was called to a diplomatic meeting with the Sultan and he brought his sons Vlad III (age 12) and Radu (age 6). But the Sultan arrested them and then released Vlad II on condition that he leave his sons as hostages. During his six years of captivity, Dracula observed and experienced Turkish brutality in the extreme, as well as the Sultan’s sexual abuse of Radu, and he developed a secret but intense hatred toward the Turks and Islam. He was a strong Eastern Orthodox Christian, founding the Comanus Monastery and frequently donating to and praying in other monasteries more than any other Wallachian prince before or after him. He also restructured the Wallachian Orthodox Church so the Metropolitan (similar to bishop) was chosen from the Cozia Monastery rather than appointed by the Patriarch of Constantinople. He later converted to Roman Catholicism, partly because he married into a Catholic family and also possibly to gain support from the West in his crusade against the Turks.

In 1448, after Dracula’s father was slain, the Sultan sent the young man back to Wallachia to rule it as a Turkish vassal. After internal conflict until 1456, Vlad was proclaimed voivode (prince) and promptly declared himself an ally of the Ottomans’ arch-rival, the Christian kingdom of Hungary. He then purged Wallachia of those boyars (nobles) who had appeased the Turks, and he created an army of loyal soldiers led by capable officers.

Next, he stopped the payment of annual tribute to the Sultan. In 1461, Sultan Muhammed II sent emissaries to Dracula’s mountaintop castle to demand tribute. The Count asked why they failed to remove their turbans in his court, and they responded that they had taken a vow to Allah never to remove their turbans before men. Vlad responded that “I shall uphold your law, so that you adhere to it firmly,” and he ordered his guards to nail the emissaries’ turbans to their heads!

Not surprisingly, Dracula soon found himself in full-scale conflict with the Ottoman Empire. And although artists’ portrayals make him look like a madman who just stuck his finger in a light socket, Dracula was in fact a firm and steady warrior and a skilled strategist and tactician. He knew his kingdom was no match for the Ottoman Empire in an all-out war. So, much like General Washington in America’s War for Independence, Dracula determined that his best strategy was to inflict such casualties and invoke such terror as to convince the Ottomans that Wallachia was not worth what it would cost to conquer it.

During the winter of 1461-62, he agreed to bring 50 Wallachian children as tribute to the Sultan. But that was a ruse. He placed his soldiers in the mountains, and at the appropriate signal they attacked and massacred the Ottoman army. Dracula took the two leading Muslim generals and, in “honor” of their high positions, impaled them on high stakes.

Shortly afterward, he led an army of 2,000 to a Turk-held fortress in Nicopolis. Speaking the fluent Turkish he had learned in captivity, he persuaded the guards to lower the drawbridge. He and his men then stormed the fortress and massacred 23,884 Turks. He then wrote to King Matthias of Hungary that “we will not flee before [the Ottomans’] savagery, but stand by all of the Christians, and if he will kindly lend his ear to the prayers of his poor subjects and grant us victory over the Infidels, the Enemies of the Cross of Christ, it will be the greatest honor, benefit, and spiritual help for Your Majesty … and for all true Christians.”

The Sultan raised an army of 150,000 to conquer Wallachia. Dracula fought them off with an army of only 30,000, using guerilla tactics, hiding his troops in the mountains, and launching night-time cavalry charges into the enemy encampments. This struck terror into the hearts of the Muslim soldiers.

And Dracula proved himself to be a master of psychological warfare. As the sultan led a march toward the Wallachian capital, they came upon the “Forest of the Impaled” – 20,000 Muslims impaled on stakes, surrounding Dracula’s castle for six miles in circumference. Chalkokondyles says, “the Turks, seeing so many people impaled, were scared out of their wits.” They quivered in their tents that night, and at dawn Dracula and his men descended from their mountain fortress and made a sudden charge into the Muslim encampment, cutting down countless Turks.

That morning the Sultan ordered a retreat, and his disheveled army returned to Adrianople in disgrace. European Christendom rejoiced, and even on the distant Mediterranean island of Rhodes where the Knights of St. John held out against the Ottomans, monks “tolled the bells and [sang] Te Deum to worship the glory of the Romanian prince.”

Raymond Ibrahim has recorded this and much more in his excellent book, Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam. In eight thrilling chapters he tells the stories of Duke Godfrey, El Cid, Richard the Lion-hearted, St. Louis, and others. And the last chapter is titled “Vlad Dracula: The Dread Lord Impaler.”

Yes, Dracula was brutal, but he fought a brutal enemy in a brutal era. At that time impalement was a common form of execution, especially among the Turks. And I believe my doctor is right: he saved Romania from Islam and helped preserve European Christendom. Certainly, the world needs more gentleness, more kindness, more love. But sometimes force must be met with force. Sometimes God uses strong, even brutal men to fight brutality and accomplish His will. I hope to see Dracula in heaven.

The true account of Count Dracula is far more compelling than the vampire story.

Too bad Bram Stoker didn’t think of that.

(Reprinted with permission from 1819 News)

Colonel Eidsmoe serves as Professor of Constitutional Law for the Oak Brook College of Law & Government Policy, as Senior Counsel for the Foundation for Moral Law (morallaw.org), and as Pastor of Woodland Presbyterian Church (woodlandpca.org) of Notasulga, Alabama. He may be contacted for speaking engagements at eidsmoeja@juno.com.

THE VIEWS OF SUBMITTED EDITORIALS MAY NOT BE THE EXPRESS VIEWS OF THE ALABAMA GAZETTE.