Vlad the Impaler, Neagoe Basarab and Wallachia in the 15th–16th Centuries

After the death of Mircea the Elder, Wallachia went through a period of rivalry for the throne between the branches of the Basarab family, backed either by Hungary or by the Ottoman Empire. Vlad II, called Dracul, ruled in 1436–1442 and 1443–1447. He was admitted to the Order of the Dragon by Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg, which is why he came to be known as “Dracul”. He was killed in 1447, near Bălteni, together with his eldest son Mircea, and a period of instability followed in which the Dănești and the Drăculești disputed the throne.

Vlad III, nicknamed the Impaler (Țepeș), the son of Vlad Dracul, ruled three times: in 1448, in 1456–1462 and in 1476. During the six years of his main reign he tried to strengthen princely authority, to curb the power of the rebellious boyars and to impose order. His harsh punishments, above all impalement, earned him the reputation of a terrible ruler, although the German and Russian sources, written by his enemies, sometimes exaggerate. At the same time, he protected merchants, punished theft and encouraged trade, and in popular tradition he is regarded as a just ruler.

Vlad the Impaler refused to pay tribute to Sultan Mehmed II and, in the winter of 1461–1462, attacked the Ottoman territories south of the Danube, destroying fortresses and killing about 24,000 people, as he himself wrote in a letter to Matthias Corvinus. In 1462 the sultan launched a great campaign. Vlad could not confront the far more numerous Ottoman army directly, so he used scorched-earth tactics. On the night of 16–17 June 1462 he attacked the sultan’s camp near Târgoviște in the so-called “Night Attack”, which terrified Mehmed.

Vlad’s brother, Radu the Handsome, backed by the Turks, won the throne, while Vlad was arrested by Matthias Corvinus at Brașov and held prisoner at Buda and Visegrád for about twelve years. He regained his throne in 1476 with the help of Stephen the Great and Stephen Báthory, but died in battle at the end of that same year, near Bucharest or Snagov. He is believed to have been buried at Snagov Monastery. The legends about him inspired the novel “Dracula”, published by the Irish writer Bram Stoker in 1897. The exact circumstances of his death are unknown, and the place of his burial remains disputed among specialists.

Neagoe Basarab (1512–1521) was a learned ruler and a diplomat. Between 1512 and 1517 he built the monastery at Curtea de Argeș, a masterpiece of medieval Romanian architecture. He wrote “The Teachings of Neagoe Basarab to His Son Theodosius”, the first great literary work in Slavonic in Romanian culture, a treatise on the role of the ruler, on faith and on morality, with ideas in common with those of the European humanists. During his reign Wallachia enjoyed a period of relative peace, and in 1521 the first document in the Romanian language appeared, “Neacșu’s Letter”.