To Vlad the Impaler the year 1476 was a tragic and sad chapter.
After his reinstatement on the throne was delayed for almost two years, his last reign was as short as the first. It took prince Basarab Laiota only a few weeks to return with Ottoman support and kill him.
Although it is known that he participated in several campaigns under Matthias Corvinus as an army general, we can be only certain of his acts in the winter of 1475 to 1476.
He participated in the battle of Bosnia, where he used one of his signature methods to conquer the city of Srebrenica. During the day of a local fair, 500 of his people gained entrance disguised as merchants and slaughtered the garrison.
The Turks had come to be horrified only by hearing his name!
When, in the late spring of 1476, his cousin Stephen the Great was attacked by the Sultan, Vlad gathered troops in Transylvania and marched with Stephen Bathory [uncle of Elizabeth Bathory] to help Moldova.
Although they did not arrive in time to prevent their loss of the battle, they helped Stephen the Great to drive out the Turks out of his land.
Only then did the three cross the border in Wallachia and Vlad was on the throne of Targoviste for a third time with the help of Stephen the Great and Stephen Bathory.
But he was unable to stand on it for a long time – in the end it was the noblemen who betrayed him.
According to legend Dracula was beheaded and his head was sent to the Turkish Sultan as a reassurement that the dreaded Wallachian prince was dead. His head was exposed in a square in Constantinople so that the Turks could once again feel safe and trust their ruler again after the epic fail represented by the campaign the Sultan had started against Dracula.
For many years is was believed that the body of Vlad the Impaler had been buried at the monastery of Snagov, but recent excavations contradict these data. NO bones were found to match the period of Dracula, and some grave historians hypothesize that they were actually switched to another grave to protect Dracula`s last resting place – recent theories rank the monastery of Comana as a more probable burial site.
๑۞๑ Related:๑۞๑
† Vlad the Impaler
† Count Dracula
