The return of this young man with ties to both the Ottoman Empire and Hungary pleased the boyars of the Walachian council. Not to mention, he was only a naive boy in his twenties. They relished the thought of how easily it would be to control him.
The Ottoman envoy pointedly reminded Vlad that he would still need to present tribute and customary gifts to the empire as before, and the voivode obediently agreed. The envoy returned home and recommended that the sultan wait and see how the Walachia situation developed.
However, Vlad wasn’t as meek as those around him had assumed. This young man—who’d been tossed around by the great powers, lived fearing for his life in exile, and amassed a wealth of knowledge from his various benefactors—had finally been given an opportunity to spread his wings. No one yet realized that those wings had grown as large as a bird of prey’s or a dragon’s, tipped with claws sharp enough to rip and tear his enemies to pieces.
Vlad began by purging himself of the boyars who meddled with his government.
His father and brother had both been killed the year before his first reign. Rumors at the time linked the murders to Hunyadi, but having come to know the man personally during his years of exile, Vlad reasoned that he hadn’t conceived the plot to assassinate them. The Walachian boyars were those most affected by any issues related to the voivode, so they raised the most suspicion. Vlad needed to crush them and rid himself of the main culprits of his family’s murder.
He rooted out the boyars involved in the illicit trade of agricultural products and other goods, arresting them and sentencing each one to death by impalement. This punishment was typically reserved for theft or other similar crimes, so dealing with the culprits in this way incensed the boyars, who became openly hostile toward Vlad.
The relationship between Walachia’s voivode and boyars originally served as a way to avoid internal conflict involving succession of the ruler. The system of having many aristocratic families swear fealty to a single voivode had been created to benefit society and enable the voivode to protect the nobility. So long as that balance remained intact, the stability of the country would be maintained.
However, when the aristocrats used this system to secretly amass power and exploit farmers and merchants, the nation was thrown into turmoil and political corruption spread. Vlad intended to rectify this cycle of depravity.
First, he assigned people from lesser aristocratic families despised by the more powerful ones to fill the vacant positions left by the executed boyars. He chose his appointees carefully, selecting retainers for their wise judgment regardless of stature. Naturally, these lower families were grateful to Vlad and became reliable allies.
Next, he restructured the military, creating a standing army controlled directly by the government.
Until then, the Walachian army had relied solely on traditional knights drawn from the retainers of the great aristocratic houses. Their allegiance was first and foremost to the boyars, resulting in an army that could turn on the government at the whim of its masters.
Vlad now commanded an army to resist this threat. He began to recruit powerful fighters—a call that was answered by the likes of talented mercenaries and farmers who still remembered how to wield a blade. They didn’t carry the blood of knights, but they were bold and tenacious men with experience on the field of war. Vlad selected the best of the group to create his own personal guard who served to protect him from assassination. His father, brother, and uncle had all been murdered, so it was highly likely that he might suffer a similar fate. He wanted to do everything he could to separate himself from that possibility.
Death would not take him until Walachia grew stronger.
Until he could announce far and wide that no major power would control them.
Until they gained independence and became a powerful nation envied by all the world.
Vlad decisively handled domestic problems that would give any normal person pause, tackling them with unbridled faith in his homeland. When the Black Death swept through the region, he burned any infected village to ashes, corpses and all, to ensure the disease wouldn’t spread. In the wake of these actions, people began to slander Vlad, saying that he enjoyed burning poor peasants alive, but it didn’t bother him in the least. He needed to eradicate the disease in order to rebuild the nation and make it stronger.
He didn’t mind being called a ruthless tyrant.
Because everything he did, he did for his country.
1462. Six years after Vlad’s reinstatement as voivode.
The Ottoman Empire raised the tribute demanded of Walachia to ten thousand gold ducats, which Vlad used as an opportunity to refuse payment for the first time. It was a direct challenge to the Ottoman Empire.
Eleven years earlier, Mudan II had been succeeded by Mehmed II as sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Irritated at the impudence of the “backwater boy” voivode, the new sultan promptly sent an army of elite soldiers to Walachia. Armed with swords and spears and protected by tough armor, these imperial soldiers quickly made their way through the vassal state of Bulgaria and crossed the Danube to attack Walachian land.
Walachia had entered into a full-scale war, but with the superior number and quality of the Ottoman soldiers, they couldn’t hope to beat them head-on.
Vlad purposely let the imperial army penetrate deep into his lands, then used the forests and mountains to launch repeated surprise attacks and nighttime raids. He evacuated his people to the mountains and torched the empty towns to ensure the imperial army couldn’t raid them for food. The nerves of the imperial soldiers frayed in this unfamiliar land as lack of food and water caused their bodies and minds to deteriorate. Meanwhile, the Walachian army hid in the forests, striking from where their enemy couldn’t see and purposely attacking while their opponent slept. After harrying them for a while, the army would retreat to the overrun forests and mountains where the imperial soldiers couldn’t pursue them.
The Ottomans began to steal food from one another, disobey orders while blaming the ineptitude of their commanding officers, and flee from battle in great numbers. Eventually, one particular rumor started to spread among their ranks:
“Demonic warriors fight with the Walachian army—a ferocious father and son as wicked as Voivode Vlad himself.”
The pair they referred to were the captain of Vlad’s personal guard, Razvan, a hero who’d fought in many battles, and his eighteen-year-old son George.
Both had gained their positions through promotions from Vlad and so were fiercely loyal to the voivode. Within the small territory they held, the two were revered by the people as the kindest of souls. Yet when they set foot on the battlefield, they transformed into wild warriors who slaughtered their enemies without mercy.
They commanded their troops from atop their beloved horses, assaulting the imperial army like a tempest. Upon seeing them, the Ottoman soldiers would cower in fear, as if they’d encountered the devil himself. Even the pair’s horses seemed ferocious as they mercilessly trampled enemy soldiers and cried out like monsters.
Razvan and his son swung their swords, cutting through the enemy ranks, slashing and stabbing, sending heads flying. The gushing blood painted the surrounding area red. Not even the imperial commander could escape their assault. They cut him down and thrust a spear through his throat before he even had the chance to beg for his life.
Watching Razvan and his son fight, the Walachian soldiers rejoiced in having these Gods of war on their side. While the pair showed their enemies no mercy, they paid careful attention to their allies. They understood the hardships of the lower classes and always showed them kindness, even on the battlefield. They protected fellow soldiers or wounded men who fell behind and led charges from the front of the line. When the soldiers’ resolve wavered at the state of the war, father and son would rouse their spirits with impassioned speeches or calm them with logical explanations. They commanded their forces with quick judgments and swift actions, and their soldiers followed them with admiration. Razvan and George were closer and more important to them than Vlad.
Knowing that the Ottoman army was suffering, Vlad struck an additional blow to their morale.
He mobilized a large group of men and marched to a field several miles from Târgoviște, where he impaled twenty thousand imperial soldiers sentenced to death.