The Lord Count Drakulya Read online

  Drakulya and I stood there, impressed and slightly overawed at the force sailing south to meet us. “If we had a fleet,” Drakulya murmured, “or if the Venetians or Genoese had joined us, we could have ensured that these ships never reached their destination.” I nodded, not bothering to answer as I quickly tried to calculate the number of ships and the possible force they carried, realising that Drakulya’s figure of sixty thousand was no exaggerated description of the Turkish army. The Sultan intended to crush us. This was no lightning raid or punitive expedition but the same total commitment which had led to the fall of Constantinople and the complete subjection of Greece. Mohammed would have followed all the usual elaborate court ritual which preceded any major Ottoman invasion. His horse-tailed standard would have been set up in the imperial courtyard and then, accompanied by fanfares from the military bands, the prophet’s sacred banner together with other holy relics wrapped in forty silken covers would have been removed from their holy place in the throne room and carried out before him. These sacred objects would then be paraded before the city crowd, who would kneel, lips to the ground, murmuring the sacred name of Allah. Such an ornate and public ceremony was a proclamation by the Sultan against his enemies that he would return victorious. Looking at only half the force he intended to bring against us, I realised that all we could do was to delay this victory and make it as costly as possible for him.

  Drakulya, however, refused to concede anything. He stood on the brow of that hill, stark, black, against the skyline, and cursed the oblivious Turkish fleet. “Mohammed,” he shouted, “we are a free people and every piece of Wallachian soil which you take will be paid for in the blood of your soldiers!” A gull quietly hovering above us shrieked and cawed in reply as if mocking the Prince’s words, but Drakulya did not mind. He muttered a few further curses against Mohammed, his brother Radu, and other Wallachian traitors and, pronouncing himself satisfied, ordered a quick return to Bucharest.

  We returned there late that same evening to find Theodore, despite his secret treachery, had organised the army to move south the following day. Drakulya quietly agreed with this, informing Theodore of what we had seen and praising him for the strenuous efforts he had made in preparing the army to march. A consummate liar, if he had not told me personally, I would never have guessed that this was the same Drakulya who the previous night had passed sentence of death on his treacherous Greek Master of Horse.

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  The following afternoon the army left Bucharest and advanced south in three columns, Drakulya leading the centre with Theodore on the right flank and Gales, the quiet, saturnine Boyar leader, commanding the left. Before us went a screen of scouts, who were under strict instructions to link up with those outpost Drakulya and Theodore had set up along the bank of the Danube. The next morning we camped south of the village of Balteni with the Olt river guarding our right flank and the Dambovita guarding our left. Our only problem was to find out where the Turks would decide to cross the river, and within a few days a spy reported to Drakulya that the two Turkish armies had met at Vidin and they would attempt a crossing near the Wallachian village of Calafat. Once he had heard this, Drakulya ordered the army to move and we swung south-west across the Olt river, following the banks of the Danube, and encamped outside Calafat. It was impossible for us to discover what was happening on the far bank; the only thing we could do was to wait and send out reconnaissance patrols back along the river bank to ensure that the invasion did not take place elsewhere. Drakulya placed his army away from the river, issuing strict orders that no camp fires were to be lit so the Turks would not realise the whereabouts of his army.

  Drakulya’s tactics were soon rewarded. One evening in late May, our spies reported that despite the late afternoon mist they had detected low flat transport barges approaching the river bank. The camp was quietly aroused and Theodore instructed our archers to advance to the low cliffs which overhung the reedy marshy shoreline, Drakulya commanding them as he had decided he would personally supervise the ambush. The archers were held back while Drakulya and I positioned ourselves forward to gain a better view of what was happening. A thick heavy haze hindered our view of the river and at first I thought the reports were mistaken. Then, quietly, out of the mist came one, then a second, and then a low line of long black barges being poled quietly towards the bank. Each barge was full of men and, as they approached, I recognised the yellow coats and white turbans of the crack Janissary corps. Their silence made the approach all the more ominous. There was no drum beat, hardly a sound, except the lapping of the river and the dull thud as the barges came to rest in the mud and slime of the shallows. Faint orders were issued and the disembarkation began. The front barges discarded their loads and then poled out to make room for those still waiting. The Turkish strategy was to use these crack fighters to seize a beach-head, fortify it and thus prepare for a general crossing by the Turkish army.

  Drakulya lay flat and tense beside me, like some hunting wolf gravely watching the approach of some unsuspecting prey. He waited as long as he could. He knew that if he launched an attack too early then the Turks would simply lose a few men and quietly withdraw to another place. On the other hand he could not wait too long or he might face an army which would drive him back. At first the Janissaries seemed to be bewildered in their marshy disembarkation point but the officers with their ornate turbans softly ordered the men on to firmer ground. Only when they began to instruct the scouts to move forward did Drakulya suddenly come to life. He raised himself up on his knee and turned to the trumpeter, who had lain alongside him. A whispered order, then a long sharp trumpet blast pierced the silence of the river bank; the Janissaries froze for a moment, their eyes scanning the cliffs above them, anxious to see where the danger would spring from; the Wallachian archers raised themselves up, knelt, and at a second trumpet blast, loosed a lethal volley of arrows up into the air, saturating like light rain the place where the Janissaries were gathered. The river bank, so silent beforehand, was suddenly transformed into a screaming, bloody place of slaughter. The Janissaries were unable to advance on retreat. At the same time, the Turkish officers found it difficult to deploy their men and return the fire upwards, for the brow of the hill gave our archers added protection and deprived the Turks of any intelligence about what kind of force they were facing. They could only stand and look helplessly as their men dropped into the mud and slime, their bodies pierced with great feathered barbed arrows.

  One Turkish officer, driven mad by the ambush and the deadly hail of arrows, drew his sword and attempted to lead a group of his men in a suicidal attempt to secure mastery of the hill. He had only covered a few paces before he and his men danced and twirled like puppets in the falling shower of arrows, to collapse in pathetic yellow bundles. Eventually, the Janissary officers ordered their men back into the reeds towards the approaching barges, now quickly returning at the sound of battle and the screams and curses of the trapped men. Some of these barges came in too fast and simply knocked over and drowned the men waiting for them in the water; others got stuck in the mud, providing a free target for our archers, whilst a few were simply swamped by the continued fire of the Wallachian archers and became nothing more than floating coffins of soldiers, neatly feathered and covered in arrows. Of course some of the Janissaries could not swim and were tugged in by the current and pushed downstream, but a number were lucky and escaped on the waiting barges back into the mist and the security of the far bank.

  Drakulya waited until the last barge disappeared, then led us down to the marshy shallows to finish off the wounded. The archers were elated at their success and gave no quarter to any Janissary they found alive. On Drakulya’s orders a number were spared, two or three sent back to the camp, the rest lined up along the brow of that very hill which had afforded us so much protection. The prisoners, many suffering terrible wounds, were dazed and helpless but none asked for mercy and a few treated us with disdain. Each was made to kneel, their arms pinioned behind their backs
by the grinning Wallachian archers, then Drakulya with his great two-handled sword moved along the line and with one clean cut decapitated each of them, almost like a naughty boy with a stick knocks the petals off a line of flowers. The heads rolled away in a long spraying gush of red hot blood, and the bodies fell away, twitching and jerking to the soil. Drakulya, dripping with sweat, his chest heaving with the exertion, eventually finished his task, wiped his sword on the tunic of one of the dead Janissaries and ordered the archers to remove the heads of those Janissaries lying dead amongst the reeds or at the waterside. Once this was done one of the trapped barges was released, the heads stacked up on top, and the barge with its macabre cargo was pushed out into the stream by strong swimmers and left to float back towards the Turkish camp. Drakulya, however, was not finished. The bodies of the dead Janissaries were then impaled on stakes and left as a grisly monument around the water’s edge.

  I believe about four hundred Janissaries were killed that evening and Drakulya’s treatment of enemy prisoners and their dead was an attempt to strike terror into the Turks and break their morale, for if this happened to a crack Janissary corps, then, as Drakulya sardonically commented, the rest of the Turkish army would expect even worse. Of course, Drakulya knew the Sultan would soon attempt another crossing and that it was impossible to guard every entry to the Wallachian side of the Danube. On the night of Friday, 4th June, the Turks tried again and with greater success. The Janissaries and a number of Voynik mercenaries climbed into their barges and floated downstream looking for a suitable vantage point to disembark. Under the cover of darkness they eventually found it, opposite the town of Turnu where the river Olt flows into the Danube. Once Drakulya heard the news, he immediately led the cavalry east, leaving Gales in charge of the main encampment.

  Theodore and I accompanied the Prince and we found the Janissaries had, working by torchlight, established a beach-head and thrown up a rough stockade surrounded by a trench. Drakulya did not even wait to regroup the cavalry but in one wild gallop tried to sweep the Janissaries back into the river. Their officers, however, had chosen the place well. The trench broke our charge, leaving us to mill round the stockade while the enemy archers fired volley after volley of arrows over their comrades’ heads and into our ranks. On one occasion Drakulya, helmetless, his black hair streaming in the wind, managed to force his great warhorse across the trench and through the enemy stockade while he turned and twisted, lashing out with his sword at the Janissaries crowding around him. A number of us tried to follow but they were cut down and for a moment I thought Drakulya himself would be surrounded and either killed or taken prisoner. I managed to force my horse up behind him, protected from the Turks by their own stockade and Drakulya fighting in front of me; gradually my screamed curses and warnings pierced the madness in his mind and he joined me in a long wild gallop back across the trench and away from the river, our cavalry streaming behind us.

  The situation was serious for already our scouts had seen other barges approaching the Turkish emplacement. Some of them carried men but others brought long-barrelled cannon which would soon devastate our forces. Drakulya knew that he had lost the battle and that any attempt to drive the Turks back across the Danube would be suicidal. He played with the idea of bringing forward his own cannon but time was of the essence. The guns would arrive too late for us and probably just in time to be captured by the Turks so he reluctantly gave the order to withdraw and we fell back to our camp. A hasty council of war followed. Drakulya, myself, Gales and Theodore rapidly assessed the situation and reached the conclusion that the only course of action open to us was to retreat, regroup and await the Turkish advance. If we stayed on the Danube then it would leave Bucharest and other cities of the Wallachian plain open to the Turkish invader. At the same time there was also the possibility that the Turks might simply advance along the Danube and trap us with our backs against the river.

  So we marched north, Drakulya spreading his army out, a long fan of men, who burnt and devastated the land, driving the peasants and others before us. Crops were fired, wells poisoned, and what we could not consume we destroyed; any animals which could not be herded into the forest were slaughtered. The villages were emptied of people, all houses being burnt to deprive the Turks of any shelter. The cannon were left at Bucharest to defend it with a small garrison while the Prince’s household and family were sent north to his new castle on the river Arges for protection. At the same time Drakulya kept up constant harassment of the Turkish forces, the Wallachian cavalry using their knowledge of the ground and the thick forests which bordered the plain to launch surprise attacks, often at dead of night, on their approaching enemy.

  14

  Nevertheless the Turkish advance continued; the Sipahi cavalry with their turbanned helmets and highly decorative metal plate armour kept up their raids. While alongside them came their Wallachian allies, most of them cavalry who served as the spearhead of the Turkish army. Against these especially Drakulya mounted his attacks. None of them was shown mercy and any prisoners taken were impaled alive for their comrades to see. Drakulya also displayed himself as a master strategist, attacking the Turks where they least expected, refusing to grant them any respite or solace in their advance northwards and inflicting heavy casualties far beyond (so deserters informed us) what the Turks had expected. The Wallachian plain was turned into a blackened dust bowl. Fields lay scorched brown under a boiling summer sun; trees black, leafless stumps; rivers, brooks and wells no more than putrid masses full of fly-blown animal corpses. The towns and villages were emptied as the people fled north to the Carpathians. They expected no mercy from the Turks and received very little from their own prince. Drakulya’s hardened attitude lost him support amongst his own ranks; several Boyars and many of the peasants deserted to join their families, unable to accept Drakulya’s exacting price for liberation from the Turks. Others were only too pleased to throw off allegiance to a man they hated, ever eager to satisfy old grudges against him.

  Drakulya held fast. He barbarously executed those deserters he captured, accepted the fanatical loyalty of those who stayed and continued to harry the Turkish advance. He often led these attacks, appearing out of forest, secret gorges, and hidden valleys like some black Angel of Death as he charged amongst the surprised Turks, cutting them down, seizing the occasional prisoner and then disappearing as swiftly as he had come.

  I later learnt that Drakulya – or Kazikulu Bey, as the Turks called him – was regarded by them as half-demon, half-man. The speed and ferocity of his attacks and the hideous punishment meted out to prisoners only enhanced their feeling of dread as they advanced across scorched plains in the oppressive heat. Nothing lived or moved in it except columns of curly black smoke or hawks and buzzards hovering in the ash-filled air, following and feasting on the rich flesh of the dead. At night, the wolves came out of the forest, howling and plundering. The Turkish sentries were rigid with terror listening to the night sounds, trying to discover which were real and which were the animal or bird sounds we used as a signal for an attack. Then, if it came, Kazikulu Bey was in amongst them, the deadly reaper gathering lives with every sweep of his sword.

  The Turkish advance was slow but effective, using both the Dambovita and Prahova river valleys to protect their advance on Tirgoviste, relentlessly pushing us in front of them, circumventing for later action those places which could not be taken, such as Bucharest and Snagov. By the middle of June the Sultan apparently intended to take Tirgoviste and then pen Drakulya against the Carpathian Mountains. Despite their difficulties the Turks were confident of success. Drakulya’s brother, the pretender Radu, was already issuing proclamations as ‘Prince’ and we knew that several Boyars had gone over to Mohammed who tried to open negotiations with Drakulya and sent three Wallachians from Radu’s entourage under a flag of truce. The Prince received them, tore up their letters, spat in their faces and then had them flayed alive. Their skin was peeled from them, stuffed with straw and impaled by the roadsid
e, the rest of their corpses being fed to the camp dogs. There were no more negotiations.

  By July 1463 our force amounted to scarcely more than ten thousand men. Our ranks had been depleted by death and desertion although Drakulya had dismissed many to their homes, keeping only the cavalry with him. Some of these (about five hundred) were Boyars with their retinues under the direct command of Gales. Drakulya kept a close watch on them though he was equally attentive to Theodore and often, in the Greek’s presence, openly wondered how the Janissaries had been informed of where to land when they had crossed the Danube. Apart from a slight flicker of his eyes, Theodore dismissed this as a piece of idle speculation not requiring an answer, but Drakulya was satisfied that he was a traitor and one evening, as we saddled our horses for an attack on a Turkish encampment, he whispered to me to kill Theodore.

  I did, quickly while we returned to camp, calling over that I had certain information and then leading him aside into the darkness. When he turned to talk to me, I stabbed him under the heart, not caring about the startled look in his eyes. I closed his open mouth with my hand, stopping the sound of his cries and the red hot blood which gurgled out between his lips. He slipped down me, his hands scrabbling at my body, and slumped to the ground. I did not care. He was an animal who had threatened the only woman I had loved and betrayed my only friend. Drakulya was waiting for me. “Is it done?” he whispered. I nodded. “Good,” he replied and smiled, patting me on the shoulder. “You see, Rhodros,” he continued, “I always promised Theodore I would never kill him. You, fortunately, never made any such promise!”

  Drakulya then had Theodore secretly buried and gave out that he had died of wounds received in the night attack, silencing Gales’ half-muttered query with a glance.