Halfway down the Danube

The Tomb of Dracula

We visited Dracula's tomb last weekend.

(You know, it gives me a quiet but real pleasure to be able to write that.)

We've been living in Romania for well over a year and we haven't once blogged about its most famous son. And I know y'all have been waiting for it. So: a few words about Vlad Dracula.

Dracula -- the real, historical Dracula -- was, as everybody knows, a king named Vlad who lived about 500 years ago. This was back in the days when not-yet-Romania was a collection of petty kingdoms, under constant threat from the Hungarians on one side and the Turks on the other. The politics got mind-bogglingly complicated. Vlad ended up being king no less than three separate times. (His younger brother, who became his enemy, also got to be king for a while.) He also spent years in Istanbul with the Turks (as a hostage) and more years with the Hungarians (as a prisoner, then as a guest). It's a long story.

But here's the part that everyone remembers: Dracula was one hard bastard. Even in a time and place when rulers were often callous and cruel, Dracula was noted for an excess of fiendish malevolence. He was commonly known as Vlad Tepes (pron. tsep-esh), Vlad the Impaler, and he's supposed to have killed between 20,000 and 50,000 people by this means.

A couple of sample anecdotes, not for the squeamish:

"[Dracula] invited 500 boyars [noblemen] to a banquet and asked them how many princes had ruled in their lifetimes. They said they had lived through many reigns. Shouting that this was their fault because of their plotting, Dracula had them all arrested on the spot. The older ones were impaled; the others were marched 50 miles to Poenari where they were forced to build a mountaintop fortress. They worked a long time; when their clothes fell off, they worked naked. Most of them died, of course. And of course Dracula seized the boyars' property and passed it out to his supporters. In that way he created a new nobility, loyal to himself."

"A visiting merchant once left his money outside all night, thinking that it would be safe because of Dracula's strict policies. To his surprise, some of his coins were stolen. He complained to Dracula, who promptly issued a proclamation that the money must be returned or the city would be destroyed. That night Dracula secretly had the missing money, plus one extra coin, returned to the merchant. The next morning the merchant counted the money and found it had been returned. He told Dracula about this, and mentioned the extra coin. Dracula replied that the thief had been caught and would be impaled. And if the merchant hadn't mentioned the extra coin, he added, he would have been impaled, too."

A word or two on impalement. This method of execution seems to have been introduced into the region by the Turks, but it got picked up and passed around. It was brutal in its simplicity: two or three strong men held you down, while another one pounded a large stake through you lengthwise. They then lifted you up on the stake, popped it into a hole in the ground, and left you to die -- which could take hours or, if you were very unlucky, more than a day.

As I said, a Turkish innovation; but Vlad picked it up and ran with it. He seems to have actively enjoyed impaling people, sometimes doing it more or less on a whim:

"Dracula once noticed a man working in the fields while wearing a too-short caftan. The prince stopped and asked the man whether or not he had a wife. When the man answered in the affirmative Dracula had the woman brought before him and asked her how she spent her days. The poor, frightened woman stated that she spent her days washing, baking and sewing. The prince pointed out her husband's short caftan as evidence of her laziness and dishonesty and ordered her impaled despite her husband's protestations that he was well satisfied with his wife. Dracula then ordered another woman to marry the peasant but admonished her to work hard or she would suffer her predecessor's fate."

"Dracula... issued an invitation to all the poor and sick in Wallachia to come to Tirgoviste for a great feast, claiming that no one should go hungry in his land. As the poor and crippled arrived in the city they were ushered into a great hall where a fabulous feast was prepared fore them. The prince's guests ate and drank late into the night, when Dracula himself made an appearance. "What else do you desire? Do you want to be without cares, lacking nothing in this world?", asked the prince. When they responded positively, Dracula ordered the hall boarded up and set on fire. None escaped the flames -- and that was the end of their problems, as he had promised. "I did this so that no one will be poor in my realm," he said."

"On St. Bartholomew's Day in 1459 Dracula caused thirty thousand of the merchants and nobles of the Transylvanian city of Brasov to be impaled. In order that he might better enjoy the results of his orders, the prince commanded that his table be set up and that his boyars join him for a feast amongst the forest of impaled corpses. While dining, Dracula noticed that one of his boyars was holding his nose in an effort to alleviate the terrible smell of clotting blood and emptied bowels. Dracula then ordered the sensitive nobleman impaled on a stake higher than all the rest so that he might be above the stench."

Well, I did say they weren't for the squeamish.

Dracula eventually died and was, probably, buried at a monastery at Snagov. There's some controversy about this, mind. The burial area was excavated in 1931, and they did find a body -- a skeleton clad in silk, wrapped in burial cloths embroidered with gold, and buried with a crown and a goldern ring.

But... the skeleton was intact, whereas the historical chronicles state pretty clearly that Dracula was decapitated and his head sent to Istanbul for the viewing pleasure of the Sultan. To make matters weirder, the skeleton (and its accompanying treasures) seem to have gone missing during the chaos of the Second World War and the subsequent Communist takeover. They may have departed Romania in 1940, along with the wretched King Carol II, when he abdicated -- Carol made off with literally a train load of interesting stuff, and not all of it ever came back. And grabbing the crown and the gold while dumping out the old bones seems like the sort of thing Carol would do. But then again, maybe not. Nobody knows.

But Dracula probably was buried at Snagov at some point, and -- who knows? He might still be there -- tucked away quietly under some obscure corner, the gold-wrapped skeleton an elaborate red herring to fool would-be grave robbers.

Anyhow: we visited Snagov two weekends ago. To reach the monastery, you have to pay rather a lot of money (700,000 lei, or about $21) to a guy with a rowboat. He then rows you out to the monastery, which is on an island in the middle of the lake.

(The lack itself is a popular weekend getaway from Bucharest -- there are hotels and villas and whatnot all around it. The largest of the villas used to belong to Ceausescu, though I don't know if he built it or not. It's still there. It's quite large.)

We were the only visitors to the island. It's a small place, a few hectares. The monastery itself is a single rather small building, though it looks like there were once larger structures. The island is mixed trees and grass, and very green. The monks have planted a lot of flowers.

Alan ran off after a cow, and David toddled after him. The cow turned its head and mooed. Alan stopped dead in his tracks. David fell on his bottom and burst into tears. A burly monk with an enormous beard came over and smiled at us; David clung to my leg while Alan wandered off after some ducks, keeping a thoughtful eye on the cow.

There's a church, a very nice one. It dates back to the 15th century, in pieces, and is believed to have been built by Dracula himself. It was locked, but a young monk came along and let us in.

Inside the church was cool and dark. There were signs of renovation work everywhere, ladders and scaffolding and whatnot, but nobody was working. The walls were covered with paintings of saints and angels -- armed angels, brandishing spears and swords.

Up by the altar was a picture of Vlad and a single candle. Around the back was... well, I'm sure it's not right to call it a shrine. But that's what it looked like. A little one. Another picture of Vlad, set up like an icon, and some dried flowers in a vase.

We walked around for a while, admiring the paintings (which were really very beautiful) and occasionally lunging after the boys whenever they were about to pull something down on themselves. And then we gave the young monk some money, and stepped back outside into the green light of the afternoon, where the cow chewed its cud and bees droned cheerfully among the flowers, and got back in the little rowboat and went home.

And that was our visit to Dracula's tomb.

Posted by douglas at October 12, 2004 03:28 PM