The greatest threat to Vlad’s position was the rivalry in southeastern Europe between the Ottoman Empire and the Hungarian Kingdom. Following family traditions, Vlad decided to side with the latter. To the end of the 1450s there was once again talk about a war against the Turks, in which the king of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus would play the main role. Knowing this, Vlad stopped paying money to the Ottoman in 1459 and around 1460 made a new alliance with Corvinus, much to the dislike of the Turks, who attempted to remove him. They failed; later, in the winter of 1461 to 1462 Vlad crossed south of the Danube and devastated the area between Serbia and the Black Sea, leaving over 20,000 people dead.
In response to this, Sultan Mehmed II, the recent conqueror of Constantinople, raised an army of around 60,000 men and in the spring of 1462 headed towards Wallachia. With his army of 20,000-30,000 men Vlad was unable to stop the Turks from entering Wallachia and occupying the capital Târgovişte (June 4, 1462), so he resorted to guerrilla war, constantly organizing small attacks and ambushes on the Turks. The most important of these attacks took place on the night of June 16/17, when Vlad and some of his men allegedly entered the main Turkish camp (wearing Ottoman disguises) and attempted to assassinate Mehmed. The Turks eventually left the country, but not before installing Vlad’s brother, Radu the Handsome, as the new prince; he gathered support from the nobility and chased Vlad to Transylvania, and by August 1462 he had struck a deal with the Hungarian Crown. Consequently, Vlad was imprisoned by Matthias Corvinus.
[edit] In captivity
The exact length of Vlad's period of captivity is open to some debate. The Russian pamphlets indicate that he was a prisoner from 1462 until 1474. Apparently his imprisonment was none too onerous. He was able to gradually win his way back into the graces of Hungary's monarch; so much so that he was able to meet and marry a member of the royal family (the cousin of Matthias) and have two sons who were about ten years old when he reconquered Wallachia in 1476. McNally and Florescu place Vlad III the Impaler's actual period of confinement at about four years from 1462 to 1466. It is unlikely that a prisoner would have been allowed to marry into the royal family. Diplomatic correspondence from Buda during the period in question also seems to support the claim that Vlad's actual period of confinement was relatively short.
The openly pro-Turkish policy of Vlad's brother, Radu (who was prince of Wallachia during most of Vlad's captivity), was a probable factor in Vlad's rehabilitation. During his captivity, Vlad also adopted Catholicism. It is interesting to note that the Muscovy narrative, normally very favorable to Vlad Ţepeş, indicates that even in captivity he could not give up his favorite pastime; he often captured birds and mice which he proceeded to torture and mutilate — some were beheaded or tarred-and-feathered and released, most were impaled on tiny spears.
Apparently in the years before his final release in 1474 (when he began preparations for the reconquest of Wallachia), Vlad resided with his new wife in a house in the Hungarian capital (the setting of the thief anecdote). Vlad had a son from an earlier marriage, Mihnea cel Rău. His first wife, whose name is not recorded, died during the siege of his castle in 1462. The Turkish army surrounded Poienari Castle, led by his half-brother Radu the Handsome. An archer shot an arrow through a window into Vlad's main quarters, with a message warning him that Radu's army was approaching. McNally and Florescu explain that the archer was a former servant of Vlad who sent the warning out of loyalty despite having converted to Islam to get out of enslavement by the Turks. Upon reading the message, Vlad's wife flung herself off the tower into a tributary of the Argeş River flowing below the castle. According to legend she remarked that she "would rather have her body rot and be eaten by the fish of the Argeş than be led into captivity by the Turks." Today, the tributary is called Râul Doamnei (the Lady's River).
[edit] Return to Wallachia and death
See also Battle of Vaslui
Around 1475 Vlad the Impaler was again ready to make another bid for power. Vlad and voivode Stefan Báthory of Transylvania invaded Wallachia with a mixed force of Transylvanians, a few dissatisfied Wallachian boyars, and a contingent of Moldavians sent by Vlad's cousin, Prince Stephen III of Moldavia. Vlad's brother, Radu the Handsome, had died a couple of years earlier and had been replaced on the Wallachian throne by another Ottoman candidate, Basarab the Elder, a member of the Dăneşti clan. At the approach of Vlad's army, Basarab and his cohorts fled, some to the protection of the Turks, others to the shelter of the Transylvanian Alps. After placing Vlad Ţepeş on the throne, Stephen Báthory and the bulk of Vlad's forces returned to Transylvania, leaving Vlad in a very weak position. Vlad had little time to gather support before a large Ottoman army entered Wallachia determined to return Basarab to the throne. Vlad's cruelties over the years had alienated the boyars who felt they had a better chance of surviving under Prince Basarab. Apparently, even the peasants, tired of the depredations of Vlad, abandoned him to his fate. Vlad was forced to march to meet the Turks with the small forces at his disposal, somewhat less than four thousand men.
There are several variants of Vlad III the Impaler's death. Some sources say he was killed in battle against the Ottoman near Bucharest in December of 1476. Others say he was assassinated by disloyal Wallachian boyars just as he was about to sweep the Turks from the field or during a hunt. Other accounts have Vlad falling in defeat, surrounded by the bodies of his loyal Moldavian bodyguards (the troops loaned by Prince Stephen remained with Vlad after Stephen Báthory returned to his country). Still other reports claim that Vlad, at the moment of victory, was accidentally struck down by one of his own men. Vlad's body was decapitated by the Turks and his head was sent to Istanbul and preserved in honey, where the sultan had it displayed on a stake as proof that Kazıklı Bey was dead. He was reportedly buried at a monastery located near Bucharest, yet the exact place of his burial remains unknown, as excavations at Snagov monastery, usually mentioned as his final resting place, have found no human remains.
[edit] Legacy
Vlad the Impaler and the Turkish Envoys, painting by Theodor AmanRomanian oral tradition provides another important source for the life of Vlad the Impaler: legends and tales concerning the Impaler have remained a part of folklore among the Romanian peasantry
