Vlad Țepeș and Brașov: The Real Story Behind Dracula

This guide is part of our day trips from Brașov collection. For the castle and the Bram Stoker story, see Bran Castle: tickets, hours and the real history.

Who was Vlad Țepeș?

• Name: his father, Vlad II, was called Dracul after joining the Order of the Dragon, founded by King Sigismund of Hungary to fight the Ottomans. “Draculea” means “son of Dracul”. Țepeș, “the Impaler”, came from his favourite punishment.
• Dates: born around 1428–1431. He ruled Wallachia, the principality south of the Carpathians, three times: briefly in 1448, from 1456 to 1462, and again in 1476. He was killed in battle around the turn of 1476/77.
• Between the powers: Wallachia sat between the Kingdom of Hungary, which then included Transylvania and Brașov, and the Ottoman Empire. Vlad spent part of his youth as an Ottoman hostage and owed his throne in 1456 to Hungarian support.

Why Brașov mattered to him

Brașov (Kronstadt to its Saxon citizens) was the main trading town of the Burzenland, the plain inside the Carpathian bend. Its merchants carried goods over the mountain passes, including the one guarded by Bran, and held trading privileges in Wallachia. That made the town Wallachia’s most important commercial partner.

It also made Brașov a refuge for Wallachian exiles and pretenders, which is where the trouble started. In February 1452 John Hunyadi, regent of Hungary, told the burghers not to shelter Vlad. By July 1456 the situation had turned: Hunyadi informed Brașov that he had given Vlad the defence of the Transylvanian border.

The letters to Brașov’s council

Vlad’s dealings with Brașov are unusually well documented, because the town kept his letters, and they survive with the city archive. Historians date several turning points from them:

• 10 September 1456: his first surviving letter as prince, to the burghers of Brașov. He promises to protect them if the Ottomans invade Transylvania and asks for their help if the Ottomans occupy Wallachia. In the same letter he reasons that a strong prince can make peace on his own terms, while a weak one is at the mercy of stronger neighbours.
• May 1458: he asks Brașov to send craftsmen to Wallachia.
• 26 July 1460: after two years of conflict, he again addresses the burghers as “brothers and friends”.
• 7 October 1476: preparing to retake his throne with Hungarian backing, he stays in Brașov and confirms its merchants’ trading privileges in Wallachia.

Brașov’s council met in a room on the site of today’s Council House (Casa Sfatului) in Piața Sfatului: a document of 23 December 1420 allowed the district to build a chamber there “for giving justice” and for the council’s sessions.

The city archive was kept in the Council House until 1923, when it moved to the Blacksmiths’ Bastion (Bastionul Fierarilor), according to the Brașov County History Museum. The full texts are published in the Corpus Draculianum, the scholarly edition of the documents about Vlad.

Photo: Diana

Trade wars and raids, 1456–1460

The conflict had two causes that fed each other: the Saxon towns sheltered and backed Vlad’s rivals for the throne, and the two sides quarrelled over trade.

• Rival princes. Brașov supported Dan III, a brother of the prince Vlad had killed in 1456; Sibiu backed another claimant. In 1457 Vlad crossed the mountains and plundered villages around Brașov and Sibiu. The earliest German stories describe him carrying off the people of a Saxon village and impaling them.
• A short peace. In a settlement negotiated with the Hungarian magnate Michael Szilágyi, in which Vlad’s envoys took part, Brașov agreed to expel Dan. Relations were good enough in 1458 for Vlad to ask for Brașov’s craftsmen.
• Trade. Relations broke down again before the end of 1458. One scholarly theory is that Vlad barred Saxon merchants from Wallachia and forced them to sell at border fairs, but historian Kurt Treptow points out that no such measures are documented, and in 1476 Vlad claimed he had always favoured free trade. A specific dispute is recorded: Brașov seized steel a Wallachian merchant had bought in the town without refunding him, and Vlad retaliated against Saxon merchants in Wallachia.
• The accusations. In 1459 the rival claimants Basarab Laiotă and Dan III wrote to the Brașov council accusing Vlad of robbing and torturing Saxon merchants. One letter claims he impaled 41 merchants from Brașov and the Burzenland and burned or impaled 300 boys. Both men wanted Vlad’s throne, so their numbers are evidence of fear, not a count.
• The raid. Dan III invaded Wallachia and was defeated and executed by Vlad before 22 April 1460. Vlad then crossed into southern Transylvania, burned the suburbs of Brașov and had his captives impaled. Sources differ on the year: Bran Castle’s chronology and National Geographic put the attack in 1459.
• Peace. By 26 July 1460 the two sides had made peace again, and Vlad was back to calling the burghers his friends.

How the pamphlets made his reputation

The image of Vlad as a sadist comes largely from German stories that circulated from the early 1460s. Their first version was probably written by a scholar in Brașov and reflects the views of the Saxons of Brașov and Sibiu, who had suffered most from his raids.

The horror stories that made him famous were largely written from the Saxon side. They list the Saxon villages and churches he destroyed, with dates, which suggests an eyewitness source, but they also pile on atrocities that historians treat with caution.

Three things turned these stories into a European sensation:

• Politics. In 1462 King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary arrested Vlad and justified it with letters, supposedly from Vlad to the Sultan, that most historians consider forged. Historian Radu Florescu linked the forgery to a Saxon priest from Brașov. Horror stories about Vlad suited the king’s case.
• Performance. The poet Michael Beheim wrote a long verse account of Vlad’s cruelty and performed it at Emperor Frederick III’s court in Wiener Neustadt in the winter of 1463.
• Print. Printed as pamphlets with lurid woodcuts on the cover, for example in Nuremberg in 1488 and 1499 and in Strasbourg in 1500, the stories became some of the first bestsellers in the German-speaking world. The famous image of Vlad eating among impaled victims comes from these editions.

The death tolls in the pamphlets run to tens of thousands, figures larger than the population of most towns of the time. Russian versions of the stories, by contrast, give a more mixed picture: cruel, but a ruler who kept order. Four centuries later Bram Stoker borrowed the name “Dracula”, and little else, for his vampire.

What in and around Brașov is linked to him

In Brașov his trail is mostly in the archives.

Documented links

• The Council House, Piața Sfatului. The council that received his letters met on this site. Today it houses the Brașov County History Museum; see our Brașov museums guide and our guide to Brașov’s landmark buildings.
• The Blacksmiths’ Bastion. The city archive, with his letters, has been kept here since 1923. It is an archive, not a museum.
• The suburbs and villages of the Burzenland. These are the places his raids hit. Nothing marks the events today. The suburbs lay outside the town walls, which is why they were exposed; much of the wall and most of the bastions you see now were built or rebuilt after his time. Our things to do in Brașov guide covers the walls and bastions.
• The Bran pass. His army used the road over the pass to reach Brașov, according to the Bran Castle chronology. The customs post at the foot of the castle collected tolls on this route.

Not documented

• Bran Castle. No record shows that he lived in, owned or captured it; the castle itself says it is not known whether he ever took it. A story that he was imprisoned there in 1462 comes from a 2002 book, not from a record of the time. The full “fact vs fiction” story is in our Bran Castle guide.
• Tâmpa. Local tours often point to Tâmpa, the hill above the Old Town, as the place of the mass impalements described in the pamphlets. No contemporary record names the spot, so treat it as tradition.

FAQ

Did Vlad the Impaler ever come to Brașov?

Yes. His troops raided the villages around Brașov in 1457 and burned its suburbs in 1459 or 1460. In October 1476 he stayed in Brașov and confirmed its merchants’ trading privileges.

Why did Vlad Țepeș attack Brașov?

Because Brașov sheltered and supported his rivals for the Wallachian throne, above all Dan III, and because the two sides were locked in disputes over trade and merchants’ goods.

Where are Vlad Țepeș’s letters to Brașov kept?

With Brașov’s city archive, which was kept in the Council House until 1923 and then moved to the Blacksmiths’ Bastion. The texts are published in the Corpus Draculianum.

Was Vlad Țepeș at Bran Castle?

There is no record that he lived there or owned the castle. His armies did use the Bran pass between Wallachia and Transylvania.

Is Count Dracula based on Vlad Țepeș?

Only loosely. Stoker took the name “Dracula” and a few scraps of Wallachian history; the vampire is his invention. Our Bran Castle guide explains what Stoker knew.

Sources

• Brașov County History Museum: history of the Council House (council chamber 1420, archive moved in 1923)
• Bran Castle: historical chronology and Count Dracula
• National Geographic: Vlad the Impaler’s thirst for blood was one inspiration behind Count Dracula

Further reading, and the source of most dates above:

• Kurt W. Treptow, Vlad III Dracula: The Life and Times of the Historical Dracula (Center for Romanian Studies, 2000)
• Radu R. Florescu and Raymond T. McNally, Dracula, Prince of Many Faces (Little, Brown, 1989)
• Thomas M. Bohn, Adrian Gheorghe and Albert Weber (eds.), Corpus Draculianum, vol. 1: Briefe und Urkunden (Harrassowitz, 2017–2018)