Liberty or Security ?
by Peter C. Earle
Another Halloween is upon us, bringing its late autumnal burst of costumes,
candy, and merriment. Ghosts, witches, mummies, zombies, Frankenstein's
monster, film and television characters, and others will make appearances, as
will the quintessential Halloween figure: Dracula.
Most people are familiar with Count Dracula's first literary appearance in
Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula. And many
are also aware that the undead villain was loosely based on a real historical
figure, Vlad Tepes III — "Vlad the Impaler" (sometimes "Vlad
Dracula") — who ruled mid-15th century Wallachia, a region of modern day
Romania.
Incredibly, though, there is a real but lesser-known horror story behind
Dracula — a story of the long-term effects of inflationary policies and a
consequent campaign of economic nationalism, rather than of a mythic, powerful
undead creature: interventionism pursued terrifyingly, diligently, to its
logical ends.
The Real Dracula
In 1431, Vlad Tepes III, the man who would become the inspiration for Count
Dracula, was born in Transylvania. With his father, Vlad II, on the Wallachian
throne, early in life he and his brother were sent to the Ottoman court of
Mehmet the Conqueror to act as living guarantors of their father's fidelity
("loyalty hostages"). While his brother, Radu, flourished, Vlad III
was insolent and regularly experienced beatings and imprisonment.
Typical for that time, a host of intrigues swirled about the court of Vlad
II, compounded by Wallachia's critical location as a buffer kingdom between the
Ottoman and Holy Roman Empires; changes in leadership could bring about changes
in policy, swiftly impacting trade and fortunes. In December of 1447, Vlad II
was murdered during a coup. The Ottomans responded swiftly, appointing young Vlad
III to his father's former throne. A Hungarian force in turn responded, driving
Vlad to flee to Moldavia where he undertook diplomatic duties alongside his
uncle.
In 1453, Constantinople fell, and Ottoman forces surged through the
Balkans. When the Hungarian occupiers left Wallachia to support their allies
and help staunch the flow of invaders, Vlad III, now 23, leapt into action,
organizing and leading a successful invasion of his native land.
Wreckage
On retaking the throne, Vlad was stunned to find Wallachia in a state of
utter social and economic decay. Where once a brisk trade in "salt, cattle
… honey, wine … wax" and many other goods had prospered, the economy
was now utterly destroyed.[1]
In fact, throughout the century prior to Vlad III's return, the Wallachian
economy had been systematically destroyed by liberal use of a well-known policy
strategy: currency manipulation. Previous rulers of Wallachia had repeatedly
implemented monetary "reform,"
each [of which] led to the introduction of a more debased … lighter weight
type of ducat … [in order to] increase of the amount of
the coinage needed by … expanding political payments.[2]
The previous Wallachian leaders' motives were timeworn as well:
"Wallachia was confronted, almost permanently, with excessive military
expenses … as well as an active international policy."
Thus, there were "serious threats … [to] the monetary stability in
Wallachia during the entire 14th–15th century."[3]
Consistent expansion of the money supply had created insecurity within the
realm, and Vlad immediately took action to create security, making his ruling
objectives clear:
My sacred mission is to bring order.… There must be security for all in my
land.… When a prince is powerful at home, he will be able to do as he wills. If
I am feared by the right people, [we] will be strong.[4]
Over the next six years, he implemented policies according to three rough
tenets: class warfare/redistribution, protectionism, and welfare statism.
Accounts of Vlad III's murderous efforts in these pursuits rival, in their
sanguineous ingenuity, the most nightmarish accounts of both La Terreur of revolutionary France and the
concentration camps of Nazi Germany. In Roumania Past and
Present, historian James Samuelson notes, regarding the legends surrounding Vlad
Tepes III, "if one-tenth of what has been related to him [is] true … [he
is] one of the most atrocious and cruel tyrants who ever disgraced even those
dark ages."[5]
However, Vlad III was more than just a sadist; his victims were chosen
according to their usefulness with respect to fulfilling his vision for a
revitalized Wallachia. Indeed, several historians agree that "it is beyond
any doubt that [among other] reasons, Vlad the Impaler was … guided by economic
ones."[6]
Class Warfare
A bulwark of the social and economic landscape of Wallachia — and most of
Eastern Europe, at this time — was the boyar class: a
social rank of landowners, merchants, and military elites one level below the
ruling nobility. Vlad III blamed the merchants and elites for the economic
troubles of the time. Consequently, a centerpiece of his plan to right the
economic ship of Wallachia focused on persecuting the boyars and seizing their
property: leveraging the masses' schadenfreud to
harness the considerable power of envy and, in turn, greater breadth to the
reach of his throne.
The implicit message behind Vlad III's policy was an enduring one, as
states go: that the wealthy and productive live off and at the expense of the
multitude. In fact, governments are the true vampires, clandestinely siphoning
the productive output of all citizens while pitting them against each other through
propaganda and prevarication.
In Easter 1456, Vlad III invited a number of prominent boyars to his
castle, some of whom he suspected of taking being part in the conspiracy to
murder his father. Suddenly, without warning, the able-bodied were chained together
and forced to march for sixty miles through the rugged countryside to the ruins
of Poienari in the Argest valley. Many of them died enroute.… The prisoners
were forced to form a human chain under the whip to convey building materials
up the mountainside. The restoration work lasted for two months and very few of
the captives survived the ordeal.[7]
Throughout the remainder of his reign, Vlad III decimated the landowning and
merchant population and at the same time seized their wealth and property.
Throughout his reign, in fact, he devoted extensive time and effort to
"systematically eradicate the old boyar class of Wallachia."[8] In August of 1459, one account reports that he
"had thirty thousand merchants and boyars" killed.[9]
Vlad III had something in common with other murderous class avengers
throughout history: he was from the very economic stratum that he persecuted.
He began his life among the boyars, and like them was traveled, literate, and
cultured. Indeed, even while persecuting them, he unwittingly revealed shared
social mores. One of his aristocratic pet peeves was against boyar men who, in
his opinion, didn't dress fancily enough; their wives were executed.
Protectionism
He also enacted several protectionist measures. One, which specifically
targeted Transylvanian merchants coming to Wallachia, restricted them from
trading outside designated market towns.[10]Another imposed high tariffs on goods sold by Saxon
German craftsmen who exported raw commodities from Germany to Wallachia for
completion, no doubt capitalizing on cheaper labor. This included creating a
border patrol to inspect carts entering the region. In response, a small
rebellion erupted, composed of the craftsmen who, between trips, gathered in
small village settlements in northern Wallachia. It was crushed quickly as Vlad
III's troops descended on them, "pillaging, looting, and burning them to
the ground."[11] The survivors, most of whom fled to Germany,
provided some of the earliest accounts of Vlad III's brutality.
Welfare Statism
Vlad III also launched a hybrid welfare initiative, coupling a "war on
poverty" with what might best be dubbed "DraculaCare":
Vlad Dracula … once notice[d] that the poor, vagrants, beggars, and
cripples had become very numerous in his land. Consequently, he 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 for them. The guests ate and drank late into the
night.[12]
And, in an episode singularly epitomizing the immemorial tradeoff between
freedom and security,
Vlad himself then made an appearance and asked them, "What else do you
desire? Do you want to be without cares, lacking nothing in the world?"
When they responded positively, Vlad ordered the hall boarded up and set on
fire. None escaped the flames.[13]
That horrific affair over, Vlad met with the hitherto most oppressed class
in Wallachia. He "explained his action to the boyars by claiming that he did [it] 'in order that
they represent no further burden to other men, and that no one will be poor in
my realm.'"[14]
Blowback
As most of the boyars were killed off and survivors both heavily taxed and
impressed into military service, they (most unsurprisingly) began shifting
their loyalties toward the Ottoman Empire.[15]While leading troops in a series of brilliant guerilla
campaigns against Ottoman forces in 1476, Vlad III was killed in battle. One
wonders if his evil had finally come home to roost. There are several accounts
of his death, all somewhat mysterious:
Some reports indicate that he was assassinated by … Wallachian boyars just
as he was about to sweep the Turks from the field. Other accounts have him
falling … surrounded by the ranks of his loyal Moldavian bodyguard. Still other
reports claim that Vlad, at the moment of victory, was accidentally struck down
by one of his own men.[16]
In the end, the fallout from Vlad III's economic "reforms," which
largely consisted of killing of merchants and landowners en masse, as well as
erecting barriers to trade, was far-reaching:
[Soon] Wallachia lost a harbor which had been a gateway for its trade with
the Eastern world. This is the backdrop against which the main trade directions
begin to be gradually retraced, so the economic circuit in Southern and Eastern
Europe, from the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, stops being the centre piece.
The bulk of international Trade [was] shifted slowly towards the west of the
Continent and the Atlantic.[17]
The central plain of Wallachia was "heavily depopulated" toward
the end of the 14th century owing to "frequent military operations"
that continued after Vlad III's demise. In addition, his tyranny fed even more
of the political intrigue that plagued his father's reign, leading to a
succession of "short and unworthy reigns."[18]
Legacy
In the decades after his death, Vlad III's memory has, in some circles,
been whitewashed. One may soberly wonder how it is that a man responsible for
the brutal deaths of up to 100,000 of his own people might be remembered
positively, let alone warmly, but to do so would be to ignore the debauchery of
power and politics.
Under the czars in pre-revolution Russia, "[Vlad] Dracula was
presented as a cruel but just prince whose actions were directed toward the
greater good of his people."[19] The czars were executed by communists, whose
actions were quite explicitly undertaken in the name of the "greater good
of the people," and were no less appreciative of bloody tactics. On the
500th anniversary of Vlad III's death, "the man who so terrorized
Wallachia's aristocracy [and] was a champion of the craftsmen and the laboring
classes" was secularly canonized by the leftist regime in Romania.[20]
One incredible example of this admiration was the manner in which the …
anniversary of Dracula's death was celebrated in 1976. Throughout Romania
eulogies and panegyrics were ordered by Communist Party members; monographs,
novels, works of art, a film — even a commemorative stamp was issued — to
praise the Impaler.[21]
Worse yet, imitation remained the sincerest form of flattery:
It is no wonder that Romania's Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, would
emulate Vlad Tepes, for he was able to frighten his own people.… [His] policies
constituted a modern and very real version of nationalism that included
isolationist economic arrangements and attempts to suppress the ethnic rights
of Hungarians and German Saxons in Transylvania, as well as the Swabians in the
Banat. The destruction of the predominantly Hungarian-populated Transylvanian
villages … was one of the triggers of [the] 1989 uprising.[22]
Vlad the Impaler — and by extension his literary incarnation, Count Dracula
— are products of monetary inflation and economic nationalism. But there is a
solidly silver (and gold) lining to the black cape of Vlad Tepes III's legacy,
and it has taken root over the last century, facilitated by the greatest
liberating force in the history of the world: capitalism. The Dracula
character, andvampirism as a broader fantasy/horror genre, have
vastly outgrown their humble origins in Stoker's novel. Over 200 different film
adaptations have been made; countless fiction and interpretive books published
(in the former category, the hugely successful Twilight series
comes immediately to mind). A 2005 book about Vlad III, in fact, fostered an
assemblage of superlatives:
The Historian was the first debut novel to land at number one on The New York Timesbestseller list in its first week on
sale, and as of 2005 was the fastest-selling hardback debut novel in U.S.
history. The book sold more copies on its first day in print than The Da Vinci Code — 70,000 copies were sold in the
first week alone. As of the middle of August 2005, the novel had already sold
915,000 copies in the U.S. and had gone through six printings. (For comparison,
according to Publishers Weekly, only ten fiction
books sold more than 800,000 hardcover copies in the US in 2004.)[23]
On cable television, True Blood dominates
ratings, and Sesame Street's "Count" character has taught tens of
millions of children around the world how to read numerals.
Though it hardly passes for justice, being mass-marketed, minimized, and
revamped (pun intended) renders a wonderfully sardonic twist to the final
memory of a genocidal central planner — better and more ironic still, a memory
this productive: many millions are employed by and consume from businesses
centered on or involving vampire themes. They include actors, writers,
musicians, video-game programmers, retailers and merchandisers, service people
in the restaurant and tourism industry, and more. A major component of the
Dracula "franchise" will begin shortly after school gets out today;
over the past few weeks, an estimated $5 billion dollars has been spent on
Halloween candy, decorations, costumes (not least of which plastic fangs, fake
blood, rubber bats), and the like.
It is this author's hope that this not an isolated phenomenon — more
specifically, that even if it takes a few hundred years, one day Count Chocula
might find heated competition at breakfast tables by the productive,
market-borne resurrection of another homicidal guerilla fighter — possibly in
the form of "Guevara O's."
Notes
[1] Oberländer-Târnoveanu, Ernest, et al. (2009, 31
Aug - 4 Sep). The Early Stage of the Wallachian Coinage (c.
1365-1386), In The Light Of the Atomic Analyses. Paper presented at
the Proceedings of the XIV International Numismatics Congress, Glasgow, UK.
Retrieved September, 2012 from the Romanian Society of Archeometry website.
[6] Florian Georgescu, An Outline History of Bucharest (Bucharest:
Meridiane Publishing House, 1965) p. 6.
[10] Leslie Carroll, Royal Pains: A Rogues' Gallery
of Brats, Brutes, and Bad Seeds (New York: New American
Library, 2011).
[17] Laurențiu Rădvan, At Europe's Borders: Medieval
Towns in the Romanian Principalities(Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV,
2010) p. 241
[18] Economic and social stability returned with the rise of one Neagoe
Basarab (1512–1521) who encouraged trade, paid tribute to the Ottomans, and
opened diplomatic relations between the Holy Roman Empire and the Italian
Papacy.
[22] Marcel Cornis-Pope, History of the Literary
Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and
20th Centuries. Vol VI, Types and Stereotypes (Amsterdam: John
Benjamins Publishing Company, 2004) p. 338.
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