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| An illustration from the original manuscript. |
The Russian Dracula manuscript, the "Сказание о Дракуле воеводе" or "The Tale Of Dracula The Voivode" was written in 1490 by the monk Elfrosin, this was transcribed from an earlier text dated around 1486. In this version of Dracula's reign he is seen more as a strict but fair ruler than the psychopathic despot of the German Dracole Waida. The manuscript is now kept in the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg.
This translation comes from the Romanian "Vlad Tepes: Naratiunile Germane Si Rusesti Asupra Lul" by Ioan Bogdan, published in Bucharest in 1896, the language was a little awkward in places, so I have taken the liberty of amending where I thought appropriate.
The Story of Dracula.
About The Wallachian Voivode.
There was a Voivode in Wallachia, a Christian by Greek law, with the name Dracula in Latin, and in our Russian language, the devil; and he was evil in his life, like his name.
1. Once some messengers came to him from the Turkish emperor; after they had entered and bowed to him according to their custom, without taking off their hats, he asked them: "why do you behave like this? You came to a great Lord and you subject me to such shame?"
And they responded, "Such, Master, is the custom of our land."
He said to them, "Then I want to strengthen your custom." And he commanded that their caps be nailed to their heads with small metal spikes. And he released them and said, "Go and tell to your master that if he is accustomed to suffer humiliation from you, we are not used to it. And let him not send his custom to other rulers, who do not want to have it, but let him keep it to himself."
2. The emperor, angered by these messengers, went to war against Dracula, taking against him great military power. He (Dracula) gathered all his army that he had near him and he struck them overnight and slaughtered a multitude of Turks; but with such smaller numbers, his forces could not stand up against the Turkish horde, and he retreated from battle.
He (Dracula) began looking at his own men, whoever was wounded in the front he honoured and bestowed gifts and advancement, those wounded in the back were impaled like scoundrels. And when he set out again against the Turk, he said to his army, "who ever thinks of death, let him not go with me, let him stay here." The emperor, hearing this, turned back with great shame, and thus losing many men, he would not go against Dracula.
3. Once the Turkish emperor sent a messenger to give him a tribute. Dracula treated the messenger well and showed him all his possessions, and said to him "I not only want to give the emperor his tribute I want to enter into his service; you can tell the emperor that I will go to him, so that he will give an order over all his country, that neither I nor my people should be harmed; I will come immediately after you."
The emperor, hearing this from his messenger that Dracula wants to come and serve him, rejoiced at this, because he was just at war with the emperors and countries of the east; he quickly sent word through the cities and villages, that wherever Dracula would pass, they should not do him any harm, but everywhere he should be received with honour.
And he, after travelling for five days through the Turkish country, with his army and Turkish wardens, he suddenly turned without warning and began to plunder the cities and villages, and he made many prisoners and slaughtered some of them by sawing in half, impalement, others he had burned, he did not even spare the babies from their mothers breasts.
All the country through which he passed he devastated and many christians, who had been captured and held in Turkish captivity, he returned to his country, and he made much booty; and after he had feasted the Turkish wardens, he let them go, saying; "go and tell the emperor what you saw; as much as I could, I served him; if my service will be of use to him, I will gladly serve him again." The emperor, overcome with shame, did him no harm.
4. Dracula was so feared in his country, for he did not suffer any evil to be done, whether theft, rape or injustice, whoever did these things, did not remain among the living for any length of time. Whether he was a priest, a farmer or a common man; and no matter how rich someone was, he could not escape death.
In a certain place there was a spring of cold and sweet water, and people from many places came to that spring to drink the water. Dracula had made a golden cup, large and beautiful, and placed it near that spring, and all who drank from that golden cup put it back in its place, for fear of punishment no one dared to lay a hand on it as long as he lived.
5. About women. If any woman proved unfaithful to her husband, he ordered them to cut out her shame, and her skin to be tied to a pillar in the middle of the market; he did the same with those who did not protect a girls virginity; he cut off the breasts off widows, and again he impaled them through their vaginas with red hot irons until it came out through their mouths; in this state he them kept them until their flesh fell off them.
6. About messengers. Dracula had such a custom that if a messenger came to him from any place, whether from the emperor, whether from a king or a prince, and did not know how to behave properly and answer his cunning questions, he would put him in a cell, saying to him;
"I am not the cause of your death, and neither you nor your master have anything to say against me; for if your master knew that you were a stupid and unlearned messenger, and despite this he sent you to me, to a very wise lord, then your master killed you. And if you yourself dared to come, without having learned anything beforehand, then you yourself killed you."
And so for the messengers he would make large stakes, oil, and impale them, and to their masters he would send word of this deed.
7. From the Hungarian King Matthias came to him once a messenger, Leah of noble birth and a strong man. Dracula ordered him to sit with him at the head of a table in the middle of the impaled bodies. Before him was a stake, large, thick and tall, he asked the messenger: "Tell me, why did I make a stake like this?"
The messenger with great fear answered: "Master, my opinion is this, some powerful man will have sinned before you and you want to give him a more honourable death than the others."
Dracula then said to him, "you have spoken rightly, you are the great messenger of the great Lord, this stake is made for you." And he answered saying, "If I have done anything worthy of death, do what you will with me, master. You are a just judge, and not you, but I myself have caused my death."
Dracula then smiled and said, "If you had not answered me thus, you would have ended up on this very stake." And with much honour and gifts he sent the messenger on his way, saying, "You may go without fear with my message, others should not dare to come until they first learn how to speak to their betters."
8. Once Dracula was feasting under the bodies of a forest of dead people, whom those around him he had had impaled. He ordered that, whenever and wherever an evoy came to him, the envoy had to sit there with his back to the table and fulfill his mission, and he would sit in the middle of the impaled. A servant of his was sitting before him and, unable to bear that stench, he wrinkled his nose and turned his head to one side. Dracula asked him: "why do you do that?"
"Master, I cannot bear this stench." Dracula then immediately ordered him to be impaled and said to him, "You are up there where the stench will not reach you."
9. Once he gave orders throughout his country, saying: "Whoever is old or sick with something or lame, blind, or whatever disease he is afflicted with, let everyone come to me, so that I may make them all happy." And all the helpless, the poor without number gathered to him, expecting from him who knows what great mercy. And he built a large house and gathered everyone there and he gave orders to give them good food and drink.
After they had eaten and were merry, Dracula came to them and said, "What do you want from me?" They all answered him, "Master, do as God advises your Majesty." He then said to them, "If you wish, I will make you happy on this earth, and you will lack nothing." And they, expecting much from him, all answered, "We will, master."
Then he ordered the house closed up and then set on fire, and to the boyars he said, "Do you know why I did this? It was in order that it may not fall on the heads of other people to be robbed by beggers, and that no one in the country be poor, but that everyone may be rich. Second, I have freed myself, so that no one in this world may suffer from poverty or illness."
10. Once two Latin monks came to him from the Hungarian country for alms; he ordered them to be separated from each other and called one to him and showed him around the courtyard, an innumerable crowd of people impaled on stakes, then Dracula asked him, "Is what I am doing correct in the eyes of God?"
The monk answered him, "No, master, you are doing evil by torturing and killing without mercy. Masters should be merciful men, and all who are on stakes have died a martyr's death."
Then calling the other monk, he asked him the same question, and he answering said, "You, master, are appointed by God to punish with death those who do evil and to reward with mercy those who do good, these people have done evil and have received their reward according to their deeds."
Dracula then called the first monk and said to him, "Why are you leaving your monastery and your cell to go to the great rulers, knowing nothing? But since you yourself said that they are martyrs, I want to make you a martyr too." And he ordered him to be impaled.
The other one he ordered to give him 50 gold pieces, saying to him, "You are a wise man," and he also ordered him to be released with honour and to be taken by cart to the Hungarian land.
11. Once a merchant from the Hungarian country came to the city and, leaving his cart, according to the king's order, in the street in front of the palace, and putting his goods in the cart, he went to sleep in the palace. When someone passed by the cart, he took 160 gold pieces from a bag.
The merchant went to Dracula and told him about the loss of the gold. Dracula answered him, "Go, tonight we will find the gold." And he ordered all the people in the city to search for the thief, because if they did not find the thief, the whole city would be destroyed; and he ordered all the money to be put in the cart overnight, with one more gold piece.
The merchant, getting up in the morning, found the gold and counted it twice, counted it three times and found one more gold piece. Then he went to Dracula and said to him, "Master, I have found the gold, but with one more gold piece."
Then he brought out the thief with all the gold to show him, and said to the merchant, "Go in peace, if you had not confessed to me the extra gold piece, I would have ordered my men to put you with this thief on stakes."
12. Once, walking along the road, he saw a poor man wearing an unwashed and torn shirt, and Dracula asked him, "Do you have a wife?" He replied, "I have one, master." Dracula then said to him, "Take me to your house." And going and seeing that his wife was young and healthy, he asked the man, "Have you sown flax?" He replied, "Master, I have plenty," and showed him the flax.
Then Dracula said to the woman, "Why are you lazy towards your husband? Your husband has to sow, plough and feed you, as such you should make clean and worthy clothes for your husband, but you do not even want to wash his shirt, although you are healthy in body; you are to blame, not your husband." And he ordered her hands to be cut off, and her body to be impaled.
13. He had craftsmen make him iron boxes, he put his gold in them and buried them in a secret place, then he killed the craftsmen, so that no one would know what he had done, he was truly a devil.
14. Once the Hungarian King set out with an army against Dracula; he went against the King and they met and fought, and they captured Dracula alive, for he was handed over by his
own people, who had rebelled against him. He was brought before the King, who ordered him to be thrown into the dungeon of Vysegorod (1), four miles upstream from Buda, on the Danube.
He kept him there for 12 years, and then in the Wallachian country he put in another voivode. While he was in the dungeon, he did not leave his bad habits there either, but catching mice
and buying birds from the market, he tortured the mice by impaling them, and the birds by cutting their necks and letting them go with their feathers plucked out. And in the dungeon he learned to sew and with this craft he made a living.
15. Finally, King Matthias took him out of prison and brought him to Buda and gave him a house in Pest, opposite Buda. He had not yet been to the King, and it happened that a criminal escaped and entered Dracula's house; the one who chased him found him there, but Dracula, taking his sword, jumped out and cut off the head of the guard who was holding the thief. He then let the thief go; the others fled and came to the King to tell him what had happened.
The King sent for him to ask why he had done this, and he answered thus, "I have done no wrong, he only killed himself, entering like a robber into the house of a great lord; if that guard had come to me and I had found the thief in the house I would have given him to the guard and the guard would have escaped death." The King and all his people began to laugh heartily at this.
16. When the voivode of the Wallachian country died, the King sent for Dracula to come to the palace, to tell him that if he wanted to be voivode in the Wallachian country, as before, then he should accept the Latin law; and if not, he would die in prison.
Dracula then loved the temporal things more than the eternal things, he renounced Orthodoxy and moved away from the truth, he left the light and accepted darkness. The wretched man could not bear the hardships of being a prisoner, and he prepared for himself endless
torment, the wicked one, for he abandoned the Christian, Greek and Orthodox law, and accepted Latin paganism.
And the King gave him not only the rule of the country of Wallachia, but also his good sister as a wife, with whom he had two sons, living with her for about 10 years and dying in pagan law.
17. The end of Dracula was thus: while he was living in the country of Wallachia, Turks came upon that country and began to plunder and take prisoners. He struck them and the Turks began to flee, and Dracula's army cut them down without mercy, Dracula then climbed a hill, for joy to see how they cut down the Turks. Then a group of men from his army, believing him to be a Turk, rushed upon him and one struck him with a spear; he, seeing that he was attacked by his own, struck five of his murderers to death, but they pierced him with many spears until they killed him.
18. The King took his sister and her two sons back to the Hungarian land at Buda; one lives near the King, another was with the bishop of Bor-don (2) and died not long ago; the third, the eldest, named Michael, I saw also in Buda; he had fled from the Turkish emperor to the King, still unmarried, the King gave him a girl as a wife.
And Stefan, the voivode of Moldavia, with the King's will, appointed as voivode in the Wallachian country a certain Vlad, the son of a voivode; this voivode Vlad had been alone as a small child, then a priest and abbot in a monastery, he ascended to the throne of the Wallachian country; he married and lived a short time, for Stefan killed him and took his wife, and now another Vlad, a hermit, reigns in the Wallachia country.
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| An illustration from the original manuscript. |
(1) Russian form for Vysegrad, Visegrad.
(2) This is what it says in the Russian original. This is probably the city of Vidin, which in contemporary Hungarian documents was called Bodon, there was also a Catholic bishop there.
On the original manuscript the page after the Tales of Dracula someone has written on the parchment in German. It is written in Early Modern German (or Early New High German) which dates between 1350 to 1650, so it could easily have been written soon after the manuscript was completed in 1490.
This curiosity, that I have not seen translated or even mentioned before, translates thus;
"It came out of Wallachia
thus rode into the land of the Turks.
The Turks came to disgrace
and were slain
and marched against
Dracula of Wallachia."
