Eleanor of Aquitaine

Personal Profile

 

Born: c.1122, Poitiers, France

 

Died: 1 April 1204 (aged 81-82), Poitiers, France

 

Reigns: Duchess of Aquitaine: 9 April 1137 – 1 April 1204; Queen Consort of France: 1 August 1137 – 21 March 1152; Queen Consort of England: 19 December 1154 – 6 July 1189

 

Spouses: Louis VII of France (m. 1137; annulled 1152); Henry II of England (m. 1152; his death 1189)

 

Children: Marie, Countess of Champagne; Alix, Countess of Blois; William IX, Count of Poitiers; Henry the Young King; Matilda, Duchess of Saxony; Richard I, King of England; Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany; Eleanor, Queen of Castile; Joan, Queen of Sicily; John, King of England.

 

House: Poitiers

Introduction

 

One of the most renowned names and formidable queens of the Middle Ages, Eleanor of Aquitaine is often unfortunately overlooked because of the contemporaries who surrounded her: King Louis VII of France, the Crusader; King Henry II of England, the first Plantagenet; King Richard I of England, the Lionheart; and the infamous King John ‘Lackland’ of England. Despite this, without Eleanor, none of these men would have been who they were – married to two kings of different countries, mother to over five kings and queens, Eleanor epitomised the courtly lifestyle of the high Middle Ages: crusading, chivalry and even confinement. She is not just one of the stand-out queens of the Middle Ages, but one of the most powerful, influential and greatest queens of all time.

 

Early Life (c. 1122-37)

As is unfortunately the case with many of the medieval sources we have looked at so far at History in 20, Eleanor’s exact birth date is unknown. In fact, there is even debate about her birth year. But what we do know is that she was born in Poiters, some time around 1122-24. She was of noble birth, born to William X, Duke of Aquitaine and Aénor de Châtellerault, Duchess of Aquitaine.

Eleanor of Aquitaine

Eleanor was well-educated in her upbringing, which was clear to see in her later life. She was thoroughly knowledgeable in a multitude of subjects, ranging from literature and philosophy to languages and the constellations. As part of her upbringing, she was trained in courtly life, and what was expected of a young woman in a twelfth-century French court. Her father died when Eleanor was aged fifteen, and as she was the eldest of his three children, she became his heir, and thus Duchess of Aquitaine (her mother had died when Eleanor was about five). William X had requested in his will that Eleanor be placed under the guardianship of the French king, Louis VI (r. 1108-37); within hours, she had been betrothed to the king’s son, Prince Louis. Louis VI died in August 1137, and his son succeeded him as King Louis VII (r. 1137-80).

 

Queen of France and the Second Crusade (1137-52)

Eleanor married Louis VII of France when she was aged about fifteen in July 1137. They were officially crowned King and Queen of France on Christmas Day 1137. With this marriage, Eleanor almost doubled the land area subject to the Capetian House (the Royal Family of France at the time), bringing with her, her territories in the south and south-west of France.

Louis VII of France (r. 1137-80)

Ironically enough, Louis was not even meant to be king in the first place. His older brother, Philip, had fallen from his horse and died as a result, leaving Louis as the heir to the Capetian Crown. This was evident in Louis’ kingship and his personal life: as a young boy, Louis had been sent to Paris by his father to train for priesthood – and Eleanor famously once commented that she “had married a monk, not a king.” Their marriage was therefore destined to be difficult from the outset: Eleanor’s fiery, politically astute, tempestuous demeanour was unsuited to Louis’ pious, humble nature. Historian Geoffrey Hindley states that she ‘hardly fitted conventional models of domestic docility.’ And he was right.

In the early 1140s, Eleanor moved to Paris where the rulers of France met. It was at this time that Eleanor is credited with being responsible for the introduction of built-in fireplaces in castles. She was shocked by the frigid winters in the north of France, in complete contrast to the warmer, milder winters of the south. This innovation spread quickly, and built in fireplaces became a staple in castles from hereon in!

Arguably the most major event in Louis and Eleanor’s marriage was their involvement in the Second Crusade (1147-50). Under almost direct instruction from Pope Eugene III (r. 1145-53), Eleanor accompanied Louis (or, more likely, Louis accompanied Eleanor) on the way to Jerusalem, to liberate the ‘Christian’ city from the infidel (Muslims) who had taken it over. Eleanor and Louis arrived in Antioch (in modern-day Turkey) on 11 March 1148, and were showered with lavish gifts, pomp and ceremony put on by Raymond of Antioch, who had been Prince of Antioch since 1136, and was also Eleanor’s uncle.

Historian Dan Jones argues that this was ‘likely a source of comfort’ for Eleanor, to visit a close family member so far away from her homeland, and be present in his exotic court which was not only filled with exotic eastern spices, flora and fauna, but also with homely additions, such as Occitan-speaking men and women from the south and southwest of France. Despite only spending ten days as Raymond’s guests in Antioch, it was enough time to create rifts in their marriage.

Notwithstanding Raymond’s generosity and hospitality, Louis announced that he had no intention of deploying his troops to help increase Raymond’s army for the Second Crusade. Raymond was naturally furious upon hearing this, and the chronicler William of Tyre reported that “Raymond began to hate [Louis’] ways; he openly plotted against him and took means to do him injury.” To achieve this, Raymond used his relationship with Eleanor to undermine Louis.

This trick worked on Eleanor. Happy at Raymond’s court, she refused to leave for Jerusalem with her husband, so Louis set off without her. However, the joy was short-lived: as Eleanor remained in Antioch with her uncle, rumours began spreading that they were having an incestuous affair (in fact, it would not actually have been incestuous as Raymond was her blood-aunt’s husband), which blackened Eleanor’s reputation, and essentially cuckolded Louis. William of Tyre wrote that “Contrary to her royal dignity, she disregarded her marriage vows and was unfaithful to her husband.” Yet interpreting this in the twelfth century and the twenty-first century yield very different results. It was almost certain that William was referring to the perceived domestic sin of disobedience, which his straight-edged contemporaries viewed as a sin of equal magnitude to sexual infidelity. Nevertheless, the Crusade went on (and actually culminated in a miserable failure), and marked the beginning end of Louis and Eleanor’s marriage.

The royal couple were briefly reconciled at Easter 1149 and left back home for France – albeit on separate ships. Both ships (and couples) met up at Sicily, before sailing on to Pope Eugene III’s villa in Tusculum (Frascati), around twelve miles south of Rome. The Pope attempted to reconcile the couple, even offering them a marital bed draped with fine fabrics. It failed. Within eighteen months of their return to France in 1149, Eleanor had already remarried: this time to a young English nobleman, called Henry Fitzempress.

 

Queen of England (1152-67)

By Aquitaine’s law, women – unusually – could inherit and administer property in their own right, and Eleanor’s father had specified that the Duchy of Aquitaine should not be integrated into the royal demesne but should instead remain independent and be inherited by Eleanor’s heirs – not Eleanor and Louis’. Therefore, when their marriage was annulled in 1152, Eleanor parted from Louis and her huge inheritance also parted from the French Crown.

Within the space of a few months, Eleanor married Henry, Count of Anjou and Maine and Duke of Normandy. Two years later, he became King of England, and was crowned as the first Plantagenet monarch: Henry II (r. 1154-89). Eleanor’s vast territories in the south and south west of France joined with Henry’s and formed the Plantagenet Empire, from the Scotland to Spain.

The expansion of Henry II's empire upon his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152

Eleanor had still not escaped crusading: it was in Henry’s blood. His grandfather was King Fulk of Jerusalem (r. 1131-43), and his uncles were also both Kings of Jerusalem: Baldwin III (r. 1143-63) and Amalric I (r. 1163-74). It seemed like a match made in heaven. But despite their prosperous marriage (they had eight children, five of whom went on to become kings or queens), it was notoriously fractious, too. This was largely a result of Henry’s numerous mistresses, including one affectionately known as Fair Rosamund (whom Eleanor was accused of poisoning to death). Due to Henry’s infidelities, Eleanor moved back to Poitiers in France in 1167.

 

Lifestyle & Culture: The Court of Love (1167-73)

During her time in her homeland, Eleanor founded and established the Court of Love. This was a court where everything we associate with the high medieval period took place: chivalry was encouraged, poetry and music were rife, and folklore and literature were constructed within its walls. Accompanied by her daughter Marie, the court was also focused on courtly love and symbolic ritual that was eagerly lapped up by the writers and musicians of the day. However, despite the brief interlude in Eleanor’s exciting life thus far, it was soon to take a turn for the worse.

 

Rebellion & Imprisonment (1173-99)

Henry II of England (r. 1154-89)

After the crisis between Henry II and Thomas Becket (which you can read about in a previous blog post here), Eleanor had begun to start stirring rebellions against her estranged husband. She initially inspired a rebellion from the English earls Robert of Leicester and Bigod of Norfolk in early 1173 and was actually supported by her ex-husband Louis VII. Initially, Henry had managed to quash these rebellions at the expense of generous pardons and financial aid. However, in mid-1173, there was one rebellion which tipped Henry over the edge.

His eldest son, and heir, ‘Young Henry’, fled to France to be with his mother (Eleanor), apparently to plot to seize the throne from his father. Eleanor, rumoured to be actively supporting her son’s plans against Henry II, was arrested and placed under arrest. She also later encouraged Richard to pay homage to the King of France (Philip II, r. 1190-1223). But, unlike ordinary prisoners (as she was no ordinary prisoner), she was placed under relatively comfortable confinement – essentially house arrest – and shuttled between different English castles for the next sixteen years.

Young Henry died of a disease in 1183, allegedly begging for his mother’s release on his deathbed. Henry II did release Eleanor, on occasion, and she re-joined his household in 1184 for at least a part of each year, and accompanied him on solemn occasions, as well as resuming some of her ceremonial duties as queen.

 

Later Life and Death (1199-1204)

Henry II died in 1189, leaving their next oldest son – and Eleanor’s favourite son – Richard as heir. He succeeded his father as Richard I ‘the Lionheart’ (r. 1189-99) the same year, and one of his first acts was to release Eleanor completely from house arrest. Eleanor went on to rule as regent in Richard’s absence during his leading of the Third Crusade (another crusading relation to Eleanor!). Yet the ageing Eleanor’s duties were far from over: aged 70, she negotiated Richard I’s release from prison. Additionally, one of her granddaughters was Blanche of Castile, and when Eleanor was 78, she brought Blanche from Spain to wed the King of France (Louis VIII, r. 1223-26). And when she turned 80, she directed the defence of a town under siege from a marauding army. Truly iconic!

When Richard died in 1199, Eleanor lived long enough to see her youngest son (and Henry II’s favourite) John become King of England (r. 1199-1216) – she was even employed by John as an envoy to France. She later supported John’s rule against the rebellion of one of her grandsons (Arthur), and finally retired as a nun to the Abbey at Fontevraud.

Eleanor peacefully slipped away on 1 April 1204, aged 81-82, an immense age for the time. She was buried at Fontevraud, next to her favourite son, Richard.

 

Legacy

There are few historians who would disagree with the statement that Eleanor of Aquitaine was the most influential woman of the Middle Ages. There were numerous kings who did twice as little yet have twice as many sources written about them. Despite the fact she was a twelfth-century woman, she arguably had more influence over the people around her than the men did.

Historian Norman Davies states that ‘Eleanor of Aquitane was perhaps the outstanding personality of the age. She made her mark not only as a woman of remarkable spirit, but as a political and cultural patron of immense influence.’ This is true: among her children and grandchildren, she lived to see one emperor, three kings of England, kings of Jerusalem and Castile, a duke of Brittany and another queen of France.      Despite the attempts of chroniclers like William of Tyre to stain her reputation as an incestuous whore, and those others who accused her of poisoning Fair Rosamund, she nevertheless survived all odds and stands as the central figure in the cultural history of a land in which her enemies were intent on destroying.

 

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it!

 

Bibliography

Norman Davies, Europe: A History (2012)

Geoffrey Hindley, A Brief History of the Crusades: Islam and Christianity in the Struggle for World Supremacy (2004)

Simon Jenkins, A Short History of England (2011)

Dan Jones, Crusaders: An Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Land (2020)

W.B. Marsh & Bruce Carrick, Great Stories from History: 365 for Every Day of the Year (2005)

https://www.history.com/topics/british-history/eleanor-of-aquitaine

The US Civil War (1861-65)

Overview

Dates: 12 April 1861 – 9 May 1865

Location: USA

Belligerents: United States of America (USA), Confederate States of America (CSA)

Key Figures: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee (amongst others)

Outcome: Union victory; dissolution of the Confederate States; slavery abolished; beginning of the Reconstruction era; US territorial integrity preserved (amongst others)

Casualties: 828,000+ Union; 864,000+ Confederacy

Deaths: 600,000 – 1,000,000+ dead in total.

Introduction

A people divided. Bitter resentment towards the government. Doesn’t this sound similar to the US today?!

One of the most important things to note is the ‘North vs South’ argument. The US was divided politically, economically and socially: North vs South, Federal vs State government, slave state vs free state and urban vs rural. The North was much more urbanised than the south, and for the most part, had outlawed slavery (hence the free states). In fairness, there had been a huge influx of European migrants coming to the north of the US (like New York) and slavery had been outlawed in Europe for many years. In the South however, their economy was largely agrarian, meaning that slavery was economically viable for them, and part of their way of life. Many viewed slavery as part of the natural pattern of life.

But just what caused such divisions in America that 11 states seceded from the Union, and formed the Confederacy? Multiple reasons can be cited for this, and I have simply chosen the few I believe to be the most important/significant to discuss below.

The (Very) Early Beginnings: 1803-48

The US had doubled in size thanks to the Louisiana Purchase: the American acquisition of French territory on American soil for approximately $15 million – this worked out at about $18 per square mile (828,000 square miles in total). By purchasing this amount of land, the doctrine of ‘Manifest Destiny’ was drilled into the Americans’ mindset: it was their God-given duty to expand westwards, into this new territory.

Thousands of Americans migrated into this territory, but nowhere attracted Americans more than Texas, which was still technically Mexican territory. In 1836, the Texans declared independence from Mexico, and by 1845 the area was annexed and admitted to statehood (i.e., Texas officially became an American state), and this drew resentment from those who passionately resisted the addition of another slave state in America.

The US declared war on Mexico on 13 May 1846. After two years of fighting, the US won, and Mexico ceded all claims to Texas above the Rio Grande boundary, and also surrendered California and New Mexico – two other Mexican provinces.

The issue of slavery had already arisen and led to the next chapter of the US Civil War.

Decade of Turbulence: the 1850s 

The Compromise of 1850

With newly acquired territories from Mexico – California, Arizona and New Mexico – came the argument of slave states vs free states (slave states being states where slavery was legal, free states being where it was not). David Wilmot, a Congressman from Pennsylvania, argued that any territory acquired from Mexico should not permit slavery. On the other hand, Jefferson Davis, a Senator from Mississippi, said that the new territory should be comprised of slave states because they were in the South of the US. Stephen Douglas, a lawyer from Illinois, came up with the idea of Popular Sovereignty: that states should be allowed to decide for themselves. These arguments culminated in what was known as the Compromise of 1850: which gave statehood to California as a free state, allowing the new territories in the south to decide whether or not they wanted to allow slavery: Popular Sovereignty. It also implemented the new and controversial Fugitive Slave Law: whereby anyone in any state – even if it was a free state – had to hand back escaped slaves to their masters. This effectively meant that the northern states – who were largely free states – had a role to play in maintaining slavery, which many vehemently opposed. Therefore, an anti-slavery movement based on abolishing slavery grew throughout the 1850s in the north, called ‘Abolitionism’.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 opened up large-scale settlement and migration to states whose position on slavery would be decided as a result of Popular Sovereignty. This culminated in an event known as ‘Bleeding Kansas’, where members of anti-slavery and pro-slavery factions attacked each other.

On the Eve of War: 1856-61

In 1856, the pro-slavery president, James Buchanan of the Democratic Party, ran for re-election and he won. The reason this election is significant is because he ran against a brand-new, newly formed, anti-slavery party: The Republican Party. For the most part, the Republican Party had gained a lot of ground and support in the north.

President Abraham Lincoln, the
16th President of the USA (1861-65)

A year later, in 1857, brought about the Dred Scott case. Dred Scott – a slave – was taken by his master to Illinois (a free state). Scott argued that he was therefore free, but the court ruled against him, essentially citing that black people – whether slaves or not – were not classed as US citizens at all.

Tensions kept arising into 1858, and it was at this point that the Republican Party put forward an unknown Abraham Lincoln against Stephen Douglas. They both took part in a series of debates which made Lincoln well-known around the country.

In the forerunning to the 1860 elections, the Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln as their presidential candidate, but the Democrats were still divided: in the south they nominated the current Vice-President John Breckinridge, while in the north they chose Stephen Douglas. Lincoln ultimately won the election, and as an outspoken abolitionist, many in the south feared what he would do next. However, Lincoln set out to be moderate, and promised not to interfere with slavery in the existing slave states, but the damage had already been done throughout his staunch abolitionist views. Before he had even taken office, South Carolina seceded from the United States. By February 1861, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas had joined South Carolina in forming the Confederate States of America (CSA), under the presidency of Jefferson Davis.

The Early Years of the War (1861-62)

In April 1861, South Carolina demanded that federal troops stationed in South Carolina evacuate because they were independent. The federal government refused and maintained their garrison at Fort Sumter. In the early hours of 12 April 1861, just after 4:30am, the Confederate States’ navy bombarded the fort and captured it the next day, thereby starting the US Civil War.

The Confederate States are the ones highlighted
with the Confederate flag.

Although nobody was killed at Fort Sumter, Lincoln immediately called for 75,000 troops and northerners rallied to his cause. His appeal for troops caused four more states to secede between April and June: Virginia (17 April); Arkansas (6 May); North Carolina (20 May) and Tennessee (8 June), bringing the Confederacy to a total of eleven states. Within these eleven states, they had a combined population of 9 million, including 3.5 million slaves. The Union consisted of 22 states, with a population of about 22 million people, with about 500,000 whom were slaves. In addition to the north/south divide, there were also four ‘border states’ (these were the states who although they remained in the Union, thousands of men within them fought for the Confederacy). These states were Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri. In some cases, brothers in the same family fought on opposite sides, including Senator Crittenden of Kentucky: one of his sons rose to be a General in the Union Army, while the other rose to be a General in the Confederate Army.

Yet both the Union and the Confederacy had more in common than initially appeared: they both referred to the Declaration of Independence (4 July 1776) to justify their causes. For the Union, they referred to the “All men are created equal” section, interpreting this as nobody should be subjected to slavery. On the other hand, the Confederacy referred to the section claiming “The right to alter or abolish unjust government” – in their view, the government intervening in their (now independent) states trying to abolish slavery (their way of life) was reason enough for them to refer to this.

The first fielded battle of the US Civil War was the First Battle of Bull Run (sometimes referred to as First Manassas), and this was on 21 July 1861. 35,000 Confederate soldiers under the command of Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson forced a much larger number of Union forces to retreat back towards Washington DC. The realisation dawned upon the Union that any hope of a quick conflict was soon gone to ground. It even led Lincoln to call for 500,000 more troops – even the Confederates called for more, as they also realised the war would not be over any time soon.

Perhaps the most violent year of the US Civil War was 1862. In the Spring, George B. McClellan (Supreme Commander of the Union Army) led his Army of the Potomac up the peninsula between the York River and the James River, and captured Yorktown (Virginia) on 4 May.

Less than two months later, the combined forces of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee successfully drove back McClellan’s forces in the Seven Days Battles (25 June – 1 July), and McClellan called for more troops.

In the summer of 1862, Lee moved his Confederate forces northwards and split his men, sending Jackson to meet Union forces near Manassas again. On 29 August, Union troops led by John Pope met with Jackson’s forces in the Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Manassas). The following day, Lee – with the other half of his Confederate forces – hit the Union army on their left flank, and once again succeeded in driving the Union forces back to Washington DC.

This was when Lee began a series of invasions into the Union states: but by 14 September, McClellan had successfully reorganised his army, and struck at Lee’s forces in Maryland, and this time it was the Union’s turn to drive the Confederate forces back to a defensive position, at Antietam.

This ultimately led to the bloodiest day of fighting of the whole Civil War: the Battle of Antietam. The Army of the Potomac hit Lee’s forces (reinforced by Jackson’s) in a huge, pitched battle. There were estimates of 12,410 casualties from the 69,000 Union troops, and 13,724 from the 52,000 Confederate troops.

However, at the cost of over 12,000 lives, the Union victory at Antietam proved decisive: it halted the Confederate advance into Maryland, and also forced Lee to retreat into Virginia. McClellan was relieved of his duties after – in Lincoln’s mind – failing to pursue his advantage, and he was replaced by Ambrose E. Burnside.

Burnside then led an assault on Lee’s troops near Fredericksburg on 13 December, but this ended in heavy casualties and a Confederate victory; he was soon replaced by Joseph ‘Fighting Joe’ Hooker, and both armies then settled into winter quarters on opposite sides of the Rappahannock River.

1863 (and the Emancipation Proclamation)

Lincoln had used the Union victory at Antietam to issue a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation which freed all enslaved people in the rebellious states after 1 January 1863. Lincoln justified this decision as a wartime measure but did not go so far to free the enslaved people in the border states loyal to the Union.

The Emancipation Proclamation deprived the Confederacy of the bulk of its labour forces and pitted international public opinion against them, and in favour of the Union. In fact, around 186,000 black Civil War soldiers joined the Union Army by the time the war ended in 1865.

On 1 May 1863, plans for a Union offensive were spoiled by a surprise attack by the bulk of Lee’s forces, whereupon Hooker pulled his men back to Chancellorsville. The Confederates gained a costly victory in the Battle of Chancellorsville, suffering 13,000 casualties (around 22% of their soldiers), while the Union lost 17,000 men (around 15% of their troops). Lee launched another invasion of the North the following month, which culminated in the Confederates attacking the forces commanded by General George Meade on 1 July, near Gettysburg in southern Pennsylvania.

In the Battle of Gettysburg, the Confederates were unable to push through the Union defence, and suffered casualties of close to 60%. However, once again, the Union failed to take the opportunity to counterattack, and Lee’s remaining forces were able to escape into Virginia, ending the last Confederate invasion of the North. Union forces under Ulysses S. Grant took Vicksburg (Mississippi) in the Siege of Vicksburg, in a victory that would prove to be the turning point of the war in the western theatre.

However, a Confederate victory at Chickamauga Creek (Georgia), just south of Chattanooga (Tennessee) in September 1863 caused Lincoln to expand Grant’s command, and he led a reinforced Federal army – including two corps from the Army of the Potomac – to victory in the Battle of Chattanooga in late November.

On 19 November 1863, Lincoln delivered the famous Gettysburg Address, opening with the line “Four score and seven years ago”, in reference to the Declaration of Independence in 1776, once again referring to the principle that the US was a nation “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”, adding that the Civil War was a test that would determine whether such a nation could endure. It was a particularly rousing and moving speech, and motivated those who supported him.

The End in Sight: 1864-65

Sights of the some of the battlefields.

In early 1864, it finally seemed as if Lee had met his match in Grant. The Battle of the Wilderness and the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House (May 1864) were bloody but indecisive skirmishes, but the Battle of Cold Harbor in Richmond (June 1864) brought the Union one of its worst defeats: in a single hour, 6000 Union soldiers were killed. In the course of one month, Grant’s campaigns had cost the Union 50,000 soldiers. By September, General Sherman captured the Georgian capital of Atlanta, which foreshadowed the end of the secession of Georgia and created another partition in the Confederacy. Lincoln was re-elected in November – defeating Democratic candidate George McClellan.

At the turn of the year in 1865, it was a Union victory in all but name. Columbia and Charleston (South Carolina) fell to Sherman’s men by mid-February, and Jefferson Davis belatedly handed over the supreme command to Lee.

Lee’s forces made a last attempt to attack and captured the Federal-controlled Fort Stedman on 25 March. An immediate counterattack reversed the victory, and on the night of 2-3 April, Lee’s forces evacuated Richmond. Grant pursued the Confederates along the Appomattox River, finally exhausting their possibilities for escape. Grant accepted Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House (Virginia) on 9 April 1865.

However, the Union victory was soon put on a downer when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by Confederate sympathiser John Wilkes Booth in Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC on 14 April 1865.

After Lee’s surrender, secession was no longer an option in American politics. On 4 May, all the remaining Confederate forces in Alabama and Mississippi had surrendered, and on 9 May 1865 President Andrew Johnson officially declared an end to the US Civil War.

Reconstruction (1865-77)

Approximately 620,000 soldiers lost their lives in the US Civil War. It is to date the bloodiest conflict ever fought on American soil. However, the main question posing problems for the US government was how to recover from four years of civil war? This ushered in what is known as the Reconstruction era: essentially, the rebuilding of the south, as much of it had been destroyed – farms and plantations had been burned down, and many people had also been using Confederate money, which was now rendered worthless. The Reconstruction era lasted from 1865-77. I won’t go into too much detail, just a very brief overview.

Lincoln had planned to be lenient on the south, and make it easy for them to re-join the Union, adding that if 10% of the voters in an ex-Confederate state supported the Union, then the state could be readmitted. Obviously, this meant that slavery had to be made illegal as part of their constitution.

However, because of his assassination at the end of the Civil War, Lincoln’s plans never went through. His successor, Andrew Johnson (a southerner himself, from Raleigh, North Carolina) wanted to be even more lenient to the South, but Congress disagreed and passed harsher laws.

General Robert E. Lee, whose
surrender in 1865 marked the
end of the US Civil War.

To help with Reconstruction, three new amendments were added to the US Constitution (for the first time in 60 years): the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. These are commonly known as the Civil War Amendments.

The 13th Amendment (1865) outlawed slavery, and gave Congress the power to enforce the article through legislation.

The 14th Amendment (1868) stated that black people were citizens of the United States, thereby overruling the Dred Scott case from 1857.

The 15th Amendment (1870) prohibited governments from denying US citizens the right to vote based on their race or colour. However, poll taxes and literacy tests blocked many black citizens from voting, so the 15th Amendment was not as kosher as it seems from the outside.

Eventually, all 11 Confederate states were readmitted to the Union – Tennessee being the first in 1866, and Georgia being the last in 1870. It was years before the economy in the South fully recovered, but the point was that the United States was united (or as united as it could fathom to be) once more.

The Reconstruction era officially ended under the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877. He removed federal troops from the South, and state governments took over. Unfortunately, this meant that the majority of the changes to equal rights were immediately reversed.

In conclusion, the US Civil War was one of the most significant events in US history. From the abolition of slavery to the ‘right’ for black citizens to vote in the space of seven years is an incredible achievement to behold, given the circumstances and attitudes at the time. As the late author Shelby Foote said in his book The Civil War: A Narrative: “The Civil War defined [the US] as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things…It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads.”

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it!

Bibliography

Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative (1958)

Philip Jenkins, A History of the United States (Fourth Edition) (2012)

Louis P. Masur, The U.S. Civil War: A Very Short Introduction (2020) https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-politicalscience/chapter/slavery-and-civil-rights/ https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/american-civil-war-history https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9v5pY9300MQ

Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941)

Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941)

 

Overview

 

Belligerents: USA and Japan

 

Casualties: 2043 sailors, soldiers and civilians killed, approximately 1000 injured. 4 battleships sunk, 4 battleships damaged, 29 aircraft destroyed, 74 aircraft damaged.

Background

 

A good starting point can be over ten years prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor: the Manchurian Crisis of 1931. Japan invaded Manchuria (in China), and had implemented dynamite along a Chinese railway, which in turn blew up a Japanese train. It was made to look as if the Chinese had done so maliciously, so that the Japanese had a reason to invade. They did so, with little hesitation, and established the puppet-state of Manchukuo.

Over the next decade, Japan continued invading areas of China, and a Japanese attack on the USS Panay on 12 December 1937 helped to turn Western opinion against the Japanese. But how did the invasion of an area of China – before the attack on the USS Panay – spark American interest in Japan and China?

 

America was particularly unhappy with Japan’s increasingly belligerent attitude towards China. The Japanese government believed that the only way to solve its economic and demographic problems was to expand into China’s territory and take over its import market. Eventually, Japan declared war on China in 1937. In response, the US imposed a number of economic sanctions and trade embargoes on Japan, which only made the Japanese more determined to stand their ground. During the months of negotiations between Tokyo and Washington DC, neither side would budge, making war seem almost inevitable.

The Japanese route to attack Pearl Harbor

 

Fearing a Japanese invasion, the US, UK and France assisted China with its loans for war supply contracts, further aggravating the Japanese. In mid-1940, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the Pacific Fleet from San Diego, California to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He also ordered a military build-up in the Philippines, too, in an attempt to discourage Japanese aggression in the Far East.

 

By July 1941, the US had frozen Japanese assets in the US following the seizure of French Indochina after the Fall of France, thereby imposing a virtual embargo on all trade, including oil. This step made it all but certain that Japan would have to seize oilfields to fulfil its strategic needs, while ejecting the US from the Asian theatre.

 

On 17 August 1941, Roosevelt warned Japan that American was prepared to take opposing steps if “neighbouring countries” were attacked. Japan was now faced with a dilemma: either withdraw from China and lose face, or seize new sources of raw materials in the resource-rich European colonies of Southeast Asia.

 

However, because the Japanese High Command was (mistakenly) certain that any attack on Europe’s Southeast Asian colonies – including Singapore – would bring the US into the war, a devastating preventive strike appeared to be the only way to prevent American naval interference.

 

The Attack

 

Pearl Harbor in Hawaii is stituated about 2000 miles from the US mainland, and about 4000 miles from Japan, and that was exactly the problem: nobody thought – or expected – the Japanese would start a war with an attack on the distant islands of Hawaii. Instead, American intelligence officials were confident that any Japanese attack would take place in one of the European colonies in the Pacific: the Dutch East Indies, Indochina or Singapore. As a result of the American military leaders not expecting an attack so close to home, Pearl Harbor itself was left relatively undefended. Almost the entire Pacific Fleet was moored around Ford Island in the harbour, and hundreds of aeroplanes were packed onto adjacent airfields. To Japan, Pearl Harbor was an irresistibly easy target.

The USS Arizona explodes as a bomb
is dropped onto its deck, killing everyone
onboard

 

Japan’s plan was simple: destroy the Pacific Fleet. By doing that, the US would be unable to fight back as Japan’s armed forces would spread across Europe’s South Pacific colonies. After months of tactical planning, Japan launched their attack.

 

At 7:48am, on Sunday 7 December 1941, the skies over Pearl Harbor were filled with Japanese planes, and bombs and bullets rained onto the vessels below, moored in the harbour like sitting ducks. At 8:10am, an 1800-lb bomb smashed through the deck of the battleship USS Arizona and landed in its forward ammunition magazine. The ship exploded immediately and sank with more than 1000 American men trapped inside. Torpedoes pierced the body of the USS Oklahoma, and it rolled onto its side, sinking, with 400 more Americans onboard.

 

Boats attempting to extinguish the fires
raging on a US battleship

Remarkably, the devastating surprise attack lasted less than two hours, and every single battleship in Pearl Harbor – USS Arizona, USS Oklahoma, USS California, USS Maryland, USS Nevada, USS Pennsylvania, USS Tennessee, USS Utah and USS West Virginia – had sustained significant damage. All but USS Arizona and USS Utah were eventually salvaged and repaired.

 

The Impact of the Attack

 

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had crippled almost twenty American ships, and over three hundred aeroplanes. Airfields were likewise destroyed. 2043 soldiers, sailors and civilians were killed, along with 1000 more injured.

 

But – thankfully, from an American point of view – Japan had failed to destroy the Pacific Fleet. By the 1940s, battleships were no longer the most important naval vessels in war: aircraft carriers were. As it happened, all of the Pacific Fleet’s aircraft carriers were away from Pearl Harbor on 7 December, as some had returned to the mainland USA, and others were delivering planes to troops stationed on Midway and Wake Islands. Additionally, the attack on Pearl Harbor had left the base’s most important onshore facilities undamaged, including oil storage depots, submarine docks, shipyards, and repair shops. As a result, the US Navy was able to rebound fairly quickly from the attack.

 

Responses to the Attack

 

The US Ambassador to the UK, John G. Winant, was having dinner with the Prime Minister of the UK, Winston Churchill, when they heard of the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on the radio. Winant recalled Churchill’s ‘excitement’ at hearing the news: “Churchill jumped to his feet and started for the door with the announcement: ‘We shall declare war on Japan.’” When Roosevelt telephoned Churchill, his first words to his UK counterpart were “We are all in the same boat now.”

 

President Roosevelt addressed a joint session of the US Congress on Monday 8 December 1941, a day after the attack. He used one of the most widely remembered lines in US history, when he referred to the attack as: “Yesterday – December 7, 1941 – a date that will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” He went on to add that “[I] will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.”

 

For the first time during the years of negotiations with Japan throughout the 1930s, the American people were united in their determination to go to war. Japan’s aim from the attack was (rather naively) to goad the US into dropping the economic sanctions against them: instead, they had pushed America into a global conflict that ultimately resulted in Japan’s first occupation by a foreign power.

 

Later in the day on 8 December, Congress approved Roosevelt’s declaration of war on Japan. Three days later, on 11 December 1941, Japan’s allies Germany and Italy declared war against the US. For the second time in three days, Congress reciprocated, declaring war on both Germany and Italy. More than two years after the start of the Second World War, the US had entered the conflict.

 

The Legacy of Pearl Harbor

 

The legacy of the Pearl Harbor attack was bringing the US into the Second World War. Quite obviously, the European powers would not have won the war without the assistance of the US. However, there are some negative sides which I wanted to shine a light on: internment camps.

 

The attack on Pearl Harbor threw the US Pacific Coast, and especially California, into a mass panic, with California being deemed as the next location for a Japanese attack. The Japanese advance across Burma, Malaya and the Philippines not only presented a threat to the European colonies, but also to Australia. It was this rumoured invasion scare which ultimately led to the mass arrest and internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry across the US, but particularly centred in California.

 

On the same day as the attack, the FBI, assisted with the help of sheriff’s deputies, began rounding up suspected Japanese aliens in Los Angeles County. By 9 December 1941 – a mere two days after the attack – some five hundred issei(Japanese non-citizens) were in federal custody on Terminal Island in Los Angeles Harbor. On 19 February 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which allowed the War Department to remove suspicious or possibly dangerous people from military areas.

 

The incarceration was later – thankfully, and rightly so – deemed to be illegal and racially discriminatory. However, America regained the military initiative in the naval war in the Pacific in the Battles of Coral Sea (May 1942) and Midway (June 1942), and then began the long series of island-hopping campaigns to reconquer Japanese-held territory in the South and Central Pacific.

 

Ultimately, the US would go on to formally end the Second World War in Japan, with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima (6 August 1945) and Nagasaki (9 August 1945). 

 

Bibliography

 

Norman Davies, Europe: A History (2014)

Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003)

Philip Jenkins, A Short History of the United States (Fourth Edition) (2012)

Kevin Starr, California: A History (2005)

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/pearl-harbor

The Gunpowder Plot (5 November 1605)

The Gunpowder Plot (5 November 1605)

 

Overview

 

Date: 5 November 1605

 

Location: Houses of Parliament, London, England

 

Reason: Religious differences, assassination attempt against King James I of England

 

Participants: Robert Catesby, Guy Fawkes, Francis Tresham and others

 

Outcome: Failure for the plotters, plotters executed

 

 

Events Leading to the Gunpowder Plot

 

Guy Fawkes pictured guarding
the barrels of gunpowder

The Gunpowder Plot, also known as Guy Fawkes Night or simply 5 November, was an English Catholic plot against King James I (r. 1603-25), who was a Protestant. He had ascended the English throne in place of Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603), who was also a Protestant, and his persecution of Catholics was arguably stronger than Elizabeth’s was, sparking the need for drastic action in the minds of the plotters.

 

Historian Ronald Hutton argues that English Catholics initially had high hopes that James I would end the Elizabethan persecution of them. He had encouraged these ideas initially (to win further support for his accession as the first Stuart monarch), but soon reverted to the Elizabethan-style persecution of Catholics because “the weight of English public opinion had become so hostile to Catholics and the fines levied on them were so lucrative.” As a result, those who were indeed Catholic radicals, tried to blow him and his entire Parliament blown up.

 

The Plotters

 

The plotters were led by a Catholic called Robert Catesby. His father had been persecuted in Elizabeth I’s reign for refusing to conform to the Church of England. In total, the plotters numbered 13: it was certainly an unlucky number for all of them in the end: the reason I mentioned three in the summary above is because (arguably) they are the three most significant of the thirteen. Nevertheless, the names of the thirteen plotters involved were as follows: Thomas Bates, Robert Catesby, Sir Everard Digby, Guy Fawkes, John Grant, Robert Keyes, Thomas Percy, Ambrose Rookwood, Francis Tresham, Robert & Thomas Wintour, and John & Christopher Wright.

 

Catesby (and some of the other plotters) put some money together to rent a cellar which was directly underneath the House of Lords building, and transported a total of 36 barrels of gunpowder on boats across the River Thames to store in the cellar. Guy Fawkes was put in charge of the explosives because he had ten years’ experience in the military from his time fighting for Catholic Spain in the Protestant Netherlands during the Dutch Revolt (1566-1648).

 

5 November 1605

 

A segment of the infamous letter which
rumbled the plot!

However, the plan did not go to action. Lord Monteagle (one of the Lords who was due to be sitting in James’ Parliament on 5 November), was also the brother-in-law of Francis Tresham. As the 5 November approached, Lord Monteagle received an anonymous letter (which, as Fawkes would confess under torture) was written by (or, rather, attributed to) Francis Tresham, warning his brother-in-law not to attend Parliament on 5 November, as the English political establishment would receive a ‘terrible blow’. 

Sensing danger, Monteagle alerted the government, but it was decided that the government wanted to catch the plotters red-handed, so decided not to search the vaults under the Parliament chamber until the night of 4 November.

 

At approximately 11:00pm, the search party entered the rented cellar and it was a man who was also a justice of the peace (Sir Thomas Knyvet) who discovered a man guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder, a pile of firewood and a fuse. That man was, of course, Guy Fawkes.

 

Aftermath

 

Guy Fawkes was immediately arrested and questioned, under the use of torture (including the infamous rack), in order that he also name his co-conspirators. All of the thirteen plotters were eventually tracked down, and all received the same punishment: hung, drawn, and quartered.

 

A record from the trail noted that each of them were to be drawn backwards from prison by a horse tail, hanged, cut down while still alive, “have his Privy parts cut off and burned before his face, as being unworthily begotten and being unfit to leave any generation after him. His Bowels and inlaid Parts taken out and burnt…after to have his head cut off.” Then, and only then, were their bodies to be quartered.

 

Fawkes’ trial was set for 31 January 1606, along with Robert Keyes, Ambrose Rookwood and Thomas Wintour. Fawkes had been drawn, but on his way up to the gallows, he jumped from a ladder, breaking his neck and dying. His body was never quartered, but was still chopped up into four different pieces and sent to “the four corners of the kingdom”, as a warning to other potential traitors.

 

Legacy

 

A torture rack, similar to
the one Guy Fawkes
would have been tortured
on

Surprisingly, the immediate political consequences were not huge. Although tough new laws were rushed through Parliament against Catholicism, there was no widespread persecution of Catholics in England, and the peace with Spain held out. The longer-term consequences were more serious, though. Anti-Catholic feeling directly from the Gunpowder Plot played into the hands of anti-Catholic propaganda in the later seventeenth century in England.

 

If the plot had not been betrayed, it would have been the most serious terrorist attack of the seventeenth century, and not just blown up Parliament, but the entire centre of Westminster. Ronald Hutton argues that “The appropriate comparison is not with [9/11], but with the impact of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.”

 

Obviously the most famous legacy of the Gunpowder Plot is Guy Fawkes Night (also known as Bonfire Night or Fireworks Night), which was established by Parliament in 1606, and has been celebrated ever since. It is celebrated in Britain on 5 November every year, and sometimes effigies of Guy Fawkes are burned on the bonfires, while fireworks are let off to symbolise the explosions that would have occurred, had the plotters not been discovered.

 

A contemporary engraving of eight out of the
thirteen plotters. Missing are Digby, Grant,
Keyes, Rookwood and Tresham.

Bibliography

 

Ronald Hutton, A Brief History of Britain, 1485-1660: The Tudor & Stuart Dynasties (2010)

 

Simon Jenkins, A Short History of England (2011)

 

David Starkey, Crown & Country: The Kings and Queens of England, A History (2011)

 

https://www.history.com/topics/british-history/gunpowder-plot

Vlad the Impaler

Personal Profile

Vlad III Dracul, 'The Impaler' 

Born: 1428-31, known as Vlad III, Vlad the Impaler or Vlad III Dracula

 

Died: December 1476 – January 1477

 

Reign: October – November 1448; 15 April 1456 – July 1462; December 1476 – January 1477

 

Marriages: Unknown first wife; Jusztina Szilágyi

 

Children: Mihnea (b. 1462), unnamed second son (killed 1486); Vlad Drakwyla

 

Dynasty: Drâculesti, House of Basarab

 

***NOTE***

 

Throughout this post, I will refer to Vlad the Impaler as either ‘Vlad’ or ‘Vlad the Impaler’. Any other characters called Vlad (and there are a few!) will be referred to in full, such as ‘Vlad II Dracul’ (Vlad’s father), or ‘Vladislav II’ (Voivode of Wallachia), so as to avoid any confusion. There is also a list of characters at the bottom of this post, and the characters are listed in bold.

 

Early Life

 

Vlad III, better known as Vlad Dracula or Vlad the Impaler, was born in Sighisoara, a part of Transylvania, modern-day Romania. He was the second illegitimate son of Vlad II Dracul – hence the name Dracula. His father was the Voivode (ruler) of Wallachia from 1436-42, and again from 1443-47. The nickname ‘Dracul’ came from Vlad II’s membership in the Order of the Dragon, a military fraternity founded by Sigismund, the Holy Roman Emperor, in 1408. It was dedicated to stopping the Ottoman Turks’ advance into Europe from the East.

Vlad’s date of birth is often contended, and there are no definitive sources as to when he was actually born. The dates are often presumed to be between 1428-31; he was old enough to be a candidate to the throne of Wallachia* in 1448, meaning his birth would have been between 20-23 years old at the time. What we do know, though, is that he was born in Sighisoara, where his father lived in a three-storey stone house from 1431-35.

As an adolescent boy, during the Crusade Varna (1443-44), Vlad was sent as a hostage to the court of the Ottoman Sultan Murad II

The present-day countries in and around
what was Wallachia

 (r. 1421-44, 1446-51). Vlad was exploited as a child sex slave, and the buggery to which he was subjected to can be considered the likely psychiatric source of his later obsessions.

 

*Wallachia was a historical region of what is modern-day Romania. It was situated north of the Lower Danube River and south of the Southern Carpathian Mountains.

 

Reigns

Vlad was not just on the Wallachian throne once, but on three separate occasions. Although his first and third rules were significantly shorter than his second rule, they are still relevant in any discussion about Vlad the Impaler.

First Reign, October-November 1448

Upon the death of his father and elder brother in 1447, Vlad became a potential claimant to the Wallachian throne. However, the current ruler, Vladislav II, had taken the throne before Vlad had chance to publicly put his claim forward. It is often believed that Vladislav II assassinated Vlad II Dracul (Vlad the Impaler’s father) in order to seize the throne. Vladislav II was assisted by John Hunyadi, a leading military figurehead in Wallachia, and part of a noble Transylvanian family. However, in September 1448, John Hunyadi launched a campaign against the Ottoman Empire. Vlad took advantage of Hunyadi’s absence, and broke into Wallachia in early October.

The Ottoman forces defeated Hunyadi’s army in the Battle of Kosovo between 17-18 October 1448. Hunyadi’s deputy, Nicholas Vizaknai, urged Vlad to meet him in Transylvania, but Vlad refused. Vladislav II returned to Wallachia with the remnants of his defeated army – but it was still enough to scare Vlad off. Vlad fled to the Ottoman Empire, and arrived in Edime on 7 December 1448, putting an end to his first reign as Voivode of Wallachia.

 

Second Reign, 15 April 1456 – July 1462

Vlad moved from Edime to Moldavia (which forms part of modern-day Moldova, Romania and Ukraine), where his uncle Bogdan II had taken the throne with John Hunyadi’s support in Autumn 1449. Vlad allegedly wanted to settle in Brasov (a city in Transylvania), but Hunyadi forbade the burghers (privileged citizens of medieval European towns) to let him settle there in a letter he wrote to them on 6 February 1452. Vlad instead returned to Moldavia.

Unfortunately – and not for the last time – there is a gap in the history of Vlad’s life here. We do know that he returned to Hungary sometime before 3 July 1456, because on that day Hunyadi informed the citizens of Brasov that he had tasked Vlad with the defence of the Transylvanian border from the Ottomans.

 

Once again, Vlad invaded Wallachia in Spring 1456, but instead of garnering support from the Ottomans, he instead tried with Hungarian support. He was successful this time in two ways: firstly, Vladislav II ‘the imposter’ in Vlad’s view, was killed in the invasion; and secondly, he was proclaimed Voivode of Wallachia. This was evident in a letter addressed to the burghers of Brasov on 10 September 1456. In this letter, he promised to protect them from an Ottoman invasion of Transylvania, but he also sought their support if the Ottomans occupied Wallachia. Perhaps the most important element of this letter, though, was when he stated: 

 

“When a man is strong and powerful, he can make peace as he wants to; but when he is weak, a stronger one will come and do what he wants to him.”

 

This quote is often the first bit of evidence many historians see as Vlad’s completely authoritarian personality coming out. Shortly after this infamous letter, Vlad began his purge. The contemporary Byzantine historian, Laonikos Chalkokondyles, recorded in his chronicle that “hundreds or thousands” of people were impaled (with the aid of a needle-thin greased staken which was rammed up the victim’s rectum and out through their mouth in such a way that the death throes could last for days) at Vlad’s order at the beginning of his Second Reign. He initially targeted the boyars (aristocrats) who had participated in the murder of his father and brother, or whom he suspected had conspired against him. Interestingly, Chalkokondyles also wrote that Vlad helped the Wallachian economy somewhat, by using the “money, property, and other goods” of his victims to help pay off any debts he had accumulated from his previous invasions, and to pay soldiers in his retinue.

 

The next major event in Vlad’s Second Reign also occurred early on. John Hunyadi died on 11 August 1456, and his son, Ladislaus Hunyadi, became the captain-general of Hungary. Ladislaus accused Vlad of having “no intention of remaining faithful” to the Kingdom of Hungary in a letter to the burghers of Brasov and ordered them to support Dan III (Vladislav II’s brother) against Vlad.

However, the King of Hungary, Ladislaus V, had Ladislaus Hunyadi executed on 16 March 1457. Hunyadi’s mother, Erzsébet Szilágyi, and her brother, Michael, stirred up a rebellion against the king. Taking advantage of the civil war in Hungary, Vlad assisted his cousin Stephen (son of Bogdan II of Moldavia) in his move to seize Moldavia in June 1457. Vlad also broke into Transylvania and plundered the villages around Brasov and Sibiu. Some early German stories from the early 1460s describe Vlad as carrying “men, women and children” from a Transylvanian Saxon village to Wallachia and having them impaled. Since the Transylvanian Saxons remained loyal to Ladislaus V, Vlad’s attack against them strengthened the position of the Szilágyis.

Vlad’s representatives participated in the peace negotiations between Michael Szilágyi and the Saxons. The burghers of Brasov agreed that they would expel Dan III from their town. Delighted, Vlad described Michael as his “lord and elder brother” in a letter dated 1 December 1457.

 

However, Ladislaus Hunyadi’s younger brother, Matthias Corvinus, was elected King of Hungary on 24 January 1458 upon Ladislaus V’s death. He ordered the burghers of Sibiu to keep the peace with Vlad on 3 March. In May 1458, Vlad ordered the burghers of Brasov to send craftsmen to Wallachia – he disregarded the Transylvanian Saxons in this respect, because he forbade the Saxons to enter Wallachia, forcing them to sell their goods to Wallachian merchants at border fairs. One Saxon merchant confiscated the steel that a Wallachian merchant had brought to him, and upon hearing about this, Vlad “ransacked and tortured” Saxon merchants in early 1459, according to a letter written by Basarab Laiota (a son of Dan II of Wallachia):

 

“…the officials and councillors of Brasov cried to us with broken hearts about the things which Dracula, our enemy did…[he] captured all the merchants of Brasov who had gone in peace to Wallachia and took all their wealth; but he was not satisfied with only the wealth of these people…he imprisoned them and impaled them, 41 in all…he became even more evil and gathered 300 boys from Brasov that he found in Wallachia. Of these, he impaled some and burned others.”

 

In response, Dan III broke into Wallachia, but Vlad defeated him and had him executed on 20 April 1460. Vlad then invaded southern Transylvania and destroyed the suburbs of Brasov, ordering the impalement of all men and women who had been captured. Peace was restored – simply through the people of Brasov fearing Vlad – by 26 July 1460, when Vlad addressed the burghers as his “brothers and friends”. Yet Vlad was not all about brotherly love and friendship – he had war on his hands.

 

The Ottoman Wars

 

The Ottoman Wars were a major part of Vlad’s Second Rule, and perhaps the most famous of these skirmishes was what was stylised as The Night Attack at Târgoviste.

This battle was fought between Vlad’s Wallachian forces and Sultan Mehmed II’s Ottoman forces overnight on Thursday 17 June 1462. It initially started when Vlad refused to pay the jizya, a tax on non-Muslim subjects, to the Sultan, and intensified when Vlad invaded Bulgaria in early 1462. In response, Mehmed raised an army of approximately 250,000 men (100,000 regular troops and 150,000 conscript engineers) with the aim to conquer Wallachia and annex it to the Ottoman Empire. Vlad raised an army of 30,000 men (22,000 of whom were light infantry and volunteers) and with a band of these soldiers, attacked the Ottoman camp overnight, in an attempt to kill Mehmed himself. The assassination attempt failed, and Mehmed marched to the Wallachian capital of Târgoviste where he discovered it had been almost utterly destroyed. Upon leaving the capital, and heading back to Constantinople, Mehmed and his men were horrified to discover a “forest of the impaled” – thousands of impaled Turks who had been killed during Vlad’s invasion of Bulgaria. The number 23,844 carcasses impaled is mentioned by Vlad himself in a letter to Matthias Corvinus in the same year. The historian Chalkokondyles wrote that:

 

“There were large stakes on which, it was said, about twenty thousand men, women and children had been spitted, quite a sight for the Turks and the Sultan himself…There were infants too, affixed to their mothers on the stakes and birds had made their nests in their entrails.” It was not hard to see why – even with an army eight times larger than Vlad’s – the Sultan retreated back to Constantinople.

 

Vlad’s Imprisonment (1462-75)

 

Stephen III of Moldavia

Shortly after receiving Vlad’s letter describing the gory details of the thousands of impaled Turks, Matthias Corvinus (or Matthias I of Hungary as he was titled) came to Transylvania in November 1462 upon Vlad’s request. Vlad was insistent on waging war against the Ottoman Empire, but Matthias was hesitant, despite the negotiations lasting for weeks. In the end, Matthias contacted a Czech mercenary, John Jiskra of Brandys, and he captured Vlad near Rucar in Wallachia, in order to imprison him.

Vlad was imprisoned in Hungary at Matthias’ request. In order to explain Vlad’s sudden imprisonment to Pope Pius II (r. 1458-64), Matthias presented three letters to him, allegedly written by Vlad on 7 November 1462, to Mehmed II, Mahmud Pasha (Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, 1456-66, 1472-74) and Stephen III of Moldavia. In these letters, it was stated that Vlad had offered to join his forces with the Sultan’s army against Hungary if the Sultan restored him to his throne. Many historians agree that these letters were forged to give grounds for Vlad’s imprisonment.

Pope Pius II obviously bought the story of Vlad’s three letters and made sure he stayed imprisoned. He was first imprisoned in what Chalkokondyles refers to as “the city of Belgrade”, which strangely was not the modern-day capital of Serbia, but what is now Alba Iulia in Romania. He was then taken to Visegrád (Hungary), where he was held for thirteen years.                                                                                         As I mentioned earlier, there is unfortunately another gap in Vlad’s biography here. Absolutely no documents (that we know of yet!) have been preserved which refer to Vlad between 1462 and 1475.

What we do know, though, is that in Summer 1475, Stephen III of Moldavia sent his envoys to Matthias Corvinus, asking him to send Vlad to Wallachia, against Basarab Laitoa, who had submitted himself to the Ottomans. Stephen wanted to secure Wallachia for a ruler who had been an enemy of the Ottoman Empire, because “the Wallachians [were] like the Turks” to the Moldavians, according to his letter. Matthias accepted Stephen’s request, and he released Vlad from prison.

 

Third Rule and Death (1475-77)

 

Matthias recognised Vlad as the lawful prince of Wallachia, but he did not provide him military assistance to regain his principality. Vlad moved from Hungary to Transylvania in June 1475, before briefly returning to Pécs in Hungary to purchase a house. His house became known as Drakula Háza (Dracula’s House).

Mehmed II invaded Moldavia and defeated Stephen III of Moldavia in the Battle of Valea Alba on 26 July 1476. Meanwhile, Vlad stayed in Brasov, and confirmed the commercial privileges of the local burghers in Wallachia on 7 October 1476. Stephen of Moldavia and Vlad ceremoniously confirmed their alliance, and together they occupied Budapest, forcing Basarab Laiota to seek refuge in the Ottoman Empire on 16 November. Vlad informed the merchants of Brasov about his victory in a speech and urged them to come with him to Wallachia. He was crowned Voivode of Wallachia on 25 November 1476.

Mehmed II

However, Basarab Laiota returned to Wallachia with Ottoman support, and completely overwhelmed the Wallachian forces, taking them by surprise. Vlad was killed in fighting them sometime in either late December 1476 or early January 1477. He was aged between 45-49. In a letter written on 10 January 1477, Stephen III of Moldavia related that Vlad’s Moldavian retinue had been massacred. According to Leonardo Botta, the Milanese ambassador to Buda, the Ottomans cut Vlad’s corpses into pieces, and that his head had been sent to Mehmed II.

The site of Vlad’s burial is unknown – further adding elements of mystery to his life. According to popular tradition in the nineteenth century, pieces of Vlad’s body were reportedly buried in the Monastery of Snagov (Romania). However, when it was excavated in 1933, nothing was found – only adding to the horror stories and myths which surrounded the real-life Dracula!

 

Legacy

 

Works containing stories about Vlad’s cruelty emerged as early as the 1480s in the Holy Roman Empire. The invention of movable print in the 1450s thanks to Johannes Gutenberg meant that these stories and woodcuts could be published on mass and distributed across Europe – these stories made Vlad’s reputation become one of the earliest examples of a bestselling book. To enhance sales, many of the books were published with woodcuts on their title pages which depicted horrific scenes. Notable examples include the editions published in Nuremberg in 1499 and Strasbourg in 1500.

But where did the Dracula connection come from? We know he was called Vlad Dracul, but what about the vampiric element? Interestingly, Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula is the first time a connection was made between Vlad and vampirism. Yet it is not just the blood-sucking element which makes it so vastly different to Vlad’s life – numerous other similarities can be drawn. For instance, the fact that Stoker’s Count Dracula lives in a Transylvanian castle (as did Vlad), the stakes which can be used to kill vampires (such as Vlad impaling his enemies on stakes), and rumours of his body being buried in a church (which was popular in the nineteenth century regarding Vlad).

Historian Norman Davies contends that stories about Vlad’s cruelties serve to remind us about religious fanaticism and inherent evil which persisted in Western Europe as well as Eastern Europe. He draws upon examples of Mary I of England (“Bloody Mary”) and her persecution of protestants, as related in John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563) as belonging to the same “sickening genre as the horrors of the Wallachian vampire-prince.”

 

I hope you enjoyed this one, and make sure you’ve got plenty of garlic in the house to keep those vampires away! Happy Halloween, everyone!

 

List of Characters

 

Basarab Laiota: a son of Dan II of Wallachia, and had five stints as Prince of Wallachia (November-December 1473, Spring 1474, September-October 1474, January 1475-November 1476, December 1476-November 1477)

Bogdan II: Prince of Moldavia (r. 1449-51), and uncle of Vlad the Impaler.

Dan III: Sometimes referred to as ‘Dan the Younger’. A pretender to the throne of Wallachia from 1456-60. Brother of Vladislav II.

John Hunyadi: Leading Hungarian military and political figure, descended from a noble Romanian family. Father of Ladislaus Hunyadi and Matthias Corvinus.

Ladislaus V: King of Hungary and Croatia (r. 1440-57), King of Bohemia (r. 1453-57).

Ladislaus Hunyadi: Eldest son of John Hunyadi, and a Hungarian nobleman. Older brother of Matthias Corvinus.

Matthias Corvinus: Also known as Matthias I. King of Hungary and Croatia (r. 1458-90), King of Bohemia (r. 1469-90), Duke of Austria (r. 1487-90). Youngest son of John Hunyadi and younger brother of Ladislaus Hunyadi.

Mehmed II: Also known as Mehmed the Conqueror, he was Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1444-46, then again from 1451-81.

Murad II: Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1421-44 and then again from 1446-51. Vlad the Impaler was sent to his court and abused there as an adolescent.

Stephen III of Moldavia: Also known as Stephen the Great and later canonised as a Romanian Saint, he was the Voivode (Prince) of Moldavia from 1457-1504. He was a cousin of Vlad the Impaler. He was the son of Bogdan II.

Vlad II Dracul: Vlad the Impaler’s father. Also known as Vlad the Dragon. He was Voivode of Wallachia from 1436-42, and again from 1443-47.

Vlad the Impaler: Our main man! Also known more officially as Vlad III, or Vlad Dracula, he was the son of Vlad II and Voivode of Wallachia. The inspiration behind Dracula for his abhorrent cruelty to citizens and strangers alike.

Vladislav II: Voivode of Wallachia (r. 1447-48, 1448-56). Rumoured assassin of Vlad II Dracul and placed on the throne by John Hunyadi. Killed by Vlad the Impaler. Brother of Dan III.

 

Further Research

 

Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)

Norman Davies, Europe: A History (2014)

John Julius Norwich, The Popes: A History (2011)

Dictators Podcast (Spotify): Vlad the Impaler Pt. 1, Pt. 2

We Are History Podcast (Spotify): Vlad the Impaler, the original ‘Dracula’

Curious Characters Podcast (Spotify): Vlad the Impaler “Dracula”