Night Attack, The
1462 CE
The Night Attack, a skirmish fought between forces of Vlad III the Impaler of Wallachia, also known as Vlad Dracula or simply Dracula, and Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire on June 17, 1462, initially starts with Dracula's refusal to pay tribute to the Porte and escalates when Dracula invades Bulgaria and impales over twenty-three thousand Turks and Bulgarians.
Mehmed then raises a great army with the objective to conquer Wallachia and annex it to his empire.
The two leaders fight a series of skirmishes, the most notable one being the Night Attack, in which Dracula attacks the Turkish camp in the night in an attempt to kill Mehmed.
The assassination attempt fails and Mehmed marches to the Wallachian capital of Taroviste where he discovers another twenty thousand impaled Turks and Bulgarians.
Demoralized, the Sultan and his troops retreat.
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Ţepeş writes in a letter to Corvinus, dated February 2, 1462, that Hamza Pasha had been captured close to the former Wallachian fortress of Giurgiu.
He then disguises himself as a Turk and advances with his cavalry towards the fortress where he orders the guards in Turkish to have the gates open.
This they do and Ţepeş attacks and destroys the fortress.
Ţepes’ next move is a campaign to slaughter enemy soldiers and populations that might have sympathized with the Turks; first in southern Wallachia, then, in Bulgaria by crossing the frozen Danube.
While in Bulgaria, he divides his army into several smaller groups, which in the space of two weeks kill over twenty-three thousand Turks and Muslim Bulgarians.
In a letter to Corvinus, dated February 11, 1462, he states: I have killed men and women, old and young, who lived at Oblucitza and Novoselo, where the Danube flows into the sea, up to Rahova, which is located near Chilia, from the lower Danube up to such places as Samovit and Ghighen.
We killed 23,884 Turks and Bulgars without counting those whom we burned in homes or whose heads were not cut by our soldiers....Thus your highness must know that I have broken the peace with him [the sultan].
Because of his sadistic cruelty toward subjects and Turkish prisoners alike, the Wallachian monarch becomes known as Vlad the Impaler (and, as Dracula—or son of the Devil—will become the source of the Dracula legend).
The Christian Bulgarians are spared, however, and many of them are settled in Wallachia.
When hearing about the devastation, Mehmed—who is busy besieging a fortress in Corinth—sends his grand vizier, Mahmud, with an army of eighteen thousand to destroy the Wallachian port of Brăila.
Ţepeş turns back and defeats the army, and according to the Italian chronicle de Lezze, only eight thousand Turks survive.
Ţepeş's campaign is celebrated among the Saxon cities of Transylvania, the Italian states and the Pope.
A Venetian envoy, upon hearing about the news at the court of Corvinus on March 4, expresses great joy and says that the whole of Christianity should celebrate Ţepeş's successful campaign.
An English pilgrim to the Holy Land, William of Wey, passing through the island of Rhodes while on his way home, writes that "the military men of Rhodes, upon hearing of Ţepeş's campaign, had Te Deum sung in praise and honour of God who had granted such victories....The lord mayor of Rhodes convened his brother soldiers and the whole citizenry feasted on fruit and wine."
The Genoese from Caffa thank Ţepeş, for his campaign had saved them from an attack of some three hundred ships that the sultan had planned to send against them.
Many Turks, now frightened of Ţepeş, leave the European side of their empire and move into Anatolia.
Mehmed, when hearing about the events, abandons his siege at Corinth and decides to go against Vlad Ţepeş himself.
Mehmed, on hearing about the events in Bulgaria, abandons his siege at Corinth and decides to go against Vlad Ţepeş himself.
Mehmed has sent messengers in all directions to assemble an army.
The sultan moves with his army from Constantinople on April 26 or May 17, 1462 with the objective of conquering Wallachia and annexing the land to his empire.
The Sultan himself writes in a letter addressed to one of his grand viziers, that he took one hundred and fifty thousand men with him.
The Greek historian Laonikos Chalkokondyles wrote of Mehmed's army as "huge, second in size only to the one that this sultan had led against Constantinople."
He estimated the force at two hundred and fifty thousand, while the Turkish historian Tursun Bey mentioned three hundred thousand.
The same numbers were put by an anonymous Italian chronicle found in Verona, believed to have been written by a certain merchant named Cristoforo Schiappa.
A letter of a Leonardo Tocco to Francesco I Sforza, duke of Milan, wrote that Mehmed had recruited four hundred thousand men from Rumelia and Anatolia, with forty thousand being constructers of bridges armed with axes.
These numbers are deemed exaggerations.
A more realistic number is the one given by Venetian envoy at Buda, Tommasi, who mentioned a regular force of sixty thousand and some thirty thousand irregulars.
These consistsof the janissaries (the elite troops); infantry soldiers; sipâhis (the feudal cavalry); saiales (the sacrificial units composed of enslaved men who would win their freedom if they survived); acings (the archers); silahdârs (the custodians of the sultan's weapons who also protect the flanks); azabs (the pikemen); beshlis (who handle the firearms); and the praetorian guard that serves as the sultan's personal bodyguards.
Vlad's half-brother, Radu the Handsome, who willingly serves the sultan, commands four thousand horsemen.
In addition to this, the Turks bring with them one hundred and twenty cannon, engineers and workers that will build roads and bridges, priests of Islam (ulema) and muezzin, who call the troops to prayer, astrologers who consult Mehmed and help im make military decisions; and women "reserved for the night pleasures of the men."
Chalcocondyles reports that the Danube shipowners were paid three hundred thousand gold pieces to transport the army.
In addition to this, the Ottomans use their own fleet, which consists of twenty-five triremes and one hundred and fifty smaller vessels.
Ţepeş asks the Hungarian king for assistance—even offering to convert from Orthodoxy to Catholicism in order to gain support from Corvinus.
He receives no support despite promises made by Corvinus and instead calls for a mobilization.
Various sources mention the strength of his army to be between twenty-two thousand and thirty thousand nine hundred, with the most popular accepted number set at thirty thousand.The letter of Leonardo Tocco, which puts the numbers of the Turkish army at an exaggerated strength of four hundred thousand, exaggerated also the Wallachian strength, which is estimated at two hundred thousand.
The majority of the army consists of peasants and shepherds, while the boyars on horseback—who are few in numbers—are armed with lances, swords, and daggers and wear chain mail armor.
Vlad's personal guard consists of mercenaries from many countries and some Gypsies.
The Turks first try to disembark at Vidin, but are pushed back by arrows.
A contingent of janissaries lands during the night of June 4 at Turnu Severin, where three hundred of them die from Wallachian attacks.
The Ottoman army manages to advance as Ţepeş institutes a policy of scorched earth, poisons the waters, and also creates marshes by diverting the waters of small rivers.
Traps are created by the digging of pits, and then covered with timber and leaves.
The population and animals are evacuated to the mountains and as Mehmed advances for seven days, his army suffers from fatigue.
Ţepeş adopts guerrilla tactics as his cavalry make several hit-and-run attacks.
He also sends ill people suffering from lethal diseases, such as leprosy, tuberculosis, syphilis —and in more significant numbers—those who suffer from the bubonic plague, to intermix with the Turks and infect them.
The bubonic plague manages to spread in the Ottoman army.
The Ottoman fleet launches a few minor attacks on Brăila and Chilia, but without being able to do much damage, as Ţepeş has destroyed most of the ports in Bulgaria.
Chalkokondyles writes that the Sultan managed to capture a Wallachian soldier and at first tried to bribe him for information; when that didn't work, he threatened him with torture, to no avail.
Mehmed was said to have commended the soldier by saying, "if your master had many soldiers like yourself, in a short time he could conquer the world!"
After failing to capture the fortress of Bucharest and...
...the fortified island of Snagov, ...