There is an aspect of alien society that is especially important and deserves mention. It is extremely significant that hybrids appear to bridge the gap between alien and human both in appearance and in communication. While the hybrids who look mainly alien (early-stage) and those who look half-alien and half-human (middle-stage) speak telepathically, the ones that look mainly human (late-stage) can speak both telepathically and orally. When the late-stage hybrids speak through their mouths, they are more communicative and more expressive than the aliens. One can speculate that the more human they appear, the more they display oral communicative abilities.9
Hybrids can engage in substantive and lengthy conversations with humans. They can impart information about their lives and about the society in which they live. Conversely, the can elicit information about human life and society. Hybrids usually dictate the manner and content of the conversation. On some occasions, a greater latitude can be given the abductee to ask questions and engage in a more in-depth questioning. One abductee had a hybrid who was essentially assigned to him (Personal Project Hybrid) who visited him from time to time. The abductee looked forward to these meetings because he could communicate telepathically with him. For the abductee, telepathic communication represented a complex form of information exchange on many levels at once. He said that he could hold conversations on multiple topics at the same time. In explaining something as prosaic as basketball rules, the hybrid could almost instantly understand the game by simply tapping into the regions of the abductee’s brain that contained that information. Therefore communication could proceed rapidly without having to take the time for long explanations. And, the conversation can take place on a deeper level with less superficial communication.
However, regardless of the more complex form of communication that hybrid telepathic contact might generate, the hybrids live in the alien-dominated society and their lives are ruled by that dominant culture. When abductees describe disagreements and clashes between aliens and hybrids, the differences between a subordinate society with a more complete human-like sensory abilities – hearing, tasting, smelling, and so on -- and thus a fuller emotional range, and the more restricted non-hearing alien society are brought into sharp relief. For example, on one occasion, a hybrid was engaged in an argument with an alien over using an abductee as a special project. The hybrid was anxious, angry, animated, and stubborn. The alien was cool, logical, unruffled, and in control.
If late-stage hybrid emotions run the gamut from love to hate they can present special difficulties for the aliens. In one abduction event, an alien told the abductee they were having difficulty controlling the hybrids because their emotional needs constituted a serious problem that the aliens had not fully understood before they embarked upon their reproductive program. If this is true, the role of hybrid emotions looms as a significant problem for the aliens. What the final results will be of the mixing of these two types of beings is unclear.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
feet 5532.fee.0043 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
It was evident to Detective Muscio that Katherine Knight had murdered John Price, skinned and decapitated him and cooked his head and served it and portions of his buttocks (the pieces of meat in the backyard also proved to be from the victim's buttocks) on plates for herself and his two children for dinner when, or if, they returned to the house at some time.
John Price
John Price
Given that Price's son and daughter (the Beck and Little John mentioned in the note) were away from the house when the murder occurred, it seemed hardly likely that they would be returning for a meal at a pre-arranged time.
Detective Muscio also said; "I remember walking down the hallway and at about shoulder height there were all these blood splatter marks on the walls. To me, it's indicative of each attack... He's absolutely fighting for his life. The bloke's just had a bonk (sexual intercourse) in the bed when he wakes up, then stab, stab, stab. He's getting up, there is arterial spurting on the robe and the bed, and on the doorway there's a bloodied handprint or swipe on the western side of the door near the dressing table, and blood around the light switch. It looks like he's tried to turn the light switch on. And then all down the hallway they're (bloody handprints) everywhere. And he's almost made it, he's opened the front door, the screen door is shut, there is blood staining, trajectory again, flicking out across the front door, he's almost made it... but he wouldn't have survived. He would have been absolutely horrified, terrified — probably terrified more than horrified — trying to get out and all the time being stabbed."
An autopsy revealed that the victim was dead when he was skinned. A razor sharp knife had been inserted just under his collarbone and sliced horizontally across the top of the body, from shoulder to shoulder, right under the clavicles. It was a straight, clean cut, anatomically precise. Then the knife was turned and cut down the chest and over the stomach to the pubic hair line and made into a T with another straight line.
Tracing the knife tip around his pubic area and careful not to cut his penis or genitals, the killer cut down the front of John Price's thighs, over the knees and to his feet. The killer then moved up the body, held his arms up and cut down the back of each one and across the top of the victim's head. The killer then peeled the victim's skin off, including his head, his hair, his face and all the way down the length of the body to the feet exposing the victim's intestines.
The entire skin was in one piece including hair, face, ears, nose, mouth, genitals and complete stab holes and dripping in blood. Hanging from the S-hook in the doorway, the feet were dragging on the ground.
The killer then removed the victim's head clean at the C3-C4 junction, right at the top of the shoulders using a very sharp knife The cut was precise and clean. The killer would have been covered in warm, sticky blood. According to forensic pathologist Dr. Timothy Lyons, who performed the autopsy, the whole procedure would have taken about 40 minutes.
John Price
John Price
Given that Price's son and daughter (the Beck and Little John mentioned in the note) were away from the house when the murder occurred, it seemed hardly likely that they would be returning for a meal at a pre-arranged time.
Detective Muscio also said; "I remember walking down the hallway and at about shoulder height there were all these blood splatter marks on the walls. To me, it's indicative of each attack... He's absolutely fighting for his life. The bloke's just had a bonk (sexual intercourse) in the bed when he wakes up, then stab, stab, stab. He's getting up, there is arterial spurting on the robe and the bed, and on the doorway there's a bloodied handprint or swipe on the western side of the door near the dressing table, and blood around the light switch. It looks like he's tried to turn the light switch on. And then all down the hallway they're (bloody handprints) everywhere. And he's almost made it, he's opened the front door, the screen door is shut, there is blood staining, trajectory again, flicking out across the front door, he's almost made it... but he wouldn't have survived. He would have been absolutely horrified, terrified — probably terrified more than horrified — trying to get out and all the time being stabbed."
An autopsy revealed that the victim was dead when he was skinned. A razor sharp knife had been inserted just under his collarbone and sliced horizontally across the top of the body, from shoulder to shoulder, right under the clavicles. It was a straight, clean cut, anatomically precise. Then the knife was turned and cut down the chest and over the stomach to the pubic hair line and made into a T with another straight line.
Tracing the knife tip around his pubic area and careful not to cut his penis or genitals, the killer cut down the front of John Price's thighs, over the knees and to his feet. The killer then moved up the body, held his arms up and cut down the back of each one and across the top of the victim's head. The killer then peeled the victim's skin off, including his head, his hair, his face and all the way down the length of the body to the feet exposing the victim's intestines.
The entire skin was in one piece including hair, face, ears, nose, mouth, genitals and complete stab holes and dripping in blood. Hanging from the S-hook in the doorway, the feet were dragging on the ground.
The killer then removed the victim's head clean at the C3-C4 junction, right at the top of the shoulders using a very sharp knife The cut was precise and clean. The killer would have been covered in warm, sticky blood. According to forensic pathologist Dr. Timothy Lyons, who performed the autopsy, the whole procedure would have taken about 40 minutes.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
occupied 44.occ.002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Rommel advances from El Agheila again
Following the successful Operation Crusader, in late 1941, the Eighth Army had driven the Axis forces out of Cyrenaica and forced Rommel to withdraw to strong defensive positions he had prepared at El Agheila. However, their 500+ mile advance had over-stretched their lines of supply and during January 1942 they had thinned out their front line troops to work on building lines of communications and supply dumps to enable a further thrust west to be made against Tripolitania. Meanwhile, Rommel had received reinforcements in men and tanks, and on 21 January sent out three strong armoured columns to make a tactical reconnaissance. Finding only the thinnest of screens in front of him he rapidly changed his reconnaissance into an offensive. He recaptured Benghazi on 28 January, and Timimi on 3 February and pressed on towards the fortified port of Tobruk on the Mediterranean coast.
[edit] Eighth Army digs in on the Gazala line
Between Gazala and Timimi (just west of Tobruk) the Eighth Army was able to concentrate its forces sufficiently to turn and fight. By 4 February Rommel's advance had been halted and the front line had been stabilised running from Gazala on the coast (30 miles west of Tobruk) to the town of Bir Hakeim, 50 miles to the south.
The "Gazala Line" was a series of occupied "boxes" each of brigade strength set out across the desert with minefields and wire watched by regular patrols between the boxes. The Free French were to the south at the Bir Hakeim box. The line was not equally staffed with a greater number of troops covering the coast leaving the south less protected.
[edit]
Following the successful Operation Crusader, in late 1941, the Eighth Army had driven the Axis forces out of Cyrenaica and forced Rommel to withdraw to strong defensive positions he had prepared at El Agheila. However, their 500+ mile advance had over-stretched their lines of supply and during January 1942 they had thinned out their front line troops to work on building lines of communications and supply dumps to enable a further thrust west to be made against Tripolitania. Meanwhile, Rommel had received reinforcements in men and tanks, and on 21 January sent out three strong armoured columns to make a tactical reconnaissance. Finding only the thinnest of screens in front of him he rapidly changed his reconnaissance into an offensive. He recaptured Benghazi on 28 January, and Timimi on 3 February and pressed on towards the fortified port of Tobruk on the Mediterranean coast.
[edit] Eighth Army digs in on the Gazala line
Between Gazala and Timimi (just west of Tobruk) the Eighth Army was able to concentrate its forces sufficiently to turn and fight. By 4 February Rommel's advance had been halted and the front line had been stabilised running from Gazala on the coast (30 miles west of Tobruk) to the town of Bir Hakeim, 50 miles to the south.
The "Gazala Line" was a series of occupied "boxes" each of brigade strength set out across the desert with minefields and wire watched by regular patrols between the boxes. The Free French were to the south at the Bir Hakeim box. The line was not equally staffed with a greater number of troops covering the coast leaving the south less protected.
[edit]
Saturday, January 30, 2010
back 33,e Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Carl Dorr looked into the back yard several times. He didn't see Michele. The pool was still, not a ripple. Still, he wasn't worried. Sudley Road in Silver Spring, Maryland was a safe suburban street, three miles from the Washington, D.C. border. Nothing exciting had ever happened in this leafy enclave. He had no doubt that his daughter was down the street playing with her pal, Eliza Clark. He stayed relaxed, paying a few bills while he finished watching the auto race. Michele didn't return.
Around 5:30 he wandered over to the Clark's house. Geoffrey Clark had returned home and was in the back barbecuing. His children from his first marriage were there, as was his new girlfriend. Eliza was part of the group. There was no Michele.
Geoff Clark said he hadn't seen Michele all day. So did his daughter Eliza. Perplexed, Carl walked to the end of the street and saw nothing. The bewildered father began knocking on doors. Nothing. Panic began to set in. He drove through the neighborhood again and then pointed his car in the direction of the nearest police precinct. There, he reported her missing.
Around 5:30 he wandered over to the Clark's house. Geoffrey Clark had returned home and was in the back barbecuing. His children from his first marriage were there, as was his new girlfriend. Eliza was part of the group. There was no Michele.
Geoff Clark said he hadn't seen Michele all day. So did his daughter Eliza. Perplexed, Carl walked to the end of the street and saw nothing. The bewildered father began knocking on doors. Nothing. Panic began to set in. He drove through the neighborhood again and then pointed his car in the direction of the nearest police precinct. There, he reported her missing.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
control 7.con.2001 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Two years after his mother died, Harold Shipman was finally admitted to Leeds University medical school. Getting in had been a struggle. In spite of his self-proclaimed superiority, he'd had to re-write the exams he'd flunked first time around. Nonetheless, his grades were adequate enough for him to collect a degree and serve his mandatory hospital internship.
It is surprising to learn that so many of his teachers and fellow students can barely remember Shipman. Some who do remember claim that he looked down on them and seemed bemused by the way most young men behaved. "It was as if he tolerated us. If someone told a joke he would smile patiently, but Fred never wanted to join in. It seems funny, because I later heard he'd been a good athlete, so you'd have thought he'd be more of a team player."
Most of his contemporaries — especially from his earlier years — simply remember him as a loner. They also remember the one place where his personality changed — the football field. Here, his aggression was unleashed, his dedication to win intense.
Even so, he was more sociable in medical school than his mother had allowed him to be while living at home.
A former teacher said, "I don't think he ever had a girlfriend; in fact he took his older sister to school dances. They made a strange couple. But then, he was a bit strange — a pretentious lad."
But Shipman finally found companionship in a girl and married before most of his contemporaries did. At nineteen, he met Primrose — 3 years his junior.
Her background was similar to Fred's. Her mother restricted her friendships, and controlled her activities.
No poster girl, Primrose was delighted to have finally found a boyfriend. Shipman married her when she was 17 — and 5 months pregnant.
By 1974 he was a father of two and had joined a medical practice in the Yorkshire town of Todmorden. In this North England setting, Fred seemed to undergo a metamorphosis; he became an outgoing, respected member of the community — in the eyes of his fellow medics and patients.
But the staff in the medical offices where he worked saw a different side of the young practitioner. He was often unnecessarily rude and made some of them feel "stupid" — a word he frequently used to describe anyone he didn't like. He was confrontational and combative with many people, to the point where he belittled and embarrassed them. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire also had a way of getting things done his way — even with the more experienced doctors in the practice.
Not yet thirty, Shipman had become a control freak.
It is surprising to learn that so many of his teachers and fellow students can barely remember Shipman. Some who do remember claim that he looked down on them and seemed bemused by the way most young men behaved. "It was as if he tolerated us. If someone told a joke he would smile patiently, but Fred never wanted to join in. It seems funny, because I later heard he'd been a good athlete, so you'd have thought he'd be more of a team player."
Most of his contemporaries — especially from his earlier years — simply remember him as a loner. They also remember the one place where his personality changed — the football field. Here, his aggression was unleashed, his dedication to win intense.
Even so, he was more sociable in medical school than his mother had allowed him to be while living at home.
A former teacher said, "I don't think he ever had a girlfriend; in fact he took his older sister to school dances. They made a strange couple. But then, he was a bit strange — a pretentious lad."
But Shipman finally found companionship in a girl and married before most of his contemporaries did. At nineteen, he met Primrose — 3 years his junior.
Her background was similar to Fred's. Her mother restricted her friendships, and controlled her activities.
No poster girl, Primrose was delighted to have finally found a boyfriend. Shipman married her when she was 17 — and 5 months pregnant.
By 1974 he was a father of two and had joined a medical practice in the Yorkshire town of Todmorden. In this North England setting, Fred seemed to undergo a metamorphosis; he became an outgoing, respected member of the community — in the eyes of his fellow medics and patients.
But the staff in the medical offices where he worked saw a different side of the young practitioner. He was often unnecessarily rude and made some of them feel "stupid" — a word he frequently used to describe anyone he didn't like. He was confrontational and combative with many people, to the point where he belittled and embarrassed them. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire also had a way of getting things done his way — even with the more experienced doctors in the practice.
Not yet thirty, Shipman had become a control freak.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
folklore 44.fol.0003 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
During the investigation into the letters, the contents of the poems were also regarded as clues. It was soon discovered that the Vian poem was patterned after a "Curly Locks" nursery rhyme that had only just appeared in Games, a puzzle magazine. After making this startling discovery, investigators obtained a list of all the subscribers to the magazine in question.
The Fox poem, titled "Oh Death to Nancy," had been patterned after a poem entitled Oh Death which had been published in a Wichita State University textbook. The book had previously been used in an American folklore class; hence, investigators obtained a copy of the class roster.
Law enforcement officials have not yet released BTK's letters to the public. When asked to typify them, Capt. Paul Dotson stated, "Here I am. Pay attention."
Using all of the available evidence obtained, investigators soon began to assemble lists of every white male that lived within a quarter-mile of the Oteros' house in or around January 1974. Investigators also made similar lists for the Vian, Fox and Bright homes. In addition, task force investigators compiled lists of men living within 1 1/4 miles of each of the victim's homes; they also assembled lists of white male students who attended Wichita state University between 1974 and 1979. The smallest list contained the names of eight people who had checked out the mechanical engineering textbook from the library where the Otero letter was found.
The Fox poem, titled "Oh Death to Nancy," had been patterned after a poem entitled Oh Death which had been published in a Wichita State University textbook. The book had previously been used in an American folklore class; hence, investigators obtained a copy of the class roster.
Law enforcement officials have not yet released BTK's letters to the public. When asked to typify them, Capt. Paul Dotson stated, "Here I am. Pay attention."
Using all of the available evidence obtained, investigators soon began to assemble lists of every white male that lived within a quarter-mile of the Oteros' house in or around January 1974. Investigators also made similar lists for the Vian, Fox and Bright homes. In addition, task force investigators compiled lists of men living within 1 1/4 miles of each of the victim's homes; they also assembled lists of white male students who attended Wichita state University between 1974 and 1979. The smallest list contained the names of eight people who had checked out the mechanical engineering textbook from the library where the Otero letter was found.
Monday, November 16, 2009
army 2.arm.99299 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
As the son of the Dragon, Vlad Dracula was expected to become, by his adolescence, a warrior. Even though the first-born Mircea would be first in line to the throne of the principality, the father looked upon all of his sons — Mircea, Vlad and Radu (born in 1435) — as champee elite to the family name. They learned how to steady a bow, wield a blade and ride bareback before they reached the age of their scholastic studies. The art of fighting came foremost.
Dracula's birthplace (CORBIS)
Dracula's birthplace (CORBIS)
In chain mail made to fit their small bodies, with broadswords equally balanced, and on Arabian ponies, they dashed through the edelweiss-strewn forest beside Sighisoara clipping gnarled sycamores and poplars they pretended were oversized sultans. While Carpathian eagles looped overhead, watching curiously, and as woodpeckers careened out of the way, the Dragon watched his little Davids taking on the imaginary Goliaths. He timed their charges, graded their legionnaire skills.
The Dragon envisioned great things for his clan. But, if the sons of Dracul were to be real men, he told himself, they would need a dominion of their own. Being siblings of the Governor of Transylvania, mere puppets to Hungary, was not enough. His prospect, therefore, continued to be to take free-state Wallachia from the timid Danejsti who had virtually placed the welcome mat out for the Turks.
By 1435, the Dragon had convinced his old mentor, King Sigismund of Hungary, to lend him an army large enough to oust the thin-blooded cousin before Romania was lost forever. After a bitter siege on Wallachia's capital, Tirgoviste, the Dragon finally sat on the throne he had wanted for more than a decade.
Tirgoviste, located on the banks of the Dimbovita River, was an old city even when young Dracula followed his conqueror father there. A busy crossroads and commercial thoroughfare in the southern bottomlands of the Carpathians, it was comprised of hundreds of varieties of markets and merchants' stores, busy at all hours. Near the center of town rose the Byzantine eaves of the wealthy landowners who owned a division of fertile grape-producing fields surrounding the town.
The Byzantine battlements of the Prince's Palace, more a fortress, overlooked the roofs of the town and earned a panorama of the rolling landscape of trees, boulders, plains and a generosity of small lakes that provided citizens with mountain water and freshwater fish. The palace's central walls, four feet thick, had been erected by Mircea from the ruins of an early Roman outpost; at a far and high corner of town, they merged with the walls that surrounded Tirgoviste itself. Posh living quarters and the prince's low-beamed rectangular throne room were set back from the main gate across a courtyard and gardens guarded night and day by a legion of sentries posted along the walls and atop the main lookout, the Chindia Watchtower.
Dracula's early life at Tirgoviste consisted of more of the same as in Transylvania, physical and mental study. His mother, the devoutly religious Catholic Princess Cneajna, saw to her sons' religious upbringing, ensuring that they received ongoing commune with the monks from the nearby Church of the Holy Paraclete. Before the sun set, the boys' tutoring had also included, apart from combat skills, daily injections of geography, mathematics, science, language and the classical arts and philosophy.
Dracula and his older brother, Mircea, were the most rough-and-tumble of the Dragon's heirs; they often got into mischief with many of the scamps of the local boyars in Tirgoviste. In appearance, they greatly resembled their father with his dark features, aquiline nose and high cheekbones. Dracula, it was said, inherited his father's temper, combustive and fiery.
Their younger sibling, Radu, despite his warrior's training, spoke softly, moved quietly and tended to prefer the company of only certain boys. (Florescu and McNally hint at Radu's homosexuality.) Angelic faced, the image of his mother, he would, in time, be called Radu the Handsome. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire In later years, he and Dracula would become fierce rivals.
As for the Dragon, he had become a dignified Wallachian statesman. He ruled firmly, but fairly. However, he found himself stuck between his conscience and duty. Due to the trepidation of his predecessor, Danejsti, the forces of Turkish Sultan Murad II had gained such a foothold in Wallachia that they were in a position to ransack the principality at will. They were everywhere. Their caravans roamed the streets of Tirgoviste, Buzau and Bucharest; their cavalries paraded unchecked from the border of Turkish Bulgaria to the Carpathian Mountains, their scimitars at their sides gleaming in the sun; their foot soldiers camped openly on the Arges and Olt Rivers. In essence, Murad — not the Dragon — owned Wallachia. Attesting to that, consider that the latter was forced to pay the sultan 10,000 gold ducats annually to keep the major cities in his province free from savage attack.
Depending on the source, the Dragon's relationship with the Turks was either forced (because he hadn't the strength to fight back) or chosen (accepting neutrality as a small price to pay for Wallachian liberty). Knowing the character of the Dracul, one might assume he was merely waiting for a first chance to strike. When that opportunity came in 1442, however, he desisted a fight by refusing to join the famous, politically ambitious "White Knight" Jonas Hunyadi, Viceroy of Transylvania, who mustered a huge army to kick the Turks back to Bulgaria.
Some authors believe that the Dragon was being pessimistic, believing that Hunyadi hadn't a chance. Nevertheless, the White Knight, ahead of a force comprised mostly of royal troops loaned to him by the new Hungarian king, Ladislaus III, moved without the Wallachian prince's participation. After a bloody engagement near the Danube, the Turks under the command of Sihabeddin were chased south of the Danube.
Frustrated and angered by his army's setback, Sultan Murad called several top-ranking Europeans, including the Dragon, to Turkish Gallipoli for a parley. No one but the Dragon answered the summons. He took with him his two sons, 13-year-old Dracula and nine-year-old Radu, believing it to be strictly a call under truce. When he entered the sultan's salon, he and his sons were promptly arrested.
Held captive for days, the prince was finally released under conditions set forth by the Turkish court:
1. that he swear by both the Bible and the Koran to avoid the engendering of further hostilities;
2. that he deposit 10,000 ducats in the sultan's treasury; and,
3. insuring he is a man of his word, that he leave his two sons as hostages in Turkey for an indefinite period of time. The Dragon reluctantly consented.
It was not the first time that the Turks pressed into service youths wrested from European nobility. As a body, these captives were placed in what was called the Janissary Corps. The scholastic Turkey: A Country Study, explains: "Expeditions were regularly organized to collect a tribute of Christian boys from the Balkan provinces. Those taken became Muslims and underwent training that instilled in them a corporate identity. These 'slaves of the state' were...prepared for admission into the Ottoman ruling class...where they engaged in Islamic studies, learned Persian and Arabic, and received advanced mitary training."
Young Radu and Dracula were moved from Gallipoli to the center of the Turkish nation, the city of Adrianople. They were not treated as prisoners, per se, but were kept under constant surveillance and supervision. (After all, they were the sons of an important enemy and at many times were given access to government buildings and military unformation.) But, virtually, they were free to roam the day-lit streets when away from obligation, to partake of the Eastern way of life, to breathe in the atmosphere of the markets with their many spices and many new customs, to taste the indescribably aromatic dishes, even to court a girl if they wished — providing she was of honorable birth — under the silvery Byzantine moon.
Radu proved to require little, if any, observation; he fully accustomed himself to the laws, by-laws and culture of Turkey, which he saw as his "adopted" country.
Dracula, on the other hand, often displayed a belligerent and smothering attitude. A good pupil, and not outwardly hostile, he nevertheless liked to quarrel with superiors and bemoan his confinement. He fought for more personal liberty, insulted his bodyguards and a little too often (to suit his present patriarchs) belittled Asian customs.
The Turks were forced to take him to task — more precisely, to the whipping post — on quite a few occasions.
In 1445, European Christians attempted another crusade against the Ottomans. Again, their principle was Jonas Hunyadi, the White Knight, who rode towards Turkish districts with a legion armed for a long conflict. The Dragon, despite his promise to Sultan Murad — and most likely because he did not want to face a public chastisement like the one he had endured for his conscientious objection to the 1442 campaign — offered 4,000 cavalrymen under the leadership of his son, Mircea. He did refuse, however, to personally bear arms in the offensive, hoping the sultan would accept that decision as his intention of loyalty and, thus, refrain from harming his children.
*****
The sultan, upon hearing that Hunyadi was on the attack, had the Dracul's boys locked in the dungeon. There, they received daily floggings and endured long periods of hunger. Dracula's insolence harshened his treatment; he suffered various tortures to mind and body. Still, he was kept alive, probably due to the fact that the sultan figured he could still be employed as a bartering tool.
From a narrow window above his cell, Dracula witnessed the executions of less-fortunate prisoners taking place in the yard outside. Depending upon their crime, they were hanged, shot with arrows or spears, beheaded, crushed under wheels, or given over to a wild beast of prey. Many were impaled.
At first, the teenage boy may have been repulsed at the site of impalement. But, after a while, he certainly grew fascinated by it. Impalement, the most inhuman of punishments, involved piercing a body length-wise with a sharpened pole, the victim then left to die atop the raised pole. Death was excruciating and sometimes slow. Men were usually struck through the rectum, women through the vagina. Dracula watched the victims squirm, scream, hemorrhage, then die. He saw the crows pick at their carcasses that often remained under the hot Turkish sun until they were only blistered meat.
Dracula learned to detest his captives for their cruelty, yet wished that he would be given the chance to serve his captives likewise. Not knowing if and when he might be next, he imagined, if he survived, a day that he could inflict such torment on the Turks. Battered, starving, cut, singed and now having to view what the Turks did several times a week just beyond his windowsill, he probably went mad.
*****
Hunyadi's army had accrued a trio of victories in Turkish Bulgaria — at Peretz, Nis and Sofia — but when reaching the important shipping town of Varna on the Black Sea, it came face to face with an overpowering force under Murad. Hunyadi's troops were slaughtered, Hunyadi himself sent dashing on foot for his life. He and a very few of his soldiers, including the Dragon's son, Mircea, managed to reach Romania safely.
The White Knight, who valued his reputation (and who had set his sights on someday rising to the throne of Hungary), lost respect after the Varna fiasco. To compensate, he regrouped his forces, rebuilt a small army and attacked the Dragon's palace in Wallachia. By asserting his power this way, that is, by taking over Wallachia for his own, he could rebuild a new, first step to the political power he had lost.
The Dragon had been caught unaware. His castle walls were scaled after a brief siege. Fleeing into the hills, the forlorn prince, wife Cneajna and son Mircea could not evade their conquerors. Captured, they were quickly put to death. Mircea met the worst fate: He was buried alive.
*****
When the news of his family's massacre reached 17-year-old Dracula, he went berserk. Sultan Murad, realizing that the boy had suffered enough, released him from prison and offered him a command position in the cavalry. (Even though the captive had been an often-unwilling one, even unruly, the sultan had admired his gumption.) Dracula accepted the post.
The first evidence of Dracula's cunning, a shrewdness that would serve him throughout his life, becomes apparent at this point. By using one enemy against another, he was able to escape Turkey, gain the throne of Wallachia, and avenge his parents' and brother's murders.
He made a deal with the sultan. If the latter would supply him with an appropriate force to push Hunyadi out of Wallachia and set him, Dracula, on its throne, he would keep the principality open to Turkish commerce, its highways unblocked, and restore the per annum tribute of 10,000 ducats to Turkey. The sultan agreed.
A large force of tribal horsemen followed Dracula westward in 1448. They surprised a vanguard of Hunyadi's army at Kosovo Polje, Serbia, and in a nocturnal battle, utterly destroyed it. Reining north in pursuit of Hunyadi, Dracula's cavalry galloped with war whoops into Tirgoviste. But, much to Dracula's disappointment, he learned that his prey had flown.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire In all events, a Dracul had come home. He placed himself on the throne of embattled Wallachia, sought out any boyar who had sided with the ambitious White Knight against his father — there had been several — and made perfect example of them all.
There are stories that insist a faithful servant of the Dragon had recovered his master's prize sword from the field where he had been slain and presented it to the son and heir. Dracula. It was an elegant Toledo blade, etched with the Sign of the Dragon. Dracula would carry that sword with him the remainder of his life, going to his death wielding it. But, for now, as its first use, he blessed it in the blood of his father's killers.
The first of three separate Dracula reigns had begun. It was not to last long.
Dracula's birthplace (CORBIS)
Dracula's birthplace (CORBIS)
In chain mail made to fit their small bodies, with broadswords equally balanced, and on Arabian ponies, they dashed through the edelweiss-strewn forest beside Sighisoara clipping gnarled sycamores and poplars they pretended were oversized sultans. While Carpathian eagles looped overhead, watching curiously, and as woodpeckers careened out of the way, the Dragon watched his little Davids taking on the imaginary Goliaths. He timed their charges, graded their legionnaire skills.
The Dragon envisioned great things for his clan. But, if the sons of Dracul were to be real men, he told himself, they would need a dominion of their own. Being siblings of the Governor of Transylvania, mere puppets to Hungary, was not enough. His prospect, therefore, continued to be to take free-state Wallachia from the timid Danejsti who had virtually placed the welcome mat out for the Turks.
By 1435, the Dragon had convinced his old mentor, King Sigismund of Hungary, to lend him an army large enough to oust the thin-blooded cousin before Romania was lost forever. After a bitter siege on Wallachia's capital, Tirgoviste, the Dragon finally sat on the throne he had wanted for more than a decade.
Tirgoviste, located on the banks of the Dimbovita River, was an old city even when young Dracula followed his conqueror father there. A busy crossroads and commercial thoroughfare in the southern bottomlands of the Carpathians, it was comprised of hundreds of varieties of markets and merchants' stores, busy at all hours. Near the center of town rose the Byzantine eaves of the wealthy landowners who owned a division of fertile grape-producing fields surrounding the town.
The Byzantine battlements of the Prince's Palace, more a fortress, overlooked the roofs of the town and earned a panorama of the rolling landscape of trees, boulders, plains and a generosity of small lakes that provided citizens with mountain water and freshwater fish. The palace's central walls, four feet thick, had been erected by Mircea from the ruins of an early Roman outpost; at a far and high corner of town, they merged with the walls that surrounded Tirgoviste itself. Posh living quarters and the prince's low-beamed rectangular throne room were set back from the main gate across a courtyard and gardens guarded night and day by a legion of sentries posted along the walls and atop the main lookout, the Chindia Watchtower.
Dracula's early life at Tirgoviste consisted of more of the same as in Transylvania, physical and mental study. His mother, the devoutly religious Catholic Princess Cneajna, saw to her sons' religious upbringing, ensuring that they received ongoing commune with the monks from the nearby Church of the Holy Paraclete. Before the sun set, the boys' tutoring had also included, apart from combat skills, daily injections of geography, mathematics, science, language and the classical arts and philosophy.
Dracula and his older brother, Mircea, were the most rough-and-tumble of the Dragon's heirs; they often got into mischief with many of the scamps of the local boyars in Tirgoviste. In appearance, they greatly resembled their father with his dark features, aquiline nose and high cheekbones. Dracula, it was said, inherited his father's temper, combustive and fiery.
Their younger sibling, Radu, despite his warrior's training, spoke softly, moved quietly and tended to prefer the company of only certain boys. (Florescu and McNally hint at Radu's homosexuality.) Angelic faced, the image of his mother, he would, in time, be called Radu the Handsome. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire In later years, he and Dracula would become fierce rivals.
As for the Dragon, he had become a dignified Wallachian statesman. He ruled firmly, but fairly. However, he found himself stuck between his conscience and duty. Due to the trepidation of his predecessor, Danejsti, the forces of Turkish Sultan Murad II had gained such a foothold in Wallachia that they were in a position to ransack the principality at will. They were everywhere. Their caravans roamed the streets of Tirgoviste, Buzau and Bucharest; their cavalries paraded unchecked from the border of Turkish Bulgaria to the Carpathian Mountains, their scimitars at their sides gleaming in the sun; their foot soldiers camped openly on the Arges and Olt Rivers. In essence, Murad — not the Dragon — owned Wallachia. Attesting to that, consider that the latter was forced to pay the sultan 10,000 gold ducats annually to keep the major cities in his province free from savage attack.
Depending on the source, the Dragon's relationship with the Turks was either forced (because he hadn't the strength to fight back) or chosen (accepting neutrality as a small price to pay for Wallachian liberty). Knowing the character of the Dracul, one might assume he was merely waiting for a first chance to strike. When that opportunity came in 1442, however, he desisted a fight by refusing to join the famous, politically ambitious "White Knight" Jonas Hunyadi, Viceroy of Transylvania, who mustered a huge army to kick the Turks back to Bulgaria.
Some authors believe that the Dragon was being pessimistic, believing that Hunyadi hadn't a chance. Nevertheless, the White Knight, ahead of a force comprised mostly of royal troops loaned to him by the new Hungarian king, Ladislaus III, moved without the Wallachian prince's participation. After a bloody engagement near the Danube, the Turks under the command of Sihabeddin were chased south of the Danube.
Frustrated and angered by his army's setback, Sultan Murad called several top-ranking Europeans, including the Dragon, to Turkish Gallipoli for a parley. No one but the Dragon answered the summons. He took with him his two sons, 13-year-old Dracula and nine-year-old Radu, believing it to be strictly a call under truce. When he entered the sultan's salon, he and his sons were promptly arrested.
Held captive for days, the prince was finally released under conditions set forth by the Turkish court:
1. that he swear by both the Bible and the Koran to avoid the engendering of further hostilities;
2. that he deposit 10,000 ducats in the sultan's treasury; and,
3. insuring he is a man of his word, that he leave his two sons as hostages in Turkey for an indefinite period of time. The Dragon reluctantly consented.
It was not the first time that the Turks pressed into service youths wrested from European nobility. As a body, these captives were placed in what was called the Janissary Corps. The scholastic Turkey: A Country Study, explains: "Expeditions were regularly organized to collect a tribute of Christian boys from the Balkan provinces. Those taken became Muslims and underwent training that instilled in them a corporate identity. These 'slaves of the state' were...prepared for admission into the Ottoman ruling class...where they engaged in Islamic studies, learned Persian and Arabic, and received advanced mitary training."
Young Radu and Dracula were moved from Gallipoli to the center of the Turkish nation, the city of Adrianople. They were not treated as prisoners, per se, but were kept under constant surveillance and supervision. (After all, they were the sons of an important enemy and at many times were given access to government buildings and military unformation.) But, virtually, they were free to roam the day-lit streets when away from obligation, to partake of the Eastern way of life, to breathe in the atmosphere of the markets with their many spices and many new customs, to taste the indescribably aromatic dishes, even to court a girl if they wished — providing she was of honorable birth — under the silvery Byzantine moon.
Radu proved to require little, if any, observation; he fully accustomed himself to the laws, by-laws and culture of Turkey, which he saw as his "adopted" country.
Dracula, on the other hand, often displayed a belligerent and smothering attitude. A good pupil, and not outwardly hostile, he nevertheless liked to quarrel with superiors and bemoan his confinement. He fought for more personal liberty, insulted his bodyguards and a little too often (to suit his present patriarchs) belittled Asian customs.
The Turks were forced to take him to task — more precisely, to the whipping post — on quite a few occasions.
In 1445, European Christians attempted another crusade against the Ottomans. Again, their principle was Jonas Hunyadi, the White Knight, who rode towards Turkish districts with a legion armed for a long conflict. The Dragon, despite his promise to Sultan Murad — and most likely because he did not want to face a public chastisement like the one he had endured for his conscientious objection to the 1442 campaign — offered 4,000 cavalrymen under the leadership of his son, Mircea. He did refuse, however, to personally bear arms in the offensive, hoping the sultan would accept that decision as his intention of loyalty and, thus, refrain from harming his children.
*****
The sultan, upon hearing that Hunyadi was on the attack, had the Dracul's boys locked in the dungeon. There, they received daily floggings and endured long periods of hunger. Dracula's insolence harshened his treatment; he suffered various tortures to mind and body. Still, he was kept alive, probably due to the fact that the sultan figured he could still be employed as a bartering tool.
From a narrow window above his cell, Dracula witnessed the executions of less-fortunate prisoners taking place in the yard outside. Depending upon their crime, they were hanged, shot with arrows or spears, beheaded, crushed under wheels, or given over to a wild beast of prey. Many were impaled.
At first, the teenage boy may have been repulsed at the site of impalement. But, after a while, he certainly grew fascinated by it. Impalement, the most inhuman of punishments, involved piercing a body length-wise with a sharpened pole, the victim then left to die atop the raised pole. Death was excruciating and sometimes slow. Men were usually struck through the rectum, women through the vagina. Dracula watched the victims squirm, scream, hemorrhage, then die. He saw the crows pick at their carcasses that often remained under the hot Turkish sun until they were only blistered meat.
Dracula learned to detest his captives for their cruelty, yet wished that he would be given the chance to serve his captives likewise. Not knowing if and when he might be next, he imagined, if he survived, a day that he could inflict such torment on the Turks. Battered, starving, cut, singed and now having to view what the Turks did several times a week just beyond his windowsill, he probably went mad.
*****
Hunyadi's army had accrued a trio of victories in Turkish Bulgaria — at Peretz, Nis and Sofia — but when reaching the important shipping town of Varna on the Black Sea, it came face to face with an overpowering force under Murad. Hunyadi's troops were slaughtered, Hunyadi himself sent dashing on foot for his life. He and a very few of his soldiers, including the Dragon's son, Mircea, managed to reach Romania safely.
The White Knight, who valued his reputation (and who had set his sights on someday rising to the throne of Hungary), lost respect after the Varna fiasco. To compensate, he regrouped his forces, rebuilt a small army and attacked the Dragon's palace in Wallachia. By asserting his power this way, that is, by taking over Wallachia for his own, he could rebuild a new, first step to the political power he had lost.
The Dragon had been caught unaware. His castle walls were scaled after a brief siege. Fleeing into the hills, the forlorn prince, wife Cneajna and son Mircea could not evade their conquerors. Captured, they were quickly put to death. Mircea met the worst fate: He was buried alive.
*****
When the news of his family's massacre reached 17-year-old Dracula, he went berserk. Sultan Murad, realizing that the boy had suffered enough, released him from prison and offered him a command position in the cavalry. (Even though the captive had been an often-unwilling one, even unruly, the sultan had admired his gumption.) Dracula accepted the post.
The first evidence of Dracula's cunning, a shrewdness that would serve him throughout his life, becomes apparent at this point. By using one enemy against another, he was able to escape Turkey, gain the throne of Wallachia, and avenge his parents' and brother's murders.
He made a deal with the sultan. If the latter would supply him with an appropriate force to push Hunyadi out of Wallachia and set him, Dracula, on its throne, he would keep the principality open to Turkish commerce, its highways unblocked, and restore the per annum tribute of 10,000 ducats to Turkey. The sultan agreed.
A large force of tribal horsemen followed Dracula westward in 1448. They surprised a vanguard of Hunyadi's army at Kosovo Polje, Serbia, and in a nocturnal battle, utterly destroyed it. Reining north in pursuit of Hunyadi, Dracula's cavalry galloped with war whoops into Tirgoviste. But, much to Dracula's disappointment, he learned that his prey had flown.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire In all events, a Dracul had come home. He placed himself on the throne of embattled Wallachia, sought out any boyar who had sided with the ambitious White Knight against his father — there had been several — and made perfect example of them all.
There are stories that insist a faithful servant of the Dragon had recovered his master's prize sword from the field where he had been slain and presented it to the son and heir. Dracula. It was an elegant Toledo blade, etched with the Sign of the Dragon. Dracula would carry that sword with him the remainder of his life, going to his death wielding it. But, for now, as its first use, he blessed it in the blood of his father's killers.
The first of three separate Dracula reigns had begun. It was not to last long.
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