Go! Go! Go!
Go! Go!
Just before midnight on June 4th, 1462,
the first wave of Sultan Mehmed II's
invading army reaches the shores of Wallachia…
…where Vlad Dracula awaits.
Hit them again!
Keep firing until we kill them all!
Our men have drawn you out of hiding, brother Vlad.
Now you'll see what we've been hiding.
Fire!
Let's rain hell down upon them!
From the southern banks of the Danube,
Mehmed the Conqueror unleashes the latest generation of Ottoman firepower
upon the army of Vlad Dracula.
Earlier on in Mehmed's reign,
it was the giant cannon that was fundamental
in the conquest of Constantinople.
Of course, you needed those giant cannon to be able to breach the city walls.
Fire!
Since the siege of Constantinople,
a huge amount has changed in terms of the technology that allows the Ottomans to
mix the power of gunpowder
with more extended mobile military campaigns.
Three tenths of a mile and three degrees left.
We see, for example, the use of smaller cannons and mortars
that are able to be better targeted.
All ready, Sultan.
Fire!
A professor of mine said to me,
Ottoman artillery was like having a stealth bomber.
The technology was so far above what was available to everybody else,
right from Constantinople, 1453 onwards.
Meanwhile, across the river,
his grand vizier, Mahmud Pasha, leads a heroic charge
against hundreds of Wallachian attackers.
Push! Follow them! Show no mercy!
But the outcome of the battle is far from decided.
Vlad's army is a highly mobile force,
who was hitting, and then running and retreating,
and whose sole purpose is to prevent
the Ottomans from moving their army across the Danube.
Moving across a river is the moment where any army is at its weakest point.
When they cross north of the Danube,
the first units are attacked by Vlad, and they inflict a lot of losses.
When we see the Ottomans on the banks of the Danube
under terribly fierce fire,
they don't fall back, they don't retreat.
They wait, they dig in, they establish the beachhead.
Because they know there's well-coordinated artillery behind them.
Fire!
Two hours into the battle, Vlad regroups and reloads…
Keep firing! Don't let them cross the river!
…determined to neutralize Mehmed's cannons.
We must silence Mehmed's cannons.
Send the long bowmen to the riverbank. Now!
Yes, Prince. Archers! Follow me!
Line up, and…
release!
Incoming!
Reload! Release!
Protect the Sultan!
Shields now!
Protect the Sulltan!
Let's give them a Wallachian welcome that they will never forget.
Hit them again!
Ready!
-Release! -Fire!
It takes a while for the Ottomans to get the situation under control.
Release!
Shields!
Mahmud Pasha's relentless push inland,
coupled with the Ottoman barrage, proves too much for Vlad Dracula's army.
This is perhaps another example of Mehmed's sledgehammer cracking a nut.
Firepower from 120 late medieval cannons must have been something quite terrifying.
After a few hours of fight, the Janissaries and the Ottoman artillery
push the… the Wallachians back and they actually withdraw.
They couldn't stay there and fight because the Ottomans could bring,
hour after hour, fresh troops.
It was suicide.
Ali Bey, send the rest of the Janissaries and the Asappis across now.
Yes, Sultan.
Finally, Mahmud Pasha, holding military supremacy,
manages to create the bridgehead so desired by the Sultan,
so that Ottoman troops can then cross.
By dawn, the battle is over.
Sultan, I promised I would get you safely to the other side.
Bogdan Bey, you've earned your head tonight.
That I have, Sultan.
Mehmed's tactical brilliance and cannons deliver victory,
along with thousands of Ottoman soldiers to the shores of Wallachia.
As the sun rises over the Danube,
the sultan's invasion enters a new phase.
For Vlad Dracula, the first taste of Ottoman firepower is a bitter one.
His army flees into the countryside.
Mehmed has the ability to bring down superior firepower,
superior numbers to win the day, but it's come at a cost.
It's come at the cost of a near defeat.
It's come at the cost of a loss of a number of his elite personal troops.
One of our most important sources for Mehmed's campaign against Vlad
is by a member of the Janissary elite unit of the Ottoman army.
What is your name, ghazi?
Konstantin, Sultan.
Konstantin Mihailovíc tells us
that once the Janissaries had won the day,
the sultan gave out 30,000 gold coins to the unit to be distributed.
I am told that you were one of the only survivors
from the first unit who crossed the river.
Yes, Sultan. I lost many brothers.
You and the other ghazis willingly entered the jaws of death,
knowing what awaited you.
Your blood and bravery delivered our victory.
Thank you, Sultan.
What is mine is theirs.
My empire is in their debt.
This is part of showing Mehmed's generosity as a ruler.
But also, it's another sign,
perhaps to people on the other side of the battlefield,
that this is a man with nearly unlimited wealth,
and that could be very tempting
if you were someone on the other side of the battlefield who was maybe wavering
as to which side you might want to be on.
So, generosity can be as important as brutality in winning hearts and minds.
Mahmud Pasha, you and your men fought courageously,
just as I knew you would.
But Vlad knew exactly where we were landing.
Sultan, there's clearly a spy in our camp.
Or spies.
Hence, my secrecy about our cannons last night.
We must find the traitors before they get us all killed.
There is someone.
Someone within our upper ranks with access to our battle planning,
and he has close ties with Prince Vlad.
Your instincts are rarely wrong, but Radu is like a brother to me.
He has been a loyal advisor and fought bravely by my side.
But never against his own brother
in his own country.
Find the spies.
How many men did we lose?
Four-hundred, maybe more. Ten of our cannons were destroyed.
We need more soldiers.
Prince.
Send a messenger to Buda at once.
Tell them their beloved crusade is at hand.
We have Mehmed where we want him, but the time to attack is now!
Prince, would it not benefit us to retreat
and wait for the Hungarians to arrive?
Look out there, Gales.
What do you see?
The Ottoman army, Prince.
Desecrating the Wallachian soil
that our fathers and grandfathers bled and died for!
The next man who mentions "retreat" will have his tongue cut out.
They will not reach Târgovişte!
We must keep fighting the Turks
on our terms!
The Hungarians will come. King Matthias has given me his word.
Until then,
we will divide our forces and hit-and-run from the shadows…
like wolves,
while the Hungarians arrive.
It's a fight even my dear friend Mehmed can't win.
While Vlad Dracula remains determined to kill the sultan in battle,
his immediate plan is to slow
the Ottoman army's march north to Târgovişte,
allowing the Hungarians' mighty Black Army time to enter the battle,
forcing the Ottomans to fight on two fronts.
The same Black Army that wounded Mehmed and nearly killed him
at the siege of Belgrade six years earlier.
The king of Hungary was always playing this great crusader
because his father was actually a great commander
who defeated the Ottomans several times.
He just needed to use that Crusader rhetoric
to somehow strong-arm Vlad into defying the Ottoman sultan.
The Hungarian army was incredibly formidable.
A big confrontation between the Ottomans and the Hungarians directly
would have been hugely costly
in terms of lives lost and expenditure made for both sides.
Mehmed's army tends its wounded
before launching its grueling march to Târgovişte,
but the clock on the invasion is ticking,
as rumors of the Hungarians joining Vlad spread,
along with whispers of Wallachian spies inside the Ottoman camp.
Brother Mehmed.
Brother Radu.
I hope you recovered from the crossing.
A few scratches, nothing more.
Your brother gave us quite a welcome last night.
The memoirs of the next great voivode of Wallachia?
Just my diary.
Some poetry and my sketches.
Nothing important.
You should be more careful with your diary.
Vlad is in the wind for the moment,
but he has spies in our camp.
Who knows what they might get their hands on.
Wise advice.
Men desperate to hold on to power
or take power,
are capable of anything.
Even if it means betraying those closest to them.
Radu! Radu?
Put away your silly poetry. We're finally going home.
Where are your clothes, brother? Your sword?
Come on! The men and horses are waiting.
-I'm not going with you. -Collect your things.
I want to get on the road soon.
Vlad…
I'm staying here.
Sultan Murad has freed us and given us 500 men.
You will help me take the throne.
This is what we have waited for all these years.
Look around you, little brother. You're a prisoner.
These Ottomans are not your family. You are a Wallachian.
I am Wallachian, but they've been good to us.
I can serve as your ambassador in the sultan's court.
United, we can do more.
You will learn soon enough that it is a cold and miserable life
living in Mehmed's shadow.
I will always be your brother.
I should kill you for this betrayal!
It's hard to say what was the relationship between the two brothers.
Vlad was a rebel.
He didn't want to do what the Hungarians said,
the Ottomans said.
He wanted his own way.
But Radu tried to be a loyal subject of the Ottomans
because he had been raised and trained to become the ruler of a vassal country
and do everything that the Turks told him to do.
Maybe he likes the Ottoman way of doing things,
or maybe he's a royal brother who knows what often happens to royal brothers.
In succession struggles, brothers get killed.
As Mehmed drives his army north
towards the Wallachian capital of Târgovişte,
there is no sign of Vlad Dracula, the man he's come to kill.
But elsewhere, the Hungarian threat to Mehmed's plans to overthrow Vlad
grows larger by the day.
Princess Mara, I have word from the king's court in Hungary.
Your friend in the palace says that,
King Matthias is certainly moving the Hungarian cavalry
to the Wallachian border.
How old is this news?
Two days old.
Sinan Bey, how fast are your brother's carrier pigeons?
The fastest, Princess.
We must get a message to the sultan at once.
The Ottoman armies sloughed through mud and ash for days
without seeing any sign of life.
Vlad Dracula has unexpectedly vanished, avoiding a face-to-face fight
with his more powerful foe for the moment,
but not before turning the Wallachian countryside
into a hellish wasteland.
They're in the Wallachian forests.
It's swampy.
Vlad Dracula's men are even creating dams on rivers to flood the land around,
making it even more difficult for a modern army to move its artillery,
to move its bodies of troops through this dense forest.
So the Ottoman troops are struggling all day.
There's no water to drink. There's very little food.
It's a scorched-earth policy.
The granaries have been destroyed, all the crops have been burned.
Then you had all the fields in flames,
and you got to some villages that had already been left or destroyed.
You wanted to drink water, but you couldn't drink water
because, before withdrawing,
the Wallachians would leave some animal carcasses
in the rivers or in the wells.
The Wallachians had a lot of pigs,
so they would just cut the pigs and throw pieces of the pigs in the water.
No Muslim soldier would drink that.
Sultan.
No, save your water, Mahmud Pasha. You will need it.
Who does this to his own people?
His own land?
Vlad deprives us of food and water…
…hoping to break our will.
-Hmm.
Grand Vizier, we'll rest here for an hour and give the men a break.
-Summon Ali Bey and our generals. -Yes, Sultan.
Sultan.
Any word from our scouts?
Not yet.
They've been gone for more than a day now.
We haven't seen a single Wallachian in five days.
He's out there,
watching and waiting.
Vlad is great at doing something
that Mehmed's ancestors would have been great at doing.
Hit-and-run raids, light cavalry battles,
drawing the Ottoman forces in ever more and ever further away from their bases
and their supply lines into a scorched-earth land
that was free of peasantry, free of food.
There was nothing there for the Ottomans, to sustain themselves,
drawing them ever more into an all-or-nothing campaign.
Eight days into Mehmed's invasion of Wallachia,
his missing Ottoman scouts have been found.
He's alive!
Ghazi…
What is it, soldier?
They are here.
The style of war he was using is
one of the oldest warfare techniques in the world.
When you don't have enough men, you have to choose your own best position,
attract the enemy there, and just try to inflict as many losses as you can.
The Wallachian cavalry was usually light cavalry,
and they were armed with bows and arrows,
they would attack in small packs against usually bigger Ottoman units,
but it was the element of surprise.
Let's say that 50 Wallachian cavalry men attack an Ottoman unit.
From the first moment, you could have 50 Ottoman soldiers dead.
In the next ten to 15 seconds,
you could have another 50 Ottoman soldiers dead.
Maybe the attack lasted, like, one minute, but they could make a lot of damage.
Stand down.
It's a trap.
They're trying to draw us into the forest!
You are next, brother Mehmed.
You're next!
Return to formation,
and wait for my signal.
Now, you hide in the forest,
just as you've hidden beneath the skirt of the Hungarian king for years!
You are no longer fighting defenseless women and children!
Come out, and finish what you have started!
Come out, you coward!
You have even less courage and honor than your spineless father!
Hear me now, Vlad Dracula!
Fatih Sultan Mehmed is coming for you.
There will be no escape!
I always think of the Mongols as the ultimate terror machine,
just creating those pyramids of skulls.
But I think what Vlad did was pretty spectacular.
Vlad was a master of psychological warfare.
He knows what he's doing, and he knows what he's doing
because he knows who he's fighting.
He doesn't only know the history
as it's been told at his court in Wallachia,
he knows the Ottoman version of history too.
He knows not just what they're proud of, but what they're afraid of,
and that's something that he can really play on
in strategizing his moves against Mehmed.
Vlad fights like a coward.
I've had enough of these games he plays.
Let me take a unit of Janissaries and hunt him down.
That would be playing right into his hands.
Rest assured,
we will avenge the martyrs and do so without mercy.
But to defeat Vlad, we must think like him.
Look at that mighty war machine camped outside our door.
He's no match for us on the battlefield.
So he lurks in the shadows, scheming…
willing to do anything to achieve victory.
That is how he was trained.
But so was I.
Brother Mehmed, if you decide to surrender now,
maybe I'll go easy on you.
Focus, Prince.
Words are no substitute for cold, hard steel.
And patience.
Use his rage against him, Prince.
Patience, Prince. He will show his weakness.
Well done, Prince.
Well done.
One more time, Hamza Bey!
I must avenge myself!
No, Prince Vlad.
In war, such impulsiveness will get you and your men killed.
You need more focus and discipline.
Now concede the battle, Prince Vlad.
Stand down!
Fourteen years later,
as Mehmed chases Vlad Dracula across Wallachia,
new terrors unfold back home in the imperial palace…
…and within the Ottoman camp.
You're dying alone.
Who's there?
Show yourself, and I'll slit your throat from ear to ear.
Bayezid.
There was someone in my room! There was someone in my room!
Bayezid! Bayezid! Bayezid.
Where are you?
Mother!
I hid until they left!
Who was it, Mother?
I don't know.
Help me.
Please, help me.
Who goes there? State your business.
Brother, are you hurt?
Please. Help me.
Help me. Help me.
Help me.
Alarm!… … Alarm!
-Alarm!