Original subtitles

So,

you've finally thrown me over for your Ottoman master.

I suppose that's meant for me.

And that for me.

Mehmed is losing the battle, but you don't have to die for him.

I don't plan on dying.

Then join me, and we'll kill him together.

We swore an oath of loyalty to Mehmed.

Those were empty words uttered with a knife to our throats.

What about your loyalty to me?

Who protected you when we were left to rot in the sultan's palace?

As the fighting intensifies in the Ottoman camp,

Sultan Mehmed II and his soldiers find themselves facing endless waves

of Wallachian attackers.

The wrath of Vlad Dracula.

A piece of gold for every Wallachian head you bring me!

Mehmed has always tried to turn you against me,

but the blood of Dracula

still runs through your veins.

It is time for you to come home.

Join me, brother.

We'll build our own empire,

and you will lead my army.

No.

You have nothing to offer but war and suffering.

Thousands have died

because of your lust for power and vengeance.

Even your own wife.

What do you know of Anastasia's death?

I was there.

I'll cut your head.

It's your head I've come for.

Then come and take it, brother.

June 17, 1462,

Hell comes to Earth

outside the Wallachian capital of Târgovişte.

Under the cover of darkness and disguised as Ottoman soldiers,

Vlad Dracula's army launches the infamous Night Attack,

a daring surprise assault on the camp of Sultan Mehmed II.

If I was one of... of Vlad's soldiers,

this is a crazy plan, but a plan that, if it works, we have an amazing victory.

And if it doesn't, we go down fighting,

and we go down fighting in a most spectacular fashion.

The Wallachians unleash a torrent of steel and fire

in a desperate attempt to stop the Ottomans taking Vlad's throne.

The Wallachians get inside the camp,

and they dash forward, carrying torches,

shooting arrows as wildly as they can,

and causing as much chaos and confusion as they can.

It's pitch black. You can't see what's going on.

You don't know who's who.

So, the initial attack by Vlad is a huge success.

This was potentially a disaster.

Hold the line!

They're losing ground! Keep pushing!

Hold the line!

Sultan!

Our men can't hold our position much longer!

We're about to be overrun!

Have faith, Ali Bey.

Do you think I intend to die in this hellhole?

Hold!

Father always said you were weak.

Father was wrong about many things.

Let's see how sharp your sword is, baby brother.

You should show more respect for the new ruler of Wallachia.

One of the sultan's bootlicks,

sent to do his dirty work.

You will die by Prince Radu's sword or my own.

Either way, we'll deliver what's left from your corpse to the sultan.

Once I kill Mehmed, I'll be back for you.

Get him!

Vlad Dracula flees into the chaos,

joining his soldiers,

who continue pouring into the Ottoman camp.

Sultan, our line is breaking!

Now you are mine.

Unleash the Janissaries!

Whenever you saw the Janissaries on the field in front of you,

you knew that hell was coming.

It's a trap.

It's a trap! It's a trap!

At least one Ottoman chronicle says that

the Ottomans were waiting for the Wallachians that night.

The sultan must have known,

even if he never told anyone in the camp,

or maybe just told his commanders and his Janissary corps.

Mehmed was a master of military strategy and a tactician,

and he was a brilliant soldier.

He never showed any fear.

Drive them to the center!

We know that the losses were huge for the Ottomans,

but they managed to regroup at some point.

Drive them to the center!

Mehmed, we must remember, is the toughest character around.

Nothing will stop the man.

He is tough. He is resilient.

Keep the line!

Keep the formation!

Where is he?

Where is he?

Where did he go?

Find him!

Thousands are killed in the first few hours of fighting.

Hand cannons. Now!

With the battle hanging in the balance,

Mehmed once again summons his superior firepower.

Fire!

Hit them again!

Fire!

The Janissaries, with their incredible discipline,

form up around the sultan, and they create a withering wall of fire.

Ghazis, take the fight to the infidels!

They are no match for us!

Sultan.

Radu, you live.

Yes, barely.

Sultan.

Sultan, we should get you away from here, where it's safer.

And where might that be?

Sultan,

my brother has escaped.

He's coming for you.

It is as it should be then.

I will find him first and kill him.

Face me, Mehmed!

Face me, Mehmed!

It's time to end this!

Sultan, no!

You came here to kill me?

Here I am!

The glory and renown you've sought your entire life.

It's not glory I'm seeking, Mehmed.

It's revenge.

Radu and Mahmud Pasha are not here to save you.

But they will help me bury you.

Just like when we sparred as boys.

Ha?

I kept the wolves from your door for years!

- Protected you like a brother! - Lies!

You took my brother and destroyed my family!

You are blind and a fool,

but I will keep my promise and give you an honorable death.

How you did to my wife?

It gives me some comfort knowing your wife is also...

dead.

No.

Yes, and you will soon join her.

No!

Wallachia will be your grave.

Die!

This is madness. Why are you doing this?

How could you do this?

Show me some patience and loyalty.

Wallachia will be your grave.

- Sultan, do you hear me? - Can you hear me?

- I'll kill you! I'll kill you! - No, Sultan!

Sultan, it's me.

Where's Vlad?

He is gone.

There's nowhere to run.

I will find him and kill him.

Vlad alive represented a threat.

He had escaped with his life so many times,

he had to be killed.

The Night Attack, which began three hours after sunset on June 17,

rages on until 4:00 a.m. the next morning.

According to some chronicles of the battle,

in those five horrific hours,

some 20,000 men were killed.

Vlad Dracula's surprise attack pushes Mehmed's army to the brink,

but he fails to kill the sultan.

A devastating blow

for the Impaler Lord's attempt to hold on to his throne.

The discipline of the Janissaries

with all the terrors and the horrors they've been through,

there's still enough to drive the Wallachians back from the camp

and also exhaust the last arrow in Vlad Dracula's quiver.

Please, no! My only loyalty is to the sultan! I swear it! Please!

Vlad's spy?

One of them.

We'll give him a chance to reveal the others

before he's relieved of his traitorous head.

My brother's scheme almost succeeded.

How did you know where he would attack?

The Battle of Issus.

In 333 B.C.,

Alexander was greatly outnumbered by the Persian king, Darius.

He gambled and decided to attack the king and his personal guard directly,

believing that if he killed him, his much larger army would collapse.

And did Alexander win?

He routed the Persians.

But Vlad Dracula is not Alexander,

and I am not Darius.

Four hundred and fifty miles southeast of Târgovişte

in the imperial palace...

Do you know why you are here?

No, Princess Mara.

We wanted to commend you for your... loyal service.

Unfortunately, your loyalty was to the wrong person.

The Wallachian plot

to assassinate the sultan's family has been thwarted,

but there are still loose ends to tie up.

Sultana Gulbahar, would you give our friend here some water?

He seems nervous.

Thank you, Sultana.

Your friend Elena is no longer with us,

but...

she left this for you.

They tell me it's quick,

and you won't suffer...

...much.

Eight miles outside of Târgovişte,

Vlad Dracula has been defeated,

but the capital city is not yet under Ottoman control.

Last night,

Vlad Dracula threw the entire might of his army at us and failed.

The price of their failure was death.

You, soldier, how many Wallachian heads did you collect for me?

Nine, Sultan.

Then you shall collect your nine gold pieces today.

Many of our brothers were martyred at the hands of the infidels.

Today, we bury them,

but we will not forget their sacrifice.

As for our enemy,

I look around, and the only Wallachians I see are dead or in chains!

We did not ask for this war, but we will end it!

Today, we grieve!

Tomorrow, we take Târgovişte!

Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!

Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!

We thought you were dead.

I am very much alive...

but so is the sultan.

The countryside is crawling with Janissaries.

I know. It won't be long before they reach us.

Mehmed intends to put my brother on the throne.

Gather as many men as you can.

We'll fight them.

We'll fight them in the forests and mountains.

Yes, my Prince. Yes, and Târgovişte.

Hmm.

Mehmed has no idea what awaits him.

Exhausted but determined,

Mehmed and the Ottoman army arrive at Târgovişte.

A bittersweet return for Prince Radu.

Since my father first ruled these lands,

the throne has changed hands nine times.

He and my older brother, Mircea...

were killed for it,

just as Vlad will be.

When does it end?

It never ends.

So long as you sit on the throne,

you can trust no one.

And never show weakness.

And what if I displease you, Mehmed?

Learn from your brother's mistakes and forge your own path.

We only have so long to make our mark in this world.

But first, we must take Târgovişte.

Târgovişte is a natural fortress

because it's sitting on top of a very high outcrop of rock.

It was a well-engineered city as well.

It... it wasn't, um, created at the level, and depth,

and thickness of a classic medieval city expecting a gunpowder assault.

But this is a city that when you place your eye upon it,

think to yourself as an ordinary soldier,

"This is going to be a very, very, very hard nut to crack."

Sultan?

Hmm?

What is it, Mahmud Pasha?

Something is wrong.

Turn!

Turn!

Mehmed wants to hunt down Vlad and make sure he's no longer a threat,

but Vlad retreats up towards the Carpathian Mountains,

where he can try and send out messages

to try and get some help from the Hungarians,

but what he's also done in doing this is abandon his capital city.

He finds the capital of Wallachia, Târgovişte,

an abandoned city, without inhabitants, on a dusty summer day

with all the gates open.

I don't like this.

Sultan!

And next,

the sultan encounters one more surprise.

The sight that confronts Mehmed

on the road out from the Wallachian capital

is one that will probably haunt him for the rest of his life.

It was called "The Forest of Corpses."

Some of the accounts say that this spectacle was five miles

with the impaled bodies of Ottoman soldiers and Muslims.

Twenty-four thousand individuals of different ages, different genders,

all impaled and presented in horrific ways.

You have maybe one of the most beautiful pieces

of psychological warfare.

The chronicles say that even the sultan got off his horse,

and he put his, uh, rug on the ground, and he started praying.

And the army did the same

because never in the history of the Ottoman Empire,

had an Ottoman ruler and an Ottoman army seen what they were seeing.

But the most devastating blow struck by Vlad in the war for Wallachia

is yet to come.

Hamza Bey.

Have all of them taken down at once...

and given a proper burial,

far from this charnel house.

Yes, Sultan.

Hamza Bey was given

a particularly high stake because of his high rank,

but also he'd been dressed up in his nicest gear

to make sure he was putting on a good display for the sultan.

It's those kinds of details

that show that Vlad was really thinking about who his audience was for this,

and it clearly had an intended effect.

It's like you can have the city, you can have the land,

but you will be a lord of the dead.

This is what you are. You are a lord of the dead.

Vlad Dracula remains on the run,

pursued by Ottoman forces in the countryside.

But before Sultan Mehmed II departs Wallachia in July,

he deals the death blow to Vlad's violent and bloody six-year reign,

not with a sword,

but with a coronation.

Prince Radu, Voivode of Wallachia.

Vlad and I used to chase each other around this room

when our father was off at war.

One day, your children will do the same.

You're leaving?

But Vlad is still out there.

I would like nothing more than to mount him on a stake outside these walls,

to make him suffer and rot, as he did to Hamza Bey and the others,

but...

there are pressing matters in the Aegean with the scheming Venetians...

and I'm anxious to see Gulbahar and my son.

Yes, of course.

I am leaving Mihaloğlu Ali Bey

and 2,000 of my best soldiers here with you.

And this.

Thank you, Mehmed.

Be the ruler Vlad should have been.

Long may you reign, Radu Dracula.

Radu gets the crown he never thought he would get,

and Mehmed gets a friendly ruler in this key borderland territory.

We can often say that Vlad Dracula spent so much time in the Ottoman court that

he understood his enemy,

but I think we must also return the compliment to Mehmed.

He understood his enemy as well,

and he certainly understood Wallachian politics,

and he knew that by putting Radu on the throne,

Vlad Dracula was going to fall from grace very quickly.

And with this one simple gambit, Mehmed outplays him, outfoxes him,

and it's all over for Vlad Dracula, and he has to flee.

After coming within inches of killing the most powerful ruler

in the world,

Vlad Dracula soon finds himself a man with no country,

a dwindling army, and few political allies.

Forever defined by his barbarity

and his heroic, but ill-fated uprising against Mehmed the Conqueror.

We're a two-days' ride from the Hungarian border.

I won't ask you to accompany me. The choice is yours.

Your fight is my fight.

Take heart. We will return and have our revenge.

We'll see each other soon, brother Mehmed.

If Vlad had succeeded in killing the sultan,

the campaign would have ended in that moment.

It would have been not just a military blow,

it... it would have been a... a propaganda blow

for him to kill Mehmed, the guy who conquered Constantinople.

He would have been a hero for the whole Christian world.

He didn't, so he became known as Dracula, the bloodthirsty vampire.

Mehmed's strategical brilliance on the battlefield

and cunning political maneuverings

deal Vlad Dracula a devastating defeat from which he never fully recovers.

Wallachia will remain a vassal state of the Ottomans for the next 400 years.

Months after his victory at Târgovişte,

the sultan remains embittered that Vlad Dracula still lives.

What's wrong, Mehmed?

You must let this obsession go.

You won. Radu is on the throne.

- Your wife and son are safe. - Vlad Dracula is still alive...

He's nothing but a disgraced prince with no throne and no power.

I cannot rest

until he pays for what he did to Hamza Bey and the others.

I swore an oath!

You won great victories in Anatolia, the Mediterranean, Europe.

This city is a reflection of your vision.

Rome is within your grasp.

But you must put Vlad behind you.

Your destiny lies elsewhere.

Destiny...

Our destiny can be found here, The Iliad.

"Let me not then die ingloriously...

...and without a struggle,

but let me first do some great thing."

"That shall be told among men hereafter."

Mehmed finally meets Vlad Dracula

face-to-face one last time in 1477

at the ancient walls of Constantinople.