Without a doubt, the most famous prince of Wallachia was Vlad III, popularly known as Țepeș (“the Impaler”) or Drăculea (a diminutive of Dracul, “Dragon,” the nickname of his father, Vlad II), and the historical seed for the vampire count in Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. However, this character—the real one—was not the only member of […]
Ottoman Empire
Posted inAge of Exploration
When France Evacuated Toulon and Converted the Cathedral into a Mosque to Temporarily Cede It to the Ottomans
Hayreddin Barbarossa, the famed admiral of the Ottoman Empire, effectively became the master of the Mediterranean during the first half of the 16th century. Between 1543 and 1544, he raided numerous towns along the Spanish coast as well as the Genoese coast. This was nothing new, as he had been doing so for years; what […]
Posted inMiddle Ages
Empire of Trebizond, the Greek State that Survived the Fall of Constantinople
When the Ottomans, led by Sultan Mehmed II, captured Constantinople on May 29, 1453, bringing an end to the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantine Empire, they virtually controlled all the territories that had once been part of it. However, a Byzantine Greek state remained independent on the northeast coast of the Anatolian Peninsula. The Sea, […]
Posted inCulture
Abram Gannibal, the African slave who became a military engineer, general of the Russian army and great-grandfather of the writer Alexander Pushkin
There is an episode from the eighteenth century that in a way seems to come from a work of fiction: that of Abram Petrovich Gannibal, an African prince kidnapped by the Otmans but bought by a Russian ambassador who took him to his country, where, after a careful education, he reached high military and political […]
Posted inModern Era
Devshirme, the recruitment of Christian children by the Ottoman Empire to become soldiers and officials
The Ottoman Empire was one of the main powers of the 15th and 16th centuries. Its colossal dimensions guaranteed it a military surplus that allowed it to recover from any defeat in a very short time, as happened in Lepanto, and to undertake campaigns simultaneously on different fronts, in the case of Asia or Europe. […]
Posted inModern Era
The irreverent letter the Cossacks wrote to the Ottoman Sultan in 1676
Cossacks were a social and military group that by the 10th century settled in southern Russia and present-day Ukraine. They had a Turkic origin and had arrived with hordes of Mongol invasions in the area, settling there permanently. Famous for their combat skills and military strategy, they gradually integrated and mixed with other ethnic groups […]
