Vlad VI Înecatul

Who was Vlad VI Înecatul?

Vlad VI of Wallachia was the voivode [prince] who ruled Wallachia between June 1530 and September 1532. He has been historically referenced as Vlad Înecatul ["Vlad the Drowned"], as a description of the manner of his death.

One of three primary historic and geographic regions of Romania, Wallachia was founded as a principality in the early 14th century by Basarab I but, by 1415, had accepted the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire, albeit with considerable self-rule. Descendants of the House of Basarab continued to rule Wallachia and, as recounted in surviving records from the time of Mihnea Turcitul, the chronology of a century earlier indicates that the grandfather of Vlad VI, Vlad IV Călugărul [Vlad the Monk] was voivode from 1481 until his death in 1495. His son Vlad cel Tânăr [Vlad V, the Younger] became voivode in 1510, at the age of about 22 and, less than two years later, was captured following a defeat at the Battle of Bucharest and executed.

Although no specific historical documentation of his birth remains, the son of Vlad the Younger was about four years old at the time of his father's death. He became voivode at about the same age as his father, 22, in the aftermath of his predecessor Moise's rebellion against the Ottomans, but was immediately contested by Moise himself and the Craioveşti boyar family. On 29 August 1530, at the Battle of Viişoara, Vlad VI defeated Moise who died in combat. In October, after a further unsuccessful rebellion of the Oltenian nobility led by Craioveşti pretender to the throne Drăghici Gogoaşă, who was subsequently executed in Constantinople, Vlad ended Craioveşti's line of succession to the Banat of Craiova.