fought in Corvinus's army against the Ottomans in Bosnia in early 1476. Hungarian and Moldavian troops helped him to force Basarab Laiotă (who had dethroned Vlad's brother, Radu) to flee from Wallachia in November. Basarab returned with Ottoman support before the end of the year. Vlad was killed in battle before 10January 1477. Books describing Vlad's cruel acts were among the first bestsellers in the German-speaking territories. In Russia, popular stories suggested that Vlad was able to strengthen his central government only by applying brutal punishments, and many 19th-century Romanian historians adopted a similar view. Vlad's patronymic inspired the name of Bram Stoker's literary vampire, Count Dracula. Name The name Dracula, which is now primarily known as the name of a vampire, was for centuries known as the sobriquet of VladIII. Diplomatic reports and popular stories referred to him as Dracula, Dracuglia, or Drakula already in the 15thcentury. He himself signed his two letters as "Dragulya" or "Drakulya" in the late 1470s. His name had its origin in the sobriquet of his father, Vlad Dracul ("Vlad the Dragon" in medieval Romanian), who received it after he became a member of the Order of the Dragon. Dracula is the Slavonic genitive form of Dracul, meaning "[the son] of Dracul (or the Dragon)". In modern Romanian, dracul means "the devil", which contributed to Vlad's reputation. Vlad III is known as Vlad Țepeș (or Vlad the Impaler) in Romanian historiography. This sobriquet is connected to the impalement that was his favorite method of execution. The Ottoman writer Tursun Beg referred to him as (Impaler Lord) around 1500. Mircea the Shepherd, Voivode of Wallachia, used this sobriquet when referring to Vlad III in a letter of grant on 1April 1551. Early life Vlad was the second legitimate son of Vlad II Dracul, who was himself an illegitimate son of Mircea I of Wallachia. VladII had won the moniker "Dracul" for his membership in the Order of the Dragon, a militant fraternity founded by Sigismund of Luxemburg, King of Hungary. The Order of the Dragon was dedicated to halting the Ottoman advance into Europe. Since he was old enough to be a candidate for the throne of Wallachia in 1448, Vlad's time of birth would have been between 1428 and 1431. Vlad was most probably born after his father settled in Transylvania in 1429. Historian Radu Florescu writes that Vlad was born in the Transylvanian