CEZAR DIN FLORENŢA, CALAMARII ŞI VALAHII. UN IZVOR INEDIT DESPRE O PERIOADĂ NEDOCUMENTATĂ DIN A DOUA DOMNIE A LUI VLAD ŢEPEŞ (MARTIE-APRILIE 1462)
CAESAR FROM FLORENCE, THE SQUIDS AND THE WALLACHIANS. A NEW SOURCE REGARDING AN UNDOCUMENTED PERIOD OF VLAD THE IMPALER’S SECOND REIGN (MARCH-APRIL 1462)

Summary/Abstract: The authors of this study, members of the Corpus Draculianum project, have found in the Mantuan archives a corpus of letters sent to the duke Lodovico Gonzaga by a Venetian informant, named Caesar from Florence. One such letter, from the 12th of April 1462, contains a jumble of information. Firstly, the informant excuses himself to the duke for not being able to send him some culinary goods, mostly squids. But then, Caesar from Florence mentions a recent confrontation between the Turks and the Wallachians, in which the Sultan had lost no fewer than 50 ships. This letter is edited for the first time in the appendix of this study. The authors identify the Wallachians mentioned by Caesar with Vlad the Impaler’s army. By confronting this piece of information with other well-documented Italian sources, such as Antonio Guidobono’s or Pietro di Tommasi’s letters, the authors suggest a rather unusual route through which this news reached Venice. The letter shed some further light not only on the news networks, but also on an undocumented period of Vlad the Impaler’s second reign. Caesar of Florence’s letter substantiate the hypothesis that Vlad kept his army at hand until the summer of 1462 and that the January attack south of the Danube was not an isolated episode.

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