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Tracking the Vampire

Posted by Wicasta on Aug 27 2008 | Comment now »

I spent most of the day tracking a vampire named Crewe. Believe it or not, that’s not an easy thing to do.

I first found him in Veliky Novgorod, Russia, in 1570. He was born in 1554, but became a vampire in 1570. He was “brought over” by the Oprichnik, an elite military force of vampires who served as bodyguards for Ivan the Terrible, during Ivan’s conquest of Novgorod; most notably as part of the infamous Novgorod Incident, during which 2,500 to 12,000 people were put to death.

Crewe’s entire family was put to death, and he was put under the care of an uncle, who was charged with seeing him safely delivered to Moscow to begin his training as a member of the Oprichnik (their vampire enclave was based in Moscow). Once there, the Oprichnik became his family, and he never saw his uncle or any other family member again.

He served faithfully in the Oprichnik until the death of Ivan the Terrible in 1584, when Russia began to unravel under the rule of Feodor and Boris Godunov. After that, he served in the general Russian military during the Time of Troubles and was finally compelled to leave Russia in part because of the Russian famine of 1601-1603 (during which perhaps 100,000 died in Moscow).

He wandered for a decade, traveling across the country and surviving by preying upon other travelers, but eventually found his way into Romania in 1614 just after the rise of Gabriel Bethlen.  He settled in the city of Sibiu, located on the Cibin River in the Principality of Transylvania, when he discovered a small enclave of vampires there who, like him, were drawn to Sibiu’s thriving economy (and the easy prey of the people who were drawn there). He served as a mercenary in Bethlen’s armies, and fought in the campaigns against Royal Hungary, and then served under a rapid succession of other rulers through the better part of the remainder of the century.

With the rise of Peter the Great, he returned to Russia and accepted a commission as a cavalry officer. He served in various capacites and various military units (and under various names and guises) throughout Peter’s campaigns until Peter’s death in 1725, after which he returned to civilian life in Saint Petersburg (which Peter had made the capital of Russia in 1712). He returned to military life with the rise of Catherine the Great, and again served in various functions and under various guises, serving throughout her reign and under that of her successor, Alexander I.

During Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, he served as a cavalry officer in the Battle of Borodino (which is generally considered to be the largest and bloodiest single-day action of the Napoleonic Wars, involving more than 250,000 troops and resulted in at least 70,000 total casualties). After the fall of Moscow, after which Napoleon’s victory was turned into a defeat by the Russian winter and the lack of provisions found due to the Russian’s scorched-Earth policy, Crewe was among the Russian troops who pursued Napoleon’s army through Central and Western Europe and to the gates of Paris itself. He fought in the Russian army as part of the War of the Sixth Coalition, which eventually lead to Napoleon’s defeat in 1814.

After Napoleon’s defeat, Crewe chose to remain in France, sick of fighting and military life, and hoping to enjoy the promise of a new life in Paris. He enjoyed the decadent life in Paris for over twenty years, as part of a thriving vampire sub-culture, but was forced to leave Paris when the group was discovered by French authorities and targeted for elimination by the French military. Adopting yet another persona, he slipped the hands of the authorities by joining the French navy, and was happy to be dispatched to Mexico to fight in the brief Pastry War. He was involved in Rear Admiral Charles Baudin’s efforts to seize the port of Veracruz and the eventual capture of virtually the entire Mexican Navy by December 1838.

When French troops were withdrawn, Crewe deserted the French navy and remained in Mexico near Veracruz, where he was eventually arrested on suspicion of being a French spy. He was ordered sent to the capital city, and along the way befriended his captors about military matters and Mexico’s struggle with the breakaway territory of Texas and the United States. His captors spoke on his behalf upon arriving in the capital city, and, through a succession of introductions, he was eventually befriended by President Santa Anna himself, who, impressed by the stranger’s obvious military knowledge, offered him a commission in the Mexican military as a cavalry officer. Crewe accepted.

He proved himself by helping to suppress a rebel army led by Generals Jose Urrea and José Antonio Mexía, which was crushed in Puebla, by an army commanded by the president himself. In 1842 he was ordered to take part in Santa Anna’s ill-fated military expedition into Texas, helping to lead a Mexican force of almost 1,000, under General Adrian Woll, to San Antonio, where they took control of the city with minimal resistance from the Texans. He took part in a sub-action of this battle on September 11, 1842, helping to defeat a company of 54 Texans under the command of Nicholas Mosby Dawson. This part of the battle has become known as the Dawson Massacre, and is part of the lore of the state of Texas. The larger battle, however, was lost, and the Mexican forces were forced to retreat to San Antonio, and back across the Rio Grande shortly after that.

Crewe did not return to Mexico, but remained in Texas, determined to enjoy a life outside of the military in the vicinity of San Antonio. He became a defacto citizen of the United States when Texas was admitted to the American union in 1845, but determined that he would not fight against his former Mexican comrades in their war with the United States (feeling that the United States was in the wrong in their conquest of Mexican lands). Instead he headed north, feeling that his European sensibilities were ill-equipped to deal with the rought-and-tumble nature of life in San Antonio, and eventually made his way to Dallas.

Crewe remained in Dallas, again enjoying the anonymity of a city and the feeding possibilities it represents, until the beginning of the American Civil War. About the time the Civil War started, he was again forced to avoid the inconvenient inquiries into the number of deaths around or near him, and enlisted in the Confederate Army on April 1, 1863. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion Texas Sharpshooters, Company B, commanded by Major James Burnett, and served with the 1st Battalion through many of its major battles until August, 1864, when, tiring of the life of an infantry soldier, he deserted and went in search of a more interesting function.

Crewe managed to get himself attached to Forrest’s Tennessee Cavalry Battalion, under General Nathan Bedford Forrest, and served in that capacity through Forrest’s subsequent campaigns, beginning with the infamous raid on Memphis (known as the Second Battle of Memphis), until the end, when, after the disastrous Confederate defeat during the Battle of Nashville, Forrest was defeated in the Battle of Selma in Alabama. Following the defeat of the Battle of Selma, considering the war essentially over for the Confederacy, Crewe again deserted. Nathan Bedford Forrest would surrender a month later upon hearing of the surrender of Robert E. Lee, proving Crewe’s assumptions to be correct.

After leaving military service in April, 1865, Crewe wandered south from Selma, Alabama, eventually winding up in Pensacola, Florida six years later. He took a job working in the ports, but generally spent the next several decades moving from one place to another, enjoying life near the beaches (which he’d never really encountered before) and staying one step ahead of the stories of dead bodies, slowly migrating his way down Florida’s western coast.

Crewe made his way into the Tampa Bay area. While there he heard of local efforts to name a community Saint Petersburg (after Saint Petersburg, Russia) and this amused him greatly. But he liked the area, and by the time Saint Petersburg was incorporated on February 29, 1892, Crewe was already a resident. He had no intention of remaining in the area, but then discovered that there was a small community of vampires there. He concluded that perhaps he should remain for a time and see what developed.

Crewe forged a partnership with a popular vampire named Alexey Dementyev, who was also a Russian in his youth. Together they formed an organization they formally called The Enclave, but which they privately called the Oprichniki. The Enclave was formed for no other reason than to assure mutual protection and give vampires a safe-haven where they could exist without fear of discovery. To ensure the group’s survivability, a set of rules, or code of ethics, were put into place, which members had to agree to be bound by in order to attain membership. This promised mutual defense, but it all ensured that most disagreements would be resolved through intermediaries instead of outright hostility and violence.