There was a war between the Ottoman Empire and the Hungarian Kingdom. Following family traditions, Vlad decided to side with the Hungarians. To the end of the 1450s there was once again talk about a war against the Turks, in which the king of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus would play the main role. Knowing this, Vlad stopped paying money to the Ottomans in 1459, and at around 1460, he made a new alliance with Corvinus. The Turks did not like this and tried to remove him from power but they failed. In the winter of 1461 Vlad attacked and devastated the area between Serbia and the Black Sea, leaving over 20,000 people dead.