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| Background | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Born into a provincial Romanian nobility, Vlad is probably most famous for being the central character upon which Bram Stoker based his novel "Dracula". In truth, the novel and all subsequent Hollywood movies concerning Dracula and Vampires fail to convey even a fraction of the horror, terror and evil of the three reigns of Vlad in 1448, 1456-1462 and 1476. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Was venerated for centuries in Eastern Europe by Catholics as a saint for having stopped the advance of the Ottoman Empire westwards near the height of its power- an incredible feat for such as small region. A fact due in no small part for the nightmares and terror that the stories of Dracula caused his enemies. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| At the age of five he was sent to Nuremburg and invested into the Order of the Dragon, the elite Chivalric order of selected royal and noble families of Europe including members of the Italian families of Carrara and della Scala and leaders of Venice, Padua and Verona. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| But still in his young years, his father offerred him up as a hostage to the Ottomans in exchange for keeping the peace. It was during this time that it is said he was exposed to utter cruelty and barbarity- a force that shaped him for the rest of his life. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| The Ottomans installed Vlad as their puppet representative in Wallachia after his father was assassinated by local ruling families. However, he was deposed, pardoned for his treachery at being a double-agent on account of his depth of knowledge of the Ottomans. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| His main reign started in 1456. The atrocities made by Vlad include impaling, torturing, burning, skinning, roasting, and boiling people, feeding people human flesh (their friends or relatives), cutting off limbs, drowning and nailing of hats to the heads of people. His victims included men and women of all ages, religions and social classes, children and babies. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Impalement was Dracula's preferred method of torture and execution. His method of torture was a horse attached to each of the victim's legs as a sharpened stake was gradually forced into the body. The end of the stake was usually oiled, and care was taken that the stake not be too sharp; else the victim might die too rapidly from shock. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Normally the stake was inserted into the body through the anus and was often forced through the body until it emerged from the mouth. However, there were many instances where victims were impaled through other bodily orifices or through the abdomen or chest. Infants were sometimes impaled on the stake forced through their mother's chests. The records indicate that victims were sometimes impaled so that they hung upside down on the stake. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| As expected, death by impalement was slow and painful. Victims sometimes endured for hours or days. Vlad often had the stakes arranged in various geometric patterns. The most common pattern was a ring of concentric circles in the outskirts of a city that constituted his target. The height of the spear indicated the rank of the victim. The corpses were often left decaying for months. | |||||||||||||||||||||
There are claims that thousands of people were impaled at a single time. One such claim says 10,000 were impaled in the Transylvanian city of Sibiu (where Vlad the Impaler had once lived) in 1460. Another allegation asserts that during the previous year, on Saint Bartholomew's Day (in August), Vlad the Impaler had 30,000 of the merchants and officials of the Transylvanian city of Braşov that were breaking his authority impaled. One of the most famous woodcuts of the period shows Vlad the Impaler feasting amongst a forest of stakes and their grisly burdens outside Braşov, while a nearby executioner cuts apart other victims. |
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Vlad Ţepeş is alleged to have committed even more impalements and other tortures against invading Ottoman forces. It was reported that an invading Ottoman army turned back in fright when it encountered thousands of rotting corpses impaled on the banks of the Danube. It has also been said that in 1462 Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, a man noted for his own psychological warfare tactics, returned to Constantinople after being sickened by the sight of 20,000 impaled corpses outside Vlad's capital of Târgovişte. Many of the victims were Turkish prisoners of war Vlad had previously captured during the Turkish invasion. The total Turkish casualty toll in this battle reached over 40,000. The warrior sultan turned command of the campaign against Vlad over to subordinates and returned to Constantinople, even though his army had initially outnumbered Vlad's three to one and was better equipped. |
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