Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Royal Armouries, my name is David I'm part of the education team
Today, I'm going to be telling you a great story, a story of an infamous man. A man, named Vlad Dracula
Now, Vlad Dracula started his life a long time ago in the 1400's. He was born the prince of a country known as Wallachia
Which is now known as modern day Romania
Now, he was not a only son. He had a younger brother known as Radu the Handsome
And he had an older brother known as Mircia the Great. Now his father, whose name was Vlad Dracul
this is going to get very confusing very quickly, he was king of all Wallachia
Now he joined an order of knights known as the Order of the Dragons, that's where they get their name: Dracul
and that is why Dracula is called Dracula, it's son of the dragon.
As the Order of Dragons they were sword to fight heretics and all those who were not Christian
However this was a big problem for Dracul, because his country is neighboring the great Ottoman Empire
A humongous empire, and it had ambitions.
It wanted to spread it's way into Christendom
Now a good holder of his order's oath fights against the Ottomans but there's no way he's going to defeat them
Wallachia was a very small, weak country at the time and so he decided to talk.
To do this, he leaves his eldest son Mircea to look after the country and he takes
Radu the Handsome and Vlad Dracula down into the East where he sits and talks to the Sultan
However, halfway through this meeting, the guards come in. They grab Radu, the grab Dracula and they drag them away
And the Sultan tells Dracul that if he want to see his sons again, well he has to give him 10,000 a year and
And 500 children, to be soldiers in his army. Now Dracul didn't have much of an option.
And so, he agrees to these terms and he leaves the Ottoman Empire without his sons.
Now usually, when we have prisoners, we like to torture them. we like to lock them away in deep dark dungeons, never to see the light of day again
however, the Ottomans had a plan and a clever one at that, see their plan was to round up every child from their empire and treat them like their own
because when these children grow up, they will like the ottomans, and when their parents die, and they inherit the lands, the Ottomans are no longer surrounded by enemies
they're surrounded by allies.
and so Radu and Vlad had a very pleasant time with the Ottomans, they were taught how to read, write, pray
Radu was quite kind to the Ottomans, quite enjoyed their company and as a result became quite a quick favorite
However, Dracula, Dracula was a bit older than Radu, and Dracula realized he was a prisoner in everything but name
and so he was vile, he would spit, kick his teachers, he would scream and curse
and as a result, well they lost their patience ; they started to beat him, to whip him
and it's here that Vlad is said to have learnt his cruelty, they he would use later in life.
Now, moving away from the Ottoman empire and back to Wallachia, where something terrible is about to happen.
An old knight, Hunyadi had decided that Wallachia was now an enemy to Christendom
Now Vlad Dracul has betrayed the order of the dragon and he must be gotten rid of
And so, Hunyadi sends assassins in to Tirgovista, the capital of the time
and they find the king and kill him in the very streets he was meant to rule
Now the eldest brother Mircea is also captured, but he's given a much worse fate
he;s dragged away and buried alive.
Then Hunyadi places a man called Vladistav the second in charge upon the Wallachian throne, and he thinks he's won
Now news trickles over to the Ottoman Empire, where Vlad hears of this crime against his family and swears vengeance against all who had part
Now, because of his unruly temperament, the Ottomans realized the only thing he was truly good at was fighting.
so they made him an officer of their army
he was then, on top of that, sent off to the borders where no one had to look at him
this was perfect for Vlad, when he hears of the assignation, he simply takes the men under his charge and he marches them into Wallachia.
There he cuts his way through his own people
And finds himself face to face with Vlad II
and after capturing this usurper king, Vlad starts to earn his nickname: Vlad the Impaler
Now to impale someone is fairly simple, all you need to do is take a stake, here's one I made earlier. It's a big wooden stick
you sharpen it down to a nice point and then you need a victim, in this case Vlad II
Now, to impale a man properly, you take a stake, you bring it back and you plunge it into the stomach, stick it in the ground, lift it up
and there you let them hang
now if you're lucky, you die within moments however there are reports of people staying on top alive for three days
and well, you don't earn yourself a nickname by doing something once
and Vlad, well this became quite a hobby of his
He'd finally taken back his country and now he needed to make it stronger to fight against the Ottomans
and there were three things that were wrong: one the nobility.
the men and women who betrayed his father would almost certainly betray him
so he needs to get rid of those. 2: the beggars and the vagabonds, you see
Wallachia is plagued by, for want of a better word, a plague and he thought that it was these beggars that were spreading it from town to town
And 3rd: well Wallachia was full of gangs, marauding men and criminals
who would raid and take whatever they like
hurting the hard working peasants who supported his country
so, his first plan of action it to get rid of the betrayers, the nobility
and to do this he hosts a huge Easter celebration
it's a wonderful thing: the women are singing, the men are drinking, the children are dancing
everyone is having a fantastic time, however: Vlad gets up, sneaks out of the celebration
goes down into the streets of Targoviste and he comes across the grave of his elder brother Mircea.
and there, he unearths it to find that the rumors were true,
his brother had been buried alive.
and every man women and child up there, they were responsible for this
so he gathers some of his guards, they go up to the celebration and they round up every man woman and child there.
and once they'd gathered them all up they split them into two groups.
Now, if you were fit and strong you were sent up to the fort Poenari, of the real castle Dracula
and there, you were put to work for weeks and weeks, months and months, barely any water, barely any food
and eventually those beautiful Easter garments of yours would have rotted off your back
and you would have perished of exposure and exhaustion
and to add insult to injury, the bodies that were lying around would have been dragged into the fortifications
and buried into its very foundations
now, if you were old, weak, feeble you were shown a mercy
you were taken outside the city and there you were impaled. Not much of a mercy.
but hey, he's gotten rid of the traitors
and anyone whose left is too strong to stand up to him so Wallachia is one step closer to being strong again.
so next thing he needs to do is get rid of those beggars
so to do that, he sends out a letter to all of Wallachia and he says
if you can't feed yourself, if you can't feed your families, come to my mansion, I have placed a great deal of food out on the table
a great feast so you can all feed yourself and be happy
so he sends his letter to all of Wallachia
and eventually all the beggars and vagabonds come to his mansion
now when they arrive, they open the doors rather gingerly
only to be pleasantly surprised, there are tables everywhere, food, wine.
and well they sit down. They drink and they eat and Vlad joins them and it's a really lovely evening.
however, as the night goes on, the men, women, beggars, they're all getting a bit too full, a bit drowsy from the wine
Vlad stands up, he walks out of the hall, out of the mansion, closes the doors behind him, locks them in place
and then sets fire to the entire thing.
and he stands there and he watches as the flames grow higher and higher and the screams get quieter and quieter.
but hey, the beggars are sorted, no more plague, no more disease. Wallachia is one step closer to being strong again.
so all that is left is the gangs
now Vlad is a pragmatist, he realizes these bandits are pretty good fighters
and he needs a decent army if he's going to fight the Ottomans so
so. he sends his soldiers out there to capture them
but he doesn't kill them straight away he gives them an option. He says join my army, or be implaled
not much of an option, but luckily most men saw sense and joined him
however, one man didn't : a rather old man
a rather stubborn man, and when Vlad offered him the choice he said, you have no authority here.
I've been living here longer than you have, run along little prince.
Vlad, to his credit, didn't act harshly. Well he didn't impale him at least. He took the old man and he boiled him alive in a big old cauldron.
and then when the flesh dripped from his bones, he force fed that flesh to every member of that man's gang
but hey
all the gangs were sorted.
and those that heard the story were too scared, they joined his army.
those that were left they ran away
Wallachia was now strong again, and could fight the Ottoman's, so when the Ottoman's turn up to take their 10'000 duckets
and take their 500 children, Vlad says no
So what do they do? They act like children, they ransack the entire countryside
The take everything, they steal the children from their very beds.
Vlad can't stand for this, so he sends his army up to the Danube river and he waits.
He sends his men to burn down all the villages in the Ottoman empire
tries to evoke some kind of confrontation
and the Ottoman's respond. They send 60'000 soldiers to go and face Vlad's army.
Now, Vlad's stood there on the banks of the Danube river, with only 30,000 men and most were peasants not fighting men
and they were ready to lay their lives down for their country.
So the Ottoman army try to cross the river but Vlad's archers stand their ground. They draw there bows back they release arrow after arrow.
And the Ottoman's are driven back. It looks as though Vlad is going to be victorious.
It was all a bit of a ruse, the Ottoman's had sent a much larger army up the river. They had crossed elsewhere and had fortified themselves.
placing down canon and gun before Vlad could do anything about it, they had already set up this fantastic defense.
He tries to defeat them, he charges head on into them with his cavalry, into their fortification
but he's knocked back. At this point he decides the best plan is to retreat into his own country.
Now. when he goes back into Wallachia, he does something strange.
He burns down every village he comes across
He poisons every well, slaughters every animal, he salts the earth.
why would you go that to your own land?
well it was a clever plan.
It meant that if he left nothing behind in the wasteland, the Ottoman's had nowhere to sleep.
nowhere to eat, and they became hungry, they became scared.
they became tired and they began to break up into smaller groups of men and that's when Vlad would strike.
and he ghost through the trees, he would charge out and cut his way through the Ottoman army.
drag their bodies back into the woods and he would impale them there.
Can you imagine that? Being a lonely Ottoman soldier. Starving, cold, hearing these horror stories of a monster you must fight.
and then seeing your comrades impaled in front of you. It was not a good life for them
But the Sultan was determined.
He pushes on into Wallachia, so deep in fact that he arrives at Torgaviste
and that's when he's met by a forest.
but this isn't a forest of trees.
this, is a forest of the dead.
they say tens of thousands of men women and children were impaled in front of the city. .
and the Sultan, lays his eyes upon this filth, this horror and he can't stomach it anymore.
he simply takes his army and turns around.
He leaves Wallachia
So Vlad is victorious,
But there is a moral to this story.
If you rule through fear, you rule through dread, you're not making allies, you're making very quiet enemies.
And the Ottoman's realise they can fight fire with fire so they send something else.
They send Radu the Handsome
Another legitimate heir to the Wallachian throne, one that will not impale you.
One that will not kill you or murder you
And soon, Dracula found himself very much alone.
We don't really know how he died.
Maybe he died in some sort of skirmish, some report he had his head cut off in one last desperate fight against the Ottoman's
some say he ran off into his castle and hid there until he died of old age or disease.
some people say he didn't die at all, some people say he's still out there,
stalking the dark corners of the world, waiting for unsuspecting victims so he can drag them away and impale them
although I think that's just an old wives tale, I don't think you have to worry about that
So there we have it, the story of Vlad Dracula
One of history's most infamous villains.