To some he was the very embodiment of evil – the psychopathic incarnation of the Devil
himself.
To others, he was a god-fearing defender of the faith, courageously standing up to the
feared Ottoman Empire.
In his time, he was known as Vlad the Impaler, thanks to his favorite method of execution.
Today we remember him as the real-life inspiration for Bram Stoker’s infamous prince of darkness.
In this week’s Biographics, we discover the gruesome truth about the real Vlad Dracula.
Formative Years
Vlad III Dracula, future prince of Wallachia, was born in either November or December of
1431 in the northern Romanian state of Wallachia.
His father Vlad II, was to become ruler of Wallachia.
In the year of his second son’s birth, Vlad senior joined a knightly society known as
the Order of the Dragon.
Upon his induction he was given the surname Dracul, which is a derivative of Drac, meaning
dragon in ancient Romanian, but Devil in the modern language.
His son was given the name for ‘son of Dracul’, that being ‘Dracula’.
The world that Vlad was born into was a violent one, consumed with disputes over territory
and rulership.
Family name and honor were the most important thing, something which was drummed into the
boy from the start.
He also understood that the goal was to push the boundaries of empire, regardless of the
cost.
The Order of the Dragon, which Vlad senior became a part of, was committed to defending
Christianity against the hated Ottoman Turks.
At the time of his son’s birth, Vlad II served as a guard commander of the mountain
passes in Wallachia.
We don’t know who Vlad’s mother was.
When he was born, his father was married to Princess Cneajna of Moldovia, but he also
had a string of mistresses, anyone of who could have given birth to the future Dracula.
Young Vlad’s formative years were spent in Sihisoara.
When his father scended to the throne of Wallachia in 1436, he brought Vlad and his younger brother
Radu, to live in the royal court in the capital, Targoviste.
The boys would have been educated at home by Greek and Roman scholars who their father
had brought in from Constantinople.
They would have busied themselves with learning the rudiments of mathematics, geography, science
and languages, including Old Church Slavonic, German and Latin.
But their privileged upbringing was rudely interrupted when their father was ousted as
ruler by a rival group who were in league with the Hungarians.
Held Captive
Vlad senior built an alliance with the Ottomans, who agreed to help him regain his throne on
the proviso that he pay tribute to Sultan Mehmed II and that he leave his two sons at
the Ottoman court as a guarantee of his loyalty.
Vlad had no choice and the two boys were seized and made prisoners.
Although relatively well treated, the boys were able to observe the Turkish use of terror
as an instrument to achieve their ends – something which Vlad would use to great effect in his
later life.
While in the Ottoman court, the boys were able to further their education, being instructed
in logic, the Turkish language and the teachings of the Quran.
They were also given lessons in horsemanship and warfare.
The two brothers differed markedly in their attitude toward their captivity.
Radu, the younger brother, accepted the situation and embraced his new life and the teachings
that came with it.
He would eventually convert to Islam and enter service in the Ottoman court.
Vlad, however, resisted at every turn despite constant punishment for his surly attitude.
With the assistance of the Turks, Vlad senior was able to regain his throne.
But it didn’t last.
In 1447, Hungarian backed rebels attacked again, forcing Vlad and his oldest son, Mircea
II to flee.
Both were eventually captured and put to death.
The next in line to the throne of Wallachia was Vlad III’s older brother, but he had
become a monk and lived in a monastery.
This left Vlad, now 16, as the rightful heir.
Despite his obstinacy, the Turks had grown fond of the teenager.
They vowed to help him regain his throne, which they did with an overthrow of the rebel
ruler in 1448.
Ascending to Rulership
As soon as the Ottomans left, however, the Hungarians were back and, within two months,
Vlad was forced to flee to Moldovia.
For the next three years he lived there under the protection and tutelage of his uncle,
Prince Bogdan II.
But when Bogdan was assassinated in 1451, Vlad again fled, this time along with his
cousin Prince Stephen.
The two young men ended up in Transylvania, where they came under the mentorship of a
Hungarian warrior named John Hunyadi a powerbroker who was fiercely opposed to the Ottoman Empire.
Hunyadi had originally supported the new ruler of Wallachia, a man by the name of Vladislav
II.
But the relationship quickly disintegrated, thanks largely to Vladislav’s appeasement
of the Turks.
When Vladislav invaded and burnt several villages in Transylvania, Hunyadi’s patience gave
out.
He looked to the young Vlad to take back the throne that rightfully belonged to him.
In the same year -1453 – the Holy Roman city of Constantinople fell to the Ottoman
Turks.
It now appeared as if the whole of Europe was theirs for the taking.
The securing of Wallachia became more important than ever.
In 1456, Vlad led an army into Wallachia.
He met the army of Vladislav III on the field of battle and ended up killing the usurper
in hand to hand combat.
With the death of Vladislav, Vlad was restored to power as the ruler of Wallachia.
Over the next six years, he would rule with an unprecedented bloodlust that would cement
his name forever in the annals of merciless monarchs.
Unprecedented Torture
Having secured the throne of Wallachia for himself, Vlad sent a portion of his army over
the border to help his cousin Stephen to secure the throne of Moldovia.
When this was accomplished, the two cousins held sway over a large swathe of the Balkans,
proving a powerful stronghold against the Turks.
Vlad now set his mind on revenge.
He had his spies go out and find the names of any nobles who had been even remotely involved
in the plot to overthrow his father.
Having collected a list of names, Vlad invited the men to an Easter feast along with their
families.
But as soon as the traitors arrived, they were arrested.
The older among them were impaled then and there, in front of their families.
Those who were younger were forced into slavery, labouring to rebuild Vlad’s castle.
When this job was done, they were all killed.
Vlad’s treatment of the traitors to his father’s reign was just the beginning.
He next proceeded to enforce his own stringent moral code on the population.
Any deviation was met with unthinkable cruelty.
He appeared to be especially concerned with female chastity.
Any woman who lost her virginity prior to marriage, or who defiled the marriage bed,
would be impaled, with the insertion point being the vagina.
More often than not their breasts would also be cut off, with the man with whom they had
committed fornication being forced to eat them.
Vlad also had a hatred of beggars, considering them to be existing off the hard work of others.
It is said that he once invited all the beggars in Wallachia to a massive feast in a centrally
located wooden hall.
Once they had eaten to their full, he is said to have ordered the doors bolted and the building
set on fire.
In this way he is said to have ridden his realm of the scourge of poverty.
The Ottoman Threat
On the international scene the Ottoman threat was becoming more ominous.
In 1460, Pope Pius II held a congress at Mantua in Italy, calling for a new crusade to reclaim
Constantinople and push the Ottomans back to the desert.
The Crusade was to last for three years and would be led by Matthias Corvinus, the son
of John Hyundai, who had been killed during an invasion of Serbia.
Matthius made a tour of European kingdoms seeking support for the enterprise.
The only ruler who gave a positive response was Vlad Dracula of Wallachia.
Determined to hold his kingdom safe from the Turks, he formed an alliance with Matthias
Corvinus.
The Ottomans, meanwhile, were aware of the lack of support for this new crusade.
Sultan Mehmed III seized the advantage by capturing the last independent Serbian city,
Smederovo.
During this campaign, Hungarian general Mihaly Szilagyi was taken captive.
This general was known to Vlad, having helped to put down a revolt in 1548.
When Vlad heard that he had been sawed in half, his blood boiled and he became more
committed than ever to teaching the Ottomans a lesson they would never forget.
The Ottoman empire was extended to Greece in 1461 when the weak ruler surrendered without
putting up any defense.
Now both Corinth and the capital of Mistra were ruled by the Turks.
The Sultan also had his sights on Wallachia.
He declared it to be part of the Ottoman Empire.
As such he sent his envoys to Vlad’s castle in order to collect a tribute of 10,000 ducats,
along with 500 men to be taken into the Turkish army.
But the Sultan had underestimated the young ruler.
Upsetting the Sultan
When the Sultan’s envoys refused to lift their turbans as a sign of respect to him,
Vlad became enraged and had his guards drive nails through their turbans into their skulls.
The incredulous Sultan responded by sending his army across the Danube in order to seize
men and bring them back to become part of his army.
Vlad sent his forces to the area to grab any Turks that could be found.
They soon found themselves impaled on a red-hot stake.
Towards the end of 1461, Vlad wrote to the Sultan informing him that he could not afford
to pay a tribute, but that he was willing to come to Constantinople and negotiate.
Mehmed was aware that Vlad had already aligned himself with the crusade and so he decided
to take the Wallachian ruler who had dared to murder his envoys by force.
He sent one of his generals, along with a thousand strong cavalry to meet with Vlad,
with the intention of ambushing him.
But Vlad got wind of the plan and put into operation his own ambush.
As the approaching Turks were negotiating their way through a narrow traverse, Vlad
and his army attacked.
It has been reported that Vlad’s attack was one of the first instances where gunpowder
was used, apparently to deadly effect.
The Turks were killed to a man, with the majority of them suffering Vlad’s favorite torture
– impalement.
With his blood now up, Vlad took his army across the Danube River, where they attacked
Ottoman controlled areas in Bulgaria between Serbia and the Black Sea.
Vlad would go in advance to fortified towns and use his skills in the Turkish language
to encourage the guards to open the gates.
Then his army would pour in from over the horizon.
Vlad would then go into a killing frenzy, slaughtering every Turkish man, woman or child
that he could find.
Over a period of two weeks, he led his army over an area of 500 miles, killing around
23,000 people.
In February of 1462, Vlad wrote in glowing terms to Matthias Corvinus of what he had
accomplished . . .
I have killed peasant men and women, young and old, who lived at Oblucitza and Novoselo,
where the Danube flows into the sea, up to Rahova, which is located near Chilia, from
the lower Danube to such places as Samovit and Ghighen.
We killed 23,884 Turks without counting those whom we burned in homes or the Turks whose
heads were cut by our soldiers . . . Thus, your highness, you must know, I have broken
the peace.
An outraged Sultan ordered his grand vizier, Mahmud, with 18,000 troops to destroy a port
in Wallachia called Braila.
This force was intercepted by Vlad and his 30,000 strong army.
The Turks were utterly defeated, with only 8,000 of them surviving.
These quickfire victories garnered Vlad a heroic reputation throughout Europe.
Even the pope praised him.
At the same time his reputation as the Impaler King served to intimidate the Turkish people,
many of whom fled the European part of the Ottoman Empire for Anatolia.
In response to the slaughter, and the fear that Vlad had caused amongst his people, Sultan
Mehmed abandoned his campaign in Greece and turned his full attention to the Vlad problem.
He gathered together an army of 150,000 with the sole mission of finding and killing Vlad.
The Sultan had already promised the rulership of Wallachia to Vlad’s younger brother,
Radu.
With himself at the head, the Sultan set out to find and destroy Vlad the Impaler.
War with the Ottomans
Vlad’s force of around 30,000 were not only hugely outnumbered, they were also hopelessly
outclassed as far as weaponry was concerned.
They carried only lances and daggers, whereas the Turks had in their midst squadrons of
deadly archers, along with powerful siege and missile weaponry.
Despite this, Vlad was able to inflict major casualties upon the Sultan’s forces.
He followed a scorched earth policy as he moved away from the approaching Turks.
Wells were poisoned with entire populations, including animals, being evacuated.
Vlad also engaged in guerrilla fighting tactics.
Hit and run raids were made on the Sultan’s army and a primitive type of germ warfare
was utilized, where men who were afflicted with the bubonic plague were sent into Turkish
towns to inflect as many people as possible.
This tactic worked, with the plague spreading to the Sultan’s men.
In the end, though, the efforts of Vlad’s men were no more than an irritant to the vastly
superior Turkish army.
Steadily they moved on, getting ever closer to Vlad’s castle at Targoviste.
When the arrived there, Vlad and his 24,000-man strong army were holed up at a mountain refuge
just outside of the city.
Vlad, who was now faced with an encirclement by the Turks which would eventual force his
army into starvation, did something quite amazing, even for him.
Leaving his men behind in the mountains, he disguised himself and walked directly into
the Turkish army encampment.
He quickly determined the position of the Sultan’s tent.
He also found out that the sultan had given the order for his men to remain in their tents
at night in order to prevent panic in the event of an attack.
He then quietly slipped out of the camp and returned back to his own men.
Vlad now set about planning a surprise attack on the Sultan’s army.
It was his personal intention to enter the Sultan’s tent and drive his knife though
Mehmed’s heart.
On the night of June 17th, 1462 he divided his forces in two and then attacked from both
north and south.
The Turks were caught off-guard, allowing the attackers to inflict heavy losses.
Within an hour of savage fighting more than 15,000 Turks were slaughtered, at a cost of
some 5,000 of Vlad’s men, He himself succeeded in entering the tent he had previously picked
out.
The only problem was that he had selected the wrong tent and he did no find the sultan.
At daybreak, Vlad called off the attack and his men melted back into the mountains.
The Sultan was so despondent that he pulled back and was prepared to retreat all the way
back across the Danube.
However, he was convinced by his generals that success was still within their grasp
and so he led his men into the capital city.
When they arrived at Targoviste, the Turks found an abandoned city.
They also found the remains of in excess of 20,000 Turkish soldiers, killed in previous
conflicts, impaled on stakes.
At this sight, the Sultan is said to have remarked . . .
A man who had done such things is worth much!
With nothing to do in the empty city, the Sultan installed Radu as the new ruler of
Wallachia and then turned and began to retrace his steps back to the Danube.
Radu, younger brother of Vlad, now took his forces and circled Vlad’s castle, located
on a cliff just outside of the city.
Vlad’s first wife was in the castle and legend has it that she vowed to feed herself
to the fishes rather than fall to the Turks.
Apparently, she then threw herself from the temples walls into the river below.
Betrayal
Radu now set about solidifying his position.
Meanwhile the sultan had taken his army to Braila, where the town was destroyed and hundreds
killed.
Vlad knew that he had to regroup and gather a larger force if he was to have any chance
of regaining control of Wallachia.
He made his way to Hungary, where he sought the military support of his ally, Matthias
Cornivas.
Matthias appeared to give his support, even making battle plans with Vlad.
However, Cornivas had secretly turned against his old ally.
He organized a plan to ambush Vlad and the Impaler was taken as his prisoner.
The reason for Matthias’ change of loyalty has been debated for centuries, with the consensus
being that he wanted to become Holy Roman Emperor and knew that an end to hostilities
with the Turks was needed for that to become reality.
Vlad spent the next four years as a prisoner in Hungary.
During this time, he converted to Catholicism.
He also met Ilona Szilagyi, King Matthias’ cousin.
Having softened his attitude toward his prisoner, Matthias allowed the two to marry.
Apparently, he was released just prior to the ceremony.
Vlad and his new wife were given a house at Pest.
He was under strict instructions not to return to Wallachia.
Yet he had no intention of giving up on the crown that rightly still belonged to him.
He secretly collaborated with a former military commander.
They managed to gather together an army consisting of a mixture of Hungarian, Transylvanian,
Wallachian and Moldavian forces.
Vlad set out with his makeshift army in the middle of 1476.
By now his younger brother, Radu, had died and been replaced by Prince Basarb the Elder.
Before Vlad even got to Targoviste, Basarb and his army fled.
Vlad was placed on his throne and the army largely dissolved.
Vlad was back in power but he lacked a strong army.
In fact, he only had around 4,000 men to draw upon.
So, when the Turks returned two months after his retaking of the throne, he was soundly
defeated.
The End
The exact details surrounding Vlad’s death are a matter of debate.
Most scholars agree that he was killed while fighting the Turks in early 1477.
A contemporary Turkish chronicler recorded that the Turks killed and decapitated him,
sending his head back to Constantinople.
There it was said to have been preserved in honey and put on display so that everyone
could see that the dreaded Impaler was really dead.
It is estimated that Vlad’s legacy of execution methods included more than 20,000 impalements,
5,000 beheadings, 10,000 burnings at the stake, ten Turks who had nails drive through their
turbans and at least one who was boiled alive and then cannibalized.
Yet, in his home country of Romania, Vlad is seen as a hero.
He is an important national figure, a God-fearing stalwart who stood up to the Ottoman Empire.
I guess it all depends on your perspective!