Vlad The Impaler, Part 1

Here is Part 1 of a two-part piece on Vlad the Impaler by me, Pastorius:


Vlad III reigned on and off, as Prince of Wallachia, between 1448-1476. He was born, the son of Vlad II, in Transylvania. Wishing to assert his authority in an untamed world, Vlad II had been an early believer in the rallying power of images, and, had thus, used the Dragon, symbol of Order, as the logo of his reign. The people began calling him Vlad Drakul, meaning Vlad the Devil, a name which he seemed to have liked.

When Vlad III ascended to power, he signed his name to documents, Vlad Drakulea, meaning Son of the Devil.

Yes, this Vlad III, or Vlad Drakulea, is the inspiration behind the book Dracula by Bram Stoker. And with good reason, for he seems to have been a blood-thirsty man, both literally, and figuratively. Legend has it, a favorite delicacy was bread dipped in pig's blood. Whether or not that was true, Vlad Drakulea was an extraordinarily cruel ruler. And, guess where he learned much of his cruelty from?

Yes, that's right; the Muslims.

His father's reign as Prince of Wallachia was troubled by the need to balance the competing interests of the Hungarians of the realm with that of the invading Ottoman Empire. Vlad II chose appeasement much of the time, and thus, he was assasinated on the order of John Hunyadi, regent of Hungary.

This left Vlad III with no father, and, as those who assassinated his father did not trust his family, no throne.

In the years leading up to the assassination of his father, Vlad III had lived in Turkey and had familiarized himself with the customs, lifestyle, and military structure of the Ottoman Empire, as well as the language. Thus, when he found himself cut off from his royal lineage he turned to the Turks to help him successfully regain what he believed was rightfully his.

His reign was troubled from there on in. All told he gained and lost the throne three times, spending some years in prison during one fall from grace. One constant, though, was his reputation for cruelty. One of his nicknames was Vlad Tepes, which meant Vlad the Impaler.

The process of impaling an enemy is particularly gruesome. This, from Wikipedia is not for the fainter flowers among us:

Impalement was Dracula's preferred method of torture and execution, which he had learned in his youth as a prisoner of the Turks. It was and is one of the most gruesome ways of dying ever imagined.

Dracula usually had 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.

As expected, death by impalement was slow and painful. Victims sometimes endured for hours or days. Dracula 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.


Vlad was known for many of the other cruel punishments he levied on his subjects. He would cut out the genitals of women who committed adultery. He once invited a large group of the sick and the lame to a big banquet, and at the culmination of the banquet, put the question to them, "Would you like to live with no care in the world?" When they answered in the affirmative, he had the doors locked and the building burned to the ground. There were no survivors. He then told his court that he had done what he had done, because he didn't want weak people in his land.

One lesson he seemed to have learned from the Turks was the hudna. For after just a few years of aligning himself with the Turks in order to establish his power, he turned on them.

The most famous scene of Vlad's life came in a battle against the Ottoman forces of one Sultan Mehmed II. Here is a description:


In the beginning of 1462, Vlad launched a campaign against the Turks along the Danube river. It was quite risky, the military force of Sultan Mehmed II being by far more powerful than the Wallachian army. However, during the winter of 1462, Vlad was very successful and managed to gain many victories.

To punish Dracula, the Sultan decided to launch a full-scale invasion of Wallachia. Of course, his other goal was to transform this land into a Turkish province and he entered Wallachia with an army three times larger than Dracula's.

Finding himself without allies, Vlad, forced to retreat towards Tirgoviste, burned his own villages and poisoned the wells along the way, so that the Turkish army would find nothing to eat or drink.

Moreover, when the Sultan, exhausted, finally reached the capital city, he was confronted by a most gruesome sight: thousands of stakes held the remaining carcasses of some 20,000 Turkish captives, a horror scene which was ultimately nicknamed the "Forest of the Impaled."

This terror tactic deliberately stage-managed by Dracula was definitely successful; the scene had a strong effect on Mehmed's most stout-hearted officers, and the Sultan, tired and hungry, admitted defeat.


Now, see, I know you were thinking to yourselves, "Since when does Pastorius do history?" The answer, of course, is rarely. But, this one is rather important, isn't it?

I'm not going to comment further. Talk among yourselves. Can't wait to hear what you have to say.