It partly started before Vlad was born. By the time Vlad the Impaler was born in roughly , the centuries of savage conflict and occasional cannibalism between Christians and Muslims known as the Crusades were dead but not buried.
The battles shambled on like war-weary zombies in the form of what History describes as "mainly military campaigns aimed at pushing Muslims from conquered territory, or conquering pagan regions. Sigismund focused on beating back the Ottomans, and Vlad the Dragon aided in that effort.
However, things became dangerously disordered for the Dragon when he and his sons, Vlad and Radu, attended a diplomatic meeting with Ottoman Sultan Murad II. The trio was seized and Vlad and Radu would remain prisoners for years in exchange for their father's freedom.
Experts speculate that years of being used as a bargaining chip gave Vlad a huge chip on his shoulder that helped fuel his decision to attack the Ottomans when he came to power. Sadly, he regained his freedom shortly after losing his father, who was murdered by noblemen while struggling to maintain his rulership of Wallachia.
Vlad the Impaler would gain, lose, and regain his father's seat. For him, the high-stakes nature of the power struggle took on a literal dimension in , when he closed his iron fist around the reins of power and exacted vengeance. The Ottoman Turks were never far from Vlad's thoughts — or his borders. When diplomatic envoys had an audience with Vlad in , the diplomats declined to remove their hats, citing a religious custom.
Commending them on their religious devotion, Vlad ensured that their hats would forever remain on their heads by having the hats nailed to the diplomats' skulls. During one of his many successful campaigns against the Ottomans, Vlad wrote to a military ally in , "I have killed peasants, men and women, old and young, who lived at Oblucitza and Novoselo, where the Danube flows into the sea … We killed 23, 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 that I have broken the peace.
Vlad's victories over the invading Ottomans were celebrated throughout Wallachia, Transylvania and the rest of Europe — even Pope Pius II was impressed. But Vlad also earned a much darker reputation: On one occasion, he reportedly dined among a veritable forest of defeated warriors writhing on impaled poles. It's not known whether tales of Vlad III Dracula dipping his bread in the blood of his victims are true, but stories about his unspeakable sadism swirled throughout Europe.
Tens of thousands killed In total, Vlad is estimated to have killed about 80, people through various means. This includes some 20, people who were impaled and put on display outside the city of Targoviste: The sight was so repulsive that the invading Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, after seeing the scale of Vlad's carnage and the thousands of decaying bodies being picked apart by crows, turned back and retreated to Constantinople.
In , while marching to yet another battle with the Ottomans, Vlad and a small vanguard of soldiers were ambushed, and Vlad was killed and beheaded — by most reports, his head was delivered to Mehmed II in Constantinople as a trophy to be displayed above the city's gates. McNally in their book "In Search of Dracula. The Order of the Dragon was devoted to a singular task: the defeat of the Turkish, or Ottoman Empire. But the meeting was actually a trap: All three were arrested and held hostage.
The elder Vlad was released under the condition that he leave his sons behind. Under the Ottomans, Vlad and his younger brother were tutored in science, philosophy and the arts. Vlad also became a skilled horseman and warrior, according to Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally, former professors of history at Boston College, who wrote several books about Vlad III — as well as his alleged connection to Stoker's Dracula — in the s and s.
But Vlad held enmity, and I think it was one of his motivating factors for fighting the Turks: to get even with them for having held him captive. While Vlad and Radu were in Ottoman hands, Vlad's father was fighting to keep his place as voivode of Wallachia, a fight he would eventually lose.
Vlad's older half-brother, Mircea, was killed alongside his father. Not long after these harrowing events, in , Vlad embarked on a campaign to regain his father's seat from the new ruler, Vladislav II. His first attempt at the throne relied on the military support of the Ottoman governors of the cities along the Danube River in northern Bulgaria, according to Curta. Vlad also took advantage of the fact that Vladislav was absent at the time, having gone to the Balkans to fight the Ottomans for the governor of Hungary at the time, John Hunyadi.
Vlad won back his father's seat, but his time as ruler of Wallachia was short-lived. He was deposed after only two months, when Vladislav II returned and took back the throne of Wallachia with the assistance of Hunyadi, according to Curta. Little is known about Vlad III's whereabouts between and As his name suggests, he preferred to impale his victims on a stake from anus to mouth. He was a thorough guy: The spears were washed in oil to keep his victims from tearing as they were impaled and ensure that the full-body stabbing process lasted as long as possible.
Source: Columbia Pictures. Vlad loved to carry out a litany of tortures against his enemies, his own people, and really, whoever he had a chance to mess with. We know that he stuck people on pikes, set them on fire, shoved them into tight spaces, and otherwise extracted pain in fascinating ways, but one story about Vlad shows that he also had a sense of humor about things.
Supposedly, he liked to tickle people as a means to torture. Sure, ol' Vladdy had his flaws, but he also had his values. One of his biggest pet peeves was women who had sex outside of marriage, so any women in Wallachia who had a healthy sex drive ran the risk of being horribly murdered. Their sexual organs were removed from their bodes before they were impaled because Vlad liked to personalize his torment, even when he stuck with his signature move.
Vlad never saw a rule he didn't like. Aside from his penchant for wiping out entire villages of people, he was a fairly well-mannered guy, and he held his guests to a similar standard.
When a group of soldiers broke into his home while chasing a thief who tried to hide out in one of Vlad's rooms, Mr. Impaler executed their commander for not asking permission to enter his home.
Another time, when a group of turban-wearing Turks paid him a visit to collect a tax, he was affronted that the men failed to lift their "hats" to him. After they explained that it was forbidden by their religious beliefs, he nailed the turbans to their heads. Sure, it started a war, but respect is respect. During Vlad's second of three reigns as the ruler of Wallachia, he spent much of his time fighting off Mehmed II and the Ottoman army.
While there were way more Ottomans than Wallachians, Vlad still managed to terrorize his enemies through horrifying means. When Mehmed and his men arrived at the city, the gates were open for him, but there were no residents to be seen. There were, however, 23, bodies arranged in a "forest" of wooden stakes across 7 acres.
When Vlad the Impaler led military missions, he did his best to incite fear in his enemies.
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