Vlad Dracula III, also
called Vlad the Impaler,
was born in Sighiorsa, Transylvania in the year 1431.His father, Vlad II Dracul,
was a member of the Order of the Dragon; an order committed to the preservation
of the Christian faith against Islamic influences by any means required. In
1438, however, his father betrayed the order and joined forces with the Turks,
allowing them to keep Vlad III and his brother Mircea as guarantees of Vlad
II’s loyalty.
When, in 1447, Vlad II
was killed by John Hunyadi for his Turkish allegiance, Vlad III was released.
When he returned to Wallachia to take his place on the throne, he discovered
the boyars (a word for a minor nobleman) of Tirgoviste held the throne and had
murdered his brother. In 1456, the teenage Vlad finally gained his rightful
throne after killing the boyars and the murderer of his father with the help of
Turkish cavalry.
Thirteen
years later, Vlad began his reign of blood during an Easter feast. He ordered
the healthy boyars attending sent off to labor in the construction of a new
castle on the Arges river, the unhealthy were impaled in a public display.
In
addition to killing his enemies, Vlad also despised the weak. He held a feast
to which all his subject were invited, under the rouse of wanting to feed all
the poor in his kingdom. When the guests arrived, he had them fed and got them
drunk, then asked who among them would like to go without care or hunger
forever. Of course they all wanted to, so Vlad boarded up the mansion he used
for the feast and had it burned to the ground, ridding himself of all the poor,
ill, and handicapped in his land.
Vlad’s
main weapon was, not surprisingly, psychological. In the year 1461, Vlad failed
to assassinate the Turkish Sultan, who became enraged and vowed to kill Vlad.
Vlad, when he discovered the failed plot, knowing he couldn’t defeat the
Turkish army, retreated with his army to Tirgoviste. While he retreated, he
burned every village he found, dumped the corpses of pigs into the wells to
putrefy them, and left fields of impaled villagers.
The
sultan, his army demoralized, retreated for a few years, and Vlad’s brother
Radu led the Turkish forces to take his throne. Hungarian reinforcements, meant
to aid Vlad, instead arrested him. They escorted him back to Hungary where he was
interred until 1474. Vlad died in the year 1476, however, shortly after
retaking his throne, in a battle with an ottoman lord who claimed the
Wallachian throne.
There
are many unknown tales of Vlad, which may or may not be true. One such tale was
that, in order to win support for his country, Vlad placed a golden cup on a
stand overnight unobserved. The next morning, the cup remained. His subjects
knew that to take the cup and be caught meant a slow, certain death. Another
tale holds that, when three foreign ambassadors came to visit Vlad, they were
told to remove their hats. When they refused, their hats were nailed to their
heads. A third is that, when Vlad had 30,000 of the merchants and nobles of the
city of Barasov impaled, he held a feast among the forests of those people
still alive on their poles in order to fully enjoy the experience. He noticed
one of his own nobles holding his nose against the stench, and so the man was
impaled above all the others.
There
are other tales, and other vesions of those tales. For further study, I’ve
included a few links below.
Works Cited:
Picture
of The Impaler. Digital image. Listal. Listal, 2012. Web. 18 Oct.
2012. <http://i2.listal.com/image/4185404/600full-vlad-the-impaler.jpg>.
"Vlad
the Impaler (1431-1476)." Vlad the Impaler. Historicaltimeline.com, 29
Oct. 2009. Web. 11 Oct. 2012.
"Vlad Dracula/Tepes - The
Impaler." Vlad Dracula/Tepes - The Impaler. Castle of Spirits, n.d.
Web. 16 Oct. 2012.
Evolutica. "Dracula." Vlad.
Draculas.info, 5 Aug. 2006. Web. 16 Oct. 2012.
Jenkins,
Mark. Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origins of an Enduring Legend.
Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2010. Print.
Wilde, Robert. "Vlad the
Impaler / Vlad III Dracula / Vlad Tepes." About.com European History.
About.com, n.d. Web. 16 Oct. 2012.
Links for Further Research:
http://www.vladtheimpaler.com/vlad_the_impaler_bio_003.htm A site about Vlad in particular, seems to have a few historical sources.
http://www.castleofspirits.com/vlad.html
A site about creepy things. Fairly corny, but useful for the tales about Vlad.
http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/famouspeople/a/Vlad-The-Impaler.htm
A site which gives the history of Vlad the Impaler in an unbiased way. It may have been translated from another language, as the wording is, at times, a bit off.
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