How Vlad Dracula Defeated the Turks by Impaling Them, Part II: The Impaler

You’re reading Part II, if you missed Part I read it here. Vlad the Impaler, part II starts now.

In Part I we talked about the Turkish sultan and the horrific sight he witnessed upon coming to the city of Targoviste. Now we look at Vlad himself, who was he? Well, we know he was born in the tiny Transylvanian town of sighisoara in 1431. He was the second son of another Vlad. His father, Vlad the Second who was inducted into a kind of Christian Knightly order called the Order of the Dragon. Which  was created by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund and dedicated to defending Europe from the expanding Ottoman Empire in the East. His father took the name Dracul, or Dragon in Romanian, shortly after joining and passed the name down to his son Vlad the third, who took the form Dracula, or son of the dragon

Five years after Vlad’s birth, his father became ruler of the Transylvanian province of Walachia. At the time Walachia was in a precarious position. It was formally independent, but the ruler’s of Walachia lived in constant fear of invasion.

Not only did they have to worry about the Ottoman empire, but they also had to appease the more powerful Christian Kingdom of Hungary to the North. Both powers routinely intervened in Walachian politics, arranging assassinations of rulers who were too adamant about supporting the other side and supporting their own puppet candidates to the Walachian throne.

Vlad’s father had long fought for the Hungarians against the Ottomans, which is why he had been inducted into the Order of the Dragon. But after gaining the throne, Vlad II found himself playing the same game of balancing these two great powers against each other. In 1442, the Ottomans invaded Walachia, and Vlad’s father sought to stay neutral. But the Hungarians were on the upswing at that particular moment, and drove the Ottomans out, sending Vlad II and his family, including young Vlad Dracula into hiding.

However, and this will give you a sense of how quickly politics shifted in Walachia, the next year, with Turkish support, Vlad II returned to regain his throne.

In exchange for this help, the sultan of the Empire expected the Prince of Walachia to provide tribute and loyalty. That’s why in 1444, Vlad and his younger brother were sent to the court of the Ottoman Sultan Murad II.

This practice of a ruler sending his sons to another ruler is an old one, designed to ensure obedience. Offically, Vlad and his brother were guests of the Sultan, but there was a clear, if unspoken, understanding that they would be executed if their father did anything the Ottomans didn’t like.

Some historians have suggested that this period of captivity might explain why Vlad would later harbor such a profound hatred of the Ottomans. There was a culture inside the Ottoman court of pederasty where older men would often take advantage of slaves or hostages, and it’s possible that Vlad and his brother may have been sexually abused during their time in the Empire. There’s no hard evidence in the case of Vlad that this happened. But if it’s true, it could explain a lot of the cruelty that Vlad showed later in life.

All we know for sure is that in 1447, Vlad’s father was assassinated by a group of Romanian noblemen, or Boyars, along with his oldest son and Vlad Dracula’s older brother, Mircea.

After his father’s death, the Turks, who hoped to install Vlad as a loyal ruler of Walachia, sent Vlad and his brother back home. But just two months later, the Hungarians returned, deposing young Vlad.

There was a culture inside the Ottoman court of pederasty where older men would often take advantage of slaves or hostages, and it’s possible that Vlad and his brother may have been sexually abused during their time in the Empire.

Yet, in 1456, the revolving door of Walachian rulers turned again. The Hungarians, upset at the unexpectly pro-turkish policies of the man they had just put on the throne made, Vlad a deal. You can have your father’s throne back, but you answer to us.

Deciding this was the best deal he was going to get, Vlad accepted and the Hungarians invaded Walachia and placed Vlad back on his father’s throne, establishing his capitol at Tirgoviste.

But though Vlad had won the throne, he would still have to fight for it. The Turks had already picked their candidate, Vlad’s younger brother Radu the Handsome, and began trying to find someone to kill Vlad so that Radu could take his place.

And so Vlad found himself back in command and surrounded by enemies. In fact, let’s list all the people who would be happy to see Vlad dead.

Outside Walachaia, there’s the Ottoman Turks, who want to install his brother as a puppet ruler. Then there’s the Hungarians who support him now, but history has shown Vlad they won’t hesitate to depose him if they think he’s getting too close to the turks. Then there are the people inside Vlad’s own country that he has to worry about.

The nobility of Walachia, the Boyars, already killed his father and are likely waiting for a chance to do the same to Vlad. Then there are the Transylvanian Saxons.

The Saxons originally came from Germany, but sometime around the 13^thcentury, a large group of Saxons emigrated to Transylvania where they made a living as merchants in semi-autonomous communities within Walachia. They never really owed much allegiance to the native rulers of Walachia and they’re generally happy to throw their weight and considerable economic power behind conspiracies to depose them if they think it serves their interests. And in fact, some Transyvlanian Saxons were likely involved in the plot to kill Vlad’s father.

So, what’s Vlad to do?

Well, if you’re Vlad, and you have too many enemies, the first step is obviously to get rid of some of them.

At the time, it was customary for rulers to throw feasts for their nobles, especially on the day they came to power. Not only was this expected as a reward for their service, but it was a way for the ruler to build a reputation for being generous. But Vlad was never a very generous ruler. But he decided to throw a feast all the same.

So all the Boyars of the realm gathered at Vlad’s castle and as the wine flowed and food was passed around, Vlad asked a simple question of his guests:

“How many rulers have you seen in your lifetime?”

Rulers didn’t tend to last long in Walachia. And every man there had seen at least seven.  But what Vlad was really asking was “how many rulers have you betrayed? How many of you helped kill my father. And how many would like to do the same to me.”

Vlad didn’t wait for an answer, instead he had every boyar and their family arrested. The youngest Boyars, those who hadn’t conspired against Vlad’s family were sent north. There they were forced to provide labor building castles  to help defend Vlad’s realm from invasions.

So all the Boyars of the realm gathered at Vlad’s castle and as the wine flowed and food was passed around, Vlad asked a simple question of his guests:

“How many rulers have you seen in your lifetime?”

The conditions they endured were brutal. They worked through the dead of the Transylvanian winter hauling heavy stones on meager rations. They worked until their clothes rotted away and then they were forced to keep working naked. Most didn’t survive.

But for the older boyars, those who had helped kill Vlad’s father, he had something else in mind. And this would be the first time in history where Vlad ordered the punishment that would make him famous. The boyars would be impaled, immediately. Along with their wives and children.

Vlad was hardly the inventor of impalement. In fact, it was pretty common punishment, particularly in the area of Eastern Europe where Vlad lived and it was a traditional punishment for traitors which may have been why Vlad decided to impale the Boyars who betrayed his father.

But Vlad quickly became an expert at it.

 

Now, there are basically two ways to impale someone. The first is with a sharpend stake that is forced through the heart or chest, quickly killing the victim. The body is then hoisted into the air and left to rot.

But if you really want to make someone suffer before they die, which Vlad certaintly did, there is another, more painful way to do it.

Basically, a long stake with a rounded edge (often greased with animal fat) was inserted into the victim’s rectum and the stake was gradually lifted with ropes so that the victim’s own body weight drove the stake up into their intestines and eventually pierced through into the chest cavity.

The point (if you’ll excuse the pun) of using a rounded edge was that most of the organs were gradually pushed aside rather than pierced so that the victim died gradually of septic shock as the contents of the intestines spilled into the body or died when their lungs or heart collapsed as the rounded end of the stake worked its way up the body.

If you’re lucky, this happens quickly. But if you’re not, the process can take days.

The body is then hoisted into the air and left to rot.
But if you really want to make someone suffer before they die, which Vlad certaintly did, there is another, more painful way to do it.

This is the fate that Vlad had in mind for the treacherous Boyars as he ordered them rounded up and impaled by the hundreds or perhaps even thousands if we can believe the contemporary sources.

I mean, it’s the kind of suffering, the sense of fear that’s so hard for us to imagine.

But regardless of the horrible means he used to do so, with the power of the local nobility broken, Vlad might have hoped to sit a little easier on his throne, but first he had to deal with another group of enemies: the Transylvanian Saxons.

At first, Vlad seems to have hoped to have a somewhat positive relationship with the Saxons. In 1458, he seems to have sent word to Saxon communities in the nearby city of Brasov that he wanted the help of their craftsmen in building his castles.

But before they could arrive, the situation seems to have deteriorated rapidly. That May, a group of Saxons in Brasov confiscated a shipment of steel from a Walachian merchant. Vlad, never one to let an insult go unpunished, had the Saxons rounded up along with their families and had some impaled, while the others he had burnt alive.

In response, the Transylvanian Saxons got together and started to think of ways to get rid of Vlad. They settled on a minor noble with a distant claim on the Walachian throne named Dan. With a little saxon gold and a bit of help from a rival claimant to the Hungarian throne, Dan, or Dan III according to his regal title, assembled an army and invaded Walachia.

This seems to have been a minor invasion as Vlad quickly defeated Dan’s army and had Dan executed. Vlad’s army then marched on Brasov where they demolished the surrounding villages and impaled every Saxon they could get their hands on, leaving their bodies to rot outside the city.

This was a standard tactic that Vlad used. Rather than risk his men trying to take a heavily fortified city like Brasov, he would round up civilians who lived near by and arrange their impaled bodies in a ring surrounding the city. Essentially, it was a warning: Give up, because if I have to take the city by force, this is the fate that awaits all of you

 And it seems to have worked on the Saxons, as they took one look at the ring of corpses Vlad had erected and asked if Dracula wanted to negotiate.

In exchange for turning over everyone who had been involved in the plot to support Dan III’s claim to the throne, Vlad let the rest of the Saxons live, though not without impaling all those who had opposed him as a warning to the others.

And the Saxons seem to have taken that lesson to heart as they made no more serious attempts to resist Vlad’s rule for the rest of his reign.

But while the Saxons were content to let Vlad keep his throne, the Ottoman Turks were not. And they were back.

That year, 1460, was the same year that the Sultan sent his diplomats to ask why Vlad had failed to pay the customary tribute for the past three years. And after Vlad sent these diplomats back to the Sultan permanently attached to their hats, he launched an invasion of the Ottoman territories surrounding the Danube river.

Fresh of his conquest of the Romans, the Ottoman sultan seems to have grown tired of having to remember the names of all these Walachian princes and decided to just conquer the territory once and for all. And so he raised an army 150,000 men strong and set out to kill Vlad and put his little brother, Radu on the throne as a permanent and loyal client ruler.

And that May, the ottoman fleet seized the Wallachian Port of Braila and prepared the way for the massive Ottoman army.

Vlad, sensing that he was outnumbered by something like 10 to 1, ordered his army to withdrawal. But as they did he ordered them to burn everything behind them. They would leave nothing for the enemy.

And as the Ottoman army neared Vlad’s capital, Targoviste, Vlad laid a trap. One night, as the Sultan and his army camped, Vlad and a group of his most loyal men launched a lightning raid on the Ottomans. They ran through the camp, setting tents on fire and scattering horses. And as chaos took hold of the army, Vlad made his way towards the center of the camp, where he belived the Sultan would be reclining in his magnificent tent.

Vlad’s plan was to assassinate the Sultan. He hoped that with the head of the snake cut off, the body would wither and die.

But there was just one problem. Vlad had the wrong tent. And instead of the sultan, he killed one of his advisors, a man named Mahmut Pasha. Withdrawing in the early hours back to his castle, Vlad soon realized that he had slain the wrong man and that the furious sultan would soon be following behind him.

Vlad knew he could never hold the city of Targoviste against the Ottomans, and so he ordered his army to retreat. But he left one final parting gift for the Turkish ruler.

And as the Sultan approached the city, he discovered a forest of impaled prisoners. 20,000 of them according to legend.

Historians raise issue with that number. After all, it’s unlikely that Vlad would have had access to 20,000 Turkish prisoners. And it’s possible that he instead killed a few Wallachian prisoners, criminals or political prisoners to round out the numbers. But more likely is that the number is extremely inflated. At most, if the story is even true, it was probably closer to a few hundred than a few thousand.

And as the Sultan approached the city, he discovered a forest of impaled prisoners. 20,000 of them according to legend.

Either way, the Sultan does seem to have withdrawn his army and returned towards Constantinople. But it’s unlikely that it was because he couldn’t stomach the idea of fighting such a monstrous opponent. Instead, the general consensus is that Vlad’s scortched earth policy had had the intended effect, and the Sultan was having problems keeping his army supplied. No doubt he intended to return once he had the army resupplied, but as it happened, he never got the chance.

Though the Sultan had withdrawn his army, Vlad’s brother Radu began sending messages to the Wallachian nobles, reminding them that the Ottomans could always return, and perhaps asking them if they really would prefer to live under a man like Vlad than under the Ottomans. And though Vlad continued to defeat his brother in the field on the several times their armies met, the Wallachian nobles began defecting en masse until Vlad felt he could no longer hold on to his throne.

So Vlad fled Wallachia for Transyvlannia. There he met with the King of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus. Vlad asked Corvinus to help him raise an army to retake Wallachia and continue his campaign against the Ottomans.

But Corvinus doesn’t have seemed to want to fight the Turks. Having just come out of a civil war, his position must have been relatively weak and angering the Ottomans must have seemed less preferable than accommodating them. So, accommodate them he did, ordering the commander of his army to arrest Vlad at their negotions and spirit him away to captivity in Hungary.

There Vlad languished in a windowless tower for 14 years. It’s said that he continued his practice of impalement and his room was littered with the bodies of impaled mice and birds.

But finally deciding the time was right to fight against the Turks, Corvinus released Vlad in 1475 and dispatched him along with an army to fight against the Ottomans in Moldavia, a region bordering on Wallachia.

Vlad appears to have had some considerable successes against the Turks. And the next year, he managed to regain the crown of Wallachia for the third time.

But this final reign, like the first, was to be short. In 1477, the Ottomans dispatched a  man named Basarab Laiota to Wallachia along with an army. And in January of that year, Vlad fell in battle against Laiota’s army.

It’s said that the Turks, remembering Vlad’s crimes against them, chopped his body into pieces on the spot and sent his head back to the Sultan.

What was left of Vlad’s body was taken to a local monastery to be buried. But interestingly, when that monastery was later investigated by archaelogists in 1933, Vlad was not in his grave. Instead, the pit was filled with the jaws and bones of horses.

This lends one final mystery to the story of Vlad, but the truth is that he was likely buried in a different church than the one that legend claimed.

And that sort of blend between fact and legend is an important part of Vlad’s story. You see, almost immediately after his death, stories of Vlad’s cruelty spread all over Europe. And there’s a reason for that. The printing press was invented during the later half of Vlad’s life. And in the early years of printing, German publishers dominated the industry.

And that’s relevant for Vlad, because he had a long standing conflict with one group of germans in particular, the Transylvanian Saxons. So as soon as Vlad died, the Saxons began distributing wood cut fliers all over Europe, telling stories of how Vlad had famously dined among the corpses of those he had impaled. And how his reign had been one of unimagineable cruelty.

And for those who couldn’t read, which was most people at the time, they even included helpful illustrations. This probably explains why they became some of the first bestsellers in history, being read as far away as England.

And this has led many to believe that much of the events of Vlad’s life, particularly the more lurid details were largely embellished or even invented by the Saxons. But one would probably think there’s still enough independent evidence to paint a picture of Vlad as a man who certaintly was cruel and did practice impalement of his enemies. Though, maybe not to the extent we imagine.

And one might also think maybe this entire description of Vlad’s reign, as horrible as it is, sort of sanitizes it. And I think history has a way of doing that. No matter how horrible something must have been in the moment, be it the mass impalements of Vlad Dracula or the millions of people who died at the hands of the Mongols, we don’t really get a sense of what it must have been like. That hundreds of years of distance makes it hard for us to really identify what it was like for these people to endure this sort of thing. But imagine what it must have been like to be one of Vlad’s victims. To be pulled out to a field in front of an ominous looking castle and all around you are the screams of the dying men, women, and children. You can smell their blood in the air, and the contents of their bowels as it drips down the stakes. And you know that you’re next. Men with swords pull you forward and force you against a stake and as they lift you into the air, you feel every agonizing moment as it tears you apart. As the dull wood forces itself into your stomach.

It’s the kind of fear… and the kind of pain we really can’t imagine. But these were people like us. They had the same desires and hopes and lives that we all have. They just wanted to make a better lives for themselves and their families. That part of the human condition has never changed. And to imagine that you could live an entire life, with young love and dear friends and ambitions for the future that we would all recognize… and then to have it all snuffed out in a moment of extreme agony and terror. It makes you realize that no matter what how we try to reimagine the story of Vlad the Impaler, that if even a tenth of it is true, then maybe a lot of his reputation as one of history’s greatest monsters is deserved.

And no matter what he did to fight against the domination of an empire that wanted to destroy everything he loved, that maybe had done enough to him to really make it personal, did it make all of that ok?

It reminds us of the famous quote by philosopher Frederich Nietzche. [box] “Take care when you fight monsters, lest you become a monster. For when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”[/box]

Love to read history? I highly recommend buying the new Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. Check the price on Amazon.