[Music] Hungary 1474 the artist's hands Shake as he sets up his easel and paints across from him sits a man Infamous throughout the land some call him a hero the only man willing to defend Eastern Europe from the armies of the Ottoman Sultan While others say he's a monster a fiend who impales men women and children on Long spikes and feasts beneath their shirking corpses and according to one story he dips his bread in the warm blood that splatters his plate this Legend in front of the artist has a face that matches the stories a
sharp nose heavy eyebrows and bulging green eyes for over a decade the man has been a captive here but soon he'll be Unleashed again Vlad III son of the Dragon Dracula though before we take a bite out of this legendary tale we want to thank nebula for helping to make this episode possible and remind you that after this episode you should go check out our next extra history series on Nazi occultism over there a full week earlier than anywhere else by clicking the link [Music] below welcome friends today we will be discussing Vlad the Impala
AKA Dracula a 15 Century Romanian ruler who v v I'm doing a bit all right all right I'll take the fangs out kind of hurt anyway actually it's for the best because as fun as it is to make vampire jokes the true story of Vlad the Impaler is actually more interesting revealing and dare I say bloody than the literary counterpart that stole his name Vlad III later known as the Impaler is by far the most famous Romanian historical figure but he's famous in a strange sense in his homeland he's a national hero seen as a
champion of Independence and resistance against ottoman expansion but outside Romania he's mostly perceived as the psychopath and sadist that inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula in fact word of his violent Deeds spread even during his lifetime as print makers in Germany churned out exaggerated or invented stories about him in other words centuries before Stoker's birth vlad's story was already intertwined with myth which makes him difficult to talk about so just to State this upfront our plan with this series is to First discuss the historical Vlad and then do a separate episode on the complex Legacy of his
memory where yes we promise we'll talk about all the Dracula stuff because actually Dracula is Rob's favorite classic novel and we did an entire episode on that book on our literary show so you haven't read it's awesome I love it and you should definitely go take a bite out of that after you finish learning about Vlad here but okay back to history to understand Vlad the man we have to go back to the time of his father Vlad II known as dracul or the dragon Vlad dracul got that name after Sigman king of hungry and
later the holy Roman emperor made him a member of the order of the Dragon a shival order that vowed to defend Eastern Europe from the Ottoman Empire these two they were close see Vlad II grew up as a hostage at sigman's court a common practice then which was half likee going to boarding school and half likee well being a hostage vlad's father the ruling Prince of wakia had agreed to be a vassel of the Hungarian King with Vlad living within decapitating distance of the Hungarian Throne to keep his father honest I.E betray me and I
kill your kid yet Sigman was pretty chummy with vla educating him and showing him favor because sigman's ideal outcome wasn't for blad to die it was for him to succeed his father and Rule wakia as a close Ally of Hungary but why I mean why would Hungary much larger than it is today put so much effort into controlling a relatively small principality well as they say in real estate location location location wakea was essentially the buffer zone for a major conflict brewing in Eastern Europe the expansionist Ottoman Empire had rolled over the Balkans and the
then powerful Kingdom of Hungary wanted a friendly ruler in wakia to keep it free of Ottoman control and the famous ottoman jeries off hungry's borders but the Throne of wakia was a bit of a mess and keeping anyone on it was a big project Vlad dra's own father had been princ twice before he died in 1418 and five other of vlad's cousins and half Brothers had also sat on the throne by 14 36 some multiple times that's because monogamy was more of a suggestion for Wan Nobles rather than a strict Rule and that created an
enormously Twisted family tree of backstabbing and usurpation that meant the average time on the throne during flaud dra's lifetime was only around 2 to 3 years but it wasn't until 1434 that Sigman thought about a regime change that's of course when one of vlad's Brothers currently the prince sent envoys to pledge allegiance to the ottoman Sultan Murad the second in response Sigman gave Vlad a bunch of money to raise an army of exiled wakan boars basically the noble class to seized the throne he succeeded in 1436 mostly because his brother died of an illness and
vlad's First Act was to cancel the unratified treaty his predecessor had drawn up with the Ottomans then two things happened first the Ottomans invaded in response then a month later Sigman died triggering a Hungarian internal crisis that meant willia wasn't going to be getting any of its promised military aid so Vlad dra decided to forgo that whole order of the Dragon Battle the Turks thing pledged fty to morod the second and guided an ottoman Army into Hungary but that ottoman Force Was Defeated leaving the hungarians furious with Vlad see the problem that would bevil Vlad
and his son Dracula as well was that wakia was a small country between big powers and siding with one invited the other to either attack him militarily or to to try to put another relative on the WAN throne in 1442 Vlad took a meeting with John hunyadi a Hungarian vassel and Prince of Transylvania remember him he's important Who convinced vlod to withdraw his support from a planned ottoman invasion of Transylvania Vlad hoping to stay neutral didn't join The Invasion but did let mad's forces cross wakia to attack hunadi now it was Murad II who was
furious with vad and when he called him in for an explanation he jailed him along with his two youngest sons only releasing him to reclaim his throne once he'd sworn not to act against ottoman interests and pledged to send 500 children a year to join the elite ottoman janissary Corps but when he was released from ottoman custody he left a few things behind namely his 11-year-old son Vlad III known by his preferred honorific of Dracula or son of the Dragon oh that's right just like Daddy Dragon got ditched as a hostage at sigman's court this
little dragon got left as a host with the Ottomans along with his brother Radu who is around seven and these two brothers couldn't have been more different Radu got along just fine at the ottoman Court he was Charming intelligent and good-looking eventually even erning the title Radu the handsome he befriended the sulan son mmed II and his studies in Turkish the Quran logic mathematics and philosophy flourished Vlad on the other hand didn't get on so well neither Charming nor handsome he got none of the fawning attention Radu received and his def defant attitude meant he
regularly felt the Lash of a tutor's whip yet while they were generally well treated they were also in danger a fact brought home when the brothers saw two boys fellow Eastern European hostages blinded with Red Hot Irons as punishment for communicating with their father as always vlad's bulging green eyes saw everything he saw the ottoman Court memorizing its functions and ways he observed military drills closeup and was raised along with mimed gaining firsthand knowledge of a few future enemy he observed the terror tactics the ottoman States used to keep vassals and populations in line and
he learned another hard lesson that politics was imp personal betraying your family was okay if it gave you more power then one day a messenger arrived saying that Vlad and radu's privileges were being stripped they would now live in harsher conditions separated from the court for it seems their father the dragon knowing it would mean the death of his sons had joined John hunadi in a crusade to eject the Ottomans from Europe which didn't go very well the Crusaders marched to Total defeat and then in the Fallout Vlad dra gave confusing signals of which side
he was actually on but ultimately he resubmitted himself as a vassal to Sultan Morad allowing Vlad Dracula and Ru who he was surprised to learn were still alive to come home yet as I'm sure you've gathered by now in making this piece Vlad dra had invited War because now John hun storm into AIA hoping to put a pretender named vladislav on the WAN Throne because this story really needed more guys named Vlad Vlad Dracula and Radu the handsome fled back to the Ottomans while their eldest brother who stayed to fight with their father got caught
by a group of Rebel boars Who blinded him with a red hot poker and buried him alive and days later hunyadi and his men ran down Vlad II in a marsh the dragon was dead his throne given to a pretender which meant that now in 14 48 it was finally time for young Vlad to enter wakia and reclaim what was his so with military support from the ottoman sulon the son of the Dragon marched to his revenge and Dracula was Unleashed Ottoman Empire 1447 this is how Romanian folklore says it happened when Vlad drul was
being run down in a marsh when he knew that he'd be caught and killed by The Pretender vladislav he gave his sword and pendant to a loyal boar take them to my son for 5 days the boar rode evading enemies and crossing rivers until he entered the Ottoman Empire and presented them to Vlad Dracula and as the boar recounted the deaths of his father and brother Dracula stood staring at the sword and pendant both given to his father by sigismund both marked with the iconography of the order of the dragon and there the 17-year-old Vlad
Dracula swore that he would not rest until he had Avenged his murdered kin and that he would personally with his own hand slay The Pretender vladislav while the story we started with may be folklore it does capture a solid truth when John Hun's Invasion killed vlad's father and brother it put the teenage hostage into play Morad seems to have told Vlad of the deaths himself and Then followed It Up by making him an officer in the ottoman military because despite the greater popularity of his younger brother Radu vlad's seriousness and determination had convinced Sultan Morad
that this was the prince they wanted ruling wakia as an ally and considering how brutally hunyadi and his allies had killed vlad's family Murad also assumed that any chance of the Young Prince defecting to the hungarians was most likely buried alive with vlad's older brother plus it was the perfect time to reclaim wakia for the drul dynasty for when John hunyadi and vladislav marched into ottoman held Serbia Mur had dealt them a shattering defeat outside Kosovo in fact the route was so chaotic that no one even knew if hunadi or vladislav had survived seeing his
chance Vlad stormed into alakia with a Turkish Cavalry force and seized the throne a dramatic beginning to a powerful and bloody Reign soon Vlad would take revenge on the boars who had betrayed his father and brother and would carve a swath across all of the land of wait no oops sorry funny story vladislav actually turned up both very alive and with an army recaptured the throne and sent fla back into Exile his first Reign lasted all of two months at first he fled back to the Ottomans but things weren't safe there either vladislav though he'd
accepted Hun's help to be installed on the throne of wakia under the explicit agreement that he'd fight the Turks was discovering the same thing vlad's father had wakia simply couldn't survive against the Ottomans without Hungarian Aid and Hungary was a mess soon wakei and boars pressured him to make peace with the sultan so he sent envoys to Sultan Morad looking to strike a deal and Vlad rightfully worried his death might be a condition of the bargain fled to Moldavia and vla received a warm welcome there for that year his uncle had become the ruler of
Moldavia and his cousin Steven the Arab parent and the three years that Vlad spent there connecting with his cousin and getting a Renaissance education were likely some of the happiest of his life he even got a taste of military Glory helping his Uncle and Cousin turn back a Polish Force good days though the time was abruptly cut short when his uncle's half brother assassinated him and Vlad and Steven both fled to Hungary where he was forced to play cat and mouse with John hun going from town to town hiding with sympathetic boars and at one
point slipping away just as a squad of ambushers tried to catch and assassinate him then everything changed again first Sultan Murad died and in his place Rose his more vigorous and ambitious son mmed who declared it his top priority to finally conquer Constantinople a goal made possible since while the the city was still a trade center and symbolically important it had declined in military power huna's star was falling as well while he was still revered as the most famous Crusader against the Turks his two recent defeats had tarnished his reputation I mean a few years
before he'd essentially ruled Hungary on behalf of a child King but now he was back to just being a plain old Prince of Transylvania and then vladislav well vladislav was aligning ever closer with the Ottomans meaning hunyadi was suddenly shopping for a new Prince of will which set up an interesting space for an approach between hunyadi and Vlad because each did have something the other wanted hunyadi could give Vlad legitimacy official recognition in Hungary and a path to reclaim his throne and in turn Vlad could give hunyadi an able partner who knew the ottoman military
and Leadership from the inside and who could replace vladislav if necessary striking this deal however meant that Vlad would need to join the man who'd slaughtered his family H but in an ironic twist vlad's father of all people had prepared him for this decision back when he'd abandoned vad as a hostage with the Ottomans politics was impersonal and if reclaiming his throne meant forgoing Vengeance then so be it Vlad became a Noble at Hun's court and his new Patron took him to the coronation of the new Hungarian King lisl Theus where he took an oath
formally to act as an ally of Hungary in the Catholic Church his role would be the same as his father's halting the Ottomans advance and reclaiming Christian lands and with his oath sworn the Hungarian diet charged Vlad with defending the Transylvanian Frontier against the Ottomans and their Willian allies a duty his father also held news of constantinople's fall in 1453 while no surprise did sour the celebrations stories had filtered in that the Ottomans had impaled prisoners in front of the city walls a punishment used by both Ottomans and German Saxons as a way to scare
the Garrison into surrendering believing the city would fall and wanting to preserve his strength for defending his own territory hunyadi opted against sending troops to Constantinople but he knew that mmed would not stop with the Bastion of Eastern Christendom and the next place on The Chopping Block would be the Hungarian Frontier City of Belgrade so in 1456 he whipped up an army of mercenaries and marched to relieve the city leaving Vlad to defend the pass into transilvania and keep vladislav tied down Hun's forces reached Belgrade just as the besieged city was ready to fall broke
through the Turkish lines and managed to get inside the Citadel to reinforce the beleaguered Garrison they broke the siege repelling meed's forces after weeks of combat hunyadi the White Knight who had fought the Ottomans for decades had relieved Belgrade an event described as a miracle but a miracle that went sour as plague swept into his Camp killing hunyadi and the expedition's other leader but vlah Dracula had little time to mourn the enemy turned Mentor for his goal had been to tie up vladislavs forces and he knew the best way to do it Invasion as he
crossed into his homeland he looked up to see a fell star burning in the heavens Holly's Comet a Celestial body that people across the world interpreted as either a sign of impending catastrophe or great events and meeting his enemy's Army outside the WAN capital of tarisha Vlad took the burning Star as a sign of coming Victory we know little about what happened next according to one story The relatively small armies clashed but in another the forces decided to settle the issue by single combat Vlad Dracula son of the dragon against his cousin vladislav Prince of
wakia though in both versions Vlad slays The Pretender with his own hand when he took the throne his coins were stamped with the fivet tailed Comet the symbol of his victory but that Victory would be difficult to hold on to because while he agreed to pay mmed 2,000 gold as tribute and agreed to let the ottoman armies cross his lands these agreements were only to buy time for him to build and repair more fortresses and solve internal problems at home for the faction of boars who had brought him to the throne were a small minority
of the nobility most had supported the slain vladislav including those who had risen up and killed vlad's brother at the prompting of John hunyadi indeed it was only months into his second Reign when a young boar raised an army of mercenaries to Dethrone the Young Prince but Vlad ambushed the little band as they marched toward tarisha and made an example of them them no one would miss his troops sharpened long Stakes greased them and then shoved them into the bodies of the noble and all his male kin then he left them still living beside the
road to die over the coming days over time he would refine this gruesome method of execution until history remembered him chiefly for the brutal spectacle Vlad the Impaler had arrived and his enemies would suffer [Music] tarisha Easter 1457 the W and boars are feasting at V Dracula's table in their fine Easter clothes they raise cups to their new Prince the past they say is forgotten but Vlad does not forget suddenly there's a commotion and soldiers begin grabbing their arms Vlad then separates the boars and their families who had risen against his father and buried his
brother alive marching them out into the spring cold the oldest are immediately impaled while the others are forc marched down to a town below a ruined Mountain Fortress and told to pick up the freshly made bricks there they will carry the bricks up the mountain rebuilding vlad's New Castle for the rest of their short lives their fine clothes tearing and falling away until they're Nearly Naked and most work until they collapse and die ah but who cares if the boars perish from frostbite and exhaustion huh Vlad is the prince and he can appoint new Nobles
now if you watched the first two chapters of this video and thought huh I thought this guy was called Vlad the Impaler but he's hardly impaled anyone bring on the impaling after this episode you might regret that ask because this part of the tale contains like a bajillion per more impaling and violence seriously it's a lot so please let this serve as a Content warning for everything that follows because this one's going to get brutal but before we go there I want to take a slight detour and talk about State violence during this era since
it's important to understanding Vlad his times and how he's remembered the 15th century was a particularly bloody time in Europe one where violence was commonplace in everyday life few laws governed Warfare and rebellions often ended with massacres or mass executions and it was common all over Europe to keep populations in line with displays of extreme violence as this was an era of gory public executions and torture English kings put heads on spikes French ones broke people on the wheel and the Spanish had the Inquisition in other words public displays of Cruelty were a form of
political communication we say this not to excuse Vlad actually if anything it does the opposite because even by these standards his campaigns of violence were considered extreme while we don't have a lot of primary source documents on Vlad and things written about him or preserved orally are likely exaggerated there is a clear theme that emerges when we look at his second Reign when he gained the throne in 1457 Vlad embarked on a a planned deliberate campaign to break the power of the boars which had been on the rise since the time of his grandfather in
fact the instability of the WAN Throne was not all due to outside interventions by Hungary and the Ottomans it had as much if not more to do with the WAN boars who always tried to steer the weakest candidate to the throne and increase the power of their own Council Vlad on the other hand tended toward the aristocratic centralized version of power that was on the rise in the Renaissance in vlad's mind it would be he who controlled wakia not the boars and not the church and the only way to keep the throne would be to
become as powerful as possible you can judge for yourselves he explained in a letter to the Transylvanian town of brov when a man o Prince is strong and powerful he can make peace as he wants to but when he is weak a strong man will come and do what he wants to him his First Act was to purge the boars of any deemed Unfaithful or ambitious frequently executing them via impalement between 1457 and 1461 he replaced all but two Boars in his Royal Council a body that rarely changed even as the prince did suggesting he
likely surrounded himself with loyalists those loyalists came from a lower strata of the boar class While others were mercenaries or followers from his Exile in Transylvania basically people that owed their elevation directly to Vlad and who often had no previous ties or allegiances in malakia and the wealth and land that Vlad gave them had conveniently enough been provided by their predecessors who didn't need it anymore he also instituted a campaign of Terror in order to enforce public order now we have to be cautious when discussing this since firsthand records about his domestic massacres are lacking
and those written by Outsiders based on reports within the country likely include some exaggeration but even Romanian oral Traditions that are kind to Vlad casting him as tough but fair still emphasize his extreme cruelty thieves were beheaded Unfaithful wives skinned alive lazy peasants impaled Roma people forced into the military or boiled alive a Romanian folktale tells of how he threw a banquet for beggars then locked the doors and burned the hall down to stop them burdening the state and several accounts discuss him impaling priests who did not show him suitable respect in another story two
diplomats in some versions representatives of the Ottomans in others genoise Italians once said it was against their custom to remove either their turbin or skull caps before Vlad so he supposedly honored this tradition by having their head coverings nailed to their skulls and while we can't verify the truth of all these stories they all share common elements they portray a ruler who is trying to assert not only his own authority but who wants to enforce a strict moral code emphasizing hard work and deference to Authority they also suggest a tendency towards sadism but the massacres
reached a new height when it came to the Transylvanian town of brov which he had wrote to early in his Reign promising his protection if they agreed he could Retreat there in the event of being dethroned the relations between Vlad and brov got rocky fast see brov was the center of German Saxon settlement in Transylvania and a major location for trade and Manufacturing and while it happily sent flawed Artisans it was also under pressure from Hungary who by this point realized vla was not going to be a Hungarian vassel to throw their support behind when
a vod's relatives instead two of which you know just happen to be hanging around saxs in Transylvania waiting for their moment including vlad's half brother Vlad the monk because again this series needed more guys named Vlad Vlad kept up the dance of diplomacy with the Transylvanian Saxons for a couple of years ordering them to expel The Pretenders and occasionally carrying out reprisals to make it happen but by 1459 when these Saxons recognized a third Pretender his patience ran out he rounded up 41 brov merchants living in wakia and impaled them then he had 300 other
Saxons burned alive claiming that some were spies then he led a two-pronged attack into Southern Transylvania burning towns and attacking the outskirts of brov before withdrawing this attack killed thousands and remains one of vlad's most infamous acts in retaliation the Saxons of brov threw their full support behind another one of vlad's relatives Dan The Pretender to make a try for the throne and just from the fact that history remembers this guy as The Pretender you can probably guess that that did not go well captured after a brief battle Dan supposedly knelt while his grave was
dug in front of him all the while a priest conducting a burial service while the terrified man was still alive all of which climaxed when an Executioner's axe fell dropping The Pretender head into an open pit 3 years into his second Reign VOD had through utter brutality achieved many of his goals he terrorized the boars into submission or replaced them strengthened his power and created a spectacle of Gore so incredible that both Pretenders to the throne and foreign enemies along the border would think twice about trying to unseat the son of the dragon and so
he turned to foreign policy the Ottomans though Vlad started his Reign by paying mimed Financial tribute that first payment was the only one he'd sent and by 1461 he was 3 years past due and mimed was looking for a meeting to clear up the Diplomatic frostiness the envoys of memed came in force a Greek Diplomat and a Turkish Commander at their head they had planned to capture Vlad much like Murad had captured vlad's father instead vlad's Army came out of hiding surrounding the Turkish force and upon marching them back to tarisha the ottoman envoys beheld
a stake erected for each of them with two higher than the others one for the Greek Diplomat and one for the Turkish Commander within weeks vlad's Army was across the danu river ravaging Turkish territory impaling thousands of prisoners and burning civilians in their homes Vlad was going to war against the Ottoman Empire a clash that would prove a reunion for leading the Turkish Army against him was his childhood companion mamed and at the Sultan's right hand someone even closer to home vlad's own brother Radu the handsome oh boy [Music] 1461 the danu Vlad Dracula puts
pen to paper to tell his ally Matias corvinus the king of Hungary about how many he has killed attacking ottoman territory that is to say in the spring they will come with evil intentions and with all of their power and when they did Vlad would find himself fighting alone vlad's attack on ottoman territory across the danub river didn't just come out of nowhere he knew that his brother Radu was still on the ottoman Court just in case vla needed to be replaced and he was aware of meed's expansionist designs indeed it was obvious to everyone
an attack was coming because a few years earlier Pope pasas II and the venetians had raised money in order to fund a crusade that would prevent further ottoman expansion but while Matias corvinus Frederick III and other rulers had taken the Pope's money because you know free money they were slow to actually do anything productive with it because While most European monarchs talked a big game about defending against the Muslim Turks the reality was that for most kingdoms their Christian neighbor states were a much more credible threat in fact in desperation Pope Pas reached out to
other Muslim states in hopes of convincing them to attack the Ottomans to keep mimed tied down plus blad had his own border troubles namely his cousin Steven who he'd helped put on the throne of malavia but now stepen had switched sides and became an ottoman vassel massing his troops on vod's borders so that if the Ottomans came vlod would have to fend off armies from two directions that came to pass in 1462 when one night Meed and vlad's brother Radu LED ottoman forces across the Dan and into alakia Vlad opposed him with a battery of
cannons but when the Ottomans raised their own AR positions and began firing back he withdrew vad was simply outnumbered and outgunned Meed had between 60 and 70,000 troops and 120 cannons whereas vlod could only muster 10,000 soldiers in his main Force most of which peasants rather than professionals now a word of caution here while we do know what happened in this war there's still a debate about the location order of events and even what Vlad and meed's strategic objectives were Meed for his part probably didn't want to outright conquer wakia and bring it into the
Empire it was more valuable after all as a buffer zone against Hungary but of course with the more dependable Radu in charge rather than Vlad also he was interested in Steven helping him take back a Black Sea Fortress whereas Vlad of course wanted to stay on the throne and expel Meed from his lands but he did know he couldn't beat Meed in the field so instead he used gorilla tactics he sent word for Wan civilians to flee to the Carpathian Mountains then retreated burning the land behind him and poisoning water sources to deny the ottoman
Army food then his Horsemen harried meed's column striking and disappearing occasionally taking captives waiting for a moment to land a hard blow which came when the ottoman Army camped outside of the capital of tarisha not noticing that spies passed in their midst according to Folklore one of those spies was in fact Vlad himself using his command of Turkish to pass himself off as a soldier and whether true or not the scouts learned what they needed to know the location of mt's tent willake and Cavalry screamed into the unaware ottoman Force slashing down with swords and
burning canvas tents killing hundreds in the shock assault before many in the ottoman Camp could even pick up weapons and Vlad stormed through the melee slicing his way into meed's personal tent to find it empty Meed happened to be somewhere else vad called a retreat his planned decapitation strike had failed the next day the armies finally met in Earnest where vlod lost 2,000 soldiers and abandoned the capital Ted running with his shattered Army for the safety of the mountains but he left something behind as mamed and Radu approached tarisha their troops saw what from a
distance looked like a stand of trees that is until they got closer they were bodies ottoman captives from vlad's depredations along the danu and the soldiers he'd snatched during the gorilla campaign men women children all impaled in a maob display with birds nesting in their corpses One account puts the number at 20,000 roughly the amount vad himself had claimed to kill in his letter to Matias corvinus but while this Terror tactic did shake the approaching ottoman troops it actually opened another Avenue for memed he had after all brought his favorite Radu the handsome to replace
Vlad and vlad's long-standing campaigns of public cruelty and his war on the boars had not exactly endeared him to what was left of Wan nobility so with Vlad On The Run clearly defeated Boar's increasingly defected Dadu the new Prince now enthroned at tarisha quickly reached out to elements Vlad had clashed with like the Transylvanian Saxons a great warrior he was perhaps not but he was a cunning enough Diplomat to offer himself as a more reasonable alternative to his vicious brother even if he was an ottoman puppet Vlad Was Defeated out of power his troops likely
deserting in increasing numbers the only upside was that his fortress on the Black Sea had withstood a Siege by both Steven and Meed but that was cold comfort and within weeks blood support had melted to the point that Meed went home leaving Radu to run things secure on his new Throne now hiding in the Carpathian Mountains blad had but one hope see there was rumors that his old Ally Matias corvinus was marching toward wakia with a Hungarian Army so vlod dispatched messages begging for Aid in regaining his throne and corvinus came with a pair of
shackles see corvinus didn't necessarily want to battle Meed at that moment but the pope and venetians had after all given him all that nice money to fight the Ottomans with and it just seemed like such a waste to use it fighting the Ottomans you know but he did have to show he'd done something so he arrested Vlad producing several forged letters to prove that Vlad had been collaborating with Meed offering to make war on Hungary in exchange for regaining his throne and no it doesn't make a lot of sense in fact even corvin's Court historian
seems to think it was a little thin but corvinus needed to show the pope of Victory and uncovering vlad's treachery was a way to do that without expending his military so Vlad was a prisoner once again and would remain one for 14 years we have little documentation on Vlad during this period apart from the fact that he was held for a few years and then allowed to settle in a house imp PES transitioning from being strictly a prisoner to more of an exiled Noble forbidden from leaving the country though among the few stories we have
about him during this time is one violent incident involving Hungarian troops apparently a thief had run and hid in vlad's home and then then when a squad of troops burst in to pursue him Vlad had their leader executed on the spot he' argued successfully that he was within his rights because the troops had not asked for an invitation meanwhile as Vlad St causing a few diplomatic incidents in PES Radu lost the throne to another rival and when the news hit a clearly Restless vlod he pushed corvinus to give him an army to recover wakia because
remember according to corvinus Vlad was still the legitimate Prince and Vlad argued he could be useful but while corvinus still refused for years to support Vlad he did increasingly give his pet Willian Prince a longer and longer leash letting him move around within Hungary and settle in Transylvania giving him clearance to gather followers around him staging Vlad across the border exactly like all those Pretenders had done during vlad's rule corvinus was testing Dracula seeing if he could trust him and in 1476 the biggest test came when he sent vla Along on Military Expeditions against the
Ottomans in Bosnia and to bail vlad's cousin Steven out when his relationship with Meed sard and the sultan invaded mavia though it was only a Prelude within months a Hungarian Army was marching on tarisha and Vlad and Steven armies now United barely missed capturing the deposed Prince as he fled to mimed so in November 1476 Vlad once again became the prince of wakia in his life he'd been a hostage a fugitive Exile a prince a captive a general and both a Rebel and an oppressor he' carried his sword for the Ottomans hungarians mavian a pope
and a sultan now in his mid-40s it would be his third reign as Prince and though it would only last 2 months blad would live [Music] forever 1476 Constantinople a messenger stands before Meed the Conqueror he brings news of a victory against the tyrant theii who has massacred the faithful and spurned meed's friendship but the messenger didn't come alone he carries a box which upon its opening reveals the head of the treacherous slain son of the dragon or you know at least that's what one story says because like many of the stories in this series
the accounts of how vlot died are contradictory we just know that 2 months into his third Reign he fought a battle with the Ottomans and lost in fact it's kind of ironic that given all of the excruciating detail we have about how vlod killed his foes we know little about his own death but death was not the end of vlod Dracula because if there's one truth about human culture it's this when history doesn't provide a fitting end to a historical life Legend's going to step in to finish the job and Dracula refused to stay in
the grave despite his relatively brief time on the throne of wakia less than 7 years in total at the time of V Dracula's death he was already casting an outsized Shadow over history for instance do you remember back in episode 3 when we talked about the parade of Cruelty and Massacre during vlad's Second Reign well one of those incidents that might have gotten lost in the sheer cacophony of awfulness was vlad's Massacre of Transylvanian Saxons in brov an act that had huge consequences see those Saxons were German and while they had come to the area
a couple of centuries before they still had family and trade ties with their Homeland which in the mid to late 15th century was one of Europe's greatest centers of Printing and Publishing now many early books and pamphlets printed in Europe essentially functioned as political and religious propaganda and after his massacres of Saxons in brov Saxon printers made Vlad a favorite villain in their printings meaning as Vlad cooled his heels as a captive in Hungary he was becoming internationally famous for cruelty and Butchery a portrayal that only escalated after his death now it's important to note
that many of these stories printed about Vlad were exaggerated and a bunch not true at all in fact we've been very careful to not drawn them too much as sources and label said sources appropriately in the rare times that we do because while this genre of writing was originally intended to smear one's enemies it also became a sort of early horror literature even as far back as the 15th and 16th centuries the general rule for Publications was if it bleeds it leads meaning stories of Blood and Guts sold well particularly if they came along with
gruesome wood block prints even ostensibly serious Rel religious books like the 1563 publication Fox's book of Martyrs for instance would get spiced up with laured scenes of Protestants getting tortured or burned at the stake also Catholic art and Publications had a similar fascination with violent imagery and the existing stories about Vlad served as a perfect jumping off point for German authors to create stories about him doing well basically any Twisted thing they could imagine the Ottomans similarly were happy to preserve stories about vlad's awfulness since it Justified removing him and made Hungary look bad for
supporting him early biographers also played a part in this mythologizing though sometimes to vlad's benefit for example a Greek biographer who appreciated vlad's ears fighting the Ottoman Empire while acknowledging vlad's cruelty also went out of his way to try and discredit Radu this included claims that Radu converted to Islam which is debatable and that he and Meed were actually a gay couple a portrayal historians also find suspect since it only exists in one very anti-ottoman Source but before you come at us all you Meed Radu stands we're not saying this wasn't a thing just that
it's not totally established fact o but you know what is a fact until this very series Rob didn't know that people actually shipped historical figures but now he can't unknow it anyway one important thing to consider is that despite all of the things said about vla he was never in any sense accused of being a vampire that was the work of Irish writer Bram Stoker who ran across accounts of flaud as he prepared to write a vampire novel that would marry Romanian folklore with 19th century technology and medical knowledge now exactly how much inspiration stoker
took from vad has been hotly debated among historians there are those who argue that he did extensive research on Romania its folklore and its history libraries he used have discovered margin notes in books on the subjects and Jonathan Harker's journey into the Carpathian Mountains is broadly correct in its descriptions of routes terrain and even some local beliefs also in the novel sto Dracula even talks about raiding across the danu and fighting the Ottomans in his life but then the discovery of Stoker's notes in the 1970s turned a lot of these theories on their heads now
historians generally agree that stoker knew little of Romania and essentially copied Harker's route and descriptions of the countryside from a 19th century travel guide his descriptions of Dracula don't match Vlad at all and he drew upon previous English vampire novels as much as Romanian folklore his notes in fact don't even contain the name theii they do however seem very excited about the fact that several princes were from a family line called Dracula so excited in fact that in his notes he actually scrolled Dracula in wakan means Devil with Dracula and devil in all caps in
other words he probably just liked the name but didn't really know what it meant which actually was understandable because by the 19th century the word for devil and dragon had become interchangeable in Romanian plus the local Folk of the time had forgotten the order of the Dragon connection claiming that Vlad was called Dracula for his cruelty but even though his knowledge on the references he drew from and translation of the name of its title character is flawed let's also try to remember that stoker originally named his vampire count wampir and titled the book simply the
undead I know Zoe I wouldn't watch Christopher Lee in that either so that's how the outside world knew Vlad the Impaler from Stoker's moderately successful novel to block Buster play television and film adaptations to Halloween costumes games and a whole tourism industry in Romania centered around Dracula's castle a castle that Vlad probably never visited and that Bram Stoker never saw but don't let that stop you from going actually because it's still a pretty freaking cool castle but that International Fame is only half the story because while everyone outside Romania saw Vlad as either a psychopath
or blood drinking Victorian monster Romania itself had its own view to speak very broadly in the century after vlad's death wakia and mavia became ottoman tributary States whereas Transylvania remained independent for two centuries before falling under the ostroh Hungarian Empire at times between two and three of the kingdoms shared the same Monarch drawing them closer together then by the 19th century the three had enough of a shared sense of identity that they launched a series of simultaneous rebellions with the goal of Independence finally in 1878 in the aftermath of the Russo Turkish war wakia and
malavia United to form Romania and later added Transylvania after World War I and a core component of 19th century nationalism was drawing historical heroes out from history and at a time when wakia and mavia were struggling for independence from ottoman rule Vlad the Impaler fit the mold of a hero that spoke to the present issue in Romania he was seen as a brutal but fair ruler who kept wakia independent for a time and died defending his land from greater Powers now if you've watched all this ser you've probably concluded that Vlad cared more about gaining
and keeping personal power than any noble cause but as is often the case with nationalistic Heroes this was ignored in favor of a story that fit more neatly with 19th century Romanian Politics the image of Vlad as an independence fighter doing what had to be done to keep his kingdom independent from the Ottomans just felt true at the time and turned Vlad into a national symbol though to be fair even though Vlad remains a celebrated figure in modern Romania many ROM ions continue to debate over whether the country should really be proud of him who
to th it this stuff's complicated but all of these disperate opinions of V story only served to make it more interesting from a life that was messy often confusing and of let's just say ambiguous loyalties later writers have crafted vlod into everything from a nationalist icon to horror character to Folklore figure to literary vampire and to bait for tourist traps meaning he's a fascinating study in how if you're famous enough one day day you may end up rising from your grave to become something else entirely which makes you want to take a good look in
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