Vlad the Impaler was a fifteenth century historical ruler with a well-earned reputation for savagery. Even hearing the name conjures up two grisly images: Thousands of screaming innocents impaled on giant wooden spikes in the fields of Eastern Europe, and shadowy Transylvanian noblemen drinking blood in decrepit old castles. But, there’s an awful lot more to this brutal Wallachian ruler than fanciful legends about ancient counts and bloodthirsty vampires.
So, let’s strip away the terrifying myths and reveal the even darker truths behind Vlad The Impaler, thought by many to be one of the evillest men of all time. By some accounts, his total number of victims rises as high as 100,000 - many of which were killed in unimaginably horrific ways, and overseen personally by Vlad himself. Vlad’s forces were never the largest, often coming in at around 24,000 strong, but he compensated for this by building a brutal reputation across all of Eastern Europe as a man who must be feared and respected on pain of death.
To be captured by Vlad’s forces often meant being tortured to death with extreme prejudice, and mounted like a trophy outside his territory to scare off any encroaching enemies. If you were lucky, he’d kill you before the worst of the mutilation began, but few people who fell into the clutches of Vlad the Impaler could count themselves as lucky. This is a man so bloodthirsty that rumours circulated about him literally drinking the blood of his slain enemies, believing it would grant him strength.
While doubt has been cast about whether he actually ever dipped his bread in the blood of his impaled victims, it’s a testament to his character that stories like these are entirely believable, considering he made a habit of looting, burning, and slaughtering whole cities if their inhabitants dared to defy him. If he ever actually did drink blood, it probably wouldn’t even rank among the top ten of his most awful atrocities. Especially considering other acts on this list include running people through on huge wooden spikes, total dismemberment, and in some cases even skinning enemies alive.
For a man who practically seemed like a monster in human skin, you’re probably wondering how he could rise to power? Well, like many of history’s most terrifying rulers, Vlad the Impaler was quite literally born into it. Born in Wallachia – a historical region in modern Romania – between 1428 and 1431, Vlad the Impaler was actually the third Vlad of the House of Drculești.
That’s a name that probably rings a bell, thanks to Irish gothic horror writer Bram Stoker, but we’ll get back to that. Back during Vlad III’s era, Wallachia was caught between two ruling families – his own, the Drculești, and a rival house of nobles, the House of Dănești. These families both descended from the House of Basarab, who founded Wallachia, leaving their descendants with a claim to the throne over which many bloody, Game-of-Thrones-style wars were fought.
Vlad the Impaler – or Vlad Tepes, as he was known in his native tongue – was the son of Vlad of Wallachia, aka Vlad II, aka Vlad Drcul. That last one means “Vlad The Drgon”, a name he earned from being part of The Order of the Drgon – A group dedicated to protecting Christianity from the perceived threat of the Muslim Ottoman Empire based in Turkey. The name “Drcula”, often attached to Vlad the Impaler, doesn’t have anything to do with vampirism or – as some other scholars suggest - Satanism.
It actually means “Son of the Drgon. ” The name proved to be prophetic, as Tepes would take after his father as a legendary military leader. When you’re a ruler, especially a ruler of an embattled territory like Wallachia, it’s important to build yourself a strong reputation.
If you wanted to be taken seriously, the fastest way to do that is to make a grisly example of someone – and thankfully for Vlad, he was an expert at making grisly examples, particularly of the Transylvanian Saxons. These Saxons, unlike the British Anglo-Saxons, were German migrants and traders who’d settled in the area after it was conquered by Hungary in the 12th Century. Vlad’s first point of contention with the Saxons was a religious difference: The Saxons were Catholics, and Vlad – a deeply religious man – was a follower of the Romanian Orthodox Church.
However, the true impetus behind Vlad’s horrific treatment of the Saxons was a question of loyalty – the Hunyadi family, who ran the military wing of Hungary, were at odds with the nation’s monarchs. The Transylvanian Saxons were supporters of the Hapsburg King of Hungary, whereas Vlad’s loyalty lay with the Hunyadis, who’d helped install him into power. In 1457, John Hunyadi’s widow, Erzsebet Szilagy, was the target of Saxon protests.
Vlad happily helped the Szilagy forces rampage through some Saxon villages, where they looted and burned the homes of the people suspected of organising the protests. This ended up being a bigger headache for Vlad than he initially imagined – The Saxons responded to his violence by supporting two challengers to his throne: Dan III, and his own half-brother, known as Vlad the Monk. This caused an escalation in Vlad’s violence, when his efforts at diplomacy fell flat.
Vlad declared all-out war on his Saxon challengers, and burned several villages of key Vlad The Monk supporters to the ground. He also struck against Dan III, by wiping out the village of Bod near Brasov. This particular offensive was where Vlad coined his greatest trademark: The few prisoners he took during the battle he had brutally impaled at the city of Targoviste.
And if you picture this impalement as a sharpened stake forced through the chest – as many sanitised depictions tend to show – you’re both a kinder and less imaginative man than Vlad the Impaler. In his method, victims often had a slightly duller spike forced up their anus, and left there. Over the following hours – and, if you’re really unlucky, days – your body weight would force the stake further into your abdomen, at which point it would horrifically displace your internal organs.
It’s a gruesome way to die, and thus, makes an incredibly effective psychological warfare tactic. He was sending a strong message: “If you mess with Vlad, your fate is on the spike. ” But that’s far from the only sadistic method Vlad employed in dispatching his enemies.
He was also rather fond of having his men literally hack their victims to bloody pieces, such as in the Saxon city of Talmes, and even having people boiled alive in huge cauldrons, as he enjoyed doing to Saxon merchants who didn’t follow his trade rules. He handed out brutal executions like candy – having 41 students impaled just for being suspected of subversion. Many accounts have it that Vlad enjoyed dining among his fields of impaled victims – perhaps as a power move, to further his reputation as a terrifying enemy.
And this perception worked. Vlad continued to rampage and slaughter through the Saxon forces until Dan III was finally in his clutches. In a truly gangster move, Vlad forced Dan to dig his own grave while a priest read him his own funeral rites.
Dan was then decapitated and buried, eliminating yet another threat to Vlad’s power. After this, Vlad – having thoroughly subjugated his Saxon enemies – decided to call a truce. A far more formidable enemy was on the horizon: The powerful Ottoman empire, headed by the late Sultan Murad’s ambitious and ruthless son, Sultan Mehmed II.
Mehmed sent a detachment of emissaries to Vlad in order to essentially negotiate his surrender, but that wasn’t how Vlad Tepes rolled. His confidence bolstered by his new alliances with the remaining Saxons, and the forces of Hungary, Vlad literally had the emissary’s skullcaps nailed to their skulls to send a message. Mehmed was successfully provoked, and all-out war began, but Vlad organized a series of vicious guerrilla conquests – splitting his army into small groups who’d covertly and ruthlessly attack larger Ottoman strongholds, breaking them apart from within.
Vlad’s most infamous act followed shortly after, when Sultan Mehmed, enraged by Vlad’s victories, sent a powerful force of 60,000 men with top-of-the-line armour and weaponry straight to Wallachia. Vlad was outnumbered and outgunned, but there was one factor that Sultan Mehmed didn’t take into account: He may have been stronger than Vlad, but nobody was more brutal. He staged a terrifying night attack on an Ottoman encampment outside Targoviste in 1462, where he took 5,000 men.
When the full might of the Ottoman forces arrived shortly after, they discovered that Vlad had mounted all 5,000 – in addition to fifteen thousand other Ottoman prisoners - on his trademark spikes. This grisly display would later be dubbed “The Forest of The Impaled. ” To the invading Ottomans, Vlad seemed less like an average ruler and more like an inhuman monster – the kind of terrifying, legendary figure who makes a perfectly logical inspiration for the world’s most famous vampire.
Mehmed ordered his forces to retreat the next day. The troop’s morale just couldn’t survive seeing 20,000 of their countrymen turned into rotting shish-kebabs. The Ottoman’s came to know Vlad as the “Impaler King”, an iconic nickname that would live on in different forms for centuries to come.
Vlad continued his bloody reign, on and off, for the rest of his life. Even when he was deposed and imprisoned for a time, he was later released by his captors to once again wage bloody war against the Ottomans. He’d slaughter, impale, and dismember his enemies with glee all the way up until his death – when he was killed defending his beloved principality from Ottoman invasion in January of 1477.
For many modern Romanians, Vlad is still revered as a powerful ruler and a good man to his citizens – though to his unfortunate enemies, like the Saxons and the Ottomans, you’d be forgiven for thinking he was the most evil man who ever lived. Check out “Most Evil Man – Ivan The Terrible” and “Most Evil Man – Joseph Stalin” for more information on some of history’s most terrifying rulers. Sometimes, the reality is a lot more terrifying than the fiction.
