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.
Stoker, who never visited Vlad's homeland, was nonetheless known to have read Wilkinson's book. And if ever there were a historical figure to inspire a bloodthirsty, monstrous fictional character, Vlad III Dracula was one. Original article on LiveScience. IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.
Politics Covid U. News World Opinion Business. Share this —. He lasted only two months as voivode before the Hungarians reinstated Vladislav. Vlad III went into exile; little is known about his next eight years, as he moved around the Ottoman Empire and Moldavia.
The Carpathian region, where Vlad III lived, was politically and economically vital during his lifetime. Transylvania provided minerals exported to Nuremberg some miles away, where they were used to produce armaments. Arms and cloth were then traded back in the other direction. The states of Walachia, Serbia, and Bosnia constituted a buffer zone between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Ottoman Turks, who by the end of the 14th century had settled along the Danube River. In this era, the Kingdom of Hungary included much of the Transylvanian Plateau, surrounded to the north, east, and south by the Carpathian Mountains.
The mountain passes to the east, leading to Moldavia, were narrow and easy to block. To the south, in Walachia, two wide, strategic passes—Turnu Rosu, leading to the city of Sibiu, and Predeal, leading to Kronstadt called Brasov today —formed the gateway to Hungary. In order to control access to crucial trading routes, the Kingdom of Hungary and the Ottoman Empire vied to control the voivodes of Walachia.
Sometime during this period he seems to have switched sides in the Ottoman-Hungarian conflict, gaining the military support of Hungary. Vladislav II changed allegiances, too, and joined the Turks—a move that set up a clash between the two claimants to the throne of Walachia. Walachia had been ravaged by the ceaseless Ottoman-Hungarian conflict and the internecine strife among feuding boyars.
Trade had ceased, fields lay fallow, and the land was overrun by lawlessness. Vlad III began his reign with a strict crackdown on crime, employing a zero-tolerance policy for even minor offenses, such as lying.
He handpicked commoners, even foreigners, for public positions, a move to cement power by creating officials who were completely dependent on him. As voivode, he could appoint, dismiss, and even execute his new officials at will. As for the boyars—the high-ranking figures who had killed his father and older brother— Vlad III had a retributive plan.
In he invited of them to a great Easter banquet, together with their families. There, he had the women and the elderly stabbed to death and impaled; the men he forced into slave labor. To replace the boyars, Vlad III created new elites: the viteji, a military division made up of farmers who had distinguished themselves on the battlefield, and the sluji, a kind of national guard.
The brutal justice meted out to his enemies was sometimes applied to his own people as well. To get rid of homeless people and beggars, whom he viewed as thieves, he invited a large number to a feast, locked the doors, and burned them all alive. He exterminated Romanies or had them forcibly enlisted into the army.
He imposed heavy tax burdens on the German population and blocked their trade when they refused to pay. Not to be confused with the Anglo-Saxons of England, these were German migrants who had settled in Transylvania in the 12th century after the region was conquered by Hungary. They were mostly well-to-do merchants, but to Vlad III, they were allies of his enemies. After initially placing trade restrictions on Saxon goods in Walachia, he had 30, people impaled—and reportedly dined among them so he could witness their suffering personally.
He also had Kronstadt burned to the ground. And in front of the capital he found the bodies of the Ottoman prisoners of war that Vlad had taken — all impaled," Curta said. Vlad's victories over the invading Ottomans were celebrated throughout Wallachia, Transylvania and the rest of Europe — even Pope Pius II was impressed.
Not long after the impalement of Ottoman prisoners of war, in August , Vlad was forced into exile in Hungary, unable to defeat his much more powerful adversary, Mehmet II. Vlad was imprisoned for a number of years during his exile, though during that same time he married and had two children. Vlad's younger brother, Radu, who had sided with the Ottomans during the ongoing military campaigns, took over governance of Wallachia after his brother's imprisonment.
But after Radu's death in , local boyars, as well as the rulers of several nearby principalities, favored Vlad's return to power. In , with the support of the voivode of Moldavia, Stephen III the Great , Vlad made one last effort to reclaim his seat as ruler of Wallachia.
He successfully stole back the throne, but his triumph was short-lived. Later that year, while marching to yet another battle with the Ottomans, Vlad and a small vanguard of soldiers were ambushed, and Vlad was killed. There is much controversy over the location of Vlad III's tomb. It is said he was buried in the monastery church in Snagov, on the northern edge of the modern city of Bucharest, in accordance with the traditions of his time.
But recently, historians have questioned whether Vlad might actually be buried at the Monastery of Comana, between Bucharest and the Danube, which is close to the presumed location of the battle in which Vlad was killed, according to Curta. Only the harrowing tales of his years as ruler of Wallachia remain to haunt the modern world.
Live Science. Marc Lallanilla. Sometime during this period he seems to have switched sides in the Ottoman-Hungarian conflict, gaining the military support of Hungary.
Vladislav II changed allegiances, too, and joined the Turks—a move that set up a clash between the two claimants to the throne of Walachia. Walachia had been ravaged by the ceaseless Ottoman-Hungarian conflict and the internecine strife among feuding boyars.
Trade had ceased, fields lay fallow, and the land was overrun by lawlessness. Vlad III began his reign with a strict crackdown on crime, employing a zero-tolerance policy for even minor offences, such as lying. He handpicked commoners, even foreigners, for public positions, a move to cement power by creating officials who were completely dependent on him. As voivode, he could appoint, dismiss, and even execute his new officials at will. As for the boyars—the high-ranking figures who had killed his father and older brother— Vlad III had a retributive plan.
In he invited of them to a great Easter banquet, together with their families. There, he had the women and the elderly stabbed to death and impaled; the men he forced into slave labour. To replace the boyars, Vlad III created new elites: the viteji, a military division made up of farmers who had distinguished themselves on the battlefield, and the sluji, a kind of national guard.
The brutal justice meted out to his enemies was sometimes applied to his own people as well. To get rid of homeless people and beggars, whom he viewed as thieves, he invited a large number to a feast, locked the doors, and burned them all alive. He exterminated Romanies or had them forcibly enlisted into the army.
He imposed heavy tax burdens on the German population and blocked their trade when they refused to pay. Not to be confused with the Anglo-Saxons of England, these were German migrants who had settled in Transylvania in the 12th century after the region was conquered by Hungary.
They were mostly well-to-do merchants, but to Vlad III, they were allies of his enemies. After initially placing trade restrictions on Saxon goods in Walachia, he had 30, people impaled—and reportedly dined among them so he could witness their suffering personally. He also had Kronstadt burned to the ground.
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