Who was Vlad Dracula?

As you may know by now, Bram Stoker based his widely popular novel "Dracula" after Vlad Dracula, also known as Vlad Tepes and Vlad the Impaler, a real person that walked this earth.

Vlad Dracula was a Wallachian Prince who was born in the citadel of Sighisoara, Transylvania, late 1431.

The second son of Vlad Dracul or Vlad II, Vlad Dracul (the father) was a military governor and a member of the order of the Dragon where he got the name “Dracul” meaning “devil” or "dragon". The term “Dracula” on the other hand meant “son of the devil”, the added “a” meant “son of”; Vlad was known as the son of the devil throughout his growing years and it didn’t bother him a bit.

In 1436, Vlad Dracul (Vlad Dracula’s father) took over the throne of Wallachia and moved in the palace of Tirgoviste. This was the year where young Dracula first experienced the luxurious lifestyle. 

Just after two years in the palace of Tirgoviste, Vlad II betrayed the Order of the Dragon and formed an alliance with the Turks. He even turned over his two sons (Dracula and Radu) to Sultan Murad II as an insurance that he would never strike against the Turks. 

John Hunyadi, a relative of Vlad Dracul, learned about Dracul’s Turkish Alliance, which he disapproved since he has devoted his entire life in fighting the Turkish Ottomans. As a result, Hunyadi planned and implemented Vlad Dracul’s assassination which took place in the winter of 1447.

Following Vlad Dracul’s death, brothers Dracula and Radu was granted freedom by Sultan Murad II. Vlad Dracula grabbed his freedom while his brother Radu, chose to stay in the care of the Sultan.

After learning about his father’s death, Dracula was also informed of his elder brother’s (Mircea) death; eyes gouged-out and buried alive by the boyars of Tirgoviste.

These occasions led Vlad to vow revenge against these deaths. Still a teenager, Dracula, with the help of Pasha Mustafa (Hassan’s Turkish Calvary) attacked and and defeated the boyars, reclaiming the Throne of Wallachia.

He believed that he was the rightful heir to the throne but his reign was cut short by Hunyadi's appointment of Vladislav II to the throne.

To win Hunyadi's trust, Dracula formed an alliance with the latter. Then when he thought that the timing was "right", he tried to convince Hunyadi that he was the rightful heir to the throne of Wallachia. But his alliance and convincing didn't seem to work...

In 1456, Vlad Dracula made his move against Hunyadi and avenged his father’s death. He then defeated Vladislav II and took over the throne as the ruler of Wallachia.

Following Easter Sunday in 1569, Tepes ordered the arrest of boyars. He condemned those with good health to a life of slavery and used them to build his Poenary Castle on the river of Arges, while he ordered the old and the weak impaled and displayed for everyone to see. 

This was the turning point of Vlad Dracula’s ruthless reign. Vlad Dracula was a very tyrant ruler that no one dared break the law under his jurisdiction for the fear of being punished or at worst, impaled.

He enjoys torturing anyone and he specially love torturing and killing women, his mistresses are no excuse. He simply enjoy disfiguring women’s breasts and sex organs. A mistress who lied about being pregnant with his child was ordered disemboweled. What makes him even more brutal and vampiric was the rumor that he even forced mothers to eat their own babies to suit his fancies.

Tepes’ tyranny seemed an effective way of commanding order in the kingdom of Wallachia and he’s proud of it.

To impress guests of the efficiency of the way he commands order, he displayed a gold cup in the middle of Tirgoviste’s central square unguarded from anyone who may want to steal it but of course no one dared.

Impalement is a very unusual and brutal way to die - it’s a slow process of dying which usually takes several hours.

Men were impaled from their anus while women were impaled from their vaginas, their own weight dragging them down to death.

Vlad was tyrant and tough but he wasn’t “made of steel”, neither was he indispensible…

In the year of 1461, he attacked the Turks of the Danube River, not expecting to be outnumbered by Sultan Mehmed II’s army; his army ultimately failed. Determined to win and kill the Sultan, he staged nightly invasions from his camp.

A bit unlucky, he attacked the wrong tent, leaving the Sultan furious and hungry for revenge.

Not wanting to leave anything for the Sultan and its army to destroy in his kingdom, Vlad ordered the poisoning of wells and the burning of villages in his kingdom, leaving the Sultan with an already war-torn village filled with filthy decaying bodies of Vlad’s people. 

Vlad’s military (scare) tactics led the tired and hungry Sultan to order retreat of its army and leave the fight…

But it wasn’t for long because soon as he left the campaign, the sultan ordered Radu, his younger brother to pursue and have him dead.

Surprised by the attacks, Dracula fled, through the secret underground passage he uses to go to the mountains, and seek refuge in Transylvania.

Rumors of his death spread and reached his wife who jumped-off one of the battlement towers in Poenari Castle on the river of Arges, having heard of the bad news.

While in Transylvania, Vlad met King Mathias Corvinus who later jailed him at Visegard, the Hungarian Capital when the latter discovered his evil doings.

Eventually, Dracula was freed in the condition that he would report to the King frequently. He was also allowed to live inside the palace when he regained the king’s trust and confidence.

He was, from then on, a frequent guest on various functions in the palace and he even married King Mathias’ cousin, Countess Ilona Szilagy, who gave him two children.

For nine years, Vlad was under the care of King Mathias, while his brother Radu remained on the throne of Wallachia.

In the span of nine full years, Radu never enjoyed what respect the boyars had for Dracula’s bravery. This is because of Radu’s collaboration with the Turks and Sultan Mehmed II, not to mention his betrayal of the Order of the Dragon.

In collaboration with King Mathias and Prince Stephan Bathory, Vlad staged series of attacks against Radu’s army and the Ottoman Turks.

After months of successful skirmish, Vlad and his 5000 men strong Christian troop defeated Sultan Mehmed II’s army but he never had the chance of tasting the satisfaction of personally dethroning his brother, Radu, for syphilis already killed him two years earlier and have been replaced by Prince Basarab the Old.

After killing thousands of Turks in the name of Christianity, Vlad Dracula and his men came back to Romania. He once again assumed the throne of Wallachia but the Boyars haven’t forgotten about his wicked ways and are convinced that they don’t want to be under such an inhuman leadership again.

Meanwhile, Sultan Mehmed II organized his troop in Bucharest to launch an attack against Vlad in order to return Basarab to the throne. This reached Prince Stefan , so he immediately advised Vlad to organize an army to prepare for Mehmed’s attack.

Unfortunately, without their knowledge, the boyars joined Mehmed...

Undermanned and expected, Vlad knew that winning is going to be difficult, and what made the odds more difficult was the non-arrival of the additional troops promised by Prince Stefan.

Vlad was forced to fight with only few thousand men against Mehmed’s very huge crowd of army. Dracula was a true warrior in the battlefield that even though the odds were against him, he simply refused to fail.

But they were hugely outnumbered, winning nothing but DOOM, and it was clearly written all over the battlefield.

Needless to say, this was Vlad Dracula’s last battle…

There weren’t enough proof on how he died in this battle; some sources says that his own men killed him having mistaken him for a Turk while wearing one of their uniforms as a disguise. While others say that he was decapitated, his body only recognizable by his medals and armor.