The darkness of that night was to live forever in the darkness of his soul, as he bacame one of the most ruthless rulers known to history, a man who took sadistic pleasure in the torture of others and had an unwanton bloodlust, a man on whom Bram Stoker was to loosely base his character of Count Dracula.

His father, Vlad II, was the ruler of Wallachia and in 1431 had been summoned by Sigismund, the Holy Roman Emperor, to be initiated into the secret Order of the Dragon and made to swear an oath to the defend and uphold the Christian faith against its many enemies, this meant in reality the Ottoman Turks who at the time controlled much of eastern Europe.

Vlad, however, was to betray this oath and cut a deal with the Turks for the retention of his throne. In 1436, as insurance of his fidelity and future good behaviour he handed two of his sons, Vlad and his younger brother Radu, over to Sultan Murad II as hostages. Little is known of Vlad’s years in captivity though it would appear that the boys were well treated. Even so, during this time he acquired a burning hatred for the Turks, an equally virulent hatred of his brother, a love of torture, and a thirst for blood.  

In 1447, his father was murdered in a palace coup. Mircea, Vlad’s older brother, wrote to him to say that his father had had his eyes gouged out and then been set alight. Mircea himself was later to be buried alive. Soon after the coup Vlad was released from captivity and allowed to return home, Radu decided to remain with the Turks. He was determined to regain the throne of Wallachia for himself but for this to happen he had to be patient.

During these intervening years we see the more compliant side of Vlad’s character as he offended no one, maintained a low-profile, and bided his time. The preservation of his own life was his number one priority. In 1456, he got his opportunity and with Turkish help recaptured the throne. His first act was to hunt down and kill those he thought responsible for the murder of his father, and he would later avenge himself on the boyars(noblemen) he believed had been behind the plot. 

Vlad III, as he was now known, was a grim and charmless man who appeared to carry the burden of his responsibilities with him at all times. He found it difficult to relax and was rarely seen to smile. The only pleasure he took seemed to be in the pain of others and it was a dangerous thing to attempt humour in his presence. He despised idleness and hated being lied to. He was determined to be a good King, to defend his province from the Turks and to restore order. He was to achieve both but at the cost of much blood. 

Vlad believed that everyone in Wallachia should work, not to be productive was to be worthless, so he determined to rid his province of vagrancy and poverty. So he invited many of the poor to a feast in a hall he’d had especially built for the occasion. At the end of the feast, during which his guests had been wined and dined to excess, he asked those who had just eaten so lavishly if they wished to be rid of the pain of hunger forever. When they predictably answered, yes, he had the doors to the hall bolted and set it ablaze. All those inside were incinerated.

He was also notoriously capricious, once when travelling through the countryside he came across a particularly dishevelled looking farmer. Seeing that his coat was worn and that the buttons were missing he demanded to see the farmer’s wife, and proceeded to berate for her lack of care. When the wife argued that she was too busy washing, cleaning and tending to her children to concern herself with her husbands appearance, he had her, despite her husbands protestations, executed, and ordered the farmer to marry a less lazy wife in the future.

He could also be easily offended, when a delegation of Turkish ambassadors, who were visiting the Royal Court to negotiate a truce, refused to remove their hats in his presence, Vlad took this gesture as a personal affront, and ordered that they should have their hats nailed to their heads.

But it was not just strangers and foreigners who need be in fear of Vlad the Impaler. When a mistress of his who feared she was losing his affections decided to tell him that she was pregnant with his child, Vlad was delighted. When he discovered this to be a lie, he took out his knife and disembowled her on the spot.

The stories of Vlad Dracul’s cruelties are legend and too numerous to list here. He was a dark and unpredictable character and no one ever quite knew what his response would be to any given situation, except that it would invariably result in someones death; and his favoured form of execution was always impalement, a particularly slow and painful way to die. The victim would be hoisted up and then lowered onto spikes that had been driven into the ground.

These spikes would enter the body either through the anus or the vagina. The weight of the victims body bearing down on the spike would ensure their death, and Vlad would ensure it was a slow death by blunting the spikes. He would always have his victims executed in a circular pattern so he could have his dinner whilst surrounded by them and as their screams rent the air. If any of his dinner guests demurred they would suffer the same fate. He relished the experience it was said, and particularly enjoyed impaling women as they screamed the loudest. His bloodlust was his pleasure, and he never showed any guilt or conscience over what he did, he enjoyed it, and expected others to enjoy it also.

In 1461, Vlad Dracula, was at war with the Ottoman Turks in the Danube River Valley region of Hungary. Outnumbered and aware that he could not defeat the Turks in open battle he was nonetheless a ferocious warrior, and decided upon an audacious plan to attack the Turkish camp at night and personally slay the Sultan as he slept in his tent. The attack was a success but he had chosen the wrong tent.

Outraged, and relieved at his lucky escape, Sultan Mehmed II, vowed to lay waste to Wallachia and wipe it off the map. He needn’t have bothered for Vlad did this himself. burning villages and destroying crops in his determination to leave nothing for the Sultan. He also left behind a forest of impaled Turkish prisoners for the Sultan’s pleasure. Mehmed, sickened by the sight and stench of it, turned back, but first he invested Radu, Vlad’s brother, with the task of completing the campaign. Radu chased Vlad all the way back to his Castle at Poenari, which had been built by the boyars he had enslaved earlier in his reign. Vlad escaped but his wife fell mysteriously to her death from the battlements. 

Radu, was installed as the new King of Wallachia. Vlad, burning with hatred and vengeance, fled to the relative safety of the Castle of King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, who aware of Vlad’s reputation had him immediately placed under lock and key. Over time, however, Vlad won the trust of Corvinus, even to the extent of marrying his niece and fathering two children by her. So, in alliance with Corvinus he was eventually able to win back his throne. He was unable to avenge himself on his brother however, for Radu had died two months earlier of dysentry.

Vlad’s second coming, however, was to be short-lived. To regain the throne he needed the support of the Church and as a result had agreed to act as a bulwark against further encroachment by the Ottoman Turks into Christian lands. They had even sanctioned his punishment of impalement. But he wasn’t welcome back in Wallachia by those who mattered.

The boyars, who had suffered so much, preferred to live under the Turks than subject themselves again to the rule of the Impaler, and they refused to rally to his support. Even so, Vlad kept his promise to the Church and took his much reduced army to confront the Sultan. The battle, as Vlad knew full well, was a foregone conclusion. Hopelessly outnumbered his army was massacred. Vlad died in the fighting, his body so badly mutilated that it could only be recognised by its vestments. His head was cut- off and carried back to Turkey.

To many in both Hungary and Rumania, Vlad Dracula is a hero. After all, he maintained Wallachian independence, he opposed the Ottoman Empire often fighting heroically against overwhelming odds, and restored law and order to his Kingdom. It is said that he placed a gold cup in the central square of his capital Tirgoviste and dared anyone to take it, no one ever did.