Wallachian Prince Vlad III Dracul (the Dragon) had such a fearsome reputation that in later legends, he became a vampire.
The 15th century ruler Vlad III Dracul, also "Drakul", (c1431-1476) was also known as Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler). Romanians fondly remember him, with good reason, as a freedom fighter who drove out all foreign invaders during his reign. His contemporaries, the Ottoman Turks (subjects of this week's blog) and the Hungarians, also with good reason, saw him as a savage outlaw and tyrant who retained his hold on power by devising fiendish and vicious ways to murder his enemies. Both sides are right.
Born to the Voivode of Wallachia, who paid homage to Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, Vlad was sent, age 13, with his younger brother Radu to Adrianople as a hostage to the Turks. Little is known about their imprisonment except that Vlad came home four years later not quite sane. Radu remained in Turkey, allowing himself to be used as a pawn by the Ottoman Sultan against his own brother and people. One could debate which brother was more damaged by the experience when one turned tyrant and the other turned traitor.
In 1446, Vlad's father was murdered. In 1447, The Sultan tired of Wallachia's Hungarian puppet ruler, Vladislav II. He gave Vlad an army and sent him back to Wallachia. But Vlad had to flee to Moldavia two months later when Vladislav returned. Not until 1456 did he retrieve his throne, killing Vladislav.
Vlad soon turned on the Turks. Angered by his disloyalty, they invaded in 1462 and drove him from the country, installing his brother Radu instead. But Radu was weak, losing the throne in 1473 and dying of syphilis in 1475. In 1476, Vlad retook his throne and died in battle fighting the invading Turks months later. The Sultan displayed a head on a pike to prove his death, but was it really him?
Vlad's resistance to both Turkish and Hungarian dominance gained him his people's undying respect and a terrible reputation abroad. Some of it he deserved, but how much, we will never know. According to legend, he liked to invite a group of people he had deemed enemies of the realm for a banquet then slaughter them. He used all sorts of tortures-impalement being his favorite, hence his nickname. He especially hated liars, thieves and adulteresses. In his most famous massacre, he impaled 20,000 Turkish prisoners outside Tirgoviste, frightening Sultan Mehmed II's army so much that Mehmed had to turn back.
The very thing that made him so feared in his lifetime made him a hero after death. Vlad was a fearless madman surrounded by bullies and he scared them off his little country for six years. For that, he remains one of history's great outlaws.
