Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia (c. 1431 – December, 1476), more commonly known as the Impaler (Romanian: Vlad Ţepeş pronounced [ˈvlad ˈt͡sepeʃ]) or Dracula, was a three-time voivode of Wallachia, ruling mainly from 1456 to 1462.

Historically, Vlad is best known for his independent policy towards the Ottoman Empire, the expansionism of which he resisted^[3] and for the exceedingly cruel punishment he imposed.^[4]

In the English-speaking world, Vlad III is perhaps most commonly known for inspiring the name of the vampire in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula.^[5]

His Romanian surname Dracula (also spelled "Draculea", "Drakulya"), which Vlad was referred to in several documents, means "Son of the dragon" and points to his father, Vlad Dracul, who received that moniker from his subjects because he had joined the Order of the Dragon. Dracul, derived from the Latin word Draco meant "dragon", though in modern Romanian it means "devil".

His post-mortem moniker of "Ţepeş" ("Impaler") originated in his killing opponents by impalement, a practice popularized by medieval Transylvanian pamphlets. In Turkish, he was known as "Kazıkle Voyvoda" (pronounced [kɑzɯkˈɫɯ]) which means "Impaler Prince".

Vlad was the second son of Vlad Dracul and Princess Cneajna, daughter of Alexander the Good of Moldavia. Vlad's family, a branch of the House of Basarab, had been driven from Wallachia by pro-Ottoman boyars and now lived in exile in Transylvania, then part of the Kingdom of Hungary. It was there that Vlad was born, probably in the citadel of Sighişoara.

In the year Vlad was born, his father travelled to Nuremberg in today's modern Germany where he was vested into the Order of the Dragon. At the age of five, young Vlad was also initiated into the Order.

In 1436, Dracul ascended the throne of Wallachia. He was ousted in 1442 by rival factions in league with Hungary, but secured Ottoman support for his return agreeing to pay tribute to the Sultan and also send his two younger sons, Vlad and Radu, to the Ottoman court, to serve as hostages of his loyalty.

Vlad was locked up in an underground prison and often whipped for being stubborn and rude, while his younger brother Radu caught the eye of the sultan's son, Mehmed and was allowed into the Ottoman royal court. These years had a great influence on Vlad's character and led to Vlad's well-known hatred for Radu and Mehmed, who would later become the sultan. According to McNally and Florescu, he also distrusted his own father for trading him to the Turks and betraying the Order of the Dragon's oath to fight them.

In December 1447, boyars in league with the Hungarian regent John Hunyadi rebelled against Vlad Dracul and killed him in the marshes near Bălteni. Mircea, Dracul's eldest son and heir, was blinded with hot iron stakes and buried alive at Târgovişte.

To prevent Wallachia from falling into the Hungarian fold, the Ottomans invaded Wallachia and put young Vlad III on the throne. However, this rule was short-lived as Hunyadi himself now invaded Wallachia and restored his ally Vladislav II, of the Danesti clan, to the throne.

Vlad fled to Moldavia, where he lived under the protection of his uncle, Bogdan II. In October 1451, Bogdan was assassinated and Vlad fled to Hungary. Impressed by Vlad's vast knowledge of the mindset and inner workings of the Ottoman Empire as well as his hatred of the new sultan Mehmed II, Hunyadi reconciled with his former rival and made him his advisor.

In 1453, the Ottomans, under Sultan Mehmed II took Constantinople after a prolonged siege, putting an end to the final major Christian presence in the eastern Mediterranean, after which Ottoman influence began to spread from this base through the Carpathians, threatening mainland Europe.

In 1456, three years after the Ottomans had conquered Constantinople, threatened Hungary by besieging Belgrad. Hunyadi began a concerted counter-attack in Serbia: while he himself moved into Serbia and relieved the siege (before dying of the plague), Vlad led his own contigent into Wallachia, reconquered his native land and killed Vladislav II.

Vlad found Wallachia in a wretched state: constant war had resulted in rampant crime, falling agricultural production, and the virtual disappearance of trade. Regarding a stable economy essential to resisting external enemies, he used severe methods to restore order and prosperity.

Vlad considered the boyars the chief cause of constant strife as well as the death of his father and brother. To secure his rule, he had many leading nobles killed and gave positions in his council, traditionally belonging to the greatest boyars, to persons of obscure origins, who would be loyal to him alone, and some to foreigners. For lower offices, Vlad preferred knights and free peasants to boyars.

As the Wallachian nobility was linked to the Transylvanian Saxons, Vlad also acted against them by eliminating their trade privileges and raiding their cities. In 1459, he had several Saxon settlers of Kronstadt impaled.^[6]

Vlad was also on guard against the rival Dăneşti clan, and some of his raids into Transylvania may have been aimed at capturing potential challengers. Several members of the clan died at Vlad's hands, including a Dăneşti prince suspected to have taken part in his brother Mircea's murder. Vlad condemned him to death and forced him to read his own eulogy while kneeling before his open grave. He was also said to have ordered thousands of the prince's citizens, who had sheltered his rival, impaled.

Vlad allied himself with Matthias Corvinus, Hunyadi's son who had risen to be King of Hungary, and in 1459, Vlad refused to pay tribute to the Ottomans. Subsequently, the Ottomans attempted to remove him but failed and in the winter of 1461/1462 Vlad crossed the Danube and devastated the area between Serbia and the Black Sea. Vlad described his campaign: "I have killed men and women, old and young... 23,884 Turks and Bulgarians without counting those whom we burned alive in their homes or whose heads were not chopped off by our soldiers..."^[6]

In response to this, Sultan Mehmed II raised an army of around 60,000 troops and 30,000 irregulars^[7] and in the spring of 1462 headed towards Wallachia. Mehmed was greeted by a forest of stakes on which Vlad had impaled 20,000 Turkish prisoners.^[8] Commanding between 20,000 and 40,000 men, Vlad was unable to stop the Ottomans from entering Wallachia and occupying the capital Târgovişte on 4 June 1462. Subsequently, he resorted to guerrilla warfare, constantly organizing small attacks and ambushes on the Turks. The most famous of these attacks occurred on June 16/17, when during the night Vlad and some of his men (wearing Ottoman disguises) entered the main Turkish camp and attempted to assassinate Mehmed.

Unable to subdue Vlad, the Ottomans left the country and left Vlad's half-brother, Radu the Handsome, in charge of the warfare. Radu won over the nobility, which had been alienated by Vlad, and in August 1462, also managed to strike a deal with Matthias Corvinus, who imprisoned Vlad, leaving Radu ruler of Wallachia.

During this conflict, Vlad's first wife met her death. Vlad had married a Transylvanian noblewoman, who bore him at least one son, Mihnea cel Rău, who would later rule Wallachia 1508 to 1510.

Vlad's first wife died during the siege of Poienari Castle, which was surrounded by the Ottoman army led by Radu. An archer having seen the shadow of Vlad's wife behind a window, shot an arrow through the window into Vlad's main quarters, with a message warning him that Radu's army was approaching. McNally and Florescu explain that the archer was one of Vlad's former servants who sent the warning out of loyalty, despite having converted to Islam to escape enslavement by the Turks. Upon reading the message, Vlad's wife threw herself from the tower into a tributary of the Argeş River flowing below the castle. According to legend, she remarked that she "would rather have her body rot and be eaten by the fish of the Argeş than be led into captivity by the Turks". Today, the tributary is called Râul Doamnei (the "Lady's River", also called the Princess's River).

The exact length of Vlad's period of captivity is open to some debate, though indications are that it was from 1462 until 1474. Diplomatic correspondence from Buda seems to indicate that the period of Vlad's effective confinement was relatively short. Radu's openly pro-Ottoman policy as voivod probably contributed to Vlad's rehabilitation. During his captivity, Vlad also converted to Catholicism, in contrast to his brother who converted to Islam.

Gradually winning back King Matthias's favour, he married Ilona Szilágyi, a cousin of the king, and in the years before his final release in 1474, lived with her in a house in the Hungarian capital.

Around 1465, Ilona bore him two sons: the elder, Vlad IV Dracula, who spend most of his time in king Matthias' retinue and later was an unsucessful claimant to the Wallachian throne. The younger, whose name is unknown, lived with the Bishop of Oradea in Transylvania until 1482, when he fell ill. He returned to Buda, where he died in his mother's presence.^[9]. The descendants of Vlad and Ilona married into Hungarian nobility.

After his release in 1474, Vlad began preparations for the reconquest of Wallachia and in 1476, with Hungarian support, invaded the country. He was killed in battle against the Ottomans near Bucharest in 1476. The Turks decapitated his corpse and sent the head to Constantinople, where the Sultan had it displayed on a stake as proof that the Impaler was finally dead. He was reportedly buried at Snagov, an island monastery located near Bucharest.^[10]

When he came to power, Vlad immediately had all the assembled nobles arrested. The older boyars and their families were immediately impaled. The younger and healthier nobles and their families were marched north from Târgovişte to the ruins of Poienari Castle in the mountains above the Argeş River. Vlad was determined to rebuild this ancient fortress as his own stronghold and refuge. The enslaved boyars and their families were forced to labor for months, rebuilding the old castle with materials from another nearby ruin. According to tradition, they laboured until the clothes fell off their bodies and then were forced to continue working naked. Very few of the old gentry survived the ordeal of building Vlad's castle.

Throughout his reign, Vlad systematically eradicated the old boyar class of Wallachia. The old boyars had repeatedly undermined the power of the prince during previous reigns and had been responsible for the violent overthrow of several princes. Vlad was determined that his own power be on a modern and thoroughly secure footing. In place of the executed boyars, Vlad promoted new men from among the free peasantry and middle class, who would be loyal only to their prince.

Vlad the Impaler's reputation was considerably darker in Western Europe than in Eastern Europe and Romania. In the West, Vlad III Ţepeş has been characterized as a tyrant who took sadistic pleasure in torturing and killing his enemies. The number of his victims ranges from 40,000 to 100,000.^[11] According to the German stories the number of victims he had killed was at least 80,000. In addition to the 80,000 victims mentioned he also had whole villages and fortresses destroyed and burned to the ground.^[12] These numbers are most likely exaggerated.^[13]

The atrocities committed by Vlad in the German stories include impaling, torturing, burning, skinning, roasting, and boiling people, feeding people the flesh of their friends or relatives, cutting off limbs, drowning, and nailing people's hats to their heads. His victims included men and women of all ages, religions and social classes, children and babies. One German account includes the following sentence: "He caused so much pain and suffering that even the most bloodthirstiest persecutors of Christianity like Herod the Great, Nero, Diocletian and all other pagans combined hadn’t even thought of."^[12]

Impalement was Vlad's preferred method of torture and execution. His method of torture was a horse attached to each of the victim's legs as a sharpened stake was gradually forced into the body. The end of the stake was usually oiled, and care was taken that the stake not be too sharp; else the victim might die too rapidly from shock.^{[citation needed]} Normally the stake was inserted into the body through the anus and was often forced through the body until it emerged from the mouth.^{[citation needed]} However, there were many instances where victims were impaled through other bodily orifices or through the abdomen or chest.^{[citation needed]} Infants were sometimes impaled on the stake forced through their mother's chests.^{[citation needed]} The records indicate that victims were sometimes impaled so that they hung upside down on the stake.^{[citation needed]}

Death by impalement was slow and agonising. Victims sometimes endured for hours or even days. Vlad often had the stakes arranged in various geometric patterns. The most common pattern was a ring of concentric circles in the outskirts of a city that constituted his target. The height of the spear indicated the rank of the victim. The corpses were often left decaying for months.

There are claims that thousands of people were impaled at a single time. One such claim says 10,000 were impaled in the Transylvanian city of Sibiu (where Vlad had once lived) in 1460. Another allegation asserts that during the previous year, on Saint Bartholomew's Day (in August), Vlad had 30,000 of the merchants and officials of the Transylvanian city of Braşov impaled for breaking his authority. One of the most famous woodcuts of the period shows Vlad feasting in a forest of stakes and their grisly burdens outside Braşov, while a nearby executioner cuts apart other victims.^[14]

Vlad the Impaler is alleged to have committed even more impalements and other tortures against invading Ottoman forces. It was reported that an invading Ottoman army turned back in fright when it encountered thousands of rotting corpses impaled on the banks of the Danube.^[6] It has also been said that in 1462 Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, a man noted for his own psychological warfare tactics, returned to Constantinople after being sickened by the sight of 20,000 impaled corpses outside Vlad's capital of Târgovişte. Many of the victims were Turkish prisoners of war Vlad had previously captured during the Turkish invasion. The total Turkish casualty toll in this battle reached over 40,000. The warrior sultan turned command of the campaign against Vlad over to subordinates and returned to Constantinople, even though his army had initially outnumbered Vlad's three to one and was better equipped.

The German stories circulated first in manuscript form in the late 15th century and the first manuscript was probably written in 1462 before Vlad's arrest.^[13] The text was later printed in Germany and had major impact on the general public becoming a best-seller of its time with numerous later editions adding and altering the original text.

In addition to the manuscripts and pamphlets the German version of the stories can be found in the poem of Michel Beheim. The poem called "Von ainem wutrich der hies Trakle waida von der Walachei" ("Story of a Bloodthirsty Madman Called Dracula of Wallachia") was written and performed at the court of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor during the winter of 1463.^[15]

To this day four manuscripts and 13 pamphlets are found as well as the poem by Michel Beheim. The surviving manuscripts date from the last quarter of the 15th century to the year 1500 and the found pamphlets date from 1488 to 1559–1568.

Eight of the pamphlets are incunabula: they were printed before 1501. The German stories about Vlad the Impaler consist of 46 short episodes, although none of the manuscripts, pamphlets or the poem of Beheim contain all 46 stories.

All of them begin with the story of the old governor, John Hunyadi, having Vlad's father killed, and how Vlad and his brother renounced their old religion and swore to protect and uphold the Christian faith. After this, the order and titles of the stories differs by manuscript and pamphlet editions.^[12]

The German stories were written most likely for political reasons, especially to blacken the image of the Wallachian ruler. The first version of the German text was probably written in Braşov by a Saxon scholar. According to some researchers, the writer expressed the general feelings of the Saxons in Braşov and Sibiu who had borne the brunt of Vlad’s wrath in 1456–1457 and again in 1458–1459 and 1460.

Against this political and cultural backdrop, it is quite easy to understand the hostility towards Vlad the Impaler. Although there is historic background for the events described in the German stories, some are either exaggerated or even fictitious.

The Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus, also had political reasons for promoting Vlad's image as an evil prince. Corvinus had received large subsidies from Rome and Venice for the war against the Ottomans, but because of a conflict with Holy Roman Emperor, Emperor Frederick III, he couldn’t afford the military support for the fight.

By making Vlad a scapegoat, Corvinus could justify his reasons for not taking part in the war against the Ottomans. He arrested Vlad and used a forged letter in which Vlad announced his loyalty to Mehmed II, as well as horror stories about Vlad, to justify his actions to the Pope. In 1462 and 1463, the court in Buda fostered negative stories of Vlad in central and Eastern Europe, and capitalized on the horrors attributed to him.^[13]

The stories eventually changed from propaganda to literature and became very popular in the German world in the 15th and 16th centuries. Part of the reason for this success was the newly-invented printing press, which allowed the texts to filter to a wide audience.

In later accounts of these stories, Vlad's atrocities against the people of Wallachia have sometimes been interpreted as attempts to enforce his own moral code upon his country. According to the pamphlets, he appears to have been particularly concerned with female chastity. Maidens who lost their virginity, adulterous wives, and unchaste widows were all targets of Vlad's cruelty. Vlad also insisted that his people be honest and hard-working. Merchants who cheated their customers were likely to find themselves mounted on a stake beside common thieves.

The Russian or the Slavic version of the stories about Vlad the Impaler called "Skazanie o Drakule voevode" ("The Tale of Warlord Dracula") is thought to have been written sometime between 1481 and 1486. Copies were made from the 15th century to the 18th century, of which some twenty-two extant manuscripts survive in Russian archives.^[16] The oldest one, from 1490, ends as follows: "First written in the year 6994 (1486), on 13 February; then transcribed by me, the sinner Elfrosin, in the year 6998 (1490), on 28 January". The Tales of Prince Dracula is neither chronological nor consistent, but mostly a collection of anecdotes of literary and historical value concerning Vlad Ţepeş.

There are 19 anecdotes in The Tales of Prince Dracula which are longer and more constructed than the German stories. It can be divided into two sections: The first 13 episodes are non-chronological events most likely closer to the original folkloric oral tradition about Vlad. The last six episodes are thought to have been written by a scholar who collected them, because they are chronological and seem to be more structured. The stories begin with a short introduction and the anecdote about the nailing of hats to ambassadors heads. They end with Vlad's death and information about his family.^[17]

Of the 19 anecdotes there are ten that have similarities to the German stories.^[18] Although there are similarities between the Russian and the German stories about Vlad, there is a clear distinction with the attitude towards him. The Russian stories tend to give him a more positive image: he is depicted as a great ruler, a brave soldier and a just sovereign. Stories of atrocities tend to seem to be justified as the actions of a strong ruler. Of the 19 anecdotes, only four seem to have exaggerated violence.^[19] Some elements of the anecdotes were later added to Russian stories about Ivan the Terrible of Russia.^[20]

The nationality and identity of the original writer of the anecdotes Dracula is disputed. The two most plausible explanations are that the writer was either a Romanian priest or a monk from Transylvania, or a Romanian or Moldavian from the court of Stephen the Great in Moldova. One theory claims the writer was a Russian diplomat named Fedor Kuritsyn.^[21]

It is most likely that Bram Stoker found the name for his vampire from William Wilkinson's book, An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia: with various Political Observations Relating to Them. It is known that Stoker made notes about this book.^[22] It is also suggested by some that because Stoker was a friend of a Hungarian professor Ármin Vámbéry) from Budapest, Vlad's name might have been mentioned by this friend. Regardless of how the name came to Stoker's attention, the cruel history of the Impaler would have readily lent itself to Stoker's purposes.

However, recent research suggests that Stoker actually knew little about the Prince of Wallachia.^[22] Some have claimed that the novel owes more to the legends about Elizabeth Báthory, a 16th century Hungarian countess who murdered hundreds of young girls.^{[citation needed]}

The legend of the vampire was and still is deeply rooted in that region. There have always been vampire-like creatures in various stories from across the world. However, the vampire, as he became known in Europe, largely originated in Southern Slavic folklore – although the tale is absent in Romanian culture. A veritable epidemic of vampirism swept through Eastern Europe beginning in the late 17th century and continuing through the 1700s. The number of reported cases rose dramatically in Hungary and the Balkans. From the Balkans, the "plague" spread westward into Germany, Italy, France, England, and Spain. Travelers returning from the Balkans brought with them tales of the undead, igniting an interest in the vampire that has continued to this day. Philosophers in the West began to study the phenomenon. It was during this period that Dom Augustine Calmet wrote his famous treatise on vampirism in Hungary. It was also during this period that authors and playwrights first began to explore the vampire legend. Stoker's novel was merely the culminating work of a long series of works that were inspired by the reports coming from the Balkans and Hungary.

Given the history of the vampire legend in Europe, it is perhaps natural that Stoker should place his great vampire in the heart of the region that gave birth to the story. Once Stoker had determined on a locality, Vlad Dracula would stand out as one of the most notorious rulers of the selected region. He was obscure enough that few would recognize the name and those who did would know him for his acts of brutal cruelty; Dracula was a natural candidate for vampirism.

Romanian folklore and poetry, on the other hand, paints Vlad Ţepeş as a hero. His favorite weapon being the stake, coupled with his reputation in his native country as a man who stood up to both foreign and domestic enemies, gives him the virtual opposite symbolism of Stoker's vampire. In Romania, he is considered one of the greatest leaders in the country's history, and was voted one of "100 Greatest Romanians" in the "Mari Români" television series aired in 2006.

A contemporary portrait of Vlad III, rediscovered by Romanian historians in the late 19th century, had been featured in the gallery of horrors at Innsbruck's Ambras Castle. However, this original has been lost to history, but a larger copy, painted anonymously in the latter half of the sixteenth century, now hangs in the same gallery^[1][2]. This copy, unlike the all the cryptoportraits contemporary with Vlad III, seems to have given him a Hapsburg lip, although he was not a member of the Hapsburg lineage.

His image in modern Romanian culture has been established in reaction to foreign perceptions: while Stoker's book did a lot to generate outrage with nationalists, it is the last part of a rather popular previous poem by Mihai Eminescu, "Scrisoarea a III-a", that helped turn Vlad's image into modern legend, by having him stand as a figure to contrast with presumed social decay under the Phanariotes and the political scene of the 19th century (even suggesting that Vlad's violent methods be applied as a cure). This judgment was in tune with the ideology of the inward-looking regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu, although the identification did little justice to Eminescu's personal beliefs.

All accounts of his life describe him as ruthless, but only the ones originating from his Saxon detractors paint him as sadistic or insane. These pamphlets continued to be published long after his death, though usually for lurid entertainment rather than propaganda purposes. It has largely been forgotten until recently that his tenacious efforts against the Ottoman Empire won him many staunch supporters in his lifetime, not just in modern day Romania but in the Kingdom of Hungary, Poland, the Republic of Venice, the Holy See, and the Balkans. A Hungarian court chronicler reported that King Matthias "had acted in opposition to general opinion" in Hungary when he had Dracula imprisoned, and this played a considerable part in Matthias reversing his unpopular decision. During his time as a "distinguished prisoner" before being fully pardoned and allowed to reconquer Wallachia, Vlad was hailed as a Christian hero by visitors from all over Europe.

Unlike the fictional Dracula films, there have been comparatively few movies about the man who inspired the vampire. The 1975 documentary In Search of Dracula explores the legend of Vlad the Impaler. He is played in the film by Christopher Lee, known for his numerous portrayals of the fictional Dracula in films ranging from the 1950s to the 1970s.^[23]

In 1979, a Romanian film called Vlad Ţepeş (sometimes known, in other countries, as The True Story of Vlad the Impaler) was released, based on his six-year reign and brief return to power in late 1476. The character is portrayed in a mostly positive perspective though the film also mentions the excesses of his regime and his practice of impalement. The lead character is played by Ştefan Sileanu.^[24]