The Real Count Dracula: Prince Vlad III the Impaler

Although vampire stories have existed for hundreds of years, they became firmly entrenched in Western culture with the 1897 release of Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula." Since then, Count Dracula and similar vampires have been the subject of countless movies and books. Although these vampire stories are a relatively modern invention, the character of Count Dracula is actually based on a historic figure - Vlad Dracula who lived in the Romanian province of Wallachia in the 15th century. This man, who became prince of Wallachia and adopted the title Vlad III, is popularly known as Prince Vlad the Impaler because of his great cruelty.

Although the extent and nature of his cruelty has been the source of some controversy of the years, virtually all of the sources agree that Prince Vlad III ruled his territory with an extremely hard hand. He apparently prescribed death for almost every infraction of the law and by all accounts he preferred impalement to all other forms of capital punishment. Normally, victims would have their feet tied to horses while a sharpened stake was forced into the body. Usually, the stakes entered through the anus and came out the mouth. Care was taken to make sure that the stakes were not so sharp as to kill the victims too quickly. It sometimes took hours for the victims to die as Vlad wanted his victims to suffer a slow death. After the victim was impaled, the stakes were usually driven into the ground where the victim would often be left for months to serve as a warning to others.

If Vlad really did all of the things that are attributed to him, then we could easily conclude that he was one of the most sadistic human beings in the history of the world. If the stories are true, he murdered and tortured thousands of men, women, and children including up to thirty thousand at a time. According to one story, the invading Ottoman Turks retreated in horror at the sight of thousands of rotting Turkish prisoners who had been impaled on the banks of the Danube by Vlad. Other stories say he was fond of dismembering, blinding, strangling, mutilating, scalping, skinning, and boiling his victims alive. Although there are few accounts that he ever engaged in vampirism, it is easy to see why Bram Stoker modeled his Dracula on Vlad the Impaler. To this day, the man remains infamous for his cruelty and brutality.

Interestingly enough, Vlad earned the respect of many during his lifetime and continues to be seen by some in Romania as a national hero. To be sure, he brought law and order to his province and he did help check Ottoman encroachment into Eastern Europe. Further, although he virtually wiped out the lower nobility in Wallachia, he had good reason to treat them harshly. Those lower nobles had killed his father and brother and had been a destabilizing force within Romania. He had good reason to feel threatened by them.

He may have used rather Draconian measures to maintain power, but he probably was not crazy. No doubt many of the stories that persist about his cruelty are simply exaggerations or outright lies made up by his enemies. There can be no denying that he was one of the harshest rulers in history, but he might not have been as harsh as the legends say. Since it is difficult to distinguish the fact from the fiction, however, we may never know the truth about Prince Vlad III the Impaler of Wallachia.