Vlad the Impaler | Evil Manifested
“Despair has its own calms.”
- Bram Stoker, Dracula
Hey folks, before we start this week’s episode I want to issue a warning. Your discretion is advised. This episode is graphic. And you have my word that I did not make it so. Jon and I teach and discuss history as it is, not as we would like it to be. That means we must be honest. That is our responsibility to you. As a result, please do not listen to this around children or if you are squeamish.
I have done my best to mitigate details with certain references, but again, our role here is to present the history to you, and sometimes that leads us down dark paths. The benefit for all of us is that we can do it together, and in doing so, emerge intact on the other side. One last thing, I end this podcast a little differently. I invite you, as always, to push back. Let me know your thoughts so we can discuss them next week.
Anyway, enough preamble. Darkness is ahead. Let’s face it together.
Vlad Dracula was born in Transylvania in 1431. Before he was born, his unstable country had been besieged from all sides for many years. By the mid-sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire had been making incursions into southeastern Europe for over a century. These incursions signified an attempt at ongoing expansion for the purposes of influence and power. Wallachia, modern-day Romania, was situated between the Ottomans and the Hungarian Kingdom, making it a strategic stronghold for both groups and a battleground for the ongoing conflict. In addition, internal politics within Wallachia were volatile. This, combined with ongoing conflicts with Poland and Hungary, significantly weakened Wallachia’s chance to defend itself against the ongoing Ottoman invasion.
Vlad’s father, Vlad II Dracul and King of Wallachia had fought against the Ottomans but eventually accepted their terms for suzerainty, which required him to pay an annual tribute but gave Wallachia a certain amount of anatomy while protecting it from the surrounding countries of Hungry and Poland. Vlad’s lineage gave him direct access to the throne, while his family’s rivals (sometimes allied with surrounding countries) threatened his potential to rule in addition to his life.
When he was eleven years old, his father took him and his brother Radu on a diplomatic mission to the Ottomans to secure the suzerainty. After arriving, the Ottomans took Vlad and his brother and held them as collateral for the next five years. This kept them as a bargaining chip against their father, guaranteed loyalty to do the threat of harm, and provided the Ottomans time to indoctrinate the two young men with Turkish customs and rule. Vlad and Radu were not happy about being abandoned by their father and held captive by the Ottomans. Though some historians have stated that they were treated well, educated, and brought up in Turkish traditions of strategy and nobility, others have outlined the probable sexual abuse by leadership and Imams that took place in addition to gradual mistreatment within the Ottoman court. These experiences fueled Vlad’s growing hatred of their captors and compounded his desire to push against them when given the chance. His experiences were in direct contrast to his brother’s, who found favor in the Ottoman court and became fiercely loyal to their cause, both in faith and Turkish expansion.
The brothers were released by the Ottoman court in 1448. Vlad left and Radu stayed. Upon his return to Wallachia, Vlad immediately claimed the throne. His initial rule was short-lived, around two months, due to his internal conflicts with another group, the Boyars, a powerful land-owning nobility. Coming back to Wallachia, Vlad had limited resources and influence. He was opposed by Hungary who had put their backing behind another ruler in order to secure the region away from the Ottomans. As a result, Vlad led a small force against the Hungarian-backed ruler and was defeated, forcing him to once again leave Wallachia. Upon his exile, Vlad immediately began to seek out allies and resources in order to reestablish himself as ruler. His exile took him immediately to Moldavia to stay with his uncle, who was assassinated shortly thereafter. Vlad fled again, traveling over the next several years across the Holy Roman Empire, Hungary, and other areas working to secure as many allies as possible in order to retake the Wallachian throne. Though initially opposed in Hungary, Vlad eventually gained support, and launched a campaign against his opponent in his home country, taking the throne and finally securing his father’s seat.
Second Rule and Cruelty
Upon retaking the throne in 1456, Vlad immediately began enacting harsh policies to consolidate power. He started this process by publicly torturing and murdering the Boyars who had opposed him in a public show of power. One specific, and preferred way he murdered his enemies was through a process called impalement, where a rounded wooded log was pushed through the anus or vagina into the body until it came out of the mouth of the victim. Sometimes Vlad would do this while the people were still alive and was said to even relish watching them slowly die. This was something he perfected and employed throughout his life, starting with the Boyers.
As he fought against his rivals, property was seized and redistributed to allies or kept for himself. In addition, some of his public policies severely weakened the influence of the nobility and consolidated the power of the crown under his rule. His drive to centralize authority ensured that the resources of his country were directed to him, and his cruelty with his opponents put an innate fear into any who considered fighting against him. In addition to consolidating power, some historians have shown that Vlad attempted to rid the Wallachia political system of corruption, while others have stipulated that said attempts were made as part of his power consolidation and to provide him more opportunities to torture and inflict pain. Other reforms were specific to infrastructure and law, with the repair and building of roads and bridges and the installation of harsh, public punishments for adultery theft and ironically, murder.
One of his many targets during this time was the Saxons who populated neighboring Transylvania. At the time, they experienced certain protections from the Hungarian King and historically had pushed back against Vlad’s early attempts at rule and consolidation of power. Once power had been consolidated, Vlad retaliated by impaling hundreds of Saxons both in his country and in Transylvania. Many of these people he publicly, brutally murdered had nothing to do with the conflict. Vlad did not care but instead wanted to demonstrate brutality to force obedience. After this incursion, plundering, and the horrific murder of thousands, a peace deal was reached in 1460 and the terror ended, but not without leaving the countryside with the rotting, impaled victims he deemed expendable.
Defying the Ottomans and the Impalement Forest
By this time, Vlad was developing a reputation, and this may have contributed to both Poland and Hungary deciding against direct assaults on Wallachia. Believing his power to be centralized and established, Vlad launched his campaign against the Ottomans by first refusing to pay the tribute for three consecutive years. An envoy was sent by the Sultan who demanded that Vlad come to Constantinople to answer for his crimes. After his refusal, Vlad launched raids into Ottoman territory, taking fortresses and capturing thousands of prisoners. These attacks continued until the Sultan landed a force of 150,000 Turks into Wallachia to defeat Vlad and install his brother, Radu upon the throne. The sheer size of this force made for easy victories across the country, with the Ottomans taking the capital within a few weeks. Experienced in war, the Turks were used to setting up comprehensive supply lines and communications, which accelerated the march.
In response to the Ottoman landing and victories, Vlad pulled back from Ottoman lands and marched instead against the enemy on his native soil. Knowing that he was vastly outnumbered, and having limited supplies, arms, and methods by which to retreat, Vlad instead resorted to guerilla tactics, conducting skirmishes, night raids, and a full disruption of Ottoman supply lines. This approach is considered a desperate attempt to not only push the forces back but to make the occupation of Wallachia as costly in both men and arms as possible. Vlad knew he could not defeat the Ottomans in open combat, so he sought to demoralize them through raids, resource disruption, and terror so that they would leave and never come back. Historians have also speculated that these tactics were acts of sheer desperation – or insanity – due to the fact that at if and when the Ottomans did leave, they could at any time send another force at a later date to retake the country. Whatever the reason, Vlads attacks on occupying Ottoman forces continued.
One of the most infamous attacks occurred as a night raid in June 1462. Vlad and his forces raided the Sultan’s camp in an attempt to assassinate him, kill as many soldiers as possible, and burn supplies. This raid was not a success, as Vlad got lost in the massive camp and attacked the wrong tents. In addition, Turkish forces were able to regroup quickly and push Vlad and his army back into a full retreat. The attack and subsequent failure of the raid was not what made it notable history. What makes it stand out, is what happened after.
The Sultan and his forces raised the camp and prepared to the pursue Vlad, which took several hours. Once on the move, they encountered burned villages, farmland, and fields that had been set ablaze, and emptied. Smoke filled the forests to the point that the army could only see a few steps ahead of them. Orders and commands would come through the ranks to compensate for the lack of visibility, keeping the troops in line as they marched forward. Throughout that day, it is reported by a Greek historian who traveled with the Turks that “no green remained”. Everything had been destroyed. When investigating homes and other buildings, no people were found. It was as if the entire world had emptied and set on fire.
Then, late in the day, the front columns of the army came to a halt. It is said that commanders began to ride back and forth at full speeds, almost in a panic. The Greek historian, Laonikos, was asked to come to the head of the columns and survey what had stopped the army in its tracks. When he got to the front, the Sultan was sitting on his horse, staring at the landscape in front of them. It is said that Laonikos looked and put his hand over his mouth.
Thousands upon thousands of long poles had been embedded in the earth. A person was impaled on each one. Laonikos describes what he saw:
The sultan's army entered into the area of the impalements, which was seventeen stades long and seven stades wide. There were large stakes there on which, as it was said, about twenty thousand men, women, and children had been spitted, quite a sight for the Turks and the sultan himself. The Turks were dumbfounded when they saw the multitude of men on the stakes. There were infants too affixed to their mothers on the stakes, and birds had made their nests in their entrails.
This spectacle, called the impaled forest due to the sheer magnitude of the number of victims, caused the Ottoman army to pause. Turkish soldiers, and native Wallachian men, women, and children had all been subjected to the same horrific death. The villages that the army had passed through had been emptied for this purpose, and the scorched earth tactic used by Vlad was only a foreshadowing of what he was doing. Estimates of the number of victims impaled range from 20-30,000, with some historians arguing that it was a much smaller number. Though there is a debate on the total amount of people found in this forest, there is no contesting the display of absolute evil shown in this act. In addition to what was found on the scene, other writings from those who served Vlad say that once the thousands of bodies had been put on display, Vlad had a table made for himself in the middle of the field. There, he ate his dinner among the twitching corpses, sometimes even dipping his bread in the blood that fell onto his table.
Besides the sheer enjoyment of the massacre, one of Vlad’s intentions was to dissuade the Ottomans from their pursuit, which he did, but only for a short while. The cost of the invasion, plus the heat and ongoing need to keep his men fed and watered, was the real cause for a partial retreat. Shortly after this event, the Sultan left a large portion of his army in the command of Vlad’s brother, Radu. The Sultan now gone, Radu pursued his brother until Vlad fled to the Carpathian Mountains.
For the next several years, Vlad would once again seek to build up alliances with surrounding countries and areas in order to reclaim his throne from Radu. He would find some success in these efforts, and would once again wage war against the Turks until he was able to reclaim his throne in 1476. A few weeks later, he was killed in battle.
The Psychology of a Monster
In this podcast, we regularly warn you against looking through the modern lens when studying history. Hindsight always makes it easy to suggest what should have happened, what someone should have done, or if they had just done A, then they would have achieved B. There are exceptions to this warning. Sometimes, in our journey through history, we encounter something or someone so vile, that the first reaction is the correct one. We have talked about a few of those people in this podcast and will continue to do so. This is one of those encounters.
When looking at history, we can objectively conclude that Vlad was a monster. Full stop. The tactics he employed, both on and off the battlefield, appear – quite clearly – to be the result of his love for brutality, torture, and blood. Some modern psychologists have tried to understand what kind of man would do such things, and have concluded that, “Vlad may have possessed both psychopathic personality disorder and paranoid personality disorder. people with paranoid personality disorder suffer from a pattern of behaviors derived from a persistent mistrust of others and a belief that others are out to get them. They are vengeful, jealous, hold grudges, are prone to sometimes violent retaliation, and will manipulate social cues to justify their bias.”
In addition to being a psychopath, Vlad also probably had a certain level of OCD. This manifested itself as his desire that the poles on which he had his victims impaled all be a specific size, or change in length depending on rank or status. Through the consistent application of psychotic behavior, he probably experienced a phenomenon called psychic numbing, which kept him from feeling empathy or any emotions for those around him. This manifested in his hobby of skinning animals alive and then setting them free, watching as they died in agony and shock. Other instances of this was his impaling of animals, something he saw as practice for when he would do it to human beings. Additional examples include his torturing and murdering of wives who did not – in his eyes – take care of their husbands, the gutting of a woman to prove she was not carrying his child, the burning of a barn full of beggars after he had invited them in for a free feast, and having the turbans of Turkish soldiers nailed to their heads when they would not remove them in his presence.
Some have made arguments that such behavior is the product of the time and the life that Vlad had lived. While these factors certainly had an impact, they do not explain or excuse the actions that Vlad took to secure power. As one psychologist put it, “Some attribute this to long and relentless revenge against those who had caused him to suffer so much pain and humiliation during his time as an Ottoman hostage, driven by an affectionless childhood where he was bred to feel entitled and superior. However, much of Vlad’s threats to violence were either indiscriminate or directed against his own people; suggesting a more habitual, compulsive violence ingrained deeply within him.”
Stopping Evil
Generally, in our podcasts, we try not to make conclusions, as we feel it may subvert your own deliberations regarding the event or person. In this case, I’m making an exception. I, obviously, still want you to come to your own conclusions and invite you to share them with us. I hope that you all will write and argue with me about my summations, and I look forward to your questions regarding this person and his vile history. That said, there are certain people in history who are, without argument, evil, and as a result, our conclusion regarding them and their actions can shape our response when we encounter similar evil in the world today. So, with that in mind, here we go.
Vlad was more akin to a rabid dog than he was to a human. Many historians agree. His actions and desire to inflict harm was only outweighed by his selfish desire for the throne that he, due to his many bad choices, put in jeopardy. His utter hatred for the Ottomans became an excuse for him to conduct as many atrocities as possible as if to punish the world for what he had endured. Vlad’s brutal actions were NOT the result of brilliant tactics employed to subvert foreign invaders or rebelling peoples. He could have utilized said tactics without the brutality that he so enjoyed. The more opportunities he had to be brutal, the more he embraced it and as a result, the more brutal he became. Even in times of peace, he looked for reasons to kill, maim, and destroy. There was but one solution when dealing with such a monster, and thankfully, this solution was enacted on a battlefield within sight of the castle that he fought to gain his entire life.
Sometimes when we look at history, we see the darkest, most vile extremes of humanity. In this season, we will encounter many more. When we see them, we do not learn from them, but from those who survived. We learn from the circumstances that fostered and encouraged those who seek to do evil. We understand the course of actions that some took to end the reigns of terror, and we decide the measures that we will take to step in and be the barrier between the innocent, and the oncoming brutality. When we study the life of Vlad the Impaler, we see utter darkness, and as students of history, we have the context that gives us the ability and choice to be the light.
