12-18-2009, 09:38 AM
Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia (c. 1431 â December 1476), more commonly known as the Impaler or Dracula, was a three-time voivode of Wallachia, ruling mainly from 1456 to 1462.
Names
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 "Kazıklı Voyvoda" (pronounced [kɑzɯkˈɫɯ]) which means "Impaler Prince".
Earlier in the same year as Vlad Dracula's birth, his father had traveled to Nuremberg, today located in Germany, where he had been vested into the Order of the Dragon. At the age of five, young Vlad was also initiated into the Order.
Like his father, in the early years of childhood, the future ruling prince Vlad the Impaler got a distinguished education. He mastered German and Latin. During the first reign of Vlad II, Vlad the Impaler accompanied his father to Targoviste.
The Byzantine chancellor Mikhail Doukas showed that, at Targoviste, the sons of boyars and ruling princes got a distinguished education from either Romanian or Greek scholars, coming from Constantinople. The young prince learned for sure; combat skills, geography, mathematics, science, language; Romanian, Latin, Paleo-Slavic (church Slavic) and the classical arts and philosophy.
Hostage
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.
First reign and exile
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, they threatened Hungary by besieging Belgrade. 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 contingent into Wallachia, reconquered his native land and killed Vladislav II in hand to hand combat.
Second reign
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.
Raids into Transylvania
Since 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.
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.
War with the Ottoman
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..."
In response to this, Sultan Mehmed II raised an army of around 60,000 troops and 30,000 irregulars 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. 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.
First marriage
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).
Captivity in Hungary
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, some sources say Vlad also converted to Catholicism, in contrast to his brother who converted to Islam, if the conversion happened at all.
Second marriage
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 spent most of his time in king Matthias' retinue and later was an unsuccessful 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. The descendants of Vlad and Ilona married into Hungarian nobility.
Third reign and death
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. The exact location of his remains is unknown. One theory is that Vlad's remains may be located at the Comana monastery. The other theory is that Vlad is buried at Snagov, an island monastery located near Bucharest.
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[SIZE="5"]Methods of execution[/SIZE]
When he came to power Vlad ruled with the intent to gain vengeance on the boyars for killing his father and eldest brother. Though Vlad took nearly a decade to do so, he fulfilled this vow, completing the task on an Easter Sunday around 1457. 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, 40 miles north of Târgovişte. Vlad was determined to rebuild this ancient fortress as his own stronghold and refuge so he might monitor the movements of the Hungarians coming through Transylvania and the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. The enslaved boyars, their families and some master masons were forced to labor until their deaths, 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. None survived the construction of castle Poienari, as those who did not die from exhaustion were impaled.
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. 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. These numbers are most likely exaggerated.
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, and drowning. All of these punishments mainly came from things people did that displeased Vlad the most; stealing, lying, and adulterous relations. Other methods of punishment included skinning the feet of thieves, then putting salt on them and letting goats lick off the salt. This was a way that Vlad kept his people in order and taught them that stealing would not be tolerated in his lands. No exceptions were made: he punished anyone who broke his laws, whether men or women, no matter the age, religion or social class.
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 (to ensure the stake would not puncture any organs), and care was taken that the stake not be too sharp; else the victim might die too rapidly from shock. Normally the stake was inserted into the body through the anus and was often forced through the body until it emerged from the mouth. However, there were many instances where victims were impaled through other bodily orifices or through the abdomen or chest. Infants were sometimes impaled on the stake forced through their mother's chests. The records indicate that victims were sometimes impaled so that they hung upside down on the stake.
Death by impalement was slow and agonizing. 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. This place was known as the Forest of the Impaled. In this forest is a story of Vlad's "sense of humor": a servant was holding his nose and Vlad said to him while feasting "why do you do that?" The servant replied, "I cannot stand the stench, my lord!" Vlad immediately ordered him impaled and looks up at the servant saying, "then you shall live up there where the stench cannot reach you."
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. 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. Vlad was also a courageous man, he led from the front, he never let his soldiers do all the fighting. Vlad's blood-lust was deeper than impalement, he desired to be in battle as well.
Names
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 "Kazıklı Voyvoda" (pronounced [kɑzɯkˈɫɯ]) which means "Impaler Prince".
Earlier in the same year as Vlad Dracula's birth, his father had traveled to Nuremberg, today located in Germany, where he had been vested into the Order of the Dragon. At the age of five, young Vlad was also initiated into the Order.
Like his father, in the early years of childhood, the future ruling prince Vlad the Impaler got a distinguished education. He mastered German and Latin. During the first reign of Vlad II, Vlad the Impaler accompanied his father to Targoviste.
The Byzantine chancellor Mikhail Doukas showed that, at Targoviste, the sons of boyars and ruling princes got a distinguished education from either Romanian or Greek scholars, coming from Constantinople. The young prince learned for sure; combat skills, geography, mathematics, science, language; Romanian, Latin, Paleo-Slavic (church Slavic) and the classical arts and philosophy.
Hostage
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.
First reign and exile
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, they threatened Hungary by besieging Belgrade. 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 contingent into Wallachia, reconquered his native land and killed Vladislav II in hand to hand combat.
Second reign
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.
Raids into Transylvania
Since 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.
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.
War with the Ottoman
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..."
In response to this, Sultan Mehmed II raised an army of around 60,000 troops and 30,000 irregulars 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. 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.
First marriage
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).
Captivity in Hungary
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, some sources say Vlad also converted to Catholicism, in contrast to his brother who converted to Islam, if the conversion happened at all.
Second marriage
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 spent most of his time in king Matthias' retinue and later was an unsuccessful 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. The descendants of Vlad and Ilona married into Hungarian nobility.
Third reign and death
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. The exact location of his remains is unknown. One theory is that Vlad's remains may be located at the Comana monastery. The other theory is that Vlad is buried at Snagov, an island monastery located near Bucharest.
-----
[SIZE="5"]Methods of execution[/SIZE]
When he came to power Vlad ruled with the intent to gain vengeance on the boyars for killing his father and eldest brother. Though Vlad took nearly a decade to do so, he fulfilled this vow, completing the task on an Easter Sunday around 1457. 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, 40 miles north of Târgovişte. Vlad was determined to rebuild this ancient fortress as his own stronghold and refuge so he might monitor the movements of the Hungarians coming through Transylvania and the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. The enslaved boyars, their families and some master masons were forced to labor until their deaths, 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. None survived the construction of castle Poienari, as those who did not die from exhaustion were impaled.
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. 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. These numbers are most likely exaggerated.
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, and drowning. All of these punishments mainly came from things people did that displeased Vlad the most; stealing, lying, and adulterous relations. Other methods of punishment included skinning the feet of thieves, then putting salt on them and letting goats lick off the salt. This was a way that Vlad kept his people in order and taught them that stealing would not be tolerated in his lands. No exceptions were made: he punished anyone who broke his laws, whether men or women, no matter the age, religion or social class.
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 (to ensure the stake would not puncture any organs), and care was taken that the stake not be too sharp; else the victim might die too rapidly from shock. Normally the stake was inserted into the body through the anus and was often forced through the body until it emerged from the mouth. However, there were many instances where victims were impaled through other bodily orifices or through the abdomen or chest. Infants were sometimes impaled on the stake forced through their mother's chests. The records indicate that victims were sometimes impaled so that they hung upside down on the stake.
Death by impalement was slow and agonizing. 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. This place was known as the Forest of the Impaled. In this forest is a story of Vlad's "sense of humor": a servant was holding his nose and Vlad said to him while feasting "why do you do that?" The servant replied, "I cannot stand the stench, my lord!" Vlad immediately ordered him impaled and looks up at the servant saying, "then you shall live up there where the stench cannot reach you."
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. 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. Vlad was also a courageous man, he led from the front, he never let his soldiers do all the fighting. Vlad's blood-lust was deeper than impalement, he desired to be in battle as well.