by Comrade Shoaib Nagi

Created on: August 24, 2010

If Vlad III ‘The Impaler’ had not been one of the history’s most notorious sadists, he would only have earned a name of a minor Balkan prince who managed to get hold off the onslaught of the Turks, he might have been remembered for eliminating the local aristocracy and developing a new class of rulers from the common people. Instead, his activities earned him the title ‘The Impaler’ and he and his family are still associated with the vampire legends and Dracula. During his reign, he committed unmatched and unspeakable atrocities on his own people.

Vlad’s family was one of two that contested for control of Walachia, a principality sandwiched between Hungary and the might Ottoman Empire. When Vlad was born in 1431, the rival Danesti was in power and his father, Vlad II, was the governor of Transylvania under the Hungarian monarch. Since he had joined the Secret Order of the Dragon to fight against the Turks, the elder Vlad was called Dracul, which means ‘dragon’ in Romanian, and his son Vlad II used the surname Draculea which means ‘son of a dragon’.

In 1436, Vlad II seized Walachia, but was expelled in 1442. The very next year, he regained it with Turkish support, making a treaty that he guaranteed by sending his younger sons as hostages to the Sultan. The boys were interned in a remote fortress of Asia Minor. When his father was murdered in 1447, the Turks sent Vlad with an army and made him the Prince of Walachia. After two months, the Hungarians drove him out once again the Danesti came in power. Finally, in 1456, Vlad regained the territory and established his capital at Tirgoviste. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Walachia was a bulwark against the Turks, who Vlad fought. He held them off for six years, but never had the manpower of support to inflict a major defeat, although he did give the Balkans a respite from the Ottoman onslaught.

But the real reason of his fame is not because of the wars he fought or territories he established, it is because of the cruelty he inflicted upon his own people and the unimaginable atrocities he committed. Vlad’s very first aim was to assert his personal control over an unstable state. Vlad had a special grudge against the boyars, who were responsible for the murder of his father and brother. So, the very first atrocities committed by Vlad were directed against the boyars. At Easter in 1459, the prince held a special banquet for the boyars. He asked

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