True Crimes – Vlad Tepes

BRAM STOKER wrote his definitive vampire novel, ‘Dracula' in 1897 and 100 years later thousands of Dracula enthusiasts all over the world held a party to celebrate the event. Almost everyone has heard of Dracula, the fictional nosferatu (undead) count who lives forever by drinking the blood of his victims. He sleeps by day in his coffin and stalks his prey by night, and this gothic romantic villain from Transylvania has been celebrated in numerous movies featuring Max Schreck, Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee and Gary Oldman among others.

We all have an idea of whom or what Count Dracula was, but Vlad Tepes Dracula, the real historical figure and the inspiration behind Bram Stoker's novel is definitely less well known. Vlad was not a vampire, but he definitely was a killer with a passion for staking (or impaling) his victims and watching them die slowly.

Vlad Tepes was born in November 1431 in the fortress of Sighisoara , Romania . His father, Vlad Dracul was at that time the military governor of Transylvania , appointed by the Emperor Sigismund. Dracul had been inducted into the Order of the Dragon a year before. The order was a semi-military and religious society, originally created in 1387 by the Holy Roman Emperor and his second wife, Barbara Cilli. The main purpose of this secret fraternal order of knights was to promote Catholicism and to crusade against the Turkish Empire . ‘Dracula' a diminutive which means ‘the son of Dracul' was a surname ultimately used by Vlad Tepes. ‘Dracul' in the Romanian language means ‘Dragon' and also ‘Devil'.

Another source of inspiration for Stoker's evil character was the official dress of the Order of the Dragon: a black cape over a red garment. This was to be worn only on Fridays or during the commemoration of Christ's Passion. Stoker had his count dressed in this garb from the moment he first met Jonathan Harker, the central character of his novel.

In the winter of 1436-37, Dracul was appointed Prince of Wallachia (one of three Romanian provinces) and took up residence at the palace of Tirgoviste . Vlad Tepes thus lived for the next six years at the princely court. In 1442, Dracula and his younger brother Radu were taken hostage by the Sultan Murad II. (This was done for political purposes and was a common practice in those days). Dracula was held in Turkey until 1448, whilst his brother stayed in Istanbul until 1462. This captivity played an important role in young Dracula's upbringing: he became depressed and deeply distrustful of all those around him.

The Turks set him free after informing him that his father had been assassinated in 1447 – a hit organised by Vladislav II. Dracula's older brother Mircea had also been tortured and then buried alive by the boyars of Tirgoviste. Dracula swore vengeance and at the age of 17 he formed an army to get back the Wallachian throne. Supported by a force of Turkish cavalry and 5,000 troops loaned to him by pasha Mustafa Hassan, he met the army of Vladislav II in the field. But young Dracula was inexperienced in warfare, and his men suffered a bad defeat. He was forced to retreat to Transylvania and regroup his forces and it was not until 1456 that he finally won back the throne. During the battle, he had the satisfaction of killing his mortal enemy and then had his father's assassin tortured to death. Vlad Dracula began a reign of six years in Wallachia when he committed many acts of cruelty and established a fearsome reputation throughout Eastern Europe .

His first major act of revenge was aimed at the boyars of Tirgoviste for the deaths of his father and brother. On Easter Sunday 1459, he had all the boyar families arrested. The older members were impaled on stakes and the others were forced to march from the capital to the town of Poenari . This 50 miles trek was pretty gruelling, and those that survived were not permitted to rest until they reached their destination. Dracula then ordered them to build him a fortress on the ruins of an older outpost overlooking the Arges River . Many died in the process, and Dracula therefore cleverly succeeded in creating a new nobility and obtaining a stronghold for the future. What remains today of the fortress is identified as Castle Dracula, made world famous by Stoker's fictional novel.

Vlad became infamous for brutal punishment techniques: he often ordered his victims to be skinned, boiled, blinded, nailed and buried alive. He also liked to have noses, ears and sexual organs hacked off, but his favourite method of slow death was impaling men and women on stakes. Vlad was a perfectionist who revolutionised the torture of impalment. Traditionalists opted for a sharp stake for a quick death, but Prince Dracula wanted to prolong the ‘entertainment'. So instead of having the stakes sharpened, he preferred the wood to be rounded and oiled at one end so that the death was long and drawn out, lasting for hours; sometimes even days. Thus he earned the nickname ‘Tepes' which means ‘The Impaler' in the Romanian language. The Turks referred to him as ‘Kaziglu Bey' meaning ‘The Impaler Prince'.

He once executed by impaling around 2,000 Transylvanian merchants who had ignored his trade laws. Some of these victims were staked out as dinner-party entertainment for his guests. A squeamish dinner companion made the mistake of holding his nose in order to avoid the smell of blood and flesh. On seeing this, Vlad considerately had the man impaled higher than the rest so that he was above the stench!

But Vlad Tepes Dracula was also particularly known for his fierce insistence on honesty and order among his subjects. Almost any crime, from lying and stealing to murder, could be punished by impalement. Dracula was so confident in the effectiveness of his laws that he placed a golden cup on display in the central square in Tirgoviste. The cup could be used to scoop up and drink water from the fountain by any thirsty traveller, but it had to remain in the square. Anyone caught stealing the cup would of course be executed. According to reliable historical research, the cup was never stolen throughout Vlad's reign.

The prince was also very concerned that all his subjects work effectively for the community. He looked upon the poor, vagrants and beggars as thieves. One day in 1460 he invited all the poor and sick of Wallachia to his court in Tirgoviste for a great feast. After the numerous guests had eaten their full and drank gallons of wine, Dracula addressed them: “Would you all like to be without cares, lacking nothing in this world?” Of course they enthusiastically answered, “Yes!” Prince Dracula then quietly made his exit and ordered his servants to board up the hall and set the building on fire. Any unfortunates who managed to escape the flames were shot down by crossbowmen. No one survived. Dracula explained that he did this, “So that no one will be poor or dispossessed in my realm.” Well, that's one drastic way of achieving a laudable aim. I suspect that Adolf Hitler would have approved.

In January 1462, Vlad launched a campaign against the Turks along the Danube River . As Sultan Mehmed II had a much larger army than Dracula's, this was quite a risky military exercise, but Vlad moved his force about quickly, gaining many victories. In vengeance, the Sultan attacked Wallachia with a large army, intending to defeat Vlad and turn Wallachia into a Turkish province. Finding himself without allies when the Turks advanced, Dracula's army retreated towards Tirgoviste and adopted a scorched earth tactic: he had his men burn villages and poison wells along the way so that the Turkish army would not be able to live off the land.

When the Sultan and his exhausted and hungry troops neared the capital, they could see from far away what looked like a ribbon of white surrounding the entire city. Then they got closer and were confronted by a really gruesome sight – thousands of stakes held the carcasses of some 20,000 Turkish captives. Flocks of crows and other carrion birds descended on the corpses to feast on the sea of human flesh. Dying men, women and children struggling in extreme pain had their eyes pecked out before they expired on stakes driven through their backs. This horror scene was named ‘The Forest of the Impaled', by Victor Hugo in his ‘Legende des Siecles'. Vlad's macabre terror tactic worked: the Sultan and his men retreated in horror from this grisly sight.

A year later Vlad's younger brother Radu took up the Turkish cause and attacked Wallachia with another large army. Radu was an astute military leader, and he pursued his elder brother to Poenari castle on the Arges River . According to legend, this was where Dracula's beloved wife Elizabeta committed suicide by hurling herself from the upper battlements in order to escape capture by the Turks. She fell down the precipice into the freezing river below, and this scene was exploited by Francis Ford Coppola in his dramatic movie ‘Bram Stoker's Dracula', starring Gary Oldman.

When the castle fell to Radu's forces, Dracula managed to escape by using a secret passage into mountains. He was helped by some peasants of the Arefu village and finally reached Transylvania, only to be imprisoned at the Hungarian capital of Visegrad by the new king of Hungary , Matthias Corvinus. Dracula was not released until a ransom was paid in 1475.

Vlad enjoyed another brief reign in Wallachia until he went out hunting on 27 December 1476. As he rode by with his nobles, an unknown assassin loosed off a well-aimed crossbow bolt that struck Dracula, lodging deep into his throat. The prince fell mortally wounded from his horse and died minutes later. The news of his death quickly spread, and there was wild rejoicing among many Romanians that evening.

We do not know exactly why Bram Stoker chose this fifteenth century Romanian prince as a model for his fictional character, Count Dracula. It is known that Stoker had a friendly relationship with Ariminius Vambery, a Hungarian professor of history at the University of Budapest , and this man certainly gave Stoker a lot of information on Vlad Tepes Dracula. In the novel, Dr Abraham Van Helsing mentions his “friend Arminius” as the source of knowledge on Dracula and vampire lore. But the only real link between the historical Dracula (1431-1476) and the modern literary myth of the vampire is Stoker's fictional work.

Vlad Dracula's political detractors, mainly German Saxons, made use of the other meaning of the Romanian word ‘Dracul – Devil' in order to blacken the prince's reputation. Now the association of the words ‘Dragon' and ‘Devil' in Romanian language could explain an earlier link between Vlad Dracula and vampires. He was known to drink his victims' blood on occasion, but he certainly did not become a nosferatu and rise from the grave, though this was surely a good story to scare young children with.

Few mourned the passing of Vlad Tepes Dracula. He was a bloodthirsty tyrant who had the power to fully exploit his psychotic nature. The ‘ Forest of the Impaled', covering hundreds of acres outside his city, was a truly horrifying sight that no one who witnessed it could ever forget. Thankfully this kind of atrocity has never been repeated in history

(Research, johnfranc/dracula)

IF YOU need a check on my True Crime series of stories, published in the Hua Hin Observer, here is a complete list to date:
April 2002 -The Green Bicycle case, 1921. May 2002 - The Craig/Bentley Case, 1952. June 2002 - The A6 Murder Case, 1961. July 2002 - Murder of the Earl of Errol, 1941. August 2002 - The O J Simpson murder trial, 1995. September 2002 - The Aileen Wuornos case, 1989. October 2002 - The Ronald Opus case, 1993. November 2002 - Madame X, 1929. December 2002 - The Spree Killer, 1984. January 2003 - Shootout at Smiths' Club, 1966. February 2003 - The Christine Dryland case, 1991. March 2003 - Poisoned Pie in Essex, 1982. April 2003 - The Heydrich assassination, 1943. May 2003 - The Diana Davidson Murder case, 1969. June 2003 - The death of Alkibiades, 404 BC. July 2003 - The headsman of Colmar, 1780. August 2003 - The Ruth Ellis case, 1955. September 2003 - The Mel Jones Murder case, 1975. October 2003 - The Bluebeard of the bath, 1915. November 2003 - Murder in a combat zone, 1966. December 2003 - The Barn Restaurant murder case, 1972. January 2004 - The assassination of JFK, 1963. February 2004 - Judge Falcone and the Mafia, 1992. March 2004 - Gilles de Rais/Bluebeard, 1404-1440. April 2004 - The hand in the sand case, 1885. May 2004 - The body in the bag, 1979.

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