Transylvania
Vlad-as-Dracula-The Impaler
06/10/25 11:25 Filed in: History
So, was Vlad the Impaler, the persona that Dracula was based upon, truly as wicked a warlord as we are led to believe? Maybe further research indicates he wasn't as deadly as the myth suggests. Hmmm!?
You can read more about this here…
The abstract is…
<<Vlad III Dracula (c. 1431–76), the three-time voivode (prince) of Wallachia (1448, 1456–62 and 1476) and the historical inspiration for Bram Stoker’s famous novel, has been best known since the fifteenth century as Vlad the Impaler (‘Țepeș’ in Romanian and ‘Kazıklı Voyvoda’ in Ottoman Turkish). The violence and cruelty associated with his name by medieval chroniclers, pamphleteers and poets explains much of the fascination that Vlad has exercised on biographers and readers over the centuries. In order to portray the voivode and his violent conflicts with his subjects and neighbouring states, historians routinely cite the astonishing numbers given by Renaissance sources of impaled Wallachians, Saxons from Transylvania (an autonomous province within the kingdom of Hungary) and Ottomans. They generally do not, however, call these numbers into question. In her 2021 article about ‘facts and myths from the life of Vlad III the Impaler’, Aleksandra Bartosiewicz, for instance, simply observes that, ‘according to various estimates, between 40,000 and 100,000 people were sentenced in this gruesome manner during the Impaler’s rule, of which approx. 20,000 were exposed to the public in the capital city of Targovişte’.>>
You can read more about this here…
The abstract is…
<<Vlad III Dracula (c. 1431–76), the three-time voivode (prince) of Wallachia (1448, 1456–62 and 1476) and the historical inspiration for Bram Stoker’s famous novel, has been best known since the fifteenth century as Vlad the Impaler (‘Țepeș’ in Romanian and ‘Kazıklı Voyvoda’ in Ottoman Turkish). The violence and cruelty associated with his name by medieval chroniclers, pamphleteers and poets explains much of the fascination that Vlad has exercised on biographers and readers over the centuries. In order to portray the voivode and his violent conflicts with his subjects and neighbouring states, historians routinely cite the astonishing numbers given by Renaissance sources of impaled Wallachians, Saxons from Transylvania (an autonomous province within the kingdom of Hungary) and Ottomans. They generally do not, however, call these numbers into question. In her 2021 article about ‘facts and myths from the life of Vlad III the Impaler’, Aleksandra Bartosiewicz, for instance, simply observes that, ‘according to various estimates, between 40,000 and 100,000 people were sentenced in this gruesome manner during the Impaler’s rule, of which approx. 20,000 were exposed to the public in the capital city of Targovişte’.>>
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