A Popular History of Unpopular Things
A podcast that makes history more fun and accessible - we love all things gory, gross, mysterious, and weird!
A Popular History of Unpopular Things
The Original Dracula, Vlad the Impaler
Join Kelli as she goes over the ORIGINAL Dracula- Vlad Dracula, the Impaler. Although the fictional character is only loosely based on Vlad, the two are inextricably linked forever because of Bram Stoker's Dracula. So today, we'll go over the real Vlad Dracula - who is he, what did his world look like, and how did he earn the moniker "the Impaler?" Then, we'll look at the connections between the real Vlad and his Hollywood counterpart.
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The translation for the German "Prince Dracula" pamphlet:
https://web.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/prince.dracula.html
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The Original Dracula, Vlad the Impaler
Intro
Welcome to A Popular History of Unpopular Things, a mostly scripted podcast that makes history more fun and accessible. My kind of history is the unpopular stuff - disease, death, and destruction. I like learning about all things bloody, gross, mysterious, and weird.
This episode marks the beginning of the 2024 spooky APHOUT season! I mean, most of my episodes are very Halloween-friendly⌠but the next bunch of episodes are definitely more focused on all the things we love about Halloween and the fall in general - ghouls, vampires, demons, witches, and ghosts.
And for those of you watching these episodes on YouTube, youâll be treated to a new spooky APHOUT episode every Sunday for the season!
To start it all off, I wanted to take a look at the king of toxic, morally-grey men: Dracula.
Whether it was through Count Chocula, the Count on Sesame Street, or Castlevania, or with Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Gary Oldman, or even most recently Nicholas Cage, weâve all seen at least one iteration of Dracula in pop culture. Heâs unavoidable. Heâs everywhere. And heâs also intensely studied by historians trying to learn more about where he comes from. And no, Iâm not suggesting that Dracula, the vampire, is real.
Instead, Iâm talking about whether or not Dracula was based on Vlad Dracula, also sometimes called Vlad the Impaler.
Vlad was⌠well, he had quite an interesting life, actually. But heâs most known as the ruthless ruler of Wallachia [Walla-SHEE-uh] who impaled his victims and hung them up on spikes. And most assume that Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, based the vampire on Vlad⌠I mean, they do share a name. But not everyone is convinced⌠and itâs still a topic of conversation and debate today.
So what I want to do is give the history of Vlad the Impaler. Because what a name, am I right?! And once we get a good sense of who Vlad is, then Iâll give my take on whether or not Bram Stokerâs Dracula is supposed to be a romanticized version of Vlad⌠or if they just happen to share the name.
As always, Iâll start with some historical context. What did Vlad the Impalerâs world look like - the Balkans in the mid to late-15th century, thatâs the 1400s. Itâs important because Vladâs actions and his legacy are absolutely a reflection of the world he lived in, so the context is super important here.
Then, once weâve got that covered, weâll talk about Vladâs life and how he earned the moniker the impaler. And then weâll see if we can connect him to the fictional Dracula.
So letâs get started!
Historical Context
Iâm going to start with a bit of a disclaimer here - the world of the 15th century Balkans and more generically Eastern Europe is super intricate and political. So as I normally do, Iâm just going to focus on the big picture stuff - the bigger forces and events happening within the 15th century. What can I say, Iâm a big-picture historian, I like looking at the big, sweeping changes!
And if weâre talking about Eastern Europe in the 1400s⌠then we have to talk about the fall of Constantinople and the spread of Islam into Eastern Europe.
From the 1200s onwards, a group known as the Ottoman Turks migrated to Anatolia, the area that would later become Turkiye. That area was also populated by the Byzantines, an empire that served as the vestiges of the Eastern half of the Roman Empire until its collapse in 1453. But by the end of the 1200s, the empire was in severe decline. It had been in decline for hundreds of years by that point, but one particularly brutal moment was the fourth crusade, where Catholic Crusaders sacked and pillaged Orthodox Constantinople in yet another attempt at reclaiming the Holy Land from the Muslims.
Quick historical side tangent, because the question needs to be addressed - why would Christians sack a Christian city? The whole point of the Crusades (on paper, if we simplify it) was for Christians to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims, right?
Well, much like I talk about a lot with some of these European episodes when protestants and Catholics are involved, just because catholicism and Orthodoxy are both forms of Christianity, it doesnât mean they get along. And part of the reason that the catholic crusaders sacked Constantinople is because of these religious differences and the distrust they caused. They also wanted money promised to them and believed the Byzantines to be treacherous when they didnât pay out.
So after the fourth Crusade, Constantinople was on a serious decline. And when the Ottoman Turks start knocking on the door in the late, late 13th century, things donât look so good for the Byzantines.
In 1453, a very pivotal year in world history, the Ottomans under Mehmed the II, also called Mehmed the Conqueror, besieged the city. After a little less than 2 months of constant cannon bombardment, they broke through the walls and captured the capital. The Byzantine Empire was now over.
In the years that followed, the Ottoman Turks pushed even further into Europe, eventually culminating in the Battle of Vienna in 1683 - thatâs right, over 200 years after Constantinople. And yes, Vienna as in Austria. This battle marks the furthest that the Ottomans pushed into Europe - which is pretty far, really!
So you can imagine, in the 200+ years from conquering Constantinople, turning it into Istanbul, and working their way into Vienna, that there were many, many battles between the Europeans and Turks. It may not have factored much into, say, English politics, right? But it certainly was an everyday threat for those in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, and a general existential threat to Christians and Catholics alike.
And this is the world that Vlad Dracula was born into. He was born in Transylvania before the fall of Constantinople, but when Ottoman power and political influence was strong. And it goes beyond this - Vlad was even an Ottoman hostage for most of his childhood. So letâs dig a little deeper here into Vladâs history to get a good sense of who he was and how he later became known as the impaler.
Vlad before the Impaler
A quick aside. Whatâs kind of fun is that I did an episode about a member of the Eastern European nobility who is historically known for being bloody and evil and violent and intense⌠it was the Blood Countess, Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian killer who they said bathed in the blood of virgins.
Neil, donât include this next line.
If youâre listening to this episode as a podcast, I just mentioned her in my last episode on Delphine Lalaurie as an example of a high-society woman that did commit crimes but was painted as way worse than she actually was.
Ok Neil, you can put the next stuff in.
I mean Bathory was bad, but she didnât bathe in the blood of virgins. At least not that we can prove with actual evidence. I did an episode on her a looong way back so go check that out if you havenât already done so.
But what rings true in both Vladâs 15th-century Romanian story and the blood countessâ 16th-century Hungarian one is the political instability present in both - these were times when leaders might rule for mere weeks before being chased out and killed. It was tense. And that certainly was true for Vladâs family.
Vlad the II, father to Vlad the Impaler, ruled Wallachia [Walla-SHEE-uh] as a voivode between 1436â1442, and again between 1443â1447. A voivode is the Slavic term for a local ruler; think like a prince or duke. Now Wallachia [Walla-SHEE-uh], in todayâs Romania, was at the time sandwiched between Hungary to the north and the Ottoman Empire to the South; though Constantinople didnât fall until 1453, the Ottomans were still in and around the Balkans, and they forced Wallachia [Walla-SHEE-uh] to serve them as a tributary state in 1417. See, I told you. Super complicated.
But anyways, Vlad the II was stuck between a rock and a hard place. He had to be allied to the Ottomans, but he also wanted to be rid of them. To that end, he joined an organization known as the Order of the Dragon. Which is way cooler than the Order of the Pug. Do you see what I mean about pugs?! The order of the dragon makes me think of game of thrones and the house of the dragon. So much cooler than a pug.
Iâm telling you this, by the way, because itâs where the word âDraculaâ comes from. Vlad the II was so pumped by his membership in this organization to help remove the Ottomans from the Balkans that he took the moniker Vlad Dracul, which means Vlad the Dragon. Dracul comes from the Latin word for dragon: dracĹ.
His second son, Vlad, or Vlad the III, ended up as Vlad Dracula, or son of Dracul. Son of the Dragon. Which is almost as cool as Vlad the Impaler. Lots of fun names for him :) Oh, and while Iâm on the subject, we call him Vlad the Impaler, but he wasnât given that sobriquet until well after his death by an Ottoman writer named Tursen Beg, who referred to him in Turkish as Kazikh Voyvoda, or Impaler Lord. What a cool epithet. Impaler Lord. Good metal band name.
Now despite being part of the Order of the Dragon, Vlad the II still had to toe the line with the Ottomans. At one point, the Ottoman leader Murad II invited Vlad to come to his Court, and Vlad brought his two younger boys - Vlad III and Radu. All three are arrested, and after some time, Murad decides to send Papa Vlad back with the understanding that he will be properly loyal to the Ottomans going forward. And how will he ensure this? By keeping the sons as hostages in the Ottoman Empire.
This is a thing we see with other civs, too. The Inca did the same - keep the heirs of local leaders at their capital in Cuzco to ensure loyalty. If you arenât loyal and do what I want, your heirs die. Itâs a pretty effective strategy.
But noble hostage children like this, in most empires and situations, are at least given an education. So Vlad III was taught science, technology, history, and military strategy among other things.
Vlad the II goes back to rule over Wallachia [Walla-SHEE-uh], but was chased out by a rival and was killed. The oldest son, Mircea, was also killed around this time in a battle, so now Vlad the III is set to inherit Wallachia [Walla-SHEE-uh]⌠though itâs not as simple as a basic line of succession; anyone could rise to power and claim the seat, which is part of the reason why Balkan medieval politics is so messy and interesting.
Anyways, Vlad III ended up back in Wallachia [Walla-SHEE-uh] and took power in 1448 through a bloody coup and with help from Ottoman forces. Sure, he was their hostage and didnât particularly like them for it, but he was also shrewd enough to know that he needed Ottoman help in this situation to get power back. He ruled for about a month before being chased out of power.
Heâd end up ruling three separate times, but it was his second reign, from 1456-1462, where we start to see some of the actions that would eventually earn him a reputation as the impaler.
Vlad the Impaler
After he was chased out of Wallachia [Walla-SHEE-uh] during his first brief reign, he took shelter in Moldavia, and later Hungary under the powerful regent John Hunyadi. They had a complicated relationship, but Hunyadi ended up helping Vlad regain the Wallachian [Walla-SHEE-uh) voivodeâŚship⌠in 1456. Itâs interesting that Vlad would use both the Ottomans the first time and the Hungarians the second time to get control of Wallachia [Walla-SHEE-uh]; it gives you an idea of just how messy politics, rivalries, and alliances were. And remember that Wallachia [Walla-SHEE-uh] was sandwiched between the two, so there was no ignoring one or the other.
To survive in this kind of world, Vlad Dracula figured he had to be tough. And ruthless. And he gathered some of his infamy through how he survived for six years in this kind of unstable political climate. He would execute noblemen who didnât perform their duties properly or were insubordinate. He went to war against neighbors to take land outside of Wallachia [Walla-SHEE-uh], like in Transylvania. But of course, the most notorious thing about him was his preferred method of torture and execution - impalement. Which, if youâre not completely sure, is where a pole, sometimes blunt, sometimes spiked, would be inserted into your⌠err, backside⌠and forcefully shoved up until it burst through all your internal organs and came out through the mouth. And this happened while you were alive, normally.
A good example is his Danube campaign.
In 1462, Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II (yes, the one who conquered Constantinople) called Vlad to his Court. Heâd done this before though, right? As a boy when his father was called in. So he was weary of doing this. Instead, Vlad captured one of Mehmedâs chieftans and impaled him and forty of his men along the river Danube, lining the walls of TârgoviĹte [tear-go-veesh-tay] - his capital - with their mutilated bodies. From there, Vlad marched across the frozen Danube to todayâs Bulgaria and destroyed every town, city, and army that wasnât Wallachian [Walla-SHEE-uh] - whether they be Turks or anyone else. Men, women, and children were slaughtered - they either died by the sword or were burned alive. According to Vlad Dracula himself, he estimates about 22,883 people died, and those were just the ones he accounted for. He also destroyed infrastructure, goods, boats, carts, houses, churches, and forts - basically leaving the remaining people with nothing they could use to rebuild, and no economy. It also made sure that the Ottomans couldnât use anything either - the olâ scorched earth policy.
Mehmedâs army came for Vlad, crossing the Danube in June of 1462. The Turks couldnât raid local towns thanks to Vladâs scorched earthing, so they had a hard time on the campaign. When Mehmed and his men reached TârgoviĹte [tear-go-veesh-tay] at the end of the month, they expected to see Vlad Dracula waiting for them. Instead, they saw a deserted town littered with the impaled corpses of men and women, boys and girls, Christians and Muslims, all different ethnicities and nationalities - including some Hungarians. Sources give different accounts of what happened next. One says that Mehmed was confused by what he saw, but also didnât want to deprive Wallachia [Walla-SHEE-uh] of a cruel yet competent leader, so he left. Another source claims he was so sickened by the sight of these impaled bodies, including so many Turks, that they left.
But regardless of the truth, Mehmed did retreat from TârgoviĹte [tear-go-veesh-tay]. He tried various other tactics to keep power over some of the lands, including using Vladâs brother Radu to help negotiate and persuade the nobles to accept Ottoman Rule. Radu was also known as Radu the Handsome, and he stayed on from his hostage-ship in the Ottoman Empire as a member of the Court.
The Ottomans were still very much pushing into the Balkans - I mean if we take a step back and remember that the Battle of Vienna in 1683 was the furthest they made it into Europe, then we know that the Ottomans eventually carry on, right? But for Vladâs story, things started to unravel after the Danube campaign. He found himself with fewer and fewer noble friends - some had defected to the Ottoman side, and perhaps others were turned off by his cruelty and wanton killing of Christian innocents.
He ended up leaving the throne in 1462 and taking refuge in the Carpathian Mountains, appealing to the Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus for support. But instead of finding a friend, he was imprisoned. We donât know much about this time in prison, as the records are unreliable. But we do know that he was likely treated more like how he was treated as a hostage in the Ottoman Empire all those years ago, as he apparently took a wife and owned a house in Pest [pesht] while âimprisoned.â And in 1475, Vlad was released from his captivity and encouraged to once again take over Wallachia [Walla-SHEE-uh].
In 1476, Vlad and another voivode sieged Sabac [Sah-batz] and later Srebrenica [sray-bruh-NEET-suh], in todayâs Serbia and Bosnia and HerzegoVIna, respectively, where we get even more information about his cruelty.
In addition to the normal looting and pillaging, he apparently would rip the flesh, skin, and sinew from his Ottoman enemies with his bare hands before impaling them on stakes and leaving their bodies up to rot and terrorize everyone.
He reclaimed power over Wallachia [Walla-SHEE-uh] that same year in November 1476, but was quickly attacked by some rivals working under the Ottomans. Details donât agree, but Vlad Dracula died in that battle. He was decapitated and his head, preserved in honey, was sent to Mehmed II where reportedly it was paraded around in the streets. It also gives us an idea of how powerful he was that the Ottomans would celebrate in this way upon his death, right?
Now curiously, and what is so often the case with stories of these depraved, infamous, bloodthirsty rulers⌠much of what we know about Vlad the Impaler and his cruel deeds comes from biased sources well after the fact, or by his enemies. Take this pamphlet written in 1488 a little more than a decade after Vladâs death. Itâs titled âPrince Draculaâ and was printed in Germany. And much like what we saw with the Werewolf of Bedburg pamphlet, it gets worse and more fantastical the further in you read. Here are some of the highlights, in no particularly curated order. Quote:
Neil please put these as separate paragraphs/screens
âHe was appointed lord in Wallachia. Immediately⌠he had villages in Transylvania⌠burned. Both women and men, young and old perished. Some he brought home with him to Wallachia and impaled them all there.
He commanded that all young boys who were sent to his land to learn the language be confined in a chamber, and he had them burned; there were four hundred.
He had some of his people buried naked up to the navel and had them shot at. He also had some roasted and flayed.
He also had St. Bartholomew's Church burned and all vestments and chalices taken from there.
He had a large pot made and boards with holes fastened over it and had people's heads shoved through there and imprisoned them thus. And he had the pot filled with water and a big fire made under the pot and thus let the people cry out pitiably until they were boiled⌠to death.
He devised dreadful, frightful, unspeakable torments, such as impaling together mothers and children nursing at their breasts so that the children kicked convulsively at their mothers' breasts until dead. In like manner he cut open mothers' breasts and stuffed their children's heads through and thus impaled both.
He had captured a gypsy who had stolen. Then the other gypsies came and begged Dracula to release him. Then he said, "He must hang, and you must execute him yourselves." They said it was not their custom. So Dracula had the gypsy boiled in a pot. Then the other gypsies were made to eat his flesh and bones.
He had a mistress who pretended she was pregnant. Then Dracula had the woman examined by midwives, who said she was not pregnant. Then he cut this same mistress open right up to her breasts. And he said he wanted to see where his seed was, or where it had been.
And finally:
He had children roasted; these their mothers had to eat. And he cut the women's breasts off; these their husbands had to eat. Afterward he had them all impaled.â End quote.
There are more, of course, but we canât be here all day, so you are welcome to find and read the text of this source online if you want the full picture. There are six copies of this pamphlet that still exist today, one of which is in the US at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philly. Iâve put a link to the UPenn page where I read the translation of this source in the description.
There is also a pretty famous German woodcut from circa 1560 showing Vlad sitting and eating on a field next to a whole bunch of impaled victims. Tasty. It may depict an event known as the Bloody Easter, which supposedly took place on March 25th, 1459. Vlad called 500 boyars to his court for a meal. And once they were fed and fattened up, he had his guards drag each of the 500 men outside, and one by one, they were impaled on a stake until they bled to death.
But by all accounts, this was just a myth, not a real event. Just more anti-Vlad propaganda.
So the German sources⌠clearly⌠wanted to paint the picture that Vlad Dracula terrorized everyone in and around Wallachia [Walla-SHEE-uh], not just his enemies, and killed innocents on a whim. And if the vampiric Count Dracula is based on Vlad the Impaler, itâs clearly based on this exaggerated version of him.
Vlad Draculaâs Legacy
Now not everyone saw Vlad Dracula as this horrible, cruel warrior who went around shoving poles up his enemyâs backsides. I mean he did do that⌠but he wasnât always seen as a villain, is what I mean. In fact, to some local Romanian sources, Vlad is seen as a hero - a man who defended his people from the Ottomans and also the Hungarian and Saxon Catholics who wanted to control the mostly Orthodox Wallachia [Walla-SHEE-uh]. Sources are biased in both ways - both for him as a hero of the people, and against him as a cruel and vicious murderer. Although itâs also true that regardless of how itâs spun, both types of sources cede that he was a pretty cruel man who did indeed impale a lot of people.
But of course, in the modern age, a lot of what we associate with Vlad and his rule is what we get from Bram Stokerâs Dracula.
For those of you who havenât read the book, here is a brief summary of the story.
An English lawyer, Jonathan Harker, is en route to Castle Dracula in Transylvania, because heâs delivering paperwork for the sale of property in England to the Count. The Transylvanian peasants seem scared of the Castle and of Count Dracula, but Harker goes on anyway. Cue all the horror stuff - itâs dark, wolves are howling in the distance, etc. etc.
Count Dracula is a pale, thin, strange man who reacts strangely to blood - Harker cuts himself shaving, and Dracula goes for the throat. Harker realizes heâs in trouble. Heâs imprisoned there and discovers that Dracula survives by drinking human blood, and that he will likely be killed to feed the vampire. Harker tries to kill Dracula but fails, and is left weak and sickly.
Back home in England, Harkerâs fiance Mina worries about him. And a long story short and simplified here, Dracula comes to England via a ship carrying a bunch of dirt from Castle Dracula. Dracula survives by feeding off Minaâs friend Lucy, who is turning into a vampire herself. Sheâs killed by Van Helsing, a doctor, and later a stake is driven through her heart to end her properly.
Jonathan comes back from Transylvania and marries Mina, but soon Mina is Draculaâs new target. To save her, they have to find all these boxes of dirt - which is how Dracula can survive in England - and destroy them. The last box is sent back to Transylvania, they follow it, Jonathan cuts off Draculaâs head, and another guy puts a stake through his heart. End of story.
So⌠other than the name Dracula⌠not much of a connection to Vlad the Impaler. The Transylvania thing also doesnât read; even though Transylvania is part of Vladâs history, Vlad was the thrice-voivode of Wallachia [Walla-SHEE-uh]. Not the Count of Transylvania. And there werenât counts there anyway.
Historians, history buffs, and fans of mythology and fiction over the years have done a lot of research into how the two are related, if at all. Some suggest that Bram Stoker got the name Dracula from some history books on Wallachia [Walla-SHEE-uh]. Others claim that Stoker learned about Vlad from a Hungarian professor and built his story off of that. He did include some references to Vladâs life in his novel, like the Danube Campaign, so that helped tie the two together.
Iâve read that the vampire stuff could connect to Vladâs general bloodthirstyness, taken literally for the novel. Or that the act of stabbing a stake through the heart is another way of âimpaling.â I mean certainly there can be lines drawn between the real-life Vlad the Impaler and the fictional Dracula, but thereâs really not much to go on. My take is that Bram Stoker very loosely based the character off of this really infamous Wallachian [Walla-SHEE-uh] ruler, taking some names and places that stood out to him, but making the character his own. One source I read mentions that by his own admission, Bram Stoker knew very little about Vlad the Impaler; he was just inspired by a recent article about vampires in Transylvania and wanted to write a good novel about it. The vampire in question wasnât even called Dracula at first - he was Count Wampyr.
And if we take a step back and look at the context, we see that vampirism and vampire folklore were growing trends from the early 18th century in Europe onwards. I even did an episode on a vampire panic in New England, where a girl named Mercy Brown was accused of being a vampire. And in that episode, I provided the historical context for vampirism in Europe in the 18th to 19th centuries; people thought they saw vampires everywhere. So it makes sense that Bram Stoker would write about a vampire, but use a touch of real history to give his story an edge.
But what that ended up doing was clouding the real history of Vlad the Impaler, and replacing it with fictional elements. I suppose it also led to an increased interest in Romanian and more generically Balkan history, which is cool. But itâs important to separate fact from fiction when we look into characters like Vlad the Impaler who have been seemingly immortalized forever, like Dracula himself, into legend.
Outro
Thanks for joining me for this episode of A Popular History of Unpopular Things. My name is Kelli Beard, and I hope youâve enjoyed the story of the Original Dracula, Vlad the Impaler. Thank you for supporting my podcast, and if you havenât already checked out my other episodes, go have a listen!
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Go listen to Nedric, my editor and the musician behind my intro and outro song, Yello Kake. You can find his stuff wherever you get your music! Links are in the description.
Be sure to follow my podcast, available wherever you listen, so you know when new episodes are dropped. And stay tuned to get a popular history of unpopular things.
Sources to credit:
https://web.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/prince.dracula.html
