When was vlad the impaler die

There are many stories about Vlad that might well be exaggerated. One story tells of Vlad dining in a field of soldiers he has just defeated, and dipping his bread in their blood before eating it. Another describes two Turkish emissaries who visited Vlad, but who refused to remove their turbans. In response, Vlad nailed their turbans to their heads, so they could never remove them again.

During this same war Mehmet II invaded Wallachia with his army. Vlad and his brother Radu, are characters in my Order of Darkness series. In this scene from Stormbringers , Radu talks about Vlad:. Though Vlad is widely credited with bringing order and stability to Wallachia, his rule was undisputedly vicious: Dozens of Saxon merchants in Kronstadt, who were once allied with the boyars, were also impaled in The Ottoman Turks were never far from Vlad's thoughts — or his borders.

When diplomatic envoys had an audience with Vlad in , the diplomats declined to remove their hats, citing a religious custom. Commending them on their religious devotion, Vlad ensured that their hats would forever remain on their heads by having the hats nailed to the diplomats' skulls. During one of his many successful campaigns against the Ottomans, Vlad wrote to a military ally in , "I have killed peasants, men and women, old and young, who lived at Oblucitza and Novoselo, where the Danube flows into the sea … We killed 23, Turks, without counting those whom we burned in homes or the Turks whose heads were cut by our soldiers Thus, your highness, you must know that I have broken the peace.

Vlad's victories over the invading Ottomans were celebrated throughout Wallachia, Transylvania and the rest of Europe — even Pope Pius II was impressed. But Vlad also earned a much darker reputation: On one occasion, he reportedly dined among a veritable forest of defeated warriors writhing on impaled poles. It's not known whether tales of Vlad III Dracula dipping his bread in the blood of his victims are true, but stories about his unspeakable sadism swirled throughout Europe.

Tens of thousands killed In total, Vlad is estimated to have killed about 80, people through various means. This includes some 20, people who were impaled and put on display outside the city of Targoviste: The sight was so repulsive that the invading Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, after seeing the scale of Vlad's carnage and the thousands of decaying bodies being picked apart by crows, turned back and retreated to Constantinople.

But he evidently thought this arrangement sucked harder than his vampire counterpart. Vlad the Impaler would answer the call. In , Sultan Mehmet II made a call of his own, dispatching envoys to make sure Vlad stayed a vassal. But Vlad dispatched them with impalement. In case that didn't get the point across, he also stopped paying taxes. Vlad embraced unbridled barbarism when battling the Ottomans. As OZY describes , some of the tried and truly horrifying tactics he used included sending men infected with bubonic plague to mingle with Ottoman troops, poisoning wells, and conducting night raids.

In , he had an unimaginable 20, Ottoman corpses placed on stakes in an act of warfare that sounds more psychotic than psychological. OZY writes, "The tallest spike was reserved for the sultan's general, still ceremoniously robed.

Per History , a "horrified" Mehmed fled to Constantinople when he encountered the mass aerial grave serving as grisly bird feed for crows. The morbid nickname is a testament to the Wallachian prince's favorite way of dispensing with his enemies.

But other than having the same name, the two Draculas don't really have much in common, according to historians who have studied the link between Stoker's vampire count and Vlad III. However, the link between Vlad the Impaler and Transylvania is tenuous, according to Florin Curta, a professor of medieval history and archaeology at the University of Florida. Bran Castle, a modern-day tourist attraction in Transylvania that is often referred to as Dracula's castle, was never the residence of the Wallachian prince, he added.

He never even stepped foot there. It is possible for tourists to visit one castle where Vlad III certainly spent time. In , archaeologists found the likely location of the dungeon, according to Smithsonian Magazine. Tokat Castle is located in northern Turkey.

It is an eerie place with secret tunnels and dungeons that is currently under restoration and open to the public.

This designation earned Vlad II a new surname: Dracul. The name came from the old Romanian word for dragon, "drac. In modern Romanian, the word "drac" refers to another feared creature — the devil, Curta said. McNally in their book "In Search of Dracula. The Order of the Dragon was devoted to a singular task: the defeat of the Turkish, or Ottoman Empire. But the meeting was actually a trap: All three were arrested and held hostage.