Vlad the Impaler: The True Story of Dracula (History Documentary)

in june 1462 a vast ottoman army under sultan mehmed ii advanced on the city of targoviste in volakia after weeks of grueling ambushes and pitched battles resulting in thousands of turkish deaths the ottomans were preparing for a siege of the volakian capital but when a detachment of ottoman cavalry was sent ahead of the main force they encountered a site that shook them to their core they discovered a forest of impaled bodies there were over twenty thousand ottoman captives rotting in the summer heat before the walls of targoviste the forest of stakes stretched for two miles in a vast crescent up to half a mile wide this macabre site was more than the ottomans could take the scale of the horror the astonishing extremism of it broke their spirit and the sultan and his army retreated from targoviste the architect of this horrific victory was vlad iii dracula his cunning his military brilliance and above all his extremism had saved his country and his people but these very traits the extremism of led the impaler his willingness to do anything to go further than anyone else to achieve victory and his refusal to compromise would ultimately mean his downfall this is the incredible story of vlad the impaler [Music] vlad was born sometime between 1428 and 1431 the son of vlad ii dracul he was born into a time of great conflict between the christian kingdoms of the balkans and central europe and the ottoman turks who were determined to conquer them vlad was born into a valaccian aristocracy called the boyas the social structure of vlakia was quite simple there were the three peasants who worked the land the bojas who ruled over them and above them all was a prince known as the voivode there was no simple succession between the voivodes of volakia legitimate rulers had to be of the royal line ultimately descended from bazarab the first but none served for very long and there were many usurpations by brothers cousins and bastard sons of the two main factions the great enemy of the draculeshti faction was the danish d the succession was in practice about who was the strongest and this often came down to who could retain the support of external allies because vallakia was squeezed between larger more powerful kingdoms vlad's father as voivode of valakia simply had to submit to one overlord or another namely his mighty neighbours the kingdom of hungary to the north or the ottoman turks to the south to understand vlad the impaler we must first look at the actions of his father the choices of vlad ii dracul his allies and enemies and the horrific manner of his death would all have a profound impact on the character of his son vlad iii dracula and the often extreme actions that he took in his life to become voivode vlad ii had courted the powers of central europe especially the kingdom of hungary in fact this was where the famous name of dracul meaning dragon came from the order of the dragon was a chivalric order created by sigismund of luxembourg who was king of hungary and eventually holy roman emperor its primary purpose was to defend christendom from the ottoman turks and vlad ii as an ally of sigismund was welcomed into the order becoming known as dracul this name was extended to his sons in the form of dracula and his clan his descendants would become known as the draculeshti but when sigismund died in 1437 and hungary was weakened vlad ii sought instead to ally with the ottoman turks to the south the ottomans always threatened invasion across the danube and without hungarian support the vallakians had no hope of resisting and so vlad ii travelled to the ottoman capital at adernae formerly the byzantine city of adrianopol to pay homage to sultan murad ii and where he agreed to pay an annual tribute and to provide military support to the ottomans in their coming attack on hungary allying with the ottomans seems rather to go against his oaths to defend christendom from the muslim turks but this was the reality of ruling valaccia protecting your own position keeping enough of the bowyars on your side and ensuring your peasants were not wiped out in an invasion was a balancing act where every decision had potentially terrible consequences to openly defy the sultan would have meant the invasion of wallachia thousands of valakians killed and taken as slaves and vlad's own death and replacement as voivod by a boyar rival who was willing to make peace and so vlad ii tried to play both sides as best he could but after supporting an ottoman attack on hungarian transylvania he was paid a visit by one of the great men of the age john hunyadi the transylvanian hunyadi as one of the most powerful nobles of hungary was the leading opponent to ottoman expansion and would be at different times a terrible enemy and a staunch ally to both vlad ii and vlad iii and now in 1440 punyadi who would soon be regarded as the greatest military commander in the balkans and was already a noble of great influence in hungary decided to bring vallakia back under hungarian control using both the carrot and the stick in the next ottoman invasion of transylvania vlad ii supported hunyadi and when the ottomans were crushed the sultan demanded vlad come to adernae to explain himself to defy the sultan's order would have invited an invasion of valakia and so in 1442 vlad went down to adernae where he was immediately seized and imprisoned by the sultan along with his two young sons vlad who was between 11 and 14 years old and radu who was about 7 years old now vlad ii had been well aware of the risks of putting himself in the sultan's hands and so he left his eldest son behind to rule in his absence mochir ii was only about 15 years old and as his father and younger brothers were now ottoman captives he could not side with hungary against the sultan because of this ranyari invaded valakia deposed yang mercier ii and made vlad ii's cousin bazarab into the voivode of volakiya in return for his support of hungary after about a year vlad ii was released by the ottomans and he returned to retake volakia making himself voivod once more with the support of his son mercia and the boyar faction that had remained loyal to them but vlad was forced to leave his two young sons behind as hostages of the sultan and they would remain there for about five more years vlad the impaler the great and terrible enemy of the turks was in fact partly raised by them and educated and instructed by ottoman tutors but what was his life like as a hostage of the sultan before his time in ottoman captivity vlad's childhood had been perfectly pleasant he had joined his mother his two legitimate brothers and his father when they all went to the vallakian capital tagoviste in 1437 and their young vlad began his training as a knight he was taught how to fight with the sword the bow and the lance and he excelled especially at horsemanship he also learned italian french and hungarian as well as latin for international diplomacy the religion of the boyas was orthodox christianity but roman catholicism had an influence too and because of the influence of catholic hungary on his father young vlad was also instructed in the catholic faith at an early age the schism between catholic and orthodox christians in europe was for some people a greater concern than the struggle between christianity and islam and this schism was extremely important in the politics of the region when vlad and radu were raised by the ottomans their education as princes continued because the turks intended for them to be potential vassals when they came of age there was therefore no attempted conversion to islam that would have been counterproductive the turks wanted to produce tame christian princes who would deliver a principality along with its taxes produce and slaves for the sultan vlad did become fluent in turkish and he had contact with the future sultan and his great enemy mehmed ii who was just a few years younger than vlad we can only imagine the details of their relationship in some ways they had a similar character and both would become lifelong soldiers both would attempt to centralize evermore authority under themselves at the expense of their nobles although the future sultan would have a vast empire to command in his endless wars of conquest while vlad would have to fight repeatedly for his throne and in defense of his people vlad chafed under his turkish captors and was whipped frequently as punishment no doubt this along with the frustrations of his captivity had a lasting emotional impact it was rather different for his younger brother radu who in later life would be known as radu the handsome due to his exceptional good looks and by all accounts he had a far more accommodating nature than did vlad and he became a favorite of mehmed ii he was a few years older than radu as sultan mehmed ii would have five wives and four children and he maintained a royal harem of other women as was the custom but their our account that he also loved and lay with boys and that he did the same to the young radu the handsome to what extent these accounts are true is hard to say perhaps they help to fuel the hatred vlad had for the turks and the sultan and whatever happened it seems that this period of captivity was when vlad and radu began to fall out and as men they would be great enemies and whatever horrors were inflicted upon them in their captivity vlad would turn against the turks while radu turned entirely towards them their father negotiated with sultan murad ii in the summer of 1447 and no doubt the fate of the boys was a bargaining chip that encouraged vlad dracul to make favorable terms unhappy at this renewed close relationship john hunyadi invaded valakia intending to remove vlad ii and replace him with a more pro-hungarian voivode and this was when the faction of the lakian boyas who were opposed to vlad's faction decided to rebel the taneshti clan captured vlad dracul's oldest son mercier ii they burned out his eyes with hot irons and then they buried him alive vlad dracul managed to make it out of targoviste and fled south towards the danube perhaps intending to reach the turks but he was caught and killed by vladislav ii of the daneshdi john hunyadi momentarily claimed valaccia for himself but thought better of it he rewarded the pro-hungarian boyar factions who had supported him by making vladislav ii of the dhaneshti clan into the voivode of wallachia there is a story a legend perhaps that a loyal retainer of vlad ii named kazan carried the dead prince's sword and his collar with the insignia of the order of the dragon to young vlad dracula at adernae this kazan also related in graphic detail the murders of his brother and father at the hands of the daneshdi and it is said that dracula now swore to kill vladislav ii in person in early 1448 sultan murad ii released young vlad dracula so that he might take the vallakian throne and bring his people back under ottoman control now this was highly unlikely because he had few soldiers little money and no power he was between 17 and 20 years old and he had not been in valaccia for five or six years so he did not have the network of political influences necessary to make a move on the throne but there was an opportunity in october 1448 the hungarians clashed with the ottomans in a huge battle on the plain of kosovo with the hungarians were germans and bohemians and volakians under vladislav ii it was a great throw of the dice by hunyadi to crush the ottoman forces and throw back the endless invasions but the christians lost the battle and so while the voivode was still 200 miles away dracula reached targoviste with a small force of horsemen supplied by or at least paid for by the ottomans there he claimed the throne he also tried to have vladislav ii seized on his return but dracula's men failed vladislav then rounded up the volakian troops returning piecemeal to valaccia and rode against the young usurper vastly outmatched dracula was defeated in battle and he fled his first period of rule was just two or three months long and where else could he flee to but back to ederne however vladislav ii's overlords the hungarians had been defeated and the voivode of valaccia sought terms with the turks moving into the ottoman orbit dracula sensed that his life was in danger from hosts who might no longer need him to be their pet voivode so he fled to moldavia he was safe there from hungarian and ottoman interference and soon bogdan ii would become the voivode of moldavia bogdan was related to dracula by marriage and young vlad grew close to bogdan's son who would go on to become stephen the great during this period dracula fought with stephen and bogdan ii against the forces of poland dracula's stay ended when bogdan ii was murdered and usurped by his brother petra aaron in october 1451 vlad and stephen fled across the border to transylvania which was dangerous because that land was ruled by hunyadi but they had few options left from there they fled to the saxon colony town of brazil but hunyadi and vladislav had word that dracula was in the area and so he ran again to sibyu another saxon town that would give him sanctuary john hunyadi became increasingly suspicious of vladislav ii's growing closeness with the turks when vladislav sent a delegation of bojas to congratulate the new sultan mehmed ii on his ascension to the throne hunyadi sieged the duchess of thagarash and amlash from the velakian prince these were key entrance points into and across transylvania and hunyadi believed he had a ready-made replacement for vladislav in the young dracula and now he took him into his service dracula was even taken to buda where he was present at ladislash the fifth's coronation so that the exiled valakian prince in waiting could swear allegiance to the new king of hungary perhaps it seems astonishing that dracula would make peace with hunyadi the architect behind the deposition and murder of his father and brother but dracula wanted the throne and he wanted to get his hands on vladislav ii and the other bojas who had actually done these terrible deeds and if he was ever to rest volakia away from the ottomans he needed hungarian support so for once he swallowed his pride and accepted from the king of hungary responsibility for defense of the transylvanian frontier this was a role his father vlad ii had once fulfilled for hungary but now in 1451 the transylvanian border was about to become a far more dangerous place because sultan murad ii had died from a stroke and his son mehmed ii was now on the ottoman throne and for good reason he would become known to history as mehmed ii the conqueror in may 1453 the 21 year old sultan conquered constantinople and then he turned his attention to the rest of the balkans in the face of the unstoppable might of the ottomans vladislav ii turned even more towards the turks and made further overtures to the sultan agreeing that mehmed armies could march through volakia by 1455 mehmed was mustering men and suppliers on the southern banks of the danube mehmed's forces already had control of southern serbia but now his target would be belgrade its strategic position was vital once belgrade fell the danube would be open for an ottoman fleet and army to attack buddha and eventually even vienna hunyadi led the organization for the defense of belgrade pulling in every ship and every man he could but the volakians under vladislav now allied to the turks were raiding across the border into transylvania tying down troops that were desperately needed in serbia negotiations between hunyadi and vladislav failed when the volakians stirred up a rebellion against hungary in fagarash in april 1456. finally hunyadi agreed to give vlad dracula what he had long been waiting for hungarian support to retake the vallakian throne in june 1456 dracula set out through the pass over the carpathians at bran with a small force of exiled boyars and hungarian mercenaries determined to take the throne and to take his revenge [Applause] [Music] dracula sets to work gaining the support of the valakian bowyars especially those of his father's faction and all those disaffected with vladislav ii's increasing support for the ottomans it took him less than a month of travelling from valley to valley stronghold to stronghold from the mountains and foothills of the north to the plains of the south before he was strong enough to move against the murderer of his father and elder brother dracula finally caught up with vladislav ii somewhere near targoviste and cornered his enemy before the two armies dracula made vladislav an offer to fight him in a duel to the death single combat with the victor winning all of a luckia now dracula had no need to do this he could have had his men kill vladislav or he could have taken him prisoner and had him executed he could have done anything he liked instead of risking his own life and risking complete failure in his life's mission but as far as vlad dracula was concerned honor demanded that he face his enemy man to man what is more victory in a duel would prove to all that god was on his side and it was a bold statement to the watching boyas that vlad was not a weakling who had men to do his killing for him it showed also that he was a warrior not a politician and that he was willing and able to get his hands dirty and of course blood dracula cut down his enemy and so avenged the murders of his father and brother valaccio would now be vlads but the sultan was still coming for serbia and so dracula returned to his duty of guarding the transylvanian parties against ottoman attacks because with vallakia now allied to hungary john hunyadi could move his transylvanian forces to belgrade while mehmed ii would need to keep some of his own forces guarding the danube against volakian raids but while this was going on the turks had begun the siege of belgrade and were battering the walls with an enormous number of guns hunyadi gathered an army and a fleet and attacked the ottoman fleet on the danube winning a magnificent victory before reinforcing the city mehmed ii launched an assault on the breached walls but they were thrown back and routed in a spectacular and unlikely victory mehmed ii retreated all the way back to sophia and in his rage had several of his generals executed this glorious victory was marred however by the death of john hunyadi a plague a common occurrence in sieges ravaged the batted city in the days after the victory and hunyadi was one of its victims so hungary lost its greatest soldier and christendom lost its staunchest champion while vlad dracula lost the great lord who had once been his enemy but who had become his strongest ally in august 1456 dracula was formally elected by the higher boyar council and confirmed in the cathedral of targoviste with the title of prince vlad son of vlad the great sovereign and ruler of ungrovakia and the duchess of amlash and faragash as voivode dracula set out to work on international relations he wrote to the mayors of the important towns of transylvania to hunyadi's son lazlo and to the boyas who were still not aligned with him he also worked to undermine the rule of the moldavian usurper petra aaron intending his cousin stephen he was still with him in tagalog vista for the moldavian throne this was not merely repaying the favor for a relative it was in vallakian interests to pull modalia away from the ottomans as they were under petra aaron and away from poland where they had been traditionally and into the hungarian sphere along with valakia and in 1457 at the head of 6 000 volakian soldiers courtesy of dracula stephen took on and defeated his uncle the murderer and usurper of his father in two battles and stephen was crowned as moldavia's prince at the time it looked like dracula's first great success and of course it was but stephen would go on to have a far longer and far greater reign than his cousin and dracula had done well but hungary was still reeling from hunyadi's death and the danger of further ottoman attacks and volakia could not afford open defiance of the turks when mehmed ii sent ambassadors to targoviste vlad had to agree to a yearly tribute of 2000 gold to cats which was no small sum but even worse was the agreement to allow the passage of ottoman armies through valaccia so that they might assault the hungarians in transylvania in return the ottomans recognized dracula as the rightful ruler in effect promising not to undermine his rule or invade in an attempt to place another valaccian boja on the throne that was the power the ottomans held over him still when they asked him to come to constantinople to pay homage to the sultan dracula refused perhaps he remembered well what had happened to his father under the previous sultan perhaps he could not bring himself to stoop so low thus buying himself time through diplomatic agreements with his neighbours hungary moldavia and the ottomans vlad set to work on valaccia he repaired and extended panari castle a potential bolthole perched high on a steep rock precipice in the mountains the rules of his agreements with the hungarians and turks stated that he could not build such a fortress but vlad did it anyway he needed safe places and he was willing to push his luck with the overlords who both needed him at least for the time being he also had to project his power into the lowland plains and so he founded the fortress of bucharest in june 1458 building on and linking several villages in the area of course this would go on to become an important city he also fortified the nearby monastery of snagov and built a line of small forts along the plain and river it should be said that fortifying monasteries in the balkans was not in the least bit unusual these defenses were built of course to defend valakia from the ottomans on the other side of the danube but he needed them against internal enemies too valakia like many mountain kingdoms in history was fundamentally divided in preceding centuries each steep-sided narrow valley was ruled by a different clan and its chief ruled his lands and people like a king by the late medieval era these lords thrived as boyas under the voivode they elected but those ancient divisions were still there below the surface over the previous 40 years there had been 12 voivodes despite the foreign powers sponsoring candidates the boyas were where the real power lay in volakia any time the sitting voivode displeased them they could choose to back another of the royal blood including vlad's younger brother radu who still served the ottomans this fundamental instability at the heart of vallakian politics kept the voivodes in check and so it kept vallakia weak in the face of its more powerful neighbors dracula did not wish to be another short-lived ruler he did not want to leave volakia in the hands of a puppet of the ottomans or the hungarians and in fact there had been rebellions against his rule from the start they were still partisans of ladislav ii working against dracula and the powerful boyar chief albu the great had organized an unsuccessful revolt in the months after dracula took power and still album maintained a private army agitating for vlad's removal and controlling parts of the country and so dracula began a great purge of the boyars they say a tyrant should commit all his atrocities at once and put them behind him rather than dragging them out over his entire reign and certainly vlad did his best in that regard it was now when he first carried out the acts that would give him his famous sobriquet first of all his men ambushed albu the great and then impaled him and his entire family only albu's brother escaped he fled to the town of brazil which would become the main refuge for valakian dissidents during vlad's reign this was an extreme act but the boyars understood albu had maintained a force against vlad and the voivode had attacked and defeated it it seemed to them that the fighting was over and when vlad invited them to easter celebrations at the capital 200 boyars attended with their families just as the guests finished their meal in the banqueting hall of the palace the boyars and their wives were seized by dracula's men they were dragged out through the gates and impaled on mass beyond the city walls the act of impalement itself required a very long sturdy pole with a sharpened end this point would sometimes be greased with lard to aid its entry into and through the body which began at the victim's rectum and ended with an exit through the mouth or throat by which point the victim should have mercifully expired the sheer horror of this method of execution is of course what makes vlad the impaler into the legendary figure he is today what drove him to commit such appalling acts against not only his own boja lords but their wives while slaughtering his enemies by sword or beheading or hanging might have had the same result in terms of removing them from the field but mass impalement was a means to terrorize the survivors his enemies and even his allies it was a message sent loud and clear that vlad dracula was not to be trifled with he did not impale the boyar's children but their fate was hardly much better as they were marched to ponari castle where they slaved away firing bricks and carrying them up the slopes to build the towers and keeps no doubt these children were ultimately worked to death and vlad the impaler was not done in fact he was just getting started vlad replaced much of the old aristocracy with new men who had been loyal to him granting confiscated boyar land to low-born followers he created a new institution above the bowyar council that would be responsible for carrying out his will and he filled it with loyal men he also created a new military officer class drawn from the three peasant soldiers who had performed well on the battlefield men who could be relied on in battle but who also owed their newly elevated social status to vlad iii and he created a small standing army a royal bodyguard by these and other reforms and his purges vlad was in some ways seeking to emulate the centralization he had witnessed at the ottoman court he intended to make himself as much of an autocrat as the sultan was he also generously supported that other power in his realm the romanian orthodox church granting them tax immunities and other privileges especially to monasteries and he extended church properties in return he expected them to be his voice amongst the common people he especially supported the monastery of snagov on an island in a lake a few miles from bucharest this place is rumored to be the location of vlad's body although no one knows for sure certainly though he trusted the monks and they trusted him enough that they guarded his royal treasure here at snagov during the ottoman invasion of valakia in 1462. his relationship with the catholic church in valaccia was not so close during the early part of his reign in fact there is evidence of him directly attacking catholic monasteries and even impaling catholic priests but only when they defied him mainly though he replaced foreign catholic abbots with romanian ones with his external allies secured his internal enemies purged and repressed and his reforms begun vlad in 1459 suddenly refused to pay the agreed tribute to mehmed ii in return for ottoman peace the volakians had to pay a carefully calculated monetary sum and specific amounts of grain and animals to constantinople the lowlands especially were so productive that the turks saw valakia primarily as a vast granary there was also the devsharma the blood tax although forcing slaves into a military service had a more ancient origin the ottoman system was perhaps formalized by murad the first the conqueror of adrian opal and much of the southern balkans they took young christian boys from the conquered lands and pressed them into military service under the sultan they were given the name yani seri meaning new troops and they came to be known as janissaries this was a way for the sultan to centralize his own military power rather than being reliant only on his regional lords for raising troops of course the devsherme was a terrible evil christian boys between 8 and 10 years old were taken from their families in the lands subject to ottoman power and not only would they be lost to their families forever they would also be made into soldiers and turned against their own people and all the enemies of the turks and in 1459 vlad dracula said enough hungary was now ruled by john hunyadi's son matthias corvinus he was supported by his uncle by marriage michael shilaji a longtime ally and friend of draculas and it was this relationship that led to further atrocities by dracula this time committed against the saxon towns of transylvania it perhaps seems strange that saxons were here at all but these german colonies had been founded generations earlier along the vallakian transylvanian border to provide an economic boost to the region the volakians and transylvanians were populated by three peasants and their overlords and they had few merchants skilled craftsmen and artisans and no real towns the rulers of these lands looked at more modernized kingdoms and realized they were missing out on potential tax revenue from the kind of economic activity that generated actual cash instead of just crops and livestock so they invited saxons to set up colonies in their lands and awarded them favorable incentives in taxation and political freedom during vlad's early reign he had maintained a positive relationship with the saxon towns and many had supported his war against vladislav ii in return he had given them a commercial treaty promising to protect them against the ottomans and the right to unimpeded trade across transylvania and volakia but this close relationship changed when the hungarians squeezed the towns for more revenue and the town of bistri revolted and michael zilajii called on dracula to bring the region to heal and dracula brought his soldiers stormed the walls of bistri and looted and burned the town the ringleaders fled to the towns of brazov and sibu and far from stamping it out the rebellion spread the saxons clever merchants rather than nobleman soldiers had once began a propaganda campaign against dracula spreading rumors that he was a secret vassal to mehmed ii they also now supported dracula's rival boyar faction the daneshdi and dan iii brother of the deposed vladislav ii established himself in the saxon town of brazov and claimed the throne of valakia after being elected by a group of danesh de boyars and other lords who had fled dracula's earlier purges another rival claimant was declared in the saxon town of sibyu vlad dracula's half-brother known as vlad the monk was funded by the saxon merchants and supported by more unhappy boyas and a third candidate emerged from the daneshi clan a son of dan ii called bazarab also had the backing of boyars alarmed by dracula's reforms and he was also supported by saxon funding all of dracula's hard work was coming undone all the blood he had spilled to secure his throne and centralized power and now it seemed it was not enough there were still so many enemies and they had moved just after he had cut off the turks clearly he had not gone far enough with his purges and punishments first he stripped the sacks and towns of their trade protections and encouraged the merchants of volakia and the italian republics with favourable tariffs this had the benefit of bringing the small but important balakian merchant class over to his side against the other claimants and then vlad moved against them militarily this campaign waged between 1458 and 1460 would lead to dracula's infamy being spread across europe by saxon propaganda that's not to say their claims were untrue but they certainly intended to rally the support of catholic europe especially in germany against their enemy their pamphlets and woodcuts made vlad into an inhuman monster the later nurnberg chronicle of 1488 says the following quote both women and men young and old perished some he brought home with him to valaccia and impaled them there he declared a peace and during the same he had many merchants and wagoneers from workland impaled he also had a large family extinguished and impaled ambassadors numbering 55 were sent from the kingdom of hungary and saxony and transylvania into volakia dracula kept them waiting for five weeks and had stakes made for their impalement meanwhile he went into wurtzland and destroyed the grain and had all the crops burned and he had the populace led into captivity then dracula rested near saint jacob's chapel he had the outskirts burned also when the day came early in the morning he had women and men young and old impaled around the hill by the chapel and sat down among them and ate his breakfast with enjoyment end quote sibiu and brashov were within the duchess of phagorash and amlash which were possessions of the prince of valakia within transylvania sibiu was ordered to give up its support of vlad the monk and brazov was told to do the same with dan iii neither town responded to the ultimatums and so they had to be destroyed it's fair to say that vlad dracula was not a man inclined to compromise he was also a brilliant and brutal soldier at the head of a small cavalry force he surprised the saxons with a lightning raid through the passes to burn the lands that supported sibyu and brashov slaughtering and impaling villagers and burning their homes and fields saxon merchants abroad in the country were tortured and impaled these acts would be amplified through later propaganda in german pamphlets that describe dracula boiling 600 saxon merchants alive which although true to the spirit of the campaign would have been impractical in reality but the campaign of terror worked the saxons of brashov begged michael shilajit to call dracula off and offered to hand over dan the third and his supporters and to pay ten thousand florins for war damages but shilajit's nephew mathias corvinus the king of hungary arrested shilajit and brazhov reneged on its promises the king went one step further and threw his support behind dan the third against vlad dracula once again the tables had turned on dracula his extremism was almost successful but it also made him more enemies still compromise was not in his nature and he went back to work burning and slaughtering until he smashed through the suburbs of brash of itself here is where he is said to have dined beneath a forest of the impaled and their hacked off limbs in sight of the townsfolk on the walls saxon propaganda tells us he happily dipped the bread of his breakfast into the blood of his victims and in 1460 dracula captured dan iii he had a gravedug for his rival while dan waited beside it and even had to listen to his own funeral service before vlad beheaded him and then unsurprisingly he had dan the third supporters impaled dracula killed thousands of the transylvanian germans but eventually mattias corvinus organized a fragile piece dracula would pay for some of the damages his campaign had caused while the saxons were required to pay an annual sum to dracula to maintain a 4 000 strong mercenary army in theory to help dracula defend them against the ottomans because war against the turks was coming in the face of continued ottoman expansion through serbia and the sultan's plans to cross the danube to take volakia and moldavia the christian kingdoms declared and organized a crusade and now dracula would go to war against the turks [Music] as the forces of christendom readied for action dracula's old friend and ally michael shilajit was captured by the ottomans while on reconnaissance in bulgaria they tortured him for information on hungary's military preparations but presumably they were not happy with his answers or lack thereof because shilajit was executed by being sworn in half now comes another legendary moment in dracula's life during a visit by ottoman envoys they had come to discover the valakian intentions in the coming crusade and to make a final attempt to bring the voivode back on side that must have been a faint hope dracula had stopped paying tribute and the turks had ever since been launching raids on valaccia across the danube for plunder and to take volakian peasants especially children for the ottoman slave markets when these raiders were captured dracula had been having them impaled and now the sultan had executed one of dracula's few allies in a deliberately brutal fashion so tension was running high when the envoys came to dracula's court the prince's men instructed the diplomats to remove their turbans as a sign of respect the envoys explained that the turban was not the equivalent of a christian's hat and that their custom demanded that the turbines never be removed dracula then strengthened their custom by having three spikes driven through each of their heads pinning the turbines in place forever coming to terms at this point was highly unlikely but communication was still ongoing between voivode and sultan and mehmed ii decided to use this correspondence to trick dracula into putting himself in danger so he could be seized and killed hamza pasha the bay of nicopolis and the greek in his service thomas catavolinos offered to meet dracula at jeju an important fortress on the danube when dracula was almost at the fortress the ottomans sprung their trap and ambushed the volakians but dracula was a step ahead of them the turks had in fact ambushed a decoy party and the valakians in turn ambushed the turks dracula then rode on to jeju with a select group of his men all dressed as ottoman soldiers at the gates of the fortress dracula presented himself as an ottoman officer and influenced turkish demanded they let him in once inside his men attacked and started killing the garrison until the stunned turks surrendered dracula had in effect declared war and he did not sit back and wait for the ottoman invasion instead during the winter of 1461-62 he led his horsemen back and forth across the danube raiding deep into ottoman bulgaria at phenomenal speed attacking turkish forces from serbia all the way to the black sea he divided his cavalrymen into small raiding parties that moved quickly and lived off the land to cause havoc and disorder while dracula sought to capture or destroy all the fortresses along the danube that the turks meant to use for their invasion of volakia in february 1462 dracula wrote the following in a letter to matthias corvinus in buddha quote i have killed men and women old and young who lived at oblasitsa at novoselo where the danube flows into the sea up to rehova which is located near chile in the lower danube up to places such as samovit and jijin we killed 23 884 turks and bulgars without counting those whom we burned in homes or whose heads were not cut by our soldiers thus your highness must know that i have broken the peace with the sultan end quote along with his letter dracula sent the king of hungary two large bags of the heads noses and ears that he and his men had cut off their enemies the one thousand ottoman troops that he had captured after the ambush near jeju were force marched to targoviste and impaled two especially tall stakes were made for the treacherous hamza pasha and thomas catavolinos dracula hoped to have done so much damage to the ottoman preparations that their invasion would be delayed giving him more time to prepare vallakia however the resources of the ottoman empire were truly vast the ground was here mahmoud with an army of eighteen thousand men rushed to capture breela a port on the vallakian side of the danube after taking it mahmoud struck north into wallachia on a vast raiding mission doing to valakia what vlad had done to bulgaria but when the turks returned loaded with booty to re-cross the danube dracula attacked and won a great victory it was recorded that dracula killed ten of the ottoman army this victory brought mehmed ii into the field in 1462 with a vast army designed to conquer valakia once and for all and to turn it into a province of the empire there were at least sixty thousand regular troops and thirty thousand auxiliaries including bulgarians serbians and anatolians and they brought with them 120 cannon there was essentially no hope for volakia they were vastly outnumbered and outmatched in terms of troop quality after all of vlad's purges of the boyars and his organizational reforms valakia had lost much of its elite and even more of those boyars opposed to dracula fled for transylvania at this critical time this left valaccia a corps of horsemen 10 000 strong while the rest of dracula's forces were peasant soldiers raised through a mass levy of 20 thousand infantry clearly if there was to be any hope at all valakia needed allies unfortunately none were forthcoming and valaccia was on its own the turks brought a fleet from the black sea up the danube to ferry their vast army across dracula fought hard to stop the river crossing contesting the probing attacks before a massive battle that turned you what made the difference more even than the huge numbers and the excellent soldiers of the ottomans was their artillery pounding the volakian positions on the north bank the ottomans then ferried across light artillery in their first wave the turkish soldiers dug trenches after they crossed to help defend against the relentless valakian cavalry assaults that were striving to throw them back into the river inspired by the hussites in bohemia and previously employed against the turks by hunyadi dracula also employed war wagons with men shooting from inside with early firearms by all accounts it was a close run thing and the difference was certainly the barrages from those 120 cannons eventually though all the ottoman infantry including the janissaries had been ferrowed across and the vast army advanced into valaccia mehmed ii had also brought with him his replacement puppet voivode vlad's younger brother radu the handsome rode at the head of four thousand horsemen of his own the ottoman army moved relentlessly towards the capital of targoviste dracula had no hope of defeating the turks in a pitched battle and instead he began a guerrilla war grain stores and crops were burned livestock and peasants were driven away to the north and most importantly wells were poisoned and small rivers were damned and diverted to create marshes and bogland it was june and the problem of getting enough water for the vast horde slowed the ottoman advance as they moved slowly through the dense forests the turks were ambushed repeatedly dracula's peasant army even dug huge man traps and covered them with timber and leaves the ottomans were soon suffering from severe dehydration in the scorching summer heat and every night the army had to stop and dig massive earthworks to defend from the relentless night assaults foraging parties guards and anyone outside the defensive camps were taken by the volakians in the darkness and impaled what's more a terrible camp sickness soon spread through the ottoman army and their advance slowed further the turks were deeply affected by these torments and yet the weight of their numbers and the will of their sultan drove them on through the scorched earth towards the highlands and targoviste dracula had grown up with the turks and he knew mehmed ii personally he understood the mind of his enemy he knew that he could not kill them all but he could perhaps break their spirit and make the cost of conquering velaqia too great to stand and so as the ottoman army made camp in the land around his capital dracula tortured captive ottoman officers until they revealed the location of mehmed ii's camp and then he gathered all his best remaining cavalry perhaps seven to ten thousand troops and went to kill the sultan on the night of the 17th of june dracula led the assault known as the night attack at targoviste they came in with flaming torches shooting arrows and slashing through the turks with their swords penetrating deeper and deeper toward the sultan's magnificent great tent it was torn down by raging velaqian horsemen and the residents dragged out into the torchlight it was not the tent of the sultan but of two wazirs who were immediately executed when dracula finally found mehmed's tent it was surrounded by the sultan's janissaries who stood shoulder to shoulder and shot their firearms and arrows into the valackians driving them away to get past the outer guards at the start of the attack vlad and his men had posed as turks calling out the passwords in turkish that they had tortured from ottoman prisoners and now they continued to sow confusion amongst their enemies shouting out false orders in turkish to disrupt the ottoman response but with the element of surprise fading momentum stalling and the far greater numbers of the turks beginning to tell the volakians were forced to withdraw the ottomans lost perhaps 15 000 men while the valakians around 5000 most of them in the fighting retreat vlad had come very close but it wasn't enough and eventually mehmed ii advanced to the walls of tagoviste its defenses had been made formidable by dracula and the sultan was perhaps already considering returning home instead of losing more men to thirst and disease in a prolonged siege but when his men found the forest of 20 000 impaled turks stretching for two miles outside the city they had finally had as much as they could take as the ottomans retreated dracula scored another victory driving the enemy back across the danube but his country was reeling from the assault and his people were on the verge of collapse but what the ottomans could not do by force they would complete by cunning and it would lead to dracula's [Music] downfall when he retreated from valakia mehmed ii left vlad's little brother raddie behind dracula had saved his people from conquest but at terrible cost the land was burned the waters poisoned families left fatherless now radu was here backed by a small ottoman contingent to offer them peace and prosperity under his leadership all the disaffected volation factions that vlad had offended over the years soon flocked to radu helped no doubt buy bottomless bags of ottoman coin the saxon towns of the north especially threw their political and financial weight behind him where vlad was an extremist vladi the handsome knew nothing but compromise he had the backing of the ottomans and with him in charge the ottomans would not invade again a desperate people welcomed what only he could offer them the turning tide became a torrent and vlad political support swiftly vanished and he had no forces with which to contest radu's growing army by the end of the year of his victory over the turks vlad dracula fled across the mountains of transylvania and radu iii began his rule as voivode of volakia radu's army chased dracula from castle to fortress but vlad got away in transylvania he had word from mathias corvinus that he would meet him and perhaps provide him with hungarian forces to retake his throne a desperate vlad had few other options but it was a trick and dracula was captured in the king's name he would not suffer a terrible captivity however far from it the hungarians found it useful to hold a rival for the vallakian throne in their possession to encourage the current one to remain on his best behavior dracula was further honored by a position in the hungarian army and he was even offered marriage into the hungarian royal family in exchange for converting from orthodox to the catholic faith in the coming years the ottomans continued to chip away at the balkans especially albania under skanderbeg and an ottoman backed vallachia under radio iii began to clash with moldavia under stephen the great stephen defeated radu in battle and the handsome coward ran away leaving his treasure his magnificent clothes his standards and astonishingly his wife and daughter the defeated humiliated radu died of disease and basarat iii supported by the ottomans took the throne of valakia back in hungary dracula's time was coming again to secure hungarian support he married illona the daughter of vlad's old ally michael chilaji she was the king's cousin and so vlad was now part of the hunyadi clan he had two sons with her and along with an older illegitimate son they lived together at the hungarian court the extremists had become rehabilitated and even respectable in the eyes of the european nobility when the ottomans moved to conquer moldavia in 1474 they were supported by 17 000 vallakian troops under basarat iii the turks had an enormous force of 120 000 men but they were brilliantly defeated by stephen at vashli in january 1475. in the face of this stunning defeat the volakian forces not only fled they turned on the ottomans they attacked them and sieged turkish battle standards this was intended to prove basarab's loyalty to stephen and to the hungarians it did not work and stephen now one of the great heroes of christendom moved to have basarat replaced by stephen's cousin vlad dracula before that could happen dracula was required by the hungarians to assist in a campaign in bosnia where he was tasked with capturing srebrenica from the ottomans this newly reformed respectable vlad had lost none of his cunning however and he disguised his hungarian troops as turks and rode into srebrenica during market day taking the enemy by complete surprise he then burned the city to the ground plundered everything of value and impaled every turk that he found it seems then that vlad had not changed in his essential character but that did not put off the christians fighting against ottoman aggression far from it a papal legate wrote the following quote he tore the limbs off the turkish prisoners and placed their parts on stakes and displayed the private parts of his victims so that when the turks see these they will run away in fear end quote although the peasants had always loved dracula the bowyars of valakia must have wondered what awaited them when vlad rode back into their lands in 1476 to claim the throne for the third and final time by overthrowing basarat iii this time vlad had allied soldiers from hungary transylvania serbia and volakia and vlad's invasion was coordinated with the moldavian army under stephen attacking from the east basarap however had the support of 18 000 ottoman troops and a bloody battle was fought that could have gone either way but a defeated batara fled for the turks and vlad dracula was crowned voivod in late november 1476. it was an incredibly unlikely return to power and europe rejoiced at the news one of christendom's most famous soldiers would now alongside his cousin stephen stop the relentless advance of the turks and perhaps even turn back the tide but less than a month later dracula would be dead the exact circumstances of his death are shrouded in mystery but he was likely killed in a battle near bucharest the story goes that vlad's two thousand men were ambushed by basarap returned from the turks with four thousand ottomans another story is that vlad was assassinated in camp by a turkish assassin before the skirmish took place another story says it was a case of mistaken identity and he was accidentally killed by his moldavian soldiers in the confusion of battle mistaking him for an ottoman one version has him so killed because he was in disguise as a turk a victim of his own cunning of course the legend of dracula demands that something poetic or tragic occurred at the end but the death in battle of a lifelong soldier and knight is hardly unusual or surprising whatever really happened after he died his head was claimed by janissaries and sent back to mehmed ii who ultimately impaled it on a spike in constantinople whether this story also is a little too perfect is hard to say the final resting place of his body is also a mystery the story goes that it was found by local monks and buried in the chapel of the monastery at snagov vlad iii dracula was contemporaries with greater and more successful men than he had been john hunyadi stephen the great skanderbeg and his great enemy the warmonger sultan mehmed ii all held more power for longer and won more battles than dracula but even in this era of the most horrific bloodshed his willingness to go so far beyond the limits of conventional conduct has helped turn his story and not theirs into legend vlad features in my novel vampire impaler book six of my historical fantasy series the immortal knight chronicles it features many of the great battles of the era like varna kosovo the fall of constantinople the battle of belgrade and the night attack at targoviste there's a link to this series and all my books in the video description thank you to my patrons for making this video possible if you enjoy these long videos and want to see more like it please support the channel on patreon there's a link in the video description now please watch this video on the life of richard the lionheart i'm sure you'll like it thank you for watching

Channel: Dan Davis History

Views: 1,632,518

Keywords: medieval history, history of europe, history documentaries, Vlad the Impaler, Vlad Dracula, story of vlad the impaler, vlad tepes, Dracula, the real story of Dracula, the true story of count dracula, mehmed the conqueror, Janos Hunyadi, John Hunyadi, Vlad III Dracula documentary, Vlad Dracul, vlad the impaler documentary, medieval history documentary, history, Romanian history, history of Romania, History of Hungary, Ottoman Empire history, Stephen the Great

Id: BtCjc5OwBi4

Length: 59min 56sec (3596 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 20 2022