Ever since Irish writer Bram Stoke published his first novel, Dracula, in 1897, the personable but murderous and bloodthirsty vampire image became all the rage and soon became the darling of novelists, cartoonists, and screenwriters.
For more than 100 years, countless Draculas have been created, either terrifying, or affectionate, or elegant, or funny, and vampire culture has attracted a large number of followers.
From top to bottom: Elf Hostel, Four Hundred Years of Thriller, Marvel Comics, Dracula First Year, Tales of the Night, Van Helsing
Although the character of Dracula was created by a novelist, it has its own historical character archetype.
That is, the famous ancient Romanian general in European history, Vlad III, who was once named Grand Duke.
He is much fiercer than Dracula in film and television! (We can see a glimpse of this in his nickname, Vlad the Piercer.) He even reached the point where he could stop a child from crying at night just by his name. ）
This portrait of Vlad III was painted in the early 16th century and is now hanging in the museum of Ambras Castle in Innsbruck, Austria. | Public Domain
It has been suggested that Vlad III was born in 1431 in what is now Transylvania, the central region of modern Romania.
Although there are many opinions about Vlad's specific residence, many researchers believe that Vlad lived at least for a period of time in Bran Castle (also known as Dracula's Castle) in Transylvania.
Dracula Castle
According to sources, at about the age of 12, Vlad III was taken hostage in Turkey with his brother.
In 2014, archaeologists discovered a dungeon suspected they were being held in Tokat Castle in northern Turkey.
The castle is even more creepy than Branberg, with secret tunnels and dark dungeons that seem to tell visitors that young Vlad is not going to have a good time here.
According to historical records, around 1431, Vlad III's father, Vlad II, joined the Order and received the new surname "Dracul". The name stands for dragon "drac" in Old Romania.
Naturally, his son Vlad III was called "Drăculea", a word that is called "Dracula" in Old Romanian.
However, the meaning of "drac" and "Dracula" gradually changed. The meaning of these two words changed from dragon to demon.
Coupled with Vlad III's brutal style of doing things, it seems reasonable that Stoke created the image of Dracula the vampire based on him when writing the novel.
After five years as a hostage, Vlad III was finally released. However, what awaited him at home was not the warm embrace of his father and brother, but their cold corpses.
In 1447, Vlad II was overthrown by the local nobility and brutally murdered, and the position of ruler of Wallachia was usurped.
The Wallachian region is part of modern Romania.
With the assistance of the Turkish Sultan, the seventeen-year-old Vlad III led an army to retake Wallachia and regain power. Subsequently, he quickly turned against Turkey and turned to Hungary.
Vlad the Immanuel III
Whether it was fighting the Ottoman Empire externally or consolidating his rule internally, Vlad III took an unusually cruel and bloody approach...
The next paragraph of the story involves a violent and bloody plot, and everyone can choose to skip it by themselves.
Vlad's atrocities
In order to quickly restore state order, he also treated criminals with various severe punishments such as caesarean section, beheading, and skinning, the most famous of which was puncture punishment.
◼Woodcuts in a pamphlet from 1499 depict Vlad the Great eating among the bodies of pierced victims. | Internet
Puncture, as the name suggests, is a punishment in which a poor victim is tortured to death by inserting a long wooden stick into the anus of the prisoner, then passing through the entire body and coming out of the mouth, and then erecting the stick high.
In 1462, the Ottoman Empire sent troops to attack Wallachia. Faced with an enemy three times larger than his own, Vlad III avoided head-to-head combat while constantly attacking his opponents by poisoning, cutting off food, and spreading plague.
When the wounded and exhausted Ottoman army finally reached Târgoviște, the capital of Târgoviște at the time, the generals were horrified to find that what awaited them under the city were the bodies of 20,000 defeated Ottoman prisoners of war, all of whom were nailed to wooden stakes outside Targovist.
Even the battle-hardened Sultan Mehmed II of Turkey was so frightened that he retreated to Constantinople.
In addition to intimidating enemies externally, in order to consolidate his power as governor, Vlad III also often used puncture punishment when dealing with disputes between his lords.
Studies of Romanian history point to the fact that he ordered the murder of about 500 boys at a banquet held in the palace (perhaps an exaggerated figure, but the brutality remains unacceptable) and accused their disunity as the main cause of the instability of the Wallachian regime.
Even in the face of diplomatic envoys, Vlad III maintained his own crazy behavior. He had ordered the headscarves of Ottoman emissaries to be nailed to their heads, but refused to remove their headscarves to pay homage to him on the grounds of religious practice.
Vlad the Piercer and the Turkish Envoy depicts Vlad III nailing the turbans of these Ottoman diplomats to their heads. | Internet
The bloody brutality provoked a great deal of opposition and resistance, and the Ottoman Empire, which was in full swing at the time, could not accept the defeat of the offensive, and Vlad III was forced into exile in Hungary.
Although he regained the seat of ruler of Wallachia after 14 years, it was only a flash in the pan. In the end, Vlad the Assassin was defeated by the Ottoman Empire and died in front of the battle.
Unlike count Dracula, the immortal vampire, Vlad III did indeed die.
But the tragic story of his years as ruler of Wallachia still affects the modern world in another way.
Resources:
1.https://www.livescience.com/40843-real-dracula-vlad-the-impaler.html
2.https://research.library.kutztown.edu/dracula-studies/vol1/iss1/1/
3.https://www.jstor.org/stable/27725972?refreqid=excelsior%3Aa86e0113c0f22a3ce0c854912ffa9f0f
Curiosity is a general children's magazine in all fields, each issue of the magazine includes four major sections, covering five fields of science and technology, nature, history, culture and literature. Curiosity is also one of the most popular children's general studies magazines in China.