The Legends of Vlad Tepes's Cruelty
A Man of Revenge
His first major act of revenge was aimed at the boyars of Tirgoviste for the killing of his father and his brother Mircea. On Easter Sunday of what we believe to be 1459, he arrested all the boyar families who had participated to the princely feast. He impaled the older ones on stakes while forcing the others to march from the capital to the town of Poenari. This fifty-mile trek was quite grueling, and those who survived were not permitted to rest until they reached destination. Dracula then ordered them to build him a fortress on the ruins of an older outpost overlooking the Arges river. Many died in the process, and Dracula therefore succeeded in creating a new nobility and obtaining a fortress for future emergencies. What is left today of the building is identified as Castle Dracula.
A Sad day for peasants
One day, Vlad was returning to his castle; tired, angry and hungry. To his surprise, a group of famished peasants was sitting outside. Being the good sport he was, Vlad invited them inside and treated them to a sumtuous feast. After the meal, he asked the VERY grateful men/women this question: -"How would you like to be releived of your burdens forever?" They all thought it was a great idea, but they didn't know what quite to expect. Vlad ordered his soldiers to board up every door and window in the dining hall with them inside and before the last board was put up, a fire was started, burning the poor peasents into oblivion.
THE DEATH OF 500 BOIARDOS
According to a popular balad, before to reach the throne in 1456, Vlad met hundred of the best boiardos into the Entry Hall of the Palace of Tirgoviste, together with five bishops, the most important abbots from the most important foreigner and national monasteries and the archbishop. While he watched their faces, he thought that the murderers from his father and his brother could be among them. He started to speak...
- "How many reigns do you know personally, my loyall vassals,in your whole life?"
After some laughs and grimaces, came some silence...
- "Seven, M'lord". - one man answered.
- "I survived for thirty reigns!!" - Another one said.
- "Since your granfather, my Lord, there were not less than 20 princes. And I survived during all of them." - a third one said.
The youngest of all those man admitted had lived at least seven reigns. In this way, each boiardo was in his own place and tested the severity of his new Prince, because the title of Prince and every meaning of it was seen as irony. Drácula gave one order: In such few minutes, his loyal guards surrounded the hall and the 500 boiardos, their wives and children, employees were empaled immediatelly near the palace and they were there exposed until their bodies became in composition or eaten by crows. It was a lesson to the remaining boiards. It was better to submit their loyalty to the Prince or to look for exile in their own states.
The Sultan Comitive
This narrative is one of the most known about Drácula.
A comitive sent by the Sultan, came to salute officialy the prince and refused to take off their barretes as they bowed down to him. Drácula so asked them:
- Why do you act in this way before a great Prince?
- This is the costume of our country, M'Lord. - Answered them.
So, Drácula told them:
- I do want to help you in your costumes, in a way you get really stucked on it." - and so, he ordered that their barretes were nailed in their heads with small iron nails . So they left, as Dracula told them:
- Go and tell your leader that if he is used with this misrespect, we will not stand with that. That he not impose his costumes on others princes,keeping it only in his own lands.
The Golden Spear
In setember 1458, Drácula received Benedict of Boithor, a noble from Poland sent as embassador of the King Mathias Corvinus, a wanting-to-be allied. The conversation, as the dinner, was normal in the dinner hall of the Tirgoviste Palace. In the end, it was put before the visitant, a golden spear, brouht by some servants. The visitant watched it in reserv, as his knew the reputation of Drácula, that spoke in a tricky tune:
- "Tell me, why do you think I've ordered to bring that spear to heare?"
- "M'Lord, maybe a great boiardo of this lands had ofended you and you wish to honor him." -Answered the poloniam in good reason.
Drácula keept on...
- "Good answer. You are the representant of great King. I've ordered this spear in YOUR honour."
Trying to keep his pose and calm, he answered:
- "M'Lord. If I did something that neds my Death to repair my offence, do as you please, for you are the best judge, and in that way you are not responsable for my death, but I will."
Drácula bursted in a laugh...
- "If you had not answered in that way, I would have ordered to empale you imediatelly!".
So, Dracula hounored him with gifts.
In a paper published in 1499
In a paper published by Ambrosiu Huber, in 1499, with a picture that shown the scenes of the empalement, had the following sentences:
"Here starts a cruel and terrifying history about a wild man thirsty for blood. Dracula, the calamitose. As he empaled and cooked people, and boiled their heads in a coudron,and how he stripped people and cut in pieces as a pumpkin. He also cooked children and made the mothers to eat their own children. And much others horrible things that are in this publishing, even in the land he owned."
RELATE OF BROTHER JACOB, BENEDITIC ORDER
Brother Jacob, with two fellow men, brother Michael and brother Hans, expulsed from their abadia in Gorrion (actually Gorjini-grad, in Eslovênia), were running away to Wallachia, in search of exile.
The meeting with Vlad happened in the outyards of the palace. Drácula was very suspicious with the priest that crossed his dominium (mainly catholic ones), envited them o the Throne Hall. There, he went to brother Michael, with irony, wanting to know if God had reserved to him (Drácula), a place in Heaven, even with the great number of victims he sent to Death . As brother Michael ansewered: "In certain way, might by eyes of God to be considered sanctified to be relieved the weight of life of so many unhappy on Earth?"
Drácula had a great fear about his fate afterlife , of the possibility that God was watching his sins. So, he built monasteries and offered gifts to the monks, as cerimonies to the dead. And brother Michael continued:
- "Lord, you can have slvation, once God, in His mercy saved many people." And with that words, brother Michael saved his life. But, brother Hans didn't have the same luck, that was asked in sequence by Drácula, that wanted more guarantees of what brother Michael had said.
- "Mister Monk, tell me the truth, what shall be my fate afterlife?" - asked Dracula. Brother Hans, that more courageous and convict of his beliefs answered:
- "Much suffering, pain and miserable tears will never cease to thy, once that, mad tiranical, you had spilled so many inocent blood. It's possible that not even the Devil himself do not want you with Him. But, if He will, you shall be confined in Hell for eternity." - the brother stoped for a while. So he started again. - I know I will be condemned to Death by Empalement without a trial, for the honesty of my words with no pleases to you, but before it happens, give me the priviledge to finish my preach."
Angry, but a little terrorized, Drácula agreeded.
- "Speak what you please. I shall not interrupt you."
Brother Hans continued with a condemnent preaching that definetely was never heard again by Vlad...
- "You are a cruel murderer, astut and mercyless; an opressor always hunger to comit more crimes; a blood spiller, a tyrant and torturer of the poor people! Which are the crimes that justify the death of pregnant women...? And what have done their small children... wich life you took ? You have empaled people that never prejudiced you. Now you bath on the blood of innocent children that not even knew the meaning of Evil! Cruel, dissimulated and murder! How can you dare to accuse those whose blood are pure and delicated and you spilled with no mercy ? I'm horrified by you , before your assassin hatred! What drives you to seek vengance on them? Give me a immediate answer to that!"Even under rage, Vlad controled himself and answered calmly,showing his machiavelic politics...
-"I shall answer you spontaneouos and it will be known my answer now. Whem a farmer wishes to clean his land , he must reap not only the poison ivy that grows up of it, but the roots that lies on the underground. Because if he do not cut it, after one year he needs to start all over again to not let the poison ivy grow up again. In the same way, the small children will grow up and become powerful enemies,if I left them to reach the adult age. If I do in a different way, the young heirds would easily revenge their dead parents".
Even so, Hans wanted the last word... - "Mad tyrant, do you think you can live eternally? For the blood you have spilled in this World, God and His reing shall claim vengance. Crazy fool and cold-blooded, of tyrant, your very being belongs to Hell!"
Took from hate and fury, Drácula grabed the monk wth his own hands and, obligating him to lie on the floor, stabbed his head many times. Brother Hans died fast. Drácula ordered to hang his body from the feet in a high post just in front of the franciscan monastary . Frightened, the monks soon after abandoned the place.
Relate sent to Pope Pio II by Nicholas of Modrussa (1464)
Here it's a relate sent to Papa Pio II, about the death of forty thousands people, men, women of every age and nacionality:
"He murdered some crushing under the wheels of the chariots; other were naked from it's clothes and stripped from their guts; some were staked or burned with a pole on fire put over them; others were stabbed and had cut their heads, breasts, asses and in the middle of their guts, with a stake emerging from their mouths; all of this only for be sure that any sort of attrocity would never be forgotten, he stabbed with stakes the breast of mothers with their children together .Finally killed others in wild manners, torturing them with many devices, with only the most devious acts of the most tyrant would compare."
THE 160 GOLD COINS
This history talks about a foreign trader, that knowing about the justice in the lands of Dracula, when he spent one night in a inn left his chariot full of money in the streets . In the next morning, for his surprise, was missing 160 gold coins. he asked for an audience with the prince . Dracula answered: "Tonight you shall find your gold". To the citzens of Tirgoviste, he warned: "Find the thief or I shall destroy the city". Being sure that they would find the thief, Dracula ordered to put the 160 gold coins in te chariot, and plus a coin, that night.
Just in time, the thief and the orginal coins were found.And the trader told to the prince that he found one more coin. Dracula empaled the thief and show to the trader that was his fate if he has took to himself the plus coin.
The treatment to the women who sinned
The treatment given by Vlad in cases involving morality, seems to be a try to rescue his own crimes. He didn't admited any inmorality in his lands.
There's a history of an unfaithful women, that had her sexual organs stripped ,and so she had her skin reaped away and hang on a pole in the middle of the market.
The same treatment received the maidens who doesn't kept their virginity and the widows who sinned.
There are examples that tells that Vlad ordered to cut the mamils of the womem or introduce a spear on fire into the vagina until it emerges from her mouth.