Vlad The Impaler

Hi, I am Kiwi Kawaii ^^ Vlad The Impaler also known as Vlad III Ţepeş was Prince of Wallachia born in Transylvania in 1431. In the English-speaking world, Vlad is best known for the legends of his cruelty. These legends gave Bram Stoker the idea for his main character in the popular Dracula novel. The old Romanian word for dragon is Dracul, which in modern Romanian means "devil". In Old Romanian, it means "dragon". Impalement was Vlad's preferred method of torture and execution. His method of torture was a horse attached to each of the victim's legs while sharpened stake was forced into the body. Vlad often had the stakes arranged in patterns. The most common pattern was a ring outside of a city that was his target. The height of the spear indicated the rank of the victim. The corpses were often left there for months. One tale says 10,000 were impaled in the Transylvanian city of Sibiu (where Vlad the Impaler had once lived) in 1460. Another tale says that on Saint Bartholomew's Day (in August), Vlad the Impaler had 30,000 people of the free Transylvanian city of Braşov impaled. One of the most famous woodcuts of the period shows Vlad the Impaler feasting amongst a forest of stakes outside Braşov, while a nearby executioner cuts apart other victims. Impalement was not his only method of torture. Other methods include nails in heads, cutting off limbs, strangulation, burning, cutting off noses and ears, mutilation of sexual organs (especially in the case of women), scalping, skinning, exposure to the elements or to animals, and boiling alive. Vlad The Impaler is also believed to have tortured and impaled some of the Turkish forces. This artwork is based on a report that an invading Ottoman army turned back when they saw thousands of rotting corpses impaled on the banks of the river Danube. In 1462, Mehmed II returned to Constantinople after being sickened by the sight of 20,000 impaled corpses outside of Vlad's capital of Târgovişte. Many of the victims were Turkish prisoners of war.