Gone Medieval - Vlad the Impaler

Episode Date: October 29, 2022

Vlad the Impaler - Vlad Dracula - is one of history’s most brutal figures, who has enjoyed a bizarre afterlife as a cult character. Although a hero to his Romanian countrymen, the name Dracula has since become a global byword for horror.In this Hallowe’en edition of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis finds out more about Vlad the Impaler’s dramatic life and career from Gavin Baddeley, co-author of Prince Dracula: The Bloody Legacy of Vlad the Impaler.**WARNING: This episode contains graphic descriptions of impalement**The Senior Producer on this episode was Elena Guthrie. It was edited by Aidan Lonergan and produced by Rob Weinberg.For more Gone Medieval content, subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here >If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android > or Apple store > Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world,

to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. Vlad the Impaler, Vad Dracul, Dracula. Vlad the third, the ruler of Wallachia, goes by many names. He's a national hero, he's a horror icon, he's a movie star. But how much do we really know about the historical Vlad? And how did he become entangled in stories of the supernatural? I'm delighted to be joined by Vlad's biographer Gavin Badley, who's written a book along with Paul Woods, entitled Prince Dracula, the bloody legacy of Vlad the Impaler, which is out now to buy.

Thank you very much for joining us, Gavin. My pleasure. We spoke a little bit earlier about this, but the elephant in the room is how does a 15th century prince in Eastern Europe become entangled with supernatural stories of vampires? How do those lines get blurred? I guess the start of this trail takes us to the Yorkshire coastal bishop village of Whitby. And in the 1890s, you have an Anglo-Irish theatre manager called Bram Stoker,

who's on holiday there. And as a sort of sideline, Bram writes spooky novels, and he's been working on one for some time. And while he's in Whitby, he goes to the local library, which I'm reliably informed is now a chip shop. And he checks out a book, which is by an obscure English diplomat from 1820 about, it's a sort of travel book. of principalities of Wallachia and Moldova. Bram read this book, and I think it's around page 19, there's a footnote. It's about Welarchia, and it says in the local language, Dracula means devil, and it's a nickname that locals give to any ruler they think is particularly fearsome or sly.

And something about this really catches in Stoker's mind to the point where you could almost describe this as one of the most significant footnotes in cultural history. Because previously, Bram's calling the villain of the novel he's writing, which is a vampire book, he's going to call it Count Wampier, which I think most of us agree is pretty naf. And he thinks Dracula sounds great. And he was going to set it in an Austrian region called Styria. And then he finds the name of this region, Transylvania,

which translates as the land beyond the forest, which just sounds like that just so... gothic fairy tale. So Bram relocates his story to Transylvania and renames his Count Dracula. And the rest, to a certain extent, is history. Or it is and it isn't, because in recent decades, a debate has arisen between those who say that Bram took a lot more and that his character Count Dracula is obviously supposed to be an immortal version of this 15th century warlord. And other people who say it's literally nominal. He took the name. name and the rest of it and this association developed is misleading, dishonest.

I tend towards thinking that Brown did mean these to be the same characters. There are inconsistencies because his source material is very flawed. The guy William Wilkinson, I think Elaine was, a diplomat. He's not a historian. He's not even really writing a history book. So there are elements that he gets wrong. There are also elements people who criticises get wrong, for example, because one of the interesting details is that Romanian is one of the few languages

is where devil and dragon are the same word. So Drackel means both. And Dracula itself comes from Little Dragon or Son of the Dragon, which gives us kind of a clue as to where that family name comes from. But maybe we're getting a bit of Head of ourselves here. Yeah, no, I think that's an absolutely fascinating starting point for the conversation. I like that idea of the most significant footnote in history. I wonder if there are other contenders that people could point out to us.

But that sounds like a fairly significant one, yeah. It would be interesting, wouldn't it? So what do we know about the real historical Vlad? What do we know about his early years? When and where is he born? Interestingly, perhaps because of the nature of the character we're dealing with, quite a lot of the interesting details come from things like handed down folk tales and traditions and dramatic poems and that kind of thing.

But he does intrude into official accounting. So we can be pretty confident he's born around 1430 in a Transylvanian wall, town called Sigiswara, which is absolutely charming place. If you get the chance to go do, you feel like he wandered into a broigal painting. It's absolutely lovely there. But of course, he's the most famous son. And so he grows up in Transylvania. His father is a contender for the boybod of Wallachia. Wailacia is the neighbouring province. So the three provinces are Moldova, Wallachian, Transylvania, now make up modern Romania. So we know he's born around there, and that his father is also called Vlad, Vlad Drackel.

So he gets named Vlad Dracula, meaning sort of son of Vlad Drackel. Fascinating. And is it true that he ends up in the custody of the Ottoman Empire for a period in his childhood? Yes. I mean, we're about to descend into the frighteningly complicated and turbulent realms of the Eastern European history of this period. And when I was researching this, you know, it gives you a terrible headache because most of the major characters have at least three names.

they go by, they'll have a name in Wallachian, the name of Magyar, probably a German name, and then maybe they're anti-sized versions. You're trying to track all of these characters, all of whom betray each other on a regular basis and change sides. So it's dizzying stuff. But Vlad's dad, Vlad Sr., Vlad Drackel, eventually manages to take the throne of Wallachia. Now, Wallachia is in a very problematic position politically and geographically. It's right on the front line between the burgeoning Ottoman Empire to the east and there is Christian nations. It's kind of a gateway to Europe. And it's a gateway that the Ottomans are very keen to kick down at some point.

And so Wallachia is sort of the last Christian nation. Across the Danube, you get to Bulgaria, which by this point is Ottoman state. So in order to keep his throne, you have to somehow maintain a balance between keeping the Turks of the Ottoman Empire suite and also keeping your neighbours in Europe, principally Hungary, sweet. You can't afford to let that balance fall too far one way or the other. And the reason we keep getting different Voivods, rulers of Wilarkia, is because the Ottomans, one Voivod will be in command and will be sort of paying money to the Turks. And so another Voivod with a claim to the throne will go to the hungry,

Hungarians or some of the European power for assistance and overthrowing him. So it's seesaws like that. And somewhere along this seesaw, Drackel miscalculates, and the Ottoman Sultan orders him to come and answer for his betrayal. And he suspects that this may not be a particularly friendly visit. And so he leaves his son, he's oldest son called Machia in charge. And he heads over to the Ottoman Empire and they're duly taken prisoner by the Sultan. And he eventually manages to convince the Sultan to let him go, but he's forced to leave his two youngest sons.

So that's Vlad's and Vlad's younger brother, Rado, as Turkish captives. And when I say captive, the Turks would probably describe this as being guests. So they're in the court and they're being educated and taught in combat arts and so forth. They're being treated and they're effectively being groomed to be proxy Ottoman rulers. In this fashion, they're kind of an asset. And this happens when Vlad, when Dracula, is around 12. So quite a young age, even though obviously people regard as adults much younger in this period, still 12 is quite a young age to be, and his brother Radu even younger,

to find themselves in the Turkish court far away from everything they knew. And aware as well that they had the sentence of death hanging over them at any point. If their father did something to offend the Sultan, then awful things could happen to them. And they saw awful things happen to some of the other Christian princes who are being, I believe one of them was blinded. So, you know, this is a fairly tense and weird way to grow up. Yeah, strange teenage period kind of living on the edge of being in trouble that's almost beyond your control as well, because it's up to his dad or the prevailing political wins, whether he ends up in trouble or not. Yeah, very much. And in fact, at one point, his dad does

join various military expeditions, which the Sultan disapproves of, and assumes his children of being killed, he sends a letter to, I can't remember who is, maybe the King of Hungary, saying, I have sacrificed my two children to the Christian cause. So he gives him impression, he thinks that he's effectively condemned both of his kids to death, possibly torture and death. But the Sultan doesn't kill them, obviously. And do we see any impact of that period of Vlad's life at the Ottoman court? Do we see any impact of that on his later life, his style as a political ruler? Do we see any influence of the Ottoman Empire in that? Yeah, I mean, you could attack that question at several levels, and yes, obviously it had a huge impact. And the first and slightly

controversial ways, and again, getting as little ahead of ourselves, but impaling as a form of torture and execution is something which he almost certainly learned from the Turks. In very broad terms, it's a similar execution in several respects to crucifixion, but one very broad terms, in the West they crucified, in the East they impaled. And impalement has this form of, like I say particularly brutal execution, goes back to the roots of civilization in Mesopotamia and so forth. You know, the Assyrians who always could be relied upon for unnecessary brutality, I believe, were keen impalers. So he probably learned that there. He probably learned about the disposability of life, having lived, realizing he'd been effectively offered up as a human

sacrifice by his own father. And he also learned about how the Ottoman Empire worked. So this is something that he could use when he became an enemy of the Ottomans, having this inside knowledge, and he also learned how to act as a Turk. And one of the things, one of the reasons you find later on, he sometimes uses the fact that he can dress like a Turk and speak in perfect Turkish as a way of getting into Turkish castles in order to, for sneak attacks against the garrison. So he's learned all of these things from this time of the Turkish Empire. He's there for around side years. So how does Vlad come to be the ruler of Wallachia? Does he just succeed his father, or is there more of a power struggle than that? In this era and this area, nobody just succeeds.

I mean, everybody walks over the body of somebody else. I can't think of an example where there's not some kind of brutal violence involved. So basically, his father and his older brother, Machia are both killed by agents of arrival. I think it may have been Transylvanians under the command of the Hungarian warlord John Huniardi, who's a towering figure from his era. It's always tempting to go off on these tangents, because these figures are so important. We've never heard of them, but they're absolutely pivotal figures in European history. Obviously, the more tangents we go at the further we get from Vlad, so we won't go too far on that. But suffice it to say, his father and his brother have both been murdered brutally, particularly in the case of his brother,

his brother is blinded and buried alive. And so the Turks decide, this is the point at which they're going to unleash Vlad upon Volarkia. They're satisfied that after five years being indoctrinated at Turkish core, that he will be effectively a public ruler. And so they give him some truth and then leash him on Wallachia. This is far from an unqualified success. He's only 17, and the force he's given, I don't think he's particularly impressive. So he takes the throne, but only for a few months. The reason I think they probably unleash him at this point is there's a view of confusion in Wallachia at this point because the Voivode of Wilarkia and again our friend John Hunyadi had gone on a crusade against the Turks and it had failed and they disappeared on the

way back they'd actually been captured by I think it was the Voivode Serbia I believe anyway someone who didn't like them and nobody knew what had happened to them so there was a power vacuum and so the Turks thought why not let's unleash this teenage and already at this point apparently had a reputation for being fierce and hot-headed and ruthless and thought, okay, let's unleash him upon Wulatia, which they do. And let's say he takes the throne for two months, at which point Ponyardi and the other Voivod are released, return to Wulatia and chase him away. And so he's been in charge for two months in his late teens, backed by the Ottomans. I'm assuming from the fact that we know he comes back that he doesn't just go and lick his

wounds and decide that's that the end of his political career, how and why and when does he he comes back? He disappears for a while. We're not quite sure where he is. And then he heads over to Hungary. Hungary is basically the major Christian power in the region. It's a complicated relationship between Hungary, Transylvania and Wallachia. And this whole period and all of these episodes underpinned by these major divisions of religion, ethnicity, language, all these kind of things. And Hungarians are Catholic and Magyar and Transylvania historically over the last however many hundred years. Transylvania has been a sort of bone that's been fought off between the Romanians or the blacks and the Hungarians or the Magyars. So he's gone back and he's trying to convince the Hungarians

to back him. He's saying that he hates the Ottomans, that he's going to be a good candidate for an anti-Ottoman Voivod. And he eventually ends up stationed in Transylvania. Well, Archaia is reasonably flat, comparatively flat and fertile, and a lot of the important agriculture takes place in that region. Transylvania, by contrast, is a very mountainous, thickly forested region. They mostly have these seven-walled towns, which were erected by what's known as the Saxons, were yet another ethnicity to stir into this pot. The Saxons have a generic term for, they're not all from the German region. Some of them are from the low countries, some of them are from, even from France. But most of them speak a kind of Germanic

dialect. And they kind of form the mercantile middle class, to use the very crude analogy. And in Transylvania, they're the merchants, the craftsmen, they sort of fulfill all of these very important roles. And there's almost a tradition as developed where if you're the Voivod in waiting, if you're preparing to try and take the throne, then what you do is you hide out in Transylvania. Because Transylvania is an easy place to defend. The local Saxon council members are quite happy to have potential cadders for the throne under their control or as their allies to use as political ports. And so basically, Vlad waits there to an opportunity presents itself. And the whole of the region is destabilized by a series of hammer blows, really.

The major one, which changes, I think, the power structure for much of the world, you could argue, is, of course, in 1453, when Consternanot falls to Mehmet the conqueror, he becomes no. And it's interesting to know that the Mehmet, was at court, was around the same age as Vlad and his brother Radu, and was at court, they knew each other. It's even strongly rumoured that Glad's younger brother Radu actually had the spare with Mehmet during their teen years, that both of them were bisexual and that, RADU was known for being particularly handsome and that they had an affair, which is sort of interesting detail that kind of weaves into things later on. So this has altered the power structure of the entirety of Europe. All of the Christian rulers had assumed that Constantinople was never full, that it couldn't be taken, and they'd become complacent. What was really the lynching of Christian resistance to Ottoman expansion sell, and one famous quote was

that the light of the world went out. And enthusiasm for crusades, already wavering, pretty much dissolves. And so into the chaos, Huniardi dies. Our friend John Ponyardi, he's been involved in a series of failed crusades. He's also indulged in several quite successful guerrilla campaign.

And he's most famous. He successfully defends Belgrade in 1456. And this is a major. It doesn't sound like a big deal that's what he'd defend somewhere. But because all of the news that's been coming from the East had all been bad, the fact that they finally won something was a major big deal. And then not long afterwards, and Yardy catches the plague and dies.

So everything is in chaos. And Kristen West badly needs a win to use a bad football analogy. So they unleash Vlad once again, this time with Hungarian troops. And he retakes the throne in 1456. And this is, when we talk about the reign of Vlad, we're really talking about this one, because his first and third reigns are so short that they don't really quantify. It's far from unusual for a boy void to have three possibly more reins, because the pendulum of power swings in both directions so quickly that it's quite common,

which is, again, an interesting reflection of just how turbulent this period is. Because, I mean, I can't think of, I'm sure there must be one, but I can't think of an English king where they've had like two or three reigns. I mean, there must have been, or maybe during the Anity or something like that. But off the top of my head, I can't think of what. Whereas it's absolutely commonplace here. But anyway, so we're 1456 and Vlad is back in the driving seat, back in the throne again. So I guess the closest we get in England is probably in the Wars of the Roses when we have the reedeption.

So we get Edward VIII, kicks Henry VI off the throne, and then Henry VI comes back, and then Edward the fourth comes back. But there's not very much of that. It's a good analogy, because it's roughly the same period. and you have the same kind of brutality, because of course the Wars of the Rose is become increasingly a grudge match, where increasingly no cause was given and taking revenge overcomes pragmatism. It's the same sort of ambience attitude in Wallachia and Transylvania in this conflict, but probably times 10 because it's been coming on for so much longer. Right. So, I mean, listeners have patiently listened to Vlad, and we've touched on The Impaler, but let's get into some more detail. about the really gruesome impaling business that goes on.

Yeah. You talked a little bit about the significance of impaling as a form of execution that goes back for centuries. Why does Vlad use it? Why does he adopt this Ottoman form of punishment? And how much of it does he do? Does he deserve to be known as the impaler? Is that really what he's famous for?

Yes, I think it would be the short answer. It's an indication that in a brutal era, he gets a name for brutality. And I think even his supporters, his most, sympathetic supporters would say that, well, it was a cruel age, he was a cruel man in a cruel age. Nobody would deny. But I think the fact that he gained this reputation, it comes from a serious thing. But I mean, if we get onto impaling itself, I think that's worth discussing, because people often brush over it. They say the horrible thing, but, you know, there you are. Whereas I think it's worth looking at in a bit more detail. I'm hoping nobody's eating dinner

while we do this. But the first thing to say about impaling is that it's not a straightforward way of punishing or executing someone. So if you think about it, it requires more manpower and for one of a better termed resources, then you can cut somebody's hands off and leave them to bleed to death, which indeed Vlad was known to do on occasion. That just requires, you know, an axe and one maniac

to impale somebody requires a team. It requires a large stake. It requires the state to then be successfully sort of bedded into the ground so it doesn't embarrassingly fall over halfway through. So there are all these things that it's much more efforts. Clearly people are doing this or in our case, Vlad is doing this for a reason. And if I can go back to when I describe this as being a little bit like crucifixion, one of the things about impalement is you're almost turning the victim into kind of a signpost,

a warning post. You've created this very arresting visual warning or threat. And I think that is very significant. And it does say we're in all sorts of punishment. I mean, if you go to more recent history in this country, the reason why you have gibbics, you know, you execute your highwaymen or your pirate, that you also want to make an example

that lasts longer than the execution. So you hang them in an iron cage for a while. And so you've got this thing whereby this is a deliberate way of showing people. And it's also gratuitously sadistic. It's very kind of exhibitionist in its sadism. And there's also a quasi-sexual element to this. Now, some Turkish historians postage de Blad make something this and try and make some kind of Freudian case.

I don't really buy that. What I would buy is the idea that it's designed to be particularly humiliating. Someone can beheaded and it can almost seem like a noble way to go out. There's no way you can possibly look anything other than thoroughly degraded and humiliated if you're impaled. And the scale of impalement that Vlad undertakes is, if you'll forgive the expression, absolutely eye-watering. Now, with all these medieval measurements, as I know you'll be aware, so counting is not the strong suit of medieval chroniclers and historians in terms of, you know, they kind of tend to multiply everything by 10 or whatever. And so you have some of the worst, some of the largest atrocities that Vlad commits. He's impaling, they say tens of thousands sometimes.

and for that, I would say, is absolutely thoroughly implausible. But certainly there are in large numbers of people who he's doing this too. And it's designed to frighten, designed to terrify. But so there are various ways of impal, and again, I'll try and save your listeners. Put down your tomato soup if you're eating. Okay, yes. I mean, for obvious reasons, we don't really have any good accounts of exactly what happens and how this is done.

Because, you know, there's thankfully not been a great deal of impaling going on. in recent history. You can, however, look at some of the descriptions. It had been described. There's also woodcuts illustrations where you could, and obviously with some of these, you have to make a judgment call as to whether this person has ever actually seen this, or is just using their imagination. So there's a very basic idea if you just put someone on top of a stick and it goes through their middle. And so, you know, that's the most basic one. And some of the illustrations, it looks like that. So that's possible, but that's the most basic. If you want to get more elaborate, one of the ideas is,

that like crucifixion, this is not a quick death, in which case there's a suggestion, what happens is if you have a really skilled impaler, someone who's a master of his craft, if I can put it in those terms, then you have a comparatively blunt steak, and perhaps it's greased, and it's inserted into the victim's rectum, guilty that's such an angle as you slowly go down the stake, it avoids the major vital organs. And so just very, very, gradually kills you with a combination of blood loss and trauma. I don't know personally how practical, how realistic that is, whether that would actually work or not. I've seen people with medical qualifications argue in both directions, so I think it's down to the individual listeners

to decide how, but certainly that's basically what happened is you'd be held down on the floor, the stake would be ran between your legs at some point, and then it would be raised up, placed into the ground, and you'd be left there to die. Right, I'm just going to dry my eyes because they're watering. And I guess to some extent, people who hadn't seen this, it works as a weapon of terror because very much so. The way we're talking about it, I guess wouldn't be far away from the way people would be talking about it then. It's horrific.

It's horrendous. It's embarrassing. It's a degrading. It's a slow, painful way to die. And that's the point. You want people to believe that. Yes. I mean, let's talk about one of the first major instances of this.

And it'll give you kind of an idea. And that'll give us a bridge into talking about Vlad as a ruler rather than just Vlad is this terrifying. Bodie Man. So he's in power in Wallachia, and we think it's the first Easter. And Easter's the big day in the calendar. It's a big, important feast. And he's invited all of the Wallachian boyars to this big feast. Now, the boyards are like the landed gentry. They're sort of like the aristocracy. He invites them to this feast. And they're a little wary, because already Vlad has a bit of a reputation, but a short temper, a short, very violent temper. But, and that's a very violent temper. But, As things proceed and they're all eating and drinking, the mood starts to enlighten.

And Vlad quite jovially asks one of the boyards, how many boy bots have you seen during your life? And the first one says maybe three or four. And then as they go on until they get to one very elderly boyar who says he's seen 15, at which point Vlad then says, well, this is exactly why I can't trust any of you. And so he divides up the boyars into those who he thinks are young and fit enough to work, and those he thinks are too old or infirm to work. The ones who are too old and infirm, he impales. The rest of them he puts into chains, and he takes them out, and he takes them to Poinari, which is the pretty much impenetrable fortress,

still there, which has fallen into disrepair, and he's decided he's going to rebuild at his stronghold. And so it's the equivalent to taking the House of Lords out, impaling half of them in Trafalgar Square, and sending the rest of them to build your mansion, you know, in the home counties. So, yeah, it's a weapon of terror. It's also because in the background of this, and previous to this, some accounts suggest that Vlad succeeds in finding where his brother has been buried, Machia. And when he finds him, he sees evidence that his brother has been blinded and buried alive.

and evidence that someone to be buried alive would presumably see that they'd been scratching at the coffin or whatever it was. So this was pretty grisly stuff, even for a grim character like Vlad. So the boyars, some of the boyars would have been responsible for this, or at least complicit in this. So there's an eminent of personal revenge. But the other interesting aspect to this, and there's often at least two or three different subcurrents to all of these stories about Vlad.

And in this case, you get the idea of why. he's popular with the peasants. Because you can imagine, I mean, I don't know where we'll be politically, you know, by the time people are listening to this, but we're living in quite turbulent political times now. And I can imagine people being quite happy at the prospect of seeing, you know, some of our rulers being dispatched, perhaps not in such a colourful and brutal way. But you can also see how then Vlad becomes an acceptable icon for communists in the future,

because when the boy is killed. And he is almost certainly an exaggeration. clearly happened, historical evidence suggests that it wasn't this complete clear out of the entirety of the aristocracy, that didn't happen, but something did happen. And so you can see why some communists would regard this as being sort of, you know, a triumph to the working classes. You can also see how fascists would see this as an attack on the bourgeois, which was something that they would respect. And you also get this idea of sort of firm but fair, of sort of in a kind of Daily Mail on steroids, which is part of the appeal of Vlad. And you have the same kind of thing

with other stories. If I can tell you another one, which I think give you an idea of why Vlad becomes a popular figure as well as a fearsome one, there's a merchant traveling through Wilarkia, and he's got all of his goods and his gold with him, and he has to stop for the night, and he's worried about where he can put it, because obviously he's frightened of thieves. And with due sense of trepidation, he goes to Vlad's court and says, you know, explains, I'm worried, I've got all these valuable goods. I'm worried about thieves. And Vlad says, you have nothing to worry about.

There are no thieves in my kingdom. Leave all your stuff in the middle of the market square without any guards. And the merchant isn't happy about this, but he knows it's not a good idea to argue with Vlad. So he does this and comes down in the morning and to his surprise, it's all still there. As he says, thank you, Vlad. I'm glad I listened to you. It's all here. And Vlad says, no, don't take my word for it.

He said, I want you to count all the gold. This merchant counts the gold. So Vlad says, is it all there? He says, no, the curious thing is, there's one extra piece. And Vlad said, I'm glad you said that, because if you hadn't, I would have impelled you as a thief. And so the sort of subtext of this, the first is the idea that Vlad, there's not a story about how they had a gold cup in the middle of the market square, and nobody dared steal

it. So the idea that Vlad, the terror he imposed upon his subjects and everyone around him, meant that he just completely removed crime. So you can see why that kind of, you know, and the pedants sort of reflected on this with great war. I mean, it's their own surrender to me, but you can see why there are several levels to this. Over on the Warfare podcast by History here,

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Subscribe to Warfare from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts, and join us on the front lines of military history. So do you think that Vlad's people considered him a good ruler? Was he successful? Was he politically successful, militarily successful? Did his people love him, despite his brutality? Or because of it? It's very hard to say.

And to a certain extent, perhaps it's an anachronism to think of things in those terms as well, because, you know, the old sort of maxim from Machiavellic, which is an appropriate one here, is it better to be feared or loved? And Machiavelli decides it's better to be feared. It can't be both be feared. So clearly he's popular with something. He's popular with the people who he raises to fill the posts that have been vacated by the boyars who be surged.

So he's popular with them. At the point where the vast majority of Christian rulers are either ignoring or placating the Turks, Vlad's the only one who actually not only opposes them, but actually, you know, terrifies them. And so this is something that they're very respectful of. But you have to bear in mind, a lot of the victims of his cruelty are also ordinary people. So when he raids, when he starts his war with Turks, he crosses the Danube into Ottoman territory.

And he impales Bulgarian peasants as well as Ottoman troops. This isn't uncommon, let's be honest. You know, you see it's in a hundred years war. I mean, the English do it in a hundred years war, is the idea that if you kill, still, peasants are, if you want to be a totally cynical, feudal aristocrat, they're collateral, they're part of the land. And so if you want to destroy somebody's agricultural, economic power base, then you don't just learn the crops, the crops will grow grain next year, but you kill the people who plant them.

And so, you know, he's a brutal character. And there has to have been, I would imagine, at least a degree of resentment once the fear. But we don't really know. And a lot of the accounts we get are either from the one side, from people who are retrospectively trying to turn him into this firm but fair warlord. And the other side, particularly the Saxons, who are also very frequent victims of his punishments. Another interesting parallel is, you know, 500 years ago, some of the first ever horror bestsellers are these pamphlets about Vlad that come from the Germans who are fleeing from his brutality. And so people are reading me partially because they're interested in, you know, what people are. going on in the East, but they're also reading them because they are full of these grisly

descriptions and illustrations of what this character is doing. So, yes, I mean, I don't know if that answers your question. I think it's very difficult question to answer, to be honest. Yeah. And I guess that bit about, you know, killing the peasantry, it does happen in the hundred years war because it's part of demonstrating to people that your Lord can't protect you, but I can. Yes, yes. No, that's very true. It's kind of a brutal way of doing that that doesn't take into account the loss of human life that you have to inflict to achieve that. Yes, it's an indication of disrespect. Yeah. How does Vlad die?

You mentioned that he has a very short third reign. So how does he get deposed? How does he end up dying? To be fair to Vlad, I think one of the things we should do now is talk. We talked a little bit about his domestic policy. You know, if we can call it that. I mean, there are another example very quickly is that the way he deals with people he regards as being beggars or being unable to work because he has this magnificent feast and then he locks the door and burns the building down.

So, you know, you can imagine people who might be tempted by that in, you know, modern political circles, even if they wouldn't say so, you know. But his military career, he severs his connection with the Ottomans. He's supposed to be paying them an annual tribute in gold and also young boys who are to be trained to be soldiers or scribes and so forth. And then he raids into Turkish territory. And it's never quite clear. I mean, it's one of the mysteries of why he does this, because the Ottomans have. probably the most, at least one of the most efficient, fearsome war machines, one of the most

powerful military forces on the planet. And he has the resources available to him in the small principalities. And he effectively, he makes it so as the Ottoman Sultan can't do anything but wage war on him. So he only conducts this campaign where he raids into Ottoman territory and the Sultan has to respond that comes back with an army, which is at least three times, probably many times bigger than that, than what Vlad could command. And then Vlad conducts a very effective guerrilla campaign. He basically torched earth. He destroys the crops.

He poisons wells. One of the more interesting details. He also, if there's anyone who has a serious case of plague, he bribes them to join the Ottoman army. So he's using biological warfare at this stage, which is quite interesting. And he makes a last ditch. And this is often seen as Vlad's sort of great heroic act. It's been depicted in the romantic Romanian paintings and so forth.

It's usually known as the night attack. And he realizes that, you know, the Sultan is getting closer and closer to his capital, to Govester. And he's running out of options, what he can do. And so he launches a surprise attack in the middle of the night with his light cavalry. And the Ottoman camp is a sophisticated army on the march. And so it's very sort of heavily organized according to particular lines. And he knows, he thinks he knows where in the Ottoman camp the Sultan will be.

And so the aim of this, it's a two-pronged attack. The aim of this is basically to kill the Sultan. If he killed the Sultan, he stops the war because the army isn't going to keep on marching because the minute the Sultan's dead, everybody wants to be back in Constantinople because nobody wants to be away when they're choosing the new Sultan. You want to be there for the power vacuum. So he nearly gets there. and he thinks he's identified the Sultan's tent.

Turns out he's got senior officials, you know, second in command or whatever else, so it fails. He then disappears into the night, and the Sultan approaches Turgovistar, and he finds Tegovistar is deserted. But it's not undefended, and what it's defended by is thousands upon thousands of impaled bodies. Now, nobody's sure. It's generally assumed that these are prisons of war. Turkish prisoners that Vlad has taken earlier in the campaign. I think this is unlikely that, I mean, certainly that they would have made up probably the majority, but it couldn't have been all of them. And so I wonder who else could have been amongst them, and the mind boggled,

Vlad was capable of anything. And this is very much my personal opinion. So, you know, it's highly speculative. So let's take it on those terms. But I wonder if the other bodies were plague victims. So this is, because Vlad was experimenting with biological warfare in the aggressive sense. I wonder if this was a way of using a defensive sense, sort of, you know, just creating a wall of measma, a war of disease measma. Because at this point, the Sultan says, it's contested exactly why, but he turns back. He says, you know, I've had enough of this. I'm not fighting this guy. And my feeling is that I don't know if the brutality will done that. I think the fear of disease might well have. So he turns back, but he doesn't turn back

and takes his army with him. Traveling with him has been raided. Vlad's younger brother, and Radoo, he's aiming to make him the next Voivod. And so Radu then leads the Turkish army. And with Radu at the head of the Turkish army, Vlad's support just dwindles away. And they all start joining and they decide on balance. And maybe this, in part, answers your question about popularity a little bit. Because there's a growing sense that if we have a Voivod who's sympathetic, who has the sympathy of the Sultan and who isn't it,

violent maniac, we're going to have a quieter life. And so they all start joining Radu, and eventually Vlad flees to his castle, where he's besieged. He manages to escape, and he flees north, and he arranges a meeting with the King of Hungary, son of John Juniard, the guy called Matthias Corvinus. Again, a fascinating character, Renaissance prince, highly Machiavellian. And he thinks that Matthias Corvinus is going to offer him an Hungarian army. so as he can retake the throne. What actually happens is Matthias Corbinus has decided that this is not the time to have a war with the Turks. And so he captures Vlad and imprisons him.

And once again, Vlad is being kept sort of like a hit bull on a chain. He's kept like this for, I think it's about six years. And then finally, again, the time is ripe for a new Voivod sympathetic to the Christian-Hungarian cause as he's let loose. But this time, he's only out there for about a couple of months. And then he dies on the battlefield. And there are all sorts of different stories as to what happens. One of them is that he's got a mercenary bodyguard and someone has bribed them.

They turn on him. Another one is that he's using one of his old ploys and he's dressed himself as a Turk. And this backfires because his own troops kill him, thinking he is Turkish. And there are all sorts of different. One of the things we're fairly confident of is his body is then decapitated and his head is taken back to Constantinople. So as the Turks can be reassured, the impaler won't trouble them any further. Well, I mean, that's absolutely fascinating. It very much sounds to me like Vlad deserves to be remembered in his own right for what the historical Vlad did,

rather than just associating him with this Gothic horror story about vampires. I mean, definitely. There's a debate, as I suggested earlier on, amongst Gothic scholars. And I've had this debate myself with a colleague of mine, probably the best Gothic cinema scholar working instead in a chapter called Jonathan Rigby. And he's very much of the opinion that the character of Count Dracula has almost nothing to do with this historical figure and actually it's based upon a famous actor who was Ramstoke's boss and bullied him and was very sort of vampiric on him. Whereas I say, you know, from a historian's background, I say, well, look, there's stuff in the novel which clearly relates to. They describe, he describes how he used to command armies against the Turks.

And that's clearly not Sir Henry Irving. That's clearly glad Dracula. So there's this debate going on. And we concluded when we're having this debate recently that it's not insignificant that Jonathan comes from an acting background. He's also a successful actor. And so he sees it from that angle. I come from a more historical background.

So that's how I see it. But one of the night, it's a debate that can't be resolved. Because obviously, Brand Stoker died a long time ago. And I suspect even if he was alive, he wouldn't be able to give you a clear answer because it's a misunderstanding of how the creative mind works to think that a fictional character is born from a real character. Often the subconscious will mix things up for you. So there's not really always a satisfactory answer.

But I think one thing you can say is debating it is valuable because in the debate, someone like me will maybe learn something about Victorian theatre and also someone coming from a sort of more Gothic horror background will learn something about 15th century Eastern European history. And this is significant stuff. as I said, when I was researching this, one of the things that really struck me is how little I knew about this. And I'd count myself as having a pretty good knowledge of general European medieval history. But so much of this was completely new to me.

When I was researching, I was going through something like the Oxford Book of Historical Battles or something like that. And they had an entry on Nicopolis. And Nicopolis is a battle in 1396, where one of the last crusades was, you know, failed miserably against the Ottoman. And this will change the course of European history for the next 500 years. And within this book, this had like a short paragraph about Nicopolis. After this, about five pages about Agincourt, which while a sort of dramatic victory in some ways, in real terms, changed nothing, obviously from an English patriotic viewpoint. If you want to put it that way, it's a big deal.

But in terms of international geopolitics, it's a scuffle. and in Dracula, creating an interest in this figure brings out interest in all sorts of other areas. I mean, to the absolute boon to the Romanian tourist industry. They were obviously a bit problematic. When I first went in 1996, I think it was a centenary. Anyway, I went to Transylvania, Romania, to look into this. There was still a level of resentment amongst the Romanians that these decadent Westerners were arriving, and there was a national hero.

It's a bit like someone sort of suggesting Romanian tourists coming to London and saying, where did Churchill the Great Gould live? These foreigners have turned, you know, one of your revered historical figures into this corny gothic horror, a bit of an insult to national pride. I don't think you can separate these things. I think people take an interest in things for all sorts of different reasons. I think just be grateful in some ways that, you know, Dracula has given us this gateway into this fascinating theory of history.

Yeah, and that Vlad Dracula himself can be so many things to so many different people and he can be all of those things at once. Yes, indeed. Just to end on, you did mention to me before, and I wanted to try to try to, and get this in, that Vlad the Impaler has a link to your home city of York. What on earth is that? Yeah, this was really interesting. It's slightly frustrating as well. As you say, I live in York, and the first edition of this book came out around 10 years ago. And just after I'd finished researching it, and it was published, I can't remember where I first saw it, but I noticed

that amongst the civic regalia for the mayor of York, there was a sword that caught my eye. I looked at this, and I thought, hold on, particularly at scabber. had dragon symbols on it, but a very distinctive dragon symbol. It's a symbol of a sort of curled dragon with a cross, and it's kind of like wrapping its tail around its neck almost. Now, this is a very distinctive symbol of something called the Draconist Order. Now, the Dracanist Order or the Order of the dragon was something that's founded by Emperor Sigismund, the Holy Roman Emperor, who was one of the influential figures in the early 1400s, who was mounting defence of Christen U.S. Europe against the Turks. He's one of the few people who's actively trying to. And he's the guy

who, he launched the crusade of Nicopoulos, which, of course, ultimately failed. And in his attempt to try and drum up some kind of Christian support for an anti-Ottoman crusade, he creates this crusading order. And as you're probably aware, there are quite a few of these of various descriptions. And this one's one of the variety where it's considered highly prestigious. So it's aimed at princes and dukes. And basically, if you become a member of this order, then you vow to oppose the Turks, to crusade against the Turks, and you're given a sword and a mantle, which have this dragon symbol on. One of the people who was made a member of this was Vlad Dracula's father, Vlad Drackel. And the reason he's called Vlad Drackel is he was made a member of this order while he was a guest of the Hungarian court.

there's a suggestion that the extent to which he was a guest and whether he was actually allowed to leave, but he was clearly being groomed. He certainly was thoroughly proud to be major draconist because this is like high-powered stuff. You know, this is inviting him to the big table. And he's so pleased at this that he calls himself Vlad Drackle, Vlad the Dragon, because of his membership of this order. So this order is directly where we get Drackel, Dracula, and then obviously everything we've been discussing today. So I was curious, I was thinking how an earth has this draconist sword found itself into the regalia for the mayor of York? How has this ended up here? So I did a little research, and I discovered that Henry V, he was the only contender I could find,

who could possibly have been a member of the Dragon Order and hence brought draconist regalia to this country. So, and lo and behold, it turns out that Henry V was a member of the Dragon Order, and that Sigismund had actually come over to England after the disaster at Nicopolis. And essentially what has happened is that part of the reason for the defeat at Nicopolis was that it was a multinational force. Heading the Crusade Force were a number of French and Burgundian knights. And the French and Burgundian knights, arguably, you know, amongst the best heavy cavalry in the world at that point, with the drawback that they tended to be very headstrong and gloryhounds.

And so Eastern European allies of Sigismund are telling him about how you have to face the Ottomans, the best strategy to use. And the best strategy to use is not a headlong charge, because the core of the Ottoman force are the Janissaries, and the Janissaries are arguably the best heavy infantry at the time. And if you do that, what will happen is that the unstoppable force hit the immovable object, but the unstoppable force will break. And so Nicopolis is a disaster, basically because the French-Bugamian knights won't listen, and they just charge into the Ottoman lines and are enveloped and wiped out,

and Sigismund is obliged to commit the rest of his forces, and the whole thing is disaster. And understandably, Sigismund blames the French. So when Henry VIII gives the French a seriously bloody nose after the French have done something almost identical at Agincourt, then of course Sigismund's science, well, I think actually I don't want to be allied with the French anymore. This is the guy for me. And so he makes Henry V a member of the Order of the Dragon. And so Henry the Fifth commits to joining the next crusade. And in return, Sigismund has made, I think, a member of the Order of the Garter. I think that's a member of the Order of the Dragon. I think that's a member of the Order of the Dragon. I think that's a very. will be right, one of the similar orders anyway. And he in return says he will support Henry the Fitz's claim to the French crown. But of course, history and succeeds, Henry gets history and dies. And so none of this ever happens. And again, if you allow me at this point to be incredibly speculative, can do a bit of a what if, suggested by this. So what if Henry the fifth has joined another crusade and as one of the most capable medieval commanders of the day,

with troops who mastered a strategy like using longbows, they'd have stood a much better chance against the Ottomans. So, if it's possible if Henry's membership of the Order of Dragon have been taken seriously, that the Ottomans could have been driven back, and history would have been very different. And similarly, if Henry had Sigismund on side, and so basically the French then had enemies on either side of them, so they now had enemies to the east,

my Henry V actually have taken Paris, taken the crown, and again changed history completely. And it just all suggested to me. And again, I'm being highly speculative, and it's quite likely none of this would have happened, even if Henry had survived. But I just thought it's interesting, just as a final addendum to that, an old friend of mine who's a medieval historian and who's been working on the material relating to the Guildhall and so forth in New York just recently. And we were chafting about this scabber.

because it's a scabbard, really, and these are some of them we were replaced, but a lot of these are the original insignia. And he was saying, I think these are the only draconist insignia in the world. And I said, that seems unlikely. And then I thought back, and then I remembered when I'd first been researching the book, I was looking for these draconist insignia, thinking about maybe using for a visual or something. And while there are quite a few paintings of members of the draconist order wearing draconist regalia, so you can see the symbol on a tape or something, I couldn't think of anywhere where I'd

seen any of these symbols elsewhere. I mean, I could well be wrong. And so, you know, if anyone does know where else they might be, I should be fascinated to know. But it sounds like it's possible that the only surviving Drap and its insignia in the world are in the mansion house where the mayor's residence is in York. So I just thought that was an interesting addendum. It's fascinating. And we could be talking about Henry Drackel as Henry V. Yes, yes. I'd not thought about that. Very true. It would have been the scourge of the Turks and the Ottoman Empire. Let's just hope he hadn't got into impaling. Yeah, absolutely. Although we we did get John tipped off doing a bit of impaling here in the Wars of the Roses.

That's true, yes. Must have imported that from somewhere. But that's been absolutely fascinating, Gavin. Thank you so much for a wonderful overview of the life of Vlad the Impaler. And I think a much better understanding of who he was rather than just some vague connection to a vampire. Thank you. Yes, and I always enjoyed discussing this. I find the entire era endlessly fascinating.

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