Free Rage by Jerry Langton Page A

number of his rivals by execution and greatly reduced the economic and political power of the unpopular and often cruel noblemen, known as boyars . This—along with his natural charisma, frequent appearances at public events and reputation for fairness—made him phenomenally popular among his people.
    Vlad is said to have won many loyal Wallachian admirers by his reaction to a Turkish emissary who refused to take off his hat before an infidel. According to the story, he had his men nail the Turk’s hat to his head, which many Wallachians found hilarious at the time.
    Vlad III was relentless in hunting down political rivals—particularly members of the Danesti clan—and killing anyone of any political stripe who could possibly pose a threat to his reign. It was at this time that he became known as Vlad the Impaler, because his preferred method of execution was to place the victim on top of a long metal rod so that the point of the rod entered the victim’s anus and he died slowly as the weight of the body pushed it down the rod.
    Deciding it was time to get back at the much-hated but all-powerful Ottoman Empire, he stopped paying them tribute and signed a truce with the Turks’ bitter rivals, the Hungarians. When a Turkish mission to assassinate him failed, Vlad III invaded their territory in what’s now Serbia and killed 20,000 mostly innocent people, many of whom received his signature impaling.
    Enraged, Sultan Mehmed II of Turkey sent in an invasion force five times the size of Vlad’s 20,000-man army and chased him out of Wallachia, installing Vlad’s hated younger brother, Radu the Handsome, on the throne. Soon, Vlad was captured in Transylvania and imprisoned by the Hungarians.
    The Hungarians took it easy on him—particularly after he converted to Catholicism—and eventually freed him. He lived with his wife and son in Budapest, plotting his revenge. At least one (largely pro-Vlad) telling of the story maintains that he simply could not give up his favorite hobby and frequently captured birds and animals to torture and mutilate.
    In 1475, he gathered a number of Hungarian, Transylvanian and Wallachian allies and marched on his old capital. Radu had died two years earlier and the Turks had installed a man named Besarab as king. On hearing of Vlad’s approach, Besarab fled, and Vlad was crowned without a fight. Convinced that their job was done, his allies left him with just a token guard of loyal Wallachians.
    It was a bad idea. The Wallachian boyars, still angry with Vlad, revolted, captured him and delivered him to the Turks. There are many different accounts of the circumstances leading up to Vlad’s death (all cruel), but historical documents of the event agree that he was finally beheaded, his head was preserved in honey and delivered to the Turkish sultan, who placed it on a stake in his palace as proof that Vlad was actually dead.
    One of the key indications that Stoker based his character on Vlad is the novel’s title itself. Vlad II’s bloodthirsty reputation earned him the title “Dracul”—contemporary Romanian for “devil” or “dragon”—and he bore the title proudly, styling himself as Vlad Dracul (Vlad the Devil) during his reign. When Vlad III burst onto the scene with even more bloodlust, he became known by the diminutive form—as Vlad Dracula, or Vlad the Little Devil.
    So entrenched was the idea that Vlad was the basis of Dracula that two Romanian sites later became tourist attractions billed as “Dracula’s Castle.” Poenari Castle actually was inhabited by Vlad III for a few years because it was at the top of a treacherous canyon and almost impervious to attack. But that same remoteness led Vlad and other rulers to abandon it, and it fell into ruin at least three times. Most of the walls and some towers still stand, but Poenari Castle is now really little more than a weedy pile of old bricks that tourists have to climb up 1,859 nearly vertical stairs to see.
    Bran Castle,