Dracula does not need any introduction. However, before reading this article it's better to prepare some garlic, a pint of Holly Water and a 20 inches or more, silver cross.

Bram Stoker got it wrong from the very beginning. "Dracula" was not a count, but a king! And, as a king he was a great one.

The son of Vlad II, Dracul (meaning devil, in Romanian) he was raised by the Turks, in a kinky deal in which his father accepted to be the vassal of the Ottoman Empire. Think of mistreatment because he hated the Turks than and after. The problem is that the Ottomans were not aware of his feelings because they made him king of Wallahia, at the age of 17, but only after his older brother Mircea was tortured, blinded with hot iron and buried alive by Ottoman-lover-boyars. Were they mad?
Well, they certainly were, because first, Vlad impaled most of those boyars responsible for his brother's death, while the rest of them being punished to build the Poenari Castle (by the way, this is the real Dracula Castle). Second, he refused to pay the anual taxt of 10,000 golden coins to the Ottomans and,third, even attacked them killing more than 20,000 of their troops in Nicopole.

Enraged, Mehmet the Conquerer (the Turkish sultan at that time), the same one who conquered Istambul, decided to punish Vlad, and came with an army of 120,000 people. The biggest army of those times. But Vlad, the Impaler, just invented the guerrila warefare, and poisoned all waters in their way to his capital. Moreover, story goes, he attacked the turks at night with only a handful of riders, in order to kill Mehmet. Luckily, Mehmet was sleeping in a different tent and run for his life, but his poor men fought eachother, because it was a moonless night, and Vlad's men attacked dressed as turks.

Now imagine their faces in the morning, because they did not have yet the notion of "friendly fire". To coin it or not to coin it, was a mere philosophical question becasue in the morning, the remains to the troops, rushing to Targoviste (capital of Romania at that time) entered a field of impalled Turks.

Wait a minute! Was that scarry?
To answer this question, let's go graphic. Drink now your Holly Water and if you feel sick be ready to smash your fingers with the silver cross.
The fact is that impalement is a shitty procedure. That's because the impaled man has his limbs tied with ropes and, while lying on his back, his butt is pusshed against a stick. For more effect, this stick is helped with a huge hammer.
But let's discuss the stick. The stick was not sharp, as imagined, but blunt. That's because the purpose of impallement is to kill slowly,with a great deal of pain. A sharp stick is the equivalent of a quick death, but not a blunt one. This will enter about 30 cm and than the impalled is bent by the means of ropes in order to create an exit point below the chest.

Now imagine that field of 20,000 impaled people, many of them still moving on their stakes, bleeding very very slowly to death. Of course they were scared. They run for their lifes.

The above stories are true. There are more of them. Vlad the Impaler, or Vlad Tepes was a cruel king. He reportedly tortured, skined alive, boiled, roasted, and I can go on, thousands and thousands of people, but everyone of them had the last moments on a stick.

Dracula too, didn't die peacefully. He was killed during a battle against the Turks. Mehmet got his head as a present and put it on a stick, while the body of Dracula was buried in Snagov Monastery.

It's time you get handy with that garlic, because the grave was recently investigated. The bones there were from a Neolithic horse and no human remains were found there. Ans so the immortal and blood thirsty Dracula legend begins...

Other famours Romanians