Vlad III Prince of Valacchia

Vlad III of Valacchia was a Rumanian prince. Vlad III was also called Vlad Ţepeş (pronounced tse'pesh)or Vlad the Impaler. He was prince of Valacchia in 1448, from 1456 to 1462 and finally in the 1476. Thanks to his dominion, the principality of Valacchia succeeded in maintaining its independence from the Ottoman empire. For the cruelty used towards the prisoners he was nicknamed Ţepeş, that in Rumanian it means the Impaler.

The origin of the name and the tortures of Vlad:

Vlad as his father Vlad II, belonged to the order of the Dragon, one of the chivalrous orders of the Middle Ages’ religious, created in 1408 by Sigismondo of Luxemburg, king of Hungary. The purpose of the order was to protect the Catholicism and to fight against the Turks. His father Vlad II had called Dracul whosemeant it was "Dragon" since these it became his symbol. For this his child, Vlad III , was called in Rumanian “Drăculea”. But in Rumanian the term Dracul could also be interpreted as Devil. Vlad III became, therefore "Child of the Devil ". But the name with which Vlad was really remembered it is Romanian "Ţepeş", since that was the torture that reserved to his own enemies, above all the Turks because this kind of punishment was typically Ottoman.
The tool of torture preferred by Vlad was the impalement, and he created different methods to impale the thieves, the hostile warriors, the Sultan's ambassadors, the traitors. Vlad invented a way to impale the rich, stretching them more aloft some others or making to cover the pole with the silver, he invented a way to impale the merchants making to engrave some nicks on the pole so that to increase the time of the agony.

Federica Parisi