Sunday 14 December 2008

VLAD TEPES, CALLED “DRACULA”

Born in Sighiçoara in 1431, in the centre of Romania, on the Carpathians, Dracula, whose real name was Vlad Tepes Draculea, was a prince of Wallachia. The name “Tepes” meant “impaler”: the favourite method to eliminate his enemies.
“Draculea” meant “little dragon”, cause of he was the son of a dragon: the father Dracul, whose duty was to defend the Christianity from the Turkish on the Balkans.
Nevertheless, cause of his little army, he often preferred to make agreements with Turkish, paying in nature or with money, until he decided to deliver to the Turkish sultan two sons of him as hostages: one of them was the 12th years old Vlad Tepes: the sultan promised he wouldn’t invaded Wallachia.
Then Dracula had been educated to the court of the powerful and rich Turkish sultan, and to the court of Mohammed II, learning to use the terror as instrument of power.
When Vlad came back in Wallachia in 1448 to take possess of it, with the help of Turkish, after father’s death, he had to face the Boyars: from whom he was defeated, then he went in Moldavia and in a night of the year 1459, after he had invited 500 Boyars at dinner, as sign of peace, he called his army and made them impale around his palace in Tirgoviste.
The impalement, learnt by Dracula in Turkey, was a method of torture and execution involving a person being pierced with a long stake. The penetration could be through the sides, through the rectum, through the vagina, or through the mouth. This method brought to a painful death; sometimes taking days. The stake would often be planted in the ground, leaving the impaled person suspended to die.
Dracula didn’t use only the method of impalement, but others too: stake, hot oil, decapitation, etc.
During his life he had killed 100.000 people, excluding obviously the enemies died during the fights.
Successively he solved personally the problem of the heirs to the throne, gathering them in a palace and burning it.
In Transylvania he made impale 20.000 people in an only night, he had two wives and a lot of lovers, one of them told him she was pregnant for joke: he disembowelled her to be sure she was joking.
Dracula was really brave: he loved to direct his army in the first line; with his army of 30.000 unities, he opposed to the Balkan army, composed by 250.000 unities.
He applied the tactics of the “burn land”, going away leaving nothing to the enemies, using the technique of guerrilla too and dazing with psychological war the enemies, like as he blocked the way with Muslim, taken as prisoners previously.
Vlad, who was indifferent to religion, decided to convert himself and took part in the anti-Turkish campaigns.
He died in 1476 during a battle near Bucharest: he was discovered and killed by some traitor Boyars.
His head was cut and taken in Costantinopoli; Vlad was buried in the monastery of Snagov.
Immediately a lot of torments and legends of him born in that place; when the cadaver was discovered in 30 years of XX century, in his tomb they found only a yellow silk dress with silver buttons.
Today in Romany Vlad is considered as an hero of national indipendence.


Lorenzo Quercioli

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