The ottoman child-torturing machine created monsters; and their greatest creation came back to haunt them forever: Vlad Dracula, the Impaler Vlad III Dracula (also known as Vlad the Impaler or Vlad Țepeș, born c. 1431 – died 1476/1477) was the vo...
...ivode (prince) of Wallachia (a historical region in modern #Romania) during the mid-15th century. He is infamous for his extreme cruelty, particularly the use of impalement as punishment, which earned him his nickname. His life later inspired Bram Stoker's fictional Count Dracula in the 1897 novel, though the historical figure was a brutal but real medieval ruler fighting to maintain Wallachian independence amid pressures from the expanding Ottoman Empire, #Hungary, and internal boyar (nob...
...le) factions. In 1442, when Vlad was about 11 years old, his father Vlad II Dracul (a member of the Order of the Dragon, hence "Dracul" meaning "dragon" or "devil") took Vlad and his younger brother Radu to the Ottoman court as part of a diplomatic mission. To secure his father's loyalty and tribute payments (including the jizya tax and annual boys for recruitment), the Ottomans detained the boys as hostages. Vlad remained in Ottoman captivity for roughly 5–6 years (until around 1448), whi...
