One of Vlad’s infamous mass slaughterings was on the feast of St Bartholemew where he had 20,000 citizens impaled one sunny afternoon. One of his footmen made the mistake of holding his nose to block out the stench of death. Vlad didn’t like this pussy-footing around so he had him impaled too, but in a show of sarcastic kindness he raised him above the other corpses so that he wouldn’t be bothered by the smell.
Vlad sat by and continued his relaxing lunch amongst the bedlam and occasionally had a servant dip his bread in the dying’s blood so he could savour the taste of life. I see where Bram Stoker was coming from.
On one occasion Vlad invited hundreds of poor people into the dining hall of his castle. He gave them a good filling meal — that’s nice. But as they ate, Vlad and his staff exited the hall and locked the doors behind them. His archers then shot flaming arrows into the hall and roasted them alive. For literally no reason at all.
On another occasion an Ottoman army who weren’t exactly famed for being baby girls, actually did a U-turn on their approach to his castle when they saw thousands of rotting corpses on the banks of the Danube. In a similar vein Mehmed II (more on him later) returned to Constantinople after witnessing 20,000 impaled bodies outside Vlad’s capital.
☛ Now: Most Brutal Execution Methods #2: Scaphism
