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- [00:01]
John Hopkins
Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals, like business management, strategic planning, and effective communication, and you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more@capella.edu it is June 1462. Sometime after midnight in a region called Wallachia, now part of Romania, a man approaches an army camp in a broad valley, its fires burning low. Slightly built and wearing Turkish robes and a turban, when this visitor is close enough, he calls out to greet the guards in their language, so unconcerned they wave him through. He walks rapidly, passing tethered horses and camels as he goes, until he notices one particularly large tent, lavishly decorated with Ottoman textiles. Satisfied that this is the sleeping quarters of the Sultan Mehmet, the man makes a mental note of its location, then slips beyond the camp's perimeter into the darkness, eventually reaching his own camp hidden in the forest. His return is greeted by cheers. Those around the fire make room for him as he sits and recounts what he has learned of this invading force. They listen in respectful silence, because this man is the Lord of Wallachia. His name is Vlad Tsepes, a title that strikes fear. It translates as Vlad the Impaler. Compared to the Ottoman army, his soldiers are a mere ragtag bunch of guerrilla fighters. They have donkeys rather than horses and camels. Instead of parading in shining metal armor like the sultan's troops, his men sit polishing their makeshift leather uniforms or sharpening homemade weapons. But even though they are outnumbered and outclassed, Vlad tells his soldiers to rest, because tomorrow they must fight. The next day passes, and once it is dark again, Vlad sets off. This time he is not alone, and he makes no attempt at subterfuge. Torches blazing, his men storm past the guards fanning out between tents, setting fires as they go. While the ambushed Ottomans raise the alarm, Vlad himself makes a beeline for the sultan's tent. He bursts into the opulent quarters, and though the men inside try to defend themselves, he fells them with efficient swings of his sword. He uses a foot to roll them over and sees he has made a mistake. The dead men are mere officials. The sultan is not here. He runs outside to join his vastly outnumbered men. The Valakians do what they can, slaughtering horses and camels before cutting their losses and fleeing into the night. Vlad's mission to assassinate the Sultan did not go to plan, and he knows Mehmet will come after him. So Vlad will prepare a gruesome surprise for his great enemy. They don't call him Vlad the Impaler for nothing. Days later, the Sultan and his army are approaching the Wallachian capital. When he reaches the outskirts of Targoviste, Mehmet senses that something is wrong. The roads are deserted, homes empty, market stalls abandoned. Up ahead, he spots a strange sight. It looks like a forest of low trees. As he draws closer, he notices a smell of death. His sleeve pressed across his face against the oppressive odor, the reality dawns. These are not trees at all, but a field of wooden stakes planted in the ground. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Each stake holds aloft a body men, women and children, skewered and held upright, Left to die slowly of their terrible injuries. Left as a warning. Horrified, the Sultan stops in his tracks, his army behind him. He came to seize the region of Wallachia, but its leader is a monster. Even a warrior like Mehmet has never seen anything like this. He signals his army to retreat, and gratefully, they get out of Wallachia while they can. The man who became known as Vlad the Impaler is one of history's greatest and most terrifying villains. Keeping a tight grip on the reins of power, using torture, terrorism and tough justice, he spread fear with spectacular displays of sadistic punishment. So much so that his exploits were published as horror stories. In his own time, Vlad was a warlord, but also an inspiration for oppressed people. He unified a region and resisted foreign invaders, making him a folk hero in his homeland. But Vlad is perhaps best known under his family name, Dracul, the inspiration for the most spine chilling tale of all time, Bram Stoker's novel about a vampire called Dracula. But what sparked Vlad's bloodthirsty obsession? How did he come to give his name to a vampire? And when it comes to medieval violence and tyranny, how did Vlad the Impaler keep raising the stakes? I'm John Hopkins from the Noiser Network. This is a short history of Vlad the impaler in the 15th century. Wallachia is a region of what is now Romania and includes its modern day capital, Bucharest. The province is hemmed in by the Carpathian Mountains, with the region of Transylvania to the north and lands controlled by the Ottomans to the south. It is an area rich in agriculture, but is also plagued by conflict. The region is trapped between opposing cultures, part of a buffer Zone between Europe and the East, Christians and Muslims, the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire. This tension makes Wallachian politics complicated. It's governed by a lord or warlord known as a voivoit. He maintains control in a kind of feudal system of wealthy landowners ruling over peasants who work the land. But the voivoit also has to appease belligerent neighbors and negotiate their constantly shifting allegiances. As such, the title of Voyvoid changes hands with alarming frequency and bloodshed in the 1430s. One candidate for Voyvoid is Vlad II, or Vlad the Elder, the father of the boy who will become known as Vlad the Impaler. Not much is known about the early life of Vlad the Elderly, but he is probably an illegitimate son of a previous Voyvoit. Vlad the Elder has an ally in a man named Sigmund. He's the king of Germany and Hungary, and later the Holy Roman Emperor, the Empire's political head of state. Sigmund founds a group known as the Order of the Dragon, a chivalric society dedicated to fighting enemies of Christianity. In 1431, he initiates Vlad the Elder into the Order. The honor furnishes Vlad with a new title, Vlad the Dragon, or in his own Wallachian language, Vlad Dracul Dacre Stoker is the great grandnephew of Bram Stoker, author of the horror story Dracula. He is also a historian and writer of modern Dracula novels.
- [09:09]
Dacre Stoker
Sigmund took it upon himself to bring together a group of the rulers and fashioned this group after the Crusades to sort of hold off the potential of the invading Ottoman Empire in the name of Christianity. So this Order of the Dragon is the literal translation, but you also have to realize there is different translations at the same time, because we're looking at different languages, like Romanian, Hungarian, German. So it's also been translated into books as Order of the Devil. So you wonder, why would a Christian group call themselves Order of the Devil or the Dragon? From what I've been told, it's a way of intimidating your enemies. And if you're dealing with the devil or dealing with these dragons, you'd better watch out. We're really strong. So that's how it came about, the Order of the Dracul. And then if you're a son of Dracul, you're Dracula, son of a member of the Order of the Dragon.
- [10:09]
John Hopkins
As a neighbor of Wallachia, Sigmund wants to ensure that his voivode is loyal to him. In this way, he hopes to create a territorial wall of Christian leaning provinces to protect Europe from the threat posed by the Muslim Ottoman Empire that lies to the south and east. So Sigmund gives his endorsement and military resources to Vlad the Elder in his campaign for leadership. It works, and in 1436, Vlad II takes the throne. However, Sigmund dies only a year later, and the Order of the Dragon loses its influence for many decades. The power vacuum he leaves behind plunges the region into further turmoil. Seeing that his powerful support from the north is waning, Vlad the Elder does a U turn and sides instead with the Ottomans. Worried that he can no longer beat them, he decides to join them. At this stage in their long history, the Ottomans are a formidable force. Their empire covers all of modern day Turkey and Greece and spreads into Eastern Europe to include what is now Albania, Montenegro and much of Serbia. They also hold vassal states around the Black sea. But by 1442, Vlad the Elder's political maneuvering gets him into trouble. His northern neighbor, the voivode of Transylvania called John Hunyadi, launches an offensive against the Ottomans, and the Ottoman Sultan, Murad II is afraid that Vlad the Elder will turn tail and join forces with the Transylvanian again. Murad summons Vlad to his capital in Edirne, a town in what is now Turkey. Vlad the Elder is forced to prove his allegiance to the Ottomans by paying an annual stipend and sending 500 Wallachian boys every year to join the Sultan's personal guard. Crucially, the voivode is obliged to leave behind his two sons as political hostages. This is where Vlad the Impaler's story really starts, because he is one of those young captives. Vlad the Younger, or Vlad Dracula, is only 11 years old when he is sent to the Ottoman court with his little brother Radu. Their lives depend entirely on their father staying in favor with the Sultan. Although Vlad receives an education, becoming fluent in the language of the Turks and learning horsemanship and swordsmanship, he is a prisoner in a foreign land for the rest of his childhood and he never sees his father again. Before he can return home to Wallachia, Vlad the Elder is assassinated by the Transylvanian John Hunyadi. Helping him is a man called Vladislav Dan, who is installed as the new voivoid of Wallachia. After young Vlad reaches manhood, he is finally freed from the Ottoman court and returns to Wallachia. But he goes home with two mortal enemies on his mind the men who killed his father and the Ottomans who imprisoned and mistreated him for seven years.
- [13:28]
Dacre Stoker
Radu quite liked the lifestyle, but for whatever reason, Vlad did not and he resisted. Know who knows if he was beaten or punished, but apparently he observed impalement going on. So what we learn later about Vlad that he had the nickname Impaler, but did he invent it himself? No. Apparently he invented it by watching the atrocities of the Ottomans on either their enemies or criminals or so on. And then when he finally was released, Radu decided to stay. So he liked the lifestyle that was bestowed upon him. Vlad got back and he was bent on revenge. And that's really what set him on his way.
- [14:13]
John Hopkins
The holiday season officially starts when you get that first card in the mail. Shutterfly makes it easy to add more meaning to the everyday with hundreds of holiday card designs that can be personalized in seconds with your favorite photos from this year. Select your greeting, customize the color, and even add little extras like personalized foil to make a holiday card that really shines. Enjoy. 40% off with code. Smile 40@shutterfly.com and send something meaningful this year. See site for more details. This episode is brought to you by Etsy. Oh, hear that? Okay, thank you. Etsy knows these aren't the sounds of holiday gifting. Well, not the ones you're hoping for. You want squeals of delight, happy tears? How did you. And spontaneously written songs of joy. I am so happy.
- [15:05]
Dacre Stoker
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
- [15:07]
John Hopkins
Oh yeah. Um, okay, the song needs a bit of work, but anyway, to get those reactions, make sure everyone on your list feels heard with handmade, handpicked and designed gifts from small shops on Etsy. Gifts like personalized jewelry, custom artwork, cozy style items, vintage pieces, and home decor to celebrate all of your favorite people and their specific kind of special. For original gifts that say I get you, Etzy has it. In 1448, Vlad manages to install himself as voivode of Wallachia, but only because the sitting ruler, Vladislav Dan, is out of the region on a military campaign. Vlad's first reign is short. It lasts a few months until the voivoid returns and chases him off. But a few years later, a seismic political event that occurs 400 miles south of Wallachia sends shockwaves across the region. The Ottoman leader, now Sultan Mehmed ii, is finally close to conquering the Byzantine Empire, their age old rival for power in the Mediterranean. At their peak, the Byzantines ruled over what is now Egypt, Greece, Turkey and Syria from their capital in Constantinople, Now Istanbul. By 1453, the Byzantines are faltering under pressure from Muslim Turks who are also expanding around the region. Now Sultan Mehmed wants to take Constantinople. Not only would that end the Byzantines, but it would also bring a major strategic city under ottoman control. For 55 days, the sultan's troops bombard the capital's four mile long walls, a barrier that hasn't been breached in a thousand years. With the use of cannon and tens of thousands of troops, the city falls. Mehmet moves his capital from Ediene, where young Vlad spent his childhood, and establishes a new multicultural Constantinople. From the perspective of Christendom, though, the loss of the great walled city removes an obstacle that had helped to prevent an Ottoman expansion to the West. They're worried about the arrival of Islam in Christian Europe, especially when refugees fleeing Constantinople bring with them stories of Ottoman brutality. Exiles relate one incident when the Sultan ordered two sailors to be impaled on wooden posts at the gate of the city. Significantly for Vlad, the Ottoman victory creates insecurity that reaches as far north as Wallachia. The current voivode, Vladislav Dan, has little support from neighboring rulers, so Vlad takes advantage of the chaos to raise an army of mercenaries and march against him. In 1456, Vlad hunts down the voivoid and kills him in hand to hand combat, finally taking the life of the man who assassinated his father a decade earlier. And now, at the age of 25, Vlad is once again ruler of Wallach. But if the people think he will bring stability, they are mistaken. When it comes to violence, Vlad the Impaler is about to up his game. It is Easter Sunday, 1457, in the castle of Targoviste. Vlad Dracula sits on his wooden throne and taps his fingers as the huge doors of his banquet room swing open. A long line of men file in, laughing and chattering. They are jovial, looking forward to the party and the surprise that Vlad has invited them here. For as the crowd gather in a horseshoe shape, Vlad signals for a musician to play and a piper starts an upbeat tune. The men are all noble, rich landowners and merchants, known as boyars. Many have long white beards and wear robes decorated with pearls or furs. Others are younger, having inherited their titles and properties. All the boyars wear tall hats that display their status, and though few of them care, most are unpopular with local peasants who are forced to live in poverty while laboring for them. Now Vlad waves for the music to stop. In the sudden silence, the voivoid stands his chair screeching. Some of the nobles look around the hall in disgust. They'd been promised a feast, but there is nothing on offer. So what's going on? The eldest boyar frowns at Vlad in return, Vlad asks the bearded man how many voivodes he has served in his lifetime. The boyar says it is over 30 because he is old enough to be Vlad's father or grandfather. Laughter ripples through the guests, but it dies out as Vlad, stony faced, crosses the room. He approaches another boyar, standing so close they are nose to nose, then asks the same question. This nobleman says he has served 20 leaders. This time no one laughs. Some of the men cough nervously as Vlad spins on his heel and walks slowly across the stone floor towards the youngest boya. When that man says he has served seven voyvoids, Vlad grabs the boyar's expensive hat and throws it into the fire. The gasps of outrage. He then pushes open the doors of the banqueting hall and orders his guests out into the castle's courtyard. As they gather in the open air, they see a group of women being held back by soldiers, some of them wailing and crying. They are the wives of the noblemen, dressed in their finery. Vlad addresses the terrified crowd. He says they should be ashamed to have served so many voivoids. It only proves that they have been disloyal to their masters. He has no place for disloyalty at his court. He selects the younger and physically able Boyaz and tells them to gather by the gate. As these men are led away, they are told they will now march to a place called Poenari. There they will spend the rest of their lives hauling stones to build them a new fortress. But the fate for the old men, their wives, and anyone not fit enough to work as a slave laborer is even worse. A pile of wooden stakes has been stacked in the courtyard. Screaming breaks out as soldiers grab the oldest boyar by the arms and drag him over to the sharpened poles. The others are unable to help as the elderly man is forced down on the ground, while one of Vlad's henchmen selects a stake and brings it over. The old man's fellow aristocrats can't bear to watch what happens next. But they can't avoid the man's screams as the stake is raised and planted into a ready made hole in the ground. The elderly nobles and their wives face some of the very worst deaths imaginable. If done properly. It is said victims take days to die from internal injuries and blood loss. According to reports from Po'nari, the surviving boyars are enslaved and forced to labor on the building site until their clothes rot away. After that, they must continue to work naked. Eventually, they construct a huge fortress on a hilltop that stands there to this day. Vlad's purge of the aristocracy is condemned by some as tyranny, but welcomed by many peasants who had been downtrodden by the gentry. Either way, Vlad is now widely feared, as stories of his extreme violence begin to circulate.
- [23:48]
Dacre Stoker
I think even to this day, as many times as I've gone to Transylvania and I pick up books and talk to people, they say, you know, maybe half of it's true. But even if half of that half is true, definitely this man was a tyrant. He created these atrocities.
- [24:06]
John Hopkins
Though there is no disputing his brutality, many Wallachians feel that the threat of this particularly cruel death penalty makes their daily lives safer. One visitor to Wallachia is a traveling merchant who arrives in Targoviste in a cart laden with valuable goods. The trader is so concerned about theft that he seeks an audience with the voivoid to ask where to park his cart overnight. Vlad informs the man that his kingdom is safe. He can leave the cart in the middle of the city square and no harm will come to it. The merchant doesn't dare to disagree with Vlad Dracula. The next morning, the man finds his cart exactly where he left it, except a bag of gold coins is missing. Vlad orders his guards to hunt down the thief while his soldiers prepare wooden stakes in the square. When the robber is found, he is immediately impaled in compensation for his loss. Vlad then gives the merchant a bag of gold from his own coffers and prompts him to count the coins to make sure he is not out of pocket. The trader finds there is one extra coin in the bag. He hands the gold piece back to Vlad. It was a wise decision. The extra coin was a test. If the merchant had tried to take what wasn't his, he would have met the same fate as the thief.
- [25:40]
Dacre Stoker
It was the heavy handed rule of law, and there was so much unruly behavior. It was very risky to go down the road. Highwaymen would steal from you, you know, a lot of violence. And so he started this whole thing about anybody caught going against his rule, they would really be tortured, burned, you know, the skin taken off, impaled. All these things that became urban legend, some of them probably very true, but it was mostly him portraying this very hard style of leadership.
- [26:21]
John Hopkins
Even those of high status take their lives into their hands when they visit Vlad's court at Dagovich Day. Just like his father, Vlad is trapped in a never ending round of shifting allegiances with his powerful neighbors. He is constantly at war with the Ottomans, while also having to Live alongside them and negotiate with them. On one occasion, the Sultan sends two envoys to Wallachia. The men present themselves to Vlad wearing traditional Ottoman clothing, including turbans. Vlad knows, after growing up in the Ottoman court, that it is customary not to remove the headgear, but he asks the ambassadors to take them off just the same. When the men refuse on religious grounds, Vlad sends for a hammer and iron spikes. He nails the turbans to the Turks heads and sends the bodies back to the Sultan in yet another gruesome display of his independence from Ottoman culture.
- [27:23]
Dacre Stoker
But at the same time, what he represented was a resistance against a bigger threat, and that is change in the political landscape and the religious landscape of Europe. And he did it with outnumbered army, with advanced techniques of guerrilla warfare. He had to use tactics to force his own people to follow his lead so that they could bind together and stop paying tribute and homages to the opposition.
- [27:56]
John Hopkins
Vlad the Impaler is also not averse to biological warfare. Ahead of a battle with the Ottomans, he bribes one of his own soldiers, who has contracted the plague, to secretly conscript into the Sultan's army and spread the disease. And sometimes even law abiding citizens of Wallachia are not safe from his nefarious creativity.
- [28:21]
Dacre Stoker
Apparently, he invited all these people to a big hall, and they were people who were less fortunate, beggars and homeless, and it was like, oh, what a wonderful man. He's taking care of these people with a big banquet, a big feast, and yet he says, wouldn't you love to have no more pain and sorrow in your life, no more suffering? I will do this for you. Oh, yes, we would love this. And what he does is bars the doors, sets the whole thing on fire, and they all die in a fiery mess. And so, in his idea, I just made all your problems go away. You're not suffering anymore, you're dead. But also you're not a burden to our society, who is trying hard to fight against the invading Ottomans. You know, that's obviously morally wrong. At his time, that was his justification.
- [29:22]
John Hopkins
Did you know that the team behind this show has other podcasts, too? Discover them all@noiser.com or wherever you get your podcasts. While many see Vlad's methods as the vicious actions of a dangerous despot, his hardline policies actually win him favor in some quarters. News of his defiant stand against the Turks spreads through Christian Europe. Even Pope Pius II is impressed, sending money to Vlad and other allies to fund a new crusade against the Ottomans. Among Vlad's own people, there are Those who feel that his uncompromising leadership makes him a hero.
- [30:05]
Dacre Stoker
This is not a unified country. It is all made up of not just the principalities, but the vivoids in each of these areas. The boyars, the rich guys that had their own small militias to protect their own interests, that he had to bring them together. And this is one of the things that he did that people even look at to this day with a sense of great reverence. Vlad the Impaler. Vlad Dracula did this first. And how can you possibly do that? In his time, it was the threat of violence.
- [30:37]
John Hopkins
Vlad is not the first to choose impalement as his favorite punishment. He saw the method used by the Ottomans when he was a boy at their court. It is slow and painful, but also publicly humiliating and physically degrading. It has overtones of other practices from the wider region, such as crucifixion, but it is a laborious and impractical way to kill. Execution by sword or arrow is quick and easy. Impalement requires an entire team. And yet, according to his own handwritten letters, Vlad impaled tens of thousands of people. Why go to such lengths?
- [31:22]
Dacre Stoker
Supposedly Vlad was able to impaling 10,000 people, 20,000, 40,000. All these numbers thrown around and yet when people look at this and say, wait a second, how long does it take to actually cut down these big trees, have these big 20 foot poles, 30 foot poles, strip off the branches, grease them down, and then inflict this upon the person you're impaling. So it probably would, you know, be at least a couple of hours to prepare the stick for impalement, let alone how could you possibly do it for 20,000. So it's probably greatly exaggerated number what's not exaggerated is the visual aspect. You know, you've captured this guy after a battle, he's still alive with a bad arm. What better way to dissuade the enemy from coming back the next day for day two of the battle, and that is erect your fallen comrades who are still alive into what they would call the forest of the Impaled, which apparently happened outside Togovish Day. On one of the battles, up went hundreds of these guys. And when the Sultan started marching in to take on the city or siege the city, my God, you see hundreds or thousands of your people in your army withering and having crows picking out their eyeballs, still alive. It would be enough to dissuade even the most bravest of soldiers, but also the leader. What manner of man is this? What type of devil would do this?
- [33:03]
John Hopkins
It's not Just the Ottomans and his own people who are intimidated by Vlad's tactics. In the 1440s, a German named Johannes Gutenberg invents the printing press. It means that 30,000 copies of a news pamphlet can be printed every day, compared to the few hundred that could previously be made by hand. It sparks a reading revolution. Then, as now, public appetite for true crime is insatiable. Bloody accounts of Vlad's atrocities make it into print, often accompanied by graphic illustrations, such as woodcut prints depicting his savagery.
- [33:42]
Dacre Stoker
So you've got Germany just off a little bit to the north. These were the most sort of advanced traders coming into the country, trading goods services. They also were the ones that picked up some of the horrifying stories of Vlad, and yet not so widespread. Did these stories travel until such time as the printing press in certain parts of Germany. Nuremberg was one of them, where a woodcut description, a physical description of lad sitting in this forest of the impaled with this sort of bowl around him, but also the stories, all these different methods of communication started spreading around the somewhat civilized world. And that was even during Vlad's lifetime, so late 1400s, this was beginning to happen.
- [34:31]
John Hopkins
But even Vlad Dracula can only hold out for so long against the Ottomans. In 1462, Sultan Mehmet leads his army into Wallachia. Wildly outnumbered, Vlad resorts to guerrilla tactics. He sneaks into the Ottoman camp under the COVID of darkness, locates the Sultan's tent and comes back the following night with an army in an attempt to assassinate his enemy. He fails and so tries to intimidate Mehmed instead by using a scorched earth policy, he burns his own farmland, poisoning wells so that the invaders can find no water, creating a forest of impaled bodies, probably Ottoman prisoners of war, but maybe also his own peasants or plague victims. The terrorist tactics do hamper the Ottoman advance, but eventually Mehmet returns to Wallachia. He installs a puppet leader as a voivode, none other than Vlad's younger brother, now known as Radu the Handsome, who also grew up as a prisoner in the Ottoman court. But unlike Vlad, who hardened against his captos, Radu has fallen for the charms of the Ottomans. It is even suggested that Radu had a teenage love affair with Mehmet and stays loyal to him for life. Vlad tries to make a comeback, but ends up being taken captive by another old enemy, the Transylvanian John Hunyadi. According to one eyewitness account passed on by a Hungarian bishop, Vlad spends the next 14 years in prison, where the only outlet for his bloodlust is to trap rats and impale them on bits of wood. In 1475, Vlad finds himself released from prison and reinstalled as voivode by the powerful King of Hungary, who wants an anti Ottoman puppet ruler on the Wallachian throne. But Vlad's comeback is short lived. With an army of only 2000 men, he is cornered and killed by the Ottomans. There are conflicting accounts of his death and of the treatment of his remains. Some say his head is sent to Constantinople to be put on display, ironically impaled on a spike. Others report that it is buried at a monastery in his homeland. Today, no one knows where his grave is located. But although Vlad the Impaler is dead, his legend continues to grow. Soon it is not only connected to violence, but also to the supernatural. It starts with a wandering German singer called Michael Boeheim, who performs a poem at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick iii. The song title translates as Story of a Despot Called Dracula, Voivoid of Wallachia. In the epic, Boeheim recalls Vlad's greatest gruesome hits, including a time when he impaled two monks in order to help them to get to heaven, and then impaled their donkey because it annoyed him with its braying. More significantly, for Vlad's role in history, Boeheim recounts another famous incident, one that was also depicted in one of the woodcut pictures used in the printed pamphlets from Nuremberg. Both Boeheim and the illustration depict Vlad sitting at a dining table surrounded by impaled bodies. There is a bowl in front of him to collect the victim's blood. The important historical question is, what is Vlad doing with this bowl?
- [38:22]
Dacre Stoker
So Boeheim never actually met Vlad. He just heard the reports from people coming back from Transylvania and Wallachia, and he actually said it was his pleasure and gave him courage to see human blood flow. And it was his custom, put his hands into a bowl and was brought to the table. That also is a description of that woodcut in Nuremberg. So Boeheim says that. But when it actually got translated, they said Dracula as dipping his bread into the blood of his victims, as opposed to putting his fingers in the bowl, now dipping his bread into the blood of his victims. The reference would have then made us believe he then drank the blood of his victims. Therefore, technically, he was a vampire.
- [39:19]
John Hopkins
But centuries later, when 20th century academics have the damning words of the poem translated into English again by a different linguist, the mistake is rectified. Boeheim actually described Vlad dipping his hands, not his bread into the bowl. So, yes, he is cruel and sadistic, but not someone who actually drinks blood. He is not really a vampire. However, the damage has been done.
- [39:47]
Dacre Stoker
The aura of Vlad drinking blood was kind of now out there. Oh my God. Maybe he was a vampire. So that's where our man Vlad gets a sort of bad rap. Bloodthirsty is about as close as it gets.
- [40:04]
John Hopkins
We can be sure that Vlad the impaler dies around 1476 and stays dead. But though it's a while before his name becomes synonymous with that of the vampire, the concept of creatures who feed on blood is already found in cultures all around the globe, going back millennia. In folklore, there is some overlap between vampires, zombies and werewolves. But drinking blood stands out as the defining characteristic of the vampire. In some Chinese traditions, a corpse that comes into contact with a living animal may turn into a vampire. In Russian folklore, witches come back as vampires. There is some dispute about the origin of the word vampyr, which has been traced to Turkish, Hebrew, Greek, or languages spoken in Transylvania and Wallachia. Modern archaeologists in Bulgaria have uncovered 700 year old graves of men buried with iron stakes through their hearts. It reflects a local superstition that people who are badly behaved while alive may come back from the dead to wreak more havoc. So they were literally pinned into their coffin and staked through the heart for good measure. In the Middle Ages, the plague often leaves people with bleeding mouth lesions that makes them look like they've been consuming blood. Other medical conditions overlap with common traits associated with vampires. A blood condition known as porphyria causes an acute sensitivity to sunlight and receding gums that make the teeth appear like fangs. The Spanish Inquisition burns at the stake some 600 porphyria sufferers who are mistaken for vampires. But fear of vampires really takes hold. In 18th century Europe. Hysteria is sparked by outbreaks of diseases such as rabies. In Serbia in the 1720s, there are two separate reports of suspected vampires being exhumed from their graves after unexplained epidemics in their villages. During the ensuing panic, it becomes commonplace to desecrate graves to prevent the dead from rising. Burying bodies upside down is said to stop the deceased from escaping their coffins at night, while placing Christian symbols such as a cross in the grave allows them to rest in peace. In literature, the vampire soon captures the imagination of poets and authors, with Lord Byron, Emily Bronte and many others making reference to them in the 1800s. However, it is arguably not until Irish writer Bram Stoker gets his teeth into the stories and connects them with a long dead Wallachian warlord that the legends really get a new lease of life. Bram, or Abraham Stoker, is the manager of the Lyceum Theater in London. The venue still operates today in the West End. It is now the home of the blockbuster musical the Lion King. But back in the 1890s, Stoker would supplement his income by writing what are called sensation novels, exciting tales about horror, crime and the supernatural that are serialized in newspapers. Stoker has to ride quickly, so he is always in search of fresh ideas. It is July 1890, on northern England's east coast. A steam train lets out a loud whistle as it pulls into a station. Torture. And fashionably dressed Bram Stoker jumps onto the platform, looking forward to a quiet week in this seaside town called Whitby. Soon his wife and children will join him for a holiday. But first he hopes to finish a strange story he has been writing. This is the right place for inspiration. Whitby has a rather macabre reputation. Setting out to explore the town on foot, he soon stops to window shop at a jewelry store that specializes in jet. It's a black stone unique to the area, which is often used to make mourning pendants or memorial pieces for funerals. This is what gives Whitby its reputation. Stoker walks onto the harbor that opens into the North Sea, then climbs to a viewpoint overlooking the town. Up on the cliff, standing above the bustling streets where the townsfolk go about their business, is Whitby Abbey. The remains of its stone arches are immense and strike him as beautiful and romantic, especially in the sea mist. This is exactly the right setting for his novel. He feels a prickle of excitement as he heads to his guest house to start writing. Some days later, Stoker takes another stroll along the quayside. Entering the small library, he walks between the shelves, gathering a pile of books. But he is looking for one in particular. A travel guide that has been suggested by an expert on Eastern European folklore. Eventually, he finds a copy and goes over to a spare table. Pulling out a chair, he dumps the reading pile and settles down to his studies. He flips open the leather bound cover. The book is called An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. It is a skinny volume with densely printed pages of text over 50 years old. It was written by a British diplomat called William Wilkinson. Bram flicks through its pages, scanning the text and footnotes, scribbling notes in his journal as he goes. Absorbed by the foreign names and places, he barely notices. The minutes pass. Then Bram reads a footnote that stops him in his tracks. He lifts the book to the light, reading it again, then copies it into his journal. After writing the name Dracula, he notes the meaning of the word in capital letters. Devil. He slams the travel guide shut and knocks over his chair. In his haste to get outside, the writer runs through the streets of Whitby until he reaches the place where he can look across the water to the ruined abbey. Suddenly he can picture it all. A man coming from the east by ship. He must be called Dracula. Count Dracula the vampire has arrived. Inspired by the name taken from Vlad Dracula and found in this book about Wallachia, Stoker changes the title of his work in progress. It was called Count Wampier and set in Austria. Now it is called Dracula and set in Transylvania. Six years later, the novel is published. A copy costs six shillings and is bound in yellow cloth with dramatic red letters. It is Stoker's seventh book and proves an instant hit with a mostly positive reception. It's described as a weird and spirit quelling romance in one review, but the Pall Mall Gazette suggests that it is only suited to the man with sound conscience and digestion, and warns that it might cause the manslaughter of an older woman or parlour maid. In any case, the book has never been out of print since it was released in 1897. But none of the reviews pick up on the connection with Vlad the Impaler. Even though he is a legendary historical figure in his own right, it is not until much later that Vlad himself is assumed to be the inspiration for the vampire, not just his namesake. So how much did Stoker have Vlad in mind when he devised his famous bloodsucker?
- [48:48]
Dacre Stoker
Bran was opportunistic. He took a real person with history that was quite convincing. Bloodthirsty history. He used some of that history in the novel itself and then created the name based on other books that he saw. So it was Bram's intention to merge Vlad Dracula with a devil incarnate that he had in his mind to create the character Count Dracula, a count of Transylvania. Opportunistic use of history, superstition and fiction. Graham was not the first guy to do this, but by basing things on real people, real places, real events, when Dracula came out in 1897, some people thought it might be real. So he had the desired effect. And that effect and finding reality, was based on his very extensive research.
- [49:45]
John Hopkins
The vampire industry also spawns a tourism boom in Romania, where history lovers and Dracula fans alike visit sites connected to the vampire or Vlad the Impaler, the two often becoming entwined in people's minds. Bizarrely, recent DNA analysis of letters written by the real Vlad Dracula suggest that he might have had a condition called haemolacria, in which sufferers cry tears of blood. Another strange detail that has loomed out of the historical darkness to connect him to his bloody namesake. So how can we separate the two shadows cast through history by one long dead man? Should we remember Vlad the Impaler as a despotic warlord or Vlad Dracula as inspiration for a literary phenomenon?
- [50:43]
Dacre Stoker
Vlad the Impaler. Vlad Dracula, really, he was a hero at the time by his people, although they were scared of him. He really represented a hardline right wing ruler who made people by force and by, you know, adhering to laws. And if they didn't, they would be tortured, imprisoned or whatever. In the meantime, though, he was, by my great uncle, recognized by his name and by potential reputation as the perfect name for a novel that has become synonymous with vampires and sort of the playbook for vampires, which in 1897 changed the world. So he has been thrust really against anything he's done to prolong his name in history, but it has been altered to that of more of a superstar in Hollywood that represents other things than what he was actually doing in real life. Those other things have taken on a life of their own.
- [51:50]
John Hopkins
Next time on Short History of We'll bring you a short history of the Lighthouse of Alexandria. The Lighthouse goes well beyond practical purposes because it's a symbol of power, because it's imposing, it's grand, it's tall, it's strong. So it suggests all of those things about the leaders of the city, about the Ptolemies, that they have this kind of supremacy. I would say it also has a kind of symbolic importance that it's spreading light. And we see that as a city that becomes a knowledge capital of the world, spreading knowledge far and wide, spreading light of knowledge far and wide. And Alexandria to a large extent becomes defined by this famous building. That's next time. If you can't wait a week until the next episode, you can listen to it right away by subscribing to Noiser Plus. Head to www.noiser.comscriptions for more information.
- [52:52]
Dacre Stoker
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