Creepy facts about the real Dracula

We all remember Count Dracula, created by Bram Stoker. He is one of the most famous vampires in literature, it was he who became the "classic" prototype of the modern vampire - an elegant and mysterious person who thirsts for human blood. However, if you didn’t know, he was no match for his namesake Vlad Tepes, the ruler of Wallachia, known for his excessive “humanism” and “love” for people.

For many years he kept the whole of Wallachia in fear with his unpredictable and unbridled cruelty. Of course, he did not drink the blood from the necks of the victims, but thousands of bloody executions, the murders of "unworthy" residents of the city and impalement were very to his liking, which is confirmed by the manuscripts of the 15th century. Nevertheless, there are two directly opposite points of view about him. According to the first, Tepes was a crazy sadist who enjoyed torturing his victims. According to the second - a fighter against the hated Turks. In this way, he simply tried to fight the cowardice of the soldiers and the betrayal of the boyars.

1. The prince dipped his bread into buckets of blood of the people he killed. A 15th-century manuscript tells how Dracula once invited several guests to his mansion, threw a feast, and then impaled them right at the dinner table. Then he slowly finished his dinner, dipping bread into buckets of their blood.

2. Dracula avenged his father by killing hundreds of people. And he not only killed, but ripped open the bellies with blunt swords. Vlad spent most of his youth in a Turkish prison, and when he was released, he learned that his father had been betrayed by his own people, including the boyars. And since the young prince did not know the names of the traitors, he invited them all to a feast, at which they were executed.

3. Tepes preferred to be called Dracula, which means "son of the dragon." Although over time, the people assigned a different meaning to the name - “the son of the Devil”, which was more like the truth.

4. Dracula had a sense of humor - though a very unusual one. For example, when people impaled twitched like frogs, the prince looked at them and seemed to casually remark: “Oh, what amazing grace they have!”

5. Impaling was the only execution. It may seem that Dracula was an ordinary madman who only did what he ran and killed people, but this is not so. Impaling was accepted as a punishment for a crime, whether the perpetrator committed murder or stole a loaf of bread. Of course, there were exceptions. Once a gypsy from a camp traveling through the lands of Dracula stole something. When he was caught, the prince ordered the unfortunate man to be boiled, and the other gypsies forced him to eat.

6. Dracula got rid of all the sick and poor, burning them alive in an attempt to restore order in the streets of the capital of Wallachia. One day he called all the poor, the sick and the vagabonds to one of his houses under the pretense of a holiday. After they had eaten, Dracula politely apologized, went out and ordered all the windows and doors in the house to be boarded up. Then the house was burned down. According to the chronicles of that time, not a single person survived. These were still flowers: sometimes the prince burned entire villages in his possessions for no apparent reason.

7. Dracula "gave" golden goblets to his subjects. The result of hundreds of murders was that Dracula was in complete control of his people and he knew it. To test how much his subjects feared him, he placed cups of pure gold on the main square of the capital. It was announced that anyone could drink from them, but under no circumstances should the goblets leave the square. At that time, about 60,000 people lived in the city, but during the entire period of the reign of the prince, no one even touched these bowls, although they were in full view of thousands of people living in poverty.

8. Dracula poisoned his own wells because of the constant threat of a Turkish invasion. One day he sent troops to drive the Turks out of their land. And when the Turks began to win, Dracula began to burn down his own villages, so that the Turks had nowhere to rest and resupply provisions. Moreover, he poisoned all the wells and killed thousands of inhabitants so that the invaders would not get all this.

9. Dracula's body disappeared.

During the war with the Turks, the prince died on the battlefield. It is believed that Dracula's body was buried in the cemetery of the Snagov Monastery on the outskirts of Bucharest. But there are conflicting rumors: some claim that the body of the prince was never found, others that the remains were buried, but then disappeared. The second version seems to be true, since Vlad III was probably buried with treasures, and robbers could have reached the grave.