The Impaler Prince
The Impaler Prince
by Jill Terry
I am a man with a penchant for killing, whose soul has been damned and corrupted by mere mortals, who knew me not lest for my bloodline and looked upon themselves as mine enemy. I have been driven to the brink of insanity and watched as if a bystander, as my grasp of reality slowly ebbed away. I have delighted in the carnal pleasures of many a wondrous Maiden, to the point of obsession and beyond. I am cruel, wicked, powerful, feared and revered. I am evil incarnate and no man dare attempt to put an end to my madness, lest he too become an unfortunate himself.
I am Vlad Tepes, son of Vlad Dracul, Prince of Wallachia Romania.
My story begins when I was a mere child, on the edge of my eleventh year. I was enjoying my life, for all intents and purposes, living with my father and elder brother, Mircea, and younger brother Radu, in the Palace of Tirgoviste. As the son of a nobleman, I was naturally trained and educated in the skills of war and peace deemed necessary to become a Christian Knight, as was my lot in life, set forth by my father’s position.
Under the cloak of darkness, on a night when the skies were roiling with tempest clouds, my brother Mircea and I were stolen from our palace home, taken as hostages and imprisoned for six long, agonizing years. In the beginning I held to the belief that at any moment, my father and his faithful Knights, would appear out of the darkness, as if a light sent from the heavens above, to rescue us from the hell that had befallen us. But they did not come and there was no light to penetrate the darkness of despair that I came to know so well.
Undoubtedly, the horrific, inhumane and unnatural experiences of torture that I was forced to endure during my imprisonment, cast upon me by my father’s political adversary, caused me to develop an unparalleled loathing for society as a whole. This living nightmare that I unwillingly suffered, stole my virtue of innocence, befuddled my mind and turned my thoughts to those of revenge and bloodlust, hardened my heart and blackened my soul.
I had stared into the many faces of evil and was forced to submit to its will. But in my darkest hour, I held to the belief that I would one day, unleash my wrath one-hundred fold on my abusers and the Devil himself would beg me for mercy.
*****
I was in my seventeenth year when they came and informed me of my father’s assassination and the brutal torture and death of my brother, Mircea. They described to me in great detail the way in which my brother had been beaten, blinded by hot iron stakes that pierced his eyes and then buried alive, at the hands of the boyars of Tirgoviste.
Upon receiving the news, I was released by my captors and given the support of a force of Turkish cavalrymen and a contingent of troops that were lent to me by Pasha Mustafa Hassan, so that I could act as their own candidate and fulfill their order in seizing the throne of Wallachia. Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful in my seizure and the throne was claimed by none other than Vladislav II, the assassin who organized the deaths of my father and brother.
My failure simply incensed my lust for blood and I was forced to patiently wait eight long years before receiving satisfaction in the killing of my mortal enemy and seizing my rightful position on the throne. It was then that my true reign began and I unleashed my pent-up fury through brutal acts of punishment, on all those I deemed worthy of my attentions. My controversial reputation quickly spread throughout the land and soon I would come to be known as, Vlad Tepes Dracula; The Impaler Prince.
Once in a position of power, my philosophies and insistence of honesty and order became know fairly quickly. Almost any crime, from lying and stealing to killing, would result in punishment by impalement. It was my belief that all subjects must work and be productive members within the community and therefore, I looked upon the poor vagrants and beggars of my land, as nothing more than lowly thieves.
Consequently, I invited all the poor and sick of Wallachia to my court, in Tirgoviste, to participate in a great feast. Once all those in attendance had their fill of food and drink, which lasted well into the night, I made a brief appearance and then ordered the hall to be boarded up and set aflame. Needless to say, there were no survivors and my actions cast a shadow of fear and dismay into the hearts of all.
Once the task of ridding the land of all the beggars and thieves was complete, I could then concentrate on my first major act of revenge, which was directed at the boyars of Tirgoviste, for the conspiracy and killing of my father and brother. And so, in celebration of Easter, I invited all the boyars and their families to participate in a princely feast. During the celebration I participated in verbal exchange with several guests on the topic of how many princes had ruled during their lifetimes. I would appear that all those in attendance had outlived several princes, although I knew beyond a doubt that such a fate would not befall my reign. It was during this conversation that I ordered all the assembled guests arrested on the spot.
The elder boyars and their families were impaled on stakes and all those who remained were forced to march fifty miles from the capital to the town of Poenari. The trek was quite grueling, but no one was permitted to rest until their destination was reached. At that point, the remaining survivors were enslaved and ordered to build a fortress on the ruins of an old outpost that overlooked the Arges River. Many died in the process, but I was successful in creating a new nobility and obtaining a fortress for future emergencies; a fortress which would come to be known as Castle Dracula.
*****
I became quite well known for my brutal and inhumane punishment techniques, which I had concocted and perfected during the years of my imprisonment. The methods in which I chose my victims to die depended largely on my state of mind and what loathsome memories happen to be haunting me at the time. It was my belief that no torture cast upon my victims could come close in comparison to that which I had withstood and survived. Many believed that I was perversely fascinated with death and thus the reason for my actions. I did not attempt to convince them otherwise, lest it be a waste of my time to try and explain the hatred and loathing contempt that consumed me to the core of my very being.
What I found truly fascinating was that no one took notice of the fact that the killing very rarely happen by my own hand. Thousands of eager gentry as well as paupers, waited anxiously in line to be among my chosen assassins; to do my bidding and quench their own perverse thirst for death and mutilation. This simply proved my theory that all men were evil and deserved to die. Unbeknownst to them, each assassin was placed on my special list of victims that should die the slowest, most agonizing and painful deaths, only to be replaced by the next eager gent at the head of the line. Who would in time befall the same fate.
My methods of torture were a clear indication of my sanity or lack thereof, yet they were never questioned and always carried out to my exact specifications. I often ordered people to be skinned alive, boiled in a vat, decapitated, blinded, strangled, hanged, burned, roasted, hacked, nailed, buried alive or stabbed to death. As one can well imagine, the mere listing of my methods exhausts me; however, tis necessary in order for one to comprehend the depth of my madness and despair.
On occasion, immediate death was spared the victim and they were forced to endure their remaining hours or days with their ears, noses, sexual organs or limbs cut off. But beyond a doubt and by far the most gruesome way of dying imaginable, was by impalement on the stake.
Impalement techniques varied, but most often a horse was attached to each of the victim’s legs and a sharpened stake was gradually forced into the buttocks until it emerged through the victim’s mouth. It was necessary to oil the end of the stake and great care was taken so that the stake was not too sharp, lest the victim might die too quickly due to sudden shock. Death by impalement should be slow and painful and if done properly, the victim could endure for hours or sometimes days after.
*****
Since it was my belief that all of mankind was corrupt and evil, no one was immune to my attentions. My victims included women and children, great lords and peasants, ambassadors of foreign lands and merchants. Many attempted to justify my actions on the basis of political necessity, even though the death count under my reign reached ten, twenty and even thirty-thousand killings at one time.
Yes, thirty-thousand…unbelievable isn’t it!
This particular incident took place on St. Bartholomew’s Day, in the year 1459, when I ordered thirty-thousand merchants and boyars of Transylvania impaled. In an attempt to better appreciate the results of my orders, I commanded that my table be set up among the forest of stakes that held their grisly impaled victims, many of which were still alive.
While a nearby executioner diligently hacked apart another victim, I invited my faithful boyars to join me in a feast of celebration. While dining I couldn’t help but notice one of my boyars holding his nose in an effort to alleviate the terrible stench of clotting blood and emptied bowels that not only surrounded our table, but undoubtedly could be smelled for miles. I asked if he found the stench oppressive and his dishonest response was that his only concern was for my personal health and welfare. In a moment of humorous irony, I immediately ordered him impaled on the spot, on a stake higher than all others, so that he might enjoy the last moments of his life above the offending odors.
There was no pause between my orders being voiced and carried out and it was in that moment, literally surrounded by a sea of death and destruction as far as the eye could see, I realized that no man were brave enough to stop my insanity. The political situation surrounding my land had little or nothing to do with my reign of terror, nor were they a result of my attempt at enforcing my own moral code upon the land. My actions were purely self-centered in nature and an ill-fated attempt to release the demons that plagued and haunted my tortured soul.
I would not come to know such a release until the moment of my own death in December of the year 1476. After my death, my body was decapitated by the Turks and my head was sent to Constantinople where the Sultans proudly and befittingly displayed it on a stake, as proof of my death.
Let my reign of terror be a lesson to those who believe themselves beyond reproach, and willingly corrupt the hearts, minds and bodies of others, due to their own lack of humanity and sickness of soul. Nothing was gained me, by the tens of thousands of deaths that occurred by my order. My soul that once was pure and corrupted at the hand of man, is now damned for all eternity, by an entity who wields such atrocities that my mortal heart and mind could never have fathomed.
Evil begets evil and no good can surely come of it, yet goodness shall reign in the hearts of those who cast it aside and in their darkest hour of despair and suffering, seek the Truth, the Light and the Way.
© Copyright 2006 by Jill Terry. All Rights Reserved.
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