Many people are familiar with the famous "Vampire Count", which is an evil and tragic character, and to date, he has been mentioned in at least a thousand books.
However, most people do not know that dracula the vampire count is actually a national hero in the hearts of Romanians, who is the medieval Grand Duke of Wallachia "Vlad III".
Vlad III was nicknamed "Thorn Stick", and through this nickname, it is not difficult to see that he is a bad guy. This was the case, between 1456 and 1462, Vlad III ruled over what is now Romania and grew the area to enrich the lives of the people under his jurisdiction.
Of course, he is very cruel to foreigners, he likes to kill, he likes to conquer, he likes to occupy other people's territory. Therefore, in the hearts of Romanians, he is a respected national hero. But in the eyes of his enemies, he is a bloodthirsty monster, so they are happy to turn Vlad III into the evil vampire of folk tales.
Vlad III was born in 1431 in Transylvania, northwestern Romania. Despite being born into an aristocratic family, in the years before the weak crown, he almost dodged in the cracks of the family struggle, and almost died several times. Over time, he developed psychological problems, became somewhat grotesque, and developed a jealous personality.
The grown-up Vlad III wanted to make a career in exchange for a place in the family, so he joined the "Dragon Knight Legion" against the Turks. Changed his real name "Fred Tepes" to "Dracula".
The name derives from the Latin "Draco", which means "dragon", while Dracula means "son of a dragon".
This "son of the dragon" does have the courage of a dragon, he can fight a good battle, he is invincible, and the Turks are afraid. By the age of 25, Dracula had become a scheming man, and he used his ingenuity to obtain the assistance of the Princes of Transylvania to eliminate the enemies that stood in his way and succeed him as the monarch of Wallachia.
Since then, he has officially become Vlad III. In the historical archives of Romania to this day, Vlad III was an enlightened monarch who was highly regarded, and he was at least dozens of praised titles.
But according to the study of Central Asian history and Western history, Vlad III was not so good, he often played the role of a wall between Turkey and Hungary, whoever had a thick arm he helped whomever was weak, he helped the strong fight.
Thus, his enemies, and the Romanians who disliked him, began to write various works with him as the protagonist, in which Vlad III was no longer a national hero, but a bloodthirsty demon. Noshi said that he loves blood and enjoys eating while watching Turkish prisoners of war dismembered. When he ate breakfast, he was sure to use the fresh blood of the Turkish prisoners of war as jam. Over time, unable to escape the temptation of blood, he began to drink blood wine, and even asked his subordinates to find young and beautiful women for him, just for him to suck fresh blood.
Since then, Vlad III (Dracula) has become the embodiment of the "vampire", and a large number of works since then have been based on him, creating various stage plays and even being adapted to the screen many times. Of course, the stories are all fictional.
In fact, Vlad III was indeed somewhat bloodthirsty, except that he did not suck blood. In addition to his nickname of thorn stick, he also has a nickname called piercing. It stems from the fact that he was sent by his father as a teenager to the Turks as a prisoner, and in the Turks, he learned a cruel torture - piercing.
The Turks were very fond of killing prisoners of war in this way, and the operation was simple, just inserting prisoners of war into long sharpened wooden sticks. On each occasion, the Turks executed at least one or twenty people in this way, with the highest record piercing of twenty thousand in just one day. Prisoners of war do not die immediately, but are slowly pierced to death in pain, a long process that can be imagined for the prisoners of war.
Inspired by this, Vlad III used this torture on the Turks in his own way. Therefore, he also had the title of "piercing the heart demon".
In 1462, mehmed II, the Ottoman Turkish conqueror, enraged by Vlad III's capricious character and the murder of Turkish emissaries, personally led a Turkish army to attack Wallachia.
Faced with a powerful Turkish army, Vlad III did not fight it hard, but used insidious tactics against the enemy. He ordered people to be poisoned in the water sources along the road, dug up the river channel to turn the land into a swamp, laid various traps along the road, let tuberculosis, syphilis, and leprosy form a team to die, and spread these diseases that were considered incurable at the time to the enemy army.
His tactics played a decisive role in the outcome of the battle, and half of the Turkish army fell ill and the rest were exhausted. Taking advantage of this opportunity, on 17 June 1462, Vlad III led 24,000 cavalry in a night raid against the Turkish army.
This night raid was so successful that most of the Turks were killed, the rest were taken prisoner, and only a small number escaped. Mehmed II was nearly captured, but was lucky enough to escape.
When Mehmed II regrouped his army and returned, he saw a picture that made them feel extremely frightened. All they saw was an empty city and wooden stakes full of corpses, and there was not a single living person here. Vlad III left them a "fortress of the dead". That's right, the place has since been named The forest of the Impaled, which means Fortress of Death.
The air was foul-smelling, and the Turks could not bear the psychological pressure, and after a bout of vomiting, they all retreated. It is precisely for this reason that in the works of the past, the Fortress of Death has become Dracula's sanctuary, a place where no one is allowed to enter.