Vlad the Impaler: The Real Count Dracula by Enid A. Goldberg and Norman Itzkowitz

Here is a new work for me:  Florida Suite by Frederick Delius.

Vlad the Impaler: The Real Count Dracula by Enid A. Goldberg

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This short book was packed with interesting information about Vlad Dracula, the real man who inspired Bram Stoker's vampire novel.

Reading about the life of this real Dracula, if I had to choose between the two, I'd take the vampire over this real life tyrant.

Vlad Dracula was the son of Vlad Dracul senior and was "Dracula" which means "little dragon" or more appropriately, "little devil", except there was nothing little about the monstrosities Vlad Dracula committed against friend and foe alike. Who was friend or foe depended on who Dracula believed would help him attain and keep power. These would switch back and forth fairly rapidly.

He came by this philosophy honestly. When his father was in power, the area that later became known as Romania in Transylvania was wedged between the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire. As a last ditch effort to stay in power, Vlad Senior sent Vlad Jr. and his brother Rudi to the Sultan of the Ottomans as prisoners in exchange for his help to fight the Western Europeans.

Vlad and Rudi spent several years in prison with the Ottomans. After Vlad's release he returned home under the promise he would help the Sultan's cause in bringing Transylvania under Ottoman rule. Vlad did not keep his promise. This was a habit with him.

After the death of his father, Vlad Dracula took over, at times fighting the Ottomans, which included his brother who chose to stay with the Ottomans, killing other brothers and former friends. Other times he fought with the Ottomans against the soldiers of western Europe. It all depended on who would help him stay in power.

He was also vengeful. The ruling class in Transylvania, the Boyers, were responsible for killing his father. He invited them to a feast after which he had them all impaled and their bodies left to rot on stakes. This was called The Forest of the Impaled. There is a wooden engraving showing Vlad eating a meal among this horrible forest.

As for the older men, the women and children, he forced them to climb a mountain and build a castle, called Castle Dracula, which can still be seen today and has probably been used in horror movies. These builders were literally worked to death and the trail to the mountain top where the castle resides is paved with the skeletons of the builders.

Furthermore he created a severe police state where even minor infractions were punished by death. Whole villages were murdered in Vlad's determination to maintain control. His subjects feared him more than they feared the Turks.

Vlad seemed not only to be capable of heartless, violent pragmatism, he was also sadistic. It was not enough to make his victims die. He enjoyed watching them suffer as they died slowly.

Some historians say Vlad Dracula killed as many people as the Bubonic plague which also ravished Europe around the same time. While that may be an exaggeration, it is estimated that his death toll may have approached a hundred thousand or more.

And his reign only lasted seven years. Eventually, Dracula was overpowered by soldiers of the Roman Empire, killed and beheaded. His truncated body is buried beneath the floor of the Comana Monastery, surrounded by swampland in Romania.

While this book can seem gruesome, it provides and interesting an informative account of life in middle Europe during the 15th century. While life during these unsettling times was violent and cruel by any account, still Vlad took it to a whole other level that turned him into a nefarious legend and, an inspiration for many vampire legends.



View all my reviews

Castle Dracula