Vlad the Impaler

Vlad III (1428/31–1476/77), called the Impaler and also Dracula after his father Vlad II Dracul, was three times voivode of Wallachia. From 1442 he and Radu were Ottoman hostages. After his father and eldest brother were murdered, he invaded in 1448 with Ottoman support but was expelled, returning in 1456 with Hungarian backing to purge the boyars who killed his kin.

He impaled captives from the Transylvanian Saxons, giving him his epithet. In 1462 he raided south of the Danube, claiming over twenty-three thousand enemy dead. When Mehmed II invaded, Vlad night-attacked his Târgoviște camp to kill the sultan but missed his tent.

The Ottomans withdrew, but many Wallachians joined Radu, the sultan's new prince. Imprisoned in Hungary from 1463 to 1475, he retook Wallachia after his release in November 1476 and fell near Snagov before 10 January 1477. German pamphlets made his cruelty a bestseller.