Vlad Dracula: The Monster Printed by a Political Campaign

In 1462, a German story began circulating through Central Europe. It said that Vlad III of Wallachia ate among impaled victims, burned villages and killed tens of thousands. The text became known as Geschichte Dracole Waide and appeared at the moment when Hungary’s King Matthias Corvinus needed to explain why he had imprisoned an ally who had fought the Ottomans instead of sending him support. A modern catalogue of medieval sources says the story may have been produced at Matthias’s court to defame Vlad.

Vlad was real. He ruled Wallachia three times, fought the Ottoman army and did use impalement. But the image of “Dracula the vampire” was built from political texts, printed pictures and accounts written by his enemies. The enormous figures in those stories do not match the capacity of execution sites, village populations or contemporary letters. Propaganda kept the name Dracula, enlarged the cruelty and, four centuries later, handed the name to Bram Stoker’s fictional count.