Case file · Folklore / legend
Vlad III's 'forest of the impaled'
In June 1462 Sultan Mehmed II, invading Wallachia, reportedly found thousands of impaled Ottoman captives outside Vlad III's capital at Târgoviște, a scene that founded Vlad's reputation as a monster.
1462 CE · 44.92, 25.46 · status: account
The account
The Byzantine historian Laonikos Chalkokondyles describes the field of stakes. German pamphlets printed from 1463 spread tales of Vlad's cruelty, and Bram Stoker borrowed the name Dracula ('son of the Dragon') for his 1897 vampire, though nothing in the historical record links Vlad to vampirism.
The sceptical view
Numbers in the chronicles are exaggerated and some pamphlets were propaganda; the vampire connection is a literary invention.