January 04, 2019

Curse of Strahd 40: The Impaler

1 hour 2 minutes

In 1462 the prince of Wallachia, Vlad III Dracula, led an army against his Ottoman overlords. He declared that he was fighting for Christianity, the crown of Hungary and its wearer king Matthias Corvinus, and had “killed 23,884 Turks and Bulgarians” during his campaign.

Corvinus did not come to his aid however and an Ottoman army, 150,000 strong, the largest since the conquest of Constantinople according to the historian Chalkokondyles, crossed the Danube on June 4th 1462.

Vlad attempted to assassinate the Sultan in his camp but failed to reach the Sultan's tent, instead attacking the Vizier Mahmut Pasha. Retreating from the massive army Vlad employed scorched earth tactics. When the Ottomans entered the city of Târgoviște they were horrified to discover a "forest of the impaled".

Chalkokondyles writes thus:

"The sultan was seized with amazement and said that it was not possible to deprive of his country a man who had done such great deeds, who had such a diabolical understanding of how to govern his realm and its people. And he said that a man who had done such things was worth much. The rest of the Turks were dumbfounded when they saw the multitude of men on the stakes. There were infants too affixed to their mothers on the stakes, and birds had made their nests in their entrails."

Campaign: “Curse of Strahd”, Dungeons & Dragons

Music by: Metatron Omega, Flowers for Bodysnatchers & Wordclock

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