October 31, 2023 • 67 mins
Ben and Pat are joined on a special Halloween episode by Tani Caesar (Unhinged History) to talk about a couple of infamous (and spoooooky) Eastern European nobles -- Elizabeth Bathory, the terrifying Blood Countess of Hungary, and th equally-notorious Vlad III of Wallachia, better known outside of his native Romania as Vlad the Impaler (or, if you prefer, Vlad Dracula). This one is going to be gruesome and unhinged, but luckily we'll have Tani here to help us get through it.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. Christmas Day, sixteen ten, Armed with swords,
golden crosses, and blazing torches, Hungarian soldiers and Roman Catholic
priests storm up a steep hill towards the imposing black
(00:21):
spires of Chachitse Castle. The fortress was once home to
the notorious Black Knight of Hungary, a warrior renowned for
slaughtering Turks in battle and using vicious methods to extract
information from his prisoners. Now it is the residence of
his widow, a dark and mysterious woman from the ruling
(00:44):
family of Transylvania whose bloodlines can be traced to the
greatest kings and warriors of Hungary and Poland. She is
a powerful enemy, but the dark rumors surrounding her lair,
the mysterious reports of missing women and gold earls, must
be investigated. Justice must be done. The soldiers bang on
(01:06):
the door of her castle, their knocks echoing through the
torchlit halls and blood soaked chambers of the grim palace.
The door slowly creaks open. What the priests and soldiers
(01:28):
find inside is a scene of pure horror. When asked
to testify about their discoveries at trial, the lead investigator
simply refused. He said that the intimate details of what
he discovered in the grim chambers of Chachitse Castle that
evening were simply too gruesome to recall. But today the
(01:50):
world remembers. They have heard the stories of the sadistic
torture devices, the bathtubs filled with the warm blood of
slain virgins, the horrors of the blood Countess from her
influence on the stories of vampire Laura that followed to
her infamous claim as perhaps being one of history's first
(02:11):
female serial killers. The name Elizabeth Bathory only resonates one
type of emotion from those that hear it, that of
dread and terror. Hello, and welcome back to Badass of
(02:33):
the Week. My name is Ben Thompson and I am
here as always with my co host, doctor Pat Larish. Pat,
thank you so much. We are here on a very
spooky day. And how things going for you? How's your
Halloween going?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Okay, I've picked up a lot of trigger treat candy
to hand out to my students and or neighborhood children.
And it's getting into fall weather, so leaves are falling
off the trees, at least in the Northern Hemisphere.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
At least this side of the world. Yeah, we have
a very special guest today. We are joined by by
Tany Caesar, who has a podcast called Unhinged History. And
we are already pretty unhinged about us of the week,
but I think we can really up our game for
for Halloween. And Tanny, you are joining us from the
(03:21):
Southern Hemisphere where it's not cold and spook.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
It is hot as hell, which is pun is intended,
and there's polland everywhere, and the anti histamines we're out, so,
you know, not really thinking about Halloween just yet, but
we'll get them when it turns not time, I think, right.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
And we were talking a little before the show and
you said that kind of Halloween is more of a
US thing, it's not really a.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
It is, well, I mean, it's a more it's just
a Northern Hemisphere thing, I think. And then it's been
an Americanized and now it's sort of come over to Australia,
but it's not as big of a definitely not as
big of a deal down Under. But you know, free
lollies will get anyone going, so.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
That's fair enough, you know, that's why it's catching on.
You gets to dress up in dress up in crazy
costumes and get candy. There's worse things, right, Yeah, I
get my pumpkin spice latte here while we're going to
talk about Vladi and paler. Yeah lovely, I think says
torture and mutilation, licking nutmeg.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Yes, oh gosh, this is why it's unhinged.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Yes, well, why don't you tell us a little bit
about your show for people who might not have been
exposed to it yet. Yeah, why don't you kind of
give us the overview of Unhinged?
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Yeah, so, Unhinge History is my long form content really
from my TikTok. So. I started tiktoking a while ago
now and realized that my closet history buff hobby weirdness
(05:16):
was actually enjoyable for people to watch, you know, So
that sort of took off, and then I realized that, yeah,
short form just isn't enough for some of these stories.
So I started the podcast down Hinge History. It's been
going for not that long now, but yeah, it's been
(05:37):
really fun. And this is probably the second under Unhinched History.
This is Yeah, you'll be the second interview like style
podcast so I'm excited and grateful to be here.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Yeah, and so this episode will air on your show
as well as on ours and a slightly different version
of it, but you can listen to them both and
get all the same great content. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Hello on the platforms, I click.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Every bill, Yes, click all those, but don't forget to
subscribe and leave a comment below. Yeah, so we are
going to be talking about some pretty unhinged characters for
our Halloween episode today, Pat, do you want to tell
us who we're going to be talking about because it's
(06:23):
it's it's pretty intense, pretty intense subject matter.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah, it's pretty intense subject matter, and this episode will
be gruesome, so listeners make an informed decision. Yes, we're
going to talk about two infamous badasses. Elizabeth Bathory, known
famously as the Blood Countess and also the lad the
(06:48):
third Tepesh, known as Flad the Impaler, who was inspiration
at least in part for Bram Stoker's Dracula the vumpa
we all think of as like the famous vampire, the
one who inspired the count on Sesame Street, et cetera,
(07:08):
et cetera.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
I refer to all vampires as Draculas just f y.
I think that's I think it's so funny and it's
never not funnier to interchange Dracula for vampire.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
And also not me knowing until not that long ago
that Transylvania was actually real place and not just a
movie like setting food.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yes, and it doesn't show up on any maps.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah, we are, we are.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
We are in Transylvania. We are in all of these
these food blazes we're talking about. Dracula's in Transylvania.
Speaker 5 (07:42):
It should be uh yes, yes, it is a real
place and uh yes, and it's not a state in
the United States next to New Jersey.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
It is in eastern Europe. So I'm I'm from Pennsylvania.
So I want to get a check with the jock.
I was watching this podcaster and who was asked, what's
your favorite part of the Renaissance, and he goes, what
the fair or the restaurant. I'm glad you clarified, because
(08:22):
I really do think it's necessary to clarify.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Yeah, Transylvania's in Slovakia and Romania. It's like a cross Romania. Yeah,
and it's like all eastern Europe. It's kind of one
of these places that has been in a lot of
different It was part of the Austro Hungarian Empire, owned
by Hungry different times, like people have fought over it
for a long time. Saxon's had it for a while.
Everybody is kind of fought over this place, which is
(08:48):
how it got his reputation for being bloody. But yes,
so Draguela's in Transylvania. That's the theme of this very
special Halloween episode. And we are going to take a
really quick break, and then when we get back, we
are going to start talking about the first of these
two people who really heavily influenced the Dracula myth. Tanny
(09:09):
is going to talk to us about Elizabeth Bathory. So
we'll be right back. Okay, welcome back, and Tani, why
don't you get us started on the story of Elizabeth Bathory,
the Blood Countess.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Let's take it away, all right, bath three. I've heard
her name pronounced so many ways as Elizabeth and then iconic.
I don't have the inflection. I'm Australian. Well, we swallow
all our words, you know. I can't like anyway. So
Lizzie b Wow, what a what a what a lady?
(09:56):
I think I'm going to start.
Speaker 6 (09:57):
Just with a what A with a little bit of
to this because she is, amongst historians, a little bit
of a controversial individual.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Why because a lot of what we know or believe
we know about her is upon assumption we'll get into
the very morbid details about or third party witnesses, which
will also get into the morbid details of and then
(10:30):
there's a group of scholars that are like, yeah, but
this guy said this, and then some people think, we
think that maybe she just got set up. She was rich,
and then that that guy wanted her money said blah
blah blah. But then also there's a whole bunch of
other stuff which at least convinces me of a lot
(10:51):
of things that went down. So just keep that in mind.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah, it's something that we were coming across when we
were researching this too, where it's like, did she get
a bad rap, maybe, but she probably also did a
lot of really messed up stories. Yeah, yeah, exaggerated or
did they exaggerated eighty percent? It's hard to say for sure.
That's where it happens, or.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
To be the devil's advocate. I don't even know if
I used that term right, but it felt right because whatever, we're.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Just going to be making those kinds of fun episode,
I think.
Speaker 7 (11:25):
Oh yeah, yeah, roll with it. The other side of
the coin is that she was no she was a
part of a huge, noble, very wealthy family. So if
it got out that she did some like quirky, kinky, freaky,
sadistic stuff too much, well that would tarnish the name
(11:49):
of the whole ass family. Right, So then there's that
side of it. It's like, well, how much don't we know?
So it could be either all but it is, but
we'll tell the story as we.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Have details of it. That was just my very long
profess and trigger warning, blood will be involved.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
So you're saying that depending on how you depending on
what we don't know what reality is, maybe the reality
is exaggerated a lot or a little, or maybe the
reality is underreported exactly a little or a lot.
Speaker 8 (12:22):
Yeah, And based on what we do have records of
the under reporting that was done by her, she did
a lot of covering up herself.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
We know that. So anyway, moving forward.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
So but probably a bad person, probably legitimately did some
bad things. Yeah, right, there's a lot of like you know,
there have been attempts in the past over the last
you know, years, to rehab her image a little bit.
I think she probably did a lot of bad stuff,
(12:59):
and that's just talking about a lot of the The
evidence seems overwhelming that some bad stuff was happening in
the torture dungeons of her creepy castle.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Torture not not really great. So all right, So basically
we're in fifteen sixty Transylvania, which we've covered. That is
a real place. Yes, And so her uncle was Stephen Bathory.
(13:31):
Now he was the Duke of Transylvania and mates with
Glad the Impeller.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Is that right, that's true, Yeah, her uncle, Yeah, thought
they fought together.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Yeah, yeah, that is right. So she when she was
a young girl, she people tortured back then, they did
public killings. It was a gruesome time. It was war
time as well. People were subjected to a lot of
(14:04):
traumatizing stuff. So that's the first thing.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
You never want to go back in time. You would
never want to go back in history to any of
the This is torture racks and iron maidens.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Yeah, the convention hadn't been invented yet, yeah, no, and
freezing anyway, Now in this period. So we're talking about
noble families, big names, the Batteries, the Hasburgs, blah blah blah.
We all know that they were all mess Uh. Torture
(14:39):
was common practice in this time for nobility for their slaves,
so they were able to torture however they wished for
their slaves. If they killed a slave, all they had
to do was pay a fine to the family for
the deceased slave. So that is kind of where Bathrie
(15:04):
got away with a lot of things for a very
long time because she just kept it to her slaves.
And we'll get there, but that's that's something important context
of the days that that that was allowed.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Yeah, they were they were your people. You do whatever
you want with them, They're fine, or they you on them, right,
They're your peasants and your slaves in your whatever.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, it's like your property. Yeah. So basically,
to give the quick chronology of her life, she uh
was prone to epileptic seizures as a child, which is
interesting because that was contained by the family. Because you remember,
(15:45):
at this point in time, we've got the whole Catholic
Protestant situation going on, and I guess epilepsy wasn't really understood,
and the demons within sort of situation. So her the
epilepsy was like, don't tell anyone about that. She would
go into these fits of rage, so she probably had
you know something. Now, she got engaged at eleven. You
(16:10):
heard that, right, engaged at eleven, got pregnant while horse
playing with a fourteen year old boy. Got pregnant at eleven. Yeah,
the same we deal with this, Oh goodbye baby, who.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Were unhappy, This is awkward.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Terrible, terrible job, and then we're going to marry you
off at fifteen to a noble person or whatever. I
don't really know where the baby went to be honest.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Nobody does. That's the great I'd say, I'm gonna keep
this one under wraps.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
I think I don't know, just throwing that out there.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
And her husband is her husband's a good character to
his name is is well, I can't pronounce his name.
I'm gonna throw it to Pat. That's one thing on
our show is that Pat does the good pronunciations or.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Nad ferrence if you want to do it the Hungarian way,
good old karents.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Right. So he's the Black Knights. He's called the Black Knight.
So yeah, there we a so he's remembered by history.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Black Knight and Lizzie the Blood Liquor.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
They're they're really imaginate and having even at fifteen.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Yeah literally literally, so just like keep in mind, Australians
use nicknames for everything, so some weird stuff's going to
come out of my mouth and it is what I
love him. So anyway, she's married off to the Black
Knight because we can't that's first name. And they were
(17:57):
literally a matchmate. I would argue in like the seventh
Dante's and Ferna violence. So at the time, the Black
Knight was basically in battle a lot. It was a
very gruesome time against the Ottoman Empire, and he was
(18:22):
particularly known for his creative and sadistic torture methods, and
so they basically had this like weird. I mean, it's
not they obviously have loved I feel like I don't.
I don't know the capacity of this, if they loved
(18:43):
each other or were capable of love, but it seemed
like they really loved each other because they wrote to
each other all the time and Bathrie would ask about
details to do with like the intricate, disgusting ways that
the Lack Night tortured human beings, and then he would
(19:03):
write back instructions and encourage her to do it to
her servant girls. So she starts stabbing servant girls with
needles under their fingernails. When they get it, get a
stra like sewing needles. Yeah, like sewing needles, just like
oh you did that, stitcher on like like that's And
(19:24):
then one time she broke the arm of a servant
for tugging on her hair too hard when when she
was brushing it like tugging on Elizabeth's hair. Yes, so
the servant was brushing her hair and she tugged too hard,
and so naturally the normal reaction is to therefore break
(19:44):
her arm. Oh yeah, totally irrational.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Completely rational punishment fits the crime, you know, so anyway,
and so so just just to recap here, So the
Black Knight is off here fighting Turks and torturing prisoners
of war, which, as pat said, we don't have the
Geneva convention yet, and then writing, and then Elizabeth is
(20:10):
writing him letters like oh what'd you do to that?
And he's like, dude, I put the thing under his nails.
And then he talked and told me were all the
enemy were and then she goes back and she's like,
oh cool, I'm gonna the next time somebody tugs my hair,
they're getting the nails that they're getting that needle treatment
because I got to see what happens.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
So yeah, the letters, they were like, oh look what
I did. And then he'd be like try this. And
this one letter he sent he was like, take it.
Take a servant girl, coat her and honey, leave her
outside and then put lip pieces of paper in between
each toes and let her die by ants. So you know,
(20:47):
the creativity was there.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
I mean, that would be very high on the list
of ways I would not want to die.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Yeah, me too quickly, but like and also typically being
burnt between your toes.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Like anyway, that just seems like overkill really.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
And then their blood and the honey, it seems like
they were if they were getting created, well, they were rich,
so that's how.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
It was probably not that easy to come by then.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Oh yeah, yeah, okay, So be that as it may.
The compared notes on definitely compared notes. They tried each
other's methods. It's sort of yeah that they bonded obviously. Now,
as I was saying, she was torturing and killing her
(21:40):
servant girls. And that was fine because again we were
in this period of time. But it was when she
was introduced to who I like to refer to maybe
as her mentor, Anna Dubolia or pat double leo. How
(22:03):
do you how do you spell this? Let's just go
with Anna. Ye yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
And also I like the way that the other part
of her name sounds a little bit like diabolical kind
of yeah, yeah, yeah, so Anna the dibolical.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
So anyway, the mentor comes along and she's like into
witchcraft and into like Satanism. Apparently there's evidence that she
mentored Bathory, but like they lived together and had similar interests,
which was torturing young women. So so anyway, now her
(22:44):
servants reported that once Anna got to the castle, that's
when Elizabeth started getting.
Speaker 9 (22:53):
More and more extreme with her measures of torture and
her patients that didn't really exist in the first place,
to completely disappear.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
I look, just burning your toes and getting you eaten
with hants like that's nothing.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Just wait, thinks about a hate up, literally hate. So
she turned her castle into Now I'm gonna need help
with his pat because I can't say this word guy,
I see him all right.
Speaker 10 (23:25):
Gun cam like like the quarters for women, the women
side of the building.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Yeah, yes, So so that was the Greek thing, and
so she was like, I'm gonna do that, but instead
was definitely not like a safe haven quarters and it
was like the opposite. It's like the where you go
to die. Oh.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
So she set up like a fake like like finishing school,
like a thig, like that's what this is exactly, women,
noble women and peasants women to come and be trained
by a real countess on how to that you're supposed
to be doing when you were a medieval woman.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
And then there was so it was a finishing school
in a different sense.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yeah, fair finishing school in a different sense.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
I like that because if you're from a that was good.
If you're from a noble family, you want to marry
your daughter off to a noble family son. So they
need to learn languages, which is really important at this point,
also like how to dance properly, you know, at balls
and things and needle work and blah blah. So she
opens opens the gates to the girlies and all the
(24:32):
noble families are like hell yeah, like that. It's Elizabeth Bathrie, like,
of course we're going to send out girls this finishing school.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Her uncle was friends with Ladie and Paler. I mean,
how can you not send her there? Send your daughter
after her creepy castle.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
So you know this school set up, there's Anna there,
there's Lizzie there, and rumors start like escape king because
there were a lot of deaths, not just servant deaths now,
but actual noble women, noble girl deaths. Now that oh
(25:12):
that's not allowed. You can't kill a noble girl. But
she obviously got bored of killing her servants, so she
started torturing the noble girls. Now, she announced to the
area that there was a cholera outbreak in the castle
and that's why all these girls were dead. And so
(25:33):
she's calling in the priests, right, and she would always
have the bodies completely covered, and the priests were only
allowed to look at their faces to identify them. That
preserved their modesty, I'm sure probably probably.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Plus And you have to prevent the outbreak, right, you
have to, like, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
But the priests started like chatting with each other and
they were like this girl was like supposed to be,
you know, fifteen, and she was like the size of
a four year old child. I think she was starved
to death or like there were clear lacerations for you know,
like there's something to like suspicions. And then that roomored out,
(26:18):
so people were talking, but the priests kind of couldn't
say anything because Hubby, who's back from war at this point,
Black mate, Yeah, no, she's untouchable while he's alive.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
So yeah, because he's a big war hero. He's a
super violent, like bloody guy to like you really you
didn't want to cross him, especially even if you were
like a pre stray like this guy will you'll mess
you up.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Yeah, So we don't really know the details quite yet.
But in sixteen oh four, old Mate kicks the bucket.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
This is the Middle Ages, right, We're talking about six
late six late fifteen hundreds, right, so this is still
kind of in Eastern Europe, which is you know, like
we're talking kind of medieval kind of Middle Ages kind
of thing, And so for a more than average number
of people to be dying seems significant because people just
drop dead all the time. In fifteen ninety, like, it
(27:16):
wasn't that weird for entire villages to just disappear because
somebody got sick and they all died or whatever.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Right, Like, however, these were the noble women in one
of the richest gals in the towns. Yeah, their life
expectancy should technically be better because they're.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
They should be expected to live like to.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Thirty, like slightly longer. Yeah. Anyway, Hobby's dead, but she's
rich and the husband weirdly takes like her kids and
puts them in custody of I think it's cousin or something, so.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Like it's like, call.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
I feel like the husband obviously knew something like that.
To me, was like no, no, no, no, no, no no.
Like the husband was like, I'm not leaving my kids
with that bitch.
Speaker 10 (28:14):
But when you say husband, when you say husband, do
you mean Saran nadejd the Black Knight.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Yes, yeah, so in the world. Okay, So even.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
He he was like, yeah, she's she's I like her,
but she's she's actually pretty freaking crazy.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Yeah. He left the estate to Lizzy to Bathory, but
took the kids and then gave them to Matthias the second. Yeah,
so who I think was his cousin? Somehow they were related.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
They're all related at this point. Everybody's related in fifteen ninety.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Yeah, exactly, anyhom so now she's touchable because she's alone.
A priest brave enough woke up and started talking about
all the things that they had seen when they were
given bodies, sort of like at the front gate in
(29:10):
the middle of the night, you know, just that. And
then the castle was raided by priests and the King
of Hungary. So he's like, you know what, we're raiding
the castle. So she takes off, and when the priest
went in, they quoted that the scene they found was
(29:34):
too horrible to recount within the castle.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
So that seems bad.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
The trial begins, Yes, so that means really really, really
really bad, it's too horrible to recount. So there was
three hundred witness statements, okay at this trial, and she
ain't looking too good to be innocent in this situation.
So she fled, and you know, she was living in
(30:02):
some mountainous area, and.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Well, she's not looking too good. While she's not looking
too good as a defendant, her skin is looking amazing.
I should say, like, oh crap, they're going to they're
gonna see all my stuff.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
I'm gonna run. Like if you were innocent, why would
you do that. I don't know. I'm just saying, and
take a whole bunch of money with you and get
in contact with her cousin who was he was someone
that was important as like a backup plan, like what
can you bail me out sort of thing?
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Do you have an army that can protect me from these?
Speaker 3 (30:48):
He's like, why are you fleeting in the country? Anyway,
she gets brought back for this trial and that's where
all the stuff comes out. So she tortured girls. Oh
my gosh, and like the most I don't even know.
(31:10):
I don't know. I'm wordless. Maybe you have some words
like I can't express, like the creativeness of.
Speaker 11 (31:19):
It, yeah, egregiousness, egregiousness, yeah, yeah, sadistic creativity.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
These tools just you know, like like basically what I
would like call tongs or like a like a wrench
tongue thing that would be heated and then would burn
through your finger and the bone and then your finger
gets small off. I didn't know you could do thinks
of that.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
I didn't know that's possibly there.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Uh, lots of what am I How do I put
this crucifixion esque type style torturing, like you know, symbolism,
you know, a Christian theme, and then like the normal
stuff you know, like whipping, lashings, cutting people's hands off.
Speaker 8 (32:15):
You know.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
So anyway in the trial, I promise I'm almost done.
So the biggest accusation of all was that she would
blood let her servant girls into a bath and bathe
in it to preserve her youth. Now, whilst that does
(32:42):
feel like something she'd do, like I just get the
vibe that that kind of would be possible. However, we
have no proof of that. Just keep that in mind.
So they go into the trial her servants, part of
her servants. One of them was her wet nose us.
Oh so the woman who breast fed Elizabeth when she
(33:03):
was a baby. Okay, sorry, no, the woman that breastfed
her babies? Ah got it? Yeah yeah, because nobility were
far above doing that, and she had people to torture.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
She's busy, job's got time for.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
This, got a big job. So five witnesses or tortured
into confession, which completely ruined the trial, and then the
old finger clamp and then they got buried alive. So
that so that's why it's really hard to know, because
of course they're gonna confess or anyway, great.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
There's just no good guys in this type period, right,
Like that's one of the crazy things about medieval judicial system. Literally,
it's like it's like, no, do you believe do you
believe Elizabeth Bathrie? Or do you leave the inquisition?
Speaker 3 (34:04):
Really so that the servants all get uh charged with
accomplices to murder and buried life. But Batary couldn't be
charged with anything because she was noble. So she got
exiled to a room and starved herself to death, which
is very cool, and that was the end of her life.
(34:29):
Probably good. She tortured for thirty five thirty four years,
she got away with torturing people, and the estimates of
the girls that died between six hundred and one thousand people.
There's a big gap and understanding there, so.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Right, and we can't really quantify it easily too, So.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
No, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
So so a Badass of the week we cover a
lot of like war heroes, general badass in that way, uh,
and this is kind of a different situation of like
she's criminally insane and terrifying and scary. Yes, yes, like
just bet she's a hinge. So she works perfectly for
(35:14):
the for you crossover.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
The crossover is crossing.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Yeah, yeah, yes, exactly, And yeah, like the bathing and
blood thing is pretty intense. That's what she's most well
known for. And that story, whether it is true or not,
like does kind of feed into the vampire myth, right
of all of the vampire stuff kind of comes from Transylvania.
You know, we're gonna talk about flat in a second,
but a lot of the vampire stuff is from Transylvania,
(35:40):
which is where she was from. And this bathing and
blood thing is the thing that you'll see in a
lot of vampire type settings, vampires like fiction, and so
she kind of contributes to that as Halloween. So we're
just we're gonna go with.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
It exactly, Yeah, exactly, and Vanity, you know, like you're
gonna get some wrinkles blood, I guess.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
And like you said, like she might have gotten a
I mean, did she get a bad wrap? Probably not,
Like probably deserved all of the being walled up into
a room and starting yourself. She probably was a very
bad person. The bathing and blood thing, like you said,
it doesn't show up until, like you know, the first
account of it an't until a little later. But yeah,
I think, but yeah, it's it's like you said, it
(36:28):
seems like it would fit. We can't prove that it happened,
but we can't prove that it didn't.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Yeah, exactly exactly. Well, I feel like speaking of blood,
why don't we talk about.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Okay, all right, we'll take a really quick break, and
then when we come back from that, we are going
to get into We're going to get into another psychotic,
homicidal lunatic. All right, so stay with us, welcome back.
(37:04):
We are now going to talk about Vlad the Impaler,
and to tell the story of Lad. I want to
begin with an excerpt from a fifteenth century Hungarian pamphlet
that was written by people who hated him. Here begins
a very cruel, frightening story about a wild, bloodthirsty man,
Prince Dracula. How he impaled people and roasted them and
(37:25):
boiled their heads into kettle, and skinned people and hacked
them to pieces like cabbage. So that's what we're about
to get into here. So get ready for Vlad the Impaler.
So Vled, he's led the third. He's known as Tepish.
He's from a place called Walachia, which is in present
(37:46):
day Romania. But he was born in.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
By the way, just means impaler.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Oh really. Oh cool. I never I literally never knew
that I've wit until just now. Okay, so perfect. So
he was as a child, he was just Vlad the
Third or Vlad of Wallachio.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
His dad was.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Flad the second, right, his lad. His dad is Vlad.
His dad was Vlad the second Dracool, which means the dragon.
And so Dracula just means son of the dragon, which
is cool. Yeah, but it's not what we think about
when we think about Draculas anymore. And so yeah, but
that it means son of the dragon.
Speaker 10 (38:26):
And he was called Vlad. The dad was called the
Dragon because he had been inducted into this secret society
of knights or something like that that was known as
the Order of the Dragon.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
That's cool, okay, So so so Vlad is born in Transylvania.
He has a castle that's in present day Romania. He's
about one hundred years earlier than Elizabeth Bathory.
Speaker 10 (38:49):
So Dracula aka Vlad the Third had a pretty rough childhood.
At the age of eleven, he was captured by the
Sultan of the Ottoman emp Higher and shipped off to Arinople,
modern Edna, where he and also his brother, who I
believe was known as Roder the Hansom, would spend the
(39:10):
next six years growing up as prisoners of the Turkish court.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Right, And the idea here was that this would like
bring the bring the Ottoman Empire and Wallachia a little closer. Right,
This is the the Great joy sending their kid to
start castle. Right, Like, the Ottomans are kind of dominating
Eastern Europe at this point. They've got they've me met
the conqueror is up and coming, but he's going to
(39:35):
actually be growing up with Vlad in this castle in Adrianople.
But the idea is the Ottomans are trying to move
into Eastern Europe and they're dominant power, and they they
dominate Dracool and say, hey, you know, we won't kill
you if you send your kid to come live with
us as a hostage. And it works out well because
(39:55):
you know, on the one hand, now Vlad the second
is not going to cause trouble because his two kids
are going to and you don't want to lose, right
to the handsome and on the other hand or flat
the third, right, yes, and the son of the Dragon.
And on the other hand, like, now we've got these
two kids in our castle, and we can indoctrinate them
into our you know, we can grow they grow up
(40:17):
with our guys. And so when when your kids and
our kids both become adults, they'll be buddies and everybody
will be happy and whatever.
Speaker 4 (40:25):
Not how it works out, because and it's all sunshine cupcakes. Yes, yeah,
it's a good idea on paper, it's a decent plan.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
The problem is that is that Dracula didn't go along
with the plan. Yes, yes he was.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
What is it saying like, no battle plan survives first
contact with the enemy, and no lesson plan, shall we say,
survives first contact with a bunch of eleven year olds
or whatever?
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Yeah? Yeah, I mean, and you're right here we have
lad the Third growing up with me met the Conqueror.
So vlad Bei and Paler and men Met the Conqueror
are both kind of boys at this time period, growing
up together. And Dragula is very mad. He's very mad
about being a hostage here, and he causes trouble and
he gets whipped and beaten up and tortured and all
these bad things happened to him in Turkey because he
(41:17):
just will not play along and play nice with the
other boys. He is. He is a captive here, and
he is a hostage, and he never stops trying to
escape and cause trouble.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
And he is not happy about it.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
He is not happy about it. And it actually works
out that being here in Ottoman captivity probably was a
good thing for him, because back in back in Wallachia,
some guy named Vladislav seizes the throne from Vlad's father
uh and pulls his face off with those iron pokers
we were just talking about, and uh and and Druk
(41:51):
Wuld dies from that then older the older brother of Dracula.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
He did not survive the face pulling.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Did not survive having his face pulled off with red
hot pokers. And now he.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
Was not. This is not some like New Spa treatment.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
Yeah no.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
I also, I just want to make sure the drag
hoole who's getting his face pulled off is Vlad the dad, Lad,
the second Glad, the dad. I just want to make
the yes, Dad, the impaler.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
I want to get through because we've got drag hool
and then we've got Dracula.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Yes, and these are two different.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Baby Vlad gets mad, right.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Yeah, So we will end the confusion now, because this
is the end of the story for for Dad the Impaler.
He's he's out of the picture now, he's got his
face pulled off and he's dead. Dracula has an older
brother who gets his eyes burned out with the red
hot poker and is buried alive by this Vladislav guy,
and he also dies from that. So that's the end
(42:42):
of those guys. Glad the third is now the heir
to Walachia, except that it's in the possession of a
usurper at the moment.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
Okay, so this is still the Vladislav guy, right, yes,
Vladislav Okay, yeah, yeah. So here's the situation.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Glad is in Adrianople with me at the conqueror and
these Ottomans raising him. His father and older brother are dead,
killed by a usurper who also doesn't like the Ottoman Empire.
So the Ottomans say, here's a good opportunity for us
to send a huge army with vlad the rightful heir
to the throne. We will conquer Wilacchia, will put Dracula
(43:22):
on the throne of Wilacchia where he belongs, and he
will have loyalty to us because we put him where
we put him there. This is a flawless plan.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
We set in breakfast every day for years, right, Yeah,
something that's a death of jacent strategy in theory, Yeah,
in theory.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
In theory, assuming that Vlad Dracula wants to play along
with these, with the Ottoman Empire, this actually works out.
So this giant Automan Empire army shows up with Vlad
uh you know, ostensibly leading them, and they crush the Wallachians.
(44:02):
They destroy Vladislav. According to the story, Dracula defeats him
in single combat, you know, in the throne room. Very
dramatic movie sequence here of Vlad is avenging his father
and his brother with a sword in front of the
throne of Wallachia. That in fighting the usurper in single combat.
That's the story. It seems probably that's not what happened,
(44:25):
but you know, it's a great story. So that is
how the movie version is. Yeah, So in fourteen fifty six,
Vlad becomes king of Wallachia and he becomes Vlad the Third,
and he's got the crown and he's gonna play nice
enough with the Ottomans. They go back to Adrianople, say okay, Lad,
(44:48):
don't do anything crazy while we're gone, and he says, no,
you can trust me. So Lad's got some business to
attend to. And Tony, let's assume that you are you
are Vlad the Impaler here and you have retaken the
throne of your kingdom from the armies that have usurped.
(45:09):
What's the first order of business for you?
Speaker 3 (45:12):
Revenge?
Speaker 1 (45:13):
Definitely revenge. Yeah, everybody that supported that bloody slab guy,
they got to die, which is ye.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
So you made a Game of Thrones reference and so
I'm won't continue with that. The red wedding theme music
that will haunt every Game of Thrones, like diehard fan
for the rest of our lives. Imagine that playing in
the background. So Lad gets his spies to seek out
(45:45):
every single noble person that supported Daddy getting is his
face ripped off? But this is all secret and underground, right,
And so he then has two hundred names that he
happens to invite to an easter feast as a new
(46:10):
king to get to know everyone. Oh, and bring your
families with you. So sometimes he sends out these invites
and they all come. They all come to this Easter
feast and they're like, oh, yes, the great king.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:27):
And then anyway, so.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
What happens to these guys the doors lock.
Speaker 3 (46:32):
The head of each of the family is that, like
the old eldest of each family is taken and in
front of their family is impaled.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
So you know it wasn't a feast, It was a blood.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
Bath, yes, and yep. Yeah, So he reads of Casti,
meirs all of the men responsible for this, and then
enslaves the wives and children and forces them to build
his castle, forces them to move rocks and build a
big castle in his honor, and works them until they
(47:06):
just die. Yes. And here's the thing of like the Impaler, Right,
so he becomes lad the Impaler after this, right he's
and then he he goes. He gets busy with you know,
all these people in Transylvania, all these Saxons in Transylvania,
you know, UH, Germanic people like you know Germanic people
in UH in Transylvania. They gotta go. Everybody that backed Ladislav,
(47:29):
they gotta go. But one thing we should we should
stipulate here when we're talking about being impaled, is that
I had always kind of assumed that this was like
through the abdomen, like like you would like you would
put a hot dog on a skewer, like if we
were gonna like like a you know, like a kebab
that you would grill you put the stuff on their sideways,
(47:51):
which technically is.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
True because that technically is in palement.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
However, that's not how Lad did it.
Speaker 10 (47:58):
Yeah, so instead of like a instead of like a
T shape, it's more.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Of a it's more like a corn dog. It's like,
yeah it when it wins, let's just say it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
I want to apologize to all of our listeners for
that image.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
I'm too crass.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
I can't hold it back.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
No, no, no, okay, if you made it this far,
like this is what you came for, but I still
feel like, oh, that's got to hurt.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
And yes, you sat on it until the skewer came
out of your mouth. Yeah, that's that's how that works. And
it was that's the impaalment situation for the uh corn dogs?
Corn dogs?
Speaker 3 (48:40):
Yeah, did we just ruined corn dogs? Anyway? So we're
talking about human beings.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
Yeah, we're talking about actual human beings who are dead
and in a horrible way, and probably people who didn't
deserve to die. So pat Led grows up, and so
does his childhood frenemy. Meant the conqueror, who is not
who now becomes met met the conqueror, But he was
(49:06):
just met, meant the dude when Vlad knew him glad
as now the Paler meant is now the conqueror? Yeah,
so what's his deal? I mean fight, yes, but we
definitely this is good as far as combat goes. This
is an amazing battle of epithets. But why don't you
tell us little bit about Memet the conqueror?
Speaker 11 (49:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (49:28):
Yeah, so he's the guy who conquered Constantinople. And yeah,
and these two guys that plan, which on paper would
have made the besties, did not actually happen in the
way that people hoped it would.
Speaker 3 (49:42):
They hated each other's guts.
Speaker 2 (49:44):
And when Dracula aka Led the Third aka Laed, the Paler.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
Seized control of the throne of Volachia.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
Man, does it pronounced vol? Have I been saying wa pronounced?
Speaker 3 (49:59):
How follow your heart? Then? So when Draguler are.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
Gone, I still like my mind is blown from Volakia?
Of course that, of course the W is a V
because it's Eastern Europe. But I would have never put
that together. And I'm gonna, yeah, all right.
Speaker 3 (50:18):
Something that I just have to say because my imagine
getting the nickname the Impaler versus the Conqueror, Like I'd
be pissed, Like if I was Vlad the Impala and
I'm up against a guy the conqueror, like I don't know,
the conqueror.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
Yeah, I mean, if he had fewer people, he might
have been the conqueror. I guess when you would pale
three hundred people in front of their families, like, that's
gonna stick, I think stick. I don't know if that's okay. Yeah, yeah,
So Lad takes over and med Is the is the
(51:00):
takes over in the Ottoman Empire. They're both like pretty young.
They're both in their twenties, right, so they're both kind
of these young guys that are you know, have hated
each other, have ten years of fighting literally wrestling each other.
And you know, in the old days, the Volakians have
historically paid money to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire
to not destroy them. And this is the thing that
(51:22):
is done in a lot of Eastern Europe. Please don't conquer,
Please don't the conqueror us. Here's some money, and Flat
takes over and he's like, go to hell, I'm not
doing this, and Menhad's like, dude, what's your problem? And
then Vlad responds by launching this huge campaign along the
Danube River in fourteen sixty one, just burning everything, like
(51:42):
slaughtering Turkish soldiers and civilians and impaling people and doing
all of this and just annihilating all of the Turkish
settlements and soldiers in his in what he believes is
Wallachia Volakia naturally right, So that medsense two guys to
Vlad's court to be like, dude, what is your problem?
(52:06):
And Vlad responds to theador ambassadors, right diplomats, and they
arrive in Vlad's court and they're like what is wrong
with you? And the Vlad's like, we have to take
your turbine off in my court. I have to take
your head gear off because that's respectful to me, and
they don't do that. So he has their head gear
nailed to their head with a big like think like
(52:28):
a railroad spike and they die. Mehmed has heard enough
from Vlad the Impaler and uh, and he's just gonna
He's just going to do the thing. He's going to
do the conqueror thing, and he's just going to crush
Volakia and put somebody else on the throne. Like, all right,
the Vlod experiment is a failure. We're just going to
stop this guy and find somebody else. Maybe that run
(52:48):
with a handsome guy.
Speaker 12 (52:51):
He seems not Paler's younger brother, maybe the way more chill,
a younger brother that like actually really liked growing up
that empire and was like friends with.
Speaker 3 (53:03):
Them and stuff. Maybe we should chose him.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
Yeah, And so you know, talk about like talk about
epithets right like you would have wished you to had
to conquer. I was like, oh, Why'm not the handsome one?
What was this all that? I'm the other one?
Speaker 3 (53:18):
Can you imagine the sibling life?
Speaker 1 (53:20):
Taylor? OK, So the Turks send one hundred thousand guys,
one hundred thousand man strong army with rod the Hansom
at the head hold on hold.
Speaker 3 (53:33):
On way. Do you say one hundred hundred.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
Hundred thousands, which that's a lot. It's a lot. I
mean it's close to the population of Volakia, right, Blad
can muster twenty thousand tops, right, But in reality.
Speaker 3 (53:50):
Yes, like one fifth of that, right.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
And those that was not like a sustainable number for
him because he and a lot of these guys were
untrained peasants with spears and stuff. Right, Like, the Ottoman
Empire is a professional army. They are serious. They're not
to be messed with. Yeah, and the twenty thousand guys
not only includes these peasants and stuff, but it includes
some of Vlad has to call in help from his friends,
(54:14):
including our good friends Stephen Bathory, uncle of Elizabeth Bathory.
Speaker 3 (54:19):
Elizabeth's uncle, and Funny all.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
Birds of a feather, right, and so chat Okay, so
huge army coming. Vlad's trying to muster whatever he can.
He's not going to fight them. He's not gonna be
able to defeat them on the battlefield. He's got to
come up with some other strategies here. And so one
of the things he decides he's going to do is
(54:48):
he gets a pretty big group of guys and he
decides he's going to infiltrate the Ottoman camp. So the
Ottoman Empire has shown up with their huge army. They're
all set up in these big camps and he out
Vlad can speak fluent Turkish because he would live there
and was raised there, and he knows the customs and
he knows how to speak it, and he knows what
(55:08):
the dresses and what the uniforms are, all the stuff.
So he takes a group of guys and he sneaks
into the Turkish camp and then he starts sending everything
on fire and like causing all his havoc and trying
to create this big ruckus to you know. Uh, it
doesn't work. He's going to try to kill met Meed.
Uh just tried to sneak in and kill the kill
the Sultan. Doesn't work out. He does cause plenty of havoc, loses,
(55:29):
a bunch of his guys has to escape, and and
now it's like, all right, this this little last stitch effort,
it didn't work. So now the Ottoman Empire is coming
for Castle Dracula, and it's it's looking bad, but he's
got one more trick up his sleeve, and uh, it's
it's bad. It's I mean, look, the the impaling thing
(55:52):
has worked for him so far, So.
Speaker 3 (55:55):
Why reinvent the wheel Dracula? Why?
Speaker 1 (55:58):
Yes, absolutely so. Mehmed and his huge army are approaching
Castle Dracula, and this is and what they see is
just just rows of impaled people everywhere, just rows and
rows of spikes with impaled prisoners of war Turks mostly
on them. Probably those three hundred people he'd impaled before
(56:19):
still out there, and he has this like hellscape forest
of the impaled outside of his castle.
Speaker 3 (56:28):
The forest of the impaled.
Speaker 1 (56:30):
Forest of the impaled.
Speaker 3 (56:32):
That's what. That's the name. That is the name.
Speaker 1 (56:35):
That is what does what. The Turks referred to it
as twenty thousand people as the estimate.
Speaker 3 (56:41):
Could you imagine the smell.
Speaker 1 (56:46):
Twenty thousand people is like is like a sports stadium,
like a full sporting stadium, like a floor those like
a football stadium, whether you want that to be American
or Australian football either way, Like it's a football stadium
of dead people on sticks. It's a lot of people.
Yeah uh, and that would.
Speaker 3 (57:04):
Just be that's terrific. But anyway, continuing.
Speaker 1 (57:07):
It's it's terrific. And so and the Turks like, I
mean that's the Turks are extremely religious people and they
see this and they're like, I'm out of here. I
don't want any part of it.
Speaker 3 (57:19):
Even if you're not religious.
Speaker 1 (57:22):
Well, this is like demonic stuff, right, Like this is
some this is some Satan like devil stuff, right. This
is where a lot of this Dracula myth comes from.
Is this guy was pretty dark person and did a
lot of really horrible things. Yeah, And and they see
this and they're like, this is demon this is demon stuff.
Speaker 3 (57:37):
I'm out right, Well yeah, and there's that cultural and
religious aspect too, like that would have just I mean,
just like obviously seeing something like that is horrifying. But
then yeah, like you said.
Speaker 1 (57:50):
But as a as a devout Muslim, like you don't
go to heaven until you are buried, right, like, yes,
and these guys aren't getting buried anytime soon.
Speaker 3 (57:59):
A whole bunch to other customs that I'm not even
aware of that.
Speaker 1 (58:03):
Probably, Yeah, bad news, and nobody wanted a part of it.
And they left, they went back home, and that was
the end of it. So Vled wins this war, even
though he has no business winning this war, and to
this day he is like a hero in Romania because
he saved them from the Turks, and maybe like being
(58:27):
impaled as a fate that's not as bad as being
ruled by the Turks. But I don't know. He's a
hero in Romania and they love him like they don't.
He's not a creepy figure there. He is a cultural
hero in Romania because of what he did to like
defend the country against the Turks.
Speaker 3 (58:43):
It's not interesting. That's so interesting.
Speaker 1 (58:48):
That's what we talked about with Bathory, where like, you know,
how much of this is exaggerated, how much of this
was propaganda stuff. Maybe there was only one hundred guys
and they were already you know, like he set it
up in a way that you know, the story is that.
Speaker 3 (59:02):
That's a really interesting difference between the two because like
she was just being a sadistic serial killer, even though
the term wasn't at the time. Mostly like this was
a leader who did that and then essentially won a
war without Yeah, that's fascinating. I can see doing air
(59:27):
quotes like around one a war, like a quota on
a war by just scaring the absolute shit out of everyone.
Speaker 1 (59:35):
Yep, he defended his country the only way that he
could write. And it's really it's really an interesting take
on him. And you know, you know, the Medians will
say he gets a little bit of a bad rap.
Crime was actually really low while he was in charge.
If you can believe that, No police, yea. And the
(01:00:01):
story goes that there was a there was a crown
like this golden crown, and he put it on a
pedestal in a public park and it was like gold
with jewels and stuff on it. And oh and it
never was stolen. It was stolen the day after he died.
But for his entire life, nobody took that crown. I mean,
it was priceless and it was public.
Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
It's so funny how history repeats itself because like, as
you said that, I'm thinking of like the Spartan and
GoGet I hope I pronounced that right where they like
they encouraged kids to like go and steal something they
weren't allowed to, and like, I don't know, it's just interesting,
like we just just repeat.
Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
Yes, I really hoped.
Speaker 3 (01:00:40):
The impaled forest never repeats though. That's something that would
be terrifying.
Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
It's no, it's not good, right, It's no, it's no good.
That's why that's why this guy is remembered as that's
that's why Dracula has the ed Bathory have the conjure.
The images that they do today amongst us is that
it's this bad people doing bad stuff, and that scared
everybody around them.
Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
But anyway, yeah, I mean, the Turks eventually get sick
of Vlad's shit and they kill him. In fourteen seventy six,
he dies in battle. They cut his head off. They
nail it to the city gate in Adrianople, which is
where he grew up or with the Turks like Turkey. Yeah,
they bring it back, which Adrianople is the capital at
this point where met Med's palace is his main palace.
(01:01:33):
He's in the process of moving everything to Constantinople, which
he has just conquered, which he is also in the
process of renaming it stan Bull and all of that.
But in fourteen seventy six it's Adrianople is the main
city in the Ottoman Empire, and they nail his head
to the city gates, so that and and the story
is that, like it's so that Turks can go and
(01:01:55):
look and be like, Okay, he is really dead.
Speaker 3 (01:01:58):
He's actually dead.
Speaker 1 (01:01:59):
He's gone, and it's not like this isn't like the
force of them pale where you try to scare people,
is like look you can go see him. You go here,
and he's he's here. We got him, we got him.
It's the real him. He's dead, this specific guy.
Speaker 3 (01:02:10):
Yeah, maybe what a spiritual impact as well that possibly had,
Like yeah, you know what I mean, like if that
they needed to say that he really was dead.
Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
You know, he's their minds, right, He's not hiding under
your bed, He's not in the closet somewhere waited to
jump out of it. Yeah, stick a skebob, screw up
your ass.
Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
He was a kind of creepy looking dude in general.
Oh yeah, yeah, be a little bit off with the
eye precautions or whatever.
Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
But like, yeah, big black mustache, big black beard. He
wore a lot of really cool hats. Every time you
see me, he's wearing some really really unique and cool
looking hat.
Speaker 3 (01:02:47):
Reminds me of like Napoleon or something.
Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Yeah, it's like that. He's very distinctive when you see
picture of him, it's very distinctive him. You're never gonna like,
you're never going to confuse him with somebody else. And
they paint him very dark, always dark colors.
Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
So apparently a piece of research came out recently. It
was published in the Journal of Analytical Chemistry recently. The
title of the article is Count Dracula resurrected proteomic analysis
of Lad the third the Impaler's documents by EVA technology
and mass mass spectrometry. What these chemists did is they
(01:03:27):
took some documents that had been signed by Vlad the
third and somehow managed to analize stuff apparently, you know,
you leave peptides and stuff on the paper whatever, and
they show that he probably suffered from inflammatory processes of
(01:03:48):
the respiratory tract.
Speaker 3 (01:03:49):
And or of the skin. I'm reading from the abstract
of the article.
Speaker 2 (01:03:53):
And then they think that it's possible that the data
they're getting may indicate that he may have suffered from
a pathological condition called hemolacria, which is a condition in
which you shed tears mixed with blood.
Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
WHOA, wow, the cry tears of blood. That's the lead, right,
that's the that's the drummer, that's the click.
Speaker 3 (01:04:19):
Bad, that's the clickba I bury the lead.
Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
Yeah, blad. Dracula may have actually cried tears of blood
when his father was slain, when he got news that
his dad and his brother were dead, cried tears of
blood and let an army to avenge them. That not
that's nice.
Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
Yeah, I cannot speak to the science behind it. The
article is out there. You you know, it's not behind
a paywall or anything. But I guess the takeaway is
that Flat the third is still gripping our imagination.
Speaker 3 (01:04:52):
Yes, yeah, whoa when you cry blood? No wonder the
Turks needed to see that he is actually dead because
I'm probably gonna have nightmares about this, no kidding, right, yeah,
that's that's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
Oh man, all right, well, happy Halloween guys, and Tony,
thank you so much for being on. This is awesome.
I want this to be a four and a half
hour episode, but we should probably call it at this point.
Speaker 3 (01:05:24):
We definitely should because we could talk for probably light
three day struct I agree.
Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
Where can people find more of your stuff?
Speaker 3 (01:05:32):
You can find me on literally every platform. I'm tany
t A and I Caesar c ae s a R people.
I spill it wrong on TikTok, on Instagram, all the things,
and then my podcast is Unhinged History awesome and vice versa.
Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
Yes, so we are on. The show is called Badass
of the Week. We are at Badass of the Week
on Twitter and Instagram. And although I'm very bad about
updating social media stuff, so we'll see. But yes, that's
weird and all right, well, thank you so much for
talking with us. This is really really fun. I agree time, this.
Speaker 3 (01:06:11):
Is fun and I'm actually sure this was great.
Speaker 1 (01:06:15):
Yes, yes, all right now I'm gonna go watch Twilight
and sit my pumpkin spice Ltte and thank you guys
so much, and we'll see see We'll see you soon,
stay spooky.
Speaker 10 (01:06:32):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Me, Pat Larish,
and my co host Ben Thompson. Writing is by me
and Ben. Story editing is by Ian Jacobs Brandon Phibbs.
Mixing and music and sound design is by Jude Brewer.
(01:06:54):
Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeart Badass of the
Week is based on the website Theweek dot com, where
you can read all sorts of stories about other badasses.
If you want to reach out with questions ideas, you
can email us at Badass Podcast at badassoftheweek dot com.
(01:07:15):
If you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen, and tell
your friends and your enemies if you want as. We'll
be back next week with another one. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. Christmas Day, sixteen ten, Armed with swords,
golden crosses, and blazing torches, Hungarian soldiers and Roman Catholic
priests storm up a steep hill towards the imposing black
(00:21):
spires of Chachitse Castle. The fortress was once home to
the notorious Black Knight of Hungary, a warrior renowned for
slaughtering Turks in battle and using vicious methods to extract
information from his prisoners. Now it is the residence of
his widow, a dark and mysterious woman from the ruling
(00:44):
family of Transylvania whose bloodlines can be traced to the
greatest kings and warriors of Hungary and Poland. She is
a powerful enemy, but the dark rumors surrounding her lair,
the mysterious reports of missing women and gold earls, must
be investigated. Justice must be done. The soldiers bang on
(01:06):
the door of her castle, their knocks echoing through the
torchlit halls and blood soaked chambers of the grim palace.
The door slowly creaks open. What the priests and soldiers
(01:28):
find inside is a scene of pure horror. When asked
to testify about their discoveries at trial, the lead investigator
simply refused. He said that the intimate details of what
he discovered in the grim chambers of Chachitse Castle that
evening were simply too gruesome to recall. But today the
(01:50):
world remembers. They have heard the stories of the sadistic
torture devices, the bathtubs filled with the warm blood of
slain virgins, the horrors of the blood Countess from her
influence on the stories of vampire Laura that followed to
her infamous claim as perhaps being one of history's first
(02:11):
female serial killers. The name Elizabeth Bathory only resonates one
type of emotion from those that hear it, that of
dread and terror. Hello, and welcome back to Badass of
(02:33):
the Week. My name is Ben Thompson and I am
here as always with my co host, doctor Pat Larish. Pat,
thank you so much. We are here on a very
spooky day. And how things going for you? How's your
Halloween going?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Okay, I've picked up a lot of trigger treat candy
to hand out to my students and or neighborhood children.
And it's getting into fall weather, so leaves are falling
off the trees, at least in the Northern Hemisphere.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
At least this side of the world. Yeah, we have
a very special guest today. We are joined by by
Tany Caesar, who has a podcast called Unhinged History. And
we are already pretty unhinged about us of the week,
but I think we can really up our game for
for Halloween. And Tanny, you are joining us from the
(03:21):
Southern Hemisphere where it's not cold and spook.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
It is hot as hell, which is pun is intended,
and there's polland everywhere, and the anti histamines we're out, so,
you know, not really thinking about Halloween just yet, but
we'll get them when it turns not time, I think, right.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
And we were talking a little before the show and
you said that kind of Halloween is more of a
US thing, it's not really a.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
It is, well, I mean, it's a more it's just
a Northern Hemisphere thing, I think. And then it's been
an Americanized and now it's sort of come over to Australia,
but it's not as big of a definitely not as
big of a deal down Under. But you know, free
lollies will get anyone going, so.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
That's fair enough, you know, that's why it's catching on.
You gets to dress up in dress up in crazy
costumes and get candy. There's worse things, right, Yeah, I
get my pumpkin spice latte here while we're going to
talk about Vladi and paler. Yeah lovely, I think says
torture and mutilation, licking nutmeg.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Yes, oh gosh, this is why it's unhinged.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Yes, well, why don't you tell us a little bit
about your show for people who might not have been
exposed to it yet. Yeah, why don't you kind of
give us the overview of Unhinged?
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Yeah, so, Unhinge History is my long form content really
from my TikTok. So. I started tiktoking a while ago
now and realized that my closet history buff hobby weirdness
(05:16):
was actually enjoyable for people to watch, you know, So
that sort of took off, and then I realized that, yeah,
short form just isn't enough for some of these stories.
So I started the podcast down Hinge History. It's been
going for not that long now, but yeah, it's been
(05:37):
really fun. And this is probably the second under Unhinched History.
This is Yeah, you'll be the second interview like style
podcast so I'm excited and grateful to be here.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Yeah, and so this episode will air on your show
as well as on ours and a slightly different version
of it, but you can listen to them both and
get all the same great content. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Hello on the platforms, I click.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Every bill, Yes, click all those, but don't forget to
subscribe and leave a comment below. Yeah, so we are
going to be talking about some pretty unhinged characters for
our Halloween episode today, Pat, do you want to tell
us who we're going to be talking about because it's
(06:23):
it's it's pretty intense, pretty intense subject matter.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah, it's pretty intense subject matter, and this episode will
be gruesome, so listeners make an informed decision. Yes, we're
going to talk about two infamous badasses. Elizabeth Bathory, known
famously as the Blood Countess and also the lad the
(06:48):
third Tepesh, known as Flad the Impaler, who was inspiration
at least in part for Bram Stoker's Dracula the vumpa
we all think of as like the famous vampire, the
one who inspired the count on Sesame Street, et cetera,
(07:08):
et cetera.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
I refer to all vampires as Draculas just f y.
I think that's I think it's so funny and it's
never not funnier to interchange Dracula for vampire.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
And also not me knowing until not that long ago
that Transylvania was actually real place and not just a
movie like setting food.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yes, and it doesn't show up on any maps.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah, we are, we are.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
We are in Transylvania. We are in all of these
these food blazes we're talking about. Dracula's in Transylvania.
Speaker 5 (07:42):
It should be uh yes, yes, it is a real
place and uh yes, and it's not a state in
the United States next to New Jersey.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
It is in eastern Europe. So I'm I'm from Pennsylvania.
So I want to get a check with the jock.
I was watching this podcaster and who was asked, what's
your favorite part of the Renaissance, and he goes, what
the fair or the restaurant. I'm glad you clarified, because
(08:22):
I really do think it's necessary to clarify.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Yeah, Transylvania's in Slovakia and Romania. It's like a cross Romania. Yeah,
and it's like all eastern Europe. It's kind of one
of these places that has been in a lot of
different It was part of the Austro Hungarian Empire, owned
by Hungry different times, like people have fought over it
for a long time. Saxon's had it for a while.
Everybody is kind of fought over this place, which is
(08:48):
how it got his reputation for being bloody. But yes,
so Draguela's in Transylvania. That's the theme of this very
special Halloween episode. And we are going to take a
really quick break, and then when we get back, we
are going to start talking about the first of these
two people who really heavily influenced the Dracula myth. Tanny
(09:09):
is going to talk to us about Elizabeth Bathory. So
we'll be right back. Okay, welcome back, and Tani, why
don't you get us started on the story of Elizabeth Bathory,
the Blood Countess.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Let's take it away, all right, bath three. I've heard
her name pronounced so many ways as Elizabeth and then iconic.
I don't have the inflection. I'm Australian. Well, we swallow
all our words, you know. I can't like anyway. So
Lizzie b Wow, what a what a what a lady?
(09:56):
I think I'm going to start.
Speaker 6 (09:57):
Just with a what A with a little bit of
to this because she is, amongst historians, a little bit
of a controversial individual.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Why because a lot of what we know or believe
we know about her is upon assumption we'll get into
the very morbid details about or third party witnesses, which
will also get into the morbid details of and then
(10:30):
there's a group of scholars that are like, yeah, but
this guy said this, and then some people think, we
think that maybe she just got set up. She was rich,
and then that that guy wanted her money said blah
blah blah. But then also there's a whole bunch of
other stuff which at least convinces me of a lot
(10:51):
of things that went down. So just keep that in mind.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah, it's something that we were coming across when we
were researching this too, where it's like, did she get
a bad rap, maybe, but she probably also did a
lot of really messed up stories. Yeah, yeah, exaggerated or
did they exaggerated eighty percent? It's hard to say for sure.
That's where it happens, or.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
To be the devil's advocate. I don't even know if
I used that term right, but it felt right because whatever, we're.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Just going to be making those kinds of fun episode,
I think.
Speaker 7 (11:25):
Oh yeah, yeah, roll with it. The other side of
the coin is that she was no she was a
part of a huge, noble, very wealthy family. So if
it got out that she did some like quirky, kinky, freaky,
sadistic stuff too much, well that would tarnish the name
(11:49):
of the whole ass family. Right, So then there's that
side of it. It's like, well, how much don't we know?
So it could be either all but it is, but
we'll tell the story as we.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Have details of it. That was just my very long
profess and trigger warning, blood will be involved.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
So you're saying that depending on how you depending on
what we don't know what reality is, maybe the reality
is exaggerated a lot or a little, or maybe the
reality is underreported exactly a little or a lot.
Speaker 8 (12:22):
Yeah, And based on what we do have records of
the under reporting that was done by her, she did
a lot of covering up herself.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
We know that. So anyway, moving forward.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
So but probably a bad person, probably legitimately did some
bad things. Yeah, right, there's a lot of like you know,
there have been attempts in the past over the last
you know, years, to rehab her image a little bit.
I think she probably did a lot of bad stuff,
(12:59):
and that's just talking about a lot of the The
evidence seems overwhelming that some bad stuff was happening in
the torture dungeons of her creepy castle.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Torture not not really great. So all right, So basically
we're in fifteen sixty Transylvania, which we've covered. That is
a real place. Yes, And so her uncle was Stephen Bathory.
(13:31):
Now he was the Duke of Transylvania and mates with
Glad the Impeller.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Is that right, that's true, Yeah, her uncle, Yeah, thought
they fought together.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Yeah, yeah, that is right. So she when she was
a young girl, she people tortured back then, they did
public killings. It was a gruesome time. It was war
time as well. People were subjected to a lot of
(14:04):
traumatizing stuff. So that's the first thing.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
You never want to go back in time. You would
never want to go back in history to any of
the This is torture racks and iron maidens.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Yeah, the convention hadn't been invented yet, yeah, no, and
freezing anyway, Now in this period. So we're talking about
noble families, big names, the Batteries, the Hasburgs, blah blah blah.
We all know that they were all mess Uh. Torture
(14:39):
was common practice in this time for nobility for their slaves,
so they were able to torture however they wished for
their slaves. If they killed a slave, all they had
to do was pay a fine to the family for
the deceased slave. So that is kind of where Bathrie
(15:04):
got away with a lot of things for a very
long time because she just kept it to her slaves.
And we'll get there, but that's that's something important context
of the days that that that was allowed.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Yeah, they were they were your people. You do whatever
you want with them, They're fine, or they you on them, right,
They're your peasants and your slaves in your whatever.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, it's like your property. Yeah. So basically,
to give the quick chronology of her life, she uh
was prone to epileptic seizures as a child, which is
interesting because that was contained by the family. Because you remember,
(15:45):
at this point in time, we've got the whole Catholic
Protestant situation going on, and I guess epilepsy wasn't really understood,
and the demons within sort of situation. So her the
epilepsy was like, don't tell anyone about that. She would
go into these fits of rage, so she probably had
you know something. Now, she got engaged at eleven. You
(16:10):
heard that, right, engaged at eleven, got pregnant while horse
playing with a fourteen year old boy. Got pregnant at eleven. Yeah,
the same we deal with this, Oh goodbye baby, who.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Were unhappy, This is awkward.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Terrible, terrible job, and then we're going to marry you
off at fifteen to a noble person or whatever. I
don't really know where the baby went to be honest.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Nobody does. That's the great I'd say, I'm gonna keep
this one under wraps.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
I think I don't know, just throwing that out there.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
And her husband is her husband's a good character to
his name is is well, I can't pronounce his name.
I'm gonna throw it to Pat. That's one thing on
our show is that Pat does the good pronunciations or.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Nad ferrence if you want to do it the Hungarian way,
good old karents.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Right. So he's the Black Knights. He's called the Black Knight.
So yeah, there we a so he's remembered by history.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Black Knight and Lizzie the Blood Liquor.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
They're they're really imaginate and having even at fifteen.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Yeah literally literally, so just like keep in mind, Australians
use nicknames for everything, so some weird stuff's going to
come out of my mouth and it is what I
love him. So anyway, she's married off to the Black
Knight because we can't that's first name. And they were
(17:57):
literally a matchmate. I would argue in like the seventh
Dante's and Ferna violence. So at the time, the Black
Knight was basically in battle a lot. It was a
very gruesome time against the Ottoman Empire, and he was
(18:22):
particularly known for his creative and sadistic torture methods, and
so they basically had this like weird. I mean, it's
not they obviously have loved I feel like I don't.
I don't know the capacity of this, if they loved
(18:43):
each other or were capable of love, but it seemed
like they really loved each other because they wrote to
each other all the time and Bathrie would ask about
details to do with like the intricate, disgusting ways that
the Lack Night tortured human beings, and then he would
(19:03):
write back instructions and encourage her to do it to
her servant girls. So she starts stabbing servant girls with
needles under their fingernails. When they get it, get a
stra like sewing needles. Yeah, like sewing needles, just like
oh you did that, stitcher on like like that's And
(19:24):
then one time she broke the arm of a servant
for tugging on her hair too hard when when she
was brushing it like tugging on Elizabeth's hair. Yes, so
the servant was brushing her hair and she tugged too hard,
and so naturally the normal reaction is to therefore break
(19:44):
her arm. Oh yeah, totally irrational.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Completely rational punishment fits the crime, you know, so anyway,
and so so just just to recap here, So the
Black Knight is off here fighting Turks and torturing prisoners
of war, which, as pat said, we don't have the
Geneva convention yet, and then writing, and then Elizabeth is
(20:10):
writing him letters like oh what'd you do to that?
And he's like, dude, I put the thing under his nails.
And then he talked and told me were all the
enemy were and then she goes back and she's like,
oh cool, I'm gonna the next time somebody tugs my hair,
they're getting the nails that they're getting that needle treatment
because I got to see what happens.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
So yeah, the letters, they were like, oh look what
I did. And then he'd be like try this. And
this one letter he sent he was like, take it.
Take a servant girl, coat her and honey, leave her
outside and then put lip pieces of paper in between
each toes and let her die by ants. So you know,
(20:47):
the creativity was there.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
I mean, that would be very high on the list
of ways I would not want to die.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Yeah, me too quickly, but like and also typically being
burnt between your toes.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Like anyway, that just seems like overkill really.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
And then their blood and the honey, it seems like
they were if they were getting created, well, they were rich,
so that's how.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
It was probably not that easy to come by then.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Oh yeah, yeah, okay, So be that as it may.
The compared notes on definitely compared notes. They tried each
other's methods. It's sort of yeah that they bonded obviously. Now,
as I was saying, she was torturing and killing her
(21:40):
servant girls. And that was fine because again we were
in this period of time. But it was when she
was introduced to who I like to refer to maybe
as her mentor, Anna Dubolia or pat double leo. How
(22:03):
do you how do you spell this? Let's just go
with Anna. Ye yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
And also I like the way that the other part
of her name sounds a little bit like diabolical kind
of yeah, yeah, yeah, so Anna the dibolical.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
So anyway, the mentor comes along and she's like into
witchcraft and into like Satanism. Apparently there's evidence that she
mentored Bathory, but like they lived together and had similar interests,
which was torturing young women. So so anyway, now her
(22:44):
servants reported that once Anna got to the castle, that's
when Elizabeth started getting.
Speaker 9 (22:53):
More and more extreme with her measures of torture and
her patients that didn't really exist in the first place,
to completely disappear.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
I look, just burning your toes and getting you eaten
with hants like that's nothing.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Just wait, thinks about a hate up, literally hate. So
she turned her castle into Now I'm gonna need help
with his pat because I can't say this word guy,
I see him all right.
Speaker 10 (23:25):
Gun cam like like the quarters for women, the women
side of the building.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Yeah, yes, So so that was the Greek thing, and
so she was like, I'm gonna do that, but instead
was definitely not like a safe haven quarters and it
was like the opposite. It's like the where you go
to die. Oh.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
So she set up like a fake like like finishing school,
like a thig, like that's what this is exactly, women,
noble women and peasants women to come and be trained
by a real countess on how to that you're supposed
to be doing when you were a medieval woman.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
And then there was so it was a finishing school
in a different sense.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yeah, fair finishing school in a different sense.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
I like that because if you're from a that was good.
If you're from a noble family, you want to marry
your daughter off to a noble family son. So they
need to learn languages, which is really important at this point,
also like how to dance properly, you know, at balls
and things and needle work and blah blah. So she
opens opens the gates to the girlies and all the
(24:32):
noble families are like hell yeah, like that. It's Elizabeth Bathrie, like,
of course we're going to send out girls this finishing school.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Her uncle was friends with Ladie and Paler. I mean,
how can you not send her there? Send your daughter
after her creepy castle.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
So you know this school set up, there's Anna there,
there's Lizzie there, and rumors start like escape king because
there were a lot of deaths, not just servant deaths now,
but actual noble women, noble girl deaths. Now that oh
(25:12):
that's not allowed. You can't kill a noble girl. But
she obviously got bored of killing her servants, so she
started torturing the noble girls. Now, she announced to the
area that there was a cholera outbreak in the castle
and that's why all these girls were dead. And so
(25:33):
she's calling in the priests, right, and she would always
have the bodies completely covered, and the priests were only
allowed to look at their faces to identify them. That
preserved their modesty, I'm sure probably probably.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Plus And you have to prevent the outbreak, right, you
have to, like, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
But the priests started like chatting with each other and
they were like this girl was like supposed to be,
you know, fifteen, and she was like the size of
a four year old child. I think she was starved
to death or like there were clear lacerations for you know,
like there's something to like suspicions. And then that roomored out,
(26:18):
so people were talking, but the priests kind of couldn't
say anything because Hubby, who's back from war at this point,
Black mate, Yeah, no, she's untouchable while he's alive.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
So yeah, because he's a big war hero. He's a
super violent, like bloody guy to like you really you
didn't want to cross him, especially even if you were
like a pre stray like this guy will you'll mess
you up.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Yeah, So we don't really know the details quite yet.
But in sixteen oh four, old Mate kicks the bucket.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
This is the Middle Ages, right, We're talking about six
late six late fifteen hundreds, right, so this is still
kind of in Eastern Europe, which is you know, like
we're talking kind of medieval kind of Middle Ages kind
of thing, And so for a more than average number
of people to be dying seems significant because people just
drop dead all the time. In fifteen ninety, like, it
(27:16):
wasn't that weird for entire villages to just disappear because
somebody got sick and they all died or whatever.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Right, Like, however, these were the noble women in one
of the richest gals in the towns. Yeah, their life
expectancy should technically be better because they're.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
They should be expected to live like to.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Thirty, like slightly longer. Yeah. Anyway, Hobby's dead, but she's
rich and the husband weirdly takes like her kids and
puts them in custody of I think it's cousin or something, so.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Like it's like, call.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
I feel like the husband obviously knew something like that.
To me, was like no, no, no, no, no, no no.
Like the husband was like, I'm not leaving my kids
with that bitch.
Speaker 10 (28:14):
But when you say husband, when you say husband, do
you mean Saran nadejd the Black Knight.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Yes, yeah, so in the world. Okay, So even.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
He he was like, yeah, she's she's I like her,
but she's she's actually pretty freaking crazy.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Yeah. He left the estate to Lizzy to Bathory, but
took the kids and then gave them to Matthias the second. Yeah,
so who I think was his cousin? Somehow they were related.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
They're all related at this point. Everybody's related in fifteen ninety.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Yeah, exactly, anyhom so now she's touchable because she's alone.
A priest brave enough woke up and started talking about
all the things that they had seen when they were
given bodies, sort of like at the front gate in
(29:10):
the middle of the night, you know, just that. And
then the castle was raided by priests and the King
of Hungary. So he's like, you know what, we're raiding
the castle. So she takes off, and when the priest
went in, they quoted that the scene they found was
(29:34):
too horrible to recount within the castle.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
So that seems bad.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
The trial begins, Yes, so that means really really, really
really bad, it's too horrible to recount. So there was
three hundred witness statements, okay at this trial, and she
ain't looking too good to be innocent in this situation.
So she fled, and you know, she was living in
(30:02):
some mountainous area, and.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Well, she's not looking too good. While she's not looking
too good as a defendant, her skin is looking amazing.
I should say, like, oh crap, they're going to they're
gonna see all my stuff.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
I'm gonna run. Like if you were innocent, why would
you do that. I don't know. I'm just saying, and
take a whole bunch of money with you and get
in contact with her cousin who was he was someone
that was important as like a backup plan, like what
can you bail me out sort of thing?
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Do you have an army that can protect me from these?
Speaker 3 (30:48):
He's like, why are you fleeting in the country? Anyway,
she gets brought back for this trial and that's where
all the stuff comes out. So she tortured girls. Oh
my gosh, and like the most I don't even know.
(31:10):
I don't know. I'm wordless. Maybe you have some words
like I can't express, like the creativeness of.
Speaker 11 (31:19):
It, yeah, egregiousness, egregiousness, yeah, yeah, sadistic creativity.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
These tools just you know, like like basically what I
would like call tongs or like a like a wrench
tongue thing that would be heated and then would burn
through your finger and the bone and then your finger
gets small off. I didn't know you could do thinks
of that.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
I didn't know that's possibly there.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Uh, lots of what am I How do I put
this crucifixion esque type style torturing, like you know, symbolism,
you know, a Christian theme, and then like the normal
stuff you know, like whipping, lashings, cutting people's hands off.
Speaker 8 (32:15):
You know.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
So anyway in the trial, I promise I'm almost done.
So the biggest accusation of all was that she would
blood let her servant girls into a bath and bathe
in it to preserve her youth. Now, whilst that does
(32:42):
feel like something she'd do, like I just get the
vibe that that kind of would be possible. However, we
have no proof of that. Just keep that in mind.
So they go into the trial her servants, part of
her servants. One of them was her wet nose us.
Oh so the woman who breast fed Elizabeth when she
(33:03):
was a baby. Okay, sorry, no, the woman that breastfed
her babies? Ah got it? Yeah yeah, because nobility were
far above doing that, and she had people to torture.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
She's busy, job's got time for.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
This, got a big job. So five witnesses or tortured
into confession, which completely ruined the trial, and then the
old finger clamp and then they got buried alive. So
that so that's why it's really hard to know, because
of course they're gonna confess or anyway, great.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
There's just no good guys in this type period, right,
Like that's one of the crazy things about medieval judicial system. Literally,
it's like it's like, no, do you believe do you
believe Elizabeth Bathrie? Or do you leave the inquisition?
Speaker 3 (34:04):
Really so that the servants all get uh charged with
accomplices to murder and buried life. But Batary couldn't be
charged with anything because she was noble. So she got
exiled to a room and starved herself to death, which
is very cool, and that was the end of her life.
(34:29):
Probably good. She tortured for thirty five thirty four years,
she got away with torturing people, and the estimates of
the girls that died between six hundred and one thousand people.
There's a big gap and understanding there, so.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Right, and we can't really quantify it easily too, So.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
No, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
So so a Badass of the week we cover a
lot of like war heroes, general badass in that way, uh,
and this is kind of a different situation of like
she's criminally insane and terrifying and scary. Yes, yes, like
just bet she's a hinge. So she works perfectly for
(35:14):
the for you crossover.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
The crossover is crossing.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Yeah, yeah, yes, exactly, And yeah, like the bathing and
blood thing is pretty intense. That's what she's most well
known for. And that story, whether it is true or not,
like does kind of feed into the vampire myth, right
of all of the vampire stuff kind of comes from Transylvania.
You know, we're gonna talk about flat in a second,
but a lot of the vampire stuff is from Transylvania,
(35:40):
which is where she was from. And this bathing and
blood thing is the thing that you'll see in a
lot of vampire type settings, vampires like fiction, and so
she kind of contributes to that as Halloween. So we're
just we're gonna go with.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
It exactly, Yeah, exactly, and Vanity, you know, like you're
gonna get some wrinkles blood, I guess.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
And like you said, like she might have gotten a
I mean, did she get a bad wrap? Probably not,
Like probably deserved all of the being walled up into
a room and starting yourself. She probably was a very
bad person. The bathing and blood thing, like you said,
it doesn't show up until, like you know, the first
account of it an't until a little later. But yeah,
I think, but yeah, it's it's like you said, it
(36:28):
seems like it would fit. We can't prove that it happened,
but we can't prove that it didn't.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Yeah, exactly exactly. Well, I feel like speaking of blood,
why don't we talk about.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Okay, all right, we'll take a really quick break, and
then when we come back from that, we are going
to get into We're going to get into another psychotic,
homicidal lunatic. All right, so stay with us, welcome back.
(37:04):
We are now going to talk about Vlad the Impaler,
and to tell the story of Lad. I want to
begin with an excerpt from a fifteenth century Hungarian pamphlet
that was written by people who hated him. Here begins
a very cruel, frightening story about a wild, bloodthirsty man,
Prince Dracula. How he impaled people and roasted them and
(37:25):
boiled their heads into kettle, and skinned people and hacked
them to pieces like cabbage. So that's what we're about
to get into here. So get ready for Vlad the Impaler.
So Vled, he's led the third. He's known as Tepish.
He's from a place called Walachia, which is in present
(37:46):
day Romania. But he was born in.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
By the way, just means impaler.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Oh really. Oh cool. I never I literally never knew
that I've wit until just now. Okay, so perfect. So
he was as a child, he was just Vlad the
Third or Vlad of Wallachio.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
His dad was.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Flad the second, right, his lad. His dad is Vlad.
His dad was Vlad the second Dracool, which means the dragon.
And so Dracula just means son of the dragon, which
is cool. Yeah, but it's not what we think about
when we think about Draculas anymore. And so yeah, but
that it means son of the dragon.
Speaker 10 (38:26):
And he was called Vlad. The dad was called the
Dragon because he had been inducted into this secret society
of knights or something like that that was known as
the Order of the Dragon.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
That's cool, okay, So so so Vlad is born in Transylvania.
He has a castle that's in present day Romania. He's
about one hundred years earlier than Elizabeth Bathory.
Speaker 10 (38:49):
So Dracula aka Vlad the Third had a pretty rough childhood.
At the age of eleven, he was captured by the
Sultan of the Ottoman emp Higher and shipped off to Arinople,
modern Edna, where he and also his brother, who I
believe was known as Roder the Hansom, would spend the
(39:10):
next six years growing up as prisoners of the Turkish court.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Right, And the idea here was that this would like
bring the bring the Ottoman Empire and Wallachia a little closer. Right,
This is the the Great joy sending their kid to
start castle. Right, Like, the Ottomans are kind of dominating
Eastern Europe at this point. They've got they've me met
the conqueror is up and coming, but he's going to
(39:35):
actually be growing up with Vlad in this castle in Adrianople.
But the idea is the Ottomans are trying to move
into Eastern Europe and they're dominant power, and they they
dominate Dracool and say, hey, you know, we won't kill
you if you send your kid to come live with
us as a hostage. And it works out well because
(39:55):
you know, on the one hand, now Vlad the second
is not going to cause trouble because his two kids
are going to and you don't want to lose, right
to the handsome and on the other hand or flat
the third, right, yes, and the son of the Dragon.
And on the other hand, like, now we've got these
two kids in our castle, and we can indoctrinate them
into our you know, we can grow they grow up
(40:17):
with our guys. And so when when your kids and
our kids both become adults, they'll be buddies and everybody
will be happy and whatever.
Speaker 4 (40:25):
Not how it works out, because and it's all sunshine cupcakes. Yes, yeah,
it's a good idea on paper, it's a decent plan.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
The problem is that is that Dracula didn't go along
with the plan. Yes, yes he was.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
What is it saying like, no battle plan survives first
contact with the enemy, and no lesson plan, shall we say,
survives first contact with a bunch of eleven year olds
or whatever?
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Yeah? Yeah, I mean, and you're right here we have
lad the Third growing up with me met the Conqueror.
So vlad Bei and Paler and men Met the Conqueror
are both kind of boys at this time period, growing
up together. And Dragula is very mad. He's very mad
about being a hostage here, and he causes trouble and
he gets whipped and beaten up and tortured and all
these bad things happened to him in Turkey because he
(41:17):
just will not play along and play nice with the
other boys. He is. He is a captive here, and
he is a hostage, and he never stops trying to
escape and cause trouble.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
And he is not happy about it.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
He is not happy about it. And it actually works
out that being here in Ottoman captivity probably was a
good thing for him, because back in back in Wallachia,
some guy named Vladislav seizes the throne from Vlad's father
uh and pulls his face off with those iron pokers
we were just talking about, and uh and and Druk
(41:51):
Wuld dies from that then older the older brother of Dracula.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
He did not survive the face pulling.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Did not survive having his face pulled off with red
hot pokers. And now he.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
Was not. This is not some like New Spa treatment.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
Yeah no.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
I also, I just want to make sure the drag
hoole who's getting his face pulled off is Vlad the dad, Lad,
the second Glad, the dad. I just want to make
the yes, Dad, the impaler.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
I want to get through because we've got drag hool
and then we've got Dracula.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Yes, and these are two different.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Baby Vlad gets mad, right.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Yeah, So we will end the confusion now, because this
is the end of the story for for Dad the Impaler.
He's he's out of the picture now, he's got his
face pulled off and he's dead. Dracula has an older
brother who gets his eyes burned out with the red
hot poker and is buried alive by this Vladislav guy,
and he also dies from that. So that's the end
(42:42):
of those guys. Glad the third is now the heir
to Walachia, except that it's in the possession of a
usurper at the moment.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
Okay, so this is still the Vladislav guy, right, yes,
Vladislav Okay, yeah, yeah. So here's the situation.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Glad is in Adrianople with me at the conqueror and
these Ottomans raising him. His father and older brother are dead,
killed by a usurper who also doesn't like the Ottoman Empire.
So the Ottomans say, here's a good opportunity for us
to send a huge army with vlad the rightful heir
to the throne. We will conquer Wilacchia, will put Dracula
(43:22):
on the throne of Wilacchia where he belongs, and he
will have loyalty to us because we put him where
we put him there. This is a flawless plan.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
We set in breakfast every day for years, right, Yeah,
something that's a death of jacent strategy in theory, Yeah,
in theory.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
In theory, assuming that Vlad Dracula wants to play along
with these, with the Ottoman Empire, this actually works out.
So this giant Automan Empire army shows up with Vlad
uh you know, ostensibly leading them, and they crush the Wallachians.
(44:02):
They destroy Vladislav. According to the story, Dracula defeats him
in single combat, you know, in the throne room. Very
dramatic movie sequence here of Vlad is avenging his father
and his brother with a sword in front of the
throne of Wallachia. That in fighting the usurper in single combat.
That's the story. It seems probably that's not what happened,
(44:25):
but you know, it's a great story. So that is
how the movie version is. Yeah, So in fourteen fifty six,
Vlad becomes king of Wallachia and he becomes Vlad the Third,
and he's got the crown and he's gonna play nice
enough with the Ottomans. They go back to Adrianople, say okay, Lad,
(44:48):
don't do anything crazy while we're gone, and he says, no,
you can trust me. So Lad's got some business to
attend to. And Tony, let's assume that you are you
are Vlad the Impaler here and you have retaken the
throne of your kingdom from the armies that have usurped.
(45:09):
What's the first order of business for you?
Speaker 3 (45:12):
Revenge?
Speaker 1 (45:13):
Definitely revenge. Yeah, everybody that supported that bloody slab guy,
they got to die, which is ye.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
So you made a Game of Thrones reference and so
I'm won't continue with that. The red wedding theme music
that will haunt every Game of Thrones, like diehard fan
for the rest of our lives. Imagine that playing in
the background. So Lad gets his spies to seek out
(45:45):
every single noble person that supported Daddy getting is his
face ripped off? But this is all secret and underground, right,
And so he then has two hundred names that he
happens to invite to an easter feast as a new
(46:10):
king to get to know everyone. Oh, and bring your
families with you. So sometimes he sends out these invites
and they all come. They all come to this Easter
feast and they're like, oh, yes, the great king.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:27):
And then anyway, so.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
What happens to these guys the doors lock.
Speaker 3 (46:32):
The head of each of the family is that, like
the old eldest of each family is taken and in
front of their family is impaled.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
So you know it wasn't a feast, It was a blood.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
Bath, yes, and yep. Yeah, So he reads of Casti,
meirs all of the men responsible for this, and then
enslaves the wives and children and forces them to build
his castle, forces them to move rocks and build a
big castle in his honor, and works them until they
(47:06):
just die. Yes. And here's the thing of like the Impaler, Right,
so he becomes lad the Impaler after this, right he's
and then he he goes. He gets busy with you know,
all these people in Transylvania, all these Saxons in Transylvania,
you know, UH, Germanic people like you know Germanic people
in UH in Transylvania. They gotta go. Everybody that backed Ladislav,
(47:29):
they gotta go. But one thing we should we should
stipulate here when we're talking about being impaled, is that
I had always kind of assumed that this was like
through the abdomen, like like you would like you would
put a hot dog on a skewer, like if we
were gonna like like a you know, like a kebab
that you would grill you put the stuff on their sideways,
(47:51):
which technically is.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
True because that technically is in palement.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
However, that's not how Lad did it.
Speaker 10 (47:58):
Yeah, so instead of like a instead of like a
T shape, it's more.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Of a it's more like a corn dog. It's like,
yeah it when it wins, let's just say it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
I want to apologize to all of our listeners for
that image.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
I'm too crass.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
I can't hold it back.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
No, no, no, okay, if you made it this far,
like this is what you came for, but I still
feel like, oh, that's got to hurt.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
And yes, you sat on it until the skewer came
out of your mouth. Yeah, that's that's how that works. And
it was that's the impaalment situation for the uh corn dogs?
Corn dogs?
Speaker 3 (48:40):
Yeah, did we just ruined corn dogs? Anyway? So we're
talking about human beings.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
Yeah, we're talking about actual human beings who are dead
and in a horrible way, and probably people who didn't
deserve to die. So pat Led grows up, and so
does his childhood frenemy. Meant the conqueror, who is not
who now becomes met met the conqueror, But he was
(49:06):
just met, meant the dude when Vlad knew him glad
as now the Paler meant is now the conqueror? Yeah,
so what's his deal? I mean fight, yes, but we
definitely this is good as far as combat goes. This
is an amazing battle of epithets. But why don't you
tell us little bit about Memet the conqueror?
Speaker 11 (49:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (49:28):
Yeah, so he's the guy who conquered Constantinople. And yeah,
and these two guys that plan, which on paper would
have made the besties, did not actually happen in the
way that people hoped it would.
Speaker 3 (49:42):
They hated each other's guts.
Speaker 2 (49:44):
And when Dracula aka Led the Third aka Laed, the Paler.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
Seized control of the throne of Volachia.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
Man, does it pronounced vol? Have I been saying wa pronounced?
Speaker 3 (49:59):
How follow your heart? Then? So when Draguler are.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
Gone, I still like my mind is blown from Volakia?
Of course that, of course the W is a V
because it's Eastern Europe. But I would have never put
that together. And I'm gonna, yeah, all right.
Speaker 3 (50:18):
Something that I just have to say because my imagine
getting the nickname the Impaler versus the Conqueror, Like I'd
be pissed, Like if I was Vlad the Impala and
I'm up against a guy the conqueror, like I don't know,
the conqueror.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
Yeah, I mean, if he had fewer people, he might
have been the conqueror. I guess when you would pale
three hundred people in front of their families, like, that's
gonna stick, I think stick. I don't know if that's okay. Yeah, yeah,
So Lad takes over and med Is the is the
(51:00):
takes over in the Ottoman Empire. They're both like pretty young.
They're both in their twenties, right, so they're both kind
of these young guys that are you know, have hated
each other, have ten years of fighting literally wrestling each other.
And you know, in the old days, the Volakians have
historically paid money to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire
to not destroy them. And this is the thing that
(51:22):
is done in a lot of Eastern Europe. Please don't conquer,
Please don't the conqueror us. Here's some money, and Flat
takes over and he's like, go to hell, I'm not
doing this, and Menhad's like, dude, what's your problem? And
then Vlad responds by launching this huge campaign along the
Danube River in fourteen sixty one, just burning everything, like
(51:42):
slaughtering Turkish soldiers and civilians and impaling people and doing
all of this and just annihilating all of the Turkish
settlements and soldiers in his in what he believes is
Wallachia Volakia naturally right, So that medsense two guys to
Vlad's court to be like, dude, what is your problem?
(52:06):
And Vlad responds to theador ambassadors, right diplomats, and they
arrive in Vlad's court and they're like what is wrong
with you? And the Vlad's like, we have to take
your turbine off in my court. I have to take
your head gear off because that's respectful to me, and
they don't do that. So he has their head gear
nailed to their head with a big like think like
(52:28):
a railroad spike and they die. Mehmed has heard enough
from Vlad the Impaler and uh, and he's just gonna
He's just going to do the thing. He's going to
do the conqueror thing, and he's just going to crush
Volakia and put somebody else on the throne. Like, all right,
the Vlod experiment is a failure. We're just going to
stop this guy and find somebody else. Maybe that run
(52:48):
with a handsome guy.
Speaker 12 (52:51):
He seems not Paler's younger brother, maybe the way more chill,
a younger brother that like actually really liked growing up
that empire and was like friends with.
Speaker 3 (53:03):
Them and stuff. Maybe we should chose him.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
Yeah, And so you know, talk about like talk about
epithets right like you would have wished you to had
to conquer. I was like, oh, Why'm not the handsome one?
What was this all that? I'm the other one?
Speaker 3 (53:18):
Can you imagine the sibling life?
Speaker 1 (53:20):
Taylor? OK, So the Turks send one hundred thousand guys,
one hundred thousand man strong army with rod the Hansom
at the head hold on hold.
Speaker 3 (53:33):
On way. Do you say one hundred hundred.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
Hundred thousands, which that's a lot. It's a lot. I
mean it's close to the population of Volakia, right, Blad
can muster twenty thousand tops, right, But in reality.
Speaker 3 (53:50):
Yes, like one fifth of that, right.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
And those that was not like a sustainable number for
him because he and a lot of these guys were
untrained peasants with spears and stuff. Right, Like, the Ottoman
Empire is a professional army. They are serious. They're not
to be messed with. Yeah, and the twenty thousand guys
not only includes these peasants and stuff, but it includes
some of Vlad has to call in help from his friends,
(54:14):
including our good friends Stephen Bathory, uncle of Elizabeth Bathory.
Speaker 3 (54:19):
Elizabeth's uncle, and Funny all.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
Birds of a feather, right, and so chat Okay, so
huge army coming. Vlad's trying to muster whatever he can.
He's not going to fight them. He's not gonna be
able to defeat them on the battlefield. He's got to
come up with some other strategies here. And so one
of the things he decides he's going to do is
(54:48):
he gets a pretty big group of guys and he
decides he's going to infiltrate the Ottoman camp. So the
Ottoman Empire has shown up with their huge army. They're
all set up in these big camps and he out
Vlad can speak fluent Turkish because he would live there
and was raised there, and he knows the customs and
he knows how to speak it, and he knows what
(55:08):
the dresses and what the uniforms are, all the stuff.
So he takes a group of guys and he sneaks
into the Turkish camp and then he starts sending everything
on fire and like causing all his havoc and trying
to create this big ruckus to you know. Uh, it
doesn't work. He's going to try to kill met Meed.
Uh just tried to sneak in and kill the kill
the Sultan. Doesn't work out. He does cause plenty of havoc, loses,
(55:29):
a bunch of his guys has to escape, and and
now it's like, all right, this this little last stitch effort,
it didn't work. So now the Ottoman Empire is coming
for Castle Dracula, and it's it's looking bad, but he's
got one more trick up his sleeve, and uh, it's
it's bad. It's I mean, look, the the impaling thing
(55:52):
has worked for him so far, So.
Speaker 3 (55:55):
Why reinvent the wheel Dracula? Why?
Speaker 1 (55:58):
Yes, absolutely so. Mehmed and his huge army are approaching
Castle Dracula, and this is and what they see is
just just rows of impaled people everywhere, just rows and
rows of spikes with impaled prisoners of war Turks mostly
on them. Probably those three hundred people he'd impaled before
(56:19):
still out there, and he has this like hellscape forest
of the impaled outside of his castle.
Speaker 3 (56:28):
The forest of the impaled.
Speaker 1 (56:30):
Forest of the impaled.
Speaker 3 (56:32):
That's what. That's the name. That is the name.
Speaker 1 (56:35):
That is what does what. The Turks referred to it
as twenty thousand people as the estimate.
Speaker 3 (56:41):
Could you imagine the smell.
Speaker 1 (56:46):
Twenty thousand people is like is like a sports stadium,
like a full sporting stadium, like a floor those like
a football stadium, whether you want that to be American
or Australian football either way, Like it's a football stadium
of dead people on sticks. It's a lot of people.
Yeah uh, and that would.
Speaker 3 (57:04):
Just be that's terrific. But anyway, continuing.
Speaker 1 (57:07):
It's it's terrific. And so and the Turks like, I
mean that's the Turks are extremely religious people and they
see this and they're like, I'm out of here. I
don't want any part of it.
Speaker 3 (57:19):
Even if you're not religious.
Speaker 1 (57:22):
Well, this is like demonic stuff, right, Like this is
some this is some Satan like devil stuff, right. This
is where a lot of this Dracula myth comes from.
Is this guy was pretty dark person and did a
lot of really horrible things. Yeah, And and they see
this and they're like, this is demon this is demon stuff.
Speaker 3 (57:37):
I'm out right, Well yeah, and there's that cultural and
religious aspect too, like that would have just I mean,
just like obviously seeing something like that is horrifying. But
then yeah, like you said.
Speaker 1 (57:50):
But as a as a devout Muslim, like you don't
go to heaven until you are buried, right, like, yes,
and these guys aren't getting buried anytime soon.
Speaker 3 (57:59):
A whole bunch to other customs that I'm not even
aware of that.
Speaker 1 (58:03):
Probably, Yeah, bad news, and nobody wanted a part of it.
And they left, they went back home, and that was
the end of it. So Vled wins this war, even
though he has no business winning this war, and to
this day he is like a hero in Romania because
he saved them from the Turks, and maybe like being
(58:27):
impaled as a fate that's not as bad as being
ruled by the Turks. But I don't know. He's a
hero in Romania and they love him like they don't.
He's not a creepy figure there. He is a cultural
hero in Romania because of what he did to like
defend the country against the Turks.
Speaker 3 (58:43):
It's not interesting. That's so interesting.
Speaker 1 (58:48):
That's what we talked about with Bathory, where like, you know,
how much of this is exaggerated, how much of this
was propaganda stuff. Maybe there was only one hundred guys
and they were already you know, like he set it
up in a way that you know, the story is that.
Speaker 3 (59:02):
That's a really interesting difference between the two because like
she was just being a sadistic serial killer, even though
the term wasn't at the time. Mostly like this was
a leader who did that and then essentially won a
war without Yeah, that's fascinating. I can see doing air
(59:27):
quotes like around one a war, like a quota on
a war by just scaring the absolute shit out of everyone.
Speaker 1 (59:35):
Yep, he defended his country the only way that he
could write. And it's really it's really an interesting take
on him. And you know, you know, the Medians will
say he gets a little bit of a bad rap.
Crime was actually really low while he was in charge.
If you can believe that, No police, yea. And the
(01:00:01):
story goes that there was a there was a crown
like this golden crown, and he put it on a
pedestal in a public park and it was like gold
with jewels and stuff on it. And oh and it
never was stolen. It was stolen the day after he died.
But for his entire life, nobody took that crown. I mean,
it was priceless and it was public.
Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
It's so funny how history repeats itself because like, as
you said that, I'm thinking of like the Spartan and
GoGet I hope I pronounced that right where they like
they encouraged kids to like go and steal something they
weren't allowed to, and like, I don't know, it's just interesting,
like we just just repeat.
Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
Yes, I really hoped.
Speaker 3 (01:00:40):
The impaled forest never repeats though. That's something that would
be terrifying.
Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
It's no, it's not good, right, It's no, it's no good.
That's why that's why this guy is remembered as that's
that's why Dracula has the ed Bathory have the conjure.
The images that they do today amongst us is that
it's this bad people doing bad stuff, and that scared
everybody around them.
Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
But anyway, yeah, I mean, the Turks eventually get sick
of Vlad's shit and they kill him. In fourteen seventy six,
he dies in battle. They cut his head off. They
nail it to the city gate in Adrianople, which is
where he grew up or with the Turks like Turkey. Yeah,
they bring it back, which Adrianople is the capital at
this point where met Med's palace is his main palace.
(01:01:33):
He's in the process of moving everything to Constantinople, which
he has just conquered, which he is also in the
process of renaming it stan Bull and all of that.
But in fourteen seventy six it's Adrianople is the main
city in the Ottoman Empire, and they nail his head
to the city gates, so that and and the story
is that, like it's so that Turks can go and
(01:01:55):
look and be like, Okay, he is really dead.
Speaker 3 (01:01:58):
He's actually dead.
Speaker 1 (01:01:59):
He's gone, and it's not like this isn't like the
force of them pale where you try to scare people,
is like look you can go see him. You go here,
and he's he's here. We got him, we got him.
It's the real him. He's dead, this specific guy.
Speaker 3 (01:02:10):
Yeah, maybe what a spiritual impact as well that possibly had,
Like yeah, you know what I mean, like if that
they needed to say that he really was dead.
Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
You know, he's their minds, right, He's not hiding under
your bed, He's not in the closet somewhere waited to
jump out of it. Yeah, stick a skebob, screw up
your ass.
Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
He was a kind of creepy looking dude in general.
Oh yeah, yeah, be a little bit off with the
eye precautions or whatever.
Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
But like, yeah, big black mustache, big black beard. He
wore a lot of really cool hats. Every time you
see me, he's wearing some really really unique and cool
looking hat.
Speaker 3 (01:02:47):
Reminds me of like Napoleon or something.
Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Yeah, it's like that. He's very distinctive when you see
picture of him, it's very distinctive him. You're never gonna like,
you're never going to confuse him with somebody else. And
they paint him very dark, always dark colors.
Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
So apparently a piece of research came out recently. It
was published in the Journal of Analytical Chemistry recently. The
title of the article is Count Dracula resurrected proteomic analysis
of Lad the third the Impaler's documents by EVA technology
and mass mass spectrometry. What these chemists did is they
(01:03:27):
took some documents that had been signed by Vlad the
third and somehow managed to analize stuff apparently, you know,
you leave peptides and stuff on the paper whatever, and
they show that he probably suffered from inflammatory processes of
(01:03:48):
the respiratory tract.
Speaker 3 (01:03:49):
And or of the skin. I'm reading from the abstract
of the article.
Speaker 2 (01:03:53):
And then they think that it's possible that the data
they're getting may indicate that he may have suffered from
a pathological condition called hemolacria, which is a condition in
which you shed tears mixed with blood.
Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
WHOA, wow, the cry tears of blood. That's the lead, right,
that's the that's the drummer, that's the click.
Speaker 3 (01:04:19):
Bad, that's the clickba I bury the lead.
Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
Yeah, blad. Dracula may have actually cried tears of blood
when his father was slain, when he got news that
his dad and his brother were dead, cried tears of
blood and let an army to avenge them. That not
that's nice.
Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
Yeah, I cannot speak to the science behind it. The
article is out there. You you know, it's not behind
a paywall or anything. But I guess the takeaway is
that Flat the third is still gripping our imagination.
Speaker 3 (01:04:52):
Yes, yeah, whoa when you cry blood? No wonder the
Turks needed to see that he is actually dead because
I'm probably gonna have nightmares about this, no kidding, right, yeah,
that's that's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
Oh man, all right, well, happy Halloween guys, and Tony,
thank you so much for being on. This is awesome.
I want this to be a four and a half
hour episode, but we should probably call it at this point.
Speaker 3 (01:05:24):
We definitely should because we could talk for probably light
three day struct I agree.
Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
Where can people find more of your stuff?
Speaker 3 (01:05:32):
You can find me on literally every platform. I'm tany
t A and I Caesar c ae s a R people.
I spill it wrong on TikTok, on Instagram, all the things,
and then my podcast is Unhinged History awesome and vice versa.
Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
Yes, so we are on. The show is called Badass
of the Week. We are at Badass of the Week
on Twitter and Instagram. And although I'm very bad about
updating social media stuff, so we'll see. But yes, that's
weird and all right, well, thank you so much for
talking with us. This is really really fun. I agree time, this.
Speaker 3 (01:06:11):
Is fun and I'm actually sure this was great.
Speaker 1 (01:06:15):
Yes, yes, all right now I'm gonna go watch Twilight
and sit my pumpkin spice Ltte and thank you guys
so much, and we'll see see We'll see you soon,
stay spooky.
Speaker 10 (01:06:32):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Me, Pat Larish,
and my co host Ben Thompson. Writing is by me
and Ben. Story editing is by Ian Jacobs Brandon Phibbs.
Mixing and music and sound design is by Jude Brewer.
(01:06:54):
Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeart Badass of the
Week is based on the website Theweek dot com, where
you can read all sorts of stories about other badasses.
If you want to reach out with questions ideas, you
can email us at Badass Podcast at badassoftheweek dot com.
(01:07:15):
If you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen, and tell
your friends and your enemies if you want as. We'll
be back next week with another one. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
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